Channel Islands, and more at the Hotel Alexandra than at the Sablonnerie down the road.
On Halloween and nights like that, he says, the Devil used to ride across the Coupee in a big black coffin, and the witches used to fly over from Guernsey on their broomsticks and dance on the beach with no clothes on. He’s not sure if they still do it, but he thinks if they don’t, it’s because of television.
Edward Malvoisin and Clemmie started ragging each other about it, with him saying that witches were all rot and her saying they weren’t and her betting him he wouldn’t dare walk across the Coupee at midnight and him betting her he would.
Darkside came back from the dead enough to say we hadn’t come all this way at great trouble and expense, etc., to talk a lot of nonsense about witches. Ardmore said if we could get in touch with the ghost of the settlor and ask it what to do with the trust fund, that would solve all our problems. When Darkside worked out this was a joke he decided to feel sick again and not be well enough to go on for quite a long time.
So that’s how we didn’t get to Philip Alexandre’s place until nearly midday. It’s really just a farmhouse, but he’s added a few extra bathrooms and a cocktail bar and calls it the Hotel Alexandra.
The bar was looking a good bit more stylish than it would normally have done on account of having Gabrielle in it, sitting on a high stool and drinking champagne — it’s funny how seeing Gabrielle in a place makes it feel all sort of Parisian. The chap behind the bar, doing a lot less for the decor, was Philip Alexandre himself — he’s a skinny old chap who looks as if he’d been pickled in walnut juice for about a hundred years, but quite genial when you get to know him. They were chatting away together in that funny kind of Frogspeak people talk here and didn’t seem to have been missing us at all.
Plan A had been to have the board meeting and then a spot of lunch and be driven back in time to catch the 3:30 boat to Guernsey. I thought at first we might still manage it that way, as long as people didn’t talk too much at the board meeting, but that was before they told me that they had to get through 126 other board meetings as well as the Daffodil one.
One two six, just in case you think I’ve mistyped it. That’s because Patrick and Gabrielle have set up Sark resident companies for 126 different clients and they all have to prove that this is where the board of directors take their decisions.
Plan B was skipping lunch, proposed by Darkside and not finding a seconder.
Plan C was to have lunch first, then the board meetings, and then drive back in time for the 5:30 boat to Guernsey. It worked pretty well, up to a point — I mean, it was a jolly good lunch.
They didn’t need me for the first 126 board meetings, so I went and sat in the garden and read a book. There’s a stack of old novels in the dining room by a chap called John Oxenham, and I borrowed one called
It’s all about Sark in the old days, when there wasn’t anyone living here — just the witches flying over from Guernsey for the occasional orgy. The heroine’s called Clare of Belfontaine and she’s married to a frightful rotter who’s madly jealous about her and has her cast away on Sark without any clothes, absolutely not a stitch, but she makes herself a sort of skirt out of bracken. Bet you couldn’t do that.
It’s a pity our book’s not about the old days when people did things like that — it would make it a lot easier to put in exciting bits. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it, and what I think we need is some sort of extra interest for Carruthers on the romantic side. I mean, it’s all right him fancying Eliane in a way, and marrying her after she turns out to be an heiress, because we want to have a happy ending. But the way I see it is that under all the suavity and daredevil charm, he’s a tremendously sensitive sort of chap who thinks pretty deeply about things, and I don’t see Eliane as the kind of bird who’s going to appreciate that side of him.
So what I thought was that there ought to be some other bird that he’s got a tremendous thing about on a sort of spiritual level, and it can’t ever come to anything because she’s married or something, but deep down she’s the only person who really understands him. She’d be quite a lot older than him, but sort of ageless and a bit mysterious, like the Moaning Lizzie — not miserable, though, a frightfully good sport, and laughing a lot at things.
Where was I? Oh yes, waiting to go on in my big scene as Counsel advising on the Daffodil problem. Which when it came didn’t exactly go like a breeze, because what I told them was that if they couldn’t exercise their discretion the way the settlor wanted them to, and they wouldn’t exercise it any other way, the descendants of the Palgrave chap were going to scoop the jackpot, so they’d better start finding out who they were.
I knew they wouldn’t like it and they didn’t. They were still arguing the toss about it when someone noticed it was quarter to five and time we were on our way back to the harbour. So we looked round for Albert and the carriage and there they weren’t. He’d taken someone to catch the 3:30 boat and not been seen since — it turned out he’d stopped for a swift one at the Bel Air Tavern and forgotten to start again. I suppose we might still have made it to the harbour on time if we’d run all the way, but it wasn’t an idea that anyone seemed keen on.
So here we are for the night, and no way of getting a plane to London before tomorrow evening. Like I said, absolutely not my fault and hard luck on West London County Court.
Looking on the bright side, it means I can go on reading this book about Claire of Belfontaine. I’ve just got to the bit where the chap she really fancies gets cast away on Sark as well. Her husband’s fixed it all on purpose so that they’ll die in a state of sin — people had jolly funny ideas in the old days, didn’t they? — but they’ve decided to scupper him by being all chaste and noble and not getting up to anything. So I don’t really want to leave until I find out what happens.
If I don’t make it back to London by tomorrow night, tell Henry the witches have got me. There’s a cottage here that used to belong to a bird called Rachel Alexandre, who was burned as a witch in 1600 and something — Philip’s frightfully proud of her. It’s got three bedrooms, and of course Gabrielle and Clemmie bagged two of them as soon as they knew we were staying overnight, so I thought I’d better grab the third with a view to keeping an eye on them. No sign of any chaps from the Revenue lurking in the bushes, though.
Over and out — Cantrip
“Poor Mr. Cantrip,” said Lilian, turning her wineglass between anxious fingers. “I hope he’ll be all right.”
“I can see,” said Ragwort, “no reason why he should not be. From the point of view of his own pleasure and convenience, he seems to have arranged things admirably. It is not his plans for tomorrow, for example, which are to be disrupted by an unexpected excursion to West London County Court. Why should he not be all right?”
“I was in Miss Derwent’s office this morning,” said Lilian. “To arrange about collecting my books — you know, the ones my uncle left me that Mr. Cantrip was so kind about. The girls there think there’s something — I don’t know, something unlucky about this case that Mr. Cantrip’s working on. It’s the same one Mr. Grynne was dealing with last year when — when he died. They say it was awfully unexpected.”
“No doubt it was,” said Selena. “One could hardly expect his doctor to have diagnosed a tendency to accidental drowning.”
“Of course,” said Julia absentmindedly, “if it happened to be Halloween, we might have worried about Cantrip being carried off by witches. The more so since he has comprehensively disregarded my advice to avoid girls, women, and crones — these repeated encounters of his with elderly ladies in black shawls would have, at that season, a most sinister aspect. Fortunately, however, it is some months away.”
“But surely,” said Ragwort, with an expression of some surprise, “it is not only at Halloween that the powers of darkness are particularly to be feared? There is at least one other occasion in the year when the witches of Europe climb on their broomsticks and fly across the mountains to gather in their accustomed meeting places. Have you not observed the date and its significance?”
“It’s the thirtieth of April,” said Selena. “Which means that the courts begin sitting again tomorrow.”
“It is indeed the thirtieth of April,” said Ragwort. “Which means that tonight is Walpurgis Night.”
Nurtured as I have been in a sceptical tradition, I am disinclined to believe in witchcraft. No other reason having occurred to me for Cantrip to remain longer in the Channel Islands, I was surprised, on encountering my friends in the coffeehouse on the following morning, to find Julia in possession of yet a further telex from him.
TELEX CANTRIP TO LARWOOD TRANSMITTED SARK 8:00 A.M. TUESDAY 1ST MAY
Phew — if Henry complains about being one suave Chancery junior short of strength, tell him that after last night he’s jolly lucky it’s not permanent.
Look here, Larwood, what I want to know is why birds nowadays aren’t like they used to be in the old days. Yielding is what birds were in the old days, and what I specially like about birds being yielding is that they can’t
