Alice and Harrison Fletcher die in a plane crash

Alice and Harrison Fletcher die in a plane crash during the Christmas holidays, when their flight to Martinique goes down. The brief retrospective account fixes the loss in a family history otherwise marked by intimate friendships and ordinary routines, while preserving Alice’s distinctive voice in one last exchange.

The Flight and Crash

The Fletchers were traveling to Martinique for a holiday when their airplane crashed. A student of Harrison’s had driven them to the airport. The account gives no further details about the crash or its immediate aftermath; its emphasis falls instead on the couple’s shared fate and on the small conversation that precedes their departure.

Alice’s Last Exchange

Before the flight, Alice confided to the student that living in New England meant one owed oneself a holiday in the sun, then turned to Harrison for agreement. Her speech impediment appears in the line itself: she says “the sun” as “the thun” and addresses her husband as “Harrithon.” The cheerful recommendation, made without any suggestion that the trip is dangerous, acquires a finality through the later report of the crash.

Retrospective Significance

The narration places the Fletchers’ deaths in a compressed, backward-looking account of what became of them: they died in middle age, while traveling during the Christmas holidays. This summary contrasts the plain certainty of the outcome with Alice’s lively, individual manner of speaking. Helen had thought Alice “a little loony”; that affectionate, amused impression remains beside the news of the couple’s deaths, preserving the Fletchers not only as casualties of the crash but as people remembered through their particular habits and relationships.