The Sirens Sang of Murder (9 page)

TELEX CANTRIP TO LARWOOD TRANSMITTED SARK 8:00 A.M. TUESDAY 1ST MAY

   Phew—if Henry complains about being one suave Chancery junior short of strength, tell him that after last night he’s jolly lucky it’s not permanent.

Look here, Larwood, what I want to know is why birds nowadays aren’t like they used to be in the old days. Yielding is what birds were in the old days, and what I specially like about birds being yielding is that they can’t start being it till they’ve got something to yield to, viz they jolly well wait to be asked.

You remember this book I told you about, the one where this bird and this chap are stuck on Sark with no clothes on being all chaste and noble? Well, there’s a bit where the chap feels tempted by his baser nature, and he goes striding off into the storm until he conquers it, and in some ways you can see it’s pretty sickening for him. On the other hand, when he isn’t being tempted by his baser nature, he doesn’t have to worry about the bird not bothering to conquer hers and dragging him off into the bracken and telling him to get on with it. That’s because it’s all happening in the old days, and you can’t help thinking that in some ways it must have been jolly restful.

The thing that gets me, looking back on last night, is that there was actually a stage when I was quite looking forward to getting a solid eight hours
of health-giving zizz. Which just goes to show how right all those chaps are who say what a waste of time it is expecting things to turn out the way you expect them to, because they never do.

We’d all adjourned to the bar for a swift one after dinner, but Gabrielle drank hers quite fast and said she felt like an early night. She’d been a bit edgy all evening, because on the way over from the cottage before dinner she’d thought she’d spotted someone prowling about at the far end of the garden. She wasn’t sure—she’d only seen him for a second or two and it was getting dark—and she pretended it didn’t worry her, but I could see it did.

I wouldn’t have let her walk back on her own, even if there hadn’t been anyone prowling. It’s not far from the farmhouse to the cottage, but it was pretty dark and a bit spooky. The weather had changed while we were having dinner and the moon kept getting covered up with clouds and the wind was making a sort of wailing noise in the telegraph wires.

So I said I’d quite like to turn in early as well, and then Clemmie said she would, too, and we all walked back to the cottage together. We left Patrick Ardmore and Edward Malvoisin drinking whiskey and playing darts, and Darkside drinking barley water and looking disapproving.

Right then—at ten-thirty there I am respectably tucked up in bed, just meaning to read another chapter of this book before I go to sleep, when there’s a knock on the door and Clemmie waltzes in, wearing a pink thing with a lot of frills and saying “Well, how about it?” or words to the like effect.

I know what Ragwort says you ought to do when your instructing solicitor makes a pass at you—adopt an attitude of dignified remonstrance is what he says, viz make a long speech about the traditions of the English Bar and tell her there’s nothing doing. Well, it’s all very well him saying that. If a bird makes a pass at you and you turn it down, either she takes it personally and gets miffed or she doesn’t take it personally and thinks you’re a dead loss, and either way it doesn’t do a lot for the chances of her sending you another brief.

Another thing that cramped my style for remon-stering was that she kept shushing me, because Gabrielle was in the room next door and Clemmie didn’t want her to hear us. It’s jolly difficult to make a speech about the dignity of the English Bar if you’ve got to do it in a whisper.

And then all the lights went out. I suppose we were on course for putting the light out anyway, but it’s one thing putting it out on purpose and knowing you can put it on again and another suddenly finding it’s pitch dark and knowing you can’t.

It looked as if all the lights in the cottage had gone, and I didn’t think it would be much fun for Gabrielle to be all on her own in the dark, worrying about the Revenue chaps prowling round in the garden. So I whispered a few soothing things to Clemmie and pootled out onto the landing in my pyjamas to do the heroic and chivalrous bit, viz call out to Gabrielle to sit tight and not worry while I went and looked for the fuse box.

I don’t actually know why I’m supposed to be any better at finding the fuse box than anyone else, but most birds seem to think nowadays that there are
two things chaps are useful for and the other one’s mending the electricity. Which just goes to show that Gabrielle isn’t like most birds nowadays, because she said I mustn’t bother about it and she’d be all right until morning, and I said was she sure and she said absolutely.

So I pootled back, bumping into a lot of furniture that hadn’t been there when the lights were on, and by the time I got to my bed again Clemmie’d sort of settled down in it. After that she wouldn’t let me say anything, not even in a whisper, and I couldn’t remonster any more at all.

I think Clemmie’s one of those birds that get more enthusiastic in bad weather, because the weather outside got worse and worse, with the wind howling round the chimney as if it was trying to get a part in a horror picture, and the worse it got, the more enthusiastic she was.

It was quite lucky really that she wouldn’t let me say anything. She was wearing one of those rather nice kinds of scent that smell like cinnamon toast, and what with that and all the enthusiasm, I started feeling like saying things I’d have felt a frightful ass about afterwards, specially with a sensible sort of bird like Clemmie that I’ve been mates with for years.

When the racket started outside I didn’t really feel much like going to investigate. It’s a bit difficult to explain what kind of racket it was—it was like all the kinds of racket you can think of, all happening at the same time. There was a noise like horses galloping and a noise like roofs falling in and a noise like a lot of people yelling at each other,
and the wind decided to put in an extra effort in the special effects department.

The first thing I thought was that the Third World War had broken out and there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. The second thing I thought was that the Alexandra wasn’t a terribly likely place for anyone to start a world war, but it was a jolly likely place for the Revenue to make a raid on—you know, the way they did on those Rossminster chaps a few years ago. I know they’re not supposed to go around making raids on people outside the jurisdiction, but after what Clemmie and Gabrielle had been telling me I didn’t think they’d worry about a little technicality like that.

I still didn’t feel much like getting out of bed, but I couldn’t help feeling that Clemmie and me were going to look pretty silly if we were just lying there being cosy while our clients were being rounded up and interrogated in their nightclothes and having their documents seized. I got this across to her as well as I could in whispers and got up and strode out into the night.

Well, I didn’t stride exactly, because I couldn’t find the bottom bit of my pyjamas and I’d had to wrap myself up in a blanket, and when you’re trying to get down the stairs in the pitch dark with a blanket wrapped round you in a cottage you haven’t been in before you don’t exactly stride, but in the end I made it to the front door.

It wasn’t as dark as it had been indoors—there was a light on in the farmhouse, and the moon came out just as I got outside. I still couldn’t make out what was going on, though—just that there seemed to be a lot of it, with more horsey noises
and people shouting at each other in English and local Frogspeak. So I stood on the doorstep and called out, “I say, what’s going on here?” trying to sound sort of dignified and masterful.

Just after that there was the most ghastly scream I’d ever heard, partly a sort of shriek and partly a sort of groan, like someone waking up unexpectedly in a graveyard.

Then something hardish and heavyish went whizzing past my ear and smashed against the wall behind me, and the message seemed to be that someone was trying to kill me.

Well, what they said afterwards was that it was just a misunderstanding and they were frightfully sorry. What I said was that if Albert’s aim had been an inch or two better, they’d have been in a pretty permanent minus-Cantrip situation and sorry would have buttered jolly few parsnips, so the explanation had better be good.

Albert’s story was that he’d stayed a bit longer than he ought to at the Bel Air Tavern. Well, I knew that, because that’s why we missed the 5:30 boat, but he seems to have thought that after that he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and make an evening of it. So he’d stayed on there until nearly midnight, and by the time he started for home he wasn’t what you’d call sober—more what you’d call sloshed as a newt.

The horse knew the way pretty well, though, and between the two of them they were getting on all right until they got to the Coupee. They’d just started across when Albert got a major attack of the heebie-jeebies—he can’t describe it properly, he says, but he felt a sort of prickling at the back of his
neck and remembered about all the ghosts and witches and decided that one way or another this was the place where he most didn’t want to be.

Once you’ve started driving a carriage across the Coupee there’s no way you can turn round, so he thought the best idea was just to get to the other side as fast as possible. He says the horse felt the same way about it. Silly of them really, because in the dark and with a gale-force wind blowing, they’d have done better to take k slow and steady. But they didn’t see it that way at the time, and they hurtled across as if the Devil was after them, which actually Albert seems to have thought he was.

You could say they were lucky in a way. They’d just about made it back to Little Sark when one of the wheels hit a stone and the carriage went over on its side—if it had happened ten yards sooner, they’d have gone over the cliff on one side or the other and that would have been curtains for both of them.

Albert was thrown out into the road, but not badly hurt, and he managed to pick himself up and get the horse free of its harness without too much trouble. Then something made him look round, and he saw the woman in white standing there a few yards away from him.

It seems that women in white are pretty bad news in the Channel Islands. I can’t make out exactly what they’re meant to be, or what they’re meant to do if they catch you, but the general idea is that you don’t want to see them at all, and if you do you get out fast.

So Albert didn’t stop to say “Good evening” or anything, he just scrambled up on the horse and
headed full tilt for the Alexandra, not daring to look behind him in case he saw the woman again.

He was too scared to ride all the way round to the stables. He just headed straight for the wall and jumped it, landing on sundry potting sheds and hen coops, etc,—jolly lucky the horse didn’t hurt itself. Philip Alexandre came out and started yelling at him, but he didn’t much mind about that as long as he’d got away from the woman in white.

Then the moon came out and he saw her again, standing there in her white robes in the doorway of the Witch’s Cottage and calling out to him in a hollow voice.

Well, what I said was that even if he didn’t have the sense to tell the difference between a ghost and a Chancery junior wrapped in a blanket, he might at least have had the sense to know that if I was a ghost, chucking bricks at me wouldn’t have done him any good, because they’d just have gone straight through.

Albert said he knew that really, but he’d lived a sinful life and couldn’t remember any prayers, so bricks were the best he could do. He’s not going to be sinful any more, he says—he’s going to give up booze and go to church every Sunday, so that the woman in white won’t come after him again.

Serves him right, because the upshot of all these shenanigans is that the Coupee’s blocked at this end. I went to have a look first thing this morning and there’s no way you can get round the carriage or over it without risking breaking your neck. Philip Alexandre reckons it’ll take a couple of hours to move it, and until then Little Sark’s completely cut off from everywhere else.

Clemmie’d gone back to her room by the time I got to bed again, and I haven’t seen her yet this morning. I haven’t seen any of the rest of the gang either. There’s no way we’re going to get the first boat over to Guernsey, so I suppose they’ve all decided they might as well stay in bed.

We still ought to catch the evening plane all right, but life among the tax planners being what it is, don’t let Henry count any chickens.

Over and out—Cantrip