“I doubt very much,” said Ardmore, “that it was she who dropped it. Edward had been having trouble with his fountain pen all afternoon, I remember — making blots on all sorts of vital documents. I suppose the Contessa must have lent him hers, and he still had it, poor fellow, when he went out that night.”
“I didn’t notice him having trouble with his pen,” said Darkside.
“Indeed, why should you, Gideon?” said the Irishman generously. “I’m sure you had more important things to think of. Is there anything further, Professor Tamar, on which we can assist you?”
Glancing at the Colonel, I perceived a slight discontentedness in his expression, as if he did not yet consider that he had quite had his money’s worth.
“There is just one further point,” I said. “I believe that the Contessa has some family connection with Sark. Could you tell me — what precisely is her relationship to Philip Alexandre?” The bow, I admit, was drawn somewhat at a venture; but Cantrip had mentioned her talking in Sercquais, a language not generally studied in the lycees or universities of France.
“Oh, she’s his niece,” said the Irishman casually, evidently not thinking this an important or troublesome question. “Her mother was Rachel Alexandre — she married a businessman from Brittany. Colonel Cantrip, it is a great privilege to have been entertained in a manner, if I may say so, so much in accordance with the traditions of this very distinguished club, but we really ought to go back to the seminar. Oh, come along, Gideon, you don’t suppose that thing’s loaded, do you?”
A loud report and a shattering of plaster established that it was.
“Something further, sir?” enquired the ancient servant, appearing in the doorway of the library.
Problems insoluble to the Junior Bar require the advice of leading Counsel. At the hour when tea is customarily taken I found Selena, Ragwort, and Julia gathered in Basil Ptarmigan’s room, intending to direct his mind on his return from court to the problems created by Cantrip’s continued absence. These were, in ascending order of gravity: the inconvenience of undertaking those of Cantrip’s professional obligations which were of an urgent nature; the lowering effect on morale of Henry’s disaffection and Lilian’s tearfulness — after hearing the latest gossip from the offices of Stingham and Grynne she was now referring to the boy as “poor Mr. Cantrip” and in the past tense; and the impossibility of any longer remaining responsible for the Colonel. Something must be done — Basil was to consider what.
Accepting with gratitude the offer of tea, I described what had taken place at the Remnant Club. My account was punctuated by pitiful cries from Julia, who in a brief reencounter with Patrick Ardmore at the seminar had been given no hint of any unconventionality in the Colonel’s entertainment of his guests.
“This cannot go on,” said Ragwort with magisterial sternness. “Buckets of water and plates of spaghetti are one thing, but pointing guns at people is a serious matter — and I don’t suppose that he even has a licence for it. Heaven alone knows what the appalling old — I do beg your pardon, Julia — what the delightful old gentleman will do next.”
I confessed myself unable to prophesy on that subject. Following the departure from the Remnant Club of Ardmore and Darkside, I had spent the afternoon in attempting to persuade the Colonel of the need to reflect a little on what we had learnt. Though he had eventually promised, with some reluctance, to take no action until he heard from me again, I could not be confident that his patience would survive the evening nor predict what he would do when it was exhausted.
“I suppose it would be too much to hope,” said Selena, “that all this eavesdropping and pointing guns and so forth has actually produced any useful information.”
“I have made a little progress,” I said, “in my investigation of the death of Edward Malvoisin. It begins to look as if Ardmore and Darkside can be excluded from suspicion. They both say — or Ardmore says and Dark-side does not dispute it — that they were together in the bar of the Alexandra from the time Edward Malvoisin left until the time of the accident. I did not feel able, in the rather trying circumstances of our conversation, to question them as closely as I would have wished on this point, and it may be that they were not in each other’s company for literally every minute of that period, but the absence of either for a sufficient length of time to follow Malvoisin half way across the Coupee would surely have excited comment from the other. Like Clementine, they have what I believe is technically termed an alibi. That is on the assumption, of course, that they are not accomplices.”
“If I say,” said Julia, “that Patrick is not the sort of man who pushes people over cliffs, you will no doubt accuse me of sentimental prejudice. You surely can’t imagine, however, that he would choose Gideon Dark-side as an accomplice.”
“I agree,” I said, “that it seems unlikely, though the quest for profit, my dear Julia, makes strange bedfellows. Ardmore and Darkside together would have been in an admirable position to extract money from the trust fund for their personal benefit, and if Malvoisin had found out about it… Still, the conversation which I overheard at the Godolphin did not sound to me like one between co-conspirators. Moreover, Philip Alexandre is also said to have been with them at the material time, and one must assume, I think, that, if asked, he would confirm that — a conspiracy of all three seems decidedly improbable.”
Selena refilled my teacup.
“It looks,” she said, “as if all the people we know about are excluded. Unless you count the person the Contessa saw lurking in the garden, there seem to be no suspects left. Perhaps Edward Malvoisin’s death really was an accident — Patrick Ardmore’s explanation sounds quite convincing. What a shame, Hilary — you’ll have to go back to the birth and marriage certificates.”
I was obliged to remind her that thus far there was no evidence to exclude the Contessa di Silvabianca.
“She was in the Witch’s Cottage,” said Julia. “With Cantrip and Clementine.”
“My dear Julia, you surely don’t believe that Cantrip and Clementine, occupied as they were, would have noticed if the Contessa left her room and went out again. There would have been ample time for her to do so and to reach the place where Malvoisin met his death long before the accident to the carriage. Moreover, she would have had no difficulty in finding her way, even in pitch darkness — now that we know she is Alexandre’s niece, we may assume her to be entirely familiar with the cottage and its environs. Apart from which, there is the matter of the pen.”
On the subject of the pen Julia became indignant. She had never heard of such a thing — or at any rate she had never read of such a thing — or at any rate not in any piece of respectable crime fiction published since the beginning of the Second World War. A physical object, forsooth, with the initials of a suspect engraved on it — why, it was worse than a fingerprint. If we must have a clue of a physical nature — and in Julia’s experience the best authors nowadays wholly eschewed such vulgarities — then let it at least be one invisible to the naked eye and identifiable only by the most sophisticated techniques of modern pathology. If the progress of the past half century was to count for nothing, then one might as well go back, said Julia scathingly, to murders committed by means of arsenic or for motives of matrimonial jealousy.
“I do not doubt,” I said, “that in a crime novel having any pretensions to modernity, the pen would be quite inadmissible. As a mere historian, however, there is nothing I can do about it. Nature, as we know, does imitate Art, but I fear that she all too often falls short of the highest standards. Were you to turn your attention from fictional crimes to those reported in the newspapers, you would find that people are still leaving fingerprints and murdering unfaithful spouses for all the world as if they were living in the 1920s. In the more backward parts of the country they may even still be poisoning one another with arsenic. We cannot ignore the pen for the sake of literary fashion.”
Apparently pleased with the role of hostess, Selena poured further cups of tea.
“You seem unconvinced,” she said, “by the suggestion that it had been borrowed by Edward Malvoisin.”
“It did not look to me,” I said, “like the sort of thing which one would readily lend or forget to ask to be returned. I suspect that the story of Malvoisin having trouble with his pen was an extempore invention by Patrick Ardmore.”
“We know, of course,” said Ragwort, “that he and the Contessa are colleagues of long standing and evidently friends. And we have reason to believe,” he added, looking severely at Julia, “that he is a man who might too easily allow good nature to prevail over principle. But would he go to the length of telling lies to protect her if he thought her responsible for Malvoisin’s death?”
“He may merely believe,” I said, “that she had an assignation with Malvoisin and would be embarrassed by its disclosure. That is, I suppose, a possibility — perhaps she resented Malvoisin’s advances less than she appeared to.”
