by Ellis Peters
Orrie stalked ahead like a prehistoric god on his own territory, huge and intent, never deviating from the path even when he waded ankle-deep in turgid water. The rest went round, not being equipped for wading, Paviour scurrying back to Orrie’s shoulder round the incursions of the river, anxious and ineffective in this elemental setting, the others strung out in a line that picked its way with deliberation along the foot of the slope, in the wet but thick and springy grass.
Above the glistening dotted line of wet clay that was the path, the bevelled slope of grass rose on their left, and the untidy fall of loose earth had certainly spilled across into the rising water. They came to the place where the first slip had occurred, and where, above them on level ground, the opened flue lay exposed to the sky. It had yielded nothing of value, either to the police or the archaeologists, except the few evidences of wilful damage. Whatever precious thing had ever rested there in hiding, it had certainly been removed in time. Soon the flue would be carefully built up again, if not covered over. But now the expanse of raw, reddish soil was twice as wide, for both shoulders of the original fall had begun to slide away. They stood in a chilly little group at the edge of the torn area, and looked at the slope in concerned silence. The path was still passable here, but by morning, if Orrie was right and the river still rising, it might well be covered.
‘If she comes over and starts eating under this bank,’ Orrie said with authority, ‘all this loose stuff’ll wash away like melting snow, and the bank’ll go. Ask me, we ought to put up warning notices, both ends of the path. It’ll be us for it, if somebody comes along here, not knowing, and goes in the river, or gets buried under that lot when it gives.’
‘I should have been glad to have it closed long ago,’ Paviour admitted, ‘but you know what happens if one tries to close a right-of-way, however inconvenient and dangerous. However little used, for that matter, though this one does get used. You think the river will rise much more? It’s some hours now since the rain stopped.’
‘Yes, but it takes a couple of days for the main weight to come down out of Wales. I reckon she may come up another two feet yet afore she starts dropping again. What’s more, we’ll need to do something permanent about it, besides closing it now. That’s not going to be safe again unless we firm up this bank with a concrete lining, and lift the path.’
‘That would probably be a shared responsibility,’ said George Felse, ‘with the local council, but Orrie could be right. Is this the only bad place?’
‘No, there’s a couple more just close to our boundary. But no falls there, so far. This,’ said Orrie, jerking his cropped reddish curls at the slope before them, ‘is moving now. Look at it!’
As though some infinitesimal tremor of the earth troubled the stability of the whole enclosure, little trickles of soil were starting down from the raw shoulder, a couple of yards to the left of the exposed flue, and running downhill with a tiny, sibilant sound, resting sometimes as they lodged in a momentarily stable hold, then continuing downhill on a changed course; all so quietly, without haste. The disturbed dead, Charlotte thought, trying to get out. If they could remember what it was like to be alive, she thought with a quite unexpected surge of desolation and dismay, they’d let well alone.
A curious effect, this boiling of the earth. When the pool of Bethesda was troubled, it did miracles. She badly needed a miracle, but she doubted if this narrow well into the depths of history, for all its disquiet, could provide one.
‘We’d better have a look at this bit upstream,’ said George, ‘while we’re about it. Orrie’s right, you may have to put up those notices, for your own protection, as well as other people’s.’
Orrie turned willingly, and led the way again, surging through the shallows, and the others strung out behind him on the dry side of the path, gingerly skirting the shifting pile of loose soil. Charlotte was last in the line, since they had to proceed in single file or wade, like their leader. She never knew exactly why she looked back. Perhaps, being the nearest, she heard the slight crescendo of furtive sound that was too small to reach the ears of those in front. The little drifts of earth insisted, and stones began to break free and roll gently and sluggishly downwards. Only small stones, too little to change the world, but they ran, and rolled, and jumped, and the trembling of the well was every moment more urgent with the promise of a miracle; and something prophetic, a small flame of wondering and hoping, kindled in her mind.
So it happened that her chin was still on her shoulder, and she had actually halted and turned in order to watch more attentively, when she saw a sudden small, dark hole burst open in the high mask of earth above her. Not just a hollow, shadowed darker than its surroundings, but a veritable hole upon total blackness. It grew, its rim crumbled away steadily. She saw movement varying its empty blackness, something paler moving within, scraping at the soil. Another biblical image of portent, the cloud, the hole, no bigger than a man’s hand, that grew, and grew, like this…
It was a man’s hand! Feeble, caked with grime, fingers struggled through and clawed at the soil, sending fresh trickles bounding down towards her. A real human hand,a live and demanding, felt its way through into the light with weary exultation.
She was not given to screaming or fainting, and she did neither. She stood stock-still for perhaps ten seconds, her eyes fixed upon that groping, dogged hand, her mind connecting furiously, with a speed and precision she had never yet discovered within herself. The dead were breaking out of their graves with a vengeance. Somebody dumped his car—somebody did this to him—somebody close here, somebody among us. Twenty hours under the earth! He wasn’t supposed ever to show up again. Someone is quite confident, quite sure of his work. ‘I want to know who! Only one minute, two minutes, she promised silently, and I’ll come, I’ll get you out of there. But first I want to know which of them did it! And I want to strike him dead at your feet!’
She turned and called after the dwindling procession winding its way along the riverside: ‘Wait! Come back here a moment, please, come and look! I’ve found something! ’ The right voice, pleasurably excited, urgent enough to halt them, not agitated enough to give them any warning of more than some minor discovery, some small find carried down by the fall, or the vault of another flue broken open. And that was true, how true, but they wouldn’t know the reason. When they turned to look, she waved them imperiously back to the spot, herself planted immovably. ‘Come here! Come and see! It’s important.’
They came, half indulging her and half curious. She watched their faces as they drew near, and they were all interested, enquiring and untroubled by any forewarning, for their eyes were on her, and the hand, grown to a wrist and forearm now, laboured patiently some feet above her head. She waited until they were all close, and only then did she turn and point, ordering sharply: ‘Look! Look up there!’
Two braced arms within the hypocaust thrust at the thinning barrier of soil at that moment, and sent its ruptured fringes scattering. A heaving body, blackened and encrusted with soil, erupted out of its grave, and with a staggering jerk, stood erect for one instant on the shifting slope, before its weight set the whole surface in motion, and hurled it down upon them in a skier’s leaning plunge.
She missed nothing. She even took her eyes from him, and let the police jump forward to break his fall, in order to watch all those other faces. There had been a general gasp of fright and horror; no wonder, there was nothing in that to incriminate. Bill Lawrence stood with mouth fallen open in stunned bewilderment, Lesley clapped her hands to her cheeks and uttered a muted scream. Even Orrie, though he stood rooted and silent as a rock, stared with eyes for once dilated and darkened in disbelief. But Paviour gave a high, moaning shriek, and flung up his hands between himself and the swooping figure, making an ineffectual gesture of pushing the apparition away. Then, as though he had felt his hands pass clean through its impalpable substance, he plucked them back, and turned blindly to run. Charlotte saw his face stiffen suddenly into blue ice, his
eyes roll upwards whitely, and his lips, always bloodless, turn livid. He lifted his hands, span on his heel in a rigid contortion, and fell face-down on the muddy path like a disjointed puppet.
Gus Hambro reached the grass still upright, in a rushing avalanche of loose soil, and reeled into the arms of George Felse and Detective-Sergeant Price. For a few seconds he stood peering round at them all, and they saw that his eyes were screwed up tightly against the waning twilight as though for protection against a blaze of brightness. He heaved deep breaths into him, dangled his blackened and bloody hands with a huge sigh, and collapsed slowly and quietly between his supporters, to subside into the wet grass beside the enemy Charlotte had terrified herself by striking senseless, if not dead, at his feet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
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To Charlotte, in her state of minor shock and illogical guilt, the next twenty minutes resembled one of those ancient comedy films in which sleep-walkers stride confidently about the scaffolding of an unfinished building, converging with hair-raising impetus and missing one another by inches: a purposeful chaos with a logic of its own, and all conducted in comparative silence. After the first stupefying moment, exclamation was pointless. Some one, Charlotte supposed it could only have been George Felse, must have given orders, for the whole group, apart from George and Reynolds, dispersed like a dehiscent fruit bursting, Sergeant Price, with Lesley in anxious ward, to telephone Paviour’s doctor, Charlotte to rustle up blankets, Bill Lawrence and Orrie Benyon to fetch the sun-bed stretchers from the garden-room, while George and his constable did what they could, meantime, for the casualties. The principle that victims of sudden collapse and probable acute heart failure should not be moved without medical advice hardly held good on a chilly, wet slope of grass beside a steadily rising river, and with night coming on.
At that hour on a Sunday evening it was hardly surprising that Dr Ross, who had been Paviour’s doctor for years, should be away from home. His answering service offered the number of his partner on call, but Price preferred to cut the corners and ring up the police doctor, whom he knew well, and to whom he could indicate—Lesley being temporarily out of the room helping Charlotte to collect rugs and pillows from a cupboard in the hall—what the trouble was likely to be.
‘Blue as a prime blue trout, and got all his work cut out to breathe at all. Looks pretty bad to me.’
He hung up as Lesley came in, and hoped she hadn’t heard. She had hardly spoken a word throughout, and what she was thinking was more than he could guess. For she could connect as quickly as anyone. Not much doubt of that. And who but the man who had put Gus Hambro underground for good should all but drop dead from shock when the corpse insisted upon rising?
Paviour was laid in blankets on the couch in the sitting-room, livid-faced and pinched, breathing in shallow, rattling snores. She sat beside him, sponging his face and bathing away the sweat that gathered on his forehead and lips. Gus Hambro had been carried straight upstairs to the bathroom to strip him of his wrecked clothes and clean the grime of centuries from his body, and Bill, at his own suggestion, had slipped away to the lodge to bring him some pyjamas and clothes of his own, since the victim’s effects were a total loss. Out in the hall by the front door Orrie hovered uneasily, plainly unwilling to leave until he knew what was going on, waiting for the doctor to arrive, and rolling himself one shapeless cigarette after another.
Dr Braby came with an ambulance as escort, having considerable confidence in Price’s judgement. The attendant followed him in to await orders, and fetch and carry if required. Lesley relinquished her place by the couch without a word, and stood aside, intently watching, as the doctor turned back the blankets and began a methodical examination. The sight of the sunken, leaden face and the sound of the anguished breathing made him look up at her briefly over his shoulder.
‘Will you show Johnson where the telephone is, please? Get the Comerbourne General, and say you’re bringing in a congestive heart failure, urgent. I’ll give you a note on what he’s getting: digoxin, intravenous, fifteen millilitres. We need a quick response, and in his condition I doubt if there’ll be any nausea reaction. Hot water, would you mind, Mrs Paviour?’
He spread his bag open beside him, within reach of one freckled, middle-aged hand, and prepared his injection, and very slowly and carefully administered it. For a few minutes afterwards he sat with his fingers on his patient’s pulse.
‘No history of heart trouble previously?’
‘No,’ said Lesley, ‘he’s never complained. He seemed very well, and he didn’t bother about regular check-ups, as long as he felt all right.’
‘Like most of us. We’ll have to send him into hospital, I can’t do more for him here. The digoxin will begin to take effect in ten minutes or so, and should reach maximum within a couple of hours. Then he should rally.’
‘I’ll go along with him,’ said Lesley. ‘Give me three minutes to put some things together for him.’ She looked the doctor squarely in the face. ‘You can tell me the truth, you know. Is he going to get over it?’
‘No saying yet, I’m afraid. He’s bad, but he may pull out of it successfully. Live in hope!’
Was it possible that her hopes inclined the other way? Her voice was so level and her face so still that it was left to the imagination what ambivalent thoughts they covered. If he had really attempted murder, what was there waiting for him if he got over this attack?
‘Do you want me to come along with you?’ Charlotte asked.
Lesley gave her a faint, brief smile, perhaps detecting the reluctance with which the offer was made. ‘No, thanks, you stay here and stand in for me if anyone needs feeding, or coffee, or a drink. I’m going to pack a case for Stephen.’ And she went up the stairs at a light and purposeful run, in command of herself and in need of no one to hold her hand, and in a very few minutes was back with her burden. She followed the stretcher men out through the hall, and there was Orrie still waiting in case he was needed.
He got up when the stretcher came through, his eyes dwelling in fascination upon the swathed body. It looked like a preternaturally long and narrow collection of old bones very imperfectly articulated. There seemed to be virtually nothing under the covering blanket, only two bony feet at one end of it, and a fleshless head with luxuriant grey hair and pointed beard at the other. The face wasn’t covered, so he wasn’t dead, after all. Just in process of dying. Or pretty near to it, anyhow, touch and go. Orrie looked up at Lesley, and the case in her hand, and understood.
‘How you going to get back, then? I tell you what, I’ll bring the Morris along to the General after you, and drive you home.’
‘Oh, would you, Orrie? It would be a help.’ She groped in her handbag and fished out the car keys for him. ‘I was going to get a taxi back, but I should be grateful. I’m sorry to spoil your Sunday evening like this.’ For ordinarily Orrie would have been in ‘The Crown’ by this time, or on a fishing day probably in ‘The Salmon’s Return’. She smiled at him, rather wanly, and went on quickly into the ambulance after her husband; and Orrie went off with the keys in his hand to get the Morris out of the garage.
‘Now where’s the other one?’ Braby demanded briskly, as soon as the ambulance had driven away.
He looked down with astonishment at the slight body in the bath, newly emerged from its indescribable grime. Gus was covered from head to foot with bruises and abrasions, his knees were rubbed raw, and his hands were a mess, but that appeared to be the sum of what ailed him. His state was something between unconsciousness and sleep, but steadily relaxing into simple sleep. He breathed deeply and evenly.
‘Now what in the world,’ demanded the doctor, ‘has been happening to this one?’
‘That,’ said George, ‘is a long and interesting story, and one I intend to tell you, if you can hang around for a while. Because I think you may very well be useful in more ways than one.’
‘Tell me now, it might help. And you may as well finish the job you’ve started,
while you’re about it. By the look of him, he won’t mind waiting for my services.’
George told him, while they lifted Gus out and wrapped him in a bath-sheet, and patted him dry with gingerly care, for there was hardly a square inch of him without minor lesions. They were still busy when Charlotte tapped at the door.
‘I’ve made up a bed for him,’ she reported, when George opened the door to her. ‘He’s going to be fit to stay here, surely? And Bill’s brought him pyjamas, and some clothes of his own. They won’t fit too well, but they’ll be better than Mr Paviour’s. Bill’s sleeping here overnight, too. I think Lesley’ll feel better with a man in the house. It seemed the best thing to do.’
‘You’re a treasure,’ said George warmly, and came out of the room to her, shutting the others in. ‘Which bedroom have you chosen for him? Show me!’
She showed him, saying nothing about the fact that it was next to her own, but it seemed that he had divined as much. He looked at her with a small, approving, almost affectionate smile, and she gazed back at him stubbornly and refused to blush. There were more important considerations.
‘I understand your choice,’ he said respectfully. ‘But for my purposes it might not be a good idea. Would you mind changing to another one? Let’s have a look at what’s on offer.’
He chose a room as remote from the regularly used ones as the large house permitted, its door solitary on a small cross-landing above the back stairs, which were well carpeted. The window looked out on the shrubberies and orchard at the rear, and was out of sight from the sunny front living rooms where all the activity of the household centred. The room had a large, walk-in wardrobe which had almost certainly been a powder-closet in Queen Anne’s day, when the house was built.
‘This,’ said George, ‘will do fine. You make up the bed, and we’ll get him into it.’
‘It’s too remote,’ she said accusingly. ‘You can’t keep an eye constantly on this room. And supposing he came round and called out? No one would hear him.’
