'You go home and go to bed,' he said. 'You're the one who's suffering from shock.'
In the queer way people materialise out of nowhere in the country, we had three or four people standing near us, by this time. One a hiker who had come along from the main road seeing our little group, one a rosy-faced woman who I think was going to a farm over a short cut and an old roadman. They were making exclamations and remarks.
'Poor young lady.'
'So young too. Thrown from her horse, was she?'
'Ah well, you never know with horses.'
'It's Mrs. Rogers, isn't it, the American lady from The Towers?'
It was not until everyone else had exclaimed in their astonished fashion, that the aged roadman spoke. He gave us information. Shaking his head he said,
'I must-a seen it happen. I must-a seen it happen.'
The doctor turned sharply on him.
'What did you see happen?'
'I saw a horse bolting across country.'
'Did you see the lady fall?'
'No. No, I didn't. She were riding along the top of the woods when I saw her and after that I'd got me back turned and I was cutting the stones for the road. And then I heard hoo and I looked up and there was the horse galloping. I didn't think there'd been an accident. I thought the lady perhaps had got off and let go of the horse in some way. It wasn't coming towards me, it was going in the other direction.'
'You didn't see the lady lying on the ground?'
'No, I don't see very well far. I saw the horse because it showed against the sky line.'
'Was she riding alone? Was there anyone with her, or near her?'
'Nobody near her. No. She was all alone. She rode not very far from me, past me, going along that way. She was bearing towards the woods, I think. No, I didn't see anyone at all except her and the horse.'
'Might have been the gipsy what frightened her,' said the rosy-faced woman.
I swung round.
'What gipsy? When?'
'Oh, must have been – well, at must have been three or four hours ago when I went down the road this morning. About quarter to ten maybe, I saw that gipsy woman. The one as lives in the cottage in the village. Least I think it was she. I wasn't near enough to be sure. But she's the only one as goes about hereabouts in a red cloak. She was walking up a path through the trees. Somebody told me as she'd said nasty things to the poor American young lady. Threatened her. Told her something bad would happen if she didn't get out of this place. Very threatening, I hear she was.'
'The gipsy,' I said. Then, bitterly, to myself, thought out loud, 'Gipsy's Acre. I wish I'd never seen the place.'
Book III
Chapter 19
It's extraordinary how difficult it is for me to remember what happened after that. I mean, the sequence of it all. Up to then, you see, it's all clear in my mind. I was a little doubtful where to begin, that was all. But from then on it was as though a knife fell, cutting my life into two halves. What I went on to from the moment of Ellie's death seems to me now like something for which I was not prepared. A confusion of thrusting people and elements and happenings where I wasn't myself in control of anything any more. Things happened not to me, but all around me. That's what it seemed like.
Everybody was very kind to me. That seems the thing I remember best. I stumbled about and looked dazed and didn't know what to do. Greta, I remember, came into her element. She had that amazing power that women have to take charge of a situation and deal with it. Deal, I mean, with all the small unimportant details that someone has to see to. I would have been incapable of seeing to them.
I think the first thing I remembered clearly after they'd taken Ellie away and I'd got back to my house – our house – the house – was when Dr. Shaw came along and talked to me. I don't know how long after that was. He was quiet, kind, reasonable. Just explaining things clearly and gently. Arrangements. I remember his using the word arrangements. What a hateful word it is and all the things it stands for. The things in life that have grand words – love – sex – life – death – hate – those aren't the things that govern existence at all. It's lots of other pettifogging, degrading things. Things you have to endure, things you never think about until they happen to you. Undertakers, arrangements for funerals, inquests. And servants coming into rooms and pulling the blinds down. Why should blinds be pulled down because Ellie was dead? Of all the stupid things!
That was why, I remember, I felt quite grateful to Dr. Shaw. He dealt with such things so kindly and sensibly, explaining gently why certain things like an inquest had to be. Talking rather slowly, I remember, so that I could be quite sure I was taking them in.
I didn't know what an inquest would be like. I'd never been to one. It seemed to me curiously unreal, amateurish.
The Coroner was a small fussy little man with pince-nez. I had to give evidence of identification, to describe the last time I had seen Ellie at the breakfast table and her departure for her usual morning ride and the arrangement we had made to meet later for lunch. She had seemed, I said, exactly the same as usual, in perfectly good health.
Dr. Shaw's evidence was quiet, inconclusive. No serious injuries, a wrenched collar bone and bruises such as would result from a fall from the horse, not of a very serious nature, and inflicted at the time of death. She did not appear to have moved again after she had fallen. Death, he thought, had been practically instantaneous. There was no specific organic injury to have caused death, and he could give no other explanation of it than that she had died from heart failure caused by shock. As far as I could make out from the medical language used Ellie had died simply as the result of absence of breath – of asphyxia of some kind. Her organs were healthy, her stomach contents normal.
Greta, who also gave evidence, stressed rather more forcibly than she had done to Dr. Shaw before, that Ellie had suffered from some form of heart malady three or four years ago. She had never heard anything definite mentioned but Ellie's relations had occasionally said that her heart was weak and that she must take care not to over-do things. She had never heard anything more definite than that.
Then we came to the people who had seen or been in the vicinity at the time the accident happened. The old man who had been cutting peat was the first of them. He had seen the lady pass him, she'd been about fifty yards or so away. He knew who she was though he'd never spoken to her. She was the lady from the new house.
'You knew her by sight?'
'No, not exactly by sight but I knew the horse, sir. It's got a white fetlock. Used to belong to Mr. Carey over at Shettlegroom. I've never heard it's anything but quiet and well behaved, suitable for a lady to ride.'
'Was the horse giving any trouble when you saw it? Playing up in any way?'
'No, it was quiet enough. It was a nice morning.'
There had not been many people about, he said. He hadn't noticed many. That particular track across the moor wasn't much used except as a short cut occasionally to one of the farms. Another track crossed it about a mile farther away. He'd seen one or two passers-by that morning but not to notice. One man on a bicycle, another man walking. They were too far away for him to see who they were and he hadn't noticed much anyway. Earlier, he said, before he'd seen the lady riding, he'd seen old Mrs. Lee, or so he thought. She was coming up the track towards him and then she turned off and went into the woods. She often walked across the moors and in and out of
