Quest for Alexis (16 page)

On my left, the scrubby ground fell away sharply.
The path, like a corniche road in miniature, followed
every convolution of the clifflike rockface. Soon, I
found myself on a ledge only a couple of feet wide.

I walked on, perfectly confident, until suddenly I
felt my foot slip under me. It wasn’t much but enough
to unnerve me. Looking down, I saw there were patches of frozen snow on the path, almost invisible against
the white of the limestone.

I decided it would be foolish to go on and risk a bad
fall. On a narrow path like this I could so easily slip
over the edge. Even at this point the drop was about fifteen feet, and farther along it looked considerably
more, sheer to jagged rocks below.

As I turned to go back, I heard a slight noise from
somewhere above me. It sounded like a scrabble of
small loose stones.

I paused to listen. A bird? But I’d seen and heard
no birds this morning. Some small animal, perhaps? I
had a vague idea that chamois were to be found in this
part of Provence. Or it could be something as ordinary
as a rabbit.

After a few moments when the only break in the
silence was the sighing of the wind through the pine
trees, I started to move again. But at once I jerked to a
halt, really startled. This time the sound I heard was
quite different. A human voice. A cry of distress. Faint,
muffled, but unmistakably a man’s voice.

“Help! Help!”

I stared up at the rockface above me, wondering
what to do. It was very steep and looked dangerously
crumbly. And anyway, I couldn’t be sure whether the
cry had come from up there or farther along toward
the end of the crag.

“Where are you?” I cried.

“Here.”

It sounded fainter than before and definitely seemed to come from farther on.

I started along the path but almost at once slipped
again on the ice and realized I would have to take
care.

“I’m coming,” I called out. “As quickly as I can.”

“Hurry. For God’s sake, hurry.”

He sounded close to exhaustion. Despite the danger,
I put on an extra spurt, trailing a hand against the
rough rock wall as an illusion of support. Then suddenly my foot trod ice again and skidded from under me. My fingers clutched wildly, frantically, but there
was nothing to grip. I was slipping over the edge, fall
ing into empty space. I felt my head hit rock with a
crack, and momentarily I blacked out.

It was a bush that had saved me. A spiny, prickly,
half-dead bush, growing from a crevice in the rock. I’d
clung to it instinctively, desperately. Dazed, I looked
up and saw that the edge of the path was two or three
feet above my head. But the instant I moved in an
effort to reach it, the dry twiggy bush I clung to
cracked ominously. Stretching out my leg, I found a
tiny foothold, but it gave way when I tried it, sending
down a shower of crumbled rock as a chastening warn
ing.

I tried to keep calm, to make myself think. Clutching my slender support, I scanned the face of the rock
and took careful note. There was another crack with
in reach of my left foot. Gingerly, I pushed in my toe
and this time it held.

The bush, relieved of my weight as I let go, sprang
up and tore at my face. With a reaching grabbing
movement, I got a hand over the edge. Then, labori
ously, terrified every moment that I would lose my
grip, I hauled myself upward. It seemed an eternity
before I was safely back on the path.

Crouched on my knees, I remained motionless for
several seconds, breathing heavily. It was a miracle
to be alive.

At last I stood up. The wind seemed to be rising,
and a few tiny flakes of snow whirled by. I listened,
but I heard no repetition of the cry for help.

I was in no state now to offer help to anyone. But I
couldn’t stand here doing nothing. I had to rouse Brett,
quickly. I started back along the path, stumbling, ter
rified every second of another fall.

But before I came within sight of the house I heard
him calling me.

“Gail. Gail, where are you?”

“I’m here,” I shouted in relief. “Here on the path.”

I stood still, waiting for him to come. As he ap
peared around the curve, he stopped and stared at me
in astonishment.

“What the devil?”

“Oh, Brett,” I gasped and flung myself into his arms.

“Darling, what’s happened? You look in a terrible
mess, your slacks torn and your coat all smeared with
dirt.”

“I fell. But there’s no time to tell you about it now.
Brett, I heard someone calling for help!”

“
You
what?”

“It was a man. He sounded dreadfully weak. He
must be in real trouble. We’ve got to go to him.”

“Don’t be silly, darling. You’re imagining things.
How could there be anyone here?”

I pushed back from him and looked up into his
face. “There was, I tell you. There was. Up on the top.”

Suddenly something caught my attention. A foot
print. It was level with my eyes, a yard or so along a
faintly defined path that led up steeply through the scrubby, tufty grass toward the top of the great crag.
Clear and sharp in a small patch of soft snow, the im
print of a man’s shoe.

“Brett, look.”

“What is it?”

But then some instinct warned me. A torrent of suspicions came swamping my mind. Disconnected things, connecting up. Terrors past and present merg
ing into a single rushing stream. Springing from that
footprint in the snow.

It was the mark of a rubber sole with a distinctive,
deep-patterned tread. I had noticed it before, that
same all-over design of triangles. Last night.

Brett’s shoe.

Brett had been up there on top of the crag—from where I had heard a voice calling for help. A man’s
voice, muffled, but in
English?
Amazingly, that had not
struck me as odd at the time.

Brett had expressed doubt that someone could be
up there. Not
someone
—but Brett himself. He had
been up there.

Other strange, unexplained incidents stabbed my
brain. A fast-driven car, steered at me deliberately by
some unknown driver in a dark, deserted back street
of Palma, and Brett on the scene soon after. And in the
Hôtel de l’Etoile in Nice yesterday morning, another
car mysteriously blocking the hired Renault when we
needed to get out quickly, and Brett not hurrying, re
fusing to abandon our car and find a taxi—that delay
had caused us to miss Alexis. My mind winged back
to London Airport—my handbag, containing my pass
port, snatched by someone I had thought at the time
was just an ordinary sneak thief.

And now here. A cry for help which had made me
press on along the path when I had been on the point
of turning back. Suppose I had reached the viewpoint high above the valley, what then? A push from a hid
den hand, a boulder crashing down? It wouldn’t have
taken much to send me hurtling to the rocks below.

My accident just now had been a mercy in disguise. A small fall had saved me from a worse one—a deadly
one.

Could this man I had loved be my enemy? Why,
why? I could only think of one possible explanation—
that Brett was a Communist or a fellow traveler.

Only the Communists would wish Alexis to go on
behaving as he was, destroying his reputation and alienating those who supported him. Only the Com
munists would want to stop me from reaching my
uncle. And they were ruthless. To achieve a tactical advantage in their endless propaganda war, they would go to any lengths. Even murder meant nothing to them.

What did I really know about Brett Warrender? In
our brief passionate love affair there had been so little
time to explore ideas. So little time for me to get any
hint of secret recesses in his mind.

Brett, had been a rebel once—that was common
knowledge. On leaving Cambridge, he had rejected the
idea of following Sir Ralph into the diplomatic service.
For two or three years he had knocked around the
world, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Was it then
that he had been won over to the Communist ideology?
Had he, all the while since, been a “sleeper,” slowly,
insidiously infiltrating himself, working into a position
where he would be of maximum use to the people he served, whenever and wherever the occasion arose?
Awaiting his orders. Orders that he would obey with
blind dedication.

I backed away from Brett, staring up at him in
horror. Even now he might...

“What is it?” he asked, frowning. “Why are you
looking at me like that, Gail?”

With an immense effort, I took a grip on myself.
Brett mustn’t see that I was afraid of him. I mustn’t let
him guess. I said huskily, forcing out the words, “I’m
all right. Just a bit shaken up, that’s all.”

“It’s not surprising.” He reached out to me again,
but I evaded his arms.

I was suddenly seized by a violent fit of shivering.
“I’m cold,” I muttered by way of explanation and turned back toward the house. But I kept glancing
over my shoulder, scared to take my eyes off Brett.

“Careful, Gail,” he warned. “Watch where you’re
going, or you’ll fall again.”

When we reached the track, it was wider and we
could walk two abreast. Brett said, “What was all that about thinking you heard someone shout for help?”

I shrugged, somehow managing a nervous smile. “As
you said, I must have imagined it. The wind, I sup
pose.”

He nodded. “The wind can play tricks in a wild
place like this. You ought not to have come out on
your own, you know.”

And yet, last night, he had suggested that I should
do exactly that. To see the view.

Had it been Brett’s plan to murder me all along,
right from the moment I’d announced that I was going
after Alexis? Was he still intending to kill me even now, at any moment—quite openly and without any
pretense? In this wild place where he had contrived
to bring me so cunningly, so calculatingly, it would be
easy to make my death look like an accident.

But perhaps Brett might not kill me if he saw anoth
er way of keeping me from Alexis. At Nice he had
merely delayed me. At London Airport he had tried to
stop me from leaving the country by having my pass
port snatched.

Suppose ... suppose now, even at this late hour, I
pretended that I was taking his advice and giving up
my quest for Alexis. If I told him I was going back
home, would that save me?

I needed time to think.
Think.

Back at the
mas,
I stood trembling and afraid while
Brett raked the ashes and rebuilt the fire. After a mo
ment, he turned to look up at me, an expression of
concern on his face.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Gail? Shall I make
some coffee? That will help warm you up.”

“Er... thanks.”

I sat down on the couch where I had spent the
night and held my coat open to the fire, trying to get
warm, trying to shake off the feeling of panic that
clogged my brain. Somehow, I had to get away from
here.

When Brett came back from the kitchen and hand
ed me a mug of coffee, I shrank away from him in
stinctively. But I mustn’t let him see my revulsion. I
mustn’t let him guess that I suspected anything. I drove myself to respond to what he was saying—something
about being sorry if he looked scruffy, but he had no
razor with him. I said it didn’t matter, that I must look
just as scruffy myself.

“Would you like me to heat some water so you can
have a decent wash?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said vaguely. “No. I... I mean, I’ll see to
it myself, later.”