"The first time Shipton fell or the second time?"
"Both," Fred said, then added, "I suppose Edith did cut his line. Or did he do it himself to blame her?"
"Both," Dean answered. They just looked at him. He smiled before he continued. "This is part guess, part fact, with both parts complicated. Shipton was mad as hell at me for knocking him down. He was vindictive by nature and-this is the 'guess' part-he cut his line and left my knife which he'd picked up from his wife's room."
"So how did he get down to the point where he fell?" Fred asked.
"Penny showed me how. When you rappel down, you loop the rope over your anchor, your fixed point up top, so in effect, it's secured in the middle of the line. Shipton cut a short section of rope and left it up there so it would look like someone cut it when he was part way to the bottom. He then descended down using the remaining good section intending to fake a fall or otherwise call attention to what supposedly happened."
"But he messed up and fell too far," Fred offered.
"That's what I thought at first. But it didn't make sense, even though I think Shipton himself continued to believe that's how he fell."
"Would you care to expand on that a bit?" Cynthia asked.
"Edith had cut the line and he fell, injuring himself. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing his head injury caused him to not understand, or even remember what happened. He may have continued to think he'd slipped, never realizing what she'd done."
"That's bizarre," Cynthia said. "Doesn't it make more sense that the whole bit about the cut rope was Shipton's sole doing? Perhaps Edith wasn't involved at all."
"Earlier I considered that, but when Edith was with me, she said she tried to kill her husband. We kept trying to make more of the statement than a simple declaration of fact. Shipton might have begun to consider that Edith tried to kill him, but I'm inclined to believe he saw where he could use the attempt on his life to give reason for her remorse and subsequent 'suicide'. Remember, he changed his story about blaming me for his fall. Blaming Edith fit nicely with his plans to kill her."
"That's pretty ironic," Cynthia said. "Here's Jerome Shipton concocting a story, blaming his wife for something she really did!"
"Wouldn't Shipton have seen where she cut the line?" Fred asked.
"Here's where Edith's cleverness comes into play. Remember the candle in her room? She used wax to bind the partially severed ends together, just enough that a cursory glance wouldn't disclose what she'd done. Sheriff Weller told me that later. She didn't cut the rope all the way through, but enough that it wouldn't bear her husband's full weight."