Dark Angel (28 page)

Cattermole watches them for a while, feet spread, bottom protected from the dew by Harris tweed, cigarette pungent. He removes his cap and lifts his face to the sun; he thinks of the comet the night before. His father saw that comet, the very same one, when he was a boy, back in 1835—saw it from much the same place, most likely.

He puffs the cigarette down to a small stub, then buries it. He stands up, notices for the first time that there is an odd little mound in the grass, just over to his right, a mound that was not there the previous morning. He is inspecting the mound—children’s work, by the look of it, and children shouldn’t be in this part of the wood, not by rights, they shouldn’t—when the dogs begin barking.

Cattermole straightens up. Neither dog is in view but they are close by and they are yelping. Cattermole knows that bark, a high repetitive yipping sound, the sound they make when they’ve put up a fox or a rabbit.

He waits, but neither dog emerges and the barking continues. Puzzled, Cattermole crosses the clearing, starts to turn down the path that traverses the woods, and then stops dead.

Cattermole has seen death before. He has even seen what a man looks like who has taken the blast of a shotgun full in the face—and although that was thirty years ago Cattermole has not forgotten it. But he is not prepared for what he sees now. He stares in horror, and in terror, for he at once fears that he will be blamed for this. He stares; his gorge rises; he turns away to the bushes to vomit. Sweat breaks out on his brow; he is shaking. It is when he straightens up that he hears the groan. He swings around.

Dear God,
he thinks,
so much blood and still alive. It isn’t possible.

“There’s bin a haccident. An ’orrible haccident.”

It is Arthur who brings Freddie the news, bursting into Freddie’s room, wrenching back the curtains and filling the room with light and agitation.

Freddie surfaces from deep sleep and stares at Arthur in confusion. Arthur is normally more painstaking with the disposition of his aitches, but in his excitement Cockney returns.

“In the woods. Last night. Mr. Cattermole just found ’im. Sent Jack Hennessy up to the ’ouse. The doctor’s telephoned for, and they’re fetchin ’im up on a stretcher. Blood everywhere, Jack said. Blood like you wouldn’t believe. You’d better get up, Master Frederic—”

Who, who? Frederic wants to know, but Arthur cannot tell him. Jack Hennessy didn’t know, or didn’t say, and for the moment Arthur is too drunk on disaster to care. Sufficient that there has been an appalling occurrence, that cook is in hysterics, the house in an uproar. “Blood, blood,” he keeps repeating in gurgling tones, eyes rolling with the drama of it all, as Freddie bundles back the bedclothes and struggles to get dressed.

To Freddie’s fury, Arthur departs for the kitchens and fresh information, leaving Freddie to find his own shirt and tie.

Freddie wastes precious minutes, during which he hears running footsteps, distant shouts, the hooting of car horns, and the crunch of tires on gravel. His fingers fumble; Arthur does not return. Peering from his high window, Freddie sees a group of people gathering on the drive outside. He sees Boy, Acland, his mother, his aunt Maud; he sees the butler, Ross, and—this is when he realizes there is indeed something terrible afoot—he sees Ross, staid, irreproachable, unflappable Ross, actually break into a run.

Ross waves his hands in the air like an agitated goose flapping its wings. He seems to be trying to shoo the maids back into the house, but he is having no success. Still they come out at a run, the streamers of their caps blowing in the wind; they gather, flutter, regroup. One of them—Jenna Curtis—is crying.

With a growl of anger, Freddie leaves his collar agape, his tie askew, his shoes half-laced, and runs for the stairs.

Down past the stag’s head, across the hall, onto the portico steps. The scene in front of him is now one of pandemonium.

Jack Hennessy has disappeared—gone back to help the stretcher party, someone says. No one is certain exactly what has happened, or to whom it has happened. On all sides Freddie hears little snatches, gasps, rumors and counterrumors. He stares from face to face. Boy, looking bewildered, hurrying to their mother’s side; Acland, white-faced, standing apart and staring in the direction of the woods. The head parlormaid weeping; Ross demanding sal volatile, and quickly; Nanny Temple trying to catch hold of Steenie and chivy him inside; and Steenie, running wild, leaping across the gravel from group to group, evading Nanny Temple’s clutch, and yelling.

His mother, too, has dressed in haste, Freddie sees. Her hair is not properly fastened and is already escaping from the pins at her neck; she has rushed outside without her coat.

“But what can have happened? What can have happened?” she says, over and over again. She turns; Freddie sees her eyes scan the terrace. She registers his own presence, the fact that Boy is there, Acland is there, Steenie is there. For a moment her face quietens, and then she cries out:

“Denton? Where is Denton?”

Heads turn; a group of maids eddies apart; Ross speaks in an urgent voice to one of the manservants; the man departs inside at a run. No sign of Lord Callendar, and now, alerted by the noise, other guests are appearing on the steps: Montague Stern, majestic in a padded dressing gown of crimson silk, apparently unconcerned at this departure from convention, stands for a moment at the head of the steps, surveying the scene. He turns to Acland.

“What has happened?”

“An accident of some kind.”

Acland’s voice is terse, his manner distracted.

“Is the doctor sent for?”

“The doctor, I think, is here.”

As Acland says this, and runs forward, the noise of a car is heard. It bucks up the driveway at some speed; it crunches to a halt in front of Freddie, gravel spluttering. From it emerges Dr. Haviland, red in the face, unshaven, whiskery, hat jammed low on his brows. He clutches his alligator medical bag, and at his appearance—the appearance of authority amidst chaos—a sigh goes up from the cluster of maids.

The doctor’s arrival is a diversion. As he goes to Gwen’s side and her family groups around her, only Acland stands apart, just as he did the night before for the arrival of the comet. Acland stands apart, and Jane Conyngham, coming out onto the steps with Mrs. Heyward-West, sees Acland’s head lift, sees him raise his arm to point, just as he did the night before.

Jane turns, screws up her shortsighted eyes. At first she can see nothing; then, gradually, she discerns the group to which Acland is gesturing.

There is a thin mauve mist in the valley below, as there often is on spring mornings. It shrouds the edge of the lake and the woods, and it is from this thin mist that the group of men gradually emerges. There are nine, perhaps ten of them, headed by Cattermole, by Jack Hennessy, and by Hennessy’s other brawny sons. They progress slowly, awkwardly, in fits and starts, with many muffled shouts and cautions to watch their step, to go easy now.

They are carrying something. Jane narrows her eyes. They are closer now; she can see that four of the men support an improvised stretcher. On the stretcher is a pile of rugs, the familiar tartan rugs that at Winterscombe are always brought out for shooting luncheons or for picnics.

“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Heyward-West says in a low voice, and reaches for Jane’s hand. The groups on the terrace fall silent. Jane knows they are all looking for the same thing—a face, and whether that face is covered.

The group of men is coming closer now. Jane can see that their faces are blanched with shock, that Cattermole, the most stalwart of men, is greenish and shaking. He has removed his tweed cap, and as he advances he turns the cap around and around in his hands, like a nervous child up before a teacher. Fifty feet away, the group pauses, as if reluctant to advance. By the house, no one moves and everyone is silent.

Twenty feet, fifteen; the men stop. They are sweating in the chill air; their breath comes in clouds. A word from Cattermole, and gently, reluctantly, averting their faces, they lay their burden down.

A little flutter from the group of maids; Montague Stern draws in his breath; Acland tenses. Jane stares; Freddie stares. They can see the bundled form now, under the tartan rugs; they can see the remnants of a white shirtfront; they can see blood, and a head lolling.

It is Gwen who goes forward first, and Jane has never admired her more than she does at this moment—Gwen, who, brushing aside Boy’s restraining arm, steps forward. She walks toward the bundle of rugs, bends, kneels in her silk dress on the gravel. Cattermole lifts a hand, as if in warning, then lets it fall. Gwen lifts the tartan rugs to one side.

She had assumed—everyone had assumed—a shooting accident, but no gun would have produced these kinds of injuries. Gwen stares, bewildered, shock slowing the processes of her mind. The body in front of her is so badged with blood that at first she cannot locate the source of the injuries, cannot recognize the man before her. His hands, arms, face, are lacerated; gobbets of blood spew from his mouth; his lips are retracted so that he appears to snarl.

The nails on his hands are ripped, and the stumps of his fingers are black with congealed blood; the hands are clenched like claws, clutching at the shreds of his clothing. The hands are not moving, and the smell—for a second Gwen averts her face—the smell is terrible.

Gwen lifts her face to Cattermole in bewilderment. Cattermole hesitates, and it is Dr. Haviland who, reaching her side, setting down his bag, twitches the rugs back a little further.

Gwen stiffens. From behind her there is a groan, a sigh, a scream from one of the maids. The man’s right leg is fragmented. Below the knee it is twisted and foreshortened. One foot, shoeless, is bent up under his body; the shinbone, snapped in two places, protrudes through the flesh; a sliver of bone glistens.

“Dear God,” Dr. Haviland says, very quietly. He lifts his face to Cattermole. “Dear God, man, what happened?”

“A trap, sir,” Cattermole says in a low voice. “He must have been in it for hours before I found him.” He hesitates. “He’d have gone wild, sir, trying to get out of it, just like an animal would. That’s why his hands … and his tongue, sir …” He bends toward Dr. Haviland’s ear, lowers his voice even further so that Gwen will not hear him. “He’s bit it, sir, bit it bad…. But he’s alive, sir, that’s the thing of it. At least, he was alive—when we got him out….”

Dr. Haviland turns away, his face grim. Beside him, Gwen has not moved; she remains kneeling on the gravel, her head bowed. The doctor bends toward her. He is a kind man, a conventional Edwardian; his first thought is that this is no sight for ladies.

“Lady Callendar …” He reaches for her arm to help her to her feet; he glances back toward the butler and motions him forward with the sal volatile.

“Lady Callendar, please …”

Still Gwen does not move; the doctor looks around at the silent group helplessly. There is a moment’s silence. Boy, the eldest son, who should be the one to help, seems transfixed. It is Acland who finally steps forward. He, too, bends, takes his mother’s arm, presses it.

“Come away,” he says in a low voice. “Come away, Mama. Let Haviland see if—”

Acland never completes the sentence. Suddenly he is aware, from the corner of his eye, of a rush of movement, a dart of black. He looks up, and it is Constance—Constance Cross the albatross—and she is running. Down the steps and onto the gravel; past Jane; past Nanny Temple, who tries to grasp her and misses; past the maids, and Montague Stern, and Maud, who has begun to weep; past Boy, past Freddie.

She swoops down upon the group by the stretcher, darts between the men, black hair flying, black skirts billowing, and—before Acland can stop her, before anyone can stop her—she hurls herself with appalling force onto the rugs, onto the stretcher, onto the body it is supporting. As she does so, she screams. It is a sound Acland will never forget, which no one who hears it that day will forget, a sound both terrifying and primitive. It is not a child’s cry; it is a scream of anger and grief, as raucous as the cry of a gull. The pure high note echoes in the air; then Constance buries her face against a twisted throat, a once-neat and pomaded beard.

“Father,” she cries, and then again, shaking him, “Papa …” There is absolute silence; Shawcross’s body twitches; his head rolls.

Constance looks up. She lifts her pinched white face and she stares in accusation at the silent group around her: at Gwen, at Acland, at Boy, at Freddie, at the doctor, at Cattermole. “You killed him,” she cries at the circle of faces. “You killed my father.”

Acland has never heard such hate in any voice; the venom is chilling.

He stares at Constance, and, her gaze growing still, Constance fixes her eyes upon him. Her blanched face is expressionless; her black eyes seem blank and unseeing. A stone face, a Medusa face, Acland thinks, and then—just for an instant—the quality of Constance’s stare alters. Something flickers in her eyes as she looks at Acland, and he knows she sees him. A tiny moment, but in that moment Acland feels something pass between them, a pulse of recognition, like signaling to like.

Acland would prefer to turn aside but finds he cannot do so. The idea that this child and he are in any way akin is repellent to him, yet he finds he cannot break the compulsion of her eyes. He remains still, transfixed; behind him, no one moves, and it is Constance—finally—who snaps the moment’s thread. She rises; she sways on her feet. (For a moment, Acland thinks she is going to faint.) Then she recovers herself. She stands absolutely still, a thin, erect child, an ugly child, in a shabby black frock. Her eyes are chips of flint. She lifts her clenched hands over her head; then, on a rising note, she repeats the same phrase, over and over again.

She says: “I loved him. I loved him. I
loved
him.”

And it is melodramatic, of course, Acland tells himself. Melodramatic, self-indulgent, and disgracefully ill-bred—yet he cannot tear his eyes away, because he knows that this display is beyond manners, beyond convention, and that, for all its theatricality, it is truthful.