The claimant reentered the room and nodded solemnly about him. He resumed his place, looking left and right, and said simply, “I am ready.”
“I believe,” said the Lord Chief Justice, “that the gentleman who entered with Sir John now has some questions.” He looked hopefully in the direction of Mr. Inskip. “I do not know his name, so I cannot properly introduce him to you, Sir?”
The Mr. Inskip who came forward was hardly recognizable to me as the frail old gentleman who had come off the Oxford coach. Where that one moved with a halting step, this one walked with a bounce; where one seemed timid and fearful, the other was confident beyond measure; the former spoke in a high, fluting tenor, while the present Mr. Inskip’s voice seemed mysteriously to have deepened.
“It is of no matter that you do not know my name,” said he, addressing the group, “but you, sir “ — turning to the claimant — ‘you should certainly know me. Who am I?”
The claimant, taken aback, could for a moment do naught but stare at this curious old man who had assaulted him so rudely. But then, after a bit of silent sputtering, he did manage to say: “Why. . why, I am not sure. Ought I to know you?”
“Oh, indeed you should. You and I met often — at least once a week for three years.”
“Was it in the colonies? You must forgive me, but I have a lamentably poor memory for faces.”
“Well, it was not always so. I can recall that a time there was when you would draw my face from memory and put it on a goat’s body. What was it you wished to imply by that, eh?”
“I don’t know that I wished to imply anything, sir.”
The claimant had grown tense, his mood altogether altered in not much more than a minute. His audience, by contrast, had relaxed so considerably that two or three of the commission were now chuckling at his discomfiture.
“Not know what you wished to imply?” questioned Mr. Inskip. “I doubt that. Indeed, I doubt you completely, sir. You say that you are Lawrence Paltrow? Well, I say you are not. You must convince me. “
“I believe I can,” said the claimant. “I have well over a hundred statements and affidavits which I can — ”
“Which you can what?”
The claimant sat, staring up at Mr. Inskip, his persecutor. His frustration and curiosity were plain upon his face. At last, he managed to form the question that now consumed him quite completely. “Sir, tell me, please — who are you?”
“I’ll give you my name. It is Richard Inskip. Does that mean anything to you?”
The claimant closed his eyes and fixed his face in concentration. “You were … let me see. . you were the tutor. At Oxford.”
“Ah, so you do remember the name, no doubt from some list that was passed on to you. During your recent visit to the university, you looked in on Professor Fowler and Professor Newcroft, but you failed to come to me. And so, given this opportunity, I took it eagerly that I might myself ask you the sort of questions that anyone who claims to be Lawrence Paltrow could certainly answer.”
“I … well, it was not my intent to slight you, sir,” spoke the claimant.
“Oh, pish-posh,” Mr. Inskip replied. “To be quite frank with you, young man, I do have a good memory for faces. I can recall that of Lawrence Paltrow quite well, and yours is not his. I concede that there is a resemblance, one perhaps of a brother but not of a twin. Nevertheless, if you can answer my questions, I shall put all that aside and accept that you are who you say you are. And I shall advise these gentlemen to accept you, too.” With that, the tutor gave him a flashing grin. “Shall we begin?” said he.
“Uh. . well … I suppose.”
At this point, reader, I fear I must apologize and offer an explanation of some sort. It has been my experience in writing these accounts and descriptions of certain of the cases of Sir John Fielding that it was only those matters which I myself understood that I have been able to render satisfactorily on the page. Even in medical matters which were not always entirely clear to me, I was able to consult with Gabriel Donnelly, physician and surgeon, that I might not err in their presentation. However, of what I heard from Mr. Richard Inskip during the time that followed, I understood very little (nothing, would be more accurate) and in preparing this narrative, I had none with whom I might consult and no one to question. So it is, reader, that I can give no true account of the questions put to the claimant by Mr. Inskip, for they dwelt upon matters of natural history and natural science which were simply incomprehensible to me. There were references to Sir Isaac Newton, of whom I had some knowledge, and Robert Boyle, of whom I had none. There was talk of a most peculiar table, one of ‘elements’ as it were. Yet more: ‘Pliny!’ ‘igneous phenomena’, ‘aqueous’, ‘anthricitis’, ‘hydro-phane’. On and on these strange terms, and many more such, passed from one to the other. There was a separate category of questions occasioned by the word (or name) ‘Linnaeus’, and this included ‘mammalia’, ‘molluscs’, ‘hydroids’, and such.
That last term, as I recall, occasioned this exchange between Mr. Inskip and the claimant:
Inskip: “Come now, sir. Hydroids? Surely that should be quite evident. Or have you forgotten all your Greek?”
Claimant: “Yes, forgotten it completely. “
Inskip: “And your Latin?”
Claimant: “I’ve not retained a word of it.”
Inskip: “Then, sir, I would say that your education was altogether wasted upon you.”
Thus did the tutor bait his supposed student. He jeered and made sport of the claimant as he failed to answer one question after another. It seemed likely to me that this was the manner that he employed with most of his students. So was it also with many schoolmasters I had known: The cutting remark often made a greater impression than a ruler across the knuckles.
More important was the claimant’s response to this cruel method. It seemed to hurt him deeply. In spite of myself, I could not but pity the poor fellow, so low was he brought by the tutor’s jabs. I watched as he seemed to unravel like some ill-knit muffler: His eyes brimmed with tears and his chin trembled as he managed by force of will to keep from bursting into an unmanly fit of weeping. He kept control of himself until the end, when Mr. Inskip addressed the commission and inveighed against the claimant as a charlatan, a mountebank, and assured them that had the fellow been who he pretended to be, he would have answered not some but all the questions put to him.
“I remember Lawrence Paltrow very well,” said he. “He was one of the best scholars it has been my pleasure to tutor in the last ten years, at least. Let me add that — ”
Indeed, Mr. Inskip added nothing to that statement, for the claimant then rose to his feet and shouted to the room, “M’lord, and you, gentlemen, I take my leave of you. I am neither charlatan nor mountebank. In truth, I am naught but a poor man tempted into affairs over which he had no control. I’ll not trouble you further!”
And with that he ran from the room, the threatened tears now coursing down his cheeks. Those left behind were quite astonished. Some shouted after him to stop. Others recovered sufficiently to leap to the door in pursuit. But neither shouting nor leaping about did a bit of good. The claimant was truly gone and would not easily be brought back.
Nevertheless, as I looked about the room, I became aware that another of our number was missing. As they milled about, I attempted to ascertain the identity of him who had followed the claimant out the door. I realized with a start that it was none but Sir Patrick Spenser.