Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “Who?” said Mary.

  “Mr. Carey and — and poor young Patch. And Mrs. Harter is hurt too, but she’s conscious.”

  Claire came down, and Mary turned to her.

  The General leant forward out of his seat. “Don’t let the women come. It’s ghastly. Patch was killed on the spot. The spare wheel came down on his head — broke his neck. They’re taking them to the Cottage Hospital — all but Harter. He’s down there — he somehow escaped. Old Carey is jammed between the car — and the parapet — dead they think, but they can’t get him out. Can you send down one or two of the men?”

  Claire had already rung the bell violently and we heard the servants coming hurriedly. General Kendal helped his wife out of the car. She was white-faced and shaking. We knew afterwards that the girls had been told to walk home from the scene of the accident, but that poor Mrs. Kendal had valiantly refused to let her husband come back to us by himself.

  “Let me leave her here. I’ll take the men back with me,” said the General.

  The two men who were ready first sprang into the car, and when I got in myself I found Claire already there.

  “Get out, Claire,” I said abruptly. “It’s not fit for you, and you couldn’t help them.”

  “I am coming,” said Claire tensely.

  “I tell you, there’s nothing you can do.”

  “I can do as much as you can,” she retorted.

  She was quite obviously on the verge of becoming hysterical.

  I looked at Mary in despair. There was no time to lose, but to have Claire creating a panic amongst the terrible wreckage at the bridge was unthinkable.

  General Kendal took her by the shoulders and half pushed, half lifted, her on to the steps.

  Mary Ambrey, quite resolutely, did the rest.

  Claire was screaming and struggling in her grasp as we turned and drove away.

  Mrs. Kendal, a woman of great determination, was able to command herself in a very few moments, and to give Mary a fairly lucid account of what had happened. Her story, and later on, of course, the evidence at the inquest, made the facts clear enough.

  At the bottom of the avenue is a very sharp turn into the high road, which was negotiated by General Kendal with his usual excessive caution.

  Immediately beyond it a small bridge spans the river running beneath the road, protected only by white wooden railings, and a low stone parapet.

  “We heard the Ford behind us, and Puppa said to me: ‘I hope they won’t try and pass us on the bridge.’ Those were his very words,” said Mrs. Kendal to Mary. “I looked round, as I always do, so as to tell him if anything is coming, and I saw the Ford car, as plainly as possible in the moonlight, take the corner of your drive going much too fast. Oh, much too fast. I immediately said to my husband ‘Oh, what a dangerous thing to do. I don’t believe that Mr. Harter knows how to drive,’ I said. Of course, Puppa couldn’t look round himself, but I did, and I saw the accident happen.” Her face whitened again dreadfully, but she went on, although she sobbed now and then. “I suppose he tried to right the car after taking the corner so sharply, for it seemed to swerve across the road to the left, and then suddenly to the right. That was just as they reached the bridge. It seemed to happen in a flash, and yet one saw it coming — the car crashed straight into the railings. I saw something spin up into the air — large and dark — and come down again, and the car turned over sideways, and hung over the water, half on the road, half in the air, somehow caught in the railings.”

  Poor Mrs. Kendal was shuddering violently. Her account of the tragedy was afterwards proved to be substantially correct. The wheel-tracks in the dust of the high road accurately followed the lines that she had described. The large, dark thing that had flown up and come down again was the spare wheel, somehow ripped clean off the car. It was that which had killed Bill Patch.

  Harter had been flung clear, and had landed in the mud of the river bed, nearly dry at that time of year. He was not hurt. The two on the back seat — old Carey and Mrs. Harter — were flung against the stone parapet. They picked up the woman on the road, screaming. Carey, who was probably killed on the spot, had somehow been caught in the wreckage. (When I got down there, Mrs. Harter had been taken away, into the Cottage Hospital which mercifully was not far off.)

  “They got her out almost at once,” said Mrs. Kendal. “We had stopped the car, and Puppa ran back, but I wouldn’t let the girls come. Ahlfred came, of course, but I said to the girls, ‘No, girls.’ And they stayed by the car. There seemed to be people there in a moment — I saw Major Ambrey, but thank Heaven, Nancy was safe at home. Oh, poor little thing — who is to go to her?”

  “I will,” said Claire wildly.

  Loman Cottage is three miles from the Manor House, and the chauffeur had gone down to the scene of the accident.

  “They will have sent for her from the Cottage Hospital,” Mary said gently. “Is old Mr. Carey — ?”

  Mrs. Kendal nodded, the tears running down her face. “They said he must be. They — they couldn’t move the car, so as to free him.”

  “They’ll have moved it now, with the men. I’m going down there,” said Claire suddenly.

  “No, don’t.”

  “I must help.”

  “Claire, you can’t help.”

  “I can help Nancy Fazackerly.”

  “Sallie is there, I think. I wouldn’t let my girls come — I have always shielded them most tenderly from dreadful sights and sounds — but I saw Sallie, I think.”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “She went with her brother.” Perhaps Mary, too, would have liked the selfish satisfaction of shielding her children from reality, but she does not indulge in it.

  “Sallie!” exclaimed Claire. “What can a child like Sallie do? She has no business to be there at all. I shall go myself.”

  They had a trying time with her. She kept on saying that she must go, and starting up wildly to ring for her maid and order her hat and cloak to be brought, and then she broke into tears again and said: “The only thing is, am I fit for it?”

  At least it afforded Mary the relief of occupation. In the end she telephoned down to the Cottage Hospital for news, and to ask whether Mrs. Fazackerly were there.

  Yes, she was there. Major Ambrey had fetched her. Old Carey was actually breathing when they brought him in, but had died without regaining consciousness, within five minutes of his admission.

  Mrs. Harter?

  She was badly bruised, but by some miracle had escaped serious injury. She would be detained for the night, but the doctor could find nothing the matter with her beyond severe shock.

  Harter himself had not appeared at the hospital at all.

  “Then,” said Mary, “has anyone — is anyone — with Mrs. Harter?”

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the wire. Then —

  “The nurse is within call, of course. But naturally, there’s a great deal to be done. She seems more or less stunned.”

  “I see,” said Mary.

  She hung up the receiver without mentioning the name of the dead boy.

  Claire upbraided her for that.

  “But what could I have asked?” said Mary sadly.

  “It may be a ghastly mistake — I can’t believe it’s true — why, he was laughing and talking in this very hall less than two hours ago. I can’t believe it,” Claire wailed.

  But Mary could believe it. She told me afterwards that from the instant in which she had heard that Bill Patch was dead, it seemed to her that there was something inevitable in that arbitrary solution to the affair.

  When General Kendal brought me back to the Manor — and after all we were at the bridge less than an hour — Sallie was with me. She had helped most pluckily and sensibly, with a silent efficiency that spoke admirably for her training.

  Martyn had remained with the A.A. men who were beside the wrecked car.

  The early morning light was flooding the windows, and there was in the air the curious chill
that is sometimes the preliminary, in England, to a very fine summer day.

  The faces of those three women, waiting there, were ghastly, and Claire every now and then had a paroxysm of sobbing, and low muffled screaming.

  General Kendal took his wife away. He had already told me, what was indeed sufficiently obvious, that she would inevitably be obliged to give evidence at the inquest, and the poor old fellow was already dreading the ordeal for her, and hoping vehemently that the fear of it would not occur to her until the last possible moment.

  The Ambreys were staying in the house, and Sallie said, after one look at Mary —

  “Mother, won’t you come upstairs?”

  Mary’s face was grey. She only asked me two questions —

  “Who is with Nancy?”

  “Dolly Kendal — good girl! Alfred went to fetch one of them, and she is going to spend the night with her.”

  “Mrs. Harter? Does she know?”

  “She hasn’t spoken, but they say she’s been conscious the whole time.”

  “Mother, come,” said Sallie, and they went upstairs together, Sallie holding her mother’s hand as I had never seen her do since she was a tiny child. Poor Claire cried and asked incessant questions, to which she herself supplied most of the answers, and walked up and down, and threw herself backwards and forwards in a deep armchair, and finally turned absolutely faint from sheer nervous exhaustion.

  Her maid got her upstairs and into bed, at last.

  There was nothing left of the night, but a ghastly interval of waiting and silence and realisation followed.

  I had seen Bill Patch — unrecognisable — for one instant only...

  And I had seen old Carey, my neighbour for years, crushed and broken, to all intents and purposes dead...

  I had seen Harter, the stranger whom we none of us knew except as the husband of Diamond Ellison, after the accident.

  And it was his face which was to haunt me longest.

  The theatrical litter had all been cleared away out of sight. The servants, white-faced, went about their duties as usual.

  Claire remained in her room.

  Quite early in the forenoon, Sallie and Mary Ambrey went down to the hospital. They saw Nancy, who was pathetically courageous, and heard that she had telegraphed to Bill’s father.

  They asked for Mrs. Harter.

  “She is coming round in the most extraordinary way,” said the little nurse, full of importance. “Doctor says she must have an iron constitution. But she won’t let anybody go near her — not her — not her husband, nor anyone. Strange, isn’t it? She’ll be going out in a day or two, there’s nothing to keep her in for.”

  The woman dropped her voice.

  “She’ll be wanted to give evidence at the inquest. Dreadful, isn’t it? Doctor says they’re holding it over till to-morrow, on her account.”

  I had already been notified as to the time and place of the inquest, and enjoined to attend it. That Harter’s condition at the time of the smash would be strictly inquired into, was already a matter of certainty.

  All that day people came up to the house, insisting upon talking about it all. I only saw Lady Annabel, who walked in through a French window without going to the hall-door at all.

  Even she did not touch upon the side of things that had so lately absorbed all her attention. The nearest that she came to it was to say that if ever anything seemed like the judgment of Heaven — and there she broke off, with the tears pouring down her face.

  Afterwards she went up to see Claire. They do not like one another very much, but it is always an unconscious relief to Claire to pour out the story of her own reactions to anybody at all.

  She was better after Lady Annabel’s visit, and came downstairs.

  Late in the evening, Christopher took the car to the station to meet Bill’s father. He bore many offers of hospitality, but the old man, perhaps not unnaturally, preferred to stay alone at the inn. He had not brought his young wife.

  “He is to see Nancy to-morrow, after the inquest,” Christopher told me.

  He hesitated a little, and I could guess what was in his mind.

  “She thinks that he knows nothing at all about poor Bill and that woman. I suppose there’s no chance of anything cropping up, at this inquest?”

  “Surely not. Of course, the jury will be composed of local men and they’re bound to know that there’s been talk. But I don’t see how it affects the manner of the accident, which is what they have to find a verdict about.”

  “Death by misadventure,” said Christopher slowly, and without much conviction.

  “H’m! There’s the question of contributory negligence, or worse. Did you see anything of Harter that evening?”

  “Not much. Do you mean that he was the worse for drink?”

  “Between ourselves, Chris, the fellow had undoubtedly been drinking, but as far as I could tell he was all right when he left the house.”

  “Then I can’t for the life of me understand how it happened. The ground was dry, there was no possibility of a skid, and nothing coming towards them in the road, to give any possible reason for a swerve.”

  “The steering gear?”

  “Nothing the matter with it. I was there when the men righted the car. They looked to see.”

  “The chief evidence, besides Mrs, Kendal, who actually witnessed the whole thing, will be Mrs. Harter’s, then?”

  “Good Lord, are they going to make her give evidence?”

  “How can they help it? She, and Harter himself, are the survivors of the accident.”

  Christopher groaned.

  “That little reptile, and a worthless woman, and a good fellow like poor Bill goes west — it’d wring tears from a stone to hear the poor old father talking about him, saying what a good boy he was, and how fond the little stepbrothers were of him. It seems he was clever, too, although you’d never have guessed it — a good fellow like that,” said Christopher simply.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s the cutting of the Gordian knot for Bill, all right.”

  The day and the night that preceded the inquest seemed endless. There was no possibility of restoring any sort of balance to everyday life, until that was over.

  Mary asked again if Mrs. Harter would see her, and was again refused.

  “She still hasn’t seen her husband,” said the nurse, very much shocked.

  She was quite newly arrived in the district.

  “What is she doing?” asked Sallie, her eyes wide.

  “Nothing. She’s up, you know — she’s got to get up her strength for this afternoon, poor thing. It’ll be an ordeal for her, like. She’s just sitting by the window, with her hands crossed on her lap, so.”

  Just as she had sat at her window in the Queen Street lodgings, Mary remembered.

  Then Sallie surprised even her mother by suddenly inquiring of the nurse: “How is Mr. Harter?” One rather wonders if it wasn’t the first time that anyone had thought of asking that, since the accident.

  Even the nurse, Mary said, seemed a little bit startled.

  “Oh, he wasn’t hurt, you know,” she began.

  “I know,” said Sallie— “but I suppose it’s been a shock for him, too — worse, in fact, for him.”

  “Of course, of course,” the little nurse agreed. “He’s — he’s a very quiet man, isn’t he? Kept his nerve well, and all that — which makes it all the more strange he should have had such an accident. But there’s no accounting. He’s been up here a good deal, of course — hoping his wife would come to reason, I dare say. I told him that in his place, I’d simply go up and walk in on her. It’s all nerves that makes her say she won’t see him. ‘If I were you,’ I told him straight—”

  She began the typical hospital nurse’s monologue. Sallie, the medical student, quite ruthlessly interrupted her by saying good-morning, and walking out of the room.

  “I had to ask about Harter,” she explained afterwards to Mary. “Can you imagine what it must be like, to feel
responsible for the death of two people? Especially if one hated one of them.”

  “Do you suppose that he hated Bill?”

  “I know he did. I saw him watching Bill and Mrs. Harter, on the night of the ‘Bul-bul Ameer’ —

  Oh, doesn’t all that seem ages ago — ? And, honestly, they did try him pretty high.”

  Mary could not deny it.

  “It strikes me,” said Sallie, quite quietly, “that it’s on the cards that friend Harter may actually find himself committed for trial, on a charge of manslaughter.”

  Nobody else had dared to say it.

  And Sallie was right, as she almost always is.

  It was of course a local jury, and the coroner was a local man. The state of affairs was perfectly well known to them.

  The coroner was a decent little fellow — and the dead boy’s father was in court. There was not a word spoken to connect his name with that of Mrs. Harter.

  With her, he dealt very briefly and mercifully, and she looked ill enough to justify it. Her answers were given almost inaudibly, but always straight to the point. When the coroner thanked her, and said that would do, she walked straight out of the room, and went away.

  She passed quite close to me, and I saw her face before she pulled down her veil. It looked as though she had not slept for a long, long while.

  Then Mrs. Kendal was called.

  Her account of what she had seen was, of course, emphatic, detailed, and circumstantially accurate. She made it perfectly clear that the accident was due entirely to Harter’s driving. The question of his sobriety was pressed very hard, and the medical evidence from the Cottage Hospital people was damaging on that point. I was asked if he had been drinking during the evening, and so were one or two others. None of the evidence was absolutely damning, but none of it could create a favourable impression.

  Harter’s own manner was utterly against him, too. One could see the jury disliking him more and more.

  His impassivity was absolute — after all, he was a solicitor himself — but it struck one very disagreeably, as the coroner dwelt on the frightful results of the smash, as he had not done with any of the other witnesses.