Grace was crying out, but her voice sounded like seagulls and nothing she said made sense. One of the lads said sympathetically, ‘Poor thing, oughtn’t we to let her get up?’ and Tony answered fiercely, ‘Only under a tiger net.’
‘She doesn’t know what’s happening,’ I said wearily. ‘She can’t control what she does. So don’t for God’s sake let go of her.’
Except for Tony’s resolute six foot they all sat on her gingerly and twice she nearly had them off. Finally and at long last the front door bell rang, and I hopped across the hall to answer it.
It was the local doctor, looking tentative, wondering no doubt if it were a hoax. But he took one look at Grace and was opening his case while he came across the hall. Into her arm he pushed a hypodermic needle and soon the convulsive threshing slackened, and the high pitched crying dulled to murmurs and in the end to silence.
The five men slowly stood up and stepped away from her, and she lay there looking shrunk and crumpled, her greying hair falling in streaks away from her flacidly relaxing face. It seemed incredible that such thin limbs, such a meagre body, could have put out such strength. We all stood looking down at her with more awe than pity, watching while the last twitches shook her and she sank into unconscious peace.
Half an hour later Grace still lay on the floor in the hall, but with a pillow under her head and a rug keeping her warm.
Dexter Cranfield had come back from watching the horses work and walked unprepared into the aftermath of drama. His wife’s semi-hysterical explanations hadn’t helped him much.
Roberta told him that Grace had come to kill him because he had his licence back and that she was the cause of his losing it in the first place, and he stamped around in a fury which I gathered was mostly because the source of our troubles was a woman. He basically didn’t like women. She should have been locked up years ago, he said. Spiteful, petty minded, scheming, interfering... just like a woman, he said. I listened to him gravely and concluded he had suffered from a bossy nanny.
The doctor had done some intensive telephoning, and presently an ambulance arrived with two compassionate looking men and a good deal of special equipment. The front door stood wide open and the prospect of Grace’s imminent departure was a relief to everyone.
Into this active bustling scene drove Jack Roxford.
He scrambled out of his car, took a horrified look at the ambulance, and ploughed in through the front door. When he saw Grace lying there, with the ambulance men preparing to lift her on to a stretcher, he went down on his knees beside her.
‘Grace dear...’ He looked at her more closely. She was still unconscious, very pale now, looking wizened and sixty. ‘Grace dear!’ There was anguish in his voice. ‘What’s the matter with her?’
The doctor started to break it to him. Cranfield interrupted the gentle words and said brutally, ‘She’s raving mad. She came here trying to kill me, and she could have killed my wife and daughter. It’s absolutely disgraceful that she should have been running around free in that state. I’m going to see my solicitors about it.’
Jack Roxford only heard the first part. His eyes went to the cut on Roberta’s neck and the blood-stain on her jersey, and he put his hand over his mouth and looked sick.
‘Grace,’ he said. ‘Oh Grace...’
There was no doubt he loved her. He leant over her, stroking the hair away from her forehead, murmuring to her, and when he finally looked up there were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks.
‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’
The doctor shifted uncomfortably and said one would have to see, only time would tell, there were marvellous treatments nowadays...
The ambulance men loaded her gently on to the stretcher and picked it up.
‘Let me go with her,’ Jack Roxford said. ‘Where are you taking her? Let me go with her.’
One of the ambulance men told him the name of the hospital and advised him not to come.
‘Better try this evening, sir. No use you waiting all day, now, is it?’ And the doctor added that Grace would be unconscious for some time yet and under heavy sedation after that, and it was true, it would be better if Roxford didn’t go with her.
The uniformed men carried Grace out into the sunshine and loaded her into the ambulance, and we all followed them out into the drive. Jack Roxford stood there looking utterly forlorn as they shut the doors, consulted finally with the doctor, and with the minimum of fuss, drove away.
Roberta touched his arm. ‘Can’t I get you a drink, Mr Roxford?’
He looked at her vaguely, and then his whole face crumpled and he couldn’t speak.
‘Don’t, Mr Roxford,’ Roberta said with pity. ‘She isn’t in any pain, or anything.’
He shook his head. Roberta put her arm across his shoulders and steered him back into the house.
‘Now what?’ Tony said. ‘I’ve really got to get to Reading, pal. Those runners of mine have to be declared for the second race.’
I looked at my watch. ‘You could spare another quarter of an hour. I think we should take Jack Roxford with us. He’s got a runner too, incidentally, though I imagine he doesn’t much care about that... Except that it’s one of Edwin Byler’s. But he’s not fit to drive anywhere himself, and the races would help to keep him from brooding too much about Grace.’
‘Yeah. A passible idea.’ Tony grinned.
‘Go into the house and see if you can persuade him to let you take him.’
‘O.K.’ He went off amiably, and I passed the time swinging around the drive on my crutches and peering into the cars parked there. I’d be needing a new one... probably choose the same again, though.
I leant against Tony’s car and thought about Grace. She’d left on me a fair legacy of bruises from her pinches to add to the crop grown by Oakley. Also my coat would cost a fortune at the invisible menders, and my throat felt like a well developed case of septic tonsils. I looked gloomily down at my plastered leg. The dangers of detection seemed to be twice as high as steeplechasing. With luck, I thought with a sigh, I could now go back to the usual but less frequent form of battery.
Tony came out of the house with Roberta and Jack Roxford. Jack looked dazed, and let Tony help him into the front of the estate car as if his thoughts were miles away. As indeed they probably were.
I scrunched across the gravel towards Roberta.
‘Is your neck all right?’ I asked.
‘Is yours?’
I investigated her cut more closely. It wasn’t deep. Little more than an inch long.
‘There won’t be much of a scar,’ I said.
‘No,’ she agreed.
Her face was close to mine. Her eyes were amber with dark flecks.
‘Stay here,’ she said abruptly. ‘You don’t have to go to the races.’
‘I’ve an appointment with Lord Ferth... Best to get this business thoroughly wrapped up.’
‘I suppose so.’ She looked suddenly very tired. She’d had a wearing Saturday morning.
‘If you’ve nothing better to do,’ I suggested, ‘Would you come over tomorrow... and cook me some lunch?’
A small smile tugged at her mouth and wrinkled her eyes.
‘I fell hopelessly in love with you,’ she said, ‘When I was twelve.’
‘And then it wore off?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pity,’ I said.
Her smile broadened.
‘Who is Bobbie?’ I asked.
‘Bobbie? Oh... he’s Lord Iceland’s son.’
‘He would be.’
She laughed. ‘Father wants me to marry him.’
‘That figures.’
‘But Father is going to be disappointed.’