Nothing Venture by Patricia Wentworth Page B

that that beautiful lady is out gunning for Jervis!”
    â€œI don’t think she knows.” She threw out her hands in a passionate gesture. “Oh, she can’t know!”
    They were alone in the huge formal room. Nan’s little voice quivered in it, and was smothered by the silence and the emptiness. To say the word murder in this gilded, rose-coloured room, with its soft carpet, its glittering chandeliers, its painted ceiling, was like firing a revolver shot in a puppet show. Mr Fazackerley looked at her. He was in the grip of the most profound curiosity.
    â€œI’m not an inquisitive man,” he said, “but if you’d begin at the beginning and give me an idea of what this is all about, I’d appreciate it very much.”
    Nan leaned back too.
    â€œIt’s all so tangled up—but I’m frightened—I’ll tell it as well as I can—it goes a long way back.”
    â€œTake your own time,” said Ferdinand. “Nobody’s thought of taxing that yet, so you can have as much as you like.”
    â€œIt goes right back,” said Nan. “I don’t know how you recognized me—it was very clever of you. I want to tell you how I came to find Jervis.”
    â€œI’m listening.”
    The colour stood high in Nan’s cheeks. She didn’t care whether he was listening or not. She wasn’t going to tell Ferdinand Fazackerley that ten years ago she had had a child’s adoration for Jervis which had made her follow him like an unseen shadow. She cast about for an opening. It would be quite easy if she could only get started. She began without any proper beginning at all.
    â€œI saw Jervis come across the rocks. He was going down to bathe—he had a towel over his shoulder. He went behind those rocks where the pool was.”
    â€œWhat were you doing?” said Mr. Fazackerley.
    â€œI was sitting on the beach,” said Nan with her chin in the air. “There was a way down the cliffs just beyond me. A man came down it and went across to the rocks where Jervis was. I didn’t see his face. I think he was walking on the cliff and saw Jervis and came down. He went behind the rocks, and in about five minutes I saw him again. He wasn’t coming back, he was going straight on. There’s another path up the cliff before you come to Croyde Head. He went up that. I saw him half way up it. I never saw his face at all.”
    Mr Fazackerley’s eyes were brightly attentive.
    â€œGo right on,” he said.
    â€œI waited a long time. The tide began to come up. I wondered where Jervis was. I climbed up on to the path and looked out to sea, but I couldn’t find him. The rocks hid the pool—I want you to remember that—I don’t think anyone on the cliff could have seen it.”
    Mr Fazackerley nodded.
    â€œThat’s so.”
    â€œI got frightened about Jervis. I went down to the pool, and he was lying half in and half out of it with his head bleeding and the tide coming in. The water was up to his shoulders. If I hadn’t come then, he would have been drowned. If you hadn’t come later, we should both have been drowned.”
    â€œWhat are you meaning?” said Mr Fazackerley.
    â€œThat man went behind the rocks and came out again,” said Nan rather breathlessly.
    â€œNow what do you mean by that?”
    â€œYou know what I mean—but I don’t mind saying it. I mean that the man went behind those rocks because he knew that Jervis was there and that they couldn’t be seen from the cliff. I mean that he picked up a bit of rock and struck Jervis with it, and went away and left him there with the tide coming in.”
    Fazackerley’s eyes went to the painted ceiling and down again. He did not shrug his shoulders, but the right one twitched.
    â€œYou can’t prove that, you know.”
    â€œOf course I can’t,” said Nan. “But you can be sure of lots of