‘Move.’ The voice in her ear was accompanied by a shove which took her whole body in the direction of the doorway.
Only too keen to cooperate, Fran stumbled forward, kept upright by the force of the body pressed against hers, her direction of movement mostly determined by the arm clamped around her head and mouth. The voice in her ear was unrecognizable, so low that it could have belonged to a person of either sex, but she knew that her captor must be Monica Roche, the woman she had lured here with her anonymous note. A dangerous woman she had thought to outwit. What a stupid, stupid thing to do!
What, if anything, she wondered, could the others see as she and Miss Roche emerged from the grotto and into the clearing? A light breeze had begun to rustle through the trees, masking the sound of their feet. Would any of the others even be watching the entrance to the grotto at that particular moment and, if they were, how much would they be able to make out of the two dark figures against an even darker background?
They were out in the open now, moving unsteadily across the clearing, with not a sign that any of her companions in tomfoolery had noticed them. But perhaps that was a good thing? One shout or sudden move from anyone and Monica could make good her threat, without greatly delaying her subsequent escape into the woods.
Though she had only passed that way a handful of times, Fran recognized the gentle downward incline of the track they were taking. Soon they would reach the wider path which ran between the terrace and the clifftop shelter. The path along which Monica had pushed old Mr Edgerton to his death. With a sickening sense of certainty, she understood what her captor intended. Miss Roche must have assumed, just as she had intended, that the blackmail note had come from Miss Billington. She had made her way to the rendezvous early – had perhaps been waiting there for hours – ready to seize the governess the instant she walked in. And she still thinks that I’m Miss Billington, thought Fran. It’s too dark for her to see, otherwise and she never gave me a chance to say anything, which would have given the game away at once. She thinks that getting rid of Miss Billington will put her in the clear. Imogen may know something but no one ever takes any notice of Imogen. Miss Roche thinks that if Miss Billington has an accident – just like old Mr Edgerton – and there are no witnesses and no apparent suspicious circumstances, then she will still be in the clear.
The plan to trap Monica Roche had seemed so clever and the Edgertons had fostered her vanity in it, all of them convinced that she had some sort of genius for solving mysteries and therefore willingly embracing her ideas for providing the evidence that was needed. (The very fact that Monica Roche had answered the anonymous summons was compromising, but Fran had also hoped to involve her in an incriminating conversation in the hearing of her hidden witnesses.) Only now, when it was far too late, did Fran appreciate the degree to which the whole enterprise had been fraught with personal risk. Hadn’t Tom and Mo both warned her repeatedly about getting herself into dangerous situations? Well, in a very few minutes, she would be literally poised between the devil and the deep blue sea, and she couldn’t see any possible way out. As the sound of the breakers at the foot of the cliff grew louder she vainly strained her ears for any sign of the rest of the party, who were presumably still staking out the grotto, in the mistaken belief that she was safely waiting inside.
If only she could get Miss Roche talking, she might be able to persuade her of the pointlessness of shoving another individual off the edge of the cliff by explaining that as the individual in question was but one of half a dozen people who now knew the truth, it would be far better to spare herself the trouble of a second murder and focus instead on making good an escape; but her captor’s hand still silenced her and she was afraid that any attempt to struggle would lead to Miss Roche fulfilling her threat. Cutting her intended victim’s throat on the path would be messy, and the discovery of a murdered governess would lead to a great many more questions than another death from a fall, but even so Miss Roche had no way of knowing that she would be suspected. So far as she was concerned, the meeting in the grotto was a secret known to herself and Miss Billington alone.
Fran’s eyes had long since grown accustomed to the dark, so she was aware that they had joined the main path from the terrace. To her right she could make out the shapes of the trees which grew in the garden below, and ahead of her she became aware of the pale nothingness where the land ended in a drop of perhaps eighty to a hundred feet. The sound of the water washing over the unforgiving rocks at the foot of the cliffs was growing louder. She knew she had to do something before they reached the edge, for Monica Roche was a tall, strongly built woman. In a pushing and shoving contest, which relied on physical strength, the smaller woman would inevitably come off second best.
Fran began to inch her hand towards her coat pocket. Her small torch was a puny sort of weapon, but perhaps it was better than nothing.
‘Stop! Who’s there?’
A figure seemed to rear up out of nowhere on the path ahead of them. Fran was so startled that she let out a muffled squeak of shock. Monica Roche seemed equally at a loss, jerking to a halt and in the next moment shoving Fran forward so hard that she cannoned into Henrietta Edgerton and sent them both flailing to the ground. Miss Roche took the opportunity to turn tail and race headlong back the way she had come, but within seconds the sound of her progress came to an abrupt halt and was replaced by muffled cries and the sounds of a struggle.
‘Look out!’ Fran cried. ‘She’s got a knife.’
‘Never fear.’ Hen’s voice was remarkably calm under the circumstances. ‘She’ll be no match for Eddie and Roly. Come on, let me help you up. Are you all right? You know,’ she added as she reached out a hand and hauled Fran to her feet, ‘it sounds like quite a scrap. I think we might be needed after all.’
Henrietta set off at a sprint to cover the twenty yards or so which separated them from her brothers, while Fran – who had never run towards ‘a scrap’ in her life – hastened after her. They arrived to find a dark jumble of figures scuffled on the ground and it did indeed require the effort of all of them to subdue Nurse Roche, who had already been forcibly disarmed, though not before she had managed to strike a couple of blows at Roly, which were fortunately mitigated by his tweed jacket and thick Aran knit jersey. Matters were eventually brought to a halt when, having been comprehensively pinned down, the woman on the ground simply stopped struggling.
‘Now then,’ said Roly, ‘you may as well come back willingly with us and wait at the house for the police. Otherwise we’ll just have to keep you out here in the cold until reinforcements arrive.’
‘Very well. Kindly stop shining that torch in my face and I’ll do as you say and come quietly.’ Fran was astonished to note that Miss Roche spoke in the same dispassionate tone she had employed in the teashop. Apart from being a little out of breath, no one could have guessed that she had just been involved in a life-and-death struggle.
Henrietta, who had switched on her torch, obediently swung the beam away from their captive and in doing so, saw a red stain on Roly’s sleeve. ‘You’re bleeding,’ she said.
‘It’s only a scratch,’ said Roly. ‘But someone had better go on ahead to telephone for Dr Deacon, as well as the police. You never know, it might need stitching.’
‘To the charge sheet of murder and attempted arson, we’d better add malicious wounding,’ commented Eddie, as he and Roly cautiously relinquished their holds enough to allow Monica Roche to get to her feet.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Fran said, turning to Henrietta, ‘is how you managed to get ahead of me on the path?’
‘Oh, that was easy. As soon as I spotted you coming out of the grotto, I knew that something must have gone wrong. Then I realized that it wasn’t one person, but two, very close together, and I guessed that whoever had hold of you might be armed, so I signalled to the boys to follow at a distance. Once I saw that you were definitely headed for the edge of the cliffs, I knew I had to risk intervening. Don’t forget that we grew up in these woods, stalking and tracking one another. We often played here after dark. I know all the short cuts.’
‘In addition to which,’ Eddie put in, ‘Hen won the cup for the hundred-yard sprint at her school three years in a row, so she can easily outflank anyone if she puts her mind to it.’
The brothers had positioned themselves one to either side of Miss Roche, taking her arms in readiness to frogmarch her back to the house.
‘One moment,’ Miss Roche said. ‘I think my shoe has half come off. Let me straighten it.’
She moved with surprising agility for such a large woman, twisting away from her captors as soon as they relaxed their restraint on her and dashing back the way they had come. The benefit of surprise had given her a yard or two on them, but not for nothing had Henrietta won that silver cup. She drew level with Miss Roche within a few strides and attempted to arrest her progress, while the other woman forged on towards the cliff edge, dragging Henrietta with her like a terrier clinging to a rag.
‘Hen, be careful!’ Roly’s warning rang out in the same moment as Monica Roche shrieked and disappeared, leaving a single slim figure silhouetted against the sky.
Fran was the first to reach the place. She put out a hand and realized that Henrietta was shaking.
‘Oh my God,’ Henrietta whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to push her over.’
‘That isn’t what happened,’ Fran said firmly. ‘If you hadn’t let go and pushed her away, you would have gone over too. She meant to take you with her.’
‘But …’
‘There is no but. I believe that she fully intended to jump. She knew the other alternative was the hangman’s rope. When you caught up with her, she thought she would take one more Edgerton with her – a final act of revenge.’