Death Devil's Bridge (18 page)

“Well, stolen, then,” Kate said. “Miss Marsden and I feared that Sir Charles and Mr. Rolls might not be able to land safely.”

“So we drove out and rescued them,” Patsy said with pride. She lifted her chin. “As it turned out, we were the
only
ones to get to the landing site. We have the photographs to prove that we were there,” she added. “Or at least, we will have them tomorrow, when I have developed and printed them.”

Dunstable stared incomprehendingly. “None of the men completed the chase?”

“Not one,” Bateman said, and sighed. “I lost power near Mistley. Dickson ran onto a stump and ripped open the condenser. Ponsonby—” He snickered. “Ponsonby drove into a flock of geese.”

“I was detained in Manningtree by an overzealous P.C. who charged me with excessive speed,” Ponsonby said with dignity. “The geese were superfluous.”

“But what about Albrecht?” Dunstable demanded. He looked around angrily. “The man was supposed to
win
—that's why we arranged this blasted affair. Where the devil is he? Did he quit and go back to Germany? What has happened to the Daimler?”

Bradford gave a helpless shrug. “No one knows.”

“Haven't heard a peep from the fellow,” Ponsonby added. He frowned. “
Supposed
to win, was he?”

“I shouldn't worry about him,” Bateman said cheerily. “If something happened, we should have received word by now. Unless—”

The door opened and Mudd appeared. “Ah, Mudd,” Kate said. “Is dinner to be served at last?”

“Dinner is ready, madam,” Mudd said. “But there is a boy at the door. 'E has brought a note, requesting the doctor's presence with regard to a professional matter.” He held out a silver platter on which lay a slip of torn white paper.

“It is Mrs. Goettemoeller, I suppose,” said the doctor with a sigh, reaching for the note. “She is about to deliver her seventh. Another girl, no doubt.”

“Her seventh child,” murmured Great-aunt Marsden in a shocked voice. She opened her eyes wide. “Fancy that!”

But as Dr. Bassett opened the note and read it, his face changed. “It's from Laken,” he said to Charles. “I must go immediately. I am sorry to take you from your guests, but I think it would be a good plan for you to accompany me.”

Charles had come to stand beside Kate. “What is it, Bassett?” he asked quietly. “What has happened?”

“Read it for yourself,” the doctor said, and handed him the note. He glanced around. “You might as well read it to the others, too. They shall all want to know, I am sure.”

Charles unfolded the paper. “ ‘Come to your surgery at once and bring Sir Charles,' ” he read aloud, as Kate read over his shoulder. “ ‘There has been a motorcar accident. The driver is alive, but barely. I doubt he can survive long. The motorcar is demolished.' ”

Kate pulled in an involuntary breath. Patsy gave a small, half-smothered shriek. The drivers sat for an instant in stunned, staring silence.

And then Dunstable started to his feet. “Albrecht?” he cried. “It is not Albrecht, is it? Tell me it isn't Albrecht!”

“Don't be a fool, Dunstable,” Bateman said with immense scorn. “Are there any other motorcars but Marsden's Daimler unaccounted for in the district?”

Dr. Bassett was already at the door. “Forgive me, Lady Kathryn,” he said with a quick bow. “We must be off,” he added to Charles. “There is not a moment to lose.”

“I will go with you,” Bradford said, white-faced. “It is my vehicle.”

“Yes, yes,” Dunstable gabbled. “I must go too. He is my driver.”

White-faced, Dickson put down his sherry. “We will all go,” he said, sounding almost frightened, and there was a loud babble of agreement.

The doctor raised his voice. “Gentlemen,” he said firmly, “my surgery will not accommodate the lot of you, and you can be of no possible assistance in this medical matter. Your hostess has prepared a fine meal. It would be cruelly impolite of you to abandon it.”

Charles came to Kate. “You can manage, my dear?” he asked quietly. “Bradford can take my place as host.”

“Of course we'll manage,” Kate said, with more assurance than she felt, and watched them leave the room.

There was a long silence, broken at last by Great-aunt Marsden's loud exhalation. “Well!” she said. “I must say!”

But whatever she had to say, she did not say it. The silence lengthened. Kate knew that she should rise, take Bradford's arm, and announce that it was time to go to the table, but something—some deep curiosity, some inner conviction that there was something here to learn—held her in her seat, watching the faces in the room.

Dunstable sat, too, as if thunderstruck. “It is beyond belief,” he muttered. “Utterly beyond belief. What the stockholders are going to say—” He bit his lip. “It is all very bad. Very bad, indeed.”

“Oh, blast the stockholders!” Rolls burst out angrily, his dark eyes glittering. “Is that all you can think of, Dunstable?
We
came here for sport, to test one machine against the others. What did you come for? The publicity only?”

Dunstable looked at him. “Publicity? Yes, that is certainly an angle that should be considered,” he said thoughtfully. “The event will attract plenty of press attention, I am sure. The trick will be to handle it correctly.” He looked around. “Has Sam Holt gone back to London? Where the devil is that journalist when I need him?”

“What bloody nonsense, Harry!” Bradford exclaimed, his voice heavy with disgust and revulsion. “The man you paid to come here from Germany to drive for you is dying—dead already, perhaps—and you talk of publicity!”

“And why should his accident be beyond belief?” Dickson asked, rising to reach for the sherry decanter. “It is not Albrecht's first crash, is it? Given the speeds at which we travel, motorcar-racing is a dangerous sport.” Nervously, he splashed sherry into his glass, and onto his sleeve.

“Ah, yes,” Ponsonby said, with melodramatic flair. “Death waits at every turn. Accidents can happen everywhere.” He lifted his glass. “Gentlemen, let us drink to a fallen comrade-in-arms.”

“Hear, hear,” Bateman murmured, draining his glass. And Dickson added in a strangled voice, “Indeed.”

There was a moment's silence. Dunstable raised his head. His eyes were narrowed, and the purplish bruise stood out against the mottled yellow of his face.

“It was no accident,” he said melodramatically. He paused, and then repeated, in a harsh, rasping tone, “I'm sure of it. It was no accident! I shall take this to the law!”

Kate frowned. What did the man have in mind? Was he practicing some sort of sensational gesture that would attract public attention? Would he somehow exploit this unfortunate circumstance to sell more shares of worthless stock? Or did he genuinely believe that—

“I'm not sure I understand you, Mr. Dunstable,” she said. “Surely you can't think Herr Albrecht would have deliberately endangered his life by crashing Lord Marsden's motorcar.” She glanced at Bradford, who seemed remarkably composed, under the circumstances.

“Of course I don't think he did it deliberately,” Dunstable said. “It was murder.” His voice rose. “It was
murder,
don't you see?” He was looking directly at Bradford.

Bradford colored. “Are you trying to claim that there was something wrong with my car, and that I—”

“Don't even bother to answer him, Bradford,” Rolls snapped. “He is behaving like an offensive cad.”

“Ah,” Ponsonby remarked, his tone archly pleasant. “I fear there is dissension in the ranks of the British Motor Car Syndicate. My, my, gentlemen. Is this a wrangle?”

“The syndicate has nothing to do with this affair, Ponsonby,” Rolls said in a dark tone.

“Oh, but it does,” Bateman said, and laughed slyly. “You are such a naive boy, Charlie. The syndicate has
everything
to do with it. Why don't you ask your friend Dunstable if he staged Albrecht's crash himself, for the sake of the publicity? Don't forget—
he
was supposed to be in that car, too. If he knew that it was going to crash, is there any wonder he went missing?”

“That is a base canard,” Dunstable said hotly. “I spent the entire day in a dung heap. I had nothing to do with—”

“And Albrecht was driving Marsden's car, don't forget,” Ponsonby said in a meaningful aside to Bateman. “Could they have come up with this between the two of them?”

Patsy pulled in her breath and Great-aunt Marsden
gasped in horror, fanning herself
with her lace handkerchief. “Bradford, can this man—I cannot pay him the compliment of calling him a gentleman—be accusing you of ... of... ?” She apparently could not think what Bradford might be accused of, and sputtered into a helpless silence.

Bradford got to his feet and spoke with a firm authority. “I do not believe we are showing ourselves to best advantage here, gentlemen. The evening is, after all, a social occasion. Lady Kathryn and the other ladies would be entirely justified in censuring our behavior.”

Kate, too, had begun to feel that things were getting out of hand, although she was reluctant to conclude a conflict which offered such promising revelations. But perhaps the dinner hour would open some new view of the subject.

With a bright smile, she stood and turned toward Bradford. “I understand that our dinner is ready at last, my lord. Shall we dine?”

As they went into the dining room, Kate looked questioningly at Mudd, wondering whether he remembered her instructions about the crystal, and what was to be done with it after dinner. He inclined his head slightly, and she understood. Everything else in the household might run on at sixes and sevens, but Beryl Bardwell's little experiment was proceeding according to plan.

Here's the devil to pay.

—SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Clarissa,
1785

 

 

 

W
ithout speaking, Charles followed Dr. Bassett through the lamp-lit consulting room and into the tiny surgery, more brightly illuminated by hissing gas wall sconces. Albrecht was stretched, gray-faced and motionless, on the examining table, his jacket and shirt pulled open. The room was already crowded: Edward Laken stood stonily at the foot of the table; beside him stood another, younger man, with a pale face and staring eyes and an air of suppressed excitement. A gray-haired, motherly woman with a cloth and a basin was washing Albrecht's bloodied chest. Charles looked once at the gaping wound, winced, and turned his face away. Just above the wound was a massive bruise. He had known it would be ugly, but not as ugly as this. From the look of it, the tiller had impacted the driver's chest and snapped. The shaft had pierced the rib cage.

“Hullo, Ned,” the doctor said to Laken, hastily stripping off his coat. He glanced at the other man. “What the devil are you doing here, Jessup? Hot water, please, Hester,” he said to the woman. “And my surgical instruments.” He began to roll up his sleeves.

“Jessup discovered the victim,” Laken said evenly, “in the ravine beneath Devil's Bridge.”

“The wreckage did not burn?” Charles put in.

“No, surprisingly enough.”

“And fortunate,” the doctor said, looking down at the man on the table. “Looks like the tiller ran him through.”

Laken nodded. “I was summoned, and the two of us brought Albrecht here. I thought Jessup might stay with me until I had the leisure to question him as to the circumstances of his discovery.”

“ 'Twas Lord Bradford's motor the man was drivin'!” Jessup seemed to be near bursting with an inward excitement. “Same as the one that—” He stopped and swallowed, and his eyes, bright with a kind of triumph, went rapidly from Laken to the doctor, and back to the man on the table.

“Same as the one that didn't kill your father?” Bassett laughed, a harsh, grating laugh. “The devil of a coincidence, wouldn't you say, Laken? The car rumored to have frightened Old Jessup to death is discovered wrecked by Young Jessup. One might almost think there was an invisible hand at work in the affair.” He bent over and put his ear to Albrecht's chest and listened intently for a moment. “I doubt that there's anything to be done to save the man,” he said, straightening. “But I must try.”

As if in response, Albrecht gave a deep, despairing groan, and the doctor turned to put a hand on his shoulder. “Steady there, old chap,” he said, in a comforting voice. “I'll be with you in a moment, and we'll see about easing your pain.” He looked up. “Take Jessup out of here, will you, Ned? Charles, if you try, you might be able to get something out of our patient. Hester!” He started out of the room. “Hester!”

“How did it happen, Ned?” Charles asked.

“The road leading down to the bridge is steep and treacherous,” Laken said. “The vehicle went off the road and into the ravine. I have instructed Thomas Gaskell, the constable from Lawford, to guard the area until daylight, when I intend to go over it carefully. The car is scattered in pieces, all down the ravine.” He gave Charles a thin smile. “I have learned from you to be vigilant about the scene of what might be a crime. No one will disturb it.”

Charles looked at Jessup, hearing in Laken's words the constable's suspicion that the crash had not been an accident. Jessup averted his eyes, as if he feared something in them might give him away, and began nervously twisting a button on his coat. Charles thought of the new gig he had seen the man driving, and of the rumors that had been flying around the servant hall. But Laken—whom Charles knew to be more competent than most Scotland Yard men—could be counted on to uncover any secrets Jessup might wish to conceal. He could leave the interrogation in his friend's capable hands, although his assistance might be wanted at the crash scene.