Dick Francis - Enquiry

The hair which she usually wore screwed into a fold up the back of her neck had come undone and was falling into my face. I could see less and less of what was going on. I knew only that she was still headed towards the doorway, still unimaginably violent, and mumbling now in a continuous flow of senseless words interspersed with sudden shrieks.

She reached the doorway and started trying to get free of me by crashing me against the jamb. She had a hard job of it, but she managed it in the end, and when she felt my weight fall off her she turned in a flash, sticking out her hands with rigid fingers towards my neck.

Her face was a dark congested crimson. Her eyes were stretched wide in a stark screaming stare. Her lips were drawn back in a tight line from her teeth.

I had never in all my life seen anything so terrifying. Hadn’t imagined a human could look like that, had never visualised homicidal madness.

She would certainly have lolled me if it hadn’t been for Tony, because her strength made a joke of mine. He came tearing into the hall from the kitchen and brought her down with a rugger tackle about the knees, and I fell too, on top of her, because she was trying to tear my throat out in handfuls, and she didn’t leave go.

It took all Tony could do, all Archie could do, all three other lads could do to unlatch her from me and hold her down on the floor. They sat on her arms and legs and chest and head, and she threshed about convulsively underneath them.

Roberta had tears streaming down her face and I hadn’t any breath left to tell her to cheer up, there was no more danger, no more... no more... I leant weakly against the wall and thought it would be too damned silly to pass out now. Took three deep breaths instead. Everything steadied again, reluctantly.

Tony said, ‘There’s a doctor on his way. Don’t think he’s expecting this, though.’

‘He’ll know what to do.’

‘Mother!’ Exclaimed Roberta suddenly. ‘I’d forgotten about her.’ She hurried past me into the drawing-room and I heard her mother’s voice rising in a disturbed, disorientated question.

Grace was crying out, but her voice sounded like seagulls and nothing she said made sense. One of the lads said sympathetically, ‘Poor thing, oughtn’t we to let her get up?’ and Tony answered fiercely, ‘Only under a tiger net.’

‘She doesn’t know what’s happening,’ I said wearily. ‘She can’t control what she does. So don’t for God’s sake let go of her.’

Except for Tony’s resolute six foot they all sat on her gingerly and twice she nearly had them off. Finally and at long last the front door bell rang, and I hopped across the hall to answer it.

It was the local doctor, looking tentative, wondering no doubt if it were a hoax. But he took one look at Grace and was opening his case while he came across the hall. Into her arm he pushed a hypodermic needle and soon the convulsive threshing slackened, and the high pitched crying dulled to murmurs and in the end to silence.

The five men slowly stood up and stepped away from her, and she lay there looking shrunk and crumpled, her greying hair falling in streaks away from her flacidly relaxing face. It seemed incredible that such thin limbs, such a meagre body, could have put out such strength. We all stood looking down at her with more awe than pity, watching while the last twitches shook her and she sank into unconscious peace.

Half an hour later Grace still lay on the floor in the hall, but with a pillow under her head and a rug keeping her warm.

Dexter Cranfield had come back from watching the horses work and walked unprepared into the aftermath of drama. His wife’s semi-hysterical explanations hadn’t helped him much.

Roberta told him that Grace had come to kill him because he had his licence back and that she was the cause of his losing it in the first place, and he stamped around in a fury which I gathered was mostly because the source of our troubles was a woman. He basically didn’t like women. She should have been locked up years ago, he said. Spiteful, petty minded, scheming, interfering... just like a woman, he said. I listened to him gravely and concluded he had suffered from a bossy nanny.

The doctor had done some intensive telephoning, and presently an ambulance arrived with two compassionate looking men and a good deal of special equipment. The front door stood wide open and the prospect of Grace’s imminent departure was a relief to everyone.

Into this active bustling scene drove Jack Roxford.

He scrambled out of his car, took a horrified look at the ambulance, and ploughed in through the front door. When he saw Grace lying there, with the ambulance men preparing to lift her on to a stretcher, he went down on his knees beside her.

‘Grace dear...’ He looked at her more closely. She was still unconscious, very pale now, looking wizened and sixty. ‘Grace dear!’ There was anguish in his voice. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

The doctor started to break it to him. Cranfield interrupted the gentle words and said brutally, ‘She’s raving mad. She came here trying to kill me, and she could have killed my wife and daughter. It’s absolutely disgraceful that she should have been running around free in that state. I’m going to see my solicitors about it.’

Jack Roxford only heard the first part. His eyes went to the cut on Roberta’s neck and the blood-stain on her jersey, and he put his hand over his mouth and looked sick.

‘Grace,’ he said. ‘Oh Grace...’

There was no doubt he loved her. He leant over her, stroking the hair away from her forehead, murmuring to her, and when he finally looked up there were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks.

‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’

The doctor shifted uncomfortably and said one would have to see, only time would tell, there were marvellous treatments nowadays...

The ambulance men loaded her gently on to the stretcher and picked it up.

‘Let me go with her,’ Jack Roxford said. ‘Where are you taking her? Let me go with her.’

One of the ambulance men told him the name of the hospital and advised him not to come.

‘Better try this evening, sir. No use you waiting all day, now, is it?’ And the doctor added that Grace would be unconscious for some time yet and under heavy sedation after that, and it was true, it would be better if Roxford didn’t go with her.

The uniformed men carried Grace out into the sunshine and loaded her into the ambulance, and we all followed them out into the drive. Jack Roxford stood there looking utterly forlorn as they shut the doors, consulted finally with the doctor, and with the minimum of fuss, drove away.

Roberta touched his arm. ‘Can’t I get you a drink, Mr Roxford?’

He looked at her vaguely, and then his whole face crumpled and he couldn’t speak.

‘Don’t, Mr Roxford,’ Roberta said with pity. ‘She isn’t in any pain, or anything.’

He shook his head. Roberta put her arm across his shoulders and steered him back into the house.

‘Now what?’ Tony said. ‘I’ve really got to get to Reading, pal. Those runners of mine have to be declared for the second race.’

I looked at my watch. ‘You could spare another quarter of an hour. I think we should take Jack Roxford with us. He’s got a runner too, incidentally, though I imagine he doesn’t much care about that... Except that it’s one of Edwin Byler’s. But he’s not fit to drive anywhere himself, and the races would help to keep him from brooding too much about Grace.’

‘Yeah. A passible idea.’ Tony grinned.

‘Go into the house and see if you can persuade him to let you take him.’

‘O.K.’ He went off amiably, and I passed the time swinging around the drive on my crutches and peering into the cars parked there. I’d be needing a new one... probably choose the same again, though.