The Sirens Sang of Murder

by Sarah Caudwell

  ‘I felt a bit sick myself, because however you added it up, it came out not looking too good. When the Germans found the body it was going to look as if we’d shot an unarmed prisoner with his hands tied, and apart from what they’d make of it on the propaganda side, they were liable to take it out pretty roughly on our chaps in their POW camps.

  ‘Not really young Welladay’s fault – if a chap’s firing at you, you assume he’s got his hands free – but he ought to have checked all the same. I suppose he must have thought so himself – the next thing he said was “I’m going back” and he was over the side and swimming for the shore before anyone could stop him.

  ‘Everyone stopped rowing for a second or two – then Squiffy just shook his head and said carry on. We all knew the lad would be shot if the Germans got him – they didn’t treat commando raiders as prisoners of war – but there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it. We were cutting it pretty fine already for getting back to the sub, and we just couldn’t spare the time to hang around on the off chance of picking him up again. So we went on, and that looked like being the end of my acquaintance with young Arthur Welladay.’

  The Colonel sat looking out of the window across the sunlit lawns of New Square, his gaze perhaps drawn by the War Memorial, apparently oblivious of his immediate surroundings. The rest of us also remained silent, as if forgetting for a moment that the young man he spoke of had not after all died on the clifftops of Sark on that bleak and moonless night in 1944 but had lived to enjoy success and age and high honours.

  ‘But in fact,’ said Selena gently, after some moments, ‘it was not?’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said the Colonel, his attention recalled to the present. ‘I ran into him in Normandy six months later. It seemed he’d got ashore all right and fallen in with some girl – she’d kept him hidden until the summer. When the news got through that the Allies had taken St Malo, they’d escaped to Brittany together in a fishing boat. It was quite a romantic story, but I don’t remember the details.’

  ‘You don’t happen,’ I said, ‘to recall the girl’s name?’

  ‘ ’Fraid not, Professor,’ said the Colonel apologetically. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

  ‘Julia,’ I said, ‘how old, in your estimation, is the Contessa di Silvabianca?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Julia, looking bewildered. ‘Her looks have a degree of individuality which makes it difficult to judge, and she is not a woman of whom I should care to ask so personal a question. Since one knows that she is not precisely in her first youth, I suppose one might describe her as being in the full bloom of her second.’

  ‘Would you think it possible,’ I said, ‘that she was born at the end of 1944 or the beginning of 1945?’

  ‘Oh, quite possible,’ said Julia. ‘Hilary, what on earth are you suggesting?’

  ‘I am suggesting that the Contessa is Welladay’s daughter. That would perhaps explain his evident interest in her movements. It would also mean, of course, that she, too, is a descendant of Sir Walter Palgrave,’

  ‘Hilary,’ said Selena, ‘you do realize, don’t you, that you haven’t a scrap of proper evidence for this idea?’

  ‘And even if you’re right,’ said Ragwort, ‘I would have thought that the settlement would probably be drawn in such a way as to exclude illegitimate issue.’

  ‘It does not necessarily follow,’ I said, ‘that it excludes the Contessa – if there was a child, there may well have been a marriage. I think it is time – if you will be so kind, my dear Ragwort, as to permit me to use your telephone – that I spoke again to Clementine Derwent.’

  Clementine’s view of the urgency of my investigation had not altered in the day that had passed since our last meeting. When I told her that my enquiries had revealed one, perhaps two, of the descendants of Sir Walter Palgrave to be at present in Monte Carlo – I thought it premature and possibly indiscreet to disclose their identity – she at once undertook the arrangements necessary to enable me to travel there that night.

  13

  EXTRACT FROM THE GUIDE TO COMFORTABLE TAX PLANNING

  Monaco: The principality of Monaco on the south coast of France, formerly a possession of the Republic of Genoa, has since 1308 been an independent state ruled by the Grimaldi family. In the mid-nineteenth century Prince Charles III averted national bankruptcy by building the Casino, the revenues from which rapidly eliminated any need for taxation.

  The principality consists of three areas: On the spur of rock to the right of the harbour is the old town of Monaco, a not unpicturesque little township surrounding the Palace and now chiefly devoted to the sale of tourist souvenirs; on the hillside to the left is the modern town of Monte Carlo, consisting of the Casino, a number of shops selling jewellery and other luxuries, and an agglomeration of hotels and apartment blocks; immediately behind the harbour, bounded by the Rue Grimaldi, is the Condamine, the business and commercial centre, where one finds the fruit and vegetable market and occasional vistas briefly reminiscent of Genoa.

  Area: 375 acres. Population: 23,000. Access: By train, car, or helicopter from Nice. Principal industries: Gambling, tourism, and financial services.

  Note 1: Monte Carlo is a town of steep gradients and few taxis, but exhaustion may be avoided by a perceptive use of the public lifts and escalators. If meeting a client at the Hotel de Paris, for example, after lunching with colleagues in the Condamine, on no account attempt the walk up the Avenue Monte Carlo. Take the ascenseur from the corner of the harbour to the Exotic Gardens and walk down. With care it is possible to reach almost any point in Monte Carlo from almost any other without ascending any significant gradient.

  It will be, I fear, with some surprise, perhaps even with irritation, that you remark, dear reader, how many pages yet remain before my narrative reaches its conclusion, wondering, when the truth concerning the deaths of Grynne and Malvoisin is already plain, with what maundering irrelevancies I can have contrived to fill them. It would little become the Scholar, however, to sacrifice candour to vanity: whatever derision I may incur for my slow-wittedness, I am obliged to admit that to me, despite all I had learnt that day, the truth concerning these matters was still by no means clear.

  To say that the evidence was as yet circumstantial rather than conclusive, or that I had had no sufficient opportunity to reflect on it, would be but paltry excuses. If I say anything in extenuation of my failure to perceive its true significance, it must be, I suppose, that the truth was of such a nature as to be, to a person of my temperament and upbringing, almost literally unthinkable.

  Though I continued, as I flew southwards over France, to search for some thread of meaning in the tangled mass of information which had presented itself, all remained dark and obscure. I felt only a curious sense of foreboding – a conviction, which I could not rationally explain, that Monaco was a dangerous place for Cantrip to be and that I ought to persuade him, as a matter of urgency, to return to London.

  Although Clementine had made the most admirable arrangements for my journey, including the hire of a motorcar to transport me from Nice airport to Monte Carlo, it was after midnight, by local time, before I finally arrived at the Hotel Clair de Lune. When I mentioned at the reception desk that I believed my friend Mr Cantrip was also staying there, I had little expectation of seeing him that night. I was told, however, that I would find him in the bar.

  It was a long room, furnished in devoted imitation of the Belle Epoque with crimson velvet and gilt-framed looking glasses. There were when I entered only three people in it, but if there had been thirty I dare say the woman sitting curled up on the sofa would still have been the first to attract my notice. Dressed in grey-green chiffon interwoven with silver, with some ornament also of silver shining in her auburn hair, she looked like a nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the process of transformation into a fountain, and there was about her movements a corresponding fluidity and charm which would have seduced the eye from women with better claims to be thought beautiful. She w
as holding a glass of champagne, and the pleasant sound of her laughter reached me as I entered. Sitting in a chair on her right was a tall dark man, evidently in his middle forties, and still with enough good looks to suggest that in his youth they must have been spectacular. On her left was Cantrip, who appeared to be the cause of her amusement.

  Having been in some uncertainty whether Cantrip would welcome my unexpected arrival, I was touched to receive a greeting which seemed to express no less pleasure than astonishment. He introduced me to the Count and Contessa di Silvabianca as a person whose presence would be of inestimable value, and having demanded to know what on earth I was doing in Monte Carlo cheerfully cut off my reply after a scant three words: whatever it was, I was to stop doing it and devote my entire attention to what he termed ‘the Wellieboots problem’.

  I had arrived, it seemed, at a council of war – in consequence of a long-standing dinner engagement, this was the first opportunity the Contessa and her husband had had since returning to Monte Carlo for any discussion with Cantrip of the events of the past three days. He had been relating to them the story of his journey through France, and resumed his narrative with such enthusiasm that there was neither time nor need for me to wonder if I should admit to any previous knowledge of it.

  The Contessa’s laughter was soon accounted for. Poor Cantrip was still mystified, it seemed, by the fact of her arriving in St Malo no later than the judge and himself, and she was too delighted by his perplexity to be in much haste to dispel it.

  ‘Oh, look here, Gabrielle,’ said Cantrip, with the beginnings of indignation. ‘I’ve said I can’t guess. Come on, be a sport and say how you did it.’

  ‘But, Michel,’ said the Contessa, ‘perhaps I do not want to be a sport. Perhaps I want to be very romantic and mysterious and to make you think I can cross the sea by magic. But I do not think I can make Hilary think so – professors at Oxford do not believe in magic.’ She looked at me, still laughing.

  ‘My dear Gabrielle,’ I said, for she had invited me to address her by her first name, ‘I do not doubt that you have all the powers appropriate to an enchantress. I understand, however, that it is not unknown for those engaged in the profession of tax planning to make some alteration to their appearance when they cross international frontiers. I rather suspect that you left Sark in some disguise which Cantrip failed to penetrate and that you travelled on the same boat.’

  ‘Ah, you see,’ cried Gabrielle, clapping her hands, and apparently as pleased to be detected as she had been to deceive, ‘I knew one could not hide anything from an Oxford professor. Of course, Hilary, you are quite right. As you say, I do not like the French authorities to know my travelling arrangements. I do not like the idea that just when I am getting on a plane a gentleman may tap me on the shoulder and say “One moment, Madame la Comtesse, there is a little problem with your passport, please answer a few questions,” and that somehow this little problem cannot be solved until I have told this gentleman the names of my French clients who have accounts in Geneva or Monte Carlo. No, no, no, no, I do not like this at all.’ She wagged her forefinger, reproving some imaginary representative of the French fisc.

  ‘Oh, I say,’ said Cantrip, ‘they wouldn’t.’

  ‘But I assure you, Michel, I have friends to whom it has happened. So when I am going to Jersey, for example, I slip into the cloakroom in my favourite café in St Malo and I put on – oh, some extra clothing, you know, in case it is cold in the Channel Islands. I put on a thick black dress over my other clothes, and some thick black stockings and some good solid shoes, and a head scarf and one or two shawls. And a big pair of glasses, of course, to keep the wind out of my eyes. And somehow when I come out I do not look so much like the vice president of a wicked Swiss bank with clients who do not want to pay their taxes, but more like a respectable Breton peasant lady who has buried two husbands and has some shopping to do in St Helier.’

  ‘Oh, look here,’ said Cantrip, ‘you don’t mean you were the old biddy in black? Oh, come off it, Gabrielle, you can’t have been. What about your luggage? What about your passport?’

  ‘But of course I was, Michel – did you really never recognize me? My luggage? I keep a suitcase with some clothes in it at the hotels where I usually stay – for travel I take just a little overnight case, inside the shopping basket. And my passport? Well, I still have my French passport, which does not say that I am the Contessa di Silvabianca but that I am Gabrielle Leclerc, who is a good Frenchwoman born in Brittany in – oh, but you will not expect me to tell you in which year.’

  She smiled, almost as if she guessed how much the information would have interested me. Seeing her, I had begun to sympathize with Julia’s inability to offer any useful estimate of her age. Her figure betrayed nothing – she was as slender as Clementine Derwent, though without giving the same impression of boyishness; the rich auburn of her hair might have owed much or little to art, and her face, dominated by large eyes of the ambivalent aquatic colour that Cantrip had remarked upon, was of the structure that changes little between the ages of thirty and fifty. There were some signs, it is true, of recent strain – faint shadows and hollows which suggested a loss of sleep and appetite, but this evening, at any rate, she seemed in the highest spirits. She rang for more champagne, saying that we must celebrate.

  ‘Carissima,’ said her husband, regarding her with slightly mournful dark eyes, ‘I am happy that you are happy, but I do not quite understand what it is that we are celebrating. When I hear that you – my wife – the Contessa di Silvabianca – have been hunted across France like a wanted criminal, I do not see that it is something to celebrate.’ His voice grew warm with indignation at the affront to his aristocratic name.

  ‘Because I know who is hunting me,’ said Gabrielle, reaching out to press his hand. ‘Giovanni, you know how worried I have been this past year.’

  ‘Of course, carissima, how should I not? You go away to these meetings about this Daffodil business and afterwards you are pale and nervous and frightened and not at all like my happy, beautiful wife.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘What can I do? I have begged you to give up the Daffodil case and leave it to Patrick to look after and you will not.’

  ‘Ah, Giovanni,’ said his wife, ‘I know why you do not like my beautiful Daffodil Settlement. It takes me away from home and you have no one to look after you. But I cannot give it up – it is my favourite portfolio and we have done wonderful things together. But it is true that I have been frightened. You see, Hilary, I have thought for more than a year now that someone was following me, spying on me, always when I was away, and always when I was working on this particular case – I must ask you to be discreet, we do not usually mention names. But I could not be certain, you see – I could not say “There is the same man with the big nose and black beard that I saw yesterday.” It was a matter of instinct, of impression.’

  ‘Had you any idea,’ I asked, ‘who might be doing such a thing?’

  ‘At first, of course, I thought that it was someone from the French Revenue authorities. But – there was something about it somehow that was not quite their style. I began to think that it was someone more sinister, more dangerous, and I was afraid, as Giovanni says. And at other times I wondered if I was imagining things and becoming a little bit mad perhaps. But now – now Michel has discovered that it is only Mr Justice Wellieboots, who sits in court all day and wriggles his eyebrows at my friend Julia, and who does not frighten me in the least. I do not give that for Mr Wellieboots.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Yes, Giovanni, of course it is something to celebrate.’

  It was no doubt a sufficient explanation for her present high spirits; but I wondered if she might not have some further, undisclosed reason to be confident that Mr Justice Welladay would intend no ill towards her.

  ‘If we could be sure that this man could do you no harm,’ said her husband, ‘then it would be something to celebrate. But I do not see how we can be sure of it. I suppose that a j
udge is a very powerful person, and it is not safe for you to click your fingers at him. Why has he been following you? What does he want? What does he mean to do next? For myself, I cannot be happy until we know these things.’

  ‘It is evident what he wants, chéri. Michel has told us that he does not like people to avoid tax – he has heard something somehow about my Daffodil Settlement, which has made such beautiful capital gains, and he thinks that if he can find out who the beneficiaries are he can make them pay tax, millions of pounds of tax. Poor Mr Wellieboots, he doesn’t know that he could follow me for a hundred years and read all my letters and listen to all my telephone calls and still not discover who the beneficiaries are, because I do not know it myself.’ She evidently found this thought irresistibly entertaining.

  Cantrip, however, made haste to concur in her husband’s opinion – he is not a young man to be easily persuaded, once launched on a career of knight errantry, that the damsel can deal with the dragon by herself. It would be a nightmare, he said, for Gabrielle to spend her life thinking that at any moment Mr Justice Welladay might pop out of the bushes at her; something must be done to put a stop to it once and for all.

  ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘the more I think about it, the more I don’t think the way he’s acting is the way English judges are supposed to act. I mean, we’ve got things in England like the Bill of Rights and habeas corpus and things, and what they say is that judges can’t go locking people up without giving them a chance to defend themselves. Well, I haven’t done any constitutional law for a couple of years, so I can’t swear that’s exactly what they say, but that’s the gist of it. So what I think is that Wellieboots has gone round the twist.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the Count, ‘I do not quite understand.’

  ‘Off his onion,’ said Cantrip helpfully. ‘Loopy. Nutty as a fruitcake. And the problem about people going nutty is that it’s jolly difficult to tell whether they’re harmlessly nutty or dangerously nutty. Anyway, that’s why it’s going to be so frightfully useful having Hilary here – I mean, Oxford dons are always going nutty, so if you can manage to chat to him for a couple of minutes, you’ll be able to tell how serious it is, won’t you, Hilary?’