Agatha Christie - While the light lasts

"I can't prevent your saying all these fantastical things, but I can assure you they're not true."

Vivien turned suddenly and caught her by the hand.

"Clare - for God's sake! I've been straight - I've done what you said. I've not seen Cyril again - I swear it."

"That's nothing to do with it."

"Clare - haven't you any pity - any kindness? I'll go down on my knees to you."

"Tell Gerald yourself. If you tell him, he may forgive you."

Vivien laughed scornfully.

"You know Gerald better than that. He'll be rabid - vindictive. He'll make me suffer - he'll make Cyril suffer. That's what I can't bear. Listen, Clare - he's doing so well. He's invented something - machinery, I don't understand about it, but it may be a wonderful success. He's working it out now - his wife supplies the money for it, of course. But she's suspicious - jealous. If she finds out, and she will find out if Gerald starts proceedings for divorce - she'll chuck Cyril - his work, everything. Cyril will be ruined."

"I'm not thinking of Cyril," said Clare. "I'm thinking of Gerald. Why don't you think a little of him, too?"

"Gerald? I don't care that -" she snapped her fingers - "for Gerald. I never have. We might as well have the truth now we're at it. But I do care for Cyril. I'm a rotter, through and through, I admit it. I dare say he's a rotter, too. But my feeling for him - that isn't rotten. I'd die for him, do you hear? I'd die for him!"

"That is easily said," said Clare derisively.

"You think I'm not in earnest? Listen, if you go on with this beastly business, I'll kill myself. Sooner than have Cyril brought into it and ruined, I'd do that."

Clare remained unimpressed.

"You don't believe me?" said Vivien, panting.

"Suicide needs a lot of courage."

Vivien flinched back as though she had been struck.

"You've got me there. Yes, I've no pluck. If there were an easy way -"

"There's an easy way in front of you," said Clare. "You've only got to run straight down the green slope. It would be all over in a couple of minutes. Remember that child last year."

"Yes," said Vivien thoughtfully. "That would be easy - quite easy - if one really wanted to -"

Clare laughed.

Vivien turned to her.

"Let's have this out once more. Can't you see that by keeping silence as long as you have, you've - you've no right to go back on it now? I'll not see Cyril again. I'll be a good wife to Gerald - I swear I will. Or I'll go away and never see him again. Whichever you like. Clare -"

Clare got up.

"I advise you," she said, "to tell your husband yourself... Otherwise - I shall."

"I see," said Vivien softly. "Well - I can't let Cyril suffer -"

She got up - stood still as though considering for a minute or two, then ran lightly down to the path, but instead of stopping, crossed it and went down the slope.

Once she half turned her head and waved a hand gaily to Clare, then she ran on gaily, lightly, as a child might run, out of sight...

Clare stood petrified. Suddenly she heard cries, shouts, a clamor of voices. Then - silence.

She picked her way stiffly down to the path. About a hundred yards away a party of people coming up it had stopped. They were staring and pointing. Clare ran down and joined them.

"Yes, Miss, someone's fallen over the cliff. Two men have gone down - to see."

She waited. Was it an hour, or eternity, or only a few minutes?

A man came toiling up the ascent. It was the vicar in his shirtsleeves. His coat had been taken off to cover what lay below.

"Horrible," he said, his face very white. "Mercifully, death must have been instantaneous."

He saw Clare, and came over to her.

"This must have been a terrible shock to you. You were taking a walk together, I understand?"

Clare heard herself answering mechanically.

Yes. They had just parted. No, Lady Lee's manner had been quite normal. One of the group interposed the information that the lady was laughing and waving her hand. A terribly dangerous place - there ought to be a railing along the path.

The vicar's voice rose again.

"An accident - yes, clearly an accident."

And then suddenly Clare laughed - a hoarse, raucous laugh that echoed along the cliff.

"That's a damned lie," she said. "I killed her."

She felt someone patting her shoulder, a voice spoke soothingly.

"There, there. It's all right. You'll be all right presently."

But Clare was not all right presently. She was never all right again. She persisted in the delusion - certainly a delusion, since at least eight persons had witnessed the scene - that she had killed Vivien Lee.

She was very miserable till Nurse Lauriston came to take charge. Nurse Lauriston was very successful with mental cases.

"Humor them, poor things," she would say comfortably.

So she told Clare that she was a wardress from Pentonville Prison. Clare's sentence, she said, had been commuted to penal servitude for life. A room was fitted up as a cell.

"And now, I think, we shall be quite happy and comfortable," said Nurse Lauriston to the doctor. "Round-bladed knives if you like, doctor, but I don't think there's the least fear of suicide. She's not the type. Too self-centered. Funny how those are often the ones who go over the edge most easily."

The big logs crackled merrily in the wide, open fireplace, and above their crackling rose the babel of six tongues all wagging industriously together. The house-party of young people were enjoying their Christmas.

Old Miss Endicott, known to most of those present as Aunt Emily, smiled indulgently on the clatter.

'Bet you you can't eat six mince-pies, Jean.'

'Yes, I can.'

'No, you can't.'

'You'll get the pig out of the trifle if you do.'

'Yes, and three helps of trifle, and two helps of plum-pudding.'

'I hope the pudding will be good,' said Miss Endicott apprehensively. 'But they were only made three days ago. Christmas puddings ought to be made a long time before Christmas. Why, I remember when I was a child, I thought the last Collect before Advent - "Stir up, O Lord, we beseech Thee ...

" - referred in some way to stirring up the Christmas puddings!'

There was a polite pause while Miss Endicott was speaking. Not because any of the young people were in the least interested in her reminiscences of bygone days, but because they felt that some show of attention was due by good manners to their hostess. As soon as she stopped, the babel burst out again. Miss Endicott sighed, and glanced towards the only member of the party whose years approached her own, as though in search of sympathy - a little man with a curious egg-shaped head and fierce upstanding moustaches. Young people were not what they were, reflected Miss Endicott. In olden days there would have been a mute, respectful circle, listening to the pearls of wisdom dropped by their elders. Instead of which there was all this nonsensical chatter, most of it utterly incomprehensible. All the same, they were dear children! Her eyes softened as she passed them in review - tall, freckled Jean; little Nancy Cardell, with her dark, gipsy beauty; the two younger boys home from school, Johnnie and Eric, and their friend, Charlie Pease; and fair, beautiful Evelyn Haworth ... At thought of the last, her brow contracted a little, and her eyes wandered to where her eldest nephew, Roger, sat morosely silent, taking no part in the fun, with his eyes fixed on the exquisite Northern fairness of the young girl.

'Isn't the snow ripping?' cried Johnnie, approaching the window. 'Real Christmas weather. I say, let's have a snowball fight. There's lots of time before dinner, isn't there, Aunt Emily?'

'Yes, my dear. We have it at two o'clock. That reminds me, I had better see to the table.'