I relaxed and was aware that others were doing so also, for I could hear the slow exhalation of breaths of those standing closest to me. I looked away from Judith Haynes to Allen and that was a mistake because I had relaxed too soon, I’d been instinctively aware that the seemingly quiet and sad resignation had been wholly out of character but had put it down to the effects of the shattering shock she had just received.
“You killed him, you killed him!” Her voice was an insane scream but no more insane than the demented fury with which she was attacking Mary Darling who had already stumbled over backwards, the other woman falling on top of her, clawing viciously with hooked fingers. “You bitch, you whore, you filthy slut, you-you murderess! You’re the person who killed him! You killed my husband! You! You!” Sobbing and shrieking maniacal invective at the terrified and momentarily paralysed Mary Darling who had already lost her big horn-rimmed spectacles, Judith Haynes wound one hand round the unfortunate Mary’s hair and was reaching for her eyes with the other when Smithy and Conrad got to her. Both were big strong men but she fought with such crazed and tigerish ferocity -and they had at the same time to cope with two equally hysterical dogs that it took them quite some seconds to pull her clear and even then she clung with the strength of madness to Mary’s hair, a grip that Smithy ruthlessly and without hesitation broke by squeezing her wrist until she shrieked with pain. They dragged her upright and she continued to scream hysterically with all the strength of her lungs, no longer attempting even to mouth words, just that horrible nerve~drilling shrieking like some animal in its dying agony, then the sound abruptly ceased, her legs buckled and Smithy and Conrad eased her to the floor.
Conrad looked at me. “Act two?” He was breathing heavily and looked pale.
“No. This is real. Will you please take her to her cubicle?” I looked at the shocked and sobbing Mary but she didn’t need any immediate assistance from me, for Allen, his own injuries forgotten, had dropped to his knees beside her, raised her to a sitting position and was using a none-tooclean handkerchief to dab at the three deep and ugly scratches that had been torn down the length of her left cheek. I left them, went into my cubicle, prepared a hypodermic and entered the cubicle where Judith Haynes had been taken. Smithy and Conrad were standing watchfully by and had been joined by Otto, the Count, and Goin. Otto looked at the syringe and caught my arm.
“Is that–is that for my daughter? What are you going to do to her? It’s all over now, man-good God, you can see she’s unconscious.”
“And I’m going to see that she bloody well stays that way,” I said. “For hours and hours and hours. That way it’s best for her and best for all of us. All right, I’m sorry for your daughter, she’s had a tremendous shock, but medically I’m not concerned with that, I’m just concerned with how best to treat her for the condition she’s in now which is frankly unbalanced, unstable, and highly dangerous. Or do you want to have a look at Mary darling again?”
Otto hesitated but Goin, calmly reasonable as always, came to my help. “Dr. l\larlowe is perfectly right, (Oto-and it’s for Jud I ith’s own good, after such a shock a long rest ca’n only help. This is the best thing for her.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, I’d have preferred a strait jacket, but I nodded my thanks to Goin, administered the injection, helped bundle her into a zipped sleeping bag, saw that she was covered over and above that with a sufficiency of blankets and left her. I took the dogs with me and put them in my own cubicle-I don’t much like having animals, especially highly strung ones, in the company of a person under sedation.
Allen had Marv Darling seated on a bench now but was still dabbing her cheek. She’d stopped sobbing now, was just breathing with long quivering in-drawn gasps and, scratches apart, didn’t seem much the worse for an experience that must have been as harrowing as it was brief. Lonnie was standing a few feet away, looking sorrowfully at the girl and shaking his head.
“Poor, poor lassie,” he said quietly. “Poor little girl.”
“She’ll be all right,” I said. If I do a halfway job the scratches won’t even scar.” I looked at Stryker’s body and decided that its removal to the tractor shed was clearly the first priority: apart from Lonnie and Allen no one had eyes for anything else and even although out of sight would not necessarily be out of mind the absence of that mutilated body could hardly fail to improve morale.
“I wasn’t talking about young Mary.” Lonnie had my attention again. I was thinking about Judith Haynes. Poor, lonely lassie.” I looked at him closely but I should have known him well enough by then to realise that he was incapable of either dissimulation or duplicity: he looked as sad as he sounded.
“Lonnie,” I said, “you never cease to astonish me.” I lit the oil stove, put some water on to heat, then turned to Stryker. Both Smithy and Conrad were waiting and words were unnecessary. Lonnie insisted on coming with us, to open doors and hold a flashlight: we left Stryker in the tractor shed and went back to the main cabin. Smithy and Conrad went inside but Lonnie showed no intentions of following them. He stood there as if deep in thought, seemingly oblivious of a wind now strong enough to have to lean against, of a thickening driving snow now approaching the proportions of a blizzard, of the intense and steadily deepening cold.
“I think I’ll stay out here a bit,” he said. “Nothing like a little fresh air to clear the head.”
“No, indeed,” I said. I took the torch from him and directed its beam at the nearest hut. In there. On the left.” Wherever else Olympus Productions may have fallen short in the commissariat department, it hadn’t been in the line of alcoholic stimulants.
“My dear fellow.” He retrieved his torch with a firm grasp. I personally supervised its storage.”
“And not even a lock to contend with,” I said.
“And what if there was? Otto would give me the key.”
“Otto would give you a key?” I said carefully.
“Of course. Do you think I’m a professional safe-cracker who goes around festooned with strings of skeleton keys? Who do you think gave me the keys to the lounge locker on the Morning Rose?’
“Otto did?” I said brightly.
“Of course.”
“What kind of blackmail are you using, Lonnie?”
“Otto is a very very kind man,” Lonnie said seriously. I thought I’d told you that?”
“I’d just forgotten.” I watched him thoughtfully as he plodded purposefully through the deep snow towards the provisions hut, then went inside the main cabin. Most of the people inside, now that Stryker had gone, had transferred their attention to Allen who was clearly self-consciously aware of this, for he no longer had his arm around Mary although he still dabbed at her cheek with a handkerchief. Conrad, who had clearly become more than a little smitten by Mary Stuart for he’d sought out her company whenever possible in the past two days, was sitting beside her chafing one of her hands-I assumed she’d been complaining of the temperature, which was still barely above freezing-and although she seemed half-reluctant and was smiling in some embarrassment, she wasn’t objecting to the extent of making a song and dance about it. Otto, Goin, the Count, and Divine were talking in low voices near one of the oil stoves: Divine, not surprisingly, was there not in the capacity of a contributor to the conversation but as a bartender for he was laying out glasses and bottles under Otto’s fussy direction. Otto beckoned me across.
“After what we’ve just been through,” he said, I think we’re all badly in need of a restorative.” That Otto should be lashing out so recklessly with his private supplies was sufficient indication of the extent to which he had been shaken. “It will also give us time to decide what to do with him.”
“Who?”
“Allen, of course.”
“Ah. Well, I’m sorry, I’m afraid you gentlemen will have to count me out for both drink and deliberations.” I nodded to Allen and Mary Darling, both of whom were watching us with some degree of apprehension. “A little patching up to do there. Excuse me.”
I took the now hot water from the oil stove, brought it into my cubicle, put a white cloth on the rickety table that was there, laid out a basin, instruments, and what medicaments I thought I’d require then returned to where Conrad and Mary Stuart were sitting in the main body of the cabin. Like all the other little groups in the cabin they were talking in voices so low as to be virtually whispering, whether from a desire for privacy or because they still felt themselves to be in the presence of death I didn’t know. Conrad, to my complete lack of surprise, was now industriously massaging her other hand and as that was her left or faraway one I assumed that he hadn’t had to fight for it.