‘Oh, that’s old stuff! The police know that already. I never thought of looking in the tobacco shop. I didn’t know she smoked. They can’t find out where she went, though, or even whether she took a ticket. If that’s all you found out I’m rather glad I didn’t go with you. It was much better fun staying here.’
Laura stared and then laughed.
‘Well, I’m dashed!’ she said. ‘I wash my hands of the business after that!’
But this she was not permitted to do. She woke at six and raked Mark out for an early swim. He came willingly enough, and on the way down to the sands he pointed out to Laura the attractive path on the opposite side of the bay.
‘Bags we climb up there after bathing,’ he said. ‘The tide was too high last time. I meant to do it then, but I couldn’t get round. It’s nearly two hours later to-day. We might have done it yesterday morning, but there were too many people about. I’ve an idea it might be trespassing to go up there. I’m pretty certain there’s a whacking big house just behind those trees.’
‘If it’s trespassing we must certainly have a stab at it,’ said Laura warmly. ‘I strongly object to this business of parts of the coast being cut off from public use and made into somebody’s private property. Look here, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll bathe from much farther along the beach so that the walk to the foot of those cliffs will be split in halves, so to speak. What do you say about that?’
They were fortunate enough to have the sea to themselves again, and when, invigorated and thoroughly lively, they were chasing one another along the firm sand at the edge of the sea, the landscape was still without figures, and they began the upward climb without meeting a soul. There was only one fly in the ointment. The path did not seem to be private, after all. A short sea-wall had been built to conserve the foot of the cliff, which was fairly soft and as rose-red as the legendary city, and there were steps in this wall to enable people to gain the zigzag path from the beach. It was obviously a public right of way.
Two turns of the path, and the sea was for a moment out of sight, for the path was between high bushes on which curled reddish stems of deep-scented, rich-toned honeysuckle. Here and there among the grass grew wild scabious, and, as the path mounted higher, came clumps of gorse and another glimpse of the sea.
‘Well!’ said Laura, taking out cigarettes and a piece of chocolate. ‘I’m glad we came! Puff or suck?’
‘Suck, please.’ He accepted the chocolate gratefully and for a time they tramped silently upwards. Gulls in the huge cliffs perched on the dizzy ledges or plummeted through arcs of sky towards the sea. The bushes, except for the gorse, grew sparse and then ceased. Mark and Laura came out upon downland grasses where harebells grew and the birdsfoot trefoil was everywhere. There was spaciousness here. They were approaching the summit of the cliff, and the views to the east and west were again of horizon and coast.
‘Grand!’ said Mark. ‘I wish we were trespassing, though.’
‘We may be, in a minute or two,’ said Laura. ‘Unless my eyes deceive me, which, over this sort of thing, they seldom do, yonder looms a notice-board, and that of the baser sort, and I would risk a small and carefully-hoarded sum that on it appear the magic words we require.’
They strolled towards the board. It guarded a small stout gate which was strongly wired. In contrast to the bold and open headland, the owner of the gate had planted hawthorn hedges whose tops had weathered the gales but were now bent away from the sea. Any gaps in this formidable barrier… as Mark discovered by prowling… had also been fenced and wired.
‘Blow!’ said Mark, rejoining Laura, who was gazing speculatively at the enclosure. ‘Without doing a frightful lot of damage (for which, I believe, you can be jugged), there doesn’t seem a hope of getting in.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Laura. ‘Don’t let’s bother now, but we’ll come out to-morrow morning and try from the other side. I’ve been thinking out the lie of the land, and I’ve some idea that you could work your way round to this point from that path which goes down by the side of the cliff-railway.’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Mark. ‘I used that path yesterday while you were in Torbury, and all it does is to branch away under a tunnel. Then it comes out on the opposite side of the cliff-railway and beetles down to that road where cars can get down to the beach.’
‘Eyes and no eyes,’ said Laura severely. ‘Your objective was simply the beach, therefore you did not see what I saw when I went along there after bathing on that first morning when you warned me about the tide. You wait, and after breakfast I’ll show you. I’d thought of trying it by myself, but it’s far more fun with the two of us.’
On the following morning they left the hotel again at six. Laura, accustomed to what she considered to be the dilatory opening of hotel front doors, had no scruples, at that hour of the morning, in breaking out of any place in which she happened to be staying. If the front door had a lock and the key was not there, she merely got out of a window in the lounge. Her argument was that at six in the morning all proper burglars were in bed and that therefore there was nothing anti-social in leaving a window open behind her.
At the Whitesand, however, the early-morning egress was simple. There were merely bolts top and bottom of the outer doors. The inner ones were swing doors and offered no obstacle. A short time later, Laura was wishing that it had not been easy, or, indeed, possible, to leave the hotel that morning.
She and Mark were again equipped for swimming, but this time they turned left instead of right along the front, and, coming to the cliff-railway, they crossed behind its upper platform and took a shaded ferny path of slopes and steps which ran alongside the railway track to about halfway down the cliff. Here the path proper, as Mark had pointed out, crossed the line by means of a tunnel, but there was also an ill-defined track which continued beside the line, and, instead of dipping, suddenly rose upwards to a shoulder of wooded hill.
It ended at a wall from which could be gained a view of the bathing beach below, but before the wall was reached there was a tremendously steep, bare scree which inclined at a desperate angle and offered a hare-brained chance of reaching a path below. Laura and Mark slipped, slithered and shot down this slope, and found themselves in a curiously shut-in little valley. On the farther side of it the entrancingly narrow path they had seen from above squeezed upwards between a wattle fence and some trees.
‘Come on!’ said Mark. ‘This is good!’
The path climbed steeply but steadily until, at a sudden bend, it came out upon a wide, green space which reared at a stupefying gradient and showed a bent hedge at the top and a tiny gap in the hedge where the path went through.
Laura and Mark toiled onwards, their calf-muscles aching and their backs bent nearly double to assist them in clambering up. At the gap in the hedge the prospect of a further climb met them, but, in any case, there was a gate, and beyond the gate was a large bleak house, cut off from the open country by an iron railing of insurmountable aspect and most repellent mien which reinforced the bent hedge. There seemed no doubt that the owners of the house did not propose to have their privacy violated, for the gate, which was also of iron, showed the same unwelcoming face as the powerfully-constructed railings.
Laura and Mark stood at the gate and looked through. Mark gave the gate a slight shove, but it did not budge. Around the house were long-neglected flower-beds, weed-ridden and sprawling with nasturtium. The freely-flowering roses were small, and were choked by convolvulus and bindweed. Everywhere was the bright and deadly pink of the greater willow-herb.
In contrast to all this decay and obvious neglect, the path from the gate to the house had been carefully sanded. On its level greyish-brown surface there was never a footmark, although the surface here and there had been blown a little by the wind. Beyond that, the sand had not been disturbed, and it was obvious that it had not been laid down long.