The Sirens Sang of Murder (17 page)
Read The Sirens Sang of Murder Online
Authors: Sarah Caudwell
I had begun to feel a certain uneasiness. The longer I reflected on the matter, the more suspicion seemed to direct itself towards the interesting and attractive figure of the Contessa: whose mother, it seemed—I was conscious of the absurdity of attaching any sinister significance to such a thing—was the namesake and descendant of Rachel Alexandre, burnt as a witch in the intolerant seventeenth century.
It had occurred to me that none of those with whom I had spoken had actually seen the Contessa or heard any news of her since the night of Malvoisin’s death. My anxiety was perhaps irrational; for I knew of no reason for her to wish Cantrip any harm, but when two persons simultaneously disappear, of whom one may be reasonably suspected of murderous propensities, it is difficult to feel no concern for the safety of the other.
This dismal train of thought was happily interrupted by the entry of Lilian, in possession of a new telex message.
TELEX M. CANTRIP TO J. LARWOOD TRANSMITTED HOTEL CLAIR DE LUNE MONTE CARLO 4:00 P.M. THURSDAY 3RD MAY
Yoo-hoo there, Larwood, it’s me here—ace investigator Catseyes Cantrip reporting back to base. Bet you’ll never guess what I’m doing in Monte Carlo. Well you won’t, not in a million years, so I’ll tell you.
Things started happening just after I’d bunged off my last telex. I was on my own in the office at the back of the Alexandra and I suddenly saw this awful face at the window—sort of inhuman-looking, with glaring eyes and lots of teeth. First thing I thought was that it was a werewolf or something from outer space. Second thing I thought was that it looked just like old Wellieboots when someone tries to cite the Duke of Westminster’s case. Third thing I thought was that it actually was old Wellieboots, and I was right.
I went sort of cold all over, same as you’d have done if you’d seen him without warning like that in a place you’d never expect him, but luckily we
hadn’t made what the Yanks call eye contact, so he didn’t know I’d spotted him.
Well, you don’t find High Court judges prowling round Sark glaring through office windows just for the fun of the thing, do you? The way I saw it was he must be up to something pretty sinister, and it didn’t take long to work out what it was. I mean, we all know how steamed up he gets about people dodging tax and people like you telling them how to do it and the Revenue not being tough enough with them, and when you think about it, it must get a bit frustrating for him not being able to do anything worse than sit in court and wriggle his eyebrows at them. So one fine day he decides to breeze over to the nearest tax haven and rootle about in person, with a view to getting the goods on a few hardened tax planners and slinging them in jug until they’re too old to be a danger to the public.
It was obviously my clients he was out to get the goods on, so I’d got to do something pretty fast—I mean, that’s what Counsel’s for, isn’t it, to stop judges slinging his clients in jug?—but I wasn’t too sure what. I suppose I could have gone straight out and confronted him, but I didn’t know exactly what to confront him with. Anyway, I wasn’t too keen on coming up against the eyebrows alone and unarmed and stone-cold sober, and I don’t honestly think Carruthers would have been either, or Cecilia Mainwaring if it comes to that.
So I decided what I’d better do was follow him, discreetly and at a longish distance, and find out what he was up to. I gave him a minute or so to get ahead of me and then I slid out of the office and
started after him—he was about fifty yards away, making for the Coupee.
The way he behaved when he got there was pretty suspicious, if you ask me. There were two chaps with a tractor trying to unblock the entrance, and someone with nothing to be shifty about would have gone straight up and asked how long it would take or something like that. Wellieboots just stood looking at them from a distance for a bit, and then went and sat on a bench by the edge of the cliff and did an imitation of an innocent tourist admiring the view. So I went and sat on the bench on the opposite side and did an imitation of another innocent tourist.
Bit of a waste of talent really, because there wasn’t much of an audience—just the two chaps trying to haul the carriage away and an old biddy in black nattering away with them like bosom pals. Same one I saw the day before, I suppose, unless there are lots of them in Sark. She must have been chatting them up with a view to hitching a lift—as soon as the entrance was cleared she nipped up on the tractor beside the driver and got driven straight across, riding shotgun.
Wellieboots stopped pretending to look at the view and made off along the Coupee, with me following and being careful not to get too close. I don’t suppose he’d have recognised me, specially without a wig and gown—I’ve only been in front of him a couple of times in the Companies Court, asking for the usual compulsory order, and he didn’t give me the feeling I’d made a lasting impression—but I thought I’d better be on the safe side. Actually I needn’t have worried, because he
never looked round once—just kept going all the way to the Avenue and down the hill to the harbour.
There was a boat at the quayside with a long queue of people waiting to go on board. When Wellieboots joined on the end of it I was a bit baffled—I hadn’t exactly been thinking of leaving right away, without saying good-bye to Gabrielle or anything. Still, it seemed pretty wet to give up at that stage, and I’d got my briefcase with my pyjamas and toothbrush in it, and this jolly good book that I told you about and I was still in the middle of, so in the end I decided to go on board as well.
It didn’t make much odds as far as I was concerned whether the boat was going to Jersey or Guernsey, and I thought I’d feel a bit of an ass if I asked the chap selling tickets, so I just kept quiet and gave him as much as he wanted. I got a seat a good bit away from old Wellieboots, next to a couple of characters talking about corpses. They started with one who’d been brought in that morning on a fishing boat and went on to all the drownings and shipwrecks off Sark in the past four hundred years or so—cheerful sort of subject when you’re putting out to sea.
After two or three hours we got near to some land again, but it didn’t look much like Jersey. It didn’t look much like Guernsey either. There was a huge great wall, tremendously historic-looking, with long black roofs like witches’ hats sticking up at the back of it, and I hadn’t the faintest idea where it was.
If you’re an ace investigator hot on the trail of a villainous High Court judge it’s a good thing to
know what town you’re in, so I nipped off the boat as fast as I could to find out where we were. The first thing I spotted was that everyone was talking Frogspeak, so putting two and two together I deduced we were probably in France.
I felt a bit miffed at first. I’ve nothing against France, except for it being full of foreigners, but it wasn’t where I’d have expected old Wellieboots to go if he wanted to get the goods on my clients. I started thinking poor old Catseyes Cantrip might be on a wild-goose chase. Still, having got this far I was blowed if I was giving up right away, so when he got ashore I started tailing him again.
He went through a big gate in the historic-looking wall into a square with four or five cafés in it—you know the kind they have in France, tables on the pavement with sort of conservatories over them. He went and sat down in one of them, skulking in a corner pretending to read a newspaper, and I went and skulked in a corner in the one opposite. I was getting jolly hungry by this time, so I ordered a few ham pancakes and hoped he wouldn’t move on before I got a chance to eat them.
He kept squinting at the café next door to the one I was in, as if he was watching for someone to come out of it. So I kept an eye on it as well, to see if I could spot who he was watching out for. When I saw who it was I simply couldn’t believe it. You won’t either, because it was Gabrielle.
Which absolutely just wasn’t possible. Wellieboots and I had been across the Coupee as soon as it was open and gone straight down to the harbour and got the first boat going, so there was no
way anyone could have got to France any faster than we did. But there she was.
“How very extraordinary,” said Julia, pausing in bewilderment from her reading of the telex. “How on earth can she have done it?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Perhaps she flew over on her broomstick.”
In truth, however, the reappearance at this juncture of the Contessa in the Place Chateaubriand in St. Malo was a matter of no greater astonishment to me than I can suppose it will be, dear reader, to yourself.
She didn’t look as if she was doing anything frightfully secret or mysterious—she just went into the bank next door for a minute or two and then came back and sat down and started ordering lunch.
I couldn’t go over and say hallo and ask how she’d got there, because of not wanting to be spotted by Wellieboots. It was obvious by this time that she was the one he was out to get the goods on, and of course I jolly well wasn’t going to let him, but the way I saw it was that my best chance of foiling him was to let him go on thinking she was all alone and at his mercy, little knowing he’d got Catseyes Cantrip to reckon with.
That meant I couldn’t let Gabrielle spot me either, in case she waved at me or something and blew my cover. It seemed a pity to be sitting eating lunch in the same square and not being able to talk to her, but looking on the bright side it was still a lot better than doing a possession action in West
London County Court. Hope that turned out all right, by the way.
To get to the bank I’d have had to walk straight past her, so I had to get the waiter to change me some money into francs. He gave me about half the going rate of exchange and looked at me as if I was loopy. He thought I was even loopier when I asked for my bill before I’d finished eating, but I didn’t want to get caught on the hop if anything happened suddenly.
I nearly did, all the same. I was taking more notice of Gabrielle than old Wellieboots, like anyone would with any sense, and she’d only just started making signals for her bill when I looked round and saw him heading for the gateway. So quick as a flash I was up and after him.
What happened next was pretty sinister. He pootled along to a car park a few hundred yards from the gate, went over to an oldish blue Renault, and climbed into the driving seat, cool as a cucumber. Then he just sat there, obviously waiting for Gabrielle to come along and drive off in one of the other cars.
Which to the razor-sharp intellect of the ace investigator meant just one thing—viz that he hadn’t only known where she was going to be and what she was going to be doing, but he’d known it enough in advance to fix up to have a car waiting for him in the same place as hers. Well, have a think about ways he could have found all that out, and if you can think of one that isn’t jolly sinister I’ll buy the next three bottles of wine in the Corkscrew.
Did I ever tell you about an old mate of mine at Cambridge who was an absolute whiz with locks?
He wasn’t all that hot on land law, though, and he gave me some quite useful tips in exchange for helping with his essays. One of the things I used to practise on was the boot of a Renault—in top form I could do it in ninety seconds flat, just with an ordinary penknife like one’s always got in one’s pocket. And the car Wellieboots was sitting in was exactly the same model.
It seemed sort of meant, somehow. I walked on a bit, so as not to be coming from the same direction he was expecting Gabrielle from, and then I looped back, doing an imitation of a suave young English milord strolling casually through a car park. When I got to the Renault I ducked down at the back of it and got to work—there was a wall behind me, and not a lot of people about, so I’d have been unlucky to get spotted.
It took me just under two minutes, which wasn’t bad considering I was out of practise. I’d just finished when I saw Gabrielle walking across the car park towards a rather snazzy Mercedes. Wellieboots must have seen her, too, because he started his engine. So I opened the boot and nipped in.
It was one of those things that seem like a good idea at the time and a slightly less good idea about a minute later, but by that time we were moving quite fast.
Don’t let’s have a bit in our book where Carruthers gets stuck in the boot of a car for five hours. I suppose there are some chaps who write books who could go on for pages about it and make it sound jolly exciting, but I just don’t see how they
do it. You can forget describing the scenery for a start, because there isn’t any.
It was the most boring five hours I’ve ever spent, even counting that time you got me to see three Shakespeare plays one after another in the same day. It was a lot more uncomfortable as well, because the only way there was room for me was with my knees scrunched up against my chin and my head at right angles to my spine, and not able to move anything more than about an inch. I couldn’t even risk dropping off to sleep, because I’d got my handkerchief looped round the door handle and I had to keep hold of both ends of it to keep the door sort of shut but not shut at the same time—I’d never tried opening the boot of a Renault from the inside, and I thought it would be a bad time to find out I couldn’t.
It felt as if we were driving mostly on motorway, and by the time we stopped I suppose we must have gone about two hundred and fifty miles. I was practically past caring whether anyone spotted me climbing out, but I made myself count to sixty to give Wellieboots time to get clear. Then I opened the door a bit and had a squint round.
It was beginning to get dark, and I was in a big garden with walls round it at the back of a largish house. There didn’t seem to be anyone around, so I crawled out. I thought for a bit that I was never going to be able to stand up straight again, but I managed it in the end. Then I looked round and there was the Mercedes, parked a few yards away.
When I got outside into the street I could see the town we were in was the kind of place Gabrielle would be keen on—tremendously historic-looking,
with a big castle and lots of cobblestones, and a covered market like you see in old towns in the country. The place we were parked at the back of looked like a rather grand sort of hunting lodge, but when I got round to the front it turned out to be a hotel, called after some bird called Blanche.
It seemed like a pretty fair bet that Gabrielle and Wellieboots would both be having dinner there, so I pootled in and asked for a table.
The headwaiter gave me a slightly cross-eyed sort of look, as if I wasn’t quite as swanny as he’d have liked me to be—that’s Frogspeak for having a clean shirt on and a crease in your trousers and generally not looking as if you’d spent the past five hours in the boot of a Renault. Still, he gave me a table all right—tucked away in a corner where no one would notice me, which was fine as far as I was concerned.
He can’t have thought Wellieboots was all that swanny either—he was at a table in another darkish corner, with a boar’s head with big tusks mounted on the wall behind him. There wasn’t a lot of difference between them, but the boar was friendlier-looking.
It was quite a while before Gabrielle came in, and when she did she was with a tall dark chap who I suppose you’d say was frightfully good-looking—not all that young, though, and probably putting on weight a bit if he hadn’t had his clothes cut so as to hide it. I couldn’t think to begin with how he came into the picture, but then I remembered her saying she was going to meet her husband somewhere on the way back from the Channel Islands. So obviously that’s who it was.
The headwaiter perked up like anything, because Gabrielle was looking tremendously swanny, and took them to a table outside on the terrace, with lots of flowers and candles and things. Her husband must have fixed it up in advance to make it all sort of romantic. You’d have thought he hadn’t seen her for months—he kept kissing her hand and looking into her eyes and generally being pretty soppy—but I suppose foreigners always carry on like that, specially Italians.
I could see that Gabrielle was in a bit of a tizz, though. She kept taking things out of her handbag and putting them down all over the place, as if there was something that ought to be there and wasn’t—the sort of thing you’re always doing but she usually isn’t—with a lot of hand-waving, and all the waiters gathering round trying to look helpful and sympathetic. I thought she must have lost her chequebook or her credit cards or something, but one of the waiters eventually got round to serving me and, according to him, it was her pen. I still didn’t think it was like her to make such a fuss, but I suppose it was the one she told me about that was a present from her husband, and she was in a flap in case he was miffed about it.