An older woman, a maid judging by the way she was dressed, her arm bleeding badly, dripping down her hand to the floor, was struggling to help the young woman who lay in the middle of the floor on a patterned carpet.
There seemed to be a great deal of blood, more than could be explained by the arm wound. I said, bending over the younger woman, “Let me see.” But I had to push the maid to one side even to tell if the other victim was still alive.
For a wonder she was breathing, although it was labored, and the cloth that the maid had pressed against her side was already making its own pool across the carpet.
My kit was in the motorcar with Trelawney, but I said, “Scissors, quickly, and more clean cloths.”
The maid, still quite dazed, scrambled to her feet with an effort, and disappeared. Meanwhile, I was trying to find where the shot had actually gone in-and if it had come out.
The woman moaned as I moved her, and I said gently, “You’re with friends. I’m going to stop the bleeding and make you more comfortable.”
I wasn’t certain she could hear me, but I kept making soothing noises as I worked and finally determined that she had been shot in the side. It appeared to me that the bullet had dug furrow along the ribs. I didn’t think it had reached the lung-there was no froth of blood on her lips.
The scissors came, and I cut away the once-pretty white and green fabric of her summer gown for a better look. The problem was, I couldn’t find where the bullet had stopped. Although it was very possibly lodged in her shoulder somewhere, without instruments I couldn’t be sure, and internal bleeding was still a danger if it had penetrated the rib cage under her arm.
She was so much slimmer than the wounded soldiers I’d dealt with, not much muscle or flesh there to shield the ribs, and as I tried gently to probe the site, then stanch the bleeding, she cried out. I had nothing to give her.
It took time, more time than I cared to think about, to stop the bleeding and bind up the wound as best I could with the simple bandages the maid brought me.
And as I worked I spoke to the maid hovering over my shoulder.
“What is your name?”
“Maggie,” she said, her voice shaking from shock compounded by her own pain. “Will she live?”
“Yes, I think she has a good chance. What happened here? Why were the two of you shot? Did you know the man who did this?”
“He came through the door, shouting her name. Over and over, in such a voice that I ran out from the kitchen and came to see what was happening. And then she came down the stairs, staring as if she’d seen a ghost. And it was. Dear God, it was.”
“Her husband?” I asked, ripping lengths of cloth to bind the woman’s arm to her side.
“No, oh, no. He’s in France. This was the man she was once engaged to, and then broke it off. And he’d come for revenge.”
“Her name?”
“Julia Palmer.”
“His? Do you know his name?”
“Ralph Mitchell.”
“Go on.” I sat back on my heels, looking down at my handiwork, satisfied that for the moment Julia Palmer was out of danger. “She was on the stairs, you said?”
Getting to my feet, I took the scissors to Maggie’s bloody sleeve, and I began to clean and bind up her wound as well. It went deep, and it must have been painful for her to endure my touch, but she went stoically on.
“He told her he’d come to ask her again to marry him. Then she said, cool as you please, ‘Come into the parlor, Ralph. We’ll talk about it, shall we?’ And she walked ahead of him into this room and turned to face him. I’d come with her, not knowing what to expect. Before she could say anything more, he told her that he was a Major now, and as she was a widow, he had come to ask a last time if she’d marry him. She told him he was mistaken, she was still a wife, and he said, ‘I’m an officer now, I outrank Palmer. What’s more, he’s dead. You should have heard by this time. There was a letter from Colonel Prescott. I saw it myself.’ ”
“Was Colonel Prescott his commanding officer?”
“Miss, I don’t have any idea.”
“Go on.”
Fighting back tears, she said, “Miss Julia told him, ‘But I haven’t.’ He was very angry, he told her she was lying. On purpose, to put him off. Then-then, Miss, he told her he’d killed the Lieutenant himself. Miss Julia cried out at that, and he went on shouting, ‘Do you love me? Tell me you still love me.’ But she couldn’t, could she?”
I led Maggie to a chair, and she sat down suddenly, her face very pale. “He just stood there, waiting for an answer. I didn’t know where to look. It was as if I could hear the ticking of the clock on the table behind me. But maybe it wasn’t that, only my heart in my throat.”
“How did Mrs. Palmer answer?”
“She told him then that she had never loved anyone but her husband.”
I could imagine what must have followed. But as it happened, I was wrong.
“And then?”
“He said he couldn’t live without her, and that’s when he took out his revolver, and I thought he was about to kill himself right in front of us. But it wasn’t that, was it? He pointed that revolver straight at her, and he told her that if he couldn’t have her, no one else would. She answered that if he truly loved her, he would want her happiness above his own.”
Maggie broke down as she relived the shooting in her mind. I knelt beside her, trying to comfort her.
“I don’t know what possessed me. When he fired, I pushed her to one side, and the bullet struck my arm instead. He stepped forward, shoved me away so hard I fell against the wall, and then he shot her. Standing over her, he cried out, ‘Damn you, Crawford,’ as if someone else had pulled the trigger. Then without even waiting to see if I was alive or not to tell the tale, he was gone, out the door, driving away like a whirlwind.”
I’d finished binding up Maggie’s arm. Suddenly aware that Hugh Morton had been on my heels but had never appeared, I hurried to the door to look for him. He was nowhere to be seen. I called his name, and there was no answer. There wasn’t time to worry.
I came back to the parlor and asked, “Is there a doctor close by? Do you have a motorcar-some way we can get Mrs. Palmer to him? She needs more care than I can give her. What’s more, so do you.”
“There’s the dogcart,” Maggie said, standing up. “Out back. And the old horse is in the pasture. I don’t know if I can find the strength to harness him up. There’s no one else here today. The cook’s daughter got word her husband had been killed, and so the cook and the boy who does the handiwork went over to sit with her.”
It was up to me, then.
“Stay here with your mistress,” I said. “I’ll fetch the cart.”
I found my way through to the kitchen and then out into the yard. The small dogcart was in a good state of repair, and the horse in the field came at once to my call. It took no more than ten minutes to hitch him to the cart and then drive round to the house door.
It took much longer to bring Mrs. Palmer as far as the cart. Slender as she was, she had fainted again and couldn’t help us. I sent Maggie to bring as many pillows and blankets as she could find, piled them into the cart, and then began the arduous task of settling my patient among them. It was impossible to bring Mrs. Palmer around sufficiently to help us help her. And all the while I thought about Hugh Morton, who would have been such a support through all this.
Finally, her face nearly as pale as the linens she lay on, Mrs. Palmer was ensconced among the pillows and I had shut the house door behind us before taking up the reins to drive to the nearest village. Trelawney hadn’t returned either, but it could well have taken much longer to find a telephone than I’d hoped. If that was the case, then I would surely meet him somewhere between here and the doctor’s surgery.
I drove as carefully as I could along the drive and out into the dusty road beyond, trying not to jostle Mrs. Palmer and start the wound to bleeding again. The sky was threatening, and although the distance to the nearest village was only three miles, it seemed much farther. All that mattered was whether or not it had a doctor.