trouble and it will only frighten Mrs Bidwell and her daughter. I will check that they are all right and tell Mrs Bidwell to keep the door locked and on no account to let anyone in. I had better let Mrs Bidwell know that the two gentlemen may be lost in the woodland and that we are seeking them. There is no point in telling her anything else.”
Then he was gone and was immediately out of sight, the sound of his departure deadened by the density of the wood. Darcy and Alveston stood still in silence. The minutes seemed to lengthen and, looking at his watch, Darcy saw that the colonel had been gone for nearly twenty minutes before they heard the rustle of parted branches and he reappeared.
Taking back his gun from Darcy, he said curtly, “All is well. Mrs Bidwell and her daughter both heard the sound of gunfire which they thought was close but not immediately outside the cottage. They locked the door at once and heard nothing more. The girl – Louisa is it not? – was on the verge of hysteria but her mother managed to quieten her. It is unfortunate that this is the night when Bidwell is not at home.” He turned to the coachman. “Keep a sharp eye and stop when we get to the place where Captain Denny and Mr Wickham left the chaise.”
He again took his place at the head of the little procession and they walked slowly on. From time to time Darcy and Alveston raised their lanterns high, looking for any disturbance in the undergrowth, listening for any sound. Then, after about five minutes, the chaise rocked to a stop.
Pratt said, “About here I reckon, sir. I remember this oak tree on the left and those red berries.”
Before the colonel could speak Darcy asked, “In which direction did Captain Denny go?”
“To the left, sir. There’s no path that I could see but he just charged into the wood as if the bushes wasn’t there.”
“How long before Mr Wickham followed him?”
“No more than a second or two, I reckon. Like I said, sir, Mrs Wickham clutched at him and tried to stop him going, and kept hollering after him. But when he didn’t come back and she heard the shots she told me to start moving and get to Pemberley as quick as possible. She was screaming, sir, the whole way, saying as how we was all going to be murdered.”
Darcy said, “Wait here, and don’t leave the chaise.” He turned to Alveston, “We had better take the stretcher. We shall look fools if they’ve just got lost and are wandering unharmed, but those shots are worrying.”
Alveston untied and dragged down the stretcher from the chaise. He said to Darcy, “And bigger fools if we get lost ourselves. But I expect you know these woodlands well, sir.”
Darcy said, “Well enough, I hope, to find my way out of them.”
It was not going to be easy to manoeuvre the stretcher through the undergrowth but, after discussion of the problem, Alveston shouldered the rolled canvas and they set off.
Pratt had made no reply to Darcy’s command that he should stay with the chaise but it was apparent that he was unhappy at being left alone and his fear communicated itself to the horses, whose jostling and neighing seemed to Darcy a fitting accompaniment to an enterprise he was beginning to think ill advised. Thrusting their way through the almost impenetrable bushes, they walked in single file, the colonel leading, slowly casting their lanterns from side to side and halting at every sign that someone might recently have passed that way, while Alveston manoeuvred the long poles of the stretcher with difficulty under the low-hanging branches of the trees. Every few steps they halted, called out and then listened in silence, but there was no reply. The wind, which had been hardly heard, suddenly dropped and in the calm it seemed that the secret life of the woodland was stilled by their unwonted presence.
At first, from the torn and hanging twigs of some of the bushes and a few smudges which could be footprints, there was hope that they were on the right trail, but after five minutes the trees and bushes became less thick, their calls were still unanswered and they stopped to consider how best to proceed. Afraid to lose contact in case one or other of them got lost, they had kept within yards of each other, moving west. Now they decided to return to the chaise by turning eastward towards Pemberley. It was impossible for three men to cover the whole extensive woodland; if this change of direction produced no results they would go back to the house and, if Wickham and Denny had not returned by daylight, call in estate workers and perhaps the police to institute a more thorough search.
They trudged on, when suddenly the barrier of tangled bushes was less dense and they glimpsed a moonlit glade formed by a ring of slender silver birch trees. They pressed forward with renewed energy, crashing through the undergrowth, glad to break free of the imprisonment of the tangled shrubs and the thick unyielding trunks into freedom and light. Here there was no overhanging canopy of boughs and the moonlight silvering the delicate trunks made this a vision of beauty, more chimera than reality.
And now the glade was before them. Passing slowly, almost in awe, between two of the slender trunks, they stood as if physically rooted, speechless with horror. Before them, its stark colours a brutal contrast to the muted light, was a tableau of death. No one spoke. They moved slowly forward as one, all three holding their lanterns high; their strong beams, outshining the gentle radiance of the moon, intensified the bright red of an officer’s tunic and the ghastly blood-smeared face and mad glaring eyes turned towards them.
Captain Denny lay on his back, his right eye caked with blood, his left, glazed, fixed unseeing on the distant moon. Wickham was kneeling over him, his hands bloody, his own face a splattered mask. His voice was harsh and guttural but the words were clear. “He’s dead! Oh God, Denny’s dead! He was my friend, my only friend, and I’ve killed him! I’ve killed him! It’s my fault.”
Before they could reply, he slumped forward and began a wild sobbing which tore at his throat, then collapsed over Denny’s body, the two bloody faces almost touching.
The colonel bent over Wickham, then straightened up. He said, “He’s drunk.”
Darcy said, “And Denny?”
“Dead. No, better not touch him. I know death when I see it. Let us get the body onto the stretcher and I’ll help carry it. Alveston, you are probably the strongest among us, can you support Wickham back to the chaise?”
“I think so, sir. He’s not a heavy man.”
In silence Darcy and the colonel lifted Denny’s body onto the canvas stretcher. The colonel then moved to help Alveston get Wickham to his feet. He staggered but made no resistance. His breath, which came in sobbing gasps, polluted the air of the glade with its stink of whisky. Alveston was the taller man and, once he had managed to raise Wickham’s right arm and placed it over his shoulder, was able to support his inert weight and halfdrag him a few steps.
The colonel had bent down again and now straightened up. There was a pistol in his hand. He smelled the barrels then said, “Presumably this was the weapon which fired the shots.” Then he and Darcy grasped the poles of the stretcher and with some effort lifted it. The sad procession began its laboured way back to the chaise, the stretcher first and Alveston, burdened with Wickham, some yards behind. The evidence of their passing was plain and they had no difficulty in retracing their footsteps but the journey was slow and tedious. Darcy trudged behind the colonel in a desolation of spirit in which a dozen different fears and anxieties jostled in his mind making rational thought impossible. He had never let himself wonder how close Elizabeth and Wickham had been in the days of their friendship at Longbourn, but now jealous doubts, which he recognised as unjustified and ignoble, crowded his mind. For one terrible moment he wished that it was Wickham’s body he was straining his shoulders to carry, and the realisation that he could wish, even for a second, that his enemy was dead appalled him.
Pratt’s relief at their reappearance was apparent, but at the sight of the stretcher he began shaking with fear and it was only after the colonel’s sharp command that he controlled the horses who, smelling blood, were becoming unmanageable. Darcy and the colonel lowered the stretcher to the ground and Darcy, taking a blanket from the chaise, covered Denny’s body. Wickham had been quiet on the walk through the woodland but now was becoming belligerent and it was with relief that Alveston, helped by the colonel, managed to get him into the chaise and took his seat opposite him. The colonel and Darcy again grasped the stretcher poles, and with aching shoulders took up their burden. Pratt at last had the horses under control and in silence and a great weariness of body and spirit Darcy and the colonel, following the chaise, began the long trudge back to Pemberley.
3
