No answer came to my repeated calls and, by now, I was getting really rattled.
At the end of one of the garden paths I discovered a gate that stood ajar. Beyond the gate was a narrow path that led upwards to the top of the hill that rose above the villa. Could she have gone that way? I wondered. I decided I wasn’t going to sit around in the hope she would turn up. This path appeared to be the only other exit from the villa. I knew I couldn’t have missed her on the walk up from Sorrento. There was a chance she had gone for a walk along this path and had either forgotten the time or had met with some kind of an accident.
I hurried back to the villa to leave a note in case she happened to be still in Sorrento and I had somehow missed her. I didn’t want her to go rushing back to Sorrento if she returned from there, and not find me at the villa.
I found some beaded notepaper in one of the drawers in the desk and scribbled a brief note, which I left on the table of the lounge; then I left the villa and walked fast along the garden path-to the gate.
I had walked for perhaps a quarter of a mile and was beginning to think that Helen couldn’t have possibly come this way when I saw below me, built into the hill face, a big white villa. It was in the most inaccessible place I have ever seen for a house to be built in. There was only a flight of steep steps leading from the cliff head down to the villa. The only practical way of reaching the place was by sea. I wasn’t interested in the villa and I didn’t even pause, but I looked at it as I continued my way along the winding path. I could see a big terrace with a table, lounging chairs and a big red umbrella. Down a flight of steps, I could see a harbour in which were moored two powerful motor-boats. As I Walked on, I wondered who the millionaire could be who owned such a place. I hadn’t walked more than three hundred yards before the villa was completely blotted out of my mind, for lying directly in my path was Helen’s camera case.
I recognized it immediately and I stopped short, my heart skipping a beat.
For a long moment I stared at it; then, moving forward, I stooped to pick it up. There was no doubt that it was hers. Apart from the shape and the newness of the pigskin leather, there were her initials on the cover flap in gold. The case was empty.
Holding the case in my hand, I hurried on. Another fifty yards further on the path suddenly twisted at right angles, and cut away inland into a thick wood that covered the last quarter of a mile to the top of the hill.
The right-angle bend in the path brought the path dangerously close to the overhang and, pausing there, I looked down the sheer hillside at the sea that lapped against the massive boulders some two hundred feet below.
I drew in my breath sharply as I caught sight of something white that lay, half-submerged in the sea and was sprawled out like a broken doll on the rocks.
I stood transfixed, peering down, my heart thudding, my mouth dry.
I could see the long blonde hair floating gently in the sea. The full skirt of the white frock billowed out as the sea swirled around the broken body. There was no need to make wild guesses. I knew the dead woman down there was Helen.
PART THREE
I
She had to be dead.
She couldn’t have survived that fall nor lie the way she was lying, with the sea covering her head, and not be dead, but I just couldn’t believe it.
“Helen!”
There was a cracked note in my voice as I yelled down to her.
“Helen!!”
My voice echoed back to me: a ghostly sound that set me shaking.
She couldn’t be dead, I told myself. I had to make sure. I couldn’t leave her there. She might be drowning even as I stared down at her.
I threw myself flat and edged forward until my head and shoulders were clear of the overhang. The height made me dizzy. From this point of view the drop was horrifying.
I looked feverishly along and down the chalk face to find some way that would take me down to her, but there was no way. It would be like trying to climb down the face of a monstrous wall. The only way to get down there would be to be lowered by a rope.
My heart was hammering, and there was cold sweat on my face as I edged forward a few more dangerous inches.
From this position I could see her more clearly. I could see that her face and head were completely submerged by the gently lapping sea, and as a shaft of light from the sinking sun lit up the sea, I saw there was a halo of red around her blonde hair.
She was dead all right.
I worked my way back on to the path and squatted on my heels, sick and shaking. I wondered how long she had been lying down there. She might have been dead for hours.
I had to get help. There would be a telephone in the villa. I’d call the police from there. If I
hurried, they might be able reach her before it became too dark to find her.
I stood up, took two uncertain, unsteady steps backward and came to an abrupt stop.
The police!
I suddenly realized what a police investigation would mean to me. It wouldn’t take them long to find out that Helen and I had planned to spend a month in the villa. It would only take a little longer for the news to reach Chalmers. Once I called in the police the whole sordid story would come out.
As I stood hesitating, I saw a fishing boat come slowly into the little bay below me. I immediately became aware that I was sharply silhouetted against the sky line. Although the crew down there were too far away to see my features, a wave of panic sent me down on my hands and knees out of sight.
This was it. I was in a hell of a jam. I had known all along at the back of my mind that I was walking into trouble by getting infatuated with Helen, and now I had walked into it.
As I crouched down, I imagined the expression that would come on Sherwin Chalmers’s heavy, tough face when he heard the news that his daughter and I had arranged to stay at a villa in Sorrento, and his daughter had fallen over a cliff.
He would be certain we had been lovers. He might even think I had got tired of her and had pushed her off the cliff.
This thought shook me.
There was a possibility that the police might think that too. So far as I knew, no one had seen her fall. I couldn’t prove the exact time I had arrived here. I had come out of the crowded train, just one among a hundred other travellers. I had left my suitcase with the station clerk, but he saw different faces every hour of the day, and it wasn’t likely he would remember me. There was no one else. I couldn’t recall meeting anyone on the long walk up from Sorrento. No one anyway who would be likely to swear to the exact time I had arrived on the cliff head.
A lot depended, of course, on the time when Helen died. If she had fallen within an hour or so of my arrival, and if the police suspected that I had pushed her over the cliff, then I would really be in a bad position.
By now I had worked myself into quite a state of nerves. My one thought was to get as far away from here as I could without being seen. As I turned to make my way down the path, I
stumbled over Helen’s camera case that I had dropped when I had caught sight of her.
I picked it up, hesitated, then made to heave it over the cliff, but stopped in time.
I couldn’t afford to make a single mistake now. My fingerprints were on the case.
I took out my handkerchief and wiped the case over carefully. I went over the case four or five times until I was satisfied I hadn’t left a trace of any prints. Then I tossed the case over the cliff.
