Today was a bit different.
We’d fixed up to meet at St Clement’s Bay, which Gabrielle said was her favourite place in Jersey. The idea was to get there at low tide and walk out across the sand to something she calls the Sirens’ Rock – that’s her private name for it, it’s called something different on the map. She says it’s the one that the witches used to dance round and lure fishermen on to, like you were talking about, last week.
There’s another big rock in the garden of someone’s house that’s called the Witches’ Rock, but Gabrielle doesn’t think it’s the right one because it’s on dry land. She says the proper one must be one of the ones that are covered up by the sea when the tide’s in.
It’s in the bottom right-hand corner of the island, quite near where her hotel is, so it seemed a bit silly for her to drive into St Helier to pick me up. I told her I’d get there under my own steam and got up early and walked there.
When the tide’s in it looks like you expect the seaside to look, with a sandy beach and lots of blue water next to it, all nice and neat like on a postcard. When the tide’s out it looks quite different, like a desert with damp problems – acres and acres of squelchy brown sand covered with seaweed and spiky splodges of rock all over the place, with shiny bits where the water’s got stuck between them.
I thought as soon as I saw her that Gabrielle was looking a bit under the weather, as if maybe she hadn’t slept too well. I didn’t say anything, though, in case it was just a hangover and it would be unsuave to show I’d noticed.
It takes about an hour to walk out to this rock of hers, and you couldn’t exactly call it walking dry-shod – you’ve got to take your shoes and socks off and roll your trousers up, and you still get fairly wet. Gabrielle didn’t seem to mind, though – she seemed to quite like getting wet, and by the time we got there she’d perked up a good bit.
She’d brought a thermos of coffee and some rolls from her hotel, so we sat on the rock and had a picnic breakfast. We didn’t talk much to begin with, just sat and drank coffee and listened to the sea gulls. I kept thinking what funny-coloured eyes she’d got, not green and not brown, like the bits of the sea that were stuck between the rocks and you couldn’t tell what colour they were.
And then she started telling me she thought her room had been searched last night when we were out at dinner. She said it wasn’t obvious, but she knew how she’d put her things away and she was sure that when she went up to bed some of them weren’t in quite the right place.
I asked if there was anything missing, because after all she is a contessa and she does look like the sort of bird who might have some quite nice jewellery with her, so someone on the lookout for the odd diamond bracelet to snaffle might think she was a pretty likely prospect.
She said she didn’t think there was anything missing, but if someone was looking for jewels, they wouldn’t have found any – the only valuable thing she’s got with her is a gold fountain pen with her initials on that was a birthday present from her husband, and she always keeps that in her handbag. She didn’t think it was a diamond snaffler, though – she thought it was the chap who’d been following her at Daffodil meetings.
So then she told me all about it, and of course I didn’t let on that I’d already heard about it from Clemmie. The thing I’m a bit surprised about is that she really is rattled, like Clemmie said she was. She’s a tremendously sporting sort of bird and I’d have thought being shadowed by the Revenue was the kind of thing she’d get rather a kick out of – after all, even when the Revenue are playing rough, they’re not actually going to get physical, are they?
I suppose what’s really getting her down is not being 100 per cent sure about it. She says herself that it’s mostly just a feeling she’s got – if the person she’s being followed by came and stood in front of her she wouldn’t know it was them. So sometimes she thinks she might be going a bit loopy and imagining things.
I told her she was talking bilge, because even if she isn’t being followed, it doesn’t mean she’s loopy. People do follow people, so if you think you’re being followed by someone and you’re not, that’s not being loopy, it’s just being wrong – being loopy is if you think you’re being followed by purple elephants, unless you are of course.
Anyway, I pointed out I’d be around all the time she was in Jersey, so there wasn’t anything to worry about – I mean, either the Revenue chaps were imaginary, in which case they couldn’t do her any harm, or they weren’t, in which case if they tried to, I’d jolly well make them wish they were. She seemed quite chuffed about that and said I’d made her feel a lot better.
And after all that, what do you think the silly grummet is going to do tomorrow?
The Daffodil Settlement owns shares in a company that’s meant to be resident in Sark – I suppose you’d know what the point is, I’m blowed if I do – and that’s where the directors have got to have their board meetings. The directors are the Daffodil gang plus Philip Alexandre – that’s the chap who was supposed to have made the settlement but didn’t. He lives in Sark and owns a hotel there, and the Edelweiss outfit always use him when they need a Sark resident to be a settlor or a director or anything like that. So we’re going over there tomorrow for the directors to have a board meeting and me to give them my advice about what to do with the trust fund – flying over to Guernsey in the morning and going across to Sark on the ferry. Well, that’s what the rest of us are doing – Gabrielle’s going on her own and doing something different, and she won’t tell me what it is.
I’ve pointed out to her that if I’m in one place and she’s in another, I shan’t be able to do much about sinister chaps from the Revenue leaping out of the bushes at her, but she just looks mysterious and says I’m not to worry about her. Which is a bit much, considering she’s the one who made me start worrying about her in the first place. Honestly, Larwood, there are some birds you just can’t reason with, and if you don’t know them well enough to biff them there’s not a lot you can do about it.
I didn’t like to ask her about what happened in the Cayman Islands, so I still don’t know what it was. Is that where you went last year or was it the Turks and Caicos? All I remember is that you got goofy about some chap.
We’re reckoning to be finished in Sark in time to get the evening plane from Guernsey, so I should be back in London sometime tomorrow night, worse luck. If anything interesting happens, I’ll tell you on Tuesday morning.
Over and out – Cantrip
The arrival of Ragwort and Selena distracted Julia from her Finance Bill and me from further reflection on Cantrip’s telex message. Not until Selena had purchased a bottle of Nierstein and we were all comfortably settled round the little candlelit table did it occur to me to ask Julia whether it was in fact the Cayman Islands or the Turks and Caicos that she had visited in the previous year.
She answered, with a dreamy and distant look, that it was indeed the Cayman Islands.
4
EXTRACT FROM THE GUIDE TO COMFORTABLE TAX PLANNING
Cayman Islands: A group of islands in the Western Caribbean consisting of Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brac. A British Crown Colony settled in the seventeenth century by retired pirates, survivors of shipwrecks etc. Capital: Georgetown, Grand Cayman.
Pop.: 17,000. Total area: 100 square miles. Access: Approx. 1 hour by air from Jamaica or Miami. Principal industries: Tourism and financial services. Facilities include 400 banks and more telex machines per head of population than anywhere else in the world. Recommended season for meetings: October to March.
Note 1: An ample supply of English newspapers, which are much prized by the inhabitants of Georgetown, will ensure a cordial welcome.
‘Properly regarded,’ said Selena, gazing thoughtfully into her glass, ‘your experiences last year in the Cayman Islands could be incorporated very nicely, Julia, into this book that you and Cantrip are writing. Have you considered at all why your heroine is so cold and aloof, so reluctant to admit t
o any of the gentler passions?’
‘I confess,’ said Julia, ‘that I have assumed these qualities to be natural to her.’
‘Oh no, surely not – I don’t think that would be at all sympathetic. No, as I see it, when Cecilia Mainwaring first came to the Bar she was a warm, generous, open-hearted girl whose clear, candid eyes gazed with trusting eagerness on the world about her. What has happened to change her? Why does that generous heart now wear the mask of cold indifference? Why do those candid eyes now flash with icy disdain? Ah, you may well ask.’
‘You suggest that it is because she went to the Cayman Islands?’
‘Because she went to the Cayman Islands, as you did, Julia, for reasons connected with her practise as a tax barrister, and there, as you did, she met – a man.’ Selena invested the word with overtones of the monstrous. ‘A man much older than herself, an urbane and sophisticated man, experienced in the ways of the world. What could she know of such men, poor Cecilia, whose life had been spent in the chaste cloisters of Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn? Accustomed to the innocent banter and boyish camaraderie of her contemporaries, how could she resist his subtle and practised charm? In the sensuous warmth of the Caribbean night, fragrant with the scent of a hundred exotic flowers, she gave him her heart. He trifled with it for a while as lightly as a child with a new toy, and as lightly afterwards cast it aside.’
‘Oh Selena, how sad,’ said Julia, deeply moved. ‘But whether it’s an entirely fair account, so far as my own visit is concerned – ’
‘A most affecting tale,’ said Ragwort, ‘remarkable for bearing no resemblance whatever to what happened to Julia in the Cayman Islands. If I recall the story correctly, Julia, you behaved extremely badly, and took advantage of a harmless, good-natured man who had not deserved ill of you.’
Julia, always willing to see both if not more sides of every question, seemed to find some difficulty in choosing between the versions of events proposed by her two friends. I suggested that she should tell me, quite simply and in her own words, precisely what had occurred.
In the previous November she had been appearing in a case before the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands – the details, though no doubt, as she claimed, of absorbing interest to any student of the law relating to bearer securities, are of no relevance to my present narrative. She had been accompanied by her instructing solicitor, who happened to be Clementine Derwent, and their visit had coincided with a meeting of those concerned with the Daffodil Settlement. The discretion customary among Swiss bankers and their advisers had precluded any mention of the actual name, but save that Clementine’s firm was at that time represented by Oliver Grynne, the senior partner, the meeting had been attended by the same people as that which had just taken place in Jersey and could safely be presumed to relate to the same matter.
‘You will no doubt tell me,’ I said, ‘that there is some perfectly good reason for those administering a Jersey settlement to meet in the Cayman Islands.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Julia. ‘It wouldn’t do at all, you see, for the funds of the settlement to be directly invested in the shares of companies resident in a high-tax jurisdiction such as the United Kingdom or the United States. The sensible thing is for the trustee of the settlement – in this case Edelweiss (Channel Islands) Ltd – to own shares in a private company resident in, let us say, the Cayman Islands and for that company to own shares in another private company resident in, let us say, Sark. The Sark company would be the one which owned the underlying investments – shares in ICI or General Motors or whatever it may be. The directors of the private companies, of course, would include one or two officials of the trust company and their professional advisers. And since a company is treated for tax purposes as resident in the country where its directors take their decisions, it’s essential for the directors of each company to have at least one board meeting a year in the place where it’s supposed to be resident.’
‘There is nothing remarkable, then, about your having encountered the same group of people in the Cayman Islands whom Cantrip has been advising in Jersey?’
‘By no means,’ said Julia. ‘The world of tax planning is in some ways a fairly small one – one sees the same doorplates on the offices in Georgetown and St Helier as one would in Bishopsgate or Lombard Street. I already knew most of the people involved in the Daffodil Settlement.’
I asked if she had had any previous acquaintance with Cantrip’s contessa.
‘I’d met her once before – Clementine introduced me to her at a tax-planning seminar in Luxembourg about two years ago. Stingham’s are the London solicitors for the Edelweiss group, so she and Clementine have a good deal to do with each other. We all played truant together from one of the official dinners and did our bit to reduce the problem of the champagne lake. I’d been hoping I’d run into her again sometime, but she doesn’t seem to travel abroad very much. Most of what she does can be done from her office in Monte Carlo.’
‘What exactly does she do?’
‘She invests other people’s money for them – according to Clementine, with astonishing brilliance.’
‘The name,’ I said, ‘seems vaguely familiar. Wasn’t her husband once noted for some kind of sporting activity? Riding horses or driving motorcars or something of that sort?’
‘I think he was a tennis player,’ said Julia.
‘Ah yes,’ I said, remembering now that it was indeed in that sport that the Count di Silvabianca had fifteen or twenty years before achieved celebrity. Though he had never been quite among the first rank of players, his title and his exceptional good looks had combined to make him interesting to the gossip columnists and a certain portion of the public. I concluded that the Contessa shared Julia’s taste in profiles.
They also had in common, it seemed, an extreme distaste for the advances of Edward Malvoisin, which neither Julia’s diplomatic deception nor the Contessa’s devotion to her husband were ever quite sufficient to discourage. They had commiserated, on their first evening in the Cayman Islands, about the need to avoid doing or saying anything during their stay which Malvoisin might construe as encouragement.
‘The trouble was,’ said Julia, ‘that we could think of very few things that he wouldn’t construe as encouragement. We had no doubt, for example, that for either of us to appear on the beach in any form of bathing costume, however decorous, would seem to him the clearest possible invitation to seize upon us in the manner of a hungry schoolboy claiming the last cream bun. And it would have been difficult, of course, to avoid him altogether. Fortunately, however, it turned out that Clementine found him unobjectionable – it’s curious, isn’t it, how tastes differ in these matters? – and agreed, as it were, to draw his fire in exchange for Gabrielle and me each buying her a large piña colada.’
‘Gideon Darkside,’ I said, ‘also sounds like someone whom one might wish to avoid – did you know him as well?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Julia with a weary sigh, ‘I knew Gideon Darkside. I once had the misfortune to call him as a witness before the Special Commissioners for the purpose of proving that certain accounts he had prepared were an accurate reflection of the events which had occurred. I had imagined, in my innocence, that this was a mere formality. I was therefore disconcerted when he was cross-examined on behalf of the Revenue for five hours, during which it became clear that any similarity between what had actually happened and what the accounts said had happened was purely accidental. And when he found that this was attracting unfavourable comment from the Commissioners, he became hurt and resentful – he seemed to think that preparing false accounts was a perfectly usual and accepted method of tax planning.’
‘I suppose,’ said Ragwort, ‘that he is simply one of those all too numerous people who have no idea of the difference between right and wrong.’
‘I suspect,’ said Julia, ‘that he thinks things are wrong only if one enjoys them, and is able on that basis to regard himself as a man of the highest moral character. But at least there was
no difficulty about avoiding him – he makes a point of always being too busy for idle amusement. He likes it to be known, you see, that he works harder than anyone else – that is to say, that he spends more time giving bad advice to his clients than other people do giving good advice to theirs.’
‘So you knew everyone,’ I said, ‘except Oliver Grynne and Patrick Ardmore?’
‘Oh,’ said Julia, ‘I’d met Oliver Grynne once or twice. As I may have mentioned, I’m quite often instructed by Stingham’s. I rather liked him – he was slightly pedantic sometimes, and he had a morbid obsession about keeping fit, but he was a very good lawyer. No, the only one I hadn’t met at all was Patrick Ardmore.’
Julia lit a Gauloise and adopted what she intended, I believe, to be a very casual expression.
‘On our first evening in Grand Cayman I was sitting with Clementine and Gabrielle in a little bar called the Cayman Arms, overlooking Georgetown Harbour, buying piña coladas in accordance with the bargain previously mentioned. Gabrielle had mentioned that her colleague from Jersey might be joining us, but it didn’t at once occur to me, when Patrick Ardmore came into the bar, that he was the person she had referred to. He had – I don’t quite know how to describe it – a slightly adventurous look, which one doesn’t usually associate with bankers.’
‘I should hope not indeed,’ said Ragwort.
‘All the same, he was not at all the kind of man I usually find attractive. He had unquestionably entered on his fifth decade, and it did not seem to me that his profile, even in youth, would have had the classic perfection of – say, yours, my dear Ragwort. He had not, it is true, let himself go, as men so often do when they have found someone to marry them and think they don’t need to take any trouble with their appearance any more – there was no blurring of the jawline or unsightly bulge over the waistband. Nonetheless, as he approached our table I was surprised to find myself thinking . . .’ Julia paused and looked dreamily at the ceiling, drawing deeply on her Gauloise.
The Sirens Sang of Murder Page 5