She Died a Lady (6 page)

‘Not you too?’

‘Please wait. I’m honestly trying to be fair. And I want to submit something to your judgement rather than argue a case.’ Molly hesitated. ‘Do you think you could come down to our house for a few minutes? Now? I’ve got something there I think you ought to see.’

I looked back towards our own house. Tom had finished surgery at eleven, and was on his morning round. It seemed probable that I could sneak out and sneak back again without being caught. When Molly and I emerged into the front garden, the High Street lay serene. The High Street – by courtesy – is in fact the main road, a good surface of asphalt, which runs for some distance on a very slight rise until it disappears round the turning at what used to be Miller’s Forge. Lined with small houses and shops, it dozed in the sunshine to a subdued murmur of voices coming from the open doors of the ‘Coach and Horses’ over the way. Mr Frost the postman was on his round. Mrs Pinafore, Licensed to Sell Tobacco and Sweets, was sweeping her doorstep.

But it did not remain peaceful. Molly turned to stare.

‘My word!’ she said.

From far up the street, at the Miller’s Forge end, issued the steady
pop-pop-pop
of a motor vehicle in motion. Squarely in the middle of the road, proceeding with steadiness and intensity, came a wheel-chair.

Seated majestically in the wheel-chair, hands gripping the handle of the rod which communicated with a small front wheel and served as steering-gear, was a very broad and stout man in a white linen suit. His bald head glistened in the sun. The spectacles were pulled down on his broad nose. A shawl was draped, invalid-fashion, round his shoulders. Even at a distance you could discern on his face an expression of almost inhuman malignancy. He bent forward tensely, with absorbed concentration, while the motor accelerated to a louder
pop-pop-pop
.

Round the corner of Miller’s Forge, running hard and breathless in pursuit, came Paul Ferrars the painter.

After him galloped my son Tom.

After them both came a policeman.

‘Slow down!’ Ferrars was bellowing, in a choking voice which made heads appear at windows. ‘That’s a steeper grade than it looks! For the love of Mike slow …’

Upon the face of the man in the wheel-chair was now a lordly sneer. As though conscious of his prowess, he made the chair swerve left and right in graceful fashion like a master of the art of skating. Even then, Tom maintains, things would have been all right if it had not been for the dogs.

Our dogs in Lyncombe, as a rule, are a mild-mannered lot. Motor-cars they understand. Wagons and bicycles they understand. But the spectacle of a joy-riding invalid, in a chair apparently equipped with a supercharger, was beyond comprehension and therefore maddening to the canine soul. As though conjured by magic, they came pouring over fences into the foray.

The din of their barking rose deafeningly above the
pop-pop-pop
of the chair. The Andersons’ Scotch terrier Willie was so excited that he turned a complete somersault, landing on his back. The Lanes’ Airedale made a daring dash under the wheels. Roused from his scientific absorption, the man in the chair attempted reprisals. He leaned out and made a face at them. It was, indeed, a face so terrifying that the more timorous shied back again, barking frantically; but a so-called Manchester terrier sprang on the front of the chair and attempted to get his teeth in the steering-apparatus.

The invalid replied in spirited fashion by picking up a crutch and aiming a vicious swipe with it. This was good as terrorism but bad as tactics. The steering of the chair was already under dispute. Now proceeding at a pace truly alarming, it sailed gracefully up Hicks’s driveway to the pavement; swept along the pavement at a time when – I regret to say – Mrs McGonigle, our esteemed laundress, was coming backwards out of her gate with the week’s washing; and returned to the road again by way of Pinafore’s drive.

‘Cut off your
motor
!’ Ferrars was screaming from behind. ‘For the love of Mike cut off your
motor
!’

This was good advice, which the invalid either could not or would not heed. Surrounded by dogs, the speeding wheel-chair swept past Molly and me as we stood at the gate. The invalid’s malignant expression never changed as his chair lurched over a crown in the road, described a sweeping arc in front of the ‘Coach and Horses’, and disappeared, majestically, through the open doors of the saloon-bar.

In went the dogs, in went Ferrars in pursuit, in went Tom, and in went the constable already taking out his notebook.

‘My word!’ Molly said again.

‘Gentleman seems in a hurry to get a drink,’ observed the postman.

From the pub, it is true, issued sounds suggesting that this dipsomaniac was already climbing over the counter to get at the bottles behind the bar. The crashing of glassware, the thudding of chairs, the barking of dogs, mingled above all with the profane protests of men whose beer has been spilled as they lift it to their lips.

The ensuing fifteen minutes were perhaps the most lively ever spent in Harry Pierce’s bar. One by one the dogs were shot out. Though peace was restored by liberal largesse, one powerful voice – that of the man in the wheel-chair – thundered above everything. When he reappeared, wearing a look of savage martyrdom, Ferrars was pushing his chair.

‘Now listen, test-pilot,’ Ferrars was saying. ‘This thing is a wheel-chair.’

‘All right, all right!’

‘It’s for helpless people to ride in. You’re not supposed to treat it like a new Spitfire. Do you realize we could never have squared that charge of driving a motor vehicle to the public danger, if you hadn’t been a friend of Superintendent Craft?’

An expression of hopeless and passionate misunderstanding went over the face of the malignant gentleman.

‘Looky here,’ he said. ‘Burn it all, all I was tryin’ to do was see what she’d do flat out on an open road. And what happened?’

‘You nearly wrecked the damn village, that’s what happened.’

‘Do you realize I might ’a’ been killed?’ howled his companion. ‘I come along peacefully, not botherin’ anybody. And all of a sudden about fifty vicious mongrels come chargin’ out and set their teeth in me …’

‘Where did they set their teeth in you?’

The other glowered.

‘Never you mind where they set their teeth in me,’ he said darkly. ‘If I get hydrophobia, you’ll find out soon enough. I been condemned to a lonely life, laid up with a serious injury to my toe. It’s a fine thing if I can’t get a little good fresh air in my wheel-chair, all nice and quiet, without every ruddy dog in the neighbourhood wantin’ to chew me up.’

This could be no other than the great and dignified H.M., of whom we had already heard so much. Molly and I attracted his attention almost at once. But we attracted it in an unfortunate way.

During his royal progress through the village, we had been too startled to do anything but keep a straight face. Now, however, Molly found it too difficult to keep her gravity. She suddenly made a strangled noise through her pretty nose, turned away, and held on to the bars of the gate.

Sitting in his wheel-chair outside the pub, Sir Henry Merrivale directed one glance at us through his spectacles. He lifted a malevolent finger and pointed.

‘That’s what I mean,’ he said.

‘Sh-h-h!’ urged Ferrars under his breath.

‘Why don’t
I
ever get any sympathy?’ demanded H.M., addressing the air. ‘What makes such a pariah of
me
? If it happens to anybody else – lord love a duck, it’s tragic. It’s all coos and clucks o’ sympathy. But, if it happens to the old man, it’s just funny. When they come to bury me, son, I expect the parson won’t be able to speak for laughin’, and he’ll have the whole funeral-party rollin’ in the aisles before he’s said ten words.’

‘They’re friends of mine,’ said Ferrars. ‘Come over and meet them.’

‘I’m goin’ to turn on my motor?’ offered H.M. hopefully.

‘You are
not
. I’ll push you. Sit still.’

The High Street was now quietening down, except for a few dogs which still lurked bristling at corners and eyed the stationary wheel-chair with the deepest suspicion. Tom, who had left his car beyond Miller’s Forge to join in the chase, took his leave for another call before lunch. And the great man, trying to assume an idle and graceful posture with one hand on the handle of the steering-gear, was bumped across to join us.

The first movement of the chair was greeted by a violent chorus of barking. Several of the enemy shot out of hiding, and had to be chased away.

‘You’ve guessed who this is,’ said Ferrars, as H.M. ceased flourishing his crutch. ‘That’s Dr Luke Croxley, Tom’s father. And the young lady who laughed is Miss Grange.’

Paul Ferrars, I must admit, showed up today in a much more human light than usual. He is – or was – a sardonic sort of fellow, thirtyish and lean, with a long nose and a didactic manner. He wears paint-stained flannels and old sweaters, and yells if people try to talk about chiaroscuro.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Sir Henry.’ Molly spoke with real apology. ‘I didn’t mean to laugh at you, and it was dreadfully rude of me. How’s your toe?’

‘Awful,’ said the great man, indicating a right foot still bandaged. His sour expression softened a little. ‘I’m glad
somebody’s
had the decency to ask that question.’

‘We were all very sorry to hear about it. How did you come to do it, by the way?’

H.M. looked as though he hadn’t heard the question.

‘He was showing us,’ Ferrars explained instantly, ‘how he played rugger for Cambridge in ’91.’

‘And I still think there was dirty work. If I can prove it on this feller behind me …’ H.M. paused, with a deep sniff, and then spoke to Molly with that shattering directness I was to learn about in the future. ‘You got a boyfriend?’ he asked.

Molly stiffened.

‘Really –’ she began.

‘You’re too pretty not to have a boyfriend,’ said the great man, who was merely paying her a compliment in return for her consideration in inquiring after his toe. ‘You must have lots of ’em. I mean to say, a sympathetic gal like you must find ’em swarmin’ up the ivy practically every night.’

And then, idiot that I am in dealing with young people, I must put in
my
oar.

‘Steve Grange,’ I said, ‘believes Molly is a little too young to be thinking about marriage just yet. Though we’d always rather hoped that she and Tom …’

Molly was breathless and very much on her own dignity.

‘Let Tom speak for himself, then,’ she said rather sharply. ‘And I really don’t know how we came to be discussing my affairs all of a sudden.’

‘You’re wasting your time, Molly,’ observed Ferrars, with a flash of his faint catlike quality. ‘Tom is one of nature’s bachelors. Anything in skirts, to him, is something to be put on the table, and – dissected. Could you possibly be interested in anyone else?’

Molly regarded him curiously.

‘That would depend,’ she answered, ‘on his experience.’

‘Experience?’ mocked Ferrars. ‘From
you
?’

His faint smile flashed under the long nose. He lounged with the weight on one hip, his hands thrust into the pockets of paint-stained trousers and his lean elbows sticking out like wings.

‘But maybe you’re right,’ he added, and his face clouded over. ‘This isn’t exactly the time to be discussing the matter of love-affairs, present or projected. One love-affair had too sticky a finish on Saturday night for my taste. Has anybody heard any more about that business, by the way?’

Perhaps Ferrars’ question was less casual than it had sounded, for he must have seen – as we all saw – the police-car coming along the High Street from the direction of Lynton. The car slowed down, idled, and came to a stop near my gate. Superintendent Craft climbed out from behind the wheel. Craft, whom I have known for many years, is a tall, long-faced man with one glass eye and a slow-speaking bass voice.

The fixity of that glass eye gives him a sinister air which is belied by his character. Craft is modestly sociable, and likes his pint as well as the next man. His office is at Barnstaple, where he lives, and he has studied every police manual on earth.

He walked straight up to H.M.

‘I wonder if I could have a word in private, sir?’ he requested, in that rolling voice. Then he paused, hesitated, and turned the dead eye on the rest of us as he added deliberately: ‘We’ve recovered the bodies.’

A
LL
of us remained very quiet in the warm street. Propping his crutch against the side of the chair, H.M. peered up without enthusiasm.

‘You mean,’ he grunted, ‘those two who chucked ’emselves off the cliff Saturday night?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then what do you want to see me about? They’re dead, ain’t they?’

‘Yes, sir, they’re very much dead. But there’s some little doubt about the evidence just the same.’ Superintendent Craft looked at me. ‘I’d also like to have a word with you, Doctor, if I may.’ His good eye indicated the others meaningly. ‘Is there anywhere we could go to talk?’

‘Why not come into the house? Or, better still, the back garden?’

‘That’s fine for me, Doctor, if it’d suit Sir Henry?’

H.M. merely grunted. Ferrars, who had taken out a pipe and was filling it from an oilskin pouch, watched them with frank curiosity.

‘Other company excluded, I suppose?’ Ferrars said.

‘Sorry, Mr –’ Craft didn’t know Ferrars’ name and presumably didn’t want to know it. ‘Sorry, sir. Official business.’

Ferrars was unabashed. ‘Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll just push the Big Shot into the back garden and return for him in half an hour. If he insists on starting that infernal motor, I can’t stop him. But I’m walking back to Ridd Farm with him, in case he tries to break his neck again. Where did you find the bodies, if that’s not a secret?’

The superintendent hesitated. ‘Washed up on the beach at Happy Hollow early this morning. Now, sir!’

Molly Grange turned round and walked away without a word. I seemed to remember that there was something she had wanted to show me; but this, evidently, could wait.