“I’m afraid,” said Julia sadly, “that Edward Malvoisin’s advances were of the kind which a well-bred and good-natured woman usually resents a great deal more than she appears to. I wonder if it really was Gabrielle’s pen that Patrick found on the Coupee. Would it be very difficult to have a duplicate made? One sees advertisements, in gift catalogues and so forth, for goods to be supplied with initials on them, and they don’t require the initials to be one’s own.”
“My dear Julia,” said Ragwort kindly, for he knows she is not well versed in such matters, “if I have followed Hilary’s description of it, that is not at all the sort of thing we are talking about. We are talking in effect of an item of jewellery, designed and made to order for a particular customer and intended to be entirely exclusive. No jeweller who valued his reputation would dream of duplicating the design without the consent of the original customer.”
I had begun to feel a certain uneasiness. The longer I reflected on the matter, the more suspicion seemed to direct itself towards the interesting and attractive figure of the Contessa: whose mother, it seemed — I was conscious of the absurdity of attaching any sinister significance to such a thing — was the namesake and descendant of Rachel Alexandre, burnt as a witch in the intolerant seventeenth century.
It had occurred to me that none of those with whom I had spoken had actually seen the Contessa or heard any news of her since the night of Malvoisin’s death. My anxiety was perhaps irrational; for I knew of no reason for her to wish Cantrip any harm, but when two persons simultaneously disappear, of whom one may be reasonably suspected of murderous propensities, it is difficult to feel no concern for the safety of the other.
This dismal train of thought was happily interrupted by the entry of Lilian, in possession of a new telex message.
TELEX M. CANTRIP TO J. LARWOOD TRANSMITTED HOTEL CLAIR DE LUNE MONTE CARLO 4:00 P.M. THURSDAY 3RD MAY
Yoo-hoo there, Larwood, it’s me here — ace investigator Catseyes Cantrip reporting back to base. Bet you’ll never guess what I’m doing in Monte Carlo. Well you won’t, not in a million years, so I’ll tell you.
Things started happening just after I’d bunged off my last telex. I was on my own in the office at the back of the Alexandra and I suddenly saw this awful face at the window — sort of inhuman-looking, with glaring eyes and lots of teeth. First thing I thought was that it was a werewolf or something from outer space. Second thing I thought was that it looked just like old Wellieboots when someone tries to cite the Duke of Westminster’s case. Third thing I thought was that it actually was old Wellieboots, and I was right.
I went sort of cold all over, same as you’d have done if you’d seen him without warning like that in a place you’d never expect him, but luckily we hadn’t made what the Yanks call eye contact, so he didn’t know I’d spotted him.
Well, you don’t find High Court judges prowling round Sark glaring through office windows just for the fun of the thing, do you? The way I saw it was he must be up to something pretty sinister, and it didn’t take long to work out what it was. I mean, we all know how steamed up he gets about people dodging tax and people like you telling them how to do it and the Revenue not being tough enough with them, and when you think about it, it must get a bit frustrating for him not being able to do anything worse than sit in court and wriggle his eyebrows at them. So one fine day he decides to breeze over to the nearest tax haven and rootle about in person, with a view to getting the goods on a few hardened tax planners and slinging them in jug until they’re too old to be a danger to the public.
It was obviously my clients he was out to get the goods on, so I’d got to do something pretty fast — I mean, that’s what Counsel’s for, isn’t it, to stop judges slinging his clients in jug? — but I wasn’t too sure what. I suppose I could have gone straight out and confronted him, but I didn’t know exactly what to confront him with. Anyway, I wasn’t too keen on coming up against the eyebrows alone and unarmed and stone-cold sober, and I don’t honestly think Carruthers would have been either, or Cecilia Mainwaring if it comes to that.
So I decided what I’d better do was follow him, discreetly and at a longish distance, and find out what he was up to. I gave him a minute or so to get ahead of me and then I slid out of the office and started after him — he was about fifty yards away, making for the Coupee.
The way he behaved when he got there was pretty suspicious, if you ask me. There were two chaps with a tractor trying to unblock the entrance, and someone with nothing to be shifty about would have gone straight up and asked how long it would take or something like that. Wellieboots just stood looking at them from a distance for a bit, and then went and sat on a bench by the edge of the cliff and did an imitation of an innocent tourist admiring the view. So I went and sat on the bench on the opposite side and did an imitation of another innocent tourist.
Bit of a waste of talent really, because there wasn’t much of an audience — just the two chaps trying to haul the carriage away and an old biddy in black nattering away with them like bosom pals. Same one I saw the day before, I suppose, unless there are lots of them in Sark. She must have been chatting them up with a view to hitching a lift — as soon as the entrance was cleared she nipped up on the tractor beside the driver and got driven straight across, riding shotgun.
Wellieboots stopped pretending to look at the view and made off along the Coupee, with me following and being careful not to get too close. I don’t suppose he’d have recognised me, specially without a wig and gown — I’ve only been in front of him a couple of times in the Companies Court, asking for the usual compulsory order, and he didn’t give me the feeling I’d made a lasting impression — but I thought I’d better be on the safe side. Actually I needn’t have worried, because he never looked round once — just kept going all the way to the Avenue and down the hill to the harbour.
There was a boat at the quayside with a long queue of people waiting to go on board. When Wellieboots joined on the end of it I was a bit baffled — I hadn’t exactly been thinking of leaving right away, without saying good-bye to Gabrielle or anything. Still, it seemed pretty wet to give up at that stage, and I’d got my briefcase with my pyjamas and toothbrush in it, and this jolly good book that I told you about and I was still in the middle of, so in the end I decided to go on board as well.
It didn’t make much odds as far as I was concerned whether the boat was going to Jersey or Guernsey, and I thought I’d feel a bit of an ass if I asked the chap selling tickets, so I just kept quiet and gave him as much as he wanted. I got a seat a good bit away from old Wellieboots, next to a couple of characters talking about corpses. They started with one who’d been brought in that morning on a fishing boat and went on to all the drownings and shipwrecks off Sark in the past four hundred years or so — cheerful sort of subject when you’re putting out to sea.
After two or three hours we got near to some land again, but it didn’t look much like Jersey. It didn’t look much like Guernsey either. There was a huge great wall, tremendously historic-looking, with long black roofs like witches’ hats sticking up at the back of it, and I hadn’t the faintest idea where it was.
If you’re an ace investigator hot on the trail of a villainous High Court judge it’s a good thing to know what town you’re in, so I nipped off the boat as fast as I could to find out where we were. The first thing I spotted was that everyone was talking Frogspeak, so putting two and two together I deduced we were probably in France.
I felt a bit miffed at first. I’ve nothing against France, except for it being full of foreigners, but it wasn’t where I’d have expected old Wellieboots to go if he wanted to get the goods on my clients. I started thinking poor old Catseyes Cantrip might be on a wild-goose chase. Still, having got this far I was blowed if I was giving up right away, so when he got ashore I started tailing him again.
He went through a big gate in the historic-looking wall into a square with four or five cafes in it — you know the kind they have in France, tables on the pavement with sort of conservatories over them. He went and sat down in one of them, skulking in a corner pretending to read a newspaper, and I went and skulked in a corner in the one opposite. I was getting jolly hungry by this time, so I ordered a few ham pancakes and hoped he wouldn’t move on before I got a chance to eat them.
He kept squinting at the cafe next door to the one I was in, as if he was watching for someone to come out of it. So I kept an eye on it as well, to see if I could spot who he was watching out for. When I saw who it was I
