Mary Stewart: Nine Coaches Waiting

The silence was drawing out. I heard the lustres quiver like the music of a ghostly spinet. I looked down the length of the lovely dead room towards the group by the fireplace.

Both men were watching the woman in the chair.

She was sitting very still, but her stillness wasn't even a travesty of the poise I knew. The delicate flower had wilted to pulp. She lay back in her chair as if she had no bones, and her hands were motionless at last on the shredded silk of the chair-arms. Her pale eyes were fully open now; they moved from Raoul's face to Hippolyte's, painfully. There was no need for her to speak. It was all written in her face, even, I thought, a dreadful kind of relief that now it had all been said.

The door opened and Philippe came in. He was carrying a steaming cup of bouillon very carefully between his hands. He brought it to me and held it out. "This is for you. You had an ordeal too."

I said: "Oh, Philippe…" and then my voice broke shamefully. But he didn't appear to notice this. He was looking at Héloïse, silent and slack in her chair. He said doubtfully: "Aunt Héloïse, would you like some too?"

That did it. She began to cry, on a thin dry note that was quite horrible to listen to.

I leaned forward, kissed Philippe's cheek, and said quickly: “Thank you , p'tit, but Aunt Héloïse isn't well. Better just run along. Goodnight now. Sleep well."

He gave one wondering look, and went obediently.

Héloïse didn't put her hands to her face. She lay back in her chair and sobbed tearlessly on that dreadful, jerky note. Hippolyte de Valmy, now as grey-faced as she, watched her helplessly, touching a handkerchief to his lips with an unsteady hand. Then, after a few moment's hesitation, he moved to a chair beside her, took one of her unresisting hands and began, rather feebly, to pat it. He was murmuring something through her sobs, but the uncertain comfort had no effect.

Raoul stood apart from the two of them, silent, and with the shutters still down over his face. He didn't look at me.

I believe I opened my lips to say something to him, but at that moment Héloïse began at last to speak. Her voice was terrible, thin and shaken and breathless.

She said: "It's true, yes, it's true what he says, Hippolyte. He made Léon tell him… there was a scene… dreadful things… he had no right…" She turned suddenly towards him and her free hand closed over his, clutching at him. "But I'm glad you know, Hippolyte. You'll get us out of it, won't you? You'll see there's nothing said? You won't take it further? It's not a police matter! You heard what Raoul told you-it's only in the family! That's it, it's only in the family! Bernard won't dare speak, and Raoul can't say anything; how can he? Léon's his father, isn't he? Surely that means something?" She shook his arm, leaning nearer, her voice hurrying and breathless: "You can't let it all come out, you know that! You can't do that to Léon, you and Raoul! There's no harm done… the boy's safe and the girl's all right. Don't look like that, Raoul. You know you can put it right between you if you want to! The Martin girl's in love with you; she'll keep her mouth shut, and-“

"Héloïse, please!” This, sharply, from Hippolyte. He had freed himself and moved slightly away from her. He was looking at her almost as if he'd never seen her before. "You say it's all true? You did know of it? You?"

She had sunk back in her chair. She swallowed another of those sharp convulsive sobs and moved her head to and fro against the chair-back. "Yes, yes, yes. Everything he told you. I'll admit everything, if only you'll help.” Something in his tone and look must have got through to her here, for her voice changed: "I-I'm not wicked, Hippolyte, you know that. I didn't want to hurt Philippe; but-well, it was for Léon's sake, I did it for Léon." She met his stony look and added sharply: "You know as well as I do that Valmy should be his. Surely he has the best right to it? It's his home. You know that. Why, you've said so yourself! And he's not like other men. You know that, too; you should realise he's not like other people. He should have had Valmy. He should! He'd had enough to bear without being turned out of his home!"

Her brother-in-law moved uncomfortably. "I cannot see that Léon would be grateful for this special pleading, Héloïse. And at the moment it's beside the point. What we're discussing is a good deal more serious. Attempted murder. Of a child."

"Yes, yes, I know. It was wrong. It was wrong. I admit that. But it didn't happen, did it? There's no harm done, Raoul said that himself! That doesn't have to be taken any further! Oh, you'll have to talk to Léon about it, I can see that, but you'll see he stays on at Valmy, won't you? There's no reason why he shouldn't! People are talking, but it'll soon be forgotten if you stand by us and don't bring things into the open. And I know you won't! You know how Léon feels! You'll see he keeps Valmy, won't you? He should have talked to you before- I wanted him to, instead of trying to arrange things this way. I was sure you'd see his point of view, and you do, don't you? I'm sure there's some way things can be fixed! You can come to some arrangement, can't you? Can't you?"

He started to say something, then bit it back, saying instead, calmly enough: "It's no use discussing it any more here. This is getting us nowhere. Héloïse-"

“Only promise me you won't take it to the police!"

"I can't promise anything. All I can say is that we'll try and compromise between what's right and what's best."

She seemed not to be listening. Something had broken in her, and now she couldn't stop. She was out of control; her hands and lips were shaking. The pleading voice poured on, admitting with every desperate syllable what must never-even in her mind -have been in words before.

"It'll kill him to go to Bellevigne! And all our money's in Valmy! We looked after Valmy, you can't say that we didn't! Every penny went into the estate! You can't say he was a bad trustee!"

"No," said Hippolyte.

She didn't even notice the irony. The dreadful single-mindedness she showed was ample explanation of how Léon had persuaded her to help him against what better instincts she must have possessed. She swept on: "It was for Léon's sake! Why shouldn't he get something-just this thing-out of life? Valmy was his! You know it was! Étienne had no right to do this to him, no right at all! That child should never have been born!"

Raoul said suddenly, as if the words were shaken out of him: "God pity you, Héloïse, you've begun to think like him."

This stopped her. She turned her head quickly towards him. I couldn't see her eyes, but her hands clenched themselves on the arms of the chair. Her voice went low and breathless: "You," she said, "you. You always hated him, didn't you?"

He didn't answer. He had taken out another cigarette and was making rather a business of lighting it.

"He's your father," she said. "Doesn't that make any difference? Can you stand by and see him ruined? Doesn't it mean anything to you that he's your father?"

Raoul didn't speak. For all the expression on his face he mightn't even have been listening. But I saw his brows twitch together as the match burned him.

Suddenly her hands hammered the chair-arms. She shouted at him: "Damn you, are you condemning your own father?" Even the vestiges of common self-control had gone; her voice rose to the edge of hysteria. " You to stand there and call him a murderer! You who have everything, everything, and he a cripple with nothing to call his own but that ruined relic of a place in the south! You condemn him, you talk fine and large of right and wrong and murder and police, and who's to say what you'd have done if you'd been in his place? How do you know what you'd have been if you'd smashed your car up one fine day on the zigzag and cracked your spine and two lives along with it? Yes, two! Would she have looked at you then? Ah yes, it only takes one look from you now, doesn't it, but would she? Would she have stayed with you and loved you the way I've loved him all these years and done for you what I've done for him-and glad to, mind that , glad to? Oh, no, not you!" She stopped and drew a long, shivering breath. "Oh, God, he's a better man with half a body than you'll ever be, Raoul de