Mingled With Venom

I will give my love a palace wherein she may be,

And she may unlock it without any key,

carolled Parsifal in a thin but not unpleasing tenor. He emerged in view of the startled women.

‘Good gracious me!’ exclaimed Diana, who was leaning on the wicket-gate while Romula stood like a ramrod outside it. ‘What on earth have you come back for?’

‘Ah,’ said Parsifal. He unshipped his haversack and opened it. ‘Blue sent you a sponge sandwich.’ He produced a package. ‘I daren’t go back with it after she made it especially for you.’

‘I bet that isn’t true,’ said Diana, taking the gift as Parsifal handed it over the gate and Romula stepped back. ‘Thank her, all the same. She’s a better cook than I am, Gunga Din.’

‘Since you are here, Parsifal,’ said Romula, ‘you may escort me home, or as near my house as your way takes you. I shall be glad of your company along the cliff-top. I had a very unpleasant experience on my way here. As I have told Diana, I nearly fell on to the rocks below the cliff.’

‘Indeed, Mrs Leyden? I am sorry to hear that,’ said Parsifal, preparing to follow her along the woodland path. ‘Missed your footing on the cliff-top, did you? I really think you would do well to take a companion when you go on these treacherous walks.’

‘It is not the walks which are treacherous, Parsifal.’

‘Landslides?’

‘I have not known of one in this part of the countryside.’

‘Then somebody in a hurry, perhaps, brushed against you in passing and upset your equilibrium a little. People can be very clumsy at times.’

‘Parsifal, I shall require you to protect me.’

‘Of course, Mrs Leyden.’

‘Dead! And never called me Mother!’ said Diana.

Romula turned on her as though she could have struck her. ‘If I am found dead at the bottom of the cliffs, I shall come back and haunt you. You are a strumpet,’ she said. ‘Come, Parsifal.’

Thankful that the uncomfortable interval was over, Parsifal followed her until the trees thinned and they were in the open. ‘You don’t really mean that you were attacked on your way over here, do you?’ he asked, falling in beside her.

‘I don’t know what else I mean. Which way did you come?’

‘By the hill path. It is more difficult than this route, but a good deal shorter and, of course, more easily reached from Seawards. I shall have to rejoin it later on. I must pick up some things at the hotel.’

‘Oh, well, that will do for me, too. I can telephone from there and tell Lunn to bring the car. I have had a shock, Parsifal.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘I was bending down to dig up a root of sea-pinks with my little trowel—I have a blue pot at home in which I thought the little plant would look well—when I was heavily struck by a human body and sent over the edge of the cliff.’

‘Some loutish holiday-maker who could not wait until there was room to pass.’

‘Nonsense! I was not impeding anyone. I was not on the path; but on the grass verge between the path and the cliff-edge.’

‘You might have been killed! Did you see anybody?’

‘Of course I did not. Fortunately I fell into a dip which arrested my descent, but of course I am neither of the age, the build or the physical power to be able to climb to the top again. Fortunately the cliff-path is a favourite haunt of the holiday walkers, so I thought that if I called out and continued to do so, in the end some passer-by was certain to hear me and either render assistance or go in search of it.’

‘And somebody came.’

‘After what seemed a considerable interval, yes. Of all people it turned out to be Garnet. He said he was out for his morning constitutional. I took this to mean that he was on his way to see Diana, but when, after he had climbed down and assisted me to the top, I told him that I myself was on my way to Campions, he must have thought it better to change his mind. He accompanied me through the woods as far as the Campions garden fence and then left me.’

‘You have had a lucky escape.’

‘Lucky do you call it?’

‘Miraculous, then. But surely it could not have been intended as an attack on you? It must have been either a sheer accident or dangerous, thoughtless horseplay.’

‘I have my ill-wishers, Parsifal. You reached Campions before I did, it seems. You were paying a return visit when we met.’

‘But, look!’ said Parsifal in an incredulous tone. ‘You’re not accusing me of pushing you over the edge of the cliff, are you? I came by the inland route, over the hill, as I told you. I was never on the cliff-top at all.’

‘If I thought you were my assailant, should I have asked for your escort on my homeward way? I wondered whether you had seen anybody in the woods, that is all. But, of course, you entered them from the other side, did you not?’

‘Yes, I saw nobody.’