I stared at her, shocked by the high regard she’d just expressed for my father, and searching desperately for some way to lower her regard for him. But I found that I could discover nothing that, in saying it, would not lower Miss Channing’s regard for me as well. Because of that, we were still standing silently at the water’s edge when we suddenly heard a car approaching from Plymouth Road, its engine grinding fiercely, the sound rising steadily as it neared us, becoming at last a shuddering roar.
I turned to the right and saw it thunder past us in a thick cloud of white dust, a wall of black hurling down the weedy embankment, its ancient chassis slamming left and right as it plunged at what seemed inhuman speed toward the rickety wooden pier.
For a single, appalling instant, I felt utterly frozen in place, watching like a death mask fixed to a lifeless column until Miss Channing’s scream set the world in motion again, and I saw Sarah wheel around, the car then jerk to the right, as if to avoid her, but too late, so that it struck her with full force, her body tumbling over the left side of the hood and into the water, the car plowing past her, then lifting off the end of the pier like a great black bird, heavy and wingless as it plummeted into the depths of Black Pond, then sank with a terrible swiftness, its rear tires still spinning madly, throwing silver arcs of water into the summer air.
We rushed forward at the same time, Miss Channing crashing into the water, where she sank down and gathered Sarah’s broken body into her arms. I ran to the edge of the pier and dove into the still wildly surging water.
When I surfaced again only a minute or so later, drenched and shaken, my mind caught in a dreadful horror of what I had just seen, I found Miss Channing slumped at the edge of the pond, Sarah cradled in her arms.
“It’s Mrs. Reed,” I told her as I trudged out of the water.
She looked at me in shock and grief. “Is she dead?”
My answer came already frozen in that passionlessness that would mark me from then on. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 26
I’ve never been able to remember exactly what happened after I came out of the water. I know that I ran over to where Miss Channing now sat, drenched and shivering, on the bank, with Sarah’s head resting in her lap. I remember that Sarah’s eyes were open as I approached her, blank and staring, but that I saw them close slowly, then open again, so that I felt a tremendous wave of hope that she might be all right.
At some point after that I took off down Plymouth Road, soaking wet, with my hair in my eyes, and flagged down the first passing car. There was an old man behind the wheel, a local cranberry farmer as I later found out, and he watched in disbelief as I sputtered about there having been an accident on Black Pond, that he had to get a doctor, the police, that he had to please, please hurry. I remember how he sprang into action suddenly, his movements quick and agile, as if made young by a desperate purpose. “Be right back, son,” he promised as he sped away, the old gray car thundering toward Chatham.
After that I rushed back to Milford Cottage. Miss Channing was still where she’d been when I left her, Sarah cradled in her arms, alive, though unconscious, her eyes closed, her breath rattling softly, a single arrowhead of white bone protruding from the broken skin of her left elbow, but otherwise unmarked.
We sat in an almost unbroken silence with nothing but the lapping of the pond and an occasional rustle of wind through the trees to remind us that it was real, that it had actually happened, that Sarah had been struck down, and that beneath the surface of Black Pond, Mrs. Reed lay curled over the steering wheel of the car.
Dr. Craddock was the first to arrive. His sleek new sedan barreled down Plymouth Road, then noisily skidded to a halt in front of Milford Cottage. He leaped from the car, then bolted toward us, a black leather bag dangling from his hand.
“What happened?” he asked as he knelt down, grabbed Sarah’s arm, and began to feel for her pulse.
“A car,” I blurted out. “She was hit by a car.”
He released Sarah’s arm, swiftly opened his bag, and pulled out a stethoscope. “What car?” he asked.
I saw Miss Channing’s eyes drift toward the pond as she waited for my answer.
“It’s in the water,” I said. “The car’s in the water. It went off the pier.”
Dr. Craddock gave me a quick glance as he pressed the tympanum against Sarah’s chest. “And this young woman was driving it?”
“No,” I told him. “There’s someone in the car.”
I saw the first glimmer of that astonished horror that was soon to overtake our village settle like a gray mist upon his face.
“It’s a woman,” I added, unable to say her name, already trying to erase her from my memory. “She’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He returned the stethoscope to the bag, then brought out a hypodermic needle and a vial of clear liquid. “How about you, are you all right?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
He looked at Miss Channing. “And you?” he asked as he pierced the vial with the needle, then pressed its silver point into Sarah’s arm.
“I’m all right,” Miss Channing said, her features now hung in that deep, strangely impenetrable grief that would forever rest upon her face.
“The woman in the car,” Dr. Craddock said. “Who is she?”
“Abigail Reed,” Miss Channing answered. Then she looked down at Sarah and drew back a strand of glossy wet hair. “And this is Sarah Doyle,” she said.
Sarah had already been taken away when Captain Lawrence P. Hamilton of the Massachusetts State Police arrived at Milford Cottage. He was a tall man, with gray hair and a lean figure, his physical manner curiously graceful, but with an obvious severity clinging to him, born, perhaps, of the dark things he had seen.
Miss Channing and I were standing beside the cottage when he arrived, the once-deserted lawn now dotted with other people, the village constable, the coroner, two of Chatham’s four selectmen, the tiny engine of local officialdom already beginning to crank up.
Captain Hamilton was not a part of that local establishment, as every aspect of his bearing demonstrated. There was something about him that suggested a breadth both of authority and of experience that lay well beyond the confines of Chatham village, or even of Cape Cod. It was in the assuredness of his stride as he walked toward us, the command within his voice when he spoke, the way he seemed to know the answers even before he posed the questions.
“You’re Henry Griswald?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
He looked at Miss Channing. “You live here at the cottage, Miss Channing?”
She nodded mutely and gathered her arms around herself as if against a sudden chill.
“I have most of the details,” Captain Hamilton said. “About the accident, I mean.” His eyes shifted toward the pond. A tractor had been backed to its edge, and I could see a man walking out into the water, dressed in a bathing suit, a heavy chain in his right hand.
“We’re going to pull the car out now,” Captain Hamilton told us.
The man in the water curled over and disappeared beneath the surface of the pond, his feet throwing up small explosions of white foam.
“There’s a husband, I understand,” Captain Hamilton said. “Leland Reed?”
Odd though it seems to me now, I had not thought of Mr. Reed at all before that moment, nor of the other person Captain Hamilton mentioned almost in the same breath.
“And there’s a little girl, I’m told. A daughter. Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“Could she have been in the car?”
I shook my head. “No.”