A Finer End

“How—how is she?”

“We’ve got her warm and toasty now, and resting quite comfortably. She was hypothermic when they brought her in, and her heart was a bit dicky, but she’s stable now—”

“Heart?” A fresh jolt of fear shot through him.

“A bit of cardiac arrhythmia, due to the warming process. All perfectly normal. She’s a lucky girl, your Winifred. Do you know where she was found exactly?”

“In Bulwarks Lane, below Glastonbury Tor.”

“On the tarmac itself? Probably saved her life, then. The tarmac would have held the day’s heat. A few feet either way into the grass or the ditch …” Maggie shook her head ominously.

It had been Suzanne Sanborne who had rung Jack in the early hours of the morning. He had been increasingly uneasy about Winnie—it wasn’t like her not to let him know her whereabouts—but he had told himself that she must have had an emergency. He had, in fact, imagined her sitting at the bedside of an ill or dying parishioner. That was an irony too painful now to contemplate.

In a daze, he had driven the thirty miles to the hospital in Taunton. While Andrew Catesby acknowledged him with a tight-lipped nod, Suzanne told him that the police believed Winnie must have been on her way to visit her friend Fiona Allen when she had been struck by a hit-and-run motorist. It had been Fiona who had found her, rung for police and medical aid. Fiona had then rung Andrew, who in turn had called Suzanne. How like Andrew, thought Jack, not to have rung him.

By daybreak, they had still not been allowed to see Winnie and Suzanne had been unable to stay longer. Left alone with Andrew Catesby, who glared at him from across the waiting room, Jack had left the hospital and driven to police headquarters in Yeovil. There he had seen Detective Inspector Alfred Greely, the officer who had taken the call on Winnie’s accident. Greely, a phlegmatic man with a farmer’s face and a West Country burr, held out little hope that the driver of the car could be traced. There were no witnesses, and little, if any, possibility of forensic evidence on the bike—their only avenue lay with Winnie herself, if she should awaken and remember something vital.

Now, looking down at her smooth face, calm in a repose more profound than sleep, Jack asked Maggie, “Can I speak to her? Will she know me?”

“Of course, you can, dear, and the more the better. And it’s a good bet that when she wakes up, not only will she remember that you’ve been here, she’ll remember everything you’ve said to her.” Maggie fetched a hospital- issue chair that looked too insubstantial to support Jack’s large frame and placed it next to the bed. “She’ll need you to anchor her, give her consciousness a focal point. Talk to her, touch her, hold her hand. Tell her what’s happened to her.”

When Jack took Winnie’s hand between both of his, it felt cool and unresponsive. “Winnie, it’s me, Jack,” he began awkwardly. “You’ve had a bit of a bump on the head, but you’re going to be fine, love.”

“You just keep talking to her,” Maggie instructed when he paused, “and I’ll give you a few more minutes.” She moved away to attend another patient, her face impassive.

Jack fumbled in his pocket for the prayer book the hospital staff had found in Winnie’s handbag and began to read, hoping the familiar and comforting words would somehow reach her. “O Lord our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God, who has safely brought us to the beginning of this day: Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance.…” His voice broke; he bowed his head and closed the small leather-bound book with its gilt-edged pages. It was Winnie’s, a gift from her parents upon her confirmation, she had told him once. They had been killed in a boating accident shortly afterwards, and the book had become one of her treasures.

How had she managed to survive such grief whole? he wondered. He whispered to her, rubbing her hand between his, telling her he loved her, that she was strong and that he would let nothing—nothing—take her away from him.

Maggie reappeared at his side with a soft touch on his shoulder. “You’ll have to go now, I’m afraid, but you can come back in a couple of hours.” As Jack stood, regretfully letting go Winnie’s hand, she added, “Did I hear someone say that Winifred was a vicar?”

“Of St. Mary’s, in Compton Grenville.”

“If she likes music, you might bring something for her to listen to. Music can be a very strong trigger for some people, especially if it’s an important part of their daily lives.”

“Can I leave this with you?” Jack held out the prayer book. “In case you have a chance to read to her? Or if she wakes …” He looked up, desperately meeting Maggie’s hazel eyes. “What if she wakes up while I’m gone? Or …”

Maggie dug a piece of paper and a pen from her pocket. “You have a mobile phone?” Jack nodded. “Give me your number, and I’ll ring you if there’s any change at all.”

Jack thanked her and, with a last look at Winnie, went out into the waiting area. It was then that he sank into the nearest chair, shaken by the realization that he could not bear to lose her, could not bear to go back to the desert that had been his life after Emily’s death.

Nor could he bear to sit idly by, waiting. There were too many unanswered questions. What would Winnie tell them when—he refused to consider the possibility that it might be if—she woke? Why had she been going to see her friend Fiona at that time of evening? Where had she been before that? Why hadn’t she rung him? And what had she seen before the car struck her?

There must be something he could do. The police had certainly not shown much interest in investigating the accident. Winnie was much too levelheaded to have cycled blindly into the path of an oncoming vehicle. But how else could this have happened, unless someone had deliberately hurt her? And that was unimaginable.

He would go see Fiona. Perhaps Winnie had rung her, told her something that would explain her unlikely appearance in Bulwarks Lane.

And there was one other person he could call; someone he could trust to tell him if he was completely mad.

Kincaid returned the phone to its cradle on his desk just as his sergeant came into his office with a sheaf of papers in a folder.