Patricia Wentworth - Danger Point

“Very nearly a no survivor, but not quite. She jumped lucky.”

“She isn’t hurt?”

“Not to notice. Small scratch on left cheek, slight wobble about the knees, otherwise intact. Dale won’t have to get a black tie this time.”

There was another of those sharply taken breaths. It may have represented a last attempt to curb a driven temper. If it was that, it failed. Alicia said with furious distinctness,

“She can’t make a job of anything, can she?”

The receiver was slammed down. Rafe Jerningham hung up at his end and walked out of the room.

It was Lisle who took the second call in her bedroom. She was changing for dinner, when the bell tinkled beside the bed. She stood in her peach-coloured slip and heard Dale’s voice from a long way off. She hadn’t thought of it being Dale. He hadn’t said anything about ringing her up, and she wasn’t ready to speak because he was bound to be angry about the car, and because she hadn’t done as he had told her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and said in a voice which hardly reached him,

“What is it, Dale?”

There was quite a long pause before his voice came in, suddenly loud.

“I can’t hear what you say. Who’s that speaking?”

“Lisle.”

“Who did you say? I can’t hear.”

A little while ago she would have laughed and said, laughing, “Silly! It’s me – Lisle,” but somehow the words wouldn’t come. Her throat was stiff, and her lips were stiff, though she didn’t know why.

She said, “Lisle – it’s Lisle,” but the voice didn’t sound like her own voice at all.

The receiver jarred at her ear.

“Who is it? What are you saying about Lisle?”

She repeated her own name.

“Lisle.”

Again that frantic jar of the wires.

“What about Lisle? For God’s sake – are you trying to tell me something – has anything happened?”

“The car smashed.”

“What?”

“The car.”

“What – about – Lisle?”

She found her voice.

“Dale, I can’t make you hear. It’s me – Lisle. I hope you won’t be angry about the car. It’s all smashed up.”

The loud, urgent voice dropped. He said without any expression,

“The car – you’re not hurt-”

“No – I jumped. I had a wonderful escape. I ought to have gone to Langham’s – but you won’t be angry, will you?”

There was a pause before he said,

“You’re not hurt at all?”

And at that Lisle began to tremble. How dreadful for Dale if, instead of her own voice saying she wasn’t hurt, this had been a stranger’s voice, or Rafe’s, telling him she was dead.

She said with a rush of warm emotion, “Oh, no, darling – not at all,” and heard Dale say her name with a strange break in it. It was as if he had not breath enough for even that one short word. And then the next moment he had too much. The ear-piece crackled with the violence of his anger.

“I told you to go to Langham’s! It was the last thing I said! Can’t you do anything you’re told?”

She was shaken, but she wouldn’t show it. It shook her terribly when Dale was angry, but she had begun to learn that she mustn’t let him see that she was shaken. She wouldn’t be able to live with Dale if he knew that he could shake her like that. The phrase came back to her and trailed away half finished. She wouldn’t be able to live with Dale-

His voice leapt at her again.

“Are you there? Why don’t you answer me?”

“Dale, you’re shouting.”

“What do you expect? You’ve nearly been killed, haven’t you? Do you expect me to be pleased? You disobeyed my orders and nearly killed yourself. What do you expect me to say?”

A shudder ran over her. She said, “I don’t know,” and pushed the receiver back upon its hook.

Sitting there on the edge of the bed, she put a hand down on either side of her and leaned upon the palms, steadying herself. It wasn’t Dale’s anger she was afraid of.

He had been angry before, and she had been afraid before, but not like this. Quite suddenly the fear had come, and she didn’t know why. It was natural that Dale should be angry. Any man would be angry if his wife had nearly been killed because she hadn’t done what he had told her to do. And Dale had told her to have the steering tested before she went home. She found herself clinging to that – “He did tell me – he did. I would have done it if it hadn’t been for Alicia.” There was a moment of relief and then the fear came closer. He had known Alicia all his life. He knew she meant to pick a quarrel if she could. He knew her car was at Langham’s. “Did he know I wouldn’t wait to be quarrelled with?”

The shudder came again. She cast back desperately to her first thought – “He told me to have the steering tested.”

DALE came down next day, and to Lisle’s extreme relief he seemed to have left his bad temper behind him in spite of the fact that he had found out nothing more about a possible government offer for his land. He held her and said, “Oh, Lisle!” and gave her a quick, hard kiss before he turned to Rafe. Alicia got no more than a nod.

“What’s happened about the car?” he said. “How much of a wreck is it?”

Rafe made an airy gesture.

“Total, I should say. Chassis all twisted to blazes. Lisle will have to put her hand in her pocket and buy herself a push-bike if it won’t run to a new car.”

Dale actually laughed, his hand still on Lisle’s shoulder.

“Oh, it’s not quite as bad as that. Robson’s a miser, but he’ll let her buy a car if she asks him nicely. But look here, what about the old one? Where is it? The steering ought not to have gone like that. I want to have a look at it.”

They were on the terrace, with the sun beating down upon the Italian garden. Rafe, looking down on it, said over his shoulder,

“Evans fetched the corpse home last night. I told him he’d better leave the post mortem till you came.”

Later on he strolled into the garage and beheld Dale and Evans very busy with the wreck. But when he came in Dale straightened up and came to meet him.

“It’s a most extraordinary thing about that steering. The track rod must have snapped when she came round the bend. It’s clean in two. Of course, as Evans says, it’s just possible it went when the car hit the barn, but I think that’s damned unlikely.”

Rafe glanced at Evans, but the chauffeur kept his head down.

“Well, I don’t know. You’ve got to account for the car being out of control. If it hadn’t been out of control it wouldn’t have run into the barn.”

Dale moved away, his hand on his cousin’s arm.

“Fact is, Lisle’s a damn bad driver. She might have just panicked and let go. I don’t mean to say there wasn’t something wrong with the steering, because I noticed it myself going into Ledlington – the car seemed inclined to wander. That’s what gets my goat, because I told Lisle she wasn’t to drive home without having it seen to. I don’t know whether she just forgot about it, or whether she couldn’t be bothered, but I told her to go to Langham’s and have the steering tested, and she didn’t do it.”

Rafe laughed.

“She was having a row with Alicia – no, the other way about. Lisle doesn’t have rows. Alicia was having a row with her.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh, Lisle. That’s why she didn’t stop at Langham’s. She doesn’t like rows.”

Dale gave an impatient frown.

“I don’t know anything about that. I only know I told her to have the steering checked over before she drove the car home.”

“Quite a moral tract, isn’t it? A Bride’s Disobedience or The Fatal Accident.” The light bantering voice suddenly hardened.