The Little Stranger (17 page)

‘You came as soon as you could, then.’

I said, ‘I was out with a patient. And isn’t it better to do it now, Caroline, than to wait and risk the police sending their own man? You wouldn’t rather a stranger did it?’

She turned her head to me at last, and I saw she looked ghastly, her hair unbrushed, her face white, her eyes red and swollen with weeping or watching. She said, ‘Why must you all talk about it as if it’s something ordinary, something reasonable, that has to be done?’

‘Come on, Caroline. You know it has to be done.’

‘Only because everyone says it does! It’s like—like going to war. Why should I do it? It’s not my war.’

‘Caroline, that little girl—’

‘We might have taken this to court, you know, and we might have won it. Mr Hepton said as much. Mother wouldn’t let him try.’

‘But a court case! Think of the cost of it, if nothing else.’

‘I should have found the money somehow.’

‘Then think of the attention you’d have received. Think of the look of the thing. Trying to defend yourself, with that child so injured! It wouldn’t be decent.’

She made a gesture of impatience. ‘What does attention matter? It’s only Mother who minds that. And she’s only afraid of people seeing how poor we are. As for decency—no one cares about that kind of thing any more.’

‘Your family’s been through too much. Your brother—’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘my brother! Let’s all think of him, shall we? As if we ever do anything else. He could have stood up to Mother over this. Instead he did nothing, nothing at all!’

I had never heard her criticise Roderick before, except in fun, and I was startled by her fierceness. But at the same time, her eyes were growing redder and her voice was weakening, and I think she knew there was no other way. She turned, to gaze back out of the window. I stood watching her in silence, then said gently, ‘You must be brave, Caroline. I’m sorry … Shall I see to it now?’

‘God,’ she said, closing her eyes.

‘Caroline, he’s old.’

‘Does that make it better?’

‘I give you my word, he won’t suffer.’

She sat tensely for a moment; then her shoulders sank, she let out her breath, and all the bitterness seemed to bleed away from her. She said, ‘Oh, take him. Everything else has gone, why not take him, too? I’m sick of fighting it.’

Her tone was so bleak, that at last I saw through her stubbornness to other losses and griefs; and I felt I’d been misjudging her. She put her hand on the dog’s head as she spoke, and he, understanding that she was talking about him, but also hearing the distress in her voice, looked up at her with trust and concern, then rose on his front legs and moved his muzzle towards her face.

‘You idiotic dog!’ she said, letting him lick her. Then she pushed him away. ‘Dr Faraday wants you, can’t you see?’

I said, ‘Shall I do it here?’

‘No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to see it. Take him downstairs somewhere. Go on, Gyp.’ And she pushed him to me almost roughly, so that he stumbled from the ottoman to the floor. ‘Go on,’ she said again, when he hesitated, ‘you stupid thing! Dr Faraday wants you, I told you. Go on!’

So Gyp came faithfully to me, and after a final glance at Caroline I led him from the room and quietly closed the door behind me. He followed me down through the house to the kitchen, and I took him out to the scullery and had him lie down on an old rug. He knew that was strange, for Caroline was strict about his routines; but then, he must have known there was upset in the house, and perhaps could even guess that he was the cause of it. I wondered what notions were swimming about in his mind—what memories of the party, and whether he thought of what he had done, and was guilty or ashamed. But when I looked into his eyes it seemed to me that I could see only confusion there; and after I had opened my bag and taken out what I needed, I touched his head and said to him, as I’d said to him once before, ‘Here’s a to-do, Gyp. But, never mind now. You’re a good old dog.’ And I went on murmuring nonsense like that, and I held my arm beneath his shoulders, so that after the injection had taken effect he sank on to my hand, and I felt the faltering of his heart against my palm, and then the failing of it.

Mrs Ayres had told me that Barrett would bury him, so I covered him over with the rug, then washed my hands and went back into the kitchen. I found Mrs Bazeley there: she had just arrived and was tying on her apron. When I told her what I’d been doing she shook her head, distressed.

‘In’t it a shame?’ she said. ‘The house won’t seem right without that old hound in it. Can you make it out, Doctor? I’ve seen him about the place all his life, and I’d have taken me oath on there being no more harm in him that in the hairs on me own head. I’d have trusted him with me grandchild, I would.’

‘So would I, Mrs Bazeley,’ I answered miserably; ‘if I had one.’

But there was the kitchen table, after all, to remind me of that recent, horrible night. And there, too—I hadn’t noticed her before—there was Betty. She was standing half concealed by a door that led to one of the kitchen passages; she had a pile of newly dried dish-cloths and was folding them up. But she moved with an odd jerkiness, her narrow shoulders seeming to twitch, and I realised after a second or two that she was crying. She turned her head and saw me watching, and began to weep harder. She said, with a violence that amazed me: ‘That poor old dog, Dr Faraday! Everyone’s blaming him, but it wan’t his fault! It in’t fair!’

Her voice broke down, and Mrs Bazeley went across to her to take her in her arms.

‘There, now,’ the woman said, awkwardly patting Betty’s back. ‘You see how this’ve upset us, Doctor? We dunno what we’re about. Betty’s got some idea in her head—I dunno.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘Her thinks that little girl gettin’ bit has summat peculiar to it.’

I said, ‘Something peculiar? What on earth do you mean?’

Betty drew back her head from Mrs Bazeley’s shoulder and said, ‘There’s a bad thing in this house, that’s what! There’s a bad thing, and he makes wicked things happen!’

I stared at her for a moment, then lifted my hand, to rub my face. ‘Oh, Betty.’

‘It’s true! I’ve felt ’m!’

She looked from me to Mrs Bazeley. Her grey eyes were wide, and she was shivering slightly. But I had the sense, as I’d sometimes had before with her, that, at heart, she was enjoying the fuss and attention. I said, less patiently, ‘All right. We’re all tired, and we’re all sorry.’

‘It in’t tiredness!’

‘All right!’ Now I spoke sharply. ‘This is pure silliness and you know it. This house is big, and lonely, but I thought you were used to that now?’

‘I
am
used to it! It in’t just
that
.’

‘It isn’t anything. There’s nothing bad here, nothing spooky. What happened with Gyp and that poor child, it was a horrible accident, that’s all.’

‘It wan’t an accident! It were the bad thing, whispering to Gyp, or—or nipping him.’

‘Did
you
hear a whisper?’

She spoke reluctantly. ‘No.’

‘No. And neither did I. And neither did anyone else, in all that crowd of people at the party. Mrs Bazeley, have you seen any sign of this “bad thing” of Betty’s?’

Mrs Bazeley shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t, Doctor. I’ve never seen nothing queer here at all.’

‘And how long have you been coming to this house?’

‘Well, very nearly ten years.’

‘There you are, then,’ I said to Betty. ‘Doesn’t that reassure you?’

‘No, it don’t!’ she answered. ‘Just ’cause she haven’t seen it, don’t mean it in’t true! It might be a—a new thing.’

I said, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Come on now, be a good girl and wipe your eyes. And I hope,’ I added, ‘you won’t go mentioning any of this to Mrs Ayres, or to Miss Caroline. It’s about the last thing they need at the moment. They’ve been good to you, remember? Remember how they called me in for you, that time you were poorly, in July?’

I looked into her face as I said this. She caught my meaning, and coloured. But her expression, despite the blush, grew mulish. She said in a whisper, ‘There
is
a bad thing! There
is
!’

Then she hid her face against Mrs Bazeley’s shoulder and wept again, as bitterly as before.

N
ot surprisingly, in the weeks that followed, life at Hundreds Hall seemed very changed and discouraged and sad. There was, for one thing, simply the physical absence of Gyp to get used to: the days were naturally sombre now, but the house seemed extra dim and lifeless without the dog trotting affably from room to room. Since I was still going out to the Hall once a week to treat Rod’s leg, it had become easier for me to let myself in like one of the family, and sometimes, opening up the door, I’d find myself listening out for the click and pad of paws; or else I’d turn my head to a shadow—thinking that the dark shape at the corner of my vision must be Gyp’s, and having to suffer, every time, a pang of dismay as all that had happened came rushing back to me.

I mentioned this to Mrs Ayres, and she nodded: she had stood in the hall one rainy afternoon, she said, quite convinced that she could hear the dog pattering about upstairs. The sound was so distinct, she’d gone almost nervously up to look—and realised that what she’d taken as the sound of his claws on the floorboards was really the rapid drip of water from a broken gutter outside. Something similar happened to Mrs Bazeley. She found herself making up a bowl of bread and gravy and setting it down by the kitchen door, as she’d used to do for Gyp in the old days. She let it sit there for half an hour, all the time wondering where the dog was—and then almost cried, she said, when she remembered he was gone. ‘And the queer thing was,’ she told me, ‘I only done it because I thought I’d heard him coming down the basement steps. You know how he used to huff, like an old chap? I could have sworn I heard it!’

As for poor Caroline—how often she mistook some other sound for the skitter of Gyp’s claws, or turned to a shadow supposing it him, I simply don’t know. She had Barrett dig a grave for him among the marble headstones that formed a quaint little pet’s cemetery in one of the park’s plantations. She made a dreary tour of the house, collecting the water-bowls and blankets that had been kept in various rooms for the dog’s use, and putting them away. But she seemed, in the process, to seal up her own upset and grief, with a thoroughness that unnerved me. On my first visit to the Hall after that miserable morning when I had put Gyp to sleep, I made a point of seeking her out, not wanting there to be any bad feeling between us. But when I asked her how she was, she said only, in a brisk, expressionless voice, ‘I’m fine. It’s all done now, isn’t it? I’m sorry I spoke so wildly, that time. It wasn’t your fault; I know that. It’s finished. Let me show you this, that I found yesterday in one of the rooms upstairs—’ And she brought out some antique trinket she had unearthed from the back of a drawer; and didn’t refer to Gyp again.

I felt I didn’t know her well enough to force the issue. But I spoke about her with her mother, who seemed to think that she would ‘recover in her own way’.

‘Caroline’s never been much of a girl for displaying her feelings,’ she told me with a sigh. ‘But she’s awfully sensible. That’s why I brought her back to help with her brother when he was hurt. She was as good as any nurse in those days, you know … And have you heard the latest news? Mrs Rossiter came out to tell us, just this morning. Apparently the Baker-Hydes are leaving. They’re taking the little girl back to London; the staff are following next week. Poor Standish is to be shut up and sold again. But I do think it’s for the best. Imagine Caroline or Roderick or I forever running into that family, in Lidcote or Leamington!’

I was relieved by this news, too. I hadn’t relished the prospect of regularly seeing the Baker-Hydes, any more than Mrs Ayres had. I was also pleased that the county newspapers had at last lost interest in the case. And though nothing could be done about local gossip, and though sometimes a patient or colleague of mine would raise the affair with me, knowing I had been slightly involved, whenever the subject arose I always did my best to turn or close it; and talk soon died down.

But still, I wondered about Caroline. Now and then as I drove my car across the park I would catch sight of her, just as I’d used to; and without Gyp trotting beside her she struck me as a terribly forlorn figure. If I stopped the car to speak to her she seemed willing enough to talk, in what was more or less her old manner. She looked as sturdy and as healthy as she always had. Only her face, I thought, betrayed the wretchedness of the past few weeks, for caught at certain angles it seemed heavier and plainer than ever—as if, with the loss of her dog, there had come something like the loss of the last of her optimism and her youth.

D
oes Caroline talk to you about how she’s feeling?’ I asked her brother one day in November, as I was treating his leg.

He shook his head, frowning. ‘She doesn’t seem to want to.’

‘You can’t … bring her out? Make her open up a little?’

The frown grew deeper. ‘I suppose I could try. I never seem to have the time.’

I said lightly, ‘No time for your sister?’

He didn’t answer, and I remember looking on in concern as his face darkened, and he turned his head from me as if not trusting himself to reply. The fact is, at this point I felt almost more uneasy over him than over Caroline. That the business with Gyp and the Baker-Hydes should have left its mark on her was understandable, but it seemed to have had some sort of devastating impact on him, too, which quite perplexed me. It was not just a question of his being preoccupied and withdrawn, of his spending too much time at work in his room, for that had been true of him for months. It was an extra
something
, that I saw or sensed forever at the back of his expression: some burden of knowledge, or even of fear.

I hadn’t forgotten what his mother had told me, about how she had found him on the night of the party. It seemed to me that if this new phase of his behaviour had started anywhere, it was there. I had tried several times to raise the subject with him, and every time he had found some way, through silence or evasion, of putting me off. Perhaps I should have left him to it. I was certainly busy enough on my own account in those days, for the colder weather had brought along its usual rash of winter ailments, and my rounds were heavy. But it was against all my instincts to let the matter rest; and, more than that, I simply felt involved with the family now, in a way I hadn’t even three or four weeks before. So, when I had put the electrodes in place and started up the coil, I told him plainly what was bothering me.