staggering jerk, stood erect for one instant on the shifting slope, before its weight set the whole surface in motion, and hurled it down upon them in a skier’s leaning plunge.
She missed nothing. She even took her eyes from him, and let the police jump forward to break his fall, in order to watch all those other faces. There had been a general gasp of fright and horror; no wonder, there was nothing in that to incriminate. Bill Lawrence stood with mouth fallen open in stunned bewilderment, Lesley clapped her hands to her cheeks and uttered a muted scream. Even Orrie, though he stood rooted and silent as a rock, stared with eyes for once dilated and darkened in disbelief. But Paviour gave a high, moaning shriek, and flung up his hands between himself and the swooping figure, making an ineffectual gesture of pushing the apparition away. Then, as though he had felt his hands pass clean through its impalpable substance, he plucked them back, and turned blindly to run. Charlotte saw his face stiffen suddenly into blue ice, his eyes roll upwards whitely, and his lips, always bloodless, turn livid. He lifted his hands, span on his heel in a rigid contortion, and fell face-down on the muddy path like a disjointed puppet.
Gus Hambro reached the grass still upright, in a rushing avalanche of loose soil, and reeled into the arms of George Felse and Detective-Sergeant Price. For a few seconds he stood peering round at them all, and they saw that his eyes were screwed up tightly against the waning twilight as though for protection against a blaze of brightness. He heaved deep breaths into him, dangled his blackened and bloody hands with a huge sigh, and collapsed slowly and quietly between his supporters, to subside into the wet grass beside the enemy Charlotte had terrified herself by striking senseless, if not dead, at his feet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
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To Charlotte, in her state of minor shock and illogical guilt, the next twenty minutes resembled one of those ancient comedy films in which sleep-walkers stride confidently about the scaffolding of an unfinished building, converging with hair-raising impetus and missing one another by inches: a purposeful chaos with a logic of its own, and all conducted in comparative silence. After the first stupefying moment, exclamation was pointless. Some one, Charlotte supposed it could only have been George Felse, must have given orders, for the whole group, apart from George and Reynolds, dispersed like a dehiscent fruit bursting, Sergeant Price, with Lesley in anxious ward, to telephone Paviour’s doctor, Charlotte to rustle up blankets, Bill Lawrence and Orrie Benyon to fetch the sun-bed stretchers from the garden- room, while George and his constable did what they could, meantime, for the casualties. The principle that victims of sudden collapse and probable acute heart failure should not be moved without medical advice hardly held good on a chilly, wet slope of grass beside a steadily rising river, and with night coming on.
At that hour on a Sunday evening it was hardly surprising that Dr Ross, who had been Paviour’s doctor for years, should be away from home. His answering service offered the number of his partner on call, but Price preferred to cut the corners and ring up the police doctor, whom he knew well, and to whom he could indicate— Lesley being temporarily out of the room helping Charlotte to collect rugs and pillows from a cupboard in the hall— what the trouble was likely to be.
‘Blue as a prime blue trout, and got all his work cut out to breathe at all. Looks pretty bad to me.’
He hung up as Lesley came in, and hoped she hadn’t heard. She had hardly spoken a word throughout, and what she was thinking was more than he could guess. For she could connect as quickly as anyone. Not much doubt of that. And who but the man who had put Gus Hambro underground for good should all but drop dead from shock when the corpse insisted upon rising?
Paviour was laid in blankets on the couch in the sitting-room, livid-faced and pinched, breathing in shallow, rattling snores. She sat beside him, sponging his face and bathing away the sweat that gathered on his forehead and lips. Gus Hambro had been carried straight upstairs to the bathroom to strip him of his wrecked clothes and clean the grime of centuries from his body, and Bill, at his own suggestion, had slipped away to the lodge to bring him some pyjamas and clothes of his own, since the victim’s effects were a total loss. Out in the hall by the front door Orrie hovered uneasily, plainly unwilling to leave until he knew what was going on, waiting for the doctor to arrive, and rolling himself one shapeless cigarette after another.
Dr Braby came with an ambulance as escort, having considerable confidence in Price’s judgement. The attendant followed him in to await orders, and fetch and carry if required. Lesley relinquished her place by the couch without a word, and stood aside, intently watching, as the doctor turned back the blankets and began a methodical examination. The sight of the sunken, leaden face and the sound of the anguished breathing made him look up at her briefly over his shoulder.
‘Will you show Johnson where the telephone is, please? Get the Comerbourne General, and say you’re bringing in a congestive heart failure, urgent. I’ll give you a note on what he’s getting: digoxin, intravenous, fifteen millilitres. We need a quick response, and in his condition I doubt if there’ll be any nausea reaction. Hot water, would you mind, Mrs Paviour?’
He spread his bag open beside him, within reach of one freckled, middle-aged hand, and prepared his injection, and very slowly and carefully administered it. For a few minutes afterwards he sat with his fingers on his patient’s pulse.
‘No history of heart trouble previously?’
‘No,’ said Lesley, ‘he’s never complained. He seemed very well, and he didn’t bother about regular check-ups, as long as he felt all right.’
‘Like most of us. We’ll have to send him into hospital, I can’t do more for him here. The digoxin will begin to take effect in ten minutes or so, and should reach maximum within a couple of hours. Then he should rally.’
‘I’ll go along with him,’ said Lesley. ‘Give me three minutes to put some things together for him.’ She looked the doctor squarely in the face. ‘You can tell me the truth, you know. Is he going to get over it?’
‘No saying yet, I’m afraid. He’s bad, but he may pull out of it successfully. Live in hope!’
Was it possible that her hopes inclined the other way? Her voice was so level and her face so still that it was left to the imagination what ambivalent thoughts they covered. If he had really attempted murder, what was there waiting for him if he got over this attack?
‘Do you want me to come along with you?’ Charlotte asked.
Lesley gave her a faint, brief smile, perhaps detecting the reluctance with which the offer was made. ‘No, thanks, you stay here and stand in for me if anyone needs feeding, or coffee, or a drink. I’m going to pack a case for Stephen.’ And she went up the stairs at a light and purposeful run, in command of herself and in need of no one to hold her hand, and in a very few minutes was back with her burden. She followed the stretcher men out through the hall, and there was Orrie still waiting in case he was needed.
He got up when the stretcher came through, his eyes dwelling in fascination upon the swathed body. It looked like a preternaturally long and narrow collection of old bones very imperfectly articulated. There seemed to be virtually nothing under the covering blanket, only two bony feet at one end of it, and a fleshless head with luxuriant
