by Mary Stewart
I found myself repeating, breathlessly, stupidly, in a whisper: "Roberta . . . Roberta. . . ."
The man directly in front of me was Alastair. He turned and gave me a quick, reassuring smile, and reached out a big hand to steady me up the slope.
"Don't go too near the edge, Janet. . . that's better. We'll soon get them now, if Dougal was right. These rescue chaps know every inch of the place, you know."
"But . . . Alastair"—exertion had made me only half articulate—"they can't be alive still. They must have— must be—"
"If they managed to creep into shelter, they could quite easily be alive, providing they weren't seriously hurt by a fall. It wasn't cold last night."
"Do you believe there were three of them?"
"Dougal Macrae isn't exactly given to flights of fancy," said Alastair.
"Are any of the local men missing?"
"I'm told not."
"Then, if there were three people, the third climber must be someone from the hotel. And nobody's missing from there either."
"Exactly so," said Alastair, in a blank noncommittal sort of voice.
"And if nobody from the hotel reported the accident, then it means—"
"Exactly so," said Alastair again. He paused and took my arm. Then with his free hand he pointed upwards, and a little to the right of where we were standing.
"That's where the bonfire was, that night," he said. Then he dropped my arm and addressed himself to the climb again.
I followed, numbly. Murder? Again? Who on earth would want to murder Marion and Roberta? It was absurd. But then what reason could there have been for the murder of Heather Macrae—and such a murder? But again (I told myself) between the two incidents there could be no possible similarity. The disappearance of two climbers was, if not normal, at any rate not tainted with the fantastic, almost ritual air of the other death. Or was it? When we found the bodies. . . .
I pushed the wet hair back from my face with an unsteady hand, and looked up.
The men ahead had stopped climbing, and were gathered on the edge of the gully at the point where the waterfall leaped its final hundred feet or so from the upper cliff. Someone was pointing downwards. Ropes were being uncoiled.
I hauled myself up the last step of rock and paused. Then I walked slowly forward to join them.
I was afraid, horribly afraid. I felt that no power on earth would make me look down over that edge of rock to see Roberta staring up at me with sightless eyes, with her throat cut like that of Marcia's silken doll, and the bright blood splashed into pink by the rain, crawling between the clumps of blossoming thrift.
But it appeared that no sign of either Roberta or Marion had yet been seen, though anxious eyes scanned the depths of the black gully. Dougal Macrae pointed out to the rest of the men the place where he had seen the climbers—he had not, it is true, seen them actually on the cliff, but they were making for it at an angle which suggested that they intended either to climb on the face of the Spout itself or to cross above the fall by the upper rocks.
Roderick Grant turned his head and saw me, and came over, tugging a battered pack of cigarettes from some inner pocket. He handed me one, and we lit up—no easy process this, as the force of the gusty wind had not appreciably diminished.
"What are they going to do?" I asked anxiously.
"If Dougal's right, and they were starting to climb across the Spout, then the first move is to do the same climb. There may be some traces in the rocks above the gully, or the climbers may be able to see down below the fall." "Did you get this far last night?"
"Yes, but of course it was no use in the dark. All we could do was shout."
I looked down into the cleft, where the white water leaped and wrangled. The sides of the gully gleamed and dripped, the hanging tufts of fern and heather tossing in the currents of wind that roared up the cleft like air in a wind tunnel. With each gust the water of the fall was blown back, and flattened in its own spray against the rock. The echo was uncanny.
I shivered, and then looked up again at the grim pitch above us. "Is it a very bad place to climb?"
He was grave. "It's pretty bad for anyone, and for a beginner it's—well, it's sheer lunacy."
"Can the men get down into the gully if they—if they have to?" I asked fearfully.
"Oh, yes. Beagle says he'll go, and Rhodri MacDowell is going with him. He's a local chap and a pretty good climber."
I peered down again into the echoing depths. "Doesn't the gully flatten out farther down the mountain? I mean, couldn't they start down there, and work their way up the bottom of it?"
"This is quicker. It would take hours to work up from below. The stream goes down in leaps, you see—anything from seven to twenty feet at a time. It's much simpler to go straight down here."
Operations were beginning at the foot of the cliff. Three of the men, of whom Beagle was one, were roping themselves together, preparatory to making the climb across the Spout. The rest of the group had split up, and small parties of men seemed to be casting back along the hillside, among the smaller clefts and fissures in the scree.
"What do we do?" I asked Roderick.
"I should wait here. If they do find them, injured, you might be able to help." He smiled at me reassuringly. "The odds aren't quite as bad as they look, Janet. It won't be long before we have them safely back at the hotel."
Then he was gone, and I was left with Alma Corrigan and the little group of men who remained to watch the climb across the gully.
Chapter 10
I DON'T PRETEND TO KNOW ANYTHING about the art of rock-climbing. The three men who were climbing out across the face of the Sputan Dhu were all, it appeared, experts at the job; and indeed, they moved so easily and smoothly on the rock that it was hard to believe the traverse was as dangerous as Roderick had made out.
I had gone farther up the scree to a point near the start of the climb, and sat, watching and nervously smoking, while the three climbers moved steadily, turn and turn about, across the wet cliff. The route they followed took them at a steep angle up the rock face, at one point straddling the narrow cleft above the spout of water. Even to my ignorant eyes it was obvious that the wet rock and gusty wind must add considerably to the risks of the climb, but the climbers appeared unaffected by the conditions. Ronald Beagle was first on the rope, leading with a smooth precision that was beautiful to watch. The other two, Rhodri MacDowell and a lad called Iain, were members of the local rescue team. All three—it seemed to me—took the climb very slowly, with long pauses between each man's move, when, I imagine, they were looking for traces of the other climbers. They gave no sign, however, of having found any, but moved on, unhurriedly, up and across the dreadful gap.
Dougal Macrae said, just behind me: "That's a bonny climber."
Ronald Beagle was halfway up what looked like a perpendicular slab of gleaming rock—a hideously exposed pitch, as the slab was set clear above the gully. He climbed rhythmically and easily, making for the next stance, which was an intilted ledge some fifteen feet above him.
"I think he's wonderful," I said warmly. "I don't know anything about climbing, but it looks uncommonly tricky to me."
"It's a very nasty place," said Dougal. "And that bit that Mr. Beagle is on now—that is the worst." "It looks like it."
"He must be right out over the gully. Ah, he's up. He's belaying now."
Beagle had swung himself easily onto the ledge, and was busy looping himself in some way to a jut of rock beside him. Then he turned and called down something to the men below. I couldn't hear what it was, but he must have been telling them to wait, for neither of them moved from their stances. Beagle turned to face outwards and, crouching in the support of the belayed rope, he bent to peer down into the gully.
I cried out involuntarily: "But they can't be down there, Mr. Macrae! It's impossible!"
He looked somberly down over his pipe. "If they fell from yon piece of rock that's where they'll be."
"That's what I mean." I fumbled wit
h chilled fingers for another cigarette. "They'd never have crossed that piece of rock. That girl, Roberta Symes—she'd never have tackled a climb like that. She'd never climbed before!"
His brows drew down. "D'ye say so?"
"That's what she told us. And Miss Bradford was apparently a good climber. She'd never have let Roberta try this route—surely she wouldn't!"
"No. You'd think not." He raised troubled eyes again to the dangerous pitch. "No. But it was for this place they were making when I saw them. It did look indeed as if they were planning to cross the Sputan Dhu—ah, they've moved again."
Rhodri MacDowell, the middle man, was now on Beagle's ledge, while Beagle himself was out of sight round an overhang which beeded over the far side of the gully. Iain, who was last on the rope, was moving up.
I dragged on my cigarette with a nervous movement, and shifted on the wet stone. "I—I wonder if they've seen anything—down there?" The words, tremulous and reluctant, were snatched into nothing by the wet wind.
"We'll hope ye're right, and that they'd never let the lassie try the place. It may be—"
"They?" I turned on him quickly. "It was you who said there were three climbers, wasn't it? I suppose you couldn't have made a mistake, could you? You're really sure about it?"
"Oh, aye." The soft voice was decisive. "There were three, sure enough."
"And the third one—was it a man or a woman?"
"I don't know. At that distance I could not tell very much about them, and nowadays all the ladies wear trousers on the hill, it seems. There was not anything I could be picking out, except that the middle one had a red jacket on."
"That would be Miss Symes," I said, and remembered with a pang how the scarlet windbreaker had suited Roberta's bright Dutch-doll face and black hair.
"It would make it easy enough to find her now, you'd think," said Dougal.
"I—I suppose so." The second climber had disappeared now. The rope gleamed in a pale penciled line across the overhang to where Iain was working his way up to the ledge. He gained it presently, and belayed. I heard him call something and soon Ronald Beagle reappeared some way beyond him, making for what looked like the end of the climb, a widish ledge above the scree at the far side of the gully, from which the descent was only an easy scramble.
In a very few minutes more all three climbers had foregathered on the ledge, and seemed to be holding some sort of a conference. The people on our side of the gully, Alma Corrigan, Dougal Macrae, myself, and the handful of men who had not gone to search the scree slopes, watched in stony silence, frozen into a dismal set piece of foreboding. I sat there with my forgotten cigarette burning one-sidedly between wet fingers, stupidly straining eyes and ears to interpret the distant sounds and*gestures of the men's conversation.
Dougal said suddenly: "I think they must have seen something in the gully."
"No," I said, and then again, foolishly, as if I could somehow push the truth further away from me, "no."
"Rhodri MacDowell is pointing. I thought he had seen something when he was on the cliff."
I blinked against the wet wind, and saw that one of the men was, indeed, gesturing back towards the gully. The three of them had disengaged themselves from the rope, and now began to make a rapid way down the scree towards the far side of the gully. There was about them a purposeful air that gave Dougal's guess the dismal ring of truth.
Then Alma Corrigan turned abruptly from the little group nearby, and strode across to us.
"They're down there," she announced baldly.
I just stared at her, unable to speak, but I got stiffly to my feet. Behind her the hotel proprietor, Bill Persimmon, said quickly: "We don't know for certain, but it does seem as if they've seen something."
"Ye'll be going down the gully men," said Dougal Macrae.
"I suppose so." Bill Persimmon turned back to watch the climbers' approach.
Behind us we heard the rasp and slither of boots on wet heather. Nicholas came down the slope, with Roderick not far in the rear. Nicholas's eyes, narrowed against the rain, were intent on Beagle as he approached the opposite side of the gully.
"It's time someone else took a turn," he said abruptly. "If they've been seen in the gully, I'll go down. What about you, Bill?"
"I think," began Major Persimmon, "that perhaps we ought—"
"Did they see anything down there?" Roderick's voice cut anxiously across his. "We came back because it looked as if—we thought—" He saw my face, and stopped; then he came over quickly to stand beside me, giving me a little smile of reassurance.
But I shook my head at it. "I'm afraid they did," I said under my breath. "Dougal says one of the men saw something."
"Yes. Rhodri. We saw him pointing. I'm very much afraid—" He stopped again, and bit his underlip. "Why don't you go back to the hotel, Janet?"
"Good Lord," I said, almost savagely, "don't worry about me. I'm all right."
And now the three climbers were at the edge of the gully. Beagle's voice came gustily across the fitful noises of wind and water.
".. . Below the pool. . . couldn't really see... might be ... a leg. . . going down now. .. ."
I sat down again, rather suddenly, on my stone. I think I was surprised that, now it had happened, I felt no horror, only numbness. The small things—the sluggish misery of wet shoes, the chilly drizzle, my handkerchief sodden in my coat pocket—each petty detail of discomfort seemed in turn to nag at my attention, and fix it, dazedly, upon myself. I suppose it is one kind of automatic defense; it may be a variety of shock; at any rate I just sat there, dumbly working my fingers into my damp gloves, while all round me preparations were made for the final horror of discovery.
Beagle and Rhodri MacDowell went down after all. To me, watching them with that same detached, almost childish interest, it seemed an amazing operation. They were so incredibly quick. Beagle was still shouting his information across the gully when Rhodri and the lad Iain had thrown the rope over a little pylon of rock that jutted up beside them. The ends of the doubled rope snaked down into the depths, touched bottom, and hung there. Rhodri said something to Iain, heaved the rope somehow between his legs and over his shoulder, and then simply walked backwards over the cliff. He backed down it rapidly, leaning out, as it were, against the rope that acted as a sliding cradle. It looked simple—and crazy. I must have made some kind of exclamation, because, beside me, Roderick gave a little laugh.
"It's called abseiling. ..." He himself was busy with a rope. "Quite a normal method of descent, and much the quickest. . .. No, Bill, I'll go. We'll shout up fast enough if we want reinforcements."
Rhodri had vanished. The boy Iain stayed by the spike of rock that anchored the rope, and Beagle was already on his way down. Nicholas turned back from the edge.
"I'm coming down," he said briefly.
Roderick, bending to anchor his own rope, shot him a swift upward look and hesitated. "You? I didn't know you climbed."
"No?" said Nicholas, not very pleasantly. Roderick's eyes flickered, but he merely said, mildly enough: "I'd better go first, perhaps."
And as quickly as Rhodri—and rather more smoothly —he was gone. Nicholas watched him down, with his back squarely turned to me where I sat huddled on my wet stone. Then, at a shout from below, he, too, laid hold of the ropes, and carefully lowered himself over the edge.
The little group of waiting men had moved forward to the brink of the gully, and once more there was about them, peering down into the echoing depths, that air of foreboding that gradually freezes through dread to certainty. I got up and moved to join them.
And almost at once a shout came from below—a wordless sound whose message was nevertheless hideously clear. I started forward, and felt Dougal Macrae's big hand close on my arm.
"Steady now!"
"He's found them!" 1 cried.
"Aye, I think so."
Major Persimmon was kneeling at the gully's edge; there were further exchanges of shouting, which the wind swept into
nothingness. Then the group of men broke from its immobility into rapid and practiced activity, two more of the local rescue team preparing to descend, while the main party made off at some speed down the scree.
"Where are they going?"
"For the stretchers," said Dougal.
I suppose hope dies hard. My passionate hope, and my ignorance, between them, made me blind to his tone, and to the expressions of the other men. I pulled myself eagerly out of his grip, starting forward to the edge of the gully.
"Stretchers? They're alive? Can they possibly be still alive?"
Then I saw what was at the bottom of the gully. Beagle and Nicholas were carrying it between them, slowly making their awkward way across the slabs that funneled the rush of water. And there was no possible misapprehension about the burden that they were hauling from the fringes of the cascade.... I had forgotten that a dead body would be stiff, locked like some grotesque wood carving in the last pathetic posture of death. Navy trousers, blue jacket smeared and soaked almost to black, filthy yellow mittens on horror-splayed fingers .. . Marion Bradford. But it was no longer Marion Bradford; it was a hideous wooden doll that the men held between them, a doll whose head dangled loosely from a lolling neck....
I went very quietly back to my stone, and sat down, staring at my feet.
Even when the stretchers came, I did not move. There was nothing I could do, but I somehow shrank from going back to the hotel now, alone—and Alma Corrigan showed no disposition to leave the place. So I stayed where I was, smoking too hard and looking away from the gully, along the grey flank of the mountain, while from behind me came the sounds of the rescue that was a rescue no longer. The creak and scrape of rope; a soft rush of Gaelic; grunts of effort; a call from Roderick, strained and distant; Beagle's voice, lifted in a sharp shout; Major Persimmon's, nearby, saying "What? My God!" then another splutter of Gaelic close beside me— this time so excited that I stirred uneasily and then looked round.
It was Dougal who had exclaimed. He and Major Persimmon were on their knees side by side, peering down into the gully. I heard Persimmon say again: "My God!" and then the two men got slowly to their feet, eyeing one another.