Sarah Caudwell - The Sirens Sang of Murder

“Oh, absolutely not — that would make it all much worse. I did try to sound him out a bit about the state of the family, but I didn’t get very far. He’s an only child and so was his mother — Sir Walter Palgrave’s granddaughter. But she died quite a long time ago, and she never seems to have talked to him about any aunts or cousins.”

She opened a filing cabinet beside her desk and withdrew from it a long manila envelope.

“There’s a copy of Sir Walter Palgrave’s will in here and a short note of what Peter’s told me. I’m afraid that’s all the help I can give you.” She handed me the envelope. “I don’t suppose — I don’t suppose you can tell me how long it’s going to take to track these people down, but you will try and do it as soon as possible, won’t you? I — my clients are anxious to know where they stand.”

I assured her that I would begin my researches at once and proceed with such expedition as the nature of the task might permit. Our conversation seemed to be at an end. Clementine thanked me for my assistance with a bright smile and an undertone in her voice of some emotion which I did not immediately recognise. I was already rising from my chair when I identified it as disappointment.

One becomes accustomed in academic life to the unreasonableness of the young. They desire not merely to be understood, but to be understood by telepathy; not merely to be permitted to tell their troubles, but to be prevailed on to do so. The more care they take to conceal their feelings, the greater their disillusionment if one fails to discover them.

“My dear girl,” I said, adopting the formula which I have found serviceable in such cases, “would it not be more sensible to tell me what is really the matter?”

“I don’t know why you should think,” said Clementine, looking down at her desk, “that there’s anything else.”

“We are dealing, as I understand it, with the sort of discretionary trust which could quite properly remain in existence for many years. The trust fund is safe, as I suppose, in the hands of the trustees and ex hypothesi no one is pressing for a distribution. No doubt it is desirable to identify the default beneficiaries, but most solicitors, if I may say so, would be content in those circumstances to proceed at a fairly leisurely pace. You are behaving, however, as if tracing the descendants of Sir Walter Palgrave were a matter of considerable urgency. Wouldn’t it be better to tell me why?”

She continued for some moments to stare down silently at her desk, her head between her hands, as if uncertain how, if at all, to answer me.

“I suppose,” she said at last, “because I think that one of them’s probably a murderer.”

It was plain that something serious had happened in the Channel Islands. Not without some effort of will, I listened patiently while she unfolded those parts of the story with which, unknown to her, I was already familiar: the odd circumstances surrounding the death in the Cayman Islands of Oliver Grynne; Gabrielle’s suspicion that she was being followed; and the events which had led to the professional advisers to the Daffodil Settlement spending the previous Monday night on the island of Sark.

Had I thought that her narrative might culminate in any misadventure to poor Cantrip, I could not have refrained from interrupting to ask news of him; but I recalled that she had enquired for him earlier that morning in Chambers, apparently expecting him to have returned safely to London.

When she reached the events of Monday evening, I saw her hesitate, plainly deliberating what limits should be set to her candour. Discretion apparently prevailed — she left me to assume that after dinner she had retired to the respectable solitude of her own room.

On the following morning she had breakfasted in the hotel dining room in the company of Ardmore and Darkside. The waitress who served them gave them also a full account of the misadventures of Albert, as a result of which the road across the Coupee was blocked by the overturned carriage. They had remained in the dining room to await news of its removal, neither curious nor concerned as to the precise whereabouts of the rest of the party.

Soon after nine o’clock they were told that the Coupee was clear again, but the next boat for Guernsey did not sail until noon, and there seemed no merit in haste. The three of them, therefore, were still in the dining room when Philip Alexandre brought the bad news.

Two fishermen sailing along the eastern coast of the island had seen a body lying on the rocks below the Coupee. They had managed with some difficulty to take it on board their boat, conscientiously marking with an impromptu flag the place where it had lain. On reaching harbour, they had sent an urgent message to the Constable, the member of the Sark community responsible, under the authority of the Seneschal, for the maintenance of public order.

The Constable had recognised the dead man at once as a frequent visitor to the island, and had known that Philip Alexandre was the person with whom he most commonly had dealings. It was the Jersey advocate Edward Malvoisin.

“Of course,” said Clementine, leaning back with a deep sigh, “it could have been an accident. So could Oliver Grynne getting drowned. But that means there’ve been two fatal accidents within six months to people connected with the Daffodil Settlement, and it struck me as a bit over the odds. I couldn’t think what to do about it, though. I’ve nothing solid enough to go to the police with. And anyway, the clients would have fits — you know what Swiss bankers are like about secrecy. And then I thought of you, Professor Tamar. I remembered one or two things that Cantrip had said about you and about that problem Julia had in Venice and I thought — well, I thought that if you were involved in the case perhaps you might come across something.”

“It is true,” I said, “that I have had some little success in applying the methods of Scholarship to one or two somewhat similar matters.” I was touched and rather surprised that the boy should have spoken to her of these achievements. They had not always seemed to me to receive in New Square the degree of recognition which an unprejudiced observer might think them to deserve. “I trust, however, that Cantrip has not given you an exaggerated notion of my abilities — there is nothing miraculous about them.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Clementine. “What he said was — well, what he actually said was that you were awfully good at picking up odds and ends of gossip and finding out things that weren’t any of your business.”

Making allowances for the Cambridge idiom, I supposed I must consider it a tribute. I enquired whether she had spoken of her fears to any of her colleagues.

“No — I didn’t have a chance to talk to Patrick in private, and Gideon Darkside’s the last person that I’d want to discuss it with. And I haven’t seen Cantrip or Gabrielle at all since it happened. We didn’t have time to look for them, you see — the Constable wanted us to go straight over to the harbour and confirm the identification, and anyway, Philip Alexandre seemed to think that they’d probably gone on ahead of us. So somehow or other we all missed each other — I think they must both have left Sark without hearing the news about Edward.”

I knew that Cantrip had not yet returned to Chambers; the Contessa also, it seemed, was still absent from her office in Monte Carlo.

“I tried ringing her there this morning, and she wasn’t back yet. But you see, Professor Tamar, I didn’t really expect her to be. She’d been meaning to meet her husband somewhere near Paris and spend two or three days driving south with him. She says he gets fed up when she goes off on business trips, so she always tries to make up for it by having a short holiday on her own with him afterwards.” Clementine smiled indulgently at this matrimonial bargaining. “If she left Sark without hearing about poor old Edward, then there’s no reason for her to have changed her plans. I’m not really worried about her.” I perceived, however, that this last was not entirely true.