A Christmas Escape by Anne Perry

say, it was deliberate, then the whole picture alters and becomes very grave indeed.” He chose the word intentionally, and was rewarded by an instant of real fear in Bailey’s eyes.
    That look, there and then gone again in less than a second, changed Charles’s mind. Walker-Bailey was afraid. His anger covered something close to panic inside him. Charles should have felt pity and was not proud of himself that he didn’t.
    “Perhaps you had better go and have your wounds attended to,” he suggested more gently. Finbar rose to his feet. “I think I’ll excuse myself also,” he said quietly. “It has been a long day. Good night, Mrs. Bailey.” He inclined his head toward Bretherton and Quinn, and then to Charles.
    Candace stood also, looking curiously at her uncle, then turned to leave. Charles walked beside her, a few steps after Finbar. There was an inexpressible weariness in the old man’s movements.
    Candace stood next to Charles for a moment.
    “Do you really think someone pushed him?” she asked, her voice very low. “And please don’t lie to me.”
    “I don’t know,” he said, and he was absolutely honest. “But I think he believes so. He could just have slipped in the dark.”
    “He’s so horrible I wouldn’t blame someone, would you?” she asked.
    “You have to have a very dreadful reason to want to kill anyone,” he said seriously. “Trying to scare him, I can understand. But it really is dangerous to push a man over in the dark, on that lava. He could have hit his head, and that would have been the end of him.”
    “Colonel Bretherton’s in love with Mrs. Bailey, you know,” she told him.
    He thought of arguing, but she would only think he was evading the truth.
    “Yes, I think so,” he agreed.
    “I wouldn’t blame her if she’d pushed him,” Candace went on. “He’s horrible to her, no matter how hard she tries to please him. If it was she, and I found out, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
    He felt a sudden chill of real fear. “You must, Candace. If you know anything you must share it.”
    “Why? He’s horrible! I wouldn’t hurt him! But I wouldn’t tell on anyone else who did.” There was certainty and defiance in her face and in the rigid angles of her body.
    He caught her shoulder. It was slender, the bones fine.
    “Candace! Maybe you wouldn’t hurt him, but he might very well hurt you if he thought you knew something.”
    She stared at him.
    “How would your uncle manage without you?” he said. “Have you thought of that?”
    “No,” she agreed in a whisper. “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
    “Good. I believe you. Now go to bed and don’t get up until tomorrow morning.”
    She smiled. “Yes, Charles.”

    C harles was tired after the long climb up the mountain, and then the tension at dinner. He was asleep within ten minutes of putting out the light.
    He woke up with his heart pounding but no idea what had disturbed him. It was still dark. He could barely make out the shape of the window, which was just a little paler than the walls.
    Had he been dreaming? He could recall nothing, but then most dreams slipped away within moments.
    Then he heard it again: a sharp, cracking sound that seemed to fill the air and be all around him, as if it came from every direction. He sat upright in bed, muscles knotted, body aching with the strain. But what was it? It was too loud, too all-pervasive to be any kind of gun.
    Thunder?
    There was a low rumbling sound, as of someone rolling a heavy cart over a stony road, but far louder.
    Now, bone-deep, he knew what it was. The mountain was awakening. Deep in the caldera the lava was boiling up, shaking the earth, seeking escape from its long imprisonment beneath the surface.
    Trembling, he climbed out of the bed and put on his dressing gown. He fumbled with the ties. His fingers were awkward, and all the time he was listening for another crack, another sound that would tell him what was happening.
    Why? There was nothing he could