Chapter 7

WHY did he marry her?”

She hadn’t meant to ask him that, but it was what she had always wanted to know. There was a portrait of Lydia in the long gallery, the last and least of all the portraits there. A dull, pale girl in a dull, pale dress. Why had Dale married her – Dale? She looked earnestly at Rafe.

He said in a lively voice, “Oh, didn’t you know? She got him on the rebound. Alicia had just thrown him over and married Rowland Steyne.”

Lisle tingled from head to foot. No – she hadn’t known. She sat up straight, her hands numb and cold from the stone coping.

He laughed.

“So you didn’t know? What a chump Dale is! Now when I get married, which God forbid, I shall spend my honeymoon recounting all my previous love affairs down to the last detail. You see the idea? I shall enjoy myself, because after all everyone does like talking about himself, and the wretched girl will be so bored that she’ll never want to hear about them again. Brilliant – isn’t it? Of course Dale’s list would be a longer one than mine, because for one thing he has two years’ start of me – and then women always have fallen for him. Odd, isn’t it, when I’m so much more attractive? And Dale doesn’t even notice they’re doing it half the time. Did he ever tell you about the Australian widow who threw a water-jug at his head?… No? Well, perhaps not. It’s rather a rude story.”

Lisle had herself in hand again. She said,

“Don’t be silly.”

“Honey-sweet, she wasn’t my widow. Far from me be it – a terrific female.” He rolled about fifteen r’s.

She took no notice.

“Rafe – tell me about Lydia – about the accident. You see, I can’t ask Dale, and if people say things – it seems so stupid if I don’t know.”

“So people have been saying things?” He laughed again. “They will, and they do, and you can’t stop them. I’m not at all sure that your best line isn’t the blushing, innocent, nitwit bride.”

“Really, Rafe!”

“It’s a good lay, and no tax upon the intellect. You know, my sweet, there is something rather nice and innocent about you – a please-don’t-hurt-me-I’m-only-a-poor-strayed-angel sort of touch which might be quite good at quenching the darts of the poison tongues. And if you’ve got a good lay, what I say is, stick to it.”

“I do wish you’d stop talking nonsense and tell me what I want to know.”

“What do you want to know?”

She beat her hands together.

“About the accident – about Lydia.”

His voice changed just perceptibly.

“My sweet, there’s so little to tell.”

“I want to know how it happened – I want to know who was there. Were you there?”

“We were all there, a whole party of us. But as to how it happened” – a shoulder twiched – “well, that’s asking. Everyone asked. No one could answer. So there we were, and there we are. I don’t think I should ask Dale about it if I were you.”

There was indignation in her voice as she said,

“I wasn’t going to! I was asking you. And you don’t tell me – you keep trying to put me off. And it’s no good – I’m going on until you do tell me.”

“Desperate challenge!” Rafe said at his sweetest. “Well, strayed angel, what do you want to know?”

“Who was there. You say, ‘We were all there.’ Who is we?”

“ Dale, Lydia, Alicia and Rowland Steyne, some people called Mallam, and me. Lydia ’s dead, Rowland’s dead, and the male Mallam is dead. That leaves Dale, Alicia, and the female Mallam, and me. Why don’t you go and have a heart-to-heart with Alicia? She’d love it.”

“I want to know what happened. It’s no good, Rafe – I shall just go on until you tell me.”

He made a queer wide gesture with his hands.

“But I’ve told you. There isn’t anything more. Lydia fell over the cliff and was killed.”

She repeated his words in a horrified tone.

“She fell over a precipice? What do you mean? That sounds… Was she climbing?”

“Climbing – Lydia? My poor child, that would have been murder! Any jury in the world would have hanged anyone who took Lydia climbing. We all had one look at her doing a thing like a six-inch anthill and swore off taking her anywhere off the beaten track.”

“Then how was she killed?”

“She fell off the beaten track,” said Rafe in an airy tone.

Lisle gazed at him. Only one word came to her, and that one stuck in her throat.

“How?”

“Well, that’s what everybody wondered. We were all straggled out, you know, and nobody saw what happened. There was quite a wide path – hill going up on one side and down the other – a long way down. Lots of wild flowers about, and the path winding all the time. The girls were picking the flowers. Lydia might have leaned over too far. She might have turned giddy on the edge, or she might have slipped. Everybody heard her scream, but nobody saw her go. When I got to the place, Dale was looking over the edge and Alicia was having hysterics as far away from it as she could get. The Mallams were arriving from the opposite direction.” He shrugged again. “Well, there you have it. I suppose it was the Mallam woman who struck her claws into you yesterday. Dale told me Marian Crane had asked her down.” His laugh had a spice of malice. “Perhaps that’s why he found he had to go to Birmingham.”

She spoke at once and breathlessly.

“Why do you say that? Rafe, why do you say that?”

“Because she’s that sort of woman. As you’ve met her-”

“I haven’t – I didn’t – I only heard her speak. I was on the other side of a hedge. She said something horrid about Dale.”

“Quite likely. Voice like a wasp in a treacle pot, all drawl and sting?”

She could not help a faint laugh, but a shiver cut it short.

“Yes – exactly like that. Rafe, you are clever.”

“Of course I am. ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.’ Another of my apposite quotations. Hits us off to a T, doesn’t it?”

Lisle was suddenly cold. She remembered the little woman in the train who had quoted Tennyson – Miss Maud Silver, Private Investigations – and an address in London.

Rafe said, “I shouldn’t upset myself over Aimée Mallam if I were you. Another quotation on the way – ‘Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.’ She chucked herself at Dale, and he never knew which side of the street she was on, so there was quite a spot of hell fury knocking about.” He put an arm round her and pulled her up. “Come along, its getting late. Dale will be thinking we’ve eloped.”

They came into the large square hall. It was one of the places that Lisle hated. A mid-eighteenth-century Jerningham, fresh from the Grand Tour, had converted the beautiful Elizabethan hall with its oak stairway and mellow panelling into a cold mortuary chamber paved with marble slabs and watched by chilly statues. Pretentious steps of black and white marble led to a half-landing presided over by a rather horrifying group which portrayed Actæon torn by his hounds. To right and left the stair went on to join a gallery which ran round three sides of the hall. More marble, more statues – a headless Medusa – a bust of Nero – a copy of the Laocoon – the Dying Gladiator. Lisle thought Mr. Augustus Jerningham must have had a depressing predilection for the macabre.

As she went slowly up towards the landing, Alicia came down. She had changed into a soft white chiffon dress, wide-skirted and frilled almost to the waist. Except for the narrow black velvet sash, she might have been an eighteen year old débutante. The dark, cloudy curls were drawn back into a demure cluster at the nape of the neck. She smiled up at Lisle and went on down into the hall without speaking.

Lisle went past the hounds and their slavering jaws, and Actæon with his tortured face, and along the right-hand gallery to her bedroom. She felt a sudden urge to change, to brush her hair until it shone, to put on her prettiest dress. Something in Alicia’s smile made her feel like that. She threw off the rainbow coat, dropping it carelessly over a chair and liking herself better without it. The soft green of her linen dress was all right, but the greens and reds and yellows of the coat were too strong for her colouring. They gave her skin a washed-out look and made her hair seem pale instead of fair. She thought, “I was stupid to get it – I’ll give it away,” and as the words went through her mind she heard Dale call her name.