darkest drinking moods, he saw his life like that: superior intelligence and achievement that went unrewarded, while the world carped about his credit rating and his marital problems. He wondered if his much-contemplated actions were about to change his luck or whether the deed would only prove to make his spiritual refuse heap so much the greater. He reminded himself that this was not the time for philosophy.
“You’d think there’d be a better way up here than that stupid iron ladder!” Susan Cohen’s voice floated up to them several moments before her scowling face appeared at the top rung. She heaved herself onto the flat rock floor of the mined chapel and looked around while she caught her breath. “No barriers!” she exclaimed, edging forward to peer over the precipice. “That’s negligence if I ever saw it. If somebody fell off this thing, whoever owns this could get sued for a bundle.”
“We are up here at our own risk,” said Rowan. He hoped that Mr. Kosminski would not be crass enough to recoup his assassin’s fee by suing the landowner of the rock. It was definitely a consideration, but unfortunately for Rowan’s scruples, his time was running out and he could not afford to be overly fastidious in his choice of methods. “Walk around a bit,” he said to Susan. “The views are quite spectacular.”
Elizabeth MacPherson crept up the ladder, resolutely refusing to look down. She eased her way out onto the barren rock in a posture that was somewhere between a crawl and a catatonic seizure. “This is intense,” she managed to whisper. “And there’s nothing below us but rocks, whichever way you fall.” She edged her way to the one wall of the chapel that was still standing and sat with her back to it, gripping a small outcrop of rock and taking slow deep breaths while she mustered her composure.
Susan seemed undisturbed by the imminence of death. She ambled around the tiny square of rock as if it were the interior of a gift shop. “This is a funny place for a chapel,” she announced. “Like they wanted to look down on everybody. You know that Father Brown story called ‘The Hammer of God’? According to him…”
Rowan Rover, who had been standing next to the ladder, suddenly moved in behind Susan. Furtively he took in the positions of everyone else. The group down below were talking among themselves and weren’t looking up at the rock anymore. Charles Warren, still at the base of the iron ladder, was out of the line of sight. Maud Marsh and Nancy Warren were on the eastern edge of the precipice, watching the schoolyard soccer game. Fortunately the position of the afternoon sun meant that the people in the schoolyard could not clearly see the top of the rock. Elizabeth MacPherson seemed to be taking in the scenery or recovering from the shock of the heights; at any rate, she was oblivious to her companions.
He edged in closer to Susan, so that he was standing beside her, but a few inches back, out of her range of vision. They were six inches from the rock floor’s ending in open space. He felt his stomach turn over as the wind touched him, reminding him of the emptiness beyond. Moving his arms slowly, so as not to attract attention, he maneuvered himself behind Susan, preparing to give her a fatal shove in her back and send her plummeting over the edge. He put his left foot forward and shifted his weight onto that foot as he leaned out, palms upright, ready to deliver the coup de grace.
Rowan pushed.
Susan moved.
The soccer game had caught her attention and, in the last split second, she moved sideways along the rock to get a better view of the playing field. Rowan Rover, hands outstretched and braced for a collision, found himself pushing molecules of air that were only too willing to step aside.
Rowan Rover pitched forward into the welcoming abyss, with an obscenity caught in his throat. His mind, which was racing in overdrive, was considering all the Famous Last Words entries in reference books. If the anthologists were to be believed, people never seemed to say “Oh shit!” as their ultimate utterance, but he was willing to bet that in accidents, that phrase topped the list of final remarks. In his terror-driven brain, properties like gravity and inertia had switched to slow motion and there seemed to be endless time left to contemplate his life-and various other philosophical points of interest. And, he reflected, if he did go to hell, he might be able to find out who Jack the Ripper actually was. A tempting prospect. He wondered if he could come back as a ghost and taunt Donald Rumblelow with the information.
As he reached a horizontal position, with a clear view of the underbrush, the rocks, and eternity, something stopped his forward catapult, so that instead of diving into space, he slammed against the edge of Roche Rock and dangled in a dizzying jackknife position halfway over the side. The obscenity lodged in his throat managed to find its way out, meandered for a short jaunt up into his nasal passages, and finally emerged triumphantly through his open jaws, leading a parade of expelled air for maximum volume. Fortunately, perhaps, for the schoolboys’ innocent ears, the word was lost amid the general screams on the precipice.
The pain of incipient bruises coursed through his body on the way to his whirling brain, and he had to sift through injury, fright, and bewilderment to ascertain why he wasn’t plummeting to his death. A further check of his senses told him that someone was holding onto his leg. Shortly thereafter he noted that he was being shouted at.
“Hold on to something, Rowan! Somebody! Help!” Elizabeth MacPherson, thought Rowan idly. Amazing that her reflexes were that good and that she could manage to hold on to him. All those shopping forays must have strengthened her grip. Obligingly, he grabbed the rock. It was shortly thereafter that he lost his celestial objectivity about the situation and began to grip the rock until his knuckles whitened, bellowing to be pulled up.
A moment later he felt another weight on his legs, very like someone sitting down on them. It secured his attachment to the rock, but did nothing to remove him from his dangling position off the side.
He heard Nancy Warren say, “I’ve got him. Where’s Charles?”
An out-of-breath masculine voice responded. “Here! I’ve got his feet. You grab his shoulders to steady him, Nancy!”
“It’s all right, Rowan,” called Elizabeth MacPherson. “It was lucky for you that I was coming over to ask you something about Constance Kent; otherwise I’d never have caught you in time.”
As they hoisted him back over the rim of the rock, Rowan heard Susan Cohen saying, “You’re not such a mountain goat after all, are you, Rowan?”
He closed his eyes and vowed to get safely down from Roche Rock, if only for the pleasure of seeing Susan Cohen dead and silenced.
– THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
CHAPTER 11
CORNWALL
THE ONE FORTUNATE aspect of the entire incident was that no one seemed to have noticed that Rowan had been attempting to push Susan at the time he fell. He told them that he had suffered a dizzy spell from the heights. Their concern for his health assured him that there were no suspicions to the contrary. Aside from bruised knees and a few minor scrapes, he found that he was quite uninjured and, fearful of losing another chance at Susan, he insisted that the tour continue uninterrupted.
On his instructions Bernard continued to drive down the length of Cornwall to a picturesque castle across the inlet from Falmouth. St. Mawes, a military fortification rather than a residence, was built by Henry VIII as part of his chain of coastal defenses. Its massive guns protected Carrick Roads, still used as a berthing for oceangoing vessels.
