Your very own,
Vanessa
Calais, Saturday, July 16th, 1892
My dear twin,
I am writing to you in the evening, from a little hotel in Calais, which is modest enough yet incomparably more pleasant than the miserable tenement in which I stayed with Emily and little Robert four years ago. Ah, how I remember my anguish and terror then, and how different my life is now; how lovely altogether, except for my single-minded obsession with discovering the identity of Mr Granger’s murderer.
Having arrived here by train early on, the main effort of our day was to meet with M. Lemaire, which we duly did. He received us graciously enough, considering that (as it soon transpired) he was very near to the point of dismissing the whole story of the murderer’s having arrived in England from Calais as a perfect fiction. Still, he showed himself willing to listen to the ridiculous tale of Russian princes and casinos which I poured out to him as a preliminary condition to asking him questions. He paid careful attention to each detail. I skipped over the embarrassing interludes concerning Mr Vassily Semionovich Kropoff and the elderly prince himself, confining myself to recounting hearsay. When I had finished what I hoped sounded like a convincing demonstration that we were well on the way to discovering the identity of the criminal, and that a little help from the police was all that would be needed to complete the task, he said,
‘But mademoiselle, as you may know, our police have excluded the possibility that the person who was supposedly observed on the ferry to Dover and subsequently on the train to this town, what is it called, where the murder took place, could have come from Paris, or from any other town, or even from Calais itself.’
‘But, monsieur,’ I responded politely, ‘that is very hard to believe. How can you be sure of it?’
‘We have questioned an enormous number of people around the docks at the time of the departure of the ferry,’ he replied. ‘This man was observed on the boat and on the train in England. Why was he not observed coming to the boat? Something is wrong.’
‘Well,’ I said hesitantly, glancing at Arthur, ‘we thought that perhaps he was observed so frequently after he put on the red cloak that has been mentioned in all the newspapers, and perhaps he arrived near the boat without wearing it.’
He laughed.
‘You take the police for children, mademoiselle! Do you think we went about asking people if they had observed a young man in a bright red cloak?’
‘But supposing he was not really such a noticeable kind of person,’ I persisted, ‘how can you be sure that he would have been observed at all? Perhaps he was already living in Calais, or simply arrived here in a friend’s carriage, and then walked to the boat, and nobody noticed him.’
He smiled indulgently.
‘Mademoiselle, we have considered every possibility, including the ones you now raise. We wished to see if a person could cross the port and accede to the ferry without being noticed at all. You will, I suppose, admit that the young man must have done so, according to the British theory at least. So we devised a little test, and sent one of our agents, dressed in the most normal way possible, walking quietly across the quay to board the same ferry as our unknown gentleman. We then waited some days, and then proceeded to question as many as possible of the people who were present at the time he went.’ Pausing, he reached for a sheaf of papers and shuffled them. ‘Here are the statements of the witnesses. I will not lie to you; of sixty people that we interviewed, only seven claimed to have seen the person we described, and of those, only three were finally able to identify our agent from a group of similar young men. One of them is an old woman who sits in the sunshine near the quay for most of every day, selling nuts and crumbs of old bread to feed the pigeons. When we questioned her about our agent, she said that she had seen a young man of his description and described his clothing. We were not completely convinced as the description was somewhat vague and could conceivably have corresponded to a different person, but she then picked him out among ten others.’ Selecting a paper from the pile, he continued, ‘The same woman is one of our main witnesses in the question of the young man in the red cloak, and the other is the mother of a family of small children. Of everyone we questioned, only these two are of any interest whatsoever. Let me translate the first statement for you.
‘“I watched the passengers walking up the …” (how do you call it?) “gangplank. I saw a young man with dark hair, wearing a red cloak standing on the gangplank, moving up among the people there. He was standing next to some children. I do not know where he came from. I had not seen him before I noticed him on the gangplank. He definitely did not walk past me going there. Not even without his cloak. I would have noticed him. He had a handsome, youthful face and his hair was noticeable, thick and very dark with waves or curls.”
‘Now, here is the other statement, from the mother of the children just mentioned.
‘“We had just reached the foot of the gangplank and were about to walk up it onto the boat when my little son said to me ‘Maman, look at the lovely cape.’ A young man came out in front of us wearing a red silk cape like I have never seen. He smiled and said a word or two to my son. Not much, something like ‘ça te plaît?’ He walked up in front of us and gave his ticket to the man. We saw him later on the boat. We would certainly recognise him if we saw him again. But we had definitely not seen him before then, as we were walking up towards the boat.”
‘“When you first saw him, why do you say he came out in front of you?” we asked her.
‘“He came out from the other side of a pile like that one.” She pointed to a large heap of barrels and crates which were being stocked on the boat.’
M. Lemaire put down the paper. ‘Certainly, there are such piles of merchandise in front of the boat, being loaded, every day,’ he said. ‘So what she described is natural enough. But where did he come from before being there? We do not know.’
‘What do you conclude?’ I asked, rather at a loss.
‘Our first thought was of a disguise. One could ask whether he was disguised before taking the boat or on the boat. Now, as I just told you, there are always great piles of crates or barrels being loaded or unloaded on the docks around the boats, and he could certainly have hidden briefly behind one of them. But people pass there all the time. It is not a hiding place. Nothing prevents passengers going to the boat from walking behind the heaps, and the dockworkers come to take them. So if he went there before coming out in his red cloak, it is more likely that he quickly removed a disguise than that he actually put something particular on, apart from the cloak itself, of course.’
‘That makes sense,’ I agreed. ‘It is a very good idea – it must be right.’
‘But it has a great flaw in it. Do you not see it?’
‘No,’ I replied, feeling stupid.
‘What about the disguise, Mademoiselle? The disguise!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where is it? We expected to find something – some package of clothing, some abandoned objects! We searched the entire area, questioned dozens of people, put up notices. We went to the office of found objects, and carefully inspected everything that had been given in there. There are many, many things in that place – you cannot imagine!’ He pulled out a list and scanned it with annoyance. ‘A child’s coat – ah, children! They always lose things. Children’s toys – a doll. Several scarves for the neck, of both men and women. A lady’s hat. A shoe – bah! How can a person lose one shoe? A cane. We were very interested in the cane. We asked our pigeon lady and other people if they had spotted a man with a cane – even an old man, stooping, with white hair. But it gave no result. There were men with canes, to be sure, but they all seemed to be accounted for.’
‘We-ell,’ I said, considering the list, ‘he must have carried the disguise off with him.’
‘But none of the witnesses say he was carrying any kind of a bundle.’
‘The disguise must have consisted of something quite small.’
‘Such as?’
&
nbsp; I stopped to reflect, trying to visualise the situation.
‘Suppose – suppose that he quickly wiped off grease-paint from his face with a handkerchief, and brushed up his hair which had been slicked down with oil, or covered with a hat or cap which he then stuffed into a pocket. Maybe he was wearing something noticeable – one of those scarves around his neck, for instance – which he took off and dropped there. Then he would just wrap himself up in the cloak he’d been carrying rolled up over his arm.’
‘Mademoiselle, what you say is possible, but believe me, it is not very likely. A man wearing sufficient grease-paint to really hide his features would be very noticeable on a sunny day; you may not realise it is there when you see an actor upon the stage, but outdoors it is completely different. He would look like a clown. We heard no hint of anything so strange. We are stymied, as you English say. I do not see what further researches we can now do here. I could contact my colleagues in Paris and Deauville in order to attempt to identify the young man you speak of, but it is unfortunate that we have no element at all linking him either to the crime or even to a trip to Calais. It is difficult to undertake a serious investigation on these grounds. It would be much better for the British police to simply find out his identity from the woman you told me about, the wife of the murdered man. Then his background could be checked and we might get somewhere.’
M. Lemaire rang a bell as he spoke, and instructed the young man who poked in his head respectfully to escort us out.
‘He was really very kind, don’t you think?’ I asked Arthur, as we reached the street.
‘I don’t much appreciate being dismissed that way,’ he said. ‘But he was nice enough, I suppose. Still, it is all dashed unhelpful. We seem to be at a dead end once again.’
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘He’s right about the grease-paint, I’m afraid. And yet, there must be something in the disguise idea. There isn’t anything else that could explain it!’
‘I still think it could be explained by the simple fact that he was there and nobody noticed him,’ he grumbled.
‘No. I believe him. There really are too many people standing around the boat all the time; that old pigeon lady was sure of herself. Oh, he must have done something quite special to just appear there so suddenly, all ready and dressed up – and if he did it, we can find it! I must think.’
Indeed, I must think. Oh, Dora, it is so strange. There is something in the back of my mind – something I have heard recently which has some bearing on this absurd conundrum. Is it something to do with disguising? Have I had any discussions about disguising lately? I cannot remember any. Have you noticed anything of the sort in my letters?
Your greatly puzzled
Vanessa
Cambridge, Sunday, July 17th, 1892
Dearest Dora,
How lovely it feels to be home again! Everything is wonderfully the same, and yet strangely unfamiliar at the same time.
Your letter was waiting for me here when I arrived. I shall come to visit immediately – I shall leave tomorrow, and arrive very nearly at the same time as this very letter! Oh, Dora, what can be on Ellen’s mind? You say she has been letting strange hints fall – and that she seems certain that Sylvia cannot have had a lover ever. Yet we know that she did have one, or at the very least, a suitor or a flirt, however innocent it may really have been! What makes Ellen so stubbornly sure of herself? What can she possibly know about it?
Alas, if you have not been able to persuade her to tell you what she means, then it is not likely that I shall succeed either. Yet I can argue that it is for Sylvia’s defence. It could be that deep down, she really wishes or needs to speak, and something, some fear perhaps, is restraining her. I shall see what my utmost tact can accomplish – but Dora, I have never, ever had even half the tact that you have – so I am not as optimistic as I might otherwise be!
It does not seem worth my writing much, as I shall see you tomorrow or the next day – only I simply must tell you what happened on the boat back. After my talk with Annabel in which my foolish blind eyes were unsealed, I determined that I must corner Charles and beard him, for I am dearly fond of Annabel and quite see that her present situation is untenable. I did hope, over the last several days, that as Arthur has spent a great deal of time with me, and we even came away to Calais together one day before the others, perhaps there would be some development between the two of them, but as soon as we met at the ticket office, I knew that nothing had happened, for Annabel’s face was all downcast, whereas Charles was exactly his usual cheerful self, which he would surely not have been if some explanation had occurred, either pleasant or unpleasant.
On our way to the boat, I determined that I would tackle him on board, but I very nearly forgot, for Arthur and I had other things on our mind. Indeed, we tried a little last-minute detecting as we approached the ferry; we surveyed the area with care and occupied a few minutes with a couple of minor experiments. First, we saw the old lady sitting behind her little stand of bird food. Mingling with the groups of people milling about, Arthur walked past her, behaving as normal as possible, and disappeared around a corner. A few minutes later, I hastened up to her, looking upset, and asked her in a tone of urgency if she had seen a young man with brown hair and a light brown topcoat pass by, as I had lost him. She glanced up at me and then gestured with her chin in the direction he had disappeared. ‘He passed three, four minutes ago,’ she said with a nod. I rushed after him, and soon discovered him and hauled him back. She winked at me as she saw us pass.
‘Arthur, she remembered you instantly! It’s amazing,’ I said breathlessly.
‘Bah,’ he said, ‘five minutes is not the same as five days.’
As a second experiment, I tried to imagine that I was disguised and needed to transform myself before boarding the boat. I slipped behind one of the large mounds of crates and trunks which were in the process of being loaded onto the boat we were travelling by, but I had been there less than half a minute when I was elbowed aside by a burly Frenchman in overalls, who snatched up the very box I was pressed against and heaved it up on his shoulders. Indeed, I must agree with M. Lemaire that anyone trying to don or doff a decent disguise would be taking a great risk to do it in such a place, where one cannot be sure of being alone for any time at all! How could one change one’s appearance within a few seconds? Yet I see no other possibility; that is what must have happened.
I was still puzzling over this problem as we boarded the boat, and it made me absent-minded for some little time, but as we pulled away from the shore, and I found myself hanging next to Charles over the rail on the port side of the deck, watching the coast of France distance itself slowly, I suddenly remembered my purpose with respect to him. I glanced around, but Annabel was nowhere to be seen, and Arthur was leaning on the railing some distance farther down. I turned to Charles, and raised my voice to be heard over the various roaring and churning noises of the engine and the slap of the waves. For an effect of greater severity, I planted my hands upon my hips. However, before I had pronounced a single word, he turned a glum face in my direction and said,
‘I simply can’t believe that by tonight, we’ll be back in the usual grind again. It really was a heavenly two weeks, wasn’t it?’
‘Ha,’ I said, seizing the occasion, and wondering if hints would not succeed where I had intended to employ more brutal means. ‘And why should you return to the old grind, just as before? Can some essential element of the delight you felt during your stay not accompany you back home?’
‘I wish it could,’ he smiled uncomprehendingly. ‘What could such an element be? The exotic nature of it all – that is what I would choose, followed by a cuisine containing snails. But I don’t see how I could carry that home in my pockets. Do you?’
‘Are you sure it’s really France and snails which made your stay so wonderful?’ I said, wondering if he were very dense, or if on the contrary he fully realised my purpose, but was parrying it expertly in order not to find himself in a
highly embarrassing situation. I began to ask myself if I were doing the right thing in attempting to bring him to a realisation of Annabel’s feelings. For if he were aware of it but reticent, it would be a cruelty to force the statement out into the open. Yet I found it hard to believe that such was the case. No one, seeing him in Paris, could have thought it for a moment – and he certainly is not a flirt. I decided to persist, and flung delicacy to the winds.
‘What about Annabel?’ I said. ‘Why, Arthur and I were perfectly convinced that your radiant mood was due to all the time you spent with her, as much if not more than to the architecture and historical landmarks of Paris!’
‘Annabel?’ he repeated, sincerely surprised. ‘Of course it was lovely going about with her. It’s ever so much nicer than being alone!’
‘Well, why stop then, when you are back in England?’
‘Why – why – it’s not in our habits, to go walking together, when we’re at home.’
I looked straight into his eyes, determined to gauge his feelings.
‘Would it not give you the same pleasure?’ I said.
‘I – why yes – no—’ he began awkwardly, flushing a little. ‘I guess it would be nice – I guess it would be wonderful, really, to take tea with Annabel on the grass, or in Grantchester, sometimes, as you do with Arthur. In fact, now that you mention it, I can hardly think of any prospect which would please me more! Funny, I never thought of it before.’ He stopped, thoughtfully, and then added, ‘But Annabel won’t want to, I expect. And it wouldn’t really do, you know.’
‘Why not? And why wouldn’t she want to?’ I asked firmly.
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