Why? You're still measuring the distance between the two points on the line. One is in the middle and one is not.
You could instead fold up the lines connected to the D point, into a V shape with the D point at the bottom, such that the points B and C (the top tips of the V) are separated horizontally by length 2 (and vertically by 0), and use the length 5 and 3 sides to go 4 units straight left or right from the top center of the V, and place point A and connect back to the far side of the V. Now point A is 3.87298 units above and 4.0 units to the side of point D, a diagonal length of 5.56776.
You could continuously deform this shape back down to the straight line case.
Now that I think about it, in the process of that deformation, there might be a point where slightly widening the V would allow you to place the point slightly higher and get an even larger max distance.