My Lord Bacon, in his Novum Organum, discusses this point, and investigates with his habitual brilliance the various categories of evidence, and finds them all flawed. None conveys certainty, he decides, a conclusion which (one might think) would be devastating for scientists and lawyers alike—historians and theologians have learned to live with this, the former modestly tempering their claims, the latter resting their glorious edifice on the more reliable foundations of revelation. For without certainty what is science except glorified guesswork? And without the conviction of certainty, total and absolute, how can we ever hang anyone with an easy conscience? Witnesses can lie and, as I know myself, even an innocent can confess to a crime he did not commit.

But Lord Bacon did not despair, and claimed one instance of a fingerpost which points in one direction only, and allows of no other possibility. The perfectly independent eyewitness, who has nothing to gain from his revelation, who is, in addition, schooled in observation and report through a gentlemanly status and education, this is the nearest we can get to a reliable witness and his testimony may be said to be conclusive, overwhelming all lesser forms. I claim here that status, and assert that what follows eliminates all possibility of further argument on the subject.

I sent a brief note to Dr. Grove, begging the favor of an interview, and in due course received a note saying that he would see me that evening. Thus, perhaps some two hours after Mr. Cola had left the college, I knocked on the door.

Naturally, I did not refer to the purpose of my visit immediately; I might be a beggar, but I did not wish to appear an uncivil one. So we talked for a good three-quarters of an hour, which was interrupted frequently by Grove’s belching and farting as he complained loudly of the food that his college chose to serve up to its fellows.

“I wish I knew what that cook did to it,” he said after a particularly bad attack. “You would not have thought a good simple roast could be so massacred. I swear it will be the death of me in the end. Do you know, I had a guest in this evening. Young Italian man, about your age, I’d guess. He chewed his way through with no complaint, but the look of shock about him was so great I almost felt like laughing straight in his face. That’s the trouble with these foreigners. Too used to fancy sauces. They don’t know what real meat’s like. They like their food like their religion, eh?” He chuckled at his metaphor. “All dressed up and elaborate, so you can’t tell what’s underneath. Garlic or incense. It’s the same thing.”

He chuckled again at his little sally, and I could see he was wishing he had thought of it earlier, the better to irritate his guest. I did not point out that his attitude to the food seemed to me a little contradictory.

Here he groaned again, and clutched his stomach. “Dear God, that food. Pass me that little packet of powder, dear boy.”

I picked it up. “What is this?”

“An infallible purgative, although that pompous little Italian says it’s dangerous. It isn’t; Bate says it is safe, and he is the king’s physician. If it’s good enough for a king, it’s good enough for me, I should think. It is vouched for both by authority and by my own experience. Then this Cola tells me it is useless. Nonsense; two pinches and your bowels empty on the instant. I bought a large amount four months back against such occasions as these.”

“I believe Mr. Cola is a doctor, so possibly knows what he says.”

“So he says. I don’t believe it myself. He’s too Jesuitical to be a real physician.”

“I understand he is treating Anne Blundy of a broken leg,” I said, seeing my chance of bringing the conversation around.

At the very name, Dr. Grove’s face darkened with displeasure, and he growled menacingly, like a dog warning a rival for a bone.

“So I hear.”

“Or was, for she cannot afford the treatment, and Mr. Cola, it seems, cannot afford to work for nothing.”

Grove grunted, but I did not take the warning, so eager was I to do my business and depart.

“I have pledged myself for two pounds and five shillings.”

“Good of you.”

“But I need another fifteen shillings, which I do not possess at the moment.”

“If you have come here to ask me for a loan, the answer is no.”

“But…”

“That girl near cost me eighty pounds a year. I nearly lost the living I have been promised because of her. I don’t care if her mother dies tomorrow; it would be no more than she deserves, from what I hear. And if she cannot afford treatment, then that is the consequence of her own behavior, and it would be a sin to obviate the punishment that she has brought on herself.”

“It is her mother, I think, who is being punished.”

“That is not my doing, and no longer my affair. You seem to concern yourself greatly with this servant of yours, if I may say so. Why is that?”

Perhaps I blushed, and that gave the man the hint, for he was quick-witted in his malice.

“She works for my mother and…”

“It was you who recommended that she come to me as a servant, was it not, Mr. Wood? You who are the fons et origo of my troubles with her? And you pay her medical bills as well? That is very caring, unusually so, if I may say it. Perhaps these rumors that have been circulating about her slut-tishness should properly refer themselves to you, rather than to me.”

He looked carefully at me, and I saw a slow, unmistakable look of understanding spread across his face. Dissimulation has never been a skill 1 have either cultivated or perfected. My face is an open book to those who can read, and Grove had that sort of malice which delights in other men’s secrets, tormenting and persecuting by his possession of them.

“Ah, the antiquarian and his servant, too wrapped up in his learning for a wife, contenting himself with some sluttish rubbish between his books. That’s it, isn’t it? You possess this little whore, and think it love. And you play the gallant with this grubby little bug, thinking her in your mind a veritable Eloise, pledging money you do not have, and expecting other people to stand you credit so you can impress your lady. But she is no lady, is she, Mr. Wood? Far from that, indeed.”

He looked at me again, and then laughed outright. “Oh, dear me, it is true. I see it on your face. This is the perfect joke, I must say. “The bookworm and the slut,’ almost the subject for a poem. An heroic epistle in hexameters. A theme worthy of Mr. Milton himself, for no subject is too hideous for his pen.”

He laughed again, for my face was burning red with shame and anger, and I knew that no denial would persuade him, nor deflect him from his entertainment. “Come, now, Mr. Wood,” he continued, “You must see the joke. Even you must see that. The meek little scholar, dedicated only to his learning, mousing away in his nest of papers, eyes red from never seeing the light, and we wonder why all this endeavor produces nothing. Is it some great work that is taking shape in his brain? Is it the difficulties of conception that delay the birth of a masterpiece? Is it the sheer magnitude of his task that means the years pass by with no result? And then we find out. No, ‘tis none of these. It is because, while everyone thinks he is working away, he is instead rolling in the dust with his servant. Better still, he has persuaded his mother to have the girl in her house, turning his servant into a harlot, and his mother into a bawd. Now, Mr. Wood, tell me that is not perfect.”

The theologians tell us that cruelty comes from the devil, and this may be the ultimate cause, for it is most certainly evil in intent. But in its immediate cause I do believe that true cruelty comes from a perversion of pleasure, for the cruel man enjoys the torment he inflicts on others and, like an experienced musician with his viol or virginal, can play upon his instrument and make all manner of harmony, exciting torment and humiliation, distress and empty anger, shame, regret and fear at will. Some can produce all of these, together or singly, with the most delicate touches, sometimes playing more loudly on his subject until the motion excited in the mind is all but unbearable, then more softly so that the misery is summoned gently and with seductive delight. Such a man as Grove was an artist in his cruelty, for he played for the pleasure of his creation, and the delight of his skill.