Free Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh

about,’ she thought, ‘who I am and all the rest of it. Bah!’
    She stayed on until she was refreshed. The evening had begun to close in and she was in the lee of the hill. There was a slight coolness in the air. She prepared, after the manner of old people, to rise.
    At that moment she was struck between the shoulder blades, on the back of her neck and head and on her arm. Stones fell with a rattle at her feet. Above and behind her there was a scuffling sound of retreat and of laughter.
    She got up, scarcely knowing what she did. She supposed afterwards that she must have cried out. The next thing that happened was that the sergeant was running heavily uphill towards her.
    ‘Hold hard, now, ma’am,’ he was saying. ‘Be you hurt, then?’
    ‘No. Stones. From above. Go and look.’
    He peered at her for a moment and then scrambled up the sharp rise behind the bench. He slithered and skidded, sending down a cascade of earth. Miss Emily sank back on the bench. She drew her glove off and touched her neck with a trembling hand. It was wet.
    The sergeant floundered about overhead. Unexpectedly two of the fishermen had arrived and, more surprisingly still, the tall bronze girl. What was her name?
    ‘Miss Pride,’ she was saying, ‘you’re hurt. What happened?’ She knelt down by Miss Emily and took her hands.
    The men were talking excitedly and presently the sergeant was there again, swearing and breathing hard.
    ‘Too late,’ he was saying. ‘Missed ‘im.’
    Miss Emily’s head began to clear a little.
    ‘I am perfectly well,’ she said rather faintly and more to herself than to the others. ‘It is nothing.’
    ‘You’ve been hurt. Your neck!’ Jenny said, also in French. ‘Let me look.’
    ‘You are too kind,’ Miss Emily murmured. She suffered her neck to be examined. ‘Your accent,’ she added more firmly, ‘is passable though not entirely d’une femme du monde. Where did you learn?’
    ‘In Paris,’ said Jenny. ‘There’s a cut in your neck, Miss Pride. It isn’t very deep but I’m going to bind it up. Mr Pender, could I borrow your handkerchief? And I’ll make a pad of mine. Clean, luckily.’
    While Miss Emily suffered these ministrations the men muttered together. There was a scrape of boots on the steps and a third fisherman came down from above. It was Trehern. He stopped short. ‘Hey!’ he ejaculated. ‘What’s amiss, then?’
    ‘Lady’s been hurt, poor dear,’ one of the men said.
    ‘Hurt!’ Trehern exclaimed. ‘How? Why, if it be’ant Miss Pride. Hurt! What way?’
    ‘Where would you be from then, Jim?’ Sergeant Pender asked.
    ‘Up to pub as usual, George,’ he said. ‘Where else?’ A characteristic parcel protruded from his overcoat pocket. ‘Happen she took a fall? Them steps be treacherous going for females well-gone into the terrors of antiquity.’
    ‘Did you leave the pub this instant-moment?’
    ‘Surely. Why?’
    ‘Did you notice anybody up-along, off of the steps, like? In the rough?’
    ‘Are you after them courting couples again, George Pender?’
    ‘No,’ said Mr Pender shortly. ‘I be’ant.’
    ‘I did not fall,’ said Miss Emily loudly. She rose to her feet and confronted Trehern. ‘I was struck,’ she said.
    ‘Lord forbid, ma’am! Who’d take a fancy to do a crazy job like that?’
    Jenny said to Pender: ‘I think we ought to get Miss Pride home.’
    ‘So we should, then. Now, ma’am,’ said Pender with an air of authority, ‘you’m not going to walk up them steps, if you please, so if you’ve no objection us chaps’ll manage you, same as if we was bringing you ashore in a rough sea.’
    ‘I assure you, officer –’
    ‘Very likely, ma’am, and you with the heart of a lion as all can see, but there’d be no kind of sense in it. Now then, souls. Hup!’
    And before she knew what had happened, Miss Emily was sitting on a chair of woollen-clad arms with her own arms neatly disposed by Mr Pender round a pair of slightly