She had never previously attended an inquest, and the formality of the phraseology startled her. It had an archaic touch, like something out of Magna Carta—"Touching the death of Stella Fawcett…" "draw near and give your attendance…"—as though they had been staging a pageant instead of establishing, if it could ever be established, how the first child she had borne came to disappear in the middle of the night and reappear as a corpse two miles down the river.
She followed the drift of each witness. The long-faced doctor, who told of his examination of the body, then of his visits to Dewponds months before for the purpose of treating a woman in shock. The pills and potions he had prescribed. His professional opinion of the deceased's state of mind between the date of his first call in December and the twenty-first day of March. He had treated her for insomnia. He did not consider the deceased as ill, or not in the accepted sense of the word. Under stress, certainly, but not ill.
She could not get used to hearing Stella described as "the deceased," as though everyone was under an obligation not to speak her name aloud, and she wondered if this oddly impersonal term bothered Denzil, too, or whether he was too bewildered and shocked to relate it to the woman he had worshipped since he was a boy. They got little enough out of him anyway, so that she wondered if George was right about Robert rehearsing him in what he had to say. He told them that his wife had been upset by news of her son's death and that all their married life she had had a very real fear of fire. Pressed gently by the coroner, he admitted that this fear was based on the fact that Dewponds had been burned to the ground and that the fear increased when she learned that fire had played a major part in the fatal accident last December. He identified the body taken from the river as that of his wife. He had last seen her when he went up to bed on the night of the twentieth.
The coroner, whom she recognised as a local solicitor whose wife, a rather twittery creature, had attended her garden parties, was very considerate and seemed genuinely touched by Denzil's distraught manner. He said, gently, "You searched for her personally when you discovered her missing, Mr. Fawcett?"
Denzil replied, in a scarcely audible voice, "Aye, I looked around. I didn't think much to it. She'd often get up and poke around after lock-up."
"You never heard her threaten to take her life?"
"Take her life?" He seemed outraged. "Lord no, sir, she never once said anything o' that sort." And then, "She never said much about anything save the work on the farm. Not lately, that is."
She glanced across at Adam, awaiting his turn to enter the box, and now wedged between Robert and George, legs crossed, arms tidily folded. He gave no sign that Denzil was on dangerous ground and, unlike herself, was clearly indifferent to the glances of jurymen and those standing at the back of the hall although he must have known almost everyone of them by name. In a curious way, even when sitting there, he dominated the proceedings, much as he had dominated her life for more than fifty years. He had a presence everyone else lacked and she wondered if he had always had it, even as a boy, or whether it was something that had settled upon him about the time he made history in the Crimea and India shortly before he met her, and later developed to a degree that empowered him to set all those wheels in motion across the country.
Surprisingly, to her at least, George was called, and she compared father and son, seeing them alike and yet curiously unlike, for George, although in full command of himself, lacked his father's air of authority, his ease of manner and natural amiability showing through even here. The evidence he gave was brief. He told of bringing news of her son's death to his sister in December and the manner in which she had received it, but no one could have guessed, from his reasoned tone and calm expression, that he had come within an ace of violent death himself on that occasion, and the reflection turned Henrietta's thoughts to the hatred Stella must have felt for him at that moment. Was she mad? Were they all hard at work trying to conceal the fact and, if so, was such deception wrong under the circumstances? Perhaps so. The solemnity of the proceedings, here in this stuffy parish hall, had made its impact on her, and the flutter of uncertainty about the propriety of their concerted suppression of the facts inclined her to glance back at Adam as though for reassurance. His expression was as unchanged as his posture. He might have been listening to an Act of Parliament being read aloud, or a prose recital at one of her winter soirees, so that she thought, chillingly, Would he look like that if they were discussing my death? She bowed her head for, at that moment, he seemed as remote as the God she had tried to approach in her prayers just lately.
She caught the last few words of George's evidence, something about the big fire at the yard at that time, and saw him leave the stand, to be replaced by his nephew Robert. Robert, poor lad, was clearly under strain and she knew why. He was a truthful, literal soul and it was upon him that the burden of sworn fiction would lie most heavily. Even the voicing of a half-truth, if that curious story about the fence and the bonfire qualified as such, would not come easily to him.
They asked him the same question as they had asked his father, had his mother ever threatened to take her own life, and he answered in the negative emphatically and with a certain defiance. He then told of his search of the buildings and assumption, planted by a footprint, that his mother had gone down to the bridge, some little distance from the farm. Could he give any reason why a woman haunted by a fear of fire should have gone in that direction? She saw Adam's head come up sharply as he turned his dour gaze on his grandson; Robert said, carefully, "Yes, sir, there was a reason, to my mind at least. We had been burning straw on the far bank near an old hen-house. Maybe the wind had whipped up the bonfire."
It made a disproportionate impact, producing a low sustained buzz from the body of the court, and she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Adam's features relax to resume their former impassivity. She saw the coroner's next question as the crux of the whole enquiry. The constable, in earlier evidence, had mentioned a loose rail in the bridge. Was the witness aware of such a rail, and if so, when? She could sense the expectancy of everyone present to his answer, and at length it came, as if dragged from him. "One of my men pointed it out to me that same morning. I hadn't noticed it before. The rail was four to five years old and the bridge often gets flooded. Maybe the nails holding it to the upright were rusted."
"Thank you, Mr. Fawcett. Call Adam Swann."
It seemed so silly, so ritualistic to say that, with Adam no more than five yards away, and a surge of impatience passed through her. Let Stella be buried, quickly and decently, like everybody else who died. What business was it of strangers or acquaintances to pursue enquiries into her state of mind, her obsession, her very movements up to the moment of her death? But the moment passed as Adam straightened himself and clumped up to the stand, his artificial leg echoing on the bare boards, and, now elevated some two feet above floor level, his dominance was even more profound so that she saw him as a kind of Moses passing judgment on Aaron's calf-worshippers. It comforted her enormously just to contemplate him, a man older in years than anyone in the court but secure, utterly so, in his authority, and replying to polite questions in a way that implied they were not merely irrelevant but vaguely impudent.
"You are the father of the deceased?"
"I am."
"You were leading the party that recovered her body from the river?"
"I was."
"You visited the farm early on the day of her death?"
"I did."
His steadiness affected even the coroner. "Er… could you tell the court anything you noticed on that occasion relative to this enquiry?"
"I noticed a loose rail on the parapet of the footbridge. One end was secure, the furthermost end. The near end was loose. Slight pressure on it produced a gap measuring about a foot. It was at a point over the deepest section of the stream."
There was no hint of irresolution here. He was stating plain, incontrovertible fact, and she knew they would believe him in every particular. It
was impossible not to believe him. It was as though he was telling an assembly of attentive children that the world was round, that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, that two and two made four and it was profitless to imply that it could ever be otherwise.
"You drew the attention of others to that rail?"
"I did. But before that I crossed over and went down to the half-dismantled hen-house mentioned by the previous witnesses. There was a smouldering bonfire of damp straw. No flame, just smoke."
"Thank you, Mr. Swann. As regards finding the deceased—I am sorry to have to distress you—but it is necessary I establish precisely where and how the body of the deceased was recovered."
"You cannot help distressing me. In company with my groom and gardener, I recovered my daughter's body from a pool formed by flotsam just above the ox-bow, about a mile below Tryst. It was on my land. We brought her to the bank and I waited while my employees went back to the house for a vehicle. It was about three p.m. on the same day."
"Thank you, Mr. Swann. I don't think it necessary to ask you any further questions. Neither, I think, will it be necessary to call further witnesses."
He stepped down, still impassive, still holding himself erect, and resumed his seat between son and grandson. There was a moment's silence, broken only by the soft riffle of the coroner's papers and an apologetic clearing of throats. He said, at length, "The facts in this tragic case would seem to be clear. This unfortunate woman, not in the best of health, and dogged, it seems, by a fear of fire, left her bed in the small hours of March the twenty-first and seemingly began to cross the footbridge between Dewponds Farm and her husband's land on the west bank. What happened precisely cannot be known, but the existence of a loose handrail and a smouldering bonfire beyond would seem consistent with the fact that she was on her way to investigate and slipped or fell into the river. If the jury wishes to retire to consider the facts as given by witnesses, they may do so now."
Abel Treloar, a carpenter at Twyforde, rose slowly from his seat at the central table and said, "We don't wish to retire, sir." He paused momentarily and glanced round at his silent colleagues. Nobody spoke. Nobody met his gaze. "We find that the poor lady died as a result of an unfortunate accident, sir."
He sat down very abruptly after two brief nods from the coroner, and Henrietta could find it in her to be sorry for him. She had known Abel since his apprenticeship days, and both he and his late father had often been to Tryst to do patching. Almost surely he recalled Stella as a toddler, and even then he would have addressed her as "miss" or '"missie." It would have been very surprising, she thought, if he had prolonged his speech, or had come to any other conclusion, and it occurred to her that Adam, the strategist, had taken his presence as foreman, or somebody very like him, into his calculations. She heard the coroner say, in the same subdued voice, "Then I find the deceased died from drowning as the result of an accidental fall into the water in the early hours of March the twenty-first, and return a verdict, based on the evidence that has been put to me, of accidental death. It only remains for me to express my deepest sympathy with the bereaved family in these tragic and entirely unforeseen circumstances…"
It was over and she watched Adam rise stiffly to his feet, his left hand massaging that part of his thigh where the straps of his harness chafed the flesh. It was a very familiar gesture, dating back to the day he had been restored to her, miraculously, or so it still seemed, after that shambles at Staplehurst. It served to banish the curious sense of his remoteness and impersonality that had persisted through the enquiry. He came over to her and said, in a low voice, "Let's go home, Hetty. George is bringing the motor round," and took her arm. She was surprised then to feel his fingers trembling, and for some reason the tremulous touch reminded her of Denzil standing a few yards away, listening to the halting condolences of Abel Treloar and some of the other jurymen. She said, suddenly, "We must take Denzil back to Tryst. I want him near us until after the funeral, Adam." He said, "As you please," and beckoned to his son-in-law. She thought, It hasn't been as easy for him as I imagined. It only looked that way, so that maybe, in the days ahead, he'll need to lean on me a little.
Seven
Interception
It was better, far better, than Henrietta had hoped when she made her resolve at the termination of the inquest.
After the funeral he seemed to her, although not to others less close to him, to sag. It was then that she found herself able, in some small degree, to feed back to him a little of the fortitude they had borrowed from him after they came to her with news of a drowned daughter.
There was no possibility of restricting the funeral to a private ceremony, of the kind that had been achieved when Romayne was buried here three years ago, for here was a local tragedy and Stella—child, girl, and farmwife—had been very well known in the rural community. Her funeral would have attracted a large assembly of unofficial mourners had she died a natural death so that no one was surprised to find the little church full to overflowing.
They followed, these unofficial ones, at a discreet distance, when the cortege procession wound its way past the yews to the extreme southeast corner of the churchyard, which the Swann clan had appropriated to itself. Henrietta, glancing aside from the committal, sensed their silent sympathy and realised a good deal of it was for the Fawcetts, who had farmed here for centuries. The Swanns had been here a mere fifty-two years, reckoned almost nothing in the mind of a rooted rural community. She thought, I wonder if any of them remember the circumstances of her birth, the first evening her father and I set eyes on Tryst? For had it not been for that I doubt if we would have ever bought a place so far from that slum of his beside the Thames… But then her mind, seeking a less melancholy pivot, returned to a warm evening in April 1860, when a carriage horse called Dancer ran away with their carriage and upset them against the stone pillars of the drive, thereby bringing on her labour.
She was able to draw some small comfort from the solidarity of the Swann clan. All save Alex and his wife were present, Lydia having wired to say he was on active duty in the far west of Ireland and found it impossible to get leave of absence and travel over in time. But Joanna had come, bless her, although such a poor sailor, and apologized for Clinton's absence. One of the younger children had been down with scarlet fever, she said, and Clint was due, that same day, to fetch her home from the isolation hospital. She caught Joanna looking intently at her father as the sexton's team withdrew the bands from the grave and thought, She's probably thinking this will knock years off his life, but she doesn't really know him. None of them do, save me. Not even George. It was later that week, when Adam, seeking consolation in the spring glory of his flowering shrubs, was away from the house, that she had occasion to put a rather different interpretation on Joanna's searching scrutiny of him at the graveside.
Joanna had been prevailed upon to stay over for a few days after news came that her daughter Mary was convalescing satisfactorily. It was seldom now that Tryst saw much of her or her younger sister, Helen. Both, it seemed, were fully occupied with their social life in and around the Irish capital, and the journey, by sea and land, was long and tedious. She looked well enough, Henrietta thought, but preoccupied for Joanna, least complicated of the brood, so that she was not much surprised when Jo, having established that Adam was clear of the house, said, "Could we have a chat, Mother? About something… well, bothersome. I'd appreciate your advice. Before I approach Papa, that is."
Henrietta said, guardedly, "How bothersome?"
"Bothersome enough. I badly need advice."
"About Clinton?"
"No, nothing to do with Clint this time." A fleeting smile lit up her plump, pretty face for an instant so that Henrietta guessed her daughter was remembering another time, twenty-three years behind them now, when she had sought, willynilly, counsel from her mother concerning her pregnancy before the stage-managed elopement that had earned Clinton his family nickname. "It's about Helen."
"She'
s well… happy?"
"She's well. I never saw her looking better in my life. Happy? I couldn't say really, although she must be to go to the lengths she did to look after that rascal she married."
"Just what do you mean by that, Jo? I thought you and Rory got along very well."
"We did. I always thought him a bit extravagant, but most of the Irish are. And he certainly transformed Helen after her terrible time in China. But now—well, I daresay you know how things are in Ireland since they passed the Home Rule Bill."
She didn't know, not really. Politics had never interested her and just lately, with blows raining down on them from all directions, she had not been disposed to give a rap for Irish squabbles. They were not new to anyone of her generation. All her life Ireland had been in a turmoil over one thing or another. She said, "What leisure have I had just lately to worry about Ireland's troubles? Haven't I enough of my own to go on with?"
Joanna looked uncomfortable and said, "Oh, well, I'll not worry you. I'll have a word with Papa before I go back."
"You'll do no such thing, or not if it's something likely to upset him. Good heavens, child, he's had his fill of worry recently."
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