‘Pen!’ Rolt shouted. His voice choked as he sought breath. ‘Don’t do it, Pen! Don’t do it! Oh, my Christ!’ He staggered to Helen’s side, his hand pressed hard against his ribs and his cheeks blotchy with tears. ‘Do something,’ he whispered. ‘For God’s sake do something.’
In their several ways, they added their voices to his. But it was hopeless; in that rough, fickle wind they could not even be sure they were heard—for there were times when Penelope seemed to be calling back to them, and yet they could distinguish no articulate sound. ‘Your father is cleared!’ Mr. Datchery was shouting. ‘He had nothing to do with the letters!’ And that at least Penelope heard, since her thin voice retorted with: ‘You’re just saying that! You’re just saying that so as to stop me! Keep away, I tell you! Keep away!’
Stolidly, Burns, who was nearest, moved forward again. A gust caught the figure on the parapet, so that it tottered, off balance, and hung dreadfully poised above the drop to the metals below. Burns stopped as if turned to stone; he was still too distant for a sudden rush to be any good. And as Helen watched, her heart throbbing painfully, Penelope recovered, dropped to her hands and knees, dropped further to lie sprawled face down, with her head towards them. For a moment the sour taste of death had been in her mouth; perhaps now she would reconsider. But when Burns strode forward she lifted her eyes, and it was still ‘Don’t come near! Don’t come near or I’ll jump!’
And now indeed there was no more time for pleas or reasoning. Already they could hear the rumble of the night express. Helen swung round sharply at the touch of a hand on her arm.
‘Give Burns and me just half a minute,’ said Mr. Datchery. ‘Then go and get her—and don’t stop whatever she says or does.’
‘But—’
‘If she should jump, we shall be down below.’
‘But she may not really mean to,’ said Helen desperately.
‘We can’t rely on that. Somehow the thing’s got to be precipitated, one way or the other. Do as you’re told—and God help us all if you don’t.’
He was gone. The moon vanished again. Had Helen known it, that was what Mr. Datchery wanted, because otherwise he and Burns would be too clearly visible to Penelope when they stood beneath the bridge. Catching Burns by the arm, Mr. Datchery hurried him to the farther side of the bridge—the side away from the parapet where Penelope crouched—explaining rapidly as they went. On the face of it, his scheme was insanely risky, but there was no time for weighing chances. ‘A train coming up half does it for you…’ Twisting and slithering, Burns and Mr. Datchery scrambled through the wire fence and down the cutting’s bank.
There was a platelayer’s hut there—small and dingy, with a tarred roof. Mr. Datchery remembered seeing near it, when he had been on the bridge with Penelope that morning, part of a tarpaulin such as is used to cover goods wagons. It was still there—stiff and intractable from long exposure, so that they tore their nails on it, and grazed their skin, as they toiled to spread it out—and there were cords attached to it through tarnished brass rings let into the edges, cords long enough to wind round the wrists… But all of that took them a long time to accomplish. Too long. They were not ready with the tarpaulin until the train was actually in sight, travelling at perhaps fifty miles an hour some four hundred yards away along the cutting. With the canvas stretched between them, they ran along the line towards it, under the bridge and out at the other side below the place where Penelope was.
Or rather, below the place where they hoped she was. Of all the weak points in Mr. Datchery’s plan, this, the darkness being almost absolute, was the weakest. They could only station themselves in what seemed the likeliest place and hope for the best. A poor best, too. The canvas might split under the weight of a falling body, or the cords break; Burns and Mr. Datchery might well lack sufficient strength to cope with the impact; none of them might be able to get out from under the wheels of the oncoming engine… But it was no use thinking of the scheme in those terms. It was a gigantic gamble, not a calculated act, in any serious sense, at all. If Penelope fell, and they happened not to be in the right place to catch her, well, then…
The engine was very close now. The ground trembled premonitorily beneath their feet, and it needed an extreme effort of will to step directly in the train’s path. Its noise, as it came ever closer, shut out most other sounds, but they could just hear Helen shouting, somewhere above their heads, and Penelope shouting back. At the last possible moment, they would jump aside; in the meantime, both waited steadily, feet apart, with hands gripping the edges of the tarpaulin and the cords wound about their wrists.
The noise grew. The tremors of the ground jarred them. The huge weight of hurtling metal was almost on top of them now. Again the engine whistled—a prolonged blast which increased in volume with hideous rapidity as it bore down on them. And then, faint above the uproar, they heard a scream, and in that fraction of a second both of them moved.
They moved by instinct—not farther in under the bridge, but farther out, to meet the train. Had they not done so, it would have been the finish. Even as it was, Penelope’s hurtling body landed a great deal nearer the edge of the canvas than the centre, so that they had to twist it in order to prevent her falling out of it. Mr. Datchery cried out involuntarily as the cords bit deep into his flesh. Then, a split second later, they had hurled themselves aside, literally scooping Penelope with them, and were lying, all three of them, in a tangled heap with the filthy tarpaulin on the other line, while the train thundered by within inches of them: bruised, pallid and shaken, but in no other way hurt. The long line of lighted windows flashed past; the shrieking whistle diminished in volume, dropped in pitch, ceased. It was over.
Twenty seconds later, and Helen, with Rolt behind her, was creeping down the bank towards them. Seven minutes more, and all five of them had climbed back to the top. ‘Thank God,’ was all Helen could say. ‘Oh, thank God.’ Hers had been the easier part, but in all conscience it had been terrifying enough. To her last day she would remember going towards Penelope while the din of the train grew enormous in the cutting below; would remember Penelope, as she came near, scrambling to her feet on the parapet; would remember the high, piercing shriek as, with Helen not three feet from her, she had fallen… Penelope was whey-faced now, dazed and hysterical. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she said over and over again. ‘It was an accident, I didn’t mean to.’ And Mr. Datchery, who had gone on to the bridge, summoned Burns to join him.
‘Look,’ he said.
By the moon’s wan light they could see that where Penelope had stood a great chunk of stone was broken away. ‘That,’ Mr. Datchery suggested, ‘and the wind…’
‘A good thing, sir,’ said Burns, ‘that that load of rock didn’t cosh one of us when we was down below.’
‘And as to your report—’
‘As to that, sir,’ Burns answered steadily, ‘an accident’s what I shall say. Attempting suicide’s a felony, of course, but I don’t know of any law to stop you standing on the parapets of bridges, if that’s your idea of fun.’
There was a silence while they gazed at the freshly broken surface of stone. ‘Nor I shan’t be going against my conscience, either,’ Burns added. ‘She wouldn’t have jumped, not if I know anything about it… Well, so there we are. And we’ve come pretty well out of it, sir, don’t you think?’
Mr. Datchery rubbed the weals on his wrists. ‘Firemen,’ he said with a complacency which for once was not wholly unjustified, ‘is what we ought to be.’
An hour later, and Helen Downing was alone in the drawing-room of Rolt’s house by the mill.
It was one of the oldest houses in Cotten Abbas, and he had bought it along with the land on which the mill was built. The furnishing of the room in which Helen waited was opulent but unfriendly; clearly it was not much used. But Helen, exhausted, both physically and emotionally, as she had never been exhausted before, was in no mood to criticize. She lay back in a chair with her eyes closed, wondering if the day
’s shocks were ever going to end.
They had driven to the house after dropping Burns and Mr. Datchery at the Brankham end of the village street. During the drive, Mr. Datchery had spoken only once. ‘All this must stop,’ he had said quietly, and something in the tone he used had made Helen shiver… Penelope, dazed and silent, had been put to bed, had eaten greedily after her day’s fast, had fallen, with Helen’s nembutal to aid her, into a heavy slumber. Marjory Bonnet, the nurse, had been telephoned, found unengaged; she was upstairs in the bedroom now, would be there all night. And Rolt, whom the evening’s events seemed to have aged by ten or twenty years, had gone off to wash, after begging Helen to remain and talk to him… The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece showed twenty minutes past ten, and with its drowsy ticking in her ears Helen sat relaxed—relaxed save only for the straining of her eyeballs beneath the closed lids as she strove to stay awake.
Presently Rolt reappeared, carrying a tray of drinks. His eyes were bloodshot and his shoulders bowed; all the aggressiveness had been drained out of him. ‘We can do with something,’ he said, ‘after that. Scotch? Brandy?’
‘Brandy, please.’
He poured brandy for them both. They sipped in silence, savouring the fierce warmth it gave. And after a while he said:
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘What’s to be done?’ He put his glass on a table beside him and folded his thick hands.
‘If I tell you,’ said Helen, ‘you’ll only—’
‘Only snap your head off? No, lass, there won’t be any more o’ that. It seems I’ve managed to make a proper muck of it where Pen’s concerned—so now I shall have to do what I’m told.’ He stared at the carpet. ‘Yes,’ he reiterated vehemently, ‘a proper muck of it, l’ve made. Though God knows, I meant it for the best.’
‘People always do,’ said Helen dully. ‘They always do.’
There was a silence. Then, with an effort, he said:
‘But you still haven’t told me—’
‘No, I haven’t. I should have thought you could have guessed.’
His face went very white. ‘You don’t mean a—some sort of a mental home?’
‘No!’ Helen sat upright, battling against the inertia which was creeping over her. ‘Of course not! What I meant—’
‘One o’ these psychiatrists, then? I’ve always thought of Pen as being a healthy normal girl like all the others, but now—’
‘Of course she’s healthy,’ said Helen. ‘Of course she’s normal. And for heaven’s sake get it out of your head that she tried to commit suicide. She may have thought of it, but she didn’t do it; I saw her fall, and it was definitely an accident.’
‘Well,’ he said obstinately, ‘but she did think of it, didn’t she?’
‘Precious few people don’t, at one time or another in their lives. And God knows, she had reason enough.’ Helen leaned forward earnestly. ‘Let me just remind you of what she’s been through in the past day or two. You told her she wasn’t to see her young man. You—you beat her when she did see him. Then she came on his murdered body in a place where—which seems to have had some—some sentimental association for her. And then, eavesdropping, she overheard an interview which convinced her that her father had written a cowardly anonymous letter and caused a suicide by it. All that against a background of loneliness and adolescence, combined, according to you, with physical trouble of a sort which at her age can be horribly worrying…
‘But the worst thing of all, I need hardly tell you, has been your crazy vendetta against everyone else in the village. Oh, she was loyal enough, believe me—but of course that was bound to make her doubt you. And if she hadn’t secretly doubted you she’d never for a moment have believed that you wrote that letter to Beatrice Keats-Madderly, or any of the other anonymous letters. No, she doesn’t need a psychiatrist, because she’s not temperamentally in the least abnormal. What she does need is a new father.’
And Rolt winced, screwing up his face as if he were suffering actual physical pain. Then he said: ‘I’d have the whole bloody mill pulled down if I thought it’d—’
‘That’s hardly necessary. In fact, it’d be downright idiotic. A little ordinary civility is all that’s required.’
‘Well, I dare say I might manage that.’ He tried to smile. ‘I’m a bit out of practice, but still… Look, lass, you’re sure, aren’t you?’
‘Sure about what?’
‘Sure Pen’s mind’s all right. This suicide business…’
‘There isn’t anything the matter with her,’ said Helen, ‘that you can’t cure.’
Somewhere a telephone was ringing. Rolt hesitated, got to his feet, and lumbered out to answer it. In two minutes he was back.
‘Colonel Babington,’ he said. ‘Wants us both at his house as soon as we can get. Summat in the way of a show-down, I gathered.’
Helen was mortally tired. She had had enough, and more than enough. But she knew it was impossible for her to stay away. Somehow she must see the day through to whatever its end might be. She stood up.
‘I don’t like leaving the girl,’ Rolt was saying, ‘but—’
‘She’ll be all right. She won’t even wake.’
They faced one another across the room; and: ‘I’ve been a sight luckier,’ he said abruptly, ‘than I deserve.’ Their eyes met, and for the first time there was sympathy between them.
‘Well, Duchess,’ said Harry Holt, ‘this is it.’
Chapter Sixteen
In the Chief Constable’s study the curtains were drawn against darkness. To ward off the late-evening chill a small fire had been lit, and the cat Lavender, asleep in front of it, twitched his whiskers ferociously as he chased mice or Martians through the dim corridors of dreamland. The firelight was reflected in the glass fronts of the bookcases, in the silver necklace-labels of the decanters, in the green—varnished metal of the big filing-cabinet. There were roses, yellow ones, on the roll-top desk; the brass andirons gleamed with a rich butter-colour; the lamps had large, old-fashioned shades. Ever and again an edge of the carpet would stir as the great wind outside crept secretly, through a dozen holes and crannies, into the old house.
Bulking large in his blue uniform, Constable Burns stood on guard just inside the door. His presence there was a reminder, had they needed it, that this was no social occasion. Across the room from him, beside the hearth, sat Inspector Edward Casby, gazing moodily into the clear young flames—Casby who on Helen’s arrival, in company with Rolt, had got to his feet along with the other three men, but who had avoided her eye then and was avoiding it still. Mr. Datchery, in impenitent possession of the best arm-chair, was reclining comfortably on the small of his back, his lean face tranquil, his ice-blue eyes almost closed, his brown hair standing up, as always, in spikes at the crown of his head. Near him, George Sims fidgeted with a pipe. Helen and Harry Rolt were on the fragile-looking sofa, Colonel Babington in the revolving chair by the desk. And it was Colonel Babington who was speaking now.
‘I think you know why you’re here,’ he was saying brusquely. ‘A decision has been reached as to the—the cause of our various troubles. And since all of you have been involved in them, either as witnesses or else in a—a more direct and personal sort of way, I thought it’d be only fair to let you know as soon as possible what that decision is. In the normal way, the police like to get a case thoroughly buttoned up before they say anything to anybody about it. But in view of what’s happened already this evening’—his eyes flickered momentarily in Rolt’s direction—‘it seemed best to keep you out of your beds an hour or two longer with a view to thrashing the thing out straight away.’
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the quarter after eleven, like tiny gold droplets falling into a crystal jar. No one moved. With the tempo of her heart-beats quickening momently, Helen glanced at her companions’ faces. Rolt’s was outwardly blank—but with a native shrewdness lurking somewhere behind the eyes; Casby’s, unreadable; Sims’s grave
, perhaps a little scared; Mr. Datchery’s very slightly impatient; Burns’s, stolid and unmoved. But the wariness which had at first been in Colonel Babington’s grey eyes now diminished for a time as he leaned forward to continue speaking.
‘However, before we get down to that,’ he said, ‘there’s a sort of—um—introduction I ought to make. You all know Mr. Datchery.’ The tone of Colonel Babington’s voice suggested that he himself considered this fact to be not entirely to their credit. ‘You may not have known him before this evening, but you can hardly have avoided hearing of him, because there hasn’t been so much gabble in the village about a visitor since that wretched Dutchman came here in the first year of the War—the one everyone thought was a German spy… Well, Mr. Datchery is not, as most people seem to have imagined, from Scotland Yard. But on the other hand, his name’s not Datchery, either.’
‘That,’ observed Dr. George Sims, ‘undoubtedly gets my prize for the year’s most superfluous remark.’
He grinned uncertainly at Helen—a rueful grin in which she read an apology for his behaviour earlier in the evening. And perforce she smiled back. She was a little afraid of him now—since the unpredictable is always slightly scarifying—but his natural charm of manner still worked.
‘It was I’—Colonel Babington had ignored the interruption and was forging determinedly ahead—‘it was I who asked him to come here in the first place. And of course, it’s from me that he’s been getting his information.’ Suddenly the Colonel was aggrieved. ‘What I forgot about,’ he said irritably, ‘was his mania for needless impostures. This “Datchery” business—’
Mr. Datchery sat upright abruptly.
‘Needless?’ he said with much indignation. ‘It was not needless. You yourself admitted—’
‘All I admitted was a remote possibility that someone here might have heard of you.’ The Colonel breathed heavily. ‘And that if you used your own name, people might realize you were here for a particular purpose. But since, to the best of my knowledge, you’ve never made the least attempt to disguise the reason for your presence, you might just as well not have bothered.’
The Long Divorce Page 17
