The Water

For an instant Edwin did nothing.

The hand was cold and swollen, the skin loose beneath his grip. It lay across the rope at his wrist, though he could not tell whether the fingers had caught there or merely been carried against him when the body moved.

He tore his arm backwards.

The hand came with it.

Alice turned in the mud.

The movement released another cloud of silt. Edwin could no longer see the surface. Hair passed across his face again and something struck his shoulder. He let go of the loop he had been trying to place around her and reached instead for the safety line at his waist.

It was taut.

He pulled.

The rope tightened around him but did not lift him.

Edwin planted one foot against the bottom and pushed. Mud released it with difficulty. He rose perhaps a foot before something below dragged him back.

The safety line had fouled.

He understood enough. Somewhere below him it had passed beneath one of the old bindings and drawn tight. It was an ordinary problem. He needed only to find it and free it.

His lungs had begun to burn.

Edwin reached down.

His hand found canvas, then rope, then Alice’s body. The remaining arm had worked loose from beneath the wrapping and now lay across him. When he tried to push it aside, the elbow bent and the hand slid higher, catching in the front of his shirt.

He pulled harder at the safety line.

Something moved below.

For one moment Alice rose with him.

Her face appeared out of the dark.

The canvas had fallen away from it. One side was buried in mud and the other had whitened in the water. Her hair floated above her head. Edwin saw the wound near the temple and, beneath it, one eye.

It appeared to open.

He struck at the face.

His hand passed across it and the head rolled sideways.

The movement was enough to free his shirt from Alice’s fingers. Edwin kicked upward and pulled himself along the rope.

This time he rose farther.

Then the line stopped again.

Pain ran sharply across his waist where the rope cut into him. He twisted, reached down and found the safety line trapped beneath an old turn of rope at Alice’s waist. His own pull had drawn it tight.

He had fouled it himself.

He pulled at the knot around his waist.

His fingers no longer worked properly.

The water above him had become lighter. The boat could not have been more than twelve or fifteen feet away. Edwin kicked again, felt himself rise, then something dragged across his leg and held.

He looked down.

Alice was beneath him.

The surviving arm had lifted with the movement of the ropes and lay around his thigh. Her hand rested against his hip.

Edwin struck at it once, then again.

The fingers shifted but did not fall away.

He bent towards them and lost what little upward movement he had gained. His chest contracted violently. He swallowed water, coughed into it and immediately swallowed more.

There was no longer anything orderly about the ropes.

They ran across the canvas, around his waist, beneath Alice and back towards the darkness below. Every movement tightened one part and loosened another. Edwin clawed at them without understanding which was his and which belonged to her.

The body moved closer.

Above them the surface trembled grey in the rain.

Edwin reached towards it.

The hand at his hip shifted once.

Then the water went dark.

Penelope woke shortly after seven and found Edwin’s side of the bed empty. She assumed he had risen early. By half past eight he had still not come to breakfast, and nobody below stairs had seen him.

Before anyone had decided whether this required concern, Briggs came up from the lower grounds. The eastern boat was beyond the island, turning slowly at the end of its bow line. One oar remained in place and the other had gone. Edwin’s shooting coat lay across the forward seat, soaked through.

Thomas was sent into the village for Constable Hale.

Hale reached Harcourt shortly after nine and went down to the pond with Briggs. They took the other boat out. A second rope disappeared over the stern.

They hauled on it.

Edwin came up first.

Alice came with him.

The loose lines and old bindings had drawn together so tightly that Hale could not afterwards say how the tangle had formed. Alice was still wrapped in part of the old canvas, with both sash weights attached, one at the ankles and one around the waist. Her handbag remained tied against her right hip. Her right arm was gone. The other had worked free and lay across Edwin’s body, the hand caught in his shirt near the shoulder.

It took Briggs several minutes to separate them.

In the bottom of the eastern boat, beneath the forward seat where the rain had not quite reached, Hale found a silver compact.