Patricia Wentworth - Danger Point

He stood irresolute. There was nothing to tell him which way to go, but if the fear that had brought him here and was drenching him with its cold sweat sprang from something more than his own distorted fancy, then it was in the direction of the Shepstone Rocks that he must look for Lisle. The wildest, the most dangerous part of the coast, the least frequented – at this hour solitary as a murderer’s heart could wish. By no stretch of the imagination could he suppose that Lisle would turn that way alone. And if not alone, where had she been taken, and how would he find her?

With these thoughts he was questing to and fro, turning the torch in every direction. Not many people ever came this way. Once the immediate neighbourhood of the steps was left behind the sand was smooth and unmarked as the tide had left it. The water had not quite reached the wall. The dry sand at its foot would hold no print. But half a dozen yards along the torch found what he was looking for – Lisle’s footprints going towards the Rocks, and the larger, bolder prints which were Dale’s.

He had followed them for perhaps half a dozen yards, when the torch picked up a second set of tracks – Dale’s footprints coming back – alone. They came in at a slant past the out-going tracks and were lost in the dry sand. It was plain enough and dreadful enough to read. Two had gone out, and only one had come back. Within a few short hours the damning evidence would be smoothed out by the tide, and the sand innocently blank and bare again. Fate had not given Dale those hours.

Everything in Rafe went cold and still. There was nothing in all the world but to find Lisle, dead or alive, and it came to him that she must be dead, because Dale would not now have left her alive. He could think of this quite calmly, because at the moment when he saw that single returning track all his capacity for feeling died. He was not conscious of distress, and he was not at all conscious of his body. There remained only the capacity for thought – lucid, keen, undisturbed by any hampering emotion.

He followed the footprints to the spit of sand which ran down towards the sea and the ridge beyond the Shepstone Rocks. Half way there he lost them under the first ripple of the tide. The torch went into his pocket and he went on, ankle-deep, knee-deep, breast-deep, and then wading and pushing against the weight of the water, up the side of the long, sprawling ridge. The water was no more than ankle-deep here. He walked along the ridge past the rocky point, and as he turned shoreward he heard Lisle’s cry.

It was so faint a sound that at any other time it would have gone by with all the million sounds which are never heard, but at this moment when everything in him was strung to the utmost pitch of expectancy it reached him. His heart jerked against his side. He began to walk towards the sound, coming down off the ridge into the deeper water, and then feeling his way slowly and cautiously so as to avoid the rocks. When the water was at its deepest he heard the sound again. And then his feet were on shingle and he came up the shallow slope of the beach towards the cliff.

As soon as he was clear of the water he called out.

“Lisle – where are you?”

The words beat on the rock wall and came back in a broken echo. And on that, something that wasn’t an echo. His name – “Rafe!”

Lisle had gone on calling. There was something in her which wouldn’t give up, something which said, “If I drown, it shan’t be because I gave up.” Giving up didn’t just mean dying. It meant letting in the dark, and the loneliness, and Dale’s treachery. If she had to die, she wanted to keep those things out, right up to the end. As long as she went on calling it meant that she wasn’t letting them in. When she heard Rafe’s voice all her courage leapt. She looked up from where she stood and saw the flicker of his torch, high above her like the flash of summer lightning. Only it wasn’t lightning – it was light.

She called again, and she said, “I’m here – here – here, ” and went on saying it till the light shone over the edge of the pit and she could see him kneeling there, peering down. The beam of the torch shone suddenly upon her upturned face. White, drenched and drowned, she looked at Rafe. But her eyes were alive. He saw the pupils contract and the lids come down against the glare.

LISLE! What happened? Are you all right?”

She said, “I fell-” and heard his voice with a savage note in it.

“He pushed you!”

Her hands were on the rocky wall, holding it as best she might. She hid her face against them and felt how cold they were.

There was a moment, and then he called her sharply.

“See if you can reach me! Stretch up as high as you can!”

The beam of the torch was gone. She could just make out a dark something that was his head. He was lying down on the flat-topped boulder from which Dale had pushed her, reaching down to her at the full stretch of his arms as she reached up. She stood on tiptoe and strained towards him, but their hands did not touch. She heard him move, draw back. The light came again.

“You can’t get higher up?”

“No – I’m on the highest bit. The floor slopes down. There’s a deep hole. I’ve been afraid to move.”

The beam of the torch went to and fro. It picked up a wide fissure splitting off the flat boulder from a rock wall which joined the main reef. He switched off the light and put the torch in his trouser pocket. Its light and the strength of the battery behind it were pretty well all that stood between them and death. They were not to be wasted. He said,

“I can’t reach you. There’s a split in the rock – that’s why the water is so far down. The pool drains away as the tide goes out. There’s nothing to worry about – we’ll just have to wait till it comes in, that’s all”

“Until the tide comes in!” Her voice was a faint breath of horror. It seemed too dreadful to be borne. Wait till the tide came in and drowned them!

“What’s the matter? Don’t you see that the water will float you up? Even if I could just reach your hands, I don’t think I could get you out of a sheer place like this. There’s nothing for me to hold on to, and this rock’s as slippery as they’re made. But we’ve only got to wait and the tide will do the trick. Look out – I’m letting my belt down to you. You keep hold of the buckle end. That’ll give you something to pull on, and as soon as the water’s high enough I’ll get you out.”

“Will it be long?”

“About twenty minutes, I think – perhaps half an hour. It comes up pretty quick once it’s got over the ridge. We’re really not much above that level here – that’s why I can’t risk going back for help. Evans is the only man about the place who can swim, and he’s not much use, and by the time I’d got him and a rope – well, it’s not good enough. I’ll get you out all right. Have you got hold of the belt?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not hurt?”

“No.”

“Lisle – why did you go with him? Why were you so mad?”

She said, “I didn’t know-”

“Why didn’t you go away? I tried to make you go away.”

“Was that why? I thought you hated me. Was it because you knew – about Dale?”

“I didn’t know – I was horribly afraid.”

Strange to be talking like this in the dark, the sky just visible, their faces hidden one from the other. Strange, and easy.

She thought of that, and she thought that it had always been easy to talk to Rafe. She said.

“He killed Lydia. Did you know that?”

He used the same words again.

“I didn’t know – I was afraid.”

“And Cissie – poor Cissie.”