Twenty-two
P art of a letter from Gina Hudd to her aunt Mrs. Van Rydock:
—and so you see, darling Aunt Ruth, the whole thing has been just like a nightmare—especially the end of it. I’vetold you all about this funny young man Edgar Lawson. He always was a complete rabbit—and when the Inspectorbegan questioning him and breaking him down, he lost his nerve completely and scuttled² like a rabbit. Just lost hisnerve and ran—literally ran. Jumped out of the window and round the house and down the drive, and then there wasa policeman coming to head him off, and he swerved³ and ran full tilt⁴ for the lake. He leaped into a rotten old puntthat’s mouldered⁵ there for years and pushed off. Quite a mad, senseless thing to do, of course, but as I say he was justa panic-stricken rabbit. And then Lewis gave a great shout and said, “That punt’s rotten” and raced off to the lake,too. The punt went down and there was Edgar struggling in the water. He couldn’t swim. Lewis jumped in and swamout to him. He got to him, but they were both in difficulty because they’d got among the reeds. One of the Inspector¹’smen went in with a rope round him, but he got entangled⁶, too, and they had to pull him in. Aunt Mildred said “They’lldrown—they’ll drown—they’ll both drown …” in a silly sort of way, and Grandam just said “Yes.” I can’t describeto you just how she made that one word sound. Just “yes” and it went through you like—like a sword.
Am I being just silly and melodramatic? I suppose I am. But it did sound like that….
And then—when it was all over, and they’d got them out and tried artificial respiration⁷ (but it was no good), theInspector came to us and said to Grandam:
“I’m afraid, Mrs. Serrocold, there’s no hope.”
Grandam said very quietly:
“Thank you, Inspector.”

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