try and find out who they are. So I wondered if you’d be interested. I mean, you are a legal historian.”
I could scarcely forbear to smile, for the notion was of course absurd. The tracing of missing relatives, with all respect to the no doubt very estimable persons accustomed to undertake such enquiries, can hardly be regarded as a branch of Scholarship. Recalling, however, that Clementine, like Cantrip, had spent her formative years at Cambridge, where such distinctions are perhaps but imperfectly understood, I sought some way to explain without wounding her that such an investigation would be inappropriate to my academic standing and qualifications.
’I’m afraid,” she continued, “that my clients will want the fee to be calculated on a time-costed basis. Would you consider doing it for sixty pounds an hour?” I suppose that my expression indicated surprise. It had not occurred to me, such is my innocence in these matters, that she would offer any pecuniary inducement. She looked apologetic. “Plus expenses, of course. I’m sorry, I know it’s not terribly generous.”
I found myself obliged to reconsider the matter. By the modest standards of the unworldly Scholar, the offer seemed not ungenerous; and yet, were I now to decline it, she could not but think that my reason was the inadequacy of the financial reward. I could not endure to be suspected of so grasping and sordid a motive: I indicated that I would undertake the investigation on the terms she had proposed.
“Tell me,” I said, “is there anything you already know about the descendants of Sir Walter Palgrave, or am I to begin, as it were, with a clean slate?”
The question unaccountably caused her to blush.
“Well, Sir Walter Palgrave himself was a judge, of course — end of the nineteenth century. I expect you know lots more than I do about him.” As a student chiefly of the mediaeval period, I could not truthfully claim any extensive knowledge of the Victorian judiciary, but I realised why the name had seemed faintly familiar. “I got a copy of his will from the Probate Registry. It looks from that as if he left six daughters, so the people we’re looking for are probably their children or grandchildren. But the will only gives their Christian names, so I’m afraid it doesn’t get us very far.”
“No matter,” I said, “it provides a starting point. You know nothing else that might be relevant?”
“Well’—she blushed again—“not officially. I mean, I haven’t told anyone else about it.” She hesitated. I adopted an expression, as I hoped, of sympathetic encouragement. “You see, a few months ago I got engaged. To a chap,” she added helpfully, as if supposing me unaware that when a young woman becomes engaged it is customarily to a young man. “He’s a solicitor as well — his name’s Peter. Well, one evening we happened to start talking about the way the law seems to run in families. You know — the same names keeping on cropping up in the law reports over a couple of centuries. So I asked him if there were any other lawyers in his family. And he said there wasn’t anyone close, but his grandmother had been a daughter of Sir Walter Palgrave.”
I began to understand her embarrassment. For a solicitor to continue to advise in a matter in which her prospective husband had a financial interest would be, I readily perceived, of dubious propriety.
“I suppose the Law Society would say that I either ought to chuck Peter or chuck handling the Daffodil Settlement. But I’m jolly well not going to chuck Peter, because he’s awfully nice. And Daffodil’s the biggest thing I’ve ever dealt with on my own, so I don’t want to chuck that either.”
It was a sad dilemma. A Victorian novelist, I daresay, could have done something very remarkable with the story of such a conflict between love, duty, and ambition. It seemed to me, all the same, not quite sufficient to account for the signs of tension and anxiety which I had observed in her. I inquired if she had told her fiance of the problem.
“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.
