The Sirens Sang of Murder (13 page)

By the time I returned to the Corkscrew that evening I had resolved on an entirely different approach to the matter. I had been at fault, I now saw, in indulging the natural preference of the Scholar for quiet, solitary research among the dusty documents of a bygone era. My attention should be concentrated not on a shadowy and hypothetical class of suspects of whom I knew nothing, but on those persons whom I already knew to exist and to be connected with the Daffodil settlement. I must not be deterred by the possibility that this might oblige me to travel to the Channel Islands, Monaco, or even, if necessary, the Cayman Islands.

Selena and Ragwort, sitting alone together at one of the round oak tables, shook their heads when I asked if there were any news of Cantrip.

“And now we know why not,” said Ragwort, suppressing a sneeze. “He must have known perfectly well that his uncle was arriving sometime this week, and he’s hoping to stay away until the coast’s clear, leaving the rest of us to cope with the old ruffian. I suggest that when he comes back we sue him for enormous damages.”

“Do you think,” said Selena, “that we have any cause of action?”

“Certainly—there is quite clearly a liability under the rule in
Rylands v. Fletcher
. Having in one’s possession a dangerous and mischievous thing, namely a lunatic uncle, and allowing him to escape and do damage.” Ragwort failed to suppress a sneeze.

I enquired why Julia was absent from our company.

“She should be joining us shortly,” said Selena, “but
she’s gone home to change—she’s taking the Colonel to the theatre this evening. He seemed rather disappointed, you see, that he wouldn’t be spending the evening with Cantrip—he’d been thinking, he said, that they might do a show and then have a bite of supper at one of the night spots. But of course, he said, it wouldn’t be any fun on his own, so he’d just go back to his club and have an early night. He gave a rather convincing impression of being a lonely old soldier whose friends and contemporaries have long since fallen on distant battlefields.”

“Whereupon Julia,” said Ragwort, “who is in some ways a very impressionable girl and can be reduced to tears by two stanzas of Siegfried Sassoon, proposed herself as his companion. At this the old scoundrel brightened up amazingly.”

“Well,” said Selena, “at least she’s taking him to something she actually wants to see—she’s managed to get tickets for
All’s Well That Ends Well
, with Roland Devereux in the lead. I’m not sure that it’s exactly what the Colonel means by ‘a show,’ but then I’m not sure anything is that’s currently appearing on the London stage.”

Roland Devereux, I remembered, was a young Shakespearean actor who had recently become known to a wider audience by appearing in a television series. Recalling the now celebrated perfection of his profile, I was not surprised to learn that Julia was among his admirers.

“I fear,” said Ragwort, “that there is rather more to it than that. There was once an acquaintance between them—of which it is perhaps not proper to speak further.”

“Roland Devereux,” said Selena, “unless I’m forgeting
someone, was the last slender young man but three to be the object of Julia’s hopeless and undying passion. I don’t count you, of course, Ragwort, since the attachment is of a continuing nature. And I’m not counting Patrick Ardmore, who isn’t a slender young man and has no business behaving as if he were. She spent a great deal of time admiring Roland Devereux’s profile, with many allusions to Praxiteles and Michelangelo and so forth, and her admiration did not go wholly unrewarded. It was all quite a long time ago, but she still takes a sentimental interest in his progress.”

It was at this point that Julia herself arrived. The rather exuberant décolletage which she had judged suitable for the evening’s entertainment, though it attracted favourable comment from two members of the Building Bar at the next table, was regarded by Ragwort with some disapproval.

“My dear Julia,” he said, as he poured her a glass of Nierstein, “your dress, if I may say so, seems to have been designed for a young woman somewhat—as it were, somewhat smaller than yourself.”

“It’s the size I always take,” said Julia rather defensively.

“Or possibly for a young woman of the same size, but of somewhat different shape. A young woman—dear me, how can one express it with delicacy?—let us say, with rather more fully developed shoulder blades.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Julia’s shoulder blades,” said Selena. “And anyway, they’re completely covered. Take no notice, Julia—it’s a very attractive dress.”

“I should not have liked the Colonel to think,” said Julia, “that I regarded the evening as less than festive. As it is, I feel rather conscience-stricken about my
choice of entertainment—I suppose what he’d really like is something with girls taking their clothes off.”

“Oh well,” said Ragwort, “you have certainly done your best to compensate for any disappointment he may feel on that score. I do hope you won’t catch cold—I assure you, it’s most disagreeable at this time of year.”

The auspices for the evening seemed not altogether propitious. I could think of few subjects of conversation in which Julia and the Colonel might share an interest, and none upon which they might be in sympathy. I suspected that on almost any social, political, or ethical question the old soldier would be scandalised by Julia’s opinions, she outraged by his. Moreover, as she herself had previously acknowledged, the Colonel was the sort of man who has an incorrigible propensity for getting into trouble, and Julia was not the sort of woman who would know how to keep him out of it.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Julia, with an excess of confidence which I found in itself alarming. “I have worked out a strategy for dealing with him. I intend to model my behaviour in all respects on that of my Aunt Regina. My Aunt Regina, so far as I can discover, doesn’t believe that men progress much morally or intellectually after the age of six, and she treats them accordingly. She always gets on splendidly with men like the Colonel—two of her husbands were of just the same type.”

“My dear Julia,” said Ragwort, “your ambition to deal with men in the same manner as your Aunt Regina is very laudable. From the point of view of realism, however, it is somewhat similar to your deciding to play tennis in the style of Miss Martina Navratilova.”

“The trouble is,” said Selena, with a certain wistful-ness, “that you and I, Julia, have been brought up in anera
of emancipation and enlightenment, and we have got into the habit of treating men as if they were normal, responsible, grown-up people. We engage them in discussion; we treat their opinions as worthy of quite serious consideration; we seek to influence their behaviour by rational argument rather than by some simple system of rewards and punishments. It’s all a great mistake, of course, and only makes them confused and miserable—especially men like the Colonel, who have grown up with the idea that women will tell them what they ought to do without their having to think about it for themselves. But I’m afraid it’s too late to put the clock back.”

“I don’t claim,” said Julia, “that I could maintain the impersonation of my Aunt Regina indefinitely. But I only have to do it for one evening, and most of the time we shall be watching the play.”

“What about afterwards?” said Ragwort. “Where are you taking the appalling old menace for dinner?”

“Guido’s. I suppose it’s not quite what he means by a night spot, but I wanted to take him somewhere where he couldn’t get into any trouble. And I don’t think, Ragwort, that you ought to refer to him as an appalling old menace. He fought with great distinction in the Second World War.”

“Fought in it? He probably started it—it would be his idea of a joke.”

“He got the DSO,” said Julia.

“He’s a dangerous lunatic,” said Ragwort.

“I am not sure,” said Selena, “that being a dangerous lunatic is inconsistent with having the DSO. One almost suspects that it may be a prerequisite.”

My readers, having no doubt perceived that Julia is a woman by temperament and conviction inclined towards
pacifism, will be, I daresay, as perplexed as we were by the tenderness of her regard for a man who had devoted his life, with evident enthusiasm, to the profession of arms. The truth is, I suppose, that being herself of a timorous nature, she has a romantic and disproportionate admiration for physical courage: of that, if of no other virtue, possession of the Distinguished Service Order is indisputable evidence. She attempted, however, to lend a veneer of rationality to her position, referring with passion and dubious relevance to the doctrine of equitable estoppel and the maxim “
qui com-modum sentit et onus sentire debet.”

Life in England in the second half of the twentieth century, it seemed to Julia, admittedly on the basis of a somewhat haphazard knowledge of modern history, had so far proved to be a good deal more comfortable than it would have been if we had lost the Second World War. The Colonel had done the fighting and Julia was enjoying the benefit. Would it not, in these circumstances, become her very ill to reproach him for his belligerence or to grudge as unduly troublesome an evening spent keeping him innocently amused?

“My dear Julia,” said Ragwort with a sigh, “your sentiments do you credit. We must hope that you do not have cause to regret them. Where are you meeting the frightful old—the gallant and charming old gentleman?”

“At his club in Piccadilly, at seven o’clock. I’d better go—I wouldn’t like to be late. Shall I see you at the seminar tomorrow, Hilary? I’ve told the chairman that you may be coming, and he is suitably enchanted by the prospect. Nine-thirty at the Godolphin Hotel—nine o’clock if you want coffee.”

I assured her that I would be there, and she took her
leave of us. We observed her departure with misgiving, and exchanged, I fear, some rather severe comments on Cantrip’s wanton abandonment of his responsibilities. Poor boy, had we known what had by then befallen him, we could not have spoken with such harshness.

For such a woman as Cecilia Mainwaring the public rooms of the Godolphin Hotel would have provided an admirable background. The sparkle of the magnificent chandeliers would have been appropriately reflected in the subtle gleam of her jewellery; the thick carpets would have yielded voluptuously to her elegantly shod feet; she would have swept imperiously down the wide staircase and reclined with regal seductiveness on the richly upholstered sofas.

All this, I need hardly say, was altogether wasted on Julia, whom I found there on the following morning bearing all the signs of a woman who has woken late and risen in haste, with insufficient time to comb her hair or find an unladdered pair of tights. She was sitting in an attitude of weariness in one of the deep armchairs, drinking coffee as if it were essential to her survival, and apparently engrossed in the most recent edition of the
Daily Scuttle
. Conscious, as I supposed, that this was unsuitable reading for a person of cultivated taste, she attempted on observing my approach to conceal it behind a cushion.

I enquired if she had spent an agreeable evening with the Colonel.

“I cannot say,” said Julia, “that ‘agreeable’ is quite the mot juste.”

“I suppose,” I said, “that he was rather bored
by All’s Well That End’s Well?”

“On the contrary, he enjoyed it enormously, suspending disbelief to an extent that the producer can hardly have dreamt of. He took in particular a great fancy to Helena, whom he described as ‘a damned fine girl,’ and a corresponding dislike to the Count of Roussillon, whom he judged to be unworthy of her affections. So strongly, indeed, did he feel on the subject that in the middle of the fifth act he rose from his seat and shouted, ‘Shame, sir, shame, you’re a scoundrel,’ and I had some difficulty in persuading him to sit down and be quiet.”

“My poor Julia,” I said, “it must have been a most difficult evening. No wonder you are looking a trifle worn.”

“You wrong me, Hilary. Deficient as I may be in moral fortitude, I venture to say that the trifling embarrassment of being almost thrown out of a London theatre would not alone have reduced me to the shattered wreck of humanity which you now see before you.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “What else?”

“We went to Guido’s for dinner, and the Colonel remained preoccupied with the events of the play. He was anxious to believe that in spite of having been perfectly beastly to Helena throughout five acts Roussillon was really deeply in love with her, and would thereafter make her an ardent and devoted husband.”

There seemed to me to be little in the text to justify so sentimental a reading. Roussillon’s attitude to Helena at the beginning of the play is one at best of indifference. By the end of it, when she has forced him virtually
on pain of death into an unwanted marriage, and tricked him under cover of darkness into an unintended consummation, is it probable that he will be more kindly disposed towards her? She has demonstrated, no doubt, the intensity of her feelings; but outside the conventions of the romantic novel, intensity of passion affords no guarantee of reciprocity.