Patricia Wentworth - Danger Point

“Lisle, I didn’t know anything. I couldn’t know. I could only suspect. There was always some way that it might have happened. Lydia might have slipped – she hadn’t any head for heights. Pell might have damaged your car, and Pell might have murdered Cissie – things happen like that. But when I found her lying there-”

“You found her?”

“I thought it was you.”

“But Rafe – you found her?”

“Yes, I found her -and I thought it was you. I took her by the shoulders to turn her over. That’s how my prints came on that damned coat. Lisle, I thought it was you-” His voice shuddered and broke.

She said, “Did you see her fall?”

“No, I just came on her. I didn’t hear anything either – the gulls were crying – I was a long way off. I had just been trying to get you to go away, and you asked me whether I hated you – do you remember? I was a long way off from where I was walking. I hadn’t thought where I was, or how far I’d gone. I was about a million miles away, and then I came back with a thud that pretty well broke me. And I was right under the Tane Head cliff, with what I thought was your dead body at my feet.”

After a long time she said.

“You didn’t tell anyone-”

“No, Lisle – it broke me. I came back to the wall and stayed there half the night. It wasn’t only the shock of thinking it was you – it was – Dale. If I could think it was you, why so could he. Everything I had been fighting came back and got me down. I didn’t know what to do. I made up my mind that unless I was called at the inquest I would hold my tongue. I didn’t want to bring you in for one thing. And my finding her proved nothing. It didn’t help Pell.”

She said in a curious still voice,

“Dale said you killed Lydia – and Cissie. He said you were trying to kill me – because of Tanfield. He said-”

“And you believed him!”

“I don’t know -I don’t think I believed anything – any more.”

“When you came down to dinner you looked at me as if I wasn’t there.”

Her voice lifted on a sighing breath.

“I didn’t feel – as if – any of us were there – really. It was like a horrible dream.”

“He’d been telling you then?”

“Yes. He told me. It made me feel-” She stopped as if she was searching for a word, and then said, “stunned.”

There was a moment’s silence before she spoke again.

“Rafe – what happened to your cigarette-case – the one I gave you for your birthday?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes, I know. I wanted to know if you did.”

He said, “Dale took it – on that Wednesday night. His case was empty. He saw mine lying there on one of the chairs, and he picked it up and put it in his pocket when he and Alicia went off.”

“Did he know that you had seen him take it?”

“Oh, yes, he knew. What did he tell you about it?”

“He said Alicia found it up on the cliff where Cissie went over. He said that she was looking for her emerald and diamond clip. And she found your case.”

Rafe made a movement.

“And that is very likely! I wondered what she was doing up there this morning.” He gave a curious laugh. “It really was only this morning, but it feels like years ago. I don’t suppose she dropped her clip at all, but Dale knew he had dropped my case up there, and he sent her to look for it.”

The strangest part of all this strange business was the quiet way in which they talked it over. There had been passion and racking fear, the action and reaction of hatred, suspicion, and doubt. There had been first the slow decay, and then the violent death of hope, and faith, and love. There had been floodtides of emotion. Now all was spent, was gone, was over.

They spoke to one another without effort or reserve. Neither could see the other’s face, but to each the other’s thought was most simple, plain, and clear.

After a long pause Lisle said,

“Alicia – did she know?”

There was no answer. There never was to be any answer to that. Just how much Alicia knew or guessed about Lydia – about Cissie, only Alicia herself could have told, and Alicia would never tell.

The silence spoke. And then Lisle spoke, breaking it.

“The water is rising-”

FROM the withdrawing of the tide until sundown the pool had reflected and absorbed the light and heat of the day. The water was still warm. It had not seemed so to Lisle, but she became aware of it now when the new cold water brought by the rising tide came eddying in against her breast, against her shoulders, rocking her from her unsteady footing. She held to the belt with one hand and steadied herself against the rocky wall with the other.

The new cold ripple ebbed, came again, rocking, chilling, lifting her – ebb and flow, and ebb and flow again – a tide within a tide, but each flow stronger and colder than the last.

The time came when Rafe’s hand, reaching downwards, closed on her wrist. For Lisle the worst was over then. For Rafe all the hardest part was yet to come. The rock on which he lay was slimy with weed. There was nothing to hold to. He had perforce to wait until the water was within three feet of the brink before he could get Lisle over it. She was numb and exhausted. He would have to get her out between the rocks to the sandy ridge, then round the point and in, between the rocks on the other side – just the one possible channel in either case, where the shingle spit ran in on this side and the tongue of sand upon the other. Both were deep under the water now, since the tide, which had been held up by the ridge, was by this time well over it, flooding all the lower levels.

If he had not known every rock on the beach, every twist of the channel, it would have been a very forlorn hope indeed. Even in daylight no one in his senses would have attempted to find his way amongst these formidable and jagged rocks with no real depth of water over them. The worst of them were upon this side of the Shepstone Wall. If he could reach the ridge with Lisle he could bring her in. But he had to reach the ridge. At all times a poor swimmer, she was in no case to help herself or him.

He made her float, and sliding down into the water, began to pilot her towards the ridge, swimming slowly and with extreme caution, one arm about her, his eyes straining to find each landmark.

The summer sky is never quite dark. On a clear July night there is always a faint, mysterious light under which shapes and masses appear without detail but with varying degrees of solidity. To Rafe these vague shapes possessed their unseen contours. There was not one of them which he could not call from its obscurity and see it in his mind as he had seen it unnumbered times under the light of day.

He moved slowly but with the certainty which comes of custom and practice. Lisle lay passive in the water. She might have been unconscious. He wondered if she were. He could see her face as a pale oval.

Lisle was not unconscious, but her consciousness was of a curious kind. It had limits. Within these limits she could think, but beyond them all was as vague, as dimmed as the sea in which she floated. She was not afraid any more. She was quite safe. Rafe said so. She was safe, but she was cold and very tired. She wanted above all things in the world to lie down and sleep. She felt the movement of the water. She felt Rafe’s arm. She did not know how time passed. She knew that they moved, but she did not know when they turned the point and began to head towards their own beach. She hardly knew when they reached it.

Rafe’s voice calling her – Rafe’s hands pulling her up, setting her on her feet – his arm hard about her-

“Can you walk? Better for you if you can. Can you get to the steps? I can’t leave you here with the tide coming in. Put your arm round my neck and try.”