The Spook Lights Affair Read Free Page A

fear of pneumonia tugged at her mind. The fear made her furious. When she caught up with Miss St. Ives, she’d give the girl a tongue-lashing she’d never forget.
    Virginia had reached and started up the seaward stairs to the overlook. Sabina called out for her to stop and wait, but the shouted words had no effect; typically defiant, the girl didn’t seem to care that she was being pursued. She ran up the steps two at a time, a wraithlike figure in the sinuous vapor. By the time Sabina reached the foot of the stairs, her charge had vanished onto the flagstone floor above.
    Sabina made the climb as quickly as she was able, enduring little shoots of pain at every step. When she reached the top, she could see no sign of Virginia in the thick gray swirls. She paused with ears straining, heard the faint slap of the girl’s hurrying steps. Moments later those sounds ceased and others took their place—scramblings and scrapings that Sabina couldn’t identify.
    She moved ahead cautiously, swiping her hands through the fog in an effort to clear it so she could determine where Virginia had gone. After a few steps, a vague, ghostlike luminosity appeared ahead to her left—the deb’s white gown. The figure seemed poised a couple of feet above floor level, as if Virginia had climbed up onto the parapet at the overlook’s outer edge. But surely she wouldn’t have done anything that foolish—
    Yes, she would. And had. The fog curls parted just enough ahead to reveal the spectral shape of the girl some thirty yards distant, standing between two of the statues mounted on the parapet, facing toward the sea with her arms bent away from her body. She was alone atop the wall; if anyone else lurked nearby, he was hidden by the mist.
    What was she doing up there? The stones were slippery, dangerous in the wind and fog; beyond and beneath the wall was a mostly sheer drop of several hundred feet to the Great Highway.
    “Virginia!”
    The fog muffled Sabina’s cry, and she shouted again. To no avail. Virginia continued to stand, wavering slightly from side to side now, her gown making an audible fluttery sound—
    And then, to Sabina’s horrified amazement, the girl flung herself forward and disappeared.
    There was a shriek, shrill and long-drawn, then thudding, sliding sounds that carried above the voice of the wind—the sounds of a body tumbling down the cliffside.
    It took Sabina several seconds to stumble ahead to the parapet. Just as she reached it, her foot struck something lying on the flagstones. She ignored it for the moment, leaning over the wall between the two statues to peer downward. What she saw brought another shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. A strip of ground some eight feet wide stretched out beneath, the only section of it visible straight ahead where it sloped down to the cliff edge. That part was thinly covered with purple-flowered ice plant, mashed down where Virginia’s body had landed and slid through. Beyond the ice plant, the cliff fell away in a sheer vertical drop.
    Sabina drew back, and again her foot brushed against the object on the stones. She bent to pick it up, saw that it was the chatelaine handbag Virginia had carried. Clutching it, she glanced to her left. A winding set of steps chiseled into the bare rock led down to the highway below, she remembered, but the hovering grayness hid their exact location. They weren’t an option in any case. The stone steps would be slick and slippery and the descent treacherous; it would be folly to risk climbing down them in the darkness, even if there were a chance of finding the girl alive at the bottom. And she didn’t see how there could be. It was virtually impossible for anyone to have survived such a long fall.
    Why had the mad little fool done this to herself?
    Why?
    *   *   *
    Badly shaken, Sabina took the direct route back to the mansion, down the staircase at the opposite end of the overlook. Fog-laced shadows hid her from the guests