Dark Angel (29 page)

Constance ends on a high keening note, one last yelping cry of grief. Then she is silent. In the slow motion of shock, three things happen.

First, the body of Eddie Shawcross emits a bubbling groan.

Second, Jane Conyngham steps forward. It is she who takes Constance by the arm and, with quiet determination, leads her away. At the top of the steps, Constance pauses, confronted by Sir Montague Stern and that blood-red dressing gown. They look at each other: a small child in a black dress, a tall man dressed in red. Then Stern moves to one side. The third thing occurs: One final person makes his appearance on the steps.

It is Denton Cavendish, fully dressed, moving stiffly, blinking in the daylight, everything about his appearance and demeanor that of a man awakened with a hangover.

Acland sees his father lift his hand to his forehead, look about him with apparent bewilderment, with bloodshot eyes. He looks, in a blank way, at the doctor’s car, at the group below him, at the stretcher. The old Labrador bitch Daisy appears at his side, waddles up to him, rubs against his legs.

“Good dog, good dog,” Denton says in an absent voice as his eyes rove over the group. They light upon the figure of Sir Montague Stern, always the observer, Stern in his barbaric red dressing gown. Denton’s eyes pass on; they return; his expression of confusion changes to an outraged glare.

“Has something happened? Has something
occurred
? Denton booms in the direction of the dressing gown. His tone implies that nothing short of Armageddon could excuse this garment in this place.

The absurd words echo in the morning air. Before anyone can reply, Denton’s bitch Daisy lifts her head.

Like that patient observer Stern, Daisy senses that something here is wrong. Perhaps it is just that she scents blood; on the other hand, like Stern, perhaps she can smell guilt, and fear (someone in this group is both guilty and afraid). Whatever the reason, Daisy’s hackles rise. Her throat pumps.

Denton clasps his head; he thwacks the dog’s rump. His bitch ignores her master, and his hangover. She continues to howl.

It was clear that Shawcross would die. It is possible that even now, with modern medical practice, he might have died. He had been long hours in the trap, and the loss of blood was severe. Then, there was no hope for him; it was simply (Haviland explained to Gwen) a matter of time.

But how much time? An hour? A week? A day? Gwen pressed the doctor for an answer. The doctor replied, “Not as long as a week, I fear.”

The nearest hospital was some thirty miles away. Dr. Haviland pronounced that the journey there would kill Shawcross. Gwen scarcely listened to this. She would not consider a hospital in any case; Eddie must stay at Winterscombe.

And so Shawcross must be returned to the King’s bedroom, and the King’s bed with the cupids cavorting at its foot. He must lie there beneath the royal arms, with Gwen and Maud in constant attendance; private nurses in starched uniforms must be hired. Shawcross must be cared for twenty-four hours a day.

Dr. Haviland did not expect his patient to survive the first of these twenty-four hours, but he did what had to be done. The wounds were washed with antiseptic; the fractured leg was straightened and splinted; Shawcross regained consciousness, screamed in agony, fainted again. This done, there were problems, and Dr. Haviland hinted at them gravely: The leg should have been set in plaster, but Haviland feared gangrene.

How long had Shawcross lain in the trap? No one could give him a certain answer, but it was obviously a matter of hours. Once the blood supply to a limb was cut off, gangrene could commence in thirty minutes. Haviland touched Shawcross’s blackened foot, sniffed, and decided: No plaster; it was not worth the agony it would cause—not for a man he expected to die within hours.

Apart from this question, other problems. They fenced him in on all sides. Shawcross must be suffering starvation of blood to the brain; it therefore might be efficacious (he had seen it practiced) to lay the patient at an angle, head lowered, feet raised.

On the other hand, the supply of blood to the injured leg and foot must be maintained, so perhaps the head should be raised and the feet lowered? Haviland frowned and pondered, while Maud, fluttering in the doorway, reminded everyone of the excellence of good beef broth, and Gwen, fluttering beside the bed, begged the newly arrived nurse to bring her a little eau de cologne.

The women seemed to feel that dignity was paramount: They were all for arranging Shawcross decorously, his shoulders propped against monogrammed linen pillows, his smashed leg protected by a cage under smooth sheets. Haviland, seeing this and knowing their efforts were hopeless, gave up. Let the man lie as they wanted him; let him have the beef broth by all means, if he could take any; yes, yes, cologne dabbed on the forehead did have very often a most soothing effect.

Haviland’s bedside manner came to the fore: Gravely he listened to the beat of his patient’s heart, and forebore to say how it raced and fluttered. Impressively, magisterially, he examined the patient’s eyes with a small torch, and the bitten tongue with a small spatula; he recommended quiet, he administered morphine, and—while giving no false hopes—he remained silent on such questions as fever and delirium. Septicemia, a matter at the forefront of his own mind, was never mentioned; ladies unacquainted with this term had, he found, a tendency to ask its meaning in plain English, and
poisoning of the blood
—the alternative term, and a death sentence—was one that could reduce the calmest woman to hysterics.

Haviland was certain that Shawcross would not survive the first day, let alone the first night; he was astonished to be proved wrong. Shawcross made it through the first day and the first night; he made it through the second; he was still alive on the morning of the third. Both Maud and Gwen were triumphant at this. Both were in that state of optimism and false elation which ensues from shock and lack of sleep; both were beginning to believe, Haviland saw, that Shawcross could recover from this ordeal.

“Oh, Dr. Haviland, he took a little water from a glass this morning,” Gwen cried as she came to greet him on the third morning.

“And a spoon of broth last night,” Maud added eagerly. “We wondered—perhaps something very light? A little dry toast? Do you think a coddled egg?”

They looked at him with expectant faces. Haviland said nothing. He looked down at his patient, opened his medical bag, caught—across the King’s bed—the practiced eye of the senior nurse, and saw her mouth turn down at the corners. He looked at Shawcross and marveled—as he had marveled many times in the past—at people’s capacity to deceive themselves.

Shawcross had a mounting fever; that much was obvious even before the doctor laid his hand on the hot dry skin. In two days he had wasted, so the skin of his face now seemed stretched tight across his bones. His lips were dry and cracked with dehydration; his eyes, open and unfocused, darted from side to side. Even as Haviland bent over him Shawcross began to shiver, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow.

“Lady Callendar, if you would perhaps leave us a moment, while we change the dressing?”

He saw Maud and Gwen exchange looks—frightened looks. Both left the room without speaking. Haviland twitched the bedclothes aside, lifted the cage that supported them.

The sickly smell told him immediately, even before he looked down at the dressing.

“When was this last changed?”

“An hour ago, Dr. Haviland.” The nurse paused. “His temperature is a hundred and three. It’s risen two points since six this morning.”

“Delirium?”

“There was some distress in the night. Nothing intelligible. He hasn’t regained consciousness this morning.”

Haviland sighed. With the nurse’s assistance the dressing was changed once again, and further morphine was administered.

Then, his face grave, he went downstairs once more, where he requested an interview with Lady Callendar and her husband.

In the morning room the doctor looked from husband to wife. Lady Callendar’s face was puffy from lack of sleep and weeping; her husband, moving slowly and stiffly, seemed to have aged years in the past days. Composing himself, Haviland made the small speech he had been rehearsing in his mind for two days; it was sad and regrettable, but he had to inform them that it was now a matter of hours. Once death had ensued—really he understood how painful it must be to them to consider such a matter at a time like this—the police would have to be informed. An inquest would be necessary, a formality, of course.

The doctor, having pronounced these difficult words, fell silent. Lady Callendar, he noted, made no reply. Her husband, hunched before the fire, fumbled at the rugs wrapped around his knees like an old and infirm man. He would not meet the doctor’s eyes.

“I won’t have Cattermole blamed” was all he said. “Won’t have it, d’you hear? It was an accident—an accident.”

Was it an accident? Constance does not think so, for one. Constance is not allowed into her father’s room, has not seen him since he was brought into the house. She is confined to the nursery, watched over by Nanny Temple. She is a prisoner, she feels.

Constance cannot sleep. She lies awake night after night, staring at the ceiling of her room, listening for the beat of her albatross’s wings. Constance waits for the albatross, who flies everywhere and sees everything, and the albatross tells her it was no accident—someone wanted her father to die.

But who? On this question the albatross is silent, so Constance is left to the speculations of her own mind. Denton Cavendish? Gwen? Boy? Acland? Freddie? Any one of them could have slipped away from the parry, as her father must have done, and then … What? Followed him? Pushed him? Called to him? Lured him? Threatened him—with a gun, perhaps, so he backed away from them, off the path, into the undergrowth, into that horrible, horrible thing, with its jaws grinning?

Constance holds her breath and listens to the beat of the great bird’s wings, white and slow and sure as it circles her room. Not an accident, not a mistake: Constance saw the rabbit and she knows. Someone meant to hurt her father; someone meant to snare him.

She would like to cry; her eyes scratch, but tears will not come. In a minute it will be morning. She can see light edging the curtains now; in the gardens outside, birds are singing. It will be morning, and then the albatross will leave her. She will be alone again.

When the room is gray with light she pushes aside the bedclothes and steals quietly to the door. It is very early, and if she is very very quiet, now, when her jailor Nanny Temple must surely be sleeping … She tiptoes in bare feet out of her room, across Steenie’s room, through the day nursery, and out onto the landing. No sound, no stir; her courage rises. They will not keep her away, they will not, these Cavendishes who pretend not to despise her.

But not the back stairs—there a maid might catch her, for the maids at Winterscombe also rise early. The main stairs: there she is safer, and then, once she is in the hall—cold feet on a cold stone floor—into the side hall, and then a passageway and another passageway. Past the silver room and the china pantry, past the housekeeper’s room and the stillroom: such a warren of rooms and corridors, and Constance knows all of them intimately. One danger point as she nears the kitchens and the sculleries—she can hear voices there—but then, around a corner and she is safe.

She pushes through a green baize door, and stands, heart beating hard, on the other side of it. Here, on her right, there is a small bare room with an iron bedstead and a washstand. This room, once used by the King’s manservant, is never used now. Immediately opposite it, on her left, are the stairs that lead up to the King’s dressing room. Does she dare to go up? Constance knows this is forbidden but she does not care. She will not care! They have no right,
no right,
to bar her from her father.

Silently she steals up the stairs. The door at the top is closed, and Constance listens. She can hear footsteps, the rustle of skirts—the nurse perhaps, in her starched uniform. A clink of glass against metal, a murmur of voices, and then silence.

But her father is near. Constance knows this, and although she dares go no farther, the knowledge brings her peace. She sinks down to the floor; she curls up there, like an animal. She thinks herself into her father’s mind, so that he will know she is there, his little albatross, his daughter, who loves him. She closes her eyes. After a while, Constance sleeps.

Inside the King’s bedroom, beside the bed, Gwen does not sleep. She has been awake all night, she has seen the deterioration in Eddie’s condition, she has seen the expression on the face of the nurse, and she no longer deludes herself. She knows the crisis is near.

The nurse has withdrawn. Gwen is alone with Eddie, the silence of the room broken only by the shifting of coals in the fire and the ticking of the clock. Gwen looks at the clock—it is nearing six—and wonders how many more minutes Eddie Shawcross has left. She is ashamed of herself, but she has reached that stage of exhaustion in which she hopes it will be soon. Once she had accepted the idea that Eddie must die, she began to be impatient for the end and to chafe against death’s protraction. She knows this is wicked, and hardhearted; still the involuntary prayer springs into her mind:
Let it be soon. Let it be soon, let it be quick—for his sake.

Her hands twist against the silk of her dress; she turns to look at her lover’s face and finds it difficult to believe that this is the man she loved.

His lips are cracked; his once beautifully manicured hands fumble and pull at the sheets; Gwen averts her eyes from the broken nails and the bandages. She looks away, and into her mind—there before she can push it away—comes an image of herself and Eddie, here in this room, just a few days before. She sees herself, wrists bound with black ribbons, and although she is alone her face crimsons with shame. She rubs at her wrist, thinks of bondage and pain, the scent of carnation soap, the allure of the forbidden. As she tries to force the image out of her mind, Shawcross stirs. Gwen turns back to him.