Chapter Twelve
TWELVE
Iris hadn’t set the alarm clock, so she was surprised when it went off early Sunday morning. She was even more surprised upon opening her eyes to see Gwen getting out of bed.
‘Arise and shine, partner,’ said Gwen as she began dressing.
‘What’s going on?’ Iris replied groggily.
‘It’s our last day here,’ said Gwen. ‘We should get some beetling done.’
‘We?’ said Iris, throwing off her covers. ‘You actually want to go with me?’
‘It would be a pity to have come all this way without having seen what else this place has to offer besides depravity and misery,’ said Gwen. ‘Besides, after hearing you rattle on about beetles so often, I confess that you’ve aroused my curiosity.’
Iris dressed quickly and grabbed her beetle book and her binoculars. The two went downstairs and out the back door unchallenged by anyone except for the rooster, which was emerging from the coop. He looked at the two resentfully.
‘You must be Ernie,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m Gwen. How do you do?’
Ernie did not respond.
‘I think he’s angry because we’ve beaten him to the punch,’ said Iris. ‘This way.’
They went through the gate. Behind them, Ernie greeted the dawn.
‘That’s the pond,’ said Iris.
‘Oh, there are ducklings! How cute!’ exclaimed Gwen, approaching it.
‘Watch out for that patch over there,’ Iris warned her.
‘The spurge?’
‘Of course, you knew that,’ said Iris.
‘I grew up on a country estate,’ said Gwen. ‘Our groundskeeper taught us all about what plants to avoid. Big brother Thurmond, of course, ignored his instruction and frequently came back covered with welts, which reinforced the lessons for me.’
She gazed into the murky depths of the pond pensively.
‘I wonder if they really did drown witches here,’ she said.
‘If their bones still rest buried in the mud at the bottom while the teal paddle overhead, blissfully unaware. There should be some kind of marker set up in their memory. The witches, I mean, not the teal. Hang on – are those some kind of beetle skating about?’
‘Whirligigs,’ said Iris, coming over to look. ‘They feed in groups like that.’
‘And that one?’ Gwen asked, pointing to a larger, somewhat menacing creature skimming along the surface.
‘That, my dear, is the great diving beetle, Dytiscus marginalis, the terror of the pond. A predator to be feared, if you happen to be smaller than it.’
Gwen watched as the fearsome predator suddenly disappeared below the surface.
‘Hence the name,’ she commented. ‘How do they breathe?’
‘They can make an air bubble and clutch it to their abdomens as they dive,’ said Iris.
‘To think they’ve known how to do that for thousands of years, and mankind has only figured out scuba-diving this century,’ said Gwen. ‘I shall never underestimate the humble water beetle again.’
‘Is this a full conversion, or are you only being nice to me?’
‘I’m still going to church after breakfast,’ said Gwen. ‘You are welcome to join me.’
‘Sorry, darling,’ said Iris. ‘I’ll stay here and commune with Nature until you return.’
‘Do you find Nature to be more or less forgiving than God?’ asked Gwen.
‘I can’t compare the two since I don’t believe in one of them,’ said Iris. ‘I think that if I did believe in God, I’d be even angrier at the world than I already am.’
‘Would you be angrier at yourself?’
‘It would be hard to be angrier at myself than I already am,’ said Iris.
‘OK, that one over there is a crescent water scavenger beetle. They go through dung and decayed vegetation searching for nutrients, and in doing so break them down into useful components for the soil. Very valuable creatures. More so than me at the moment, and I’ve dug through worse. ’
‘Iris, after what we learned last night, I am still of the opinion that what happened to Nancy wasn’t your fault,’ said Gwen.
‘I should have helped her more than I did,’ said Iris. ‘I keep coming back to that.’
‘You tried. She refused to be helped.’
‘I should have done a better job of convincing her,’ insisted Iris. ‘Maybe I could have persuaded her to go to the police herself. Or to a doctor.’
‘She did what she did because of who she was, how her parents raised her, and most importantly because she was raped by Bruce Cater and Kevin Pickard,’ said Gwen.
‘Nothing you did, or didn’t do, caused any of that.
Including her suicide, which we both believe it was.
I think she did that because she felt betrayed by Mrs Dorter and was terrified of what would happen when her parents found out she was pregnant. ’
‘That still doesn’t explain why someone tried to kill Tony,’ said Iris.
‘Not directly,’ said Gwen.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Iris, looking at her sharply.
‘My original thought was that this had been vengeance for Nancy,’ said Gwen. ‘But now that we have a more detailed account of what happened to her it seems unlikely that someone would want to punish Tony for it.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because they could have gone after him when he came back from Spain, for one thing. But also because they haven’t come after Mrs Dorter – or you. And both of you have been in England the entire time.’
‘Maybe they considered us unimportant or uninvolved compared to the others,’ argued Iris.
‘Then why would Tony have been any more significant? He wasn’t involved in the rape.’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ admitted Iris.
‘I think that the attack on him was because of something else. Remember when I said that the choice of a Molotov cocktail was to make him suffer before he died?’
‘Yes.’
‘There was something that Mrs Dorter said about Bruce Cater that struck me. About his death. “The fire found Bruce.” Not that he died in battle, or in a hail of bullets or from a shell, but that the fire found him.’
‘Tony said something similar,’ remembered Iris. ‘“And in the end, the fire found him anyway.” I had thought he was talking about everlasting hellfire. Maybe it was literal? How odd that an atheist like me would choose the religious meaning over the secular.’
‘I still think the choice of a petrol bomb was meant to send Tony a message,’ said Gwen. ‘We should make it back to Paddington Station by mid-afternoon. We can go directly to the hospital and ask him.’
‘Do you think this was about Bruce?’
‘I’m beginning to,’ said Gwen. ‘We haven’t spoken to his family yet.’
‘That may present some difficulty,’ said Iris.
‘Why?’
‘They won’t speak to me. His parents came to visit at Cambridge several times and were quite clear about me not being good enough to consort with the likes of them. And when I attended the memorial service for him a few years later, they completely cut me dead.’
‘Hmm. If it’s merely a matter of upper-class snobbery I should be able to pass,’ said Gwen.
‘Good for you, milady,’ said Iris. She glanced at her watch. ‘Breakfast soon. I don’t think any of our commandment-breaking fellow guests will be attending church, but maybe the twins will be going and can take you. Let’s get packed now. Wait!’
‘What? Did you think of something?’
Iris squatted down and gently plucked a tiny round-bodied creature from the edge of a pond, then held it out for Gwen to see it crawling across her palm.
‘Simplocaria semistriata,’ she said. ‘The semi-striated pill beetle. That’s a life-list find for me.’
‘Good,’ said Gwen, peering at it cautiously. ‘I’m glad the trip hasn’t been a complete waste of time.’
Their breakfast was augmented with lardy cakes and Bath buns, two local delicacies that they found on their plates, offered with a shy smile by Pamela. Then Gwen attended services with the twins while Iris wandered through the outbuildings and made friends with the animals.
When the time came for their departure, Pamela appeared in their doorway to carry their bags downstairs. Before she picked them up, she quickly stepped forwards and embraced Iris.
‘I cannot thank you enough,’ she said softly.
‘These are all the thanks I need,’ said Iris.
Timothy was waiting outside with Barney harnessed to the trap. He said nothing during the ride to the station, but after bringing their suitcases to the platform he solemnly shook their hands before leaving.
The local train came twenty minutes later. After they transferred to the London-bound train, Gwen once again placed her bags on the overhead shelf, then stood back to let Iris heave hers beside it.
Only this time, the bag caught the lip of the shelf and tumbled back. Iris frantically caught it, hugging it to her chest with both arms.
‘I am losing my touch,’ she said with chagrin.
She tossed it again, this time with success, then stared at it thoughtfully.
‘What?’ asked Gwen.
‘An idea,’ said Iris.
‘This must have been what it was like when the apple conked Newton,’ said Gwen. ‘I am honoured to be present at the occasion.’
‘You know he was a Cambridge man, don’t you?’
‘Oh, we are so lucky that a Cambridge man discovered gravity!’ cried Gwen. ‘Why, if it had been an Oxford man sitting under that tree we’d all still be floating about, untethered to the earth!’
‘I’m fairly certain that’s not how it works,’ said Iris.
‘Well, what do I know? I’ve never been to university.’
‘Another thing that’s not my fault,’ said Iris.
‘Are you going to tell me your idea?’
‘Not yet,’ said Iris. ‘I need to ask a few people some questions first.’
The taxi taking them from Paddington Station to the hospital arrived just after four in the afternoon. They went inside, still carrying their luggage.
‘I’ll mind the bags while you go and see him,’ said Gwen. ‘I’ll be in the waiting room.’
‘Thanks,’ said Iris.
Tony, to her annoyance, was asleep when she came to his room. She pulled a chair up next to his bed and contemplated where she could poke him without causing undue pain or further damage. She couldn’t think of any.
She leaned forwards and whispered, ‘Tony. Wake up.’