Henry said, “Give her to me,” and gathered his wife awkwardly into his arms.
It was Sir Simon who broke the tension by saying, brusquely, “Where was she? Where did you find her?”
David told him. “Good God.” Sir Simon was almost past surprise. “And to think that I was down there...and all the time...” He pulled himself together. “
Well,” he went on, briskly, “don’t just stand there. We must get her into bed and call the doctor.”
Henry was looking fixedly at David. “How did you come to be in the boathouse?” he asked.
David was trembling. “I...I r-rowed ashore and I heard...”
“It’s about time you were back,” said Henry, flatly. “I want to talk to you. Colin was murdered last night.”
“M-murdered?” David’s face went from white to grey, and he looked as though he, too, might faint. “W-what do you mean?”
“I mean that things are very serious indeed,” said Henry. “I need to talk to you. Where’s your boat?”
“Anchored out in the river. I...I j-just...”
“Then get aboard again and bring her up to Berrybridge as fast as you can. We’ll see you there.”
For a moment, David hesitated. He looked at Sir Simon with a sort of appealing indecision. His right hand was in his pocket, and Henry could see it clenching and unclenching nervously through the thin denim. Then he said, “Very well.” He turned on his heel and almost ran out of the house.
“Now,” said Sir Simon, “it’s bed for you, young lady. Mrs. Benson, if you’d heat some water, for—”
Henry could feel Emmy shivering in his arms. “Not here, Henry,” she murmured. “Please not here...take me home...”
So despite Sir Simon’s vigorous protests, Henry carried Emmy out to the station wagon, and sat with her on the back seat, his arm tightly round her shoulders, while Alastair drove them back to Berrybridge.
The Berry Bush, fortunately, had a room free. Emmy, walking unsteadily, protested that she was now perfectly all right: but it did not take a great deal of persuasion on the part of the others to convince her that, for the rest of the day at least, bed was the best place. The doctor arrived, bustled about cheerfully and inquisitively for some minutes, and finally pronounced that the only trouble was slight concussion and shock. He prescribed rest, hot-water bottles and pills—whereupon Rosemary and Alastair immediately volunteered to drive with the prescription to the one chemist in the neighbourhood who functioned on Sundays.
At last, the bedroom door closed behind the last intrigued chambermaid, and Henry and Emmy were left alone. Henry sat down on the bed, took Emmy in his arms and buried his face between her breasts, and for some time neither of them said a word. Then Emmy said, “What a couple of old fools we are. Don’t take it so hard, darling. It was all my own fault, and anyway I wasn’t really in any danger.”
Henry sat up and smiled at her, but his eyes were weary and worried. “You were,” he said, “and you know it. Do you feel strong enough to talk about it? It’s terribly important to know what happened.”
Emmy raised her hands in a weak gesture of helplessness. “I know it is,” she said, “and I can’t tell you a thing. I was sitting there, and suddenly I heard a sort of noise behind me, but before I could turn round—”
“You’ve no idea who hit you?”
“None at all. Everything went black, with a tremendous crash, and the next thing I knew, I was in the boat.” She shuddered. “The worst part of the whole thing was hearing you and Sir Simon talking, and not being able to attract your attention. I did try to make a noise, but I could hardly move with the ropes...” She rubbed her sore wrists.
“Don’t think about that now,” said Henry. “The important thing is—what happened before. Why should anybody have done this?”
Emmy wrinkled her brow. “I was talking to Priscilla,” she began, and then suddenly she sat up and cried, “Henry! Priscilla!”
“You mean,” said Henry, sharply, “that you were talking to Priscilla when—”
“Yes. Oh, Henry. Quick. I never thought—”
There was a knock on the door, and from the corridor the barman’s voice said, “Inspector Tibbett? Telephone, sir.”
“I’ll be back in a moment,” said Henry, and ran downstairs.
“Tibbett?” Sir Simon’s voice crackled over the wire, urgent and strained. “Tibbett, a rather terrible thing has happened. I thought you ought to know—”
“Your sister—”
“Yes. How did you know? I told you she was asleep when I got in—I went up to take a look. Well, after you left, I went to see her again, and—well, frankly, I didn’t like the look of her. Couldn’t wake her. And then I saw the empty bottle. So I called the doctor.” There was a pause.
“Well?” said Henry.
“Coma,” said Sir Simon. There was a break in his voice. “Overdose, combined with... He...the doctor...he doesn’t expect her to regain consciousness...”
“What empty bottle did you see?” Henry demanded urgently.
“Sleeping pills. The doctor prescribed them after...after the robbery, you know. I don’t suppose there’s any connection between this and...well, the business of your wife. But with all that’s been going on, I thought...”
Sir Simon’s voice trailed off into a miserable silence.
“I’m most terribly sorry, Sir Simon,” said Henry. “There’s nothing adequate one can say or do in the way of sympathy.” Sir Simon made an unidentifiable but moving noise of inarticulate grief. Henry went on. “But I can tell you that the two things are connected, and I’m afraid I’ll have to send a policeman to sit by your sister’s bed in case she does recover consciousness. I know that it seems like a brutal intrusion on your privacy, but—”
“I understand,” said Sir Simon. “I understand. Thank you for being so...” Abruptly, he rang off.
Henry put through a quick call to Proudie, and then went upstairs again. Emmy was sitting propped up on her pillows, her dark eyes full of anxiety.
“What was it?” she asked. “Is Priscilla...?”
“Not so good,” said Henry, sitting down on the bed again, “but she’s alive. Now, darling, think. Think hard. What were you talking about?”
“I guessed,” said Emmy slowly. “I guessed when I first got there and she put her head out of the window and started talking. I knew that she had something important to tell me, if only I could get it out of her.”
“So you stayed behind,” Henry prompted.
The mists were clearing from Emmy’s mind. “Sir Simon didn’t want to leave her alone,” she said, “so I offered to stay with her. Fat lot of good I did,” she added, bitterly.
“And then you talked to her.”
“I went upstairs,” said Emmy. “It was very quiet and bright and eerie in the house. She was in her room, with her hair in curlers, drinking gin out of a toothmug. She talked about...oh, thousands of things. I couldn’t get any sense out of her. She talked about her father and gin in the wardrobe and people wanting money. And then...yes, that’s right...then she suddenly said she had such a wonderful view from her bedroom window, and all the people who came and went—”
“Who?”
“Well, that’s all. She hadn’t really started when it happened. That’s the last thing I remember before I went out of the world, being furious because she hadn’t had time to tell me after all.”
“She must have said something,” said Henry. “Think. She must have said something that somebody overheard, which made it imperative that she shouldn’t say any more. What was it?”
Emmy closed her eyes and thought, desperately. At last she said, “There was something about a number.”