The Sirens Sang of Murder (14 page)

“I’m afraid,” said Julia sadly, “that I am of the same opinion. I have always supposed the title of the play to be ironic. Roussillon will continue to be beastly to her and they will live miserably ever after. Moreover, it is clear that he has only his looks to commend him, and in a few years’ time he will no doubt be losing them. Helena will realise too late that she has tied herself down to a bad-tempered and illiterate oaf who doesn’t laugh at her jokes, and she’ll wish she’d stayed in Paris and pursued her medical studies.”

It seemed all too probable.

“But the Colonel, as I say, was anxious to believe otherwise, and I endeavoured, so far as my critical conscience would allow, to agree that he might be right. We were still debating the subject when some of the cast came in—Guido’s, as you know, is rather popular with the theatrical profession—including Roland Devereux, who plays the Count of Roussillon.” Julia paused and lit a Gauloise. “The Colonel plainly felt that this presented him with an ideal opportunity to ascertain the truth of the matter. Before I could do anything to prevent him, he was leaning over Roland, shaking his fist and shouting, ‘Look here, you young blackguard, she’s a damned fine girl and she loves you—are you going to treat her decently or aren’t you?”

“Disconcerting, no doubt, though a remarkable tribute to the quality of the young man’s performance.”

“I am sure that if Roland had understood the position, he would have felt deeply flattered. He did not appreciate, however, that the Colonel’s reproaches were addressed to him in the character of the Count of Roussillon rather than
in propria persona
. And unfortunately”—she paused again and drew deeply on her Gauloise—“unfortunately, you see, I did once happen to have some acquaintance with Roland Devereux. A very passing and distant acquaintance.”

“I have been given the impression,” I said, “that it was passing but not entirely distant.”

“Well, in terms of time it’s extremely distant. Buried, one might almost say, in the mists of antiquity. In spite of which, Roland leapt instantly to the conclusion that I was the girl to whom the Colonel was referring. So instead of simply telling the Colonel that he didn’t know what he was talking about, he engaged in a spirited defence, pointing out that it was I who had been, as it were, the pursuer, and that whatever my feelings might be, his own were not engaged. This confirmed, of course, the Colonel’s worst fears about Roussillon’s attitude to Helena, and his gallant old heart was moved to indignation on her behalf.”

“Dear me,” I said, “what a very unfortunate combination of circumstances.”

“Yes indeed,” said Julia. “Not made less so by the fact that the gossip columnist of the
Scuttle
was sitting two tables away, together with his photographer.” With a heavy sigh she extracted the newspaper from its hiding place under the cushion. “I suppose you might as well see it—everyone else will have done.”

The accompanying photograph, it is fair to say, showed Julia to some advantage, though emphasising, to an extent that Ragwort would have frowned on, the décolletage previously mentioned. It showed Roland Devereux, on the other hand, at one of those moments when even the most photogenic of actors can hardly appear at his best, that is to say when a military gentleman of advanced years is emptying a plate of spaghetti over him.

“Do you think I can sue them,” said Julia, “for calling me nubile?”

“I fear not,” I said. “As you know, it means merely that you are of marriageable age, though no doubt the readers of the
Scuttle
believe it to have some more stimulating significance. Never mind, Julia, there can be few such people among your acquaintance—one never meets anyone who actually reads the
Scuttle
.”

“I know,” said Julia despondently, “but everyone always knows what’s in it. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

There was nothing I could say to persuade the poor creature that she would ever again be able to show her face in Guido’s, or in any other restaurant in London, or
in any place frequented by the theatrical profession, or indeed anywhere within fifty miles of any newsagent selling copies of the
Scuttle
. She began to reflect on the possibility of emigrating to the British Virgin Islands.

I had been glancing from time to time towards the increasing throng of men in pinstriped suits gathered round the registration desk, where pretty girls in uniforms were issuing identity badges and bound copies of the lecture notes. I could discern no one, however, who seemed to correspond to the impression I had formed of Gideon Darkside.

The only one who at all attracted my notice was a man who looked to be of a very different sort from the un-charismatic accountant. Though no less soberly dressed than the others, he was somehow of a more carefree and lighthearted demeanour than was generally characteristic of the participants in the seminar. He had twice seemed to be disposed to move in our direction, but then to think better of it and turn away. Finally, however, he appeared to make up his mind to approach.

On observing him, Julia blushed and spilt her coffee over her lecture notes.

I had not at first glance supposed him the sort of man to whom Julia would be susceptible. Tawny-haired and amber-eyed, like a slightly dilapidated pet lion, he had passed by some twenty years the perfection—as Julia esteems it—of the quarter century, and was of a build rather muscular than slender; but he had not had the carelessness to lose his figure or the misfortune to lose his hair, and his manner of dress, though at first sight suggesting the casual, revealed to a more attentive gaze the fastidious elegance which Julia always finds so attractive in others. He looked, moreover, like a man who would laugh at her jokes.

He greeted her with the slight apprehensiveness often to be observed in men when they meet after some lapse of time a woman last encountered in conditions of erotic intimacy; but his voice was singularly pleasing, echoing the charming cadences of Dublin.

“Hello, Patrick,” said Julia, making a vague and entirely useless gesture towards her inadequately combed hair, “what a nice surprise. I didn’t see your name on the list.”

“Surely to God, Julia,” said the Irishman, “you don’t think I’d come to a thing like this under my own name, do you, with spies from the Revenue lurking in every corner? I have colleagues who’d go to much greater lengths than simply travelling under a false name. They’d think it was insanely reckless of me to come to the U.K. without even putting on a false beard.”

It was clear—though Julia, having evidently forgotten my presence and perhaps also my name, was plainly incapable of performing an introduction—that the Irishman was Patrick Ardmore. There was no prospect, however, of her leading the conversation into channels useful to my enquiry: I judged it discreet to melt, as it were, into the background, leaving her to her blushings and burblings until the announcement of the first lecture.

To the actual or prospective owner of any considerable fortune, the morning’s proceedings would doubtless have been of absorbing interest. Such a person would have listened spellbound, I daresay, while Julia and her fellow speakers debated the schemes and stratagems by which income or capital may be protected from the grasping fingers of the Inland Revenue, comparing the merits of Panamanian private companies, Liechtenstein
anstalts, and Cayman Island trusts, and earnestly drawing attention to the fascinating opportunities offered by the double taxation treaty with Ireland.

The rewards of Scholarship, however, are not of a material nature, and I fear that my attention wandered. Still, the management of the Godolphin Hotel had provided me with a comfortable chair, an abundance of iced water, and a handsomely bound notepad to scribble on. If I was wasting my time, it was at least in conditions of greater luxury than are to be found in the lecture halls of Oxford.

The time came for questions. From a few rows behind me a voice originating in that part of the Midlands where everyone seems to suffer permanently from a slight cold in the head addressed the platform in a tone of some resentment. We had heard a lot, said the voice, about domicile and residence and suchlike technicalities, and the lady lawyer had talked as if there was a big difference between tax that wasn’t payable and tax that the Revenue couldn’t recover. These technical distinctions might be very interesting, said the voice, to highly paid lawyers sitting in Lincoln’s Inn, but quite frankly they weren’t much help to a simple hardworking accountant trying to give practical advice to real-life clients. What the voice had to tell its clients was whether they’d have to pay tax or not, and if they didn’t, then the voice quite frankly didn’t give a row of beans whether that was because it wasn’t payable or because it wasn’t recoverable.

With the composure of a young man not easily shocked, the chairman invited Julia to reply.

“It really rather depends,” said Julia, “on how much one minds about going to prison. Let us suppose, for example, that you advise a client to remove all his assets
from this country in order to avoid tax on his death. If your client is domiciled outside the United Kingdom, then the result of his taking your advice will be that there is no tax liability. So your advice is perfectly proper, and if you failed to give it you would probably be liable for professional negligence. On the other hand, if your client were domiciled in the United Kingdom, the result would be that there was still a liability but the Revenue couldn’t enforce it. In these circumstances you would probably be guilty of criminal conspiracy, and you could be sent to prison for it. But I agree, of course, that if you don’t mind about that, then the distinction’s of very trifling importance.”

“In steering the difficult course between the Scylla of negligence and the Charybdis of conspiracy,” said the chairman, “it is always prudent to obtain the advice of Counsel. I think we’d all agree about that.” The speakers, all members of the Revenue Bar, nodded their approval of this satisfactory conclusion. “I hope that answers your question, Mr.—Mr. Darkside, isn’t it?”

I looked round in time to identify the questioner, who was shaking his head in manifest dissatisfaction. Cantrip had not wronged Gideon Darkside in suggesting that he was of cadaverous aspect, for the paucity of the flesh covering his long bones had little in common with the muscular leanness of health; his thinning black hair lay lank across his skull, and his skin had the pallor of a fish which has been dead too long to make wholesome eating.

Lunch was preceded by what were termed cocktails. I contrived when these were served to be within a few paces of the accountant and to receive my glass of sherry at the same time that he accepted a grapefruit juice. I had thought that some trifling accident with my
glass, not involving the sacrifice of an excessive amount of sherry, would provide a natural pretext to engage him in conversation; but before I could execute such a manoeuvre he moved briskly away, with the object, as it proved, of talking to Patrick Ardmore. The Irishman greeted him with what looked more like resignation than enthusiasm.

“Glad you’re here,” said the accountant. “Wanted a word with you.”

“Of course, Gideon, by all means,” said the Irishman rather wearily.

The two men found seats at a small occasional table some distance removed from the general throng. Though they somewhat lowered their voices, I was able, by appearing engrossed in my lecture notes, to remain within earshot of their conversation.

“Look, Patrick, I want you to tell me what’s been going on.”

“Certainly, Gideon, by all means. In what connection, precisely?”

“This business of Edward Malvoisin of course. What’s happening about the inquest?”

“The inquest is on Saturday, but I understand that the Guernsey CID have already made their report to the Seneschal. They see no reason to doubt that his death was accidental.”

“And doesn’t anyone want to know what he was doing wandering about on the Coupee in the middle of the night?”

“The notion seems to have got about,” said Ardmore with pellucid innocence, “that he probably had a business appointment of some kind—something he didn’t want the rest of us to know about.”

“A business meeting? At midnight? How did anyone get a damn-fool idea like that?”

“Advisers on financial planning are in a fiercely competitive business these days, as of course you know, Gideon. If a high-net-worth individual wants advice on his tax affairs in the middle of a rainy night on Sark, then you have to be there, don’t you, or risk losing the client?”

“I never heard such a load of poppycock.”

“Or her tax affairs,” added Ardmore, with a sidelong glance and a world of innuendo.

“Oh, I see, they think he was off to see some woman. Well, that makes more sense, I suppose, specially in Malvoisin’s case. And how do they think he came to go over the edge?”

“The CID don’t think there’s any great mystery about that after all. At about midnight on Monday poor old Albert was driving his horse and carriage along the Coupee, drunk as a lord and with some idea that the Devil was after him, and you’ve seen for yourself that there’s not much leeway. If Edward was there and trying to get out of the way…” The Irishman spread his hands in a gesture designed to convey the sequel.

“Is that what the authorities think?”

“It’s the obvious explanation. There’s no question of Albert being charged with anything, of course—he’s a Sark man and very well liked, and he didn’t mean to do any harm to anyone. Well, Gideon, I think that’s all I can tell you.”