Finders and Keepers (34 page)

‘Come on, Mary. Try! Please try, Mary,' he whispered.

He continued to mutter under his breath for what seemed like hours. Refusing to admit defeat, he carried on even when logic dictated he was working on a corpse. When a gush of water spurted from her mouth, he held his breath and waited. Five long mouth-drying, heart-pounding seconds later, Mary spluttered and coughed. He rolled away from her, leaned on his hands and knees, and vomited up the supper Diana Adams had given him.

Drained by the moonlight, Mary's face was the colour he imagined death to be. He watched her intently. Then slowly – infinitely slowly – her eyelids flickered and she opened her eyes. When she saw him looking at her she closed them again.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?' His voice croaked, thick with shock, bile and the foul taste of stagnant water. When she didn't answer, he grasped hold of her by the shoulders and forced her upright into a sitting position. ‘Look at me!'

She opened her eyes again but stared silently at the silver path of moonlight that wavered over the water.

‘What did you think you were doing?'

She shook her head, spraying droplets of water in the air.

‘You weren't thinking of your brothers and sister, that's for sure,' he said angrily, shaking at the thought of what would have happened if he hadn't decided to look at the reservoir in moonlight.

She began to tremble, and small, grating cries tore from her throat. He crawled over the grass, retrieved his jacket and shoes and returned to her. Anger abated, overwhelmed by pity, he wrapped his jacket around her, and cradled her in his arms the way he had comforted his sisters when they had hurt themselves as toddlers. He smoothed her wet, tangled hair away from her face, and allowed her to shed hot, salt tears onto the shoulder of his sodden shirt and waistcoat.

A wispy, grey-blue cloud passed over the moon and drifted on. A fox called to its mate on the hillside. Half-a-dozen sheep, startled by an unfamiliar noise or the advent of a predator, bolted over the mountain above them.

‘We're both soaking wet, Mary,' he said at last. ‘We'll catch cold if we carry on sitting here.'

She looked at him as if he were a stranger.

Realizing she was in shock, he took his jacket from her, untied her shawl, lifted it from her shoulders and wrung it out before replacing his jacket on her shoulders. It had absorbed some of the water and was damp, but it was still drier than her nightgown. Rising, he held out his hand and helped her to her feet before picking up his shoes.

The walk back up the hill was slow and uncomfortable. Their wet clothes chafed, and the breeze cut through the cloth, raising goose bumps. Physically shattered and emotionally drained, neither spoke until they reached the back door.

‘Will you be all right now?' he whispered when she depressed the latch.

She nodded.

He gripped her arm, preventing her from entering the house. ‘Really?'

‘I was keeping some of my father's trousers and shirts for David,' she murmured dully. ‘They'll be too small for you but if you put them on I could dry yours before you go back to the inn.'

His first instinct was to return to his car and drive back down the valley as fast as he could. But the image of her floating, more dead than alive in the water, had branded itself on his mind. He remembered what Mrs Edwards and the shepherd Dic had said about her father hanging himself in the barn, and he knew he'd never forgive himself if she harmed herself after he left.

‘I'd like dry clothes, thank you.' He followed her into the kitchen, closed the door behind him and went to the stove. Its warmth permeated his saturated clothes, and he stood, watching the water vapour rise gently from his shirt and trousers while she disappeared upstairs. She returned ten minutes later dressed in her black skirt and blouse, a towel wrapped around her head. She handed him a pair of worn and patched men's moleskin working trousers and a thick blue workman's shirt.

He took them, went into the scullery, stripped off his sodden garments, wrung them over the sink, bundled them together and dried himself as best he could in the towel he found there. Mary had been right about the trousers. They were wide enough but the legs ended six inches above his ankles. The shirt didn't reach his waist and the cuffs flapped at his elbows. Feeling like an orphan who'd outgrown his institution uniform, he returned to the kitchen. Mary was sitting on the bench closest to the fire. Still deathly pale and shaking, she was staring into the flames but jumped up when she saw him.

‘If you give me your clothes, I'll dry them for you.' She went to the rope that lowered the drying rack from the ceiling.

‘There's no need.' He dropped the bundle on the doorstep before closing the door. ‘I'll give them to the maid to wash when I get to the inn.'

‘What will you tell her?'

‘That I felt like a midnight swim in the reservoir. Sorry, bad joke. I'll tell her I slipped and fell in when I was walking around it, looking for a vantage point to paint it.'

‘In the middle of the night?' She returned to the bench and sank back down on to it.

‘Some of the most beautiful paintings are of night scenes. Take a look at your Christmas cards when you get them at the end of the year.'

‘No one sends us Christmas cards. They wouldn't, would they, seeing as how we can't read.' There was no bitterness in her declaration.

‘I'm sorry, I didn't think.' He sat on the other end of the bench and, like her, stared into the flames. It was easier to watch their flickering than face the despair etched into her dark eyes. She continued to sit motionless only a few feet away from him, yet he felt as though a chasm had opened between them.

‘Why were you there?' Even her voice sounded remote.

‘I was thinking about a painting. Trying to decide what colours to use to capture the moonlight on the water.' He glanced across at her. ‘It's just as well that I was. Did you mean to drown yourself?'

She bit her lip but didn't move her head.

‘You don't know?'

She remained silent.

‘I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you running into the water. Afterwards it wouldn't have taken much to convince me that I'd dreamed it, or seen a ghost. I almost gave up before I found you because I thought I'd imagined the entire episode. What possessed you to run straight into the water?' When she didn't answer him, he tried another direct question. ‘Can you swim?'

She looked down and shook her head vigorously before whispering, ‘No.'

‘Mary, I know things are bad on the farm and for your family at the moment, but if you let me, I promise I will try to help you.'

She finally lifted her head and the anguish in her magnificent black eyes unnerved him. ‘If you knew just how bad they were, Mr Evans, and how bad I am, you wouldn't want to help us.'

‘Yes, I would,' he contradicted her.

‘Even if you wanted to help us, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing anyone can do -'

The latch on the door that led into the hall lifted and David walked in. He had pulled his muddy work trousers on over a blue-and-white striped flannel nightshirt.

‘I thought I heard voices.' He glowered at Harry. ‘What are you doing here with my sister in the middle of the night?'

‘Visiting.' Harry's flippant remark fell leadenly into the charged atmosphere.

‘Mr Evans helped me, David.'

‘How?' David crossed his arms across his thin chest and looked from Harry to Mary.

Harry glanced at Mary but she refused to meet his gaze. ‘I was sitting down by the reservoir, thinking of ways to paint it –'

‘In the middle of the night?' David broke in incredulously.

‘Yes, in the middle of the night.' Harry turned to David. He sensed that Mary had lifted her head and was looking at him. ‘I saw her run down the hill and straight into the water.'

‘What?'
David turned to his sister.

Mary didn't offer a word of explanation. Harry looked at his watch in the firelight and realized it had stopped at two-thirty, presumably the time he'd entered the water, but he still sensed seconds ticking into minutes. ‘One of my sisters used to walk in her sleep when she was small. Mary had the same odd look of not being aware of her surroundings, so I waded in after her and fished her out.'

‘Mary, is this true?' David asked.

‘Yes.' She took the towel from her wet hair and shook it out as proof.

‘You've never walked in your sleep before.' David went to the fire box, picked up a log and dropped it on the flames, sending a shower of sparks flying up the chimney.

‘I suppose there's a first time for everything.' Realizing that he could barely keep his eyes open and he still had to drive to the inn, Harry rose to his feet.

‘You're going?' David asked.

‘It's hardly the time to pay a social call.' Harry looked intently from David to Mary. ‘You will look after her?'

‘Of course I will, she's my sister,' David snapped defensively. ‘Why did you do it, Mary?' he demanded, unwilling to allow the matter to drop.

Mary gave Harry a quick, conscious look. ‘Like Mr Evans said, I was asleep. I didn't know what I was doing. But I checked Dolly last thing, and I think she has gangrene in her hoof.'

‘You think?' There was real fear in David's voice.

‘I'm sure,' Mary said reluctantly. ‘And you know what that means.'

‘We'll have to shoot her.' David gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. ‘But that still doesn't explain why you were sleepwalking.'

Mary looked away from Harry and back at the fire. ‘I dreamed that I was running down the valley to fetch the vet. Now that we've paid his bill, we can ask him to call and look at her.'

‘And throw good money away?' David snapped. ‘There's no need to call him. We've both seen enough animals with gangrene to recognize the smell. If you're right, I'll shoot Dolly in the morning.'

‘The agent's taken father's gun,' Mary reminded him.

‘Only one of them. There's another in the attic.'

‘You hid it?'

‘I don't tell you everything I do. And the way things are we might need it,' he muttered grimly.

‘If we do, it will only be for shooting sick animals and vermin,' Mary warned.

‘Do you want me to shoot the horse for you?' Harry volunteered.

‘You ever shoot an animal, Harry?' David asked.

‘No, but I won prizes for marksmanship in school.' Harry tried not to sound as if he were boasting.

‘My father taught me to shoot rocks off a wall before he let me loose on foxes and sick livestock. There's a difference between killing a target and an animal,' David lectured as though he were the man and Harry the boy.

‘David, that was rude,' Mary said wearily.

‘Thank you for the clothes, I'll get the maid at the inn to wash them before I bring them back.' Harry looked back at David when he was at the door. ‘You will take care of your sister?' he repeated.

‘I will, and from now on I'll lock the doors at night.'

Harry wasn't sure whether David was threatening to lock him out or Mary in. ‘Then I'll say goodnight.'

David squinted up at the sky when Harry stepped into the yard. The pale-grey light that precedes dawn had highlighted the hills to the east. ‘I don't know whether we should go back to bed or start work for the day.'

‘It might be as well if we both took a look at Dolly before the little ones get up,' Mary suggested.

Wanting to help, not knowing how, and having no excuse to linger, Harry picked up his wet clothes from the step, closed the door and set out to walk to his car.

‘You look like a vampire on his way to bed, or rather his coffin,' Toby declared cheerfully to Harry when they drove from the inn to the sanatorium the following morning.

‘It's only fair to warn you that if I am a vampire, I'm one in need of sleep and nourishment,' Harry yawned.

‘You should have eaten the breakfast the Silent One put in front of you.'

‘I was too tired to eat.'

‘Well, if that's what an evening with the Snow Queen does to you, perhaps you ought to look for a gentler woman. I couldn't get more than a grunt out of you at breakfast and you've barely said a word since we got in the car.'

‘What's there to say in response to your inane chatter?' Harry turned into the courtyard of Craig-y-Nos.

‘Tell all to Uncle Toby.'

‘Like what?' Harry pulled on the brake.

‘I happen to know that you had a
very
late night with the beautiful Diana.'

Harry glared at Toby. ‘How?'

‘You drove into the barn at half past three, according to my alarm clock.'

‘Then, like you, your alarm clock's an ass,' Harry said.

‘My alarm clock keeps perfect time. I take it that both you and the lady don't give a damn for her reputation.'

Harry left the car. ‘After I left the Adamses' house last night I drove to the reservoir.'

‘You mean the Arthurian lake.'

‘I mean the reservoir,' Harry corrected. ‘I was restless and too wide awake to sleep.'

‘Ah-hah.'

‘Ah-hah nothing,' Harry said irritably. ‘I simply wondered what the reservoir would look like in the moonlight. There was a full moon last night.'

‘I saw it, although unlike you gallivanting here there and everywhere under an open sky, I viewed it through the window of my room when I was tucked up safe and sound between the sheets in my little bed.'

‘Toby, I'm just not in the mood this morning.' Harry walked to the door of the sanatorium.

‘I can see that. Take Uncle Toby's advice -'

‘Don't you know when to stop?'

Deciding a change of topic would be expeditious. Toby tried another gambit. ‘What did you do up at my Arthurian lake?'