The Chatham School Affair (29 page)

“I don’t think she’ll need much encouragement,” I
said, glancing out across the pond toward Mr. Reed’s house, where I suddenly saw Mrs. Reed as she rushed down the front steps, dragging Mary roughly behind her. At the bottom of the stairs she paused a moment, her head rotating left and right, like someone looking for answers in the air. Then she wheeled to the left and headed toward the shed, moving swiftly now, Mary trotting along beside her.

For a time they disappeared behind a wall of foliage. Then Mrs. Reed emerged again, marching stiffly toward the car. She’d begun to pull away when I glanced at Miss Channing and saw that she was staring across the pond, observing the same scene.

“She’s crazy,” I said. “Mrs. Reed.”

Miss Channing’s eyes shot over to me. She started to speak, then stopped herself. I could see something gathering in her mind. I suppose I expected her to add some comment about Mrs. Reed, but she said nothing of the kind. “Be like your father, Henry,” she said. “Be a good man, like your father.”

I stared at her, shocked by the high regard she’d just expressed for my father, and searching desperately for some way to lower her regard for him. But I found that I could discover nothing that, in saying it, would not lower Miss Channing’s regard for me as well. Because of that, we were still standing silently at the water’s edge when we suddenly heard a car approaching from Plymouth Road, its engine grinding fiercely, the sound rising steadily as it neared us, becoming at last a shuddering roar.

I turned to the right and saw it thunder past us in a thick cloud of white dust, a wall of black hurling down the weedy embankment, its ancient chassis slamming left and right as it plunged at what seemed inhuman speed toward the rickety wooden pier.

For a single, appalling instant, I felt utterly frozen in place, watching like a death mask fixed to a lifeless column until Miss Channing’s scream set the world in motion again, and I saw Sarah wheel around, the car then
jerk to the right, as if to avoid her, but too late, so that it struck her with full force, her body tumbling over the left side of the hood and into the water, the car plowing past her, then lifting off the end of the pier like a great black bird, heavy and wingless as it plummeted into the depths of Black Pond, then sank with a terrible swiftness, its rear tires still spinning madly, throwing silver arcs of water into the summer air.

We rushed forward at the same time, Miss Channing crashing into the water, where she sank down and gathered Sarah’s broken body into her arms. I ran to the edge of the pier and dove into the still wildly surging water.

When I surfaced again only a minute or so later, drenched and shaken, my mind caught in a dreadful horror of what I had just seen, I found Miss Channing slumped at the edge of the pond, Sarah cradled in her arms.

“It’s Mrs. Reed,” I told her as I trudged out of the water.

She looked at me in shock and grief. “Is she dead?”

My answer came already frozen in that passionlessness that would mark me from then on. “Yes.”

I
’ve never been able to remember exactly what happened after I came out of the water. I know that I ran over to where Miss Channing now sat, drenched and shivering, on the bank, with Sarah’s head resting in her lap. I remember that Sarah’s eyes were open as I approached her, blank and staring, but that I saw them close slowly, then open again, so that I felt a tremendous wave of hope that she might be all right.

At some point after that I took off down Plymouth Road, soaking wet, with my hair in my eyes, and flagged down the first passing car. There was an old man behind the wheel, a local cranberry farmer as I later found out, and he watched in disbelief as I sputtered about there having been an accident on Black Pond, that he had to get a doctor, the police, that he had to please, please hurry. I remember how he sprang into action suddenly, his movements quick and agile, as if made young by a desperate purpose. “Be right back, son,” he promised as he sped away, the old gray car thundering toward Chatham.

After that I rushed back to Milford Cottage. Miss Channing was still where she’d been when I left her, Sarah cradled in her arms, alive, though unconscious, her
eyes closed, her breath rattling softly, a single arrowhead of white bone protruding from the broken skin of her left elbow, but otherwise unmarked.

We sat in an almost unbroken silence with nothing but the lapping of the pond and an occasional rustle of wind through the trees to remind us that it was real, that it had actually happened, that Sarah had been struck down, and that beneath the surface of Black Pond, Mrs. Reed lay curled over the steering wheel of the car.

Dr. Craddock was the first to arrive. His sleek new sedan barreled down Plymouth Road, then noisily skidded to a halt in front of Milford Cottage. He leaped from the car, then bolted toward us, a black leather bag dangling from his hand.

“What happened?” he asked as he knelt down, grabbed Sarah’s arm, and began to feel for her pulse.

“A car,” I blurted out. “She was hit by a car.”

He released Sarah’s arm, swiftly opened his bag, and pulled out a stethoscope. “What car?” he asked.

I saw Miss Channing’s eyes drift toward the pond as she waited for my answer.

“It’s in the water,” I said. “The car’s in the water. It went off the pier.”

Dr. Craddock gave me a quick glance as he pressed the tympanum against Sarah’s chest. “And this young woman was driving it?”

“No,” I told him. “There’s someone in the car.”

I saw the first glimmer of that astonished horror that was soon to overtake our village settle like a gray mist upon his face.

“It’s a woman,” I added, unable to say her name, already trying to erase her from my memory. “She’s dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He returned the stethoscope to the bag, then brought out a hypodermic needle and a vial of clear liquid. “How about you, are you all right?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

He looked at Miss Channing. “And you?” he asked as he pierced the vial with the needle, then pressed its silver point into Sarah’s arm.

“I’m all right,” Miss Channing said, her features now hung in that deep, strangely impenetrable grief that would forever rest upon her face.

“The woman in the car,” Dr. Craddock said. “Who is she?”

“Abigail Reed,” Miss Channing answered. Then she looked down at Sarah and drew back a strand of glossy wet hair. “And this is Sarah Doyle,” she said.

Sarah had already been taken away when Captain Lawrence P. Hamilton of the Massachusetts State Police arrived at Milford Cottage. He was a tall man, with gray hair and a lean figure, his physical manner curiously graceful, but with an obvious severity clinging to him, born, perhaps, of the dark things he had seen.

Miss Channing and I were standing beside the cottage when he arrived, the once-deserted lawn now dotted with other people, the village constable, the coroner, two of Chatham’s four selectmen, the tiny engine of local officialdom already beginning to crank up.

Captain Hamilton was not a part of that local establishment, as every aspect of his bearing demonstrated. There was something about him that suggested a breadth both of authority and of experience that lay well beyond the confines of Chatham village, or even of Cape Cod. It was in the assuredness of his stride as he walked toward us, the command within his voice when he spoke, the way he seemed to know the answers even before he posed the questions.

“You’re Henry Griswald?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

He looked at Miss Channing. “You live here at the cottage, Miss Channing?”

She nodded mutely and gathered her arms around herself as if against a sudden chill.

“I have most of the details,” Captain Hamilton said. “About the accident, I mean.” His eyes shifted toward the pond. A tractor had been backed to its edge, and I could see a man walking out into the water, dressed in a bathing suit, a heavy chain in his right hand.

“We’re going to pull the car out now,” Captain Hamilton told us.

The man in the water curled over and disappeared beneath the surface of the pond, his feet throwing up small explosions of white foam.

“There’s a husband, I understand,” Captain Hamilton said. “Leland Reed?”

Odd though it seems to me now, I had not thought of Mr. Reed at all before that moment, nor of the other person Captain Hamilton mentioned almost in the same breath.

“And there’s a little girl, I’m told. A daughter. Have you seen her?”

“No.”

“Could she have been in the car?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Well, nobody seems to be at home over there,” Captain Hamilton said, nodding out across the pond. “Do you have any idea where Mr. Reed and the little girl might be?”

I remembered the last thing I’d seen at Mr. Reed’s house, Mrs. Reed bolting across the lawn, Mary trotting at her side, both of them headed for the old gray shed.

“I think I know where she is,” I said.

Captain Hamilton appeared surprised to hear it. “You do?”

“In the shed,” I answered.

“What shed?”

“There’s a shed about a hundred and fifty yards or so from the house.”

Captain Hamilton watched me closely. “Would you mind showing it to me, Henry?”

I nodded. “All right,” I said, though the very thought of returning to Mr. Reed’s house sent a dreadful chill through me.

Captain Hamilton glanced at Miss Channing, then touched the brim of his hat. “We’ll be talking again,” he said as he took my arm and led me away.

Moments later, as he would testify the following August, Captain Hamilton and I made our way along the edges of Black Pond. The old shed stood in a grove of trees, its door tightly closed, locked from the outside with a large, rusty eyebolt.

Only a few feet away we heard a sound coming from inside. It was low and indistinct, a soft whimper, like a kitten or a puppy.

“Step back, son,” Captain Hamilton said when we reached the door.

I did as he told me, waiting a short distance away from the shed as he opened the door and peered in. “Don’t be afraid,” I heard him say as he disappeared inside it. Seconds later he stepped back out into the light, now with Mary in his arms, her clothes drenched with her own sweat, her long blond hair hanging in a tangle over her shoulders, her blue eyes staring fearfully at Captain Hamilton, asking her single question in a soft, uncomprehending voice—
Where’s my mama gone?
—and which she would hear answered forever after in a cruel school-yard song:

Into Black Pond
Is where she’s gone
Drowned by a demon lover

Mr. Reed’s car had already been dragged from the pond when Captain Hamilton and I got back to Milford Cottage. Mrs. Reed’s body had been taken from it by then,
transported to Henson’s Funeral Parlor, as I later learned, where it was placed on a metal table and covered with a single sheet.

Miss Channing and I were standing near the cottage when my father arrived. He looked very nearly dazed as he moved toward us.

“Dear God, is it true, Henry?” he asked, staring at me.

I nodded.

He looked at Miss Channing, and in that instant I saw a terrible dread sweep into his face, a sense that there were yet darker things to be learned from Black Pond. Without a word he stepped forward, took her arm, and escorted her inside the cottage, where they remained for some minutes, talking privately, my father standing by the fireplace, Miss Channing in a chair, looking up at him.

They had come back outside again by the time Captain Hamilton strode up to the cottage. He nodded to my father in a way that made it obvious that they already knew each other.

“Your son’s a brave boy, Mr. Griswald,” Captain Hamilton said. “He tried his best to save her.”

I felt my eyes close slowly, saw Mrs. Reed staring at me through a film of green water.

“The car looks fine,” Captain Hamilton added, now talking to all of us. “No problem with the brakes or the steering column. No reason for an … accident. Henry, when the car went by, could you see Mrs. Reed behind the wheel?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t notice anything but the car.”

Captain Hamilton started to ask another question, but my father intervened.

“Why would that matter, Captain?” he asked. “Whether Henry saw Mrs. Reed or not?”

“Because if there was nothing wrong with the car, then we begin to wonder if there was something wrong
with the person driving it.” He shrugged. “I mean something like a seizure or a heart attack, some reason for Mrs. Reed to lose control the way she did.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Captain Hamilton turned his attention to Miss Channing. “This young woman, Sarah Doyle. Did Mrs. Reed know her?”

Miss Channing shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Captain Hamilton appeared to turn this over in his mind, come to some conclusion about it before going on to his next thought. “And what about you, Miss Channing? Did Mrs. Reed know you?”

“Only slightly.”

“Had she ever visited you here at the cottage?”

“No.”

The captain’s eyes drifted toward the road, remained there briefly, then returned to Miss Channing. “Well, if Mrs. Reed didn’t know you, why would she have been coming this way?” he asked her. “It’s a dead end, you see. So if she didn’t have any business with you, Miss Channing, then why would she have been headed this way at all?”

Miss Channing replied with the only answer available to her. “I don’t know, Captain Hamilton,” she said.

With that, my father suddenly stepped away, tugging me along with him. “I have to get my son home now,” he explained. “He needs a change of clothes.”

Captain Hamilton made no attempt to stop us, and within a few seconds we were in my father’s car. It was the middle of the afternoon by then, the air impossibly bright and clear. As we backed away, I saw Captain Hamilton tip his hat to Miss Channing, then step away from her and head out toward the pier, where, at the very end of it, I could see Mr. Parsons facing out over the water, clothed in his dark suit, his homburg set firmly on his head.