Danger Point Read Online Free PDF Page B

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