March smiled.

“It’s a good story. I’d like to have met your old woman.”

“She was my nurse’s grandmother,” said Rafe. He turned and led the way along the wall. “We go down here,” he said.

The steps were at the end of the wall on the headland side. At their foot, above high-water mark, was a bathing-hut painted white and green – two rooms and a wide verandah set with chairs and coloured cushions. A track, trodden hard, ran past it skirting the cliff.

It was, as Rafe had said, bad going for a bad light. The track soon merged into deep soft sand, with here and there a patch of shingle, and here and there a ribbed line of rock.

When they had come about midway round the half-circle of the bay Rafe stopped and said,

“I must have turned somewhere about here.”

March looked at the headland, turned back and sighted the green and white bathing-hut, then faced round to the headland again.

“If your eyes are as good as mine, you’d see anyone on that cliff plainly enough.”

“In this light -yes.”

“How dark was it when you turned? Could you see those cushions in the verandah of the bathing-hut?”

“No.” Then, with a sudden fleeting smile, “They’re put away at night.”

“Could you have seen them if they had been there?”

“How can I tell?” His smile, the slight lift of his shoulder, the sparkle in his eyes, all said, “I’m not going to tell.”

Randal March said, “I want to go on a little farther.”

“Just as you like.”

“There’s a way up on to the cliff path, isn’t there, just beyond those rocks?”

“It’s a bit of a climb.”

“But one that you have often done?”

“Oh, often.”

“Did you do it on Wednesday?”

Rafe shook his head.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t leave the beach.”

They left it now, and climbed by the roughest of ways to the path which ran like a shelf along the cliff – about half way up at first, but rising gradually until it emerged upon the headland.

Hot sun, breeze cool off the water, a scent of heather, a scent of whin – Tane Head was a pleasant place on a summer morning.

The path became a narrow grassy track and petered out. March walked on, the ground becoming more and more uneven as they made their way along the top of the cliff. Sandy hollows rimmed with dark, scrawny clumps of gorse, great heaped bramble mounds still in bloom but with here and there a cluster of berries for the most part hard and green, low wind-bent trees twisted into every crooked shape.

“This is where she went over,” said March, coming to a standstill.

Rafe walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. There was no sheer drop. If Cissie Cole had been pushed she might have taken the first dozen feet or so at a stumbling run before she went headlong to the rocks below. And just that was what she had done. He said over his shoulder.

“She must have caught at that bush. See where it’s broken.”

March’s voice was a little dry as he answered.

“Yes – we noticed that. I think myself it puts suicide out of the question. If you were going to throw yourself over a cliff you would want to get on with it – you wouldn’t choose a place where you had to run down a slope like that before you could get to the edge.”

Rafe said, “I suppose not.” He stepped back a pace or two. “Well? What’s the great idea? Why the personally conducted tour?”

March began to walk away.

“What’s the nearest way down to the beach from here?”

“Don’t you know?” He laughed suddenly. “I’m sure you do – and I’m sure that even the most suspicious mind can’t hold it up against me if I know too. After all, I was born and brought up here. So now we both know that there’s a way down the cliff where that path we came by joins the headland. It’s a bit of a scramble, but it’s a perfectly feasible proposition.”

March looked at him.

“Did you go down that way on Wednesday night?”

He got the pleasantest smile in the world.

“You can’t go down if you haven’t come up. I’m afraid you haven’t got a frightfully good memory. I keep telling you that I didn’t leave the beach on Wednesday night.”

March opened his lips to speak and shut them again. A forward step had taken him to the top of a small hillock, and as he gained it his eye caught the sun on a moving whiteness, the flutter of a scarf in the wind. He came down off the rise with a run, rounded a high clump of gorse, and found himself face to face with Lady Steyne. Rafe, behind him, said,

“Hullo, Alicia!”

She met them with rather a chilly smile.

“Why, what are you doing up here? My scarf’s caught, Rafe. Get it off those thorns without tearing it if you can.”

“It was your scarf I saw, ” said March, and waited while Rafe dealt with it.

“We’re taking a walk – if you don’t stand still, darling, the darned thing will tear. Pleasure and instruction combined – scene of the tragedy – official observations on it. In fact, a thoroughly profitable morning. There – I’m pricked to the bone, but I don’t think I’ve bled on to your scarf.”

“I don’t know why I put it on – I’m boiled. I’ve been looking for my clip.” She turned to March. “Oh, Inspector, you will ask your men to look out for it, won’t you? I must have dropped it when I was up here with Dale the other night – a big sort of half buckle in emeralds and diamonds. I didn’t miss it till this morning, and I must have dropped it up here, because I know I had it on Wednesday, and I haven’t worn it since.”

“Is it valuable, Lady Steyne?”

“I expect so – emeralds and diamonds, you know. But I don’t know what it cost – it was a present. I should simply hate to lose it.”

“Well, if you can tell me whereabouts you were-”

She threw out an impatient hand.

“My dear man, we were all over the place! It’s the old needle and haystack game. I suppose I had better offer a reward.”

“How near the cliff did you go?”

“Not nearer than this. That’s why I was looking here. But it’s too hot to go on. I’ve got my car in the lane. Like a lift, Rafe?”

“If the Inspector has finished with me. Perhaps he would like a lift too.” He turned to March. “How did you come over – motor-bike, push-bike, car?”

“Car. If Lady Steyne will really give me a lift back to Tanfield Court, I shall be very grateful.”

Alicia said, “Oh, yes.” And then, “And you’ll find my clip for me, won’t you? I expect I’d better say a fiver for the reward.”

Chapter 38

LISLE went out into the garden and sat under the cedar. There was always shade there even at high noon. She lay back in the swinging canvas chair and closed her eyes.

Fingerprints on her coat – handprints… She felt sick – and not only with distaste. There was a kind of horror about it. All those unseen, unnoticed prints, starting out with their black accusing stains – handprints – fingerprints – everything handled, damaged, blurred. It wasn’t only a coat that had been spoiled, it was everything. Six months ago when she had stepped into this new world, how bright, and clear, and beautiful everything had been – love, marriage, home, friendship – a family ready made for a girl who had never had one – there couldn’t have been a fairer prospect anywhere. And now it was all dashed and spoiled, the colours faded, the sunlight gone-

A line that she had heard somewhere came into her head:

“Thinned into a common air like the rainbow breath of a dream.”

When had that begun to happen? She looked back, and she couldn’t tell. There had been an imperceptible withdrawal, as gradual as the ebbing of daylight or the tide.

The tears came up under her eyelids but did not fall, and presently they dried there. She began to think what she could do. A wave of terror went over her. Perhaps she could go away – for a time. But in her heart of hearts she knew that if she went now she would never come back. She shrank at the thought. The world was wide, but it promised her loneliness, not freedom. She found that she was afraid of this promise.