Chapter Four #3
‘Well, upon occasion, a swelling like that can occur on the other side of the wound as well. On the inside of the skull. And, if so, a small operation is needed to release the pressure. Do you see?’
‘You mean a . . . trephining?’
Theo had seen it in one of the books: a hole cut into the skull. In those drawings, the patient was always strapped into a chair while the surgeon screwed down into his head. She swallowed. It had never seemed something that might happen in real life.
Dr Anscombe smiled. ‘Exactly that, Miss Hallewell; you are better informed than many young women. I very much hope it won’t come to that, of course. Time will tell.’
He squeezed her arm, just below the shoulder. ‘I shall take the best possible care of her, I promise.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Theo said.
But she couldn’t help being frightened, when her plan had led to this.
‘Go home, Miss Hallewell, and rest easy. Whatever happens, I will be here for Melissa. I give you my word.’
Theo handed over the bag of oranges, and let herself be reassured. As the doctor steered her gently back towards the foyer, she lost herself to wondering whether it was harder to fetch a stone from a kidney or to cut a small section from a skull.
‘Shall I come again tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps wait, and I will send word.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘Of course.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Have no fear.’
So, Theo dawdled back to the trap, via the sweetshop for a quarter pound of Unclaimed Babies, and waited while Cook finished her visit.
The worrying thought of it all remained.
She bit the head off one of the jelly sweets, then another, and another, until the sugar made her throat raw.
But Dr Anscombe would look after Missy. She would soon be home, swaying her hips up the hill and making all the boys stare.
The four of them were sitting down to supper on Monday evening when they came for Kit.
Mona had David’s plate in one hand and a ladleful of rabbit stew in the other, and the sudden knock at the door startled them all.
Unease flooded the room. Nobody came knocking in the evening, unless there was trouble. David struggled to rise.
‘Don’t get up, Dad,’ Toby said. ‘I’ll see who it is.’
Kit stared at Toby, his mouth falling open. As though he knew.
Toby opened the door to find two men on the step. His muscles tightened, one by one. Calves, thighs, stomach, arms. His hands curled into fists.
‘Constable Pryce,’ he said stiffly. ‘Good evening.’
Kit scraped his chair back, kicking the table as he surged to his feet.
‘Steady now, Kit . . .’ Mona said. ‘Forgive him, Mr Pryce. He jumps at the mere mention of you, after all that to-do last year.’
‘Evening, Toby. Mr and Mrs Meriwether.’
The policeman had the decency to look uncomfortable. But he also had the jutting chin and steady eyes of a man set upon doing what he had come to do.
‘It’s the lad I’ve come for, so let’s not have another to-do. Let’s keep it quiet and civilised, shall we?’
David looked perplexed. ‘Which lad?’
‘Christopher.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mona said.
She got up, putting herself between her son and the door. Toby stood rooted to the spot.
‘Seems there was an incident. Up at the castle.’
‘What incident?’ Mona said. ‘Kit’s been at home with me these past six days or more . . . Whatever has happened, he can have had no part in it.’
‘Yes, well, the incident took place on Monday night last, as I understand it. A girl was—’
‘What has she said?’ Toby blurted.
‘What has who said?’ David asked anxiously.
‘Missy Cartwright,’ Toby snapped. ‘It wasn’t Kit’s fault. He never meant to harm her. She goaded him – deliberately.’
‘Toby, what is this?’ Mona’s voice shook.
Kit kept whimpering, then put his head in his hands and shook it. Harder and harder, until he was hitting himself.
Mona grabbed at his hands. ‘Stop, Kit! Oh, stop it!’
‘It was not Kit’s fault,’ Toby said. ‘You can’t take him; you can’t blame him. You can’t believe a word she says.’
A black feeling like anger filled his head, but it might also have been fear.
‘So you say,’ Pryce said. ‘But no one shall hear a word of hers again, whether to believe it or not.’
‘What?’ Mona said.
‘The wound . . .’ Toby’s mouth was dry, his tongue sticky. ‘The wound was not serious. A glancing blow . . .’
His head was bursting now, the pressure unbearable. Kit had started to cry.
‘Wound?’ Mona whispered. ‘What wound?’
‘Then you admit that you were there, and saw it happen?’ Pryce said.
Toby was silent.
‘Well,’ the policeman said. ‘The lass is dead of it.’
‘Who? Who is dead?’ David’s words echoed in the silence.
‘Melissa Cartwright. And I’m to take Christopher into Shaftesbury to be charged for her murder.’
Dr Anscombe appeared shortly after eleven on Tuesday morning.
The guests were being refreshed out on the terrace, and Theo was sitting in almost companionable silence with Dr and Mrs Mackie.
She certainly couldn’t have managed a polite conversation with anybody else, not with Missy still at the hospital and no word since her Sunday visit.
She just wanted it all to be over. Missy healed, Kit happy, all forgotten. Well, not all. Not Toby’s almost-kiss.
She watched the doctor pushing his bicycle up the hill and knew it must be important news for him to have come all that way.
She stood wordlessly as he reached the house, and turned to go indoors.
The injury may not be as superficial as it first appeared.
There was a weight at the centre of her chest.
Her mother joined them in the drawing room, in high dudgeon at having been circumvented.
‘Have you a private appointment with my daughter, Dr Anscombe?’ She used her iciest tone. ‘Theo, are you ill?’
‘Mrs Hallewell, please forgive me. I’m terribly sorry to call so abruptly. But I . . . I wanted to come in person, since I know your daughter to be a good friend of Miss Cartwright—’
‘Who? Melissa Cartwright?’ Diana made a face. ‘I hardly think so. A most unsuitable girl.’
Theo wanted to tell her to shut up. To listen.
‘What’s happened, Doctor?’ she asked, in barely a whisper. ‘How is she?’
He hadn’t told her not to worry. He hadn’t smiled. Theo gripped her hands together so hard it hurt.
‘I wanted to come in person . . .’ he said again. ‘I’m most terribly sorry to say that . . . that Miss Cartwright succumbed to her injury. Yesterday, in the afternoon.’
Diana stared. Theo didn’t understand.
‘Succumbed . . . ?’
‘Yes. I’m most terribly sorry.’
‘She’s died?’ Diana was incredulous. ‘Of a trifling knock on the head?’
‘What seems trifling can, in fact, be very serious . . . The brain may be injured, all out of sight, behind the smallest of wounds.’
Theo shook her head. She refused to allow it.
‘No. She was fine! She . . . she walked the five miles to see you! Gladly! She was fine!’ Her voice climbed in desperation.
‘Theo! Lower your voice!’
‘I will not! Missy was perfectly well – she can’t have died!’
‘I understand how difficult this must be.’ Dr Anscombe looked wretched.
‘And I quite agree, she did seem much recovered when she arrived at the hospital on Saturday. But soon afterwards she complained of an intense pain in her head, and of drowsiness, and disturbed vision. Her condition worsened. I suspected swelling within the skull, just as I told you, Miss Hallewell. Yesterday morning I performed an operation to relieve it, but . . . the fracture to her skull was more severe than it had appeared. The operation itself was a success, but she . . . she did not reawaken from the chloroform narcosis.’ There was a moment of silence.
‘She passed away at around three o’clock in the afternoon. It was very peaceful.’
‘Peaceful?’ Theo’s mind got stuck on that one word. ‘No. Missy wasn’t peaceful – not ever!’
She sought a toehold of any kind – a way to escape what she was being told. The doctor was lying, or mistaken. He’d got the wrong person. Dark blotches crowded her vision, and Diana’s voice was the last thing she heard.
‘Theo!’
She lay for a long time in the quiet of her bedroom.
The doctor had carried her up, apparently, and Theo’s first thought was how envious Missy would be about that.
Then came the realisation, and the shock, and a fresh storm of sobbing that made her head pound.
She wouldn’t eat, or drink, or talk to anyone.
Her face had patterns of dried salt; her eyes were bloodshot.
But when Uncle Crudge knocked gingerly at her door on Wednesday morning, she didn’t send him away.
He sat down beside her and she curled herself against him. Sadness made his face heavy.
‘There, there, little one,’ he said.
‘It’s all my fault, Uncle,’ Theo said eventually.
‘Nonsense. How can it be?’
‘It was all my idea! I made us all meet up that night – I insisted they all come, when nobody truly wanted to.’
‘But you might as well blame the weather, then, for not raining you off. Or the castle, for being made of stone.’
‘And I left the others. I wanted to talk to Toby, so I . . . I made him come away. He always watches Kit! He was watching him, until I took him away. And now Missy is dead. Missy is dead!’
‘And I’m sure young Toby will be castigating himself just as severely – and unfairly – as you are, for what has befallen his brother.’
Theo wiped her eyes. ‘Why? What has happened to Kit?’
‘Oh, my dear girl.’ Crudge sighed. ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you, but I didn’t want anybody else to, either.’ He held her hand tightly. ‘Christopher has been accused of causing Missy’s death. Of her . . . murder. Worse than accused – he has been arrested, and taken to Shaftesbury.’
Theo was stunned. ‘But – no!’
Only now did Theo realise that she’d told him what had actually happened at the castle, rather than the agreed lie. Only now did she realise that Crudge hadn’t queried it. She stared at him, bewildered.
‘Missy fell on the stairs, at St Agnes’s,’ she said weakly.