The Sirens Sang of Murder

by Sarah Caudwell

  16

  From the entrance to the Grand Hotel there is an admirable view across St Aubyn’s Bay to Elizabeth Castle, named by Sir Walter Raleigh in honour of his formidable sovereign and built on the islet where the hermit Helier, patron saint of Jersey and its capital, was martyred in the sixth century by marauding Norsemen. Alighting from my taxi on the following morning, however, I spared the historic fortress no more than a glance before turning to make my way towards the reception desk.

  Weary though I was from rising before dawn and from the rigours of my journey, my steps were quickened by an anxiety more urgent than the desire for rest. My attempts to communicate by telephone with Cantrip, directly or through any of our mutual acquaintance, had all proved fruitless. Eventually, finding that I chanced to have in my possession a letter bearing the telex number of Julia’s Chambers, I had prevailed on the telex operator at the Clair de Lune to transmit a message to her; but I had been obliged to express myself in terms more guarded than I would have wished, and in any case had little hope of its being read in time to be of the slightest use.

  I had no need to enquire the whereabouts of Clementine Derwent, for she was standing at the reception desk, engaged in what seemed to be a mildly acrimonious conversation with a member of the hotel management. She looked flustered, like a schoolboy who has been overoptimistic about the time required for his homework, and despite the civility of her greeting I was not entirely sure that she was pleased to see me.

  ‘It’s awfully good of you to come, Professor Tamar, but I really didn’t mean to drag you all the way back from Monte Carlo. That’s why I didn’t send you a telex about the meeting.’

  ‘My dear Clementine,’ I said, ‘that was most thoughtful of you. The fact is, however, that I am not here solely for the purpose of the meeting. There is something I have to discuss with Cantrip, as a matter of some urgency, and I was expecting to find him here. Perhaps, however, you thought his presence unnecessary at this particular meeting?’

  Her answer dashed such slender hopes as I had that the boy might still be safely in London.

  ‘Oh no, I asked him to be here and he is. Well, here in Jersey. He’s invited Gabrielle to go out for breakfast somewhere.’

  ‘Do you happen to know where?’

  ‘No, Professor Tamar, I don’t,’ said Clementine with a certain peevishness. ‘And I don’t quite know why everyone expects me to act as some kind of keeper. Oh dear – I’m sorry, but Gabrielle’s husband has turned up and he’s in a bit of a stew because I don’t know where she is. He says awful things keep happening at Daffodil meetings and he’s had a sort of premonition or something that she’s in some kind of danger. So I’m feeling a bit— ’

  ‘Your telephone call from Geneva, Miss Derwent,’ said the switchboard operator behind the reception desk.

  ‘Oh lord – Professor Tamar, will you excuse me? Would you like to go and join the others in the coffee lounge? I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  In the coffee lounge three men were sitting round one of the low tables: Patrick Ardmore, Gideon Darkside, and Count Giovanni di Silvabianca. My last encounter with Ardmore and Darkside having taken place, as my readers may recall, in somewhat unconventional circumstances at the Remnant Club, it was with some degree of misgiving that I renewed the acquaintance. My explanation of my presence at the Grand Hotel – namely that I had been retained by Clementine to trace the descendants of Sir Walter Palgrave and had thought my attendance to be of some possible value – met with a mixed response: Ardmore expressed his pleasure at meeting me again and enquired warmly after the Colonel; Darkside made various observations with which I need not trouble my readers – ‘nosy-parkering academic’ was among the least offensive of the expressions he employed. I treated these, I need hardly say, with the dignified indifference becoming to the Scholar.

  ‘I am afraid that Mr Darkside must think me also an intruder,’ said the Count apologetically. After giving me a courteous greeting he had kept a troubled silence. ‘And Gabrielle, too, will say I ought not to have come. But last night I had suddenly a feeling that she was in danger here, and I do not think one can ignore such feelings – you will think perhaps, Professor Tamar, that I am too superstitious?’ I shook my head, having found that such apparently irrational presentiments are often the product of some perfectly efficient process of unconscious reasoning. ‘Well, perhaps I am, but I could not stay in Monte Carlo when I thought she was in danger – I have been travelling almost all night. And now she is not at the hotel where she was staying, she has not arrived here for the meeting, and no one knows where she is.’

  ‘Giovanni,’ said Patrick Ardmore with gentle impatience, ‘she’s simply having breakfast out somewhere. Our meeting’s not due to begin until nine o’clock, and it’s only just after half past eight.’

  ‘It’s nearly quarter to nine,’ said the Count, ‘and she knows everyone is here. And she is always so conscientious about her business engagements.’

  ‘Young Michael Cantrip’s with her – he’ll take good care of her.’

  ‘I know he will do his best,’ said the Count, but the anxiety remained in his dark eyes.

  After glowering in silence for a while Gideon Darkside found further food for his displeasure. He pointed to the far corner of the room.

  ‘What’s that girl doing here? Haven’t we even got this room to ourselves? This is supposed to be a private meeting, even if we are keeping open house for freeloaders from Oxford.’

  Looking in the direction he indicated, I saw that there was indeed another person present, though sitting in a large armchair in such quiet and timid obscurity as readily to escape notice. It was Lilian.

  ‘She is employed as a secretary at 62 New Square,’ I said. ‘Since it cannot be supposed that she is here by coincidence, presumably Miss Derwent has some reason for thinking her presence desirable.’

  ‘A secretary? What do we need a secretary for? We’ve never needed a secretary at Daffodil meetings before. And if we do, why can’t we hire one here in Jersey instead of flying her in from London and putting her up at the most expensive hotel in St Helier? Oh, I know what it is – 62 New Square. That’s young Cantrip’s Chambers. She’s his little bit of fluff, I suppose, and the Derwent girl’s let him bring her over here at the expense of the trust fund. Well, he’s not getting away with it.’

  ‘Do be quiet, Gideon, she’ll hear you,’ said Patrick Ardmore.

  It appeared indeed that she was aware of being an object of discussion, for her cheeks had grown pink and she was studying a magazine with the intensity of one who wishes to be thought unaware of her surroundings. Plainly, however, it was a pretence – the instant that Clementine entered the room she looked up and smiled as if at a potential rescuer. Clementine went straight across to her, stooped and squeezed her hand, and seemed to be uttering words of encouragement.

  When the young solicitor finally joined us at the coffee table, Darkside renewed his objections to my presence at the meeting.

  ‘Well,’ said Clementine a little wearily, ‘I don’t quite see what it is you’re worrying about, Gideon, but if that’s how you feel about it, I don’t suppose Professor Tamar will mind leaving us once the meeting’s properly started.’

  ‘My dear Clementine, not in the least,’ I said. ‘I merely supposed that it might be helpful to those attending to hear what progress I have made.’

  Clementine looked embarrassed.

  ‘Well, actually – actually, Professor Tamar, this latest development means it’s not really necessary for you to go on with your investigation. I’m awfully sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing – if I’d known you were thinking of coming, I’d have tried to let you know.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, reflecting on the significance of this unexpected turn of events. ‘You will recall, my dear Clementine, that there were two aspects of the matter which you wished me to consider. The identity of the descendants now living of Sir Walter Palgrave and – a further question which you
believed might be related. Am I to understand that you now regard both aspects of the enquiry to be otiose?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Clementine. She looked uncomfortable, but at the same time slightly belligerent. ‘I’m sorry, Professor Tamar, but when we first talked about this I was in a bit of a state. In view of what’s happened since, I know I was just imagining things. So I’d really be awfully grateful if you’d just forget the whole thing – subject to our settling your account for the work you’ve already done, of course.’

  It was perhaps fortunate, since I was in some uncertainty how to proceed, that at this point a waiter entered the coffee lounge to enquire whether we included among our number a Miss Larwood, a Mr Cantrip, or a Professor Tamar – a Miss Jardine telephoning from London wished to speak to any one of those named. I rose and left my companions with, I confess, some relief.

  Despite the distance which divided us, I detected in Selena’s voice an uncharacteristic note of agitation – she seemed to be accusing me of having encouraged Julia to elope with the Colonel. I protested in bewilderment that I had done nothing of the kind.

  ‘About ten minutes ago,’ said Selena, ‘I arrived in Chambers and found on my desk a note from Julia, apparently written in some haste in the early hours of the morning. She says that she and Colonel Cantrip are going to Jersey and she has no time to explain why, but that the items of correspondence enclosed will make everything clear to me. By “enclosed” she seems to mean “attached by means of a paper clip”, and by “clear” she seems to mean “totally obscure” – I suppose one can’t expect a very high standard of precision at five o’clock in the morning. The correspondence to which she refers consists of the following items. Item one – a telex message from Clementine to Cantrip, sent at lunchtime yesterday, asking him to attend a meeting at the Grand Hotel this morning and to telephone to confirm the arrangement. Item two – a telex message to Cantrip from the Contessa di Silvabianca, transmitted in Monaco yesterday afternoon, inviting him to have breakfast with her. Item three – item three, Hilary, is a telex message from you to Julia, apparently dispatched from Monte Carlo late last night, indicating that if Cantrip goes to Jersey he will be in danger of a murderous attack from the same person who is responsible for the death of Edward Malvoisin. I really can’t imagine what you expected Julia to do about it.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t expect her,’ I said, ‘to come to Jersey herself. In any case, there’s no sign of her here, or of the Colonel. I dare say the plane was full and they’re still at Heathrow or Gatwick. I really don’t think that you need to worry about her.’

  ‘Don’t you? Well, in that case I can concentrate on worrying about Cantrip. Have you seen anything of him?’

  ‘I have only just arrived, and he has not yet returned from breakfasting with the Contessa. Selena, is there anything in her telex to indicate where they were to meet?’

  ‘I will read you the full text. “Dear Michael – there is something in connection with the Daffodil Settlement which I would like to discuss with you in private before the meeting, but I arrive in Jersey too late to talk to you this evening. Can you get up very early and have breakfast with me at St Clement tomorrow? I will bring some coffee and rolls from my hotel and hope to see you at quarter to seven at the place where we met before. Warmest wishes – Gabrielle di Silvabianca.” Hilary, are you serious about someone wanting to attack Cantrip? Is St Clement the sort of place where he might be in any danger?’

  ‘It is the place, according to Julia, where the witches danced and the sirens sang. But I don’t think,’ I added with foolish complacency, ‘that Cantrip can be in any danger there. The person who murdered Edward Malvoisin is here in the Grand Hotel.’

  Although it still lacked a few minutes to nine o’clock, I returned to the coffee lounge to find Gideon Darkside complaining of the delay in opening the meeting. Gabrielle and Cantrip both knew perfectly well, he said, that everyone else was already there and that to wait any longer was a waste of time and money. How much longer were they going to be, and where were they anyway?

  ‘I have been speaking,’ I said, ‘to a colleague of Cantrip’s in London. I gather that they have gone to a place called St Clement – they were to meet there at quarter to seven.’

  The information seemed to move the Count to renewed anxiety.

  ‘I know where they will have gone if they have gone to St Clement. There is a rock there that Gabrielle calls the Sirens’ Rock. It’s a favourite place of hers – one of those you can reach only at low tide. I don’t like her going there, it’s too dangerous – I’ve heard of people being cut off by the tide and drowning. But what can I do? When I say she should not go there she laughs at me.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.

  ‘My dear man, of course she does,’ said Patrick Ardmore. ‘She’s a sensible woman, Giovanni, and she knows the Channel Islands – she isn’t some silly day-tripper who doesn’t know about the tides. She’s as safe at St Clement as by the swimming pool.’

  ‘If we knew what time low tide was,’ said Clementine, ‘we might have some idea of when to expect them back. Is there any way of finding out?’

  ‘Nothing easier,’ said the Irishman. ‘It’ll be in the Evening Post. I’ll see if they’ve got a copy at the reception desk.’

  We waited in silence for his return, as if we had all begun to feel more disquiet than we cared to speak of aloud. I observed that Lilian had drawn unobtrusively closer, as though fearing to miss some news of grave import, and was sitting, pale and serious, in a straight-backed chair at the edge of the group round the coffee table.

  Returning from his errand with a copy of the local paper in his hand, Patrick Ardmore seemed to me to look a trifle less carefree than when he had left us. He spoke, however, with his customary optimism.

  ‘Low tide was at six-twenty this morning, so it must already have turned by the time they set out. Assuming it takes three-quarters of an hour or so to walk out to the rock, they’d have been there by half past seven, and I’d say they’d have to start back again by about quarter to eight to be sure of getting back safely. That gives them just time to eat their breakfast. Allowing twenty minutes or thereabouts for the drive back here, my guess is that they’ll be here any moment now.’ Something in his expression, however, made me think that he found the timing imprudently fine.

  ‘And wanting more breakfast, I expect,’ said Clementine. ‘Yes, Patrick, I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Ardmore,’ said Lilian, ‘but what happens if you’re not?’

  The Irishman seemed disconcerted by the question, or perhaps by the identity of the questioner.

  ‘If I’m not – I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t quite understand what you mean.’

  ‘You said they’d have to leave that rock place by quarter to eight to be sure of getting back safely,’ said Lilian, blushing at her own persistence. ‘What would happen if they hadn’t?’

  ‘Well, by the third hour after low water, the gullies between the rocks and the shore start filling up with water fairly quickly – the tide’s at its fastest, you see, in the third and fourth hours after it turns. If they left it much later than that, they’d be cut off.’

  ‘So they’d get wet,’ said Darkside. ‘Don’t suppose it would do them any harm. They can both swim, can’t they?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Gideon,’ said Ardmore, provoked by the irritation which the accountant seemed always to inspire in him to say more than I think he had intended. ‘The tides here are among the most powerful in the world, and the currents correspondingly dangerous. You’d have to be a very strong swimmer indeed to have any chance of making it across St Clement’s Bay when the tide is in.’ He meant, it seemed to me, that it could not be done. ‘It would be better to stay put on the rock and hope to be rescued – but it wouldn’t be very long before you were underwater.’

  ‘O dear God,’ said the Count.

  ‘But it couldn’t conceivably happen to Ga
brielle,’ said Ardmore, becoming aware that these last remarks were less than reassuring. ‘It can only happen to people who don’t know about the tides or are silly enough to forget about them. It’s out of the question for Gabrielle to do such a thing.’

  ‘Suppose . . .’ said Lilian timidly, ‘suppose they fell asleep.’

  ‘My dear girl, that really is nonsense, you know. On a hot summer afternoon, perhaps, with a couple of hours to spend out at the rock before they had to come back, I suppose it could happen. But first thing in the morning, knowing they’d only got twenty minutes out there – no, my dear, the idea’s absurd.’

  I did not doubt that he was right. And yet the image having once entered my mind would not easily leave it of a dark young man and an auburn-haired woman asleep as if spellbound on the Sirens’ Rock, while the sea crept in to surround them in its implacable embrace.

  The Count rose suddenly from his chair.

  ‘I am sorry, but I can’t bear it, simply to go on sitting here. So many terrible things have happened, and Gabrielle is my wife. How can I sit here and do nothing when she may be in danger? Please, Patrick, I know that you will think me very foolish, but will you drive me out to St Clement?’

  ‘If that’s what you want, Giovanni, then of course I’ll drive you there. But I’m sure there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing in this world.’

  ‘But you see, Patrick,’ said the Count sombrely, ‘I am not sure that it is anything in this world that I am afraid of.’

  17

  I have endeavoured throughout my account of the Daffodil affair to present the evidence to my readers in the order in which it became available to me, neither concealing any facts of which I was aware nor anticipating those of which I was as yet ignorant. It would be difficult, however, to understand clearly what occurred during the next half-hour without knowing of certain other events which took place outside the range of my observation. I have accordingly thought it right – all the more readily because the contrary decision might perhaps have been attributed to a vulgar and meretricious desire to create what is termed suspense – to interpolate at this point in my narrative a letter, written by Julia, which I did not in fact see until some time later.