The Sirens Sang of Murder (24 page)

“My daughter? Oh, my dear Professor Tamar, is that what you thought? I confess I had thought your researches to have been more thorough. My daughter? Oh no, Professor Tamar, that isn’t why Rachel wouldn’t let me meet her—Gabrielle is not my daughter.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, considerably discomfited. “I was under the impression—”

“She’s the daughter of the man I killed. I told you, Professor Tamar, that Rachel Alexandre was a remarkable woman.”

* * *

Those familiar with the Casino will infer that Carruthers, with characteristic recklessness, had begun the evening by paying the sum of five pounds required to secure
entry to the Salles Privées. Cantrip, on the other hand, had judged this too high a price to pay for the privilege of joining the handful of gamblers, dressed with respectability rather than distinction, who amid an expanse of deserted green baize were gathered there in mournful silence round a single roulette table. I found him in the Salle des Jeux Américains—that is to say, the room devoted to what I believe are called fruit machines—moving eagerly from one cacophonous device to another in search of one responsive to his skills. It was accordingly under conditions of some difficulty that Î told him of my conversation with Mr. Justice Welladay, explaining that on certain matters, having undertaken to respect the judge’s confidence, I was obliged to silence.

His efforts were from time to time rewarded with clattering showers of coins, eventually amounting to a sum almost equivalent, at the prevailing exchange rate, to eighty pounds sterling. While not seriously imperilling the solvency of the Casino, his winnings seemed to him sufficient to vindicate the chambermaid’s prophecy and to justify the purchase of a celebratory bottle of wine among the ornate mirrors and pink and crimson draperies of the Salon Rose.

It was here that his muse came upon him. He motioned for silence with the true imperiousness of the creative artist and for several minutes wrote without pause, looking up only to enquire my opinion on the spelling of
sumptuous
. At last he leant back wearily in his pink velvet chair, gazing with admiration at the ceiling, upon which were depicted a number of lightly clothed young women reclining on rose-tinted clouds—of tobacco smoke perhaps, since all were smoking cigars. He remarked, with sentimental tenderness, that one of
them looked just like Julia. I could see too little of her face to judge of the resemblance.

“My dear Cantrip,” I said, “I perceive that for the purposes of fiction you still regard Mr. Justice Welladay as the villain of the piece. You do understand, I hope, that I am now satisfied that in real life he is not?”

“Oh rather, Hilary, I quite understand that
you’re
satisfied.”

“Would you care,” I said, “to explain your emphasis on the second-person pronoun?”

“Well, what I understand is that old Wellieboots has spun you a yarn and you’ve fallen for it. And he’s told you to keep the whole thing under your hat, the way chaps do when they’re trying to get some mug to invest in underwater motels or Venusian railway shares, so you won’t have a chance to talk it over with anyone who might have a bit more sense.”

“My dear Cantrip,” I said, “I may claim, I believe, to be not quite so lacking in judgment and worldly experience as your comparison might seem to suggest.”

“You can claim what you like, old thing, but you can’t say that pootling to and fro between libraries and senior common rooms and giving the odd lecture or two on novel disseisin is exactly a training in the tough school of life. You’re jolly good at picking up juicy bits of gossip, I give you that”—he seemed to think this a most generous admission—“but the trouble is you don’t much care if it’s true or not as long as it makes a good story. So when some con artist pitches you a yarn, you swallow it hook, line, and sinker.”

“If I say that Sir Arthur Welladay impressed me as a person of almost unshakable integrity, you may perhaps be reluctant to rely on the impressions of a person so naive and inexperienced as myself. I would remind you,
however, that since he has been appointed to be one of Her Majesty’s judges, he would appear to have made a similar impression on the Lord Chancellor.”

“There you are,” said Cantrip triumphantly, as if I had proved his point. “That’s the impression successful con artists always make on people. I mean, let’s face it, if everyone can tell at first sight that you’re as crooked as a cross-eyed kookaburra, it’s not much use going in for being a con artist, is it? Better give up the idea and be an old-fashioned burglar—ask any careers master.”

“Moreover,” I continued, thinking it right in the circumstances to exercise the utmost patience, “the explanation which he offered of his behaviour was consistent with other evidence available to me of which he could not have known. It is inconceivable that it should have been a spur-of-the-moment invention.”

“That’s what you think. What you’re forgetting is that before you get to be a High Court judge you’ve got to spend about thirty years in practice at the Bar, and you’ve got to be jolly good at it. And one of the things you’ve got to be jolly good at is thinking on your feet and coming up with a convincing explanation when the evidence comes out all different from what you expected. So for old Wellieboots thinking up a good story in ten seconds flat would be a piece of cake. After all, he’d know you wouldn’t have any experience in cross-examination, so he didn’t have to worry about you picking holes in it.”

“I questioned him,” I said rather coldly, “with as much rigour as the circumstances permitted.”

“Oh yes? All right then, what does he say he was doing that night in Sark when poor old Edward Malvoisin got pushed off the cliff?”

“He told me,” I said with some reluctance, though I
did not regard this part of the judge’s narrative as being confidential, “that he spent the night in one of the outbuildings on Philippe Alexandre’s farm and saw you all retire for the night to the Witch’s Cottage. After that he slept until daybreak.”

Cantrip’s hooting merriment echoed round the Salon Rose.

I spent, I confess, a somewhat troubled night. Though I myself had every confidence that Sir Arthur Welladay had told me the truth, I had been obliged to admit that his account of his movements on the previous Monday night did not, strictly speaking, provide him with what is termed an alibi. If he had in fact stayed awake rather longer than he had claimed—long enough, that is to say, to observe the departure from the farmhouse of Edward Malvoisin, to follow the unfortunate advocate to the Coupee, and there to encompass his death—it would indeed have been beyond the limits of reasonable truthfulness to give me a wholly accurate account.

I did not for a moment believe that anything of the kind had occurred. On the other hand, if I were in error, I could not disguise from myself that the arrangement I had made would require my young friend to travel back to London in inescapable proximity to a murderer. Such thoughts conduce ill to sleep.

His belief in Sir Arthur Welladay’s homicidal inclinations had not at all deterred Cantrip from giving effect to the arrangement. On the contrary, he had embraced it, I suspect, with far greater enthusiasm than he would have done if I had persuaded him of the judge’s innocence. His spirits, when on the following morning we set out for Nice airport—I could do no less than accompany him so far—were high to the point of effervescence;
mine were weighed down by doubt and apprehension.

“Cantrip,” I said, when we had been driving for some ten minutes along the Middle Corniche, “you know that I would not for the world expose you to any personal danger.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, old thing,” said Cantrip cheerfully. “I mean, you didn’t when you set the thing up, so why start now? I shouldn’t think old Wellieboots is loopy enough to stick a knife in my ribs in the middle of a planeful of passengers.”

“I’m sure he isn’t,” I said. “I mean, I am sure that he is perfectly well-balanced and law-abiding. But at the same time—”

“Anyway, if he does, that’ll jolly well prove he’s as nutty as a fruitcake and ought to be put away somewhere he can’t do any harm—House of Lords or somewhere. So at least he’ll stop bothering Gabrielle. I say, you’ll be seeing Gabrielle, won’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “We are lunching together on Monday.”

“You’ll explain why I’ve left Monte Carlo, won’t you? I wouldn’t want her to think I’d just gone off and left her in the lurch.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”

“And the other thing you might do is give something to that rather jolly chambermaid for me. I know she talked a lot of rot about me being keen on Gabrielle, which was all bilge, of course, but she was right about me winning at the Casino, so I sort of feel she ought to get a slice of the winnings. If I give you a tenner when we get to the airport, will you pass it on to her?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, certainly.” His requests fell on my ear with a dismally testamentary ring.

Having delivered the motorcar to a representative of the company from which he had hired it, we joined the line of prospective travellers waiting for boarding cards. I saw, a few places ahead of us, the tall figure of the judge. He glanced briefly towards us as he strode away towards the departure gate, and for the first time that morning I perceived in my young friend’s eyes a flicker of apprehension.

“My dear Cantrip,” I said, “perhaps after all it would be better not to take this flight.”

“Don’t talk rot, old thing,” said Cantrip. “If I don’t go on this one, Wellieboots won’t either, and we’ll be back at square one.”

“But if you really think—”

“I’m not worried about him trying to bump me off. It’s just that I’d forgotten how he looks at you, like one of those things that turn people to stone—you know, an obelisk.”

He meant, I suppose, a basilisk, but I had not the heart to dispute with the poor boy.

It consoled me but little to reflect, during my return journey to Monte Carlo, that if he were now travelling in the company of a murderer I would not myself be lunching with one in two days’ time. Admittedly, if Gabrielle was not Welladay’s daughter—and it would hardly be logical to accept his evidence on all other issues and reject it on that—she was not a descendant of Sir Walter Palgrave and accordingly not a potential beneficiary of the Daffodil fund. I had believed from the outset, however, and saw no reason now to alter my opinion, that so far as motive was concerned the professional advisers to the settlement were as worthy of suspicion as the beneficiaries. And what of Gabrielle’s fountain pen? All those who had been in her company
on Sark and might have found an opportunity to steal it seemed now to be excluded from suspicion. It appeared then that she herself must have dropped it: for her to have done so by any innocent accident at the very place where Malvoisin had fallen would surely be… a most remarkable coincidence.

A telephone call on Saturday afternoon assured me of Cantrip’s safe arrival in London, unmolested by any homicidal attention from Mr. Justice Welladay. I was sufficiently relieved to be able to spend the remainder of the weekend in almost unalloyed enjoyment of the pleasures of the Mediterranean. On the Monday morning, however, I woke with a sense of apprehension, which I realised after a few moments was attributable to the prospect of lunching with the Contessa.

Shortly after breakfast I encountered, for the first time since Cantrip’s departure, the gipsy-eyed chambermaid, and made haste to honour my undertaking to give her a suitable share of his winnings.

“I do wish,” I said, “that you would tell me how you knew of my friend’s attachment to an auburn-haired lady who wears Houbigant’s Raffiné.”

“Oh,” she said, with a teasing smile, “don’t you wish I would tell you how I knew he would win at the Casino?”

“No, mademoiselle, I don’t think I need to ask you that. I would rather suppose that you tell all visitors of a certain type that they will be lucky at the Casino. If they are not, they will hardly venture to reproach you. If they are, they will think it just to give you a share of their winnings. Inexperienced as I am in the ways of the world, I can guess so much of the art of prophecy.”

“Oh,” said the girl, “I am afraid you are a very cynical
person. Professor. Well, if you can guess my secrets so easily, I do not see why I should tell you any more.”