The Sirens Sang of Murder

by Sarah Caudwell

  ‘You say there’s nothing sinister about this Daffodil business,’ said the Colonel. ‘But one man’s dead and another’s gone missing. And the one who’s gone missing is my nephew. In my book you’ve still got a lot of explaining to do. Right, they’re all yours, Professor – you’re the expert. Fire away.’

  Whatever Julia had said to recommend to him my skills in investigation, she had evidently failed to mention my extreme distaste for all forms of physical coercion. It would have seemed unkind to disappoint him, however, by declining to proceed with the questioning of the two witnesses whom he had presented to me at gunpoint with such innocent satisfaction. Moreover, though I did not quite believe that he would actually shoot anyone, I did not so entirely disbelieve it as to feel disposed to vex him.

  Searching in vain, in the agitation of the moment, for any useful or appropriate question, I finally enquired, for want of anything better, whether those concerned with the Daffodil Settlement had had, on the previous Monday evening, any particular cause for celebration.

  ‘No,’ said Patrick Ardmore, with the tentative care of a man just learning the rules of an interesting new game. ‘No, I don’t think so, Professor. Why should you suppose we had?’

  ‘To stay in the bar until midnight suggests conviviality.’

  ‘There was nothing convivial about it,’ said Darkside, outraged into croaking audibility. ‘We had important business to discuss.’

  ‘Indeed?’ I said. ‘I am surprised that the bar of your hotel afforded sufficient privacy for the discussion of confidential matters.’

  ‘We had it to ourselves,’ said Ardmore. ‘There was Philip Alexandre behind the bar, of course – the owner of the hotel – but he hardly counts as a stranger. Do please acquit us of conviviality, Professor Tamar – it’s very hard on Gideon to be suspected of such a thing.’

  Perceiving that this brief exchange would hardly be sufficient to satisfy the Colonel’s expectations, I cast about rather desperately in my mind for some further line of questioning.

  ‘I wonder if you would care,’ I said, ‘to tell us about the pen?’

  The effect was gratifying – the two men stared at me with as much astonishment as if I had put my hand in my pocket and extracted a large white rabbit. I noticed with some relief that the Colonel looked deeply impressed.

  ‘The pen?’ said Ardmore, raising an eyebrow. Too late, however, for credibility, even if his companion had not at the same instant exclaimed, ‘How the hell do you know about that?’

  ‘The fountain pen belonging to the Contessa di Silvabianca, which you found on the Coupee near the place where Edward Malvoisin fell to his death. If you happen to have it with you, Mr Ardmore, I should be most interested to see it.’

  The Irishman hesitated – he was evidently a good deal more troubled by my knowing about the pen than by being held up at gunpoint in a gentlemen’s club in the West End of London. He must have decided, however, that since I knew so much there could be no further harm in compliance. After an enquiring glance at the Colonel, who gave a brisk nod of assent, he opened his briefcase and produced something which gleamed prettily in the dusty sunlight from the library window. He handed it across to me – a fountain pen made, as I judged, of solid gold, engraved with a graceful and intricate design which incorporated the initials of Gabrielle di Silvabianca.

  ‘Would you care,’ I said, ‘to tell me how you came to find it?’

  ‘I understood,’ said the Irishman, ‘that you were already informed on the subject.’

  ‘It would interest me,’ I said, ‘to know the precise details.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Ardmore, ‘if they interest you, then by all means – but I can’t think why they should. It was on Monday morning, when we were on our way back across the Coupee – Miss Derwent, Gideon, and myself. Miss Derwent had run on ahead – I think she rather had the jitters about the place, not surprisingly in the circumstances, and wanted to be across as quickly as possible. I didn’t much care for it myself, but I stopped about halfway across to look down at the place where the fishermen had found poor Edward’s body – they’d marked it with some kind of flag. I looked to see if there was any sign of how he’d come to fall – whether the railings were damaged or anything of that kind. There was something shining in the grass at the edge of the road and I bent down and picked it up. Then Gideon came up and wanted to know what it was. As you see, Professor Tamar, a very trivial incident, though I admit I’m a little puzzled about how you happen to know about it – I rather thought Gideon agreed with me that there was no point in mentioning it to anyone else.’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone,’ said the accountant. ‘I said you ought to tell someone, but it’s not my responsibility.’

  ‘Have you any idea,’ I said, ‘how the Contessa happened to drop her pen in that particular place?’

  ‘I doubt very much,’ said Ardmore, ‘that it was she who dropped it. Edward had been having trouble with his fountain pen all afternoon, I remember – making blots on all sorts of vital documents. I suppose the Contessa must have lent him hers, and he still had it poor fellow, when he went out that night.’

  ‘I didn’t notice him having trouble with his pen,’ said Darkside.

  ‘Indeed, why should you, Gideon?’ said the Irishman generously. ‘I’m sure you had more important things to think of. Is there anything further, Professor Tamar, on which we can assist you?’

  Glancing at the Colonel, I perceived a slight discontentedness in his expression, as if he did not yet consider that he had quite had his money’s worth.

  ‘There is just one further point,’ I said. ‘I believe that the Contessa has some family connection with Sark. Could you tell me – what precisely is her relationship to Philip Alexandre?’ The bow, I admit, was drawn somewhat at a venture; but Cantrip had mentioned her talking in Sercquais, a language not generally studied in the lycées or universities of France.

  ‘Oh, she’s his niece,’ said the Irishman casually, evidently not thinking this an important or troublesome question. ‘Her mother was Rachel Alexandre – she married a businessman from Brittany. Colonel Cantrip, it is a great privilege to have been entertained in a manner, if I may say so, so much in accordance with the traditions of this very distinguished club, but we really ought to go back to the seminar. Oh, come along, Gideon, you don’t suppose that thing’s loaded, do you?’

  A loud report and a shattering of plaster established that it was.

  ‘Something further, sir?’ enquired the ancient servant, appearing in the doorway of the library.

  Problems insoluble to the Junior Bar require the advice of leading Counsel. At the hour when tea is customarily taken I found Selena, Ragwort, and Julia gathered in Basil Ptarmigan’s room, intending to direct his mind on his return from court to the problems created by Cantrip’s continued absence. These were, in ascending order of gravity: the inconvenience of undertaking those of Cantrip’s professional obligations which were of an urgent nature; the lowering effect on morale of Henry’s disaffection and Lilian’s tearfulness – after hearing the latest gossip from the offices of Stingham and Grynne she was now referring to the boy as ‘poor Mr Cantrip’ and in the past tense; and the impossibility of any longer remaining responsible for the Colonel. Something must be done – Basil was to consider what.

  Accepting with gratitude the offer of tea, I described what had taken place at the Remnant Club. My account was punctuated by pitiful cries from Julia, who in a brief re-encounter with Patrick Ardmore at the seminar had been given no hint of any unconventionality in the Colonel’s entertainment of his guests.

  ‘This cannot go on,’ said Ragwort with magisterial sternness. ‘Buckets of water and plates of spaghetti are one thing, but pointing guns at people is a serious matter – and I don’t suppose that he even has a licence for it. Heaven alone knows what the appalling old – I do beg your pardon, Julia – what the delightful old gentleman will do next.’

  I confessed myself unable to prophesy
on that subject. Following the departure from the Remnant Club of Ardmore and Darkside, I had spent the afternoon in attempting to persuade the Colonel of the need to reflect a little on what we had learnt. Though he had eventually promised, with some reluctance, to take no action until he heard from me again, I could not be confident that his patience would survive the evening nor predict what he would do when it was exhausted.

  ‘I suppose it would be too much to hope,’ said Selena, ‘that all this eavesdropping and pointing guns and so forth has actually produced any useful information.’

  ‘I have made a little progress,’ I said, ‘in my investigation of the death of Edward Malvoisin. It begins to look as if Ardmore and Darkside can be excluded from suspicion. They both say – or Ardmore says and Darkside does not dispute it – that they were together in the bar of the Alexandra from the time Edward Malvoisin left until the time of the accident. I did not feel able, in the rather trying circumstances of our conversation, to question them as closely as I would have wished on this point, and it may be that they were not in each other’s company for literally every minute of that period, but the absence of either for a sufficient length of time to follow Malvoisin halfway across the Coupee would surely have excited comment from the other. Like Clementine, they have what I believe is technically termed an alibi. That is on the assumption, of course, that they are not accomplices.’

  ‘If I say,’ said Julia, ‘that Patrick is not the sort of man who pushes people over cliffs, you will no doubt accuse me of sentimental prejudice. You surely can’t imagine, however, that he would choose Gideon Darkside as an accomplice.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said, ‘that it seems unlikely, though the quest for profit, my dear Julia, makes strange bedfellows. Ardmore and Darkside together would have been in an admirable position to extract money from the trust fund for their personal benefit, and if Malvoisin had found out about it . . . Still, the conversation which I overheard at the Godolphin did not sound to me like one between co-conspirators. Moreover, Philip Alexandre is also said to have been with them at the material time, and one must assume, I think, that, if asked, he would confirm that – a conspiracy of all three seems decidedly improbable.’

  Selena refilled my teacup.

  ‘It looks,’ she said, ‘as if all the people we know about are excluded. Unless you count the person the Contessa saw lurking in the garden, there seem to be no suspects left. Perhaps Edward Malvoisin’s death really was an accident – Patrick Ardmore’s explanation sounds quite convincing. What a shame, Hilary – you’ll have to go back to the birth and marriage certificates.’

  I was obliged to remind her that thus far there was no evidence to exclude the Contessa di Silvabianca.

  ‘She was in the Witch’s Cottage,’ said Julia. ‘With Cantrip and Clementine.’

  ‘My dear Julia, you surely don’t believe that Cantrip and Clementine, occupied as they were, would have noticed if the Contessa left her room and went out again. There would have been ample time for her to do so and to reach the place where Malvoisin met his death long before the accident to the carriage. Moreover, she would have had no difficulty in finding her way, even in pitch darkness – now that we know she is Alexandre’s niece, we may assume her to be entirely familiar with the cottage and its environs. Apart from which, there is the matter of the pen.’

  On the subject of the pen Julia became indignant. She had never heard of such a thing – or at any rate she had never read of such a thing – or at any rate not in any piece of respectable crime fiction published since the beginning of the Second World War. A physical object, forsooth, with the initials of a suspect engraved on it – why, it was worse than a fingerprint. If we must have a clue of a physical nature – and in Julia’s experience the best authors nowadays wholly eschewed such vulgarities – then let it at least be one invisible to the naked eye and identifiable only by the most sophisticated techniques of modern pathology. If the progress of the past half-century was to count for nothing, then one might as well go back, said Julia scathingly, to murders committed by means of arsenic or for motives of matrimonial jealousy.

  ‘I do not doubt,’ I said, ‘that in a crime novel having any pretensions to modernity, the pen would be quite inadmissible. As a mere historian, however, there is nothing I can do about it. Nature, as we know, does imitate Art, but I fear that she all too often falls short of the highest standards. Were you to turn your attention from fictional crimes to those reported in the newspapers, you would find that people are still leaving fingerprints and murdering unfaithful spouses for all the world as if they were living in the 1920s. In the more backward parts of the country they may even still be poisoning one another with arsenic. We cannot ignore the pen for the sake of literary fashion.’

  Apparently pleased with the role of hostess, Selena poured further cups of tea.

  ‘You seem unconvinced,’ she said, ‘by the suggestion that it had been borrowed by Edward Malvoisin.’

  ‘It did not look to me,’ I said, ‘like the sort of thing which one would readily lend or forget to ask to be returned. I suspect that the story of Malvoisin having trouble with his pen was an extempore invention by Patrick Ardmore.’

  ‘We know, of course,’ said Ragwort, ‘that he and the Contessa are colleagues of long standing and evidently friends. And we have reason to believe,’ he added looking severely at Julia, ‘that he is a man who might too easily allow good nature to prevail over principle. But would he go to the length of telling lies to protect her if he thought her responsible for Malvoisin’s death?’

  ‘He may merely believe,’ I said, ‘that she had an assignation with Malvoisin and would be embarrassed by its disclosure. That is, I suppose, a possibility – perhaps she resented Malvoisin’s advances less than she appeared to.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Julia sadly, ‘that Edward Malvoisin’s advances were of the kind which a well-bred and good-natured woman usually resents a great deal more than she appears to. I wonder if it really was Gabrielle’s pen that Patrick found on the Coupee. Would it be very difficult to have a duplicate made? One sees advertisements, in gift catalogues and so forth, for goods to be supplied with initials on them, and they don’t require the initials to be one’s own.’

  ‘My dear Julia,’ said Ragwort kindly, for he knows she is not well versed in such matters, ‘if I have followed Hilary’s description of it, that is not at all the sort of thing we are talking about. We are talking in effect of an item of jewellery, designed and made to order for a particular customer and intended to be entirely exclusive. No jeweller who valued his reputation would dream of duplicating the design without the consent of the original customer.’

  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.

  10

  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 w
as 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.