by Ellis Peters
Susan fell on her knees by the bed, took his face between her hands, shook his head gently in her palms, chafed his cheeks. He submitted to every impertinence without a sign of awareness. She turned her chin upon her shoulder to hiss at Liesl, who was staring in fascinated horror: ‘Fetch the doctor! Quickly! Tell him it’s morphine again, say it’s bad. Then go and make coffee. Black and strong, a lot of it.’
Liesl could not take her eyes from the pale face lolling helplessly on the pillow. He looked like a half-collapsed rag doll being subjected to some humiliating make-believe in a child’s game. ‘He has killed himself!’ she said in a whisper. ‘So he did do it! The poor boy!’
It was what they would all say, but Susan had no time to argue. She shouted furiously over her shoulder: ‘Get the doctor, I said!’ and turned a face of such passionate rage that Liesl jumped and ran to obey.
Susan took Laurence’s limp body by the shoulders, and shook him until the uncontrolled quakings of the dangling head brought a rush of tears to her eyes, and made her stop for fear he should be jolted to pieces. She thrust her hands under his armpits and hauled him up in the bed, and taking his dead weight into her arms, shook and coaxed and called him by his name in a voice of hopeless exasperation, but for all the effect it had she might have been embracing his pillow. She eased him back gently to lean against the headboard, so that she might have both hands free, and began to slap his livid cheeks, first lightly, then harder, and at last in her desperation with vicious slaps that cracked like whips. The poor abused head rolled defencelessly on the raised pillow, his fair hair tumbling over his forehead, and the marks of her fingers began to stain his cheeks a hectic red beneath the blue pits of his eyes. He gave no sign of feeling either movement or pain; she was the one who winced at every blow, and wept impotently as she belaboured him.
‘Oh, poor Laurence!’ she said piteously. ‘Poor darling!’ But she did not stop slapping him until her eyes fell on the pitcher of cold water on his washstand. She wet the end of a towel in it, wrung it out, and began to flick him in the face with that, and it seemed to her that at the shock of the cold the skin round his mouth did quiver and contract. Encouraged, she went on with her devoted cruelties. Presently she thought he drew a slight, wincing, gasp that broke the long, snoring rhythm of his breathing, but she wanted it so much that she was afraid to believe in it, and she dared not stop her efforts for a moment. It felt to her as if she had spent an hour at least in ill-using him, but in reality it was only five minutes.
She was bathed in sweat by the time the doctor flung open the door and erupted into the room like a small grey whirlwind, his bag under his arm. She had forgotten that he would have to get it out of the safe, and probably had had to rouse Franz to obtain the key. At least he had taken her word for it, and not waited to make sure that he was not being fetched out of bed on a fool’s errand.
He took one look over her shoulder, patted her back, and said briefly: ‘Keep going, you’re on the right lines.’
She heard him moving about at her back, heard the small clatter of instruments on the table, but she did not look round. Someone else had come in, too, she thought it must be Franz by the length and loudness of the step. Obstinately, with tears running unheeded down her cheeks, she wet the towel again, and went on with her work.
Something was happening at last. The faintest sounds of protest, little whimpers and gasps of pain, began to catch at his long-drawn breaths and shiver them to pieces. Tremors contorted the smooth skin of his forehead, jerking his brows together as the blows fell, but as soon as she took heart and let him rest for a moment his forehead smoothed out again into marble indifference, and the awful iron sequence resumed its long-drawn in and out. Every time she thought she had drawn him almost to the surface he slipped through her fingers again and sank.
‘Wake up, you devil!’ she hissed at him, and laid her wet cheek against his hot one for a moment, and uttered a cry of delight at hearing him sigh.
‘All right, girl, all right,’ said the doctor gently, coming to the other side of the bed. ‘Let the poor lad rest for a minute, and sit back out of my light.’
She sat back obediently on her heels and watched the examination anxiously.
‘Pulse could be worse. Not breathing too badly.’ He lifted one of the heavy eyelids with a fingertip, and frowned at the blind stare of the shrunken pupil. ‘He’s tougher than you think, girl, don’t look so desperate. Come on, help me to turn him over.’
She slid an arm under Laurence’s shoulders, and lifted him, but Franz stepped forward and took him from her. The light weight was nothing to him, it was like handling a baby.
Susan looked up across the bed at the hypodermic in the doctor’s hand. ‘What is it?’ she demanded, on a sharp note of challenge and fear.
‘Emetic. And drastic. No choice about it, I haven’t the means to get rid of it with less strain on him. This is going to be no pretty bit of pillow-smoothing. If you want to leave him to us now, do.’ But he knew she wouldn’t; it would have surprised him very much if she had moved tamely away from the bed. ‘Wonder how long he’s had the stuff in him. Do you know?’
She looked at the little oval tray on the bedside table, with its glass tumbler in a metal cup, the handle wrapped in a paper napkin. ‘A long time, I’m afraid. It must have been in the wine. Liesl says about eleven. Can you—Will he be all right?’
The needle went in and Laurence never flinched.
‘Can’t tell yet. It’s going to be a fight. We’ll have a better idea if this works.’ And he hoisted Laurence over again on to his back, and propped him upright against the headboard, drawing the quilt up round him. ‘Better let Franz take him, he’ll be heavy for you.’
‘No,’ she said, and laid the cold, wet towel on his clammy forehead and cheeks, and again saw the blue lips contract. ‘No, I can manage him.’
She dared not leave him. How could she? Someone had tried to kill him, and she did not know who. She felt that the doctor was fighting for him as she was, but even her own instincts she could not trust. What could he do but fight, once he was called to a desperate case? To do less than his most obstinate best was to be suspect at once. Even his own professional habits of mind would drive him to make a good job of it, once there was no help for it. No, she held her ground in the only way she reasonably could, by rising to the occasion. If she cried, if she was clumsy or inadequate, they would have an excuse to throw her out, and if they threw her out Laurence would die.
She had him more than halfway to consciousness by the time the convulsions of nausea stiffened the cords of his throat and tore at the muscles of his body. She braced her knee on the edge of the bed and slid her arm down over his shoulder and across his breast, and let his limp weight lie forward over it, steadying his forehead in her other hand. Her arms ached, but they held him. The spasms of agonising sickness came in waves, shaking her no less than him. For the first time his sleep was really broken, and between the throes he managed to swallow draughts of a warm, weak solution the doctor presented to his lips. She didn’t have to ask about that, she recognised it by its colour as permanganate of potash, which seemed inexplicable, but at this pale strength certainly innocuous.
In the paroxysms, which continued for some time, he fought for breath, sobbing, and she felt movements of his eyelids, and the muscles of his temples and brows, wonderful and grateful in the palm of her hand, and the labouring of his chest upon her arm; movements for the first time originating with him, instead of with her. She was only afraid that the awful retching would go on to the point of exhaustion, and kill him by another way; but it passed, and he hung inert over her arm, half conscious but too weak to try to raise himself. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and hoisted him into the hollow of her shoulder, and used the wet towel to wipe his cold, damp brow and bitter lips.
‘That’s better,’ said Dr Randall approvingly, waving Franz and the bowl away from the bed. ‘Responded like an angel. Couldn’t have a better patient.’ He
took Laurence’s chin in his hand and turned the drained face to the light, and the eyes, half-opened, tried to focus on him for a moment before the lids came wearily down over them again. ‘Oh, no, you don’t! Now you’re here you’ll stay here, my lad, even if you don’t find it very comfortable. Come on, now, let’s get a stimulant into you, you’re going to need it before we’re done with you.’ He looked at Susan across the bed, and found time for a smile. ‘Methylamphetamine,’ he said before she could ask. ‘Any wiser? You can look it up afterwards. It’s only thanks to an awkward post-operative case I happen to have it with me. Wish I had leptazol, but I haven’t. But we’ll give him a shot of dextrose, too, while we’re about it.’
The needle again, and this time Laurence was aware of it, even if it meant nothing to him except the invasion of his sleep. His skin jerked protestingly at the pricks, his sour mouth gasped into the pillow.
‘No, I know you don’t like it,’ said the doctor almost gaily, ‘but you’re not being consulted. Curse all you like, it won’t hurt you, and it’ll encourage me. Now come along, help yourself a little. Turn over, like a good boy, and sit up nicely.’ He had no choice, he was lifted briskly back to his old position, propped up on Susan’s shoulder, and settled there like an infant being dumped in his high chair. ‘Now, Mehlert, where’s that coffee your girl promised us? We might get some of it down him now.’
‘Ready!’ said Liesl’s voice eagerly from the doorway, where she must have been standing motionless for some time if anyone had had leisure to notice her; and she was off like a flash to fetch it, glad to be doing something useful at last. Neil was there, too, standing quite still beside the wall, out of everyone’s way, waiting until he should be needed. Susan had never noticed when he appeared, and felt obscurely grateful for his restraint, which had taken such care not to disturb her frenzied concentration. Miranda, thank God, must have slept through everything. They had made very little noise throughout, with luck she need know nothing until the danger was past.
Liesl brought a large pot of coffee, black and steaming. The doctor took Laurence by the chin again, and shook him briskly, for his eyelids had already closed. He frowned and tried to jerk himself away; it was a feeble effort, but the resenment that inspired it almost brought a round of applause.
‘That’s a bit more like the sweet-tempered child we know,’ said the doctor, delighted, and cracked him sharply on the cheek. The shock brought him back to the surface and opened his eyes wide in staring reproach, though it was still questionable if he saw anything or anyone distinctly. Before he could sink again the cup was at his lips, and with frequent nudges and shakings and much hectoring they kept him hard at work swallowing down coffee until he let his head fall back exhausted onto Susan’s shoulder, and panted for breath. And even when the others let him rest she was at him, hunching her shoulder to jog him awake again every time sleep came near, mopping the cold sweat from his forehead and the spilled coffee from his pyjamas and the quilt, and gently wiping his mouth after his shaky efforts to oblige them and get them to let him alone.
‘He’s a better colour,’ she said, but it was rather an appeal to the doctor to agree with her than a genuine statement of opinion.
‘He’s breathing quite nicely. If we can keep him awake I think he’ll be all right, but it’s going to be a long business. You girls had better go and get some sleep.’
Liesl went meekly back to bed when her father told her to go; someone had to be ready to go ahead with the work in the morning. But Susan stared back defiantly and did not move.
‘All right, you obstinate female,’ said the doctor, without displeasure, ‘feed him some more coffee.’ She did it somewhat better singlehanded, taking her time, and he was beginning to understand what was demanded of him, and to respond automatically by sipping and swallowing every time she shook him. It was a slow business, holding him in one arm and alternately feeding him and mopping him up with the other. Good practice for future motherhood, she thought bitterly, and no longer marvelled that small children sometimes get smacked out of sheer impatience.
‘Pulse is coming along nicely,’ said Dr Randall approvingly, ‘heart quite strong. He’s really behaving very well. I don’t think there’s much fear of a collapse. Come on, young man, I think it’s time we got you on your feet.’
When they dragged him out of bed he spoke for the first time, saying the thing he was to say over and over before the night was out. His lips and tongue would not move freely, and all that emerged was a trailing thread of sound, but they heard and understood it. ‘Oh, God!’ he said entreatingly, ‘leave me alone!’ But they took no notice of him. They put his slippers on his feet, and got him by force into his dressing gown, and the doctor held him about the body and drew one limp arm round his own lean middle-aged neck, and hauled the boy upright. Susan was glad that he was too absorbed to delegate the job to Neil and Franz, for now she, the only one present of a comparable height with the doctor, was able to fall in unchallenged on the other side.
At first they dragged him bodily from end to end of the little room, his helpless feet trailing pathetically. They bullied and jolted him at every step without mercy, shook him, coaxed him, threatened him, until even having to hear the constant flow of their voices was like being beaten. His head lolled on the doctor’s shoulder and was roughly shaken erect. It declined wearily upon Susan’s and she heaved it off with a jerk that bruised his cheekbone unpleasantly. He had to do what they wanted, just to get some peace. He had to do it, whatever it was, reasonable or unreasonable. They kept nagging at him to walk, to stand up, to come on. He began to force his feeble muscles and sleepy brain to obey, because if he didn’t they would never let him alone. But he gave in and did as they told him, and still they didn’t let him alone.
‘So tired,’ he said, mumbling piteously against Susan’s hair. ‘Want to lie down – please—!’ But the more words he managed to get out intact, the more heartlessly they dragged him up and down the room, and nothing he said would ever move them, and nothing he did would ever appease them. He began to hate them all, long before he had any clear idea who they were.
‘I know you’re tired. So are we. But you’ve got to go on. Come on, be a good boy, it’s for your own good.’ How often he’d heard that in his life, and always for detestable things which had never, as far as he could see, done him a particle of good.
‘I can’t! Oh, leave me alone!’ He would have cried if he’d had the necessary strength left. He would have gone on his knees to them and begged for mercy, if they had not held him pitilessly upright.
‘Darling, we can’t leave you alone, you’ve got to keep moving. You mustn’t go to sleep, not yet. Later on you shall sleep, I promise you. Come along, do as we ask you.’
And he did, because he had no choice. He supposed vaguely, for a moment, that it must be his mother there on his left, though it was a long time since she’d called him darling. Still, it was just like her to couple the endearment with an inflexible command to something he didn’t want to do.
‘I’m thirsty,’ he said plaintively. Ideas were connecting in his reviving brain. It was almost certainly night. Night and his mother’s presence used to be good for a drink between them, and a drink must mean a pause, leave to sit down. They let him sink on to the edge of the bed, and supported him while he drank a whole cup of strong, sweet coffee, and for some reason they were pleased with him. He was at a loss to know why. As soon as they took their hands from him for a moment to put the cup out of harm’s way his eyelids sank, and he bowed forward thankfully into Susan’s lap; and for one moment she gathered his rumpled head to her and cried over him, but the next moment she lifted him brusquely, and shook him awake.
‘No! Come on, get up! Do you hear? On your feet! You can’t sleep yet.’
When Susan and the doctor tired Neil and Franz took over. That was better for Laurence, Susan had to admit; they were taller than he was, instead of somewhat shorter, and being held higher gave him better control of his un
steady legs. But for her it was infinitely worse. To be occupied with him was one thing, but to sit pressed into a corner of the room and watch him dragged endlessly up and down by others, whimpering with exhaustion and begging despairingly to be let alone, was quite another. And it went on and on, without respite. The winter daylight came, frosty and bright, and still they walked him relentlessly from end to end of his room.
Those who had spent the night normally began to awake and get up. Trevor, having heard the news from Liesl, came quietly in with a wary face and concerned eyes, and breathed again at sight of the drooping victim in unwilling but undoubted action. Like a considerate person, as he was, he shouldered the burden of encountering Mrs Quayne, and went off to keep careful watch for her appearance and ward her off from the sickroom. McHugh came, too, large and startled and constrained, and offered to relieve Franz. He looked fresh and vigorous as ever, and yet he had probably come back from the village only about two hours ago, just in time to avoid the light. Something of the glossy complacency of his triumph was still visible on him; and he was unexpectedly kind in his handling of the poor tormented soul who hung limply upon his shoulder.
‘Go and get some breakfast, Everard, I can manage him alone for a bit. Come on, sonny, put your weight on Mac, he won’t let you down.’
He handled him buoyantly and bracingly, jockeying him along step by step, even singing to him by moments in the lightness of his heart. It was better for the victim to be in the hands of someone who cared less about him, thought Susan, someone whose kindness was a simple overflow from his own sense of abundant well-being, a bonus he could spare for the less fortunate, since he had neither the means nor the temperament to store it for his own use. She sat and watched them together, though she had been told to go and eat, and she could well afford to go and leave him in McHugh’s care. Of all people, she had no reason now to suspect McHugh; that was finished. He had been alone in his room long before Liesl heated the wine at eleven, and he had left his room only to go straight to his rendezvous with Frau Agathe. Whatever mischief he had done during his brief stay in Oberschwandegg, he had certainly not poisoned Laurence; and the inescapable inference was that he had not killed Richard Hellier, either. She was back at the beginning again; but at least there could be a beginning. Laurence was alive.
