and me.” The picture showed them sitting side by side on a sofa: Selena, with a look of judicial detachment, seemed to be appraising the quality of her champagne; Julia was smiling with sleepy and bemused benevolence at two other persons — one male, the other female, both naked, in an attitude of greater intimacy than I would wish to describe in detail to my readers: though Selena and Julia were fully dressed, the photograph was taken at such an angle as somehow to suggest that all four figures were part of a single tableau. The background I recognized without difficulty, having seen it less than two hours earlier — it was the drawing-room of Rupert Galloway’s flat. It required but little scholarship to infer that the photographs had been taken at the gathering attended by Selena and Julia in the previous November; and it seemed not over-adventurous to surmise that the film from which they were made had been in the camera appropriated by the spurious policemen.
“Julia,” I said gently, “is that the coat which Selena found for you in the cupboard at Rupert’s flat?” She nodded. “And are you,” I continued, “quite, quite sure that it’s yours?”
She turned the coat this way and that, inside out and upside down, searching, I suppose, for some winestain or cigarette burn which would identify it as unquestionably hers. Eventually, at Ragwort’s suggestion, she looked inside the collar and found sewn there a small name-tape. On reading it, she became rather pale.
“Oh dear,” she said, “it seems to be Deirdre’s. Do you think it’s been there ever since—?”
“Undoubtedly.” I said. “She would have put it in the cupboard when she arrived for the Boat Race party and no one has since thought to move it. I don’t quite know how she came by the photographs, but I fear we may easily guess how she hoped to use them. And that, my dear Julia, solves the last of the mysteries.”
Ragwort raised an eyebrow.
“Deirdre’s letter. I think we may safely assume that what Julia construed as an appeal for help was in truth a prelude to blackmail. It would be not inconsistent with the impression we have been given of Deirdre’s character; and she would no doubt have thought — she was very young, after all — that this picture was sufficiently compromising for Julia to pay money for it. You had better give the photographs to me — if you keep them, Julia, you will mix them up with some set of papers you are dealing with and cause alarm to your instructing solicitors.”
We were afterwards joined by Timothy and Cantrip and in their company spent an agreeable evening, at the end of which Timothy kindly offered me the hospitality of his flat. I rose late and breakfasted at leisure, reflecting with some complacency on the successful conclusion of my inquiry. I thought myself a trifle at fault in directing my mind too little to the point mentioned by Selena — that a person murderously resolved to secure possession of the Remington-Fiske estates, being more remote in the succession than both Deirdre and Camilla, would not necessarily have disposed of them in order of seniority; but since Deirdre’s death had not been achieved by malice, the point seemed an academic one.
Towards noon — Selena, I supposed, was by then already under sail on the blue waters of the Ionian — I went out into Middle Temple Lane and turned my steps towards Fleet Street. The news-vendor on the corner of these two thoroughfares was already offering for sale the earliest edition of the evening paper. I paused to glance at the placard proclaiming the latest news:
HEIRESS FEARED DROWNED IN SAILING ACCIDENT
I purchased a copy of the paper and looked for the “Stop Press” column; but for some reason I scarcely needed to read it to feel certain that the headline referred to Camilla Galloway.
CHAPTER 11
There is a sense in which my inquiry had been successful. Its purpose, as my readers will recall, had been to stop Julia talking about Sir Thomas More: in this it had succeeded. It is right, however, to confess immediately that my conclusions were entirely erroneous. In reaching them, I had too uncritically accepted a view of Deirdre’s death which accorded with my own preconceived opinion, banishing from my mind those curious features of the unhappy incident which were left unexplained: an error all the more culpable in that the facts were already known to me which should have led to a virtual certainty of the truth, requiring only a trivial piece of commonplace research to be confirmed beyond question. I blame myself much for my failure of judgment; though I could hardly have foreseen how dangerous it would prove to persons whom I held in affection.
The news of Camilla’s sailing accident did not persuade me, for more than a moment or two, to reconsider my opinion. Dismissing as irrational my sense of uneasiness, I concluded merely that the descendants of the late Sir James Remington-Fiske were peculiarly inclined to misadventure. Fuller and more accurate accounts of the incident appeared in due course in the English newspapers. I refrain, however, from setting out any of these
The first arrived some ten days later, on a day when I happened again to find myself in London. Looking into the Corkscrew at an early hour of the evening, I discovered Julia on the point of reading it, and willingly accepted her offer to do so aloud.
SV
Sunday afternoon.
Dear Julia,
I have been obliged to put in here by unrest among the crew, namely Sebastian. I had meant to take advantage of a nice westerly breeze to press on northwards to Corfu; but the crew claimed the sea was too rough for sailing on and threatened strike action. I pointed out that lying in the cockpit and reading aloud from the
I must tell you a most extraordinary story I have heard about Camilla Galloway. It may perhaps have been mentioned in the English newspapers; but I don’t imagine they would have thought it worth reporting in detail.
The first I heard of it was at Preveza.
Preveza is on the west coast of mainland Greece, on the north side of the Gulf of Amvrakikos. We arrived there on Friday morning, collected the necessary papers from the shipping office and took possession of the
Our destination is Ithaca, but by a roundabout route: northwards between Corfu and the mainland coast until we round the northern end of Corfu, then southwards again. This is a longish voyage under sail in a fortnight, and of course I don’t want to motor any more than I have to: it seemed to me that if we were going to see anything of Ithaca we should waste no time, but set sail as soon as we were properly provisioned.
I could see no reason for lingering in Preveza — it looked like a very ordinary fishing port, all whitewash and cobblestones, such as one might see anywhere on the Mediterranean, and distinguished only by the unusually pungent smell from the harbor. I was told by the crew, however, that in ancient and medieval times it had been a place of great strategic importance and that in the surrounding waters a battle had been fought which had changed the history of the world; I was also reminded that it was nearly lunch-time. (It’s rather extraordinary that whenever the crew wants to stop for lunch we find ourselves at the scene of a battle which has changed the history of the world — there are judges I know who would think it a most remarkable coincidence.)
We accordingly went ashore and ate moussaka and Greek salad at a taverna overlooking the Gulf, while the crew told me all about the battle. It appears that Aktion, on the south side of the Gulf, is the same place as Actium, where Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra and started the Roman Empire — the Greeks, as is their custom,
