tonight.’ He was impressed to see that the significance of his instructions was not lost on Trew, but the constable did not waste time by asking questions. ‘I know you can’t be everywhere at once,’ Penrose added, ‘but I don’t want anyone down on the backstage path so all the steps will have to be watched. William will introduce you to my cousins and a friend of mine who are in the audience – they’ll help out if necessary.’
Trew turned to go, but William caught his arm. ‘Just one thing, Archie,’ he said. ‘Nathaniel’s parents – they’re in the audience, and obviously they’re worried. I haven’t said anything to them yet, but they need to be told something before Angus makes his announcement.’
Damn, thought Penrose – of course they were here; it should have been a proud evening for their son, and he reproached himself bitterly for not thinking of them before. ‘Will you take them to one side and break the news to them first?’ he asked William, desperately sorry that they had already had to wait so long. ‘Tell them we’re doing everything we can to find Nathaniel, but try not to give them false hope. I’ll come and talk to them as soon as I know how things are.’
He was less grateful to William for his choice of climbing companion, but there was no time to argue, nor to read anything into Jago’s absence. He handed a torch to Jacks, trying to ignore his smirk, and took the more powerful light for himself. ‘Where would you like to go over, Inspector?’ the gamekeeper asked insolently. Penrose said nothing, but led the way along the outcrop of rock to the point which Rowena Cade had identified as the safest from which to start his descent. About fifteen feet of rough grass and gorse stretched out before him, sloping down sharply and culminating in nothingness. He walked as far as he could and looked to his left, using the position of the balustrade to calculate where Nathaniel had gone over the edge; from this angle, he was able to see the rocks immediately below the backstage path and, with the help of the moonlight, could just make out a dark shape on a flat piece of stone six feet or so above the encroaching tide.
Jacks joined him, although the silent presence by his side was anything but a comfort. The gamekeeper tied the rope firmly round his waist, smiling again as Penrose checked the knots, and threw the other end over the side of the cliff. He stood at a safe distance from the edge, looking defiant, and Penrose hesitated, wondering if he should, after all, ask for more help. There was no question that Jacks had the strength to act as anchor – if he chose to, but William’s casual words were significant; where had the gamekeeper been if he was coming down from the auditorium? If he had pushed the curate over, then made his escape up the side steps to rejoin the play from the other direction, how easy it would be now to untie those knots and make it look like another terrible accident. Fleetingly, Penrose questioned the wisdom of his decision to keep the truth of Nathaniel’s fall to himself until someone in authority from the local police arrived; if anything happened to him, no one would ever know that the curate’s death was murder. Standing now on lower ground, he felt the sea against his face and, as fine a mist as it was, it weighed heavily on his conscience. There was no option but to trust Jacks: he had not yet allowed himself to analyse his own reaction to Nathaniel’s sudden death, but the young man’s confusion and vulnerability had moved him deeply during their conversation, and he felt an obligation to ensure that his body, at least, had the refuge which his mind had been unable to find.
Giving Jacks only the briefest of glances, Penrose tucked the torch into his belt, grasped the rope firmly and eased himself backwards over the edge of the cliff. It took all the self-discipline he had to put his misgivings about Jacks to one side and take his time over the descent; the temptation to hurry was almost irresistible, but he lowered himself down methodically, hand over hand, and – although he would not have won any marks for elegance – he soon reached the layer of rock that Rowena Cade had described. From there, he took the safest-looking route back into the heart of the gully, noting with relief that it would be at least another twenty minutes before the tide was far enough in to affect the level he was on.
As he approached the flat rock where Nathaniel lay, he realised that – in spite of his sober words to William – he had been subconsciously nurturing the hope that the fall might not have been fatal, and that Nathaniel might have been one of the miraculous few who escaped unscathed from the severest of accidents. The unnatural arrangement of his body made the idea laughable even before the light from the torch reached his face. The curate lay on his back, and his shattered corpse seemed to reflect the emotional fragility which had marked his last few weeks of life. The folds of his costume hid his legs, but his arms were twisted at an impossible angle to his body, like a doll which had fallen foul of a particularly spiteful child, and Penrose could only imagine the extent of his internal injuries. His blond hair was matted with blood, thick and viscous and dark; blood also pooled out from beneath his skull, soaking into the grey lining of his hood and following the contours of the rock, running down towards the sea as if to beat the tide at its own game. Nathaniel’s face was tilted slightly away from Penrose but his eyes stared up at the cliff, still fixed on the horror that had brought him to this, looking upwards not to heaven but to hell. The prayer book which he always kept with him lay a little to the right of his body, next to one of the lanterns which the killer had kicked over; it had obviously been dislodged from his pocket by the impact of the fall, and Penrose found its distance poignant: even the curate’s most trusted solace had abandoned him in the end. In fact, standing alone with the body, so close to the elemental power of the sea, Penrose found it hard not to resort to an age-old language of good and evil, to look for the imprint of the devil himself in Nathaniel’s eyes.
There was no doubt that death had been instant, but how long must those final seconds have seemed when he realised that his fate was unavoidable? Had he used them to contemplate his killer, or to find some sort of peace from the anguish which had dogged him since Harry’s death? Penrose mocked his own wishful thinking. He had seen Nathaniel’s face and there was no way that his last emotion had been anything other than terror, a continuation of the living hell that he had spoken of. Why? What had he done except fall in love with the wrong person, and battle with his own ideas of right and wrong? Penrose knew that the sorrow he felt at Nathaniel’s death was due in part to the pain and confusion which any investigation would create amongst those who loved him. Secrets were spilled by any sudden fatality: a letter or diary, left out in the morning because someone took it for granted that they would return later to keep it safe, could lay a life open to a thousand different stories, and murder was by far the harshest interpreter. He hoped desperately that the darker parts of Nathaniel’s heart could be kept from his parents, but he knew that was unrealistic; if he were in charge of this investigation, he would feel obliged to discuss Nathaniel’s feelings for Harry and his parents would be left mourning a stranger, at a loss to know who their son really was and with no opportunity to find out. Nathaniel had experienced that sense of betrayal when Harry died; now, the people whom he had been so anxious to protect were about to find out exactly how that felt.
Josephine slipped the Lanchester into gear, removed the handbrake and allowed the car to roll gently down the slope towards the cliff edge. More light was needed in the stage area, and those with cars had been asked to bring them as close to the scene as possible, with their headlamps turned full on; William was understandably busy with Nathaniel’s parents, and she had been glad of something to do, however small, to take her mind off the fact that Archie was still out on the cliff-side, alone with Kestrel Jacks. She left the engine running, made sure the car was safe and went back down to see if there was any news.
The audience had gone now, efficiently ushered from the auditorium by Rowena Cade and a young man whom Josephine guessed was an off-duty policeman. Everyone else had gathered together on the stage, as if solidarity could somehow soften the tragedy of the evening’s events, and she noticed that Lettice and Ronnie were doing their best to offer some sort of solace with hot tea and brandy, brought down on vast silver trays from Minack House. Most people were still in their costumes and there was a surreal quality to the scene, but nothing would surprise her any more tonight; like everyone, she had been utterly bewildered by the sudden change of mood signalled first by Archie’s distraction, and then by his obvious alarm; when news of an accident filtered back to the audience, the incident – coming so soon after the tension of Jasper Motley’s exit and the drama of Nathaniel’s leap into thin air – seemed to bear as little relation to the real world as the tale of a devilish jackdaw and a stolen ring.
It took a lot to subdue Ronnie and Lettice, but they met her at the bottom of the steps looking as shocked and bewildered as everyone. ‘Any news?’ Josephine asked, and Lettice shook her head.
‘No, absolutely nothing. I don’t suppose we can hold out any hope that he’s still alive. What a dreadful, dreadful thing to happen. I can hardly believe it.’
‘Selfishly, it’s Pa I’m worried about,’ Ronnie said. ‘He was very fond of Nathaniel, and this will really hit him hard coming so soon after Harry’s death. I don’t know why we worried about Hephzibah – tonight makes her look like a lucky charm.’
Lettice was first to ask the obvious question. ‘I wonder what on earth went wrong?’ she said. ‘It can’t have been the jump from the balustrade because Archie didn’t panic straight away, so how could Nathaniel have fallen?’
‘You don’t suppose he threw himself off deliberately, do you?’ Josephine asked. As the sisters looked at her in
