Chapter 45

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.”

“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-”