found a strategic spot to leave the Peugeot and went off to look for breakfast.
There was a big square with a clock tower on one side of it and lots of cafes. The one at the top already had an awning up over the terrace and looked as if it was open, so I sat down there and asked for coffee and croissants.
One thing I’d made up my mind about was not passing up another chance to warn Gabrielle what was going on, so I borrowed some paper from the cafe owner and wrote her a note explaining everything.
Life being what it is, I thought if I took it myself the first person I’d run into in the lobby of the hotel would be old Wellieboots, wriggling his eyebrows and wanting to know why I wasn’t still locked in the cellar. So I asked the cafe owner if there was anyone who’d deliver it, and he offered to send his son, viz a quite bright-looking lad by the name of Gaston.
I told Gaston to make sure it wasn’t just left in a pigeonhole but taken straight up to Gabrielle in her room, and to hang about a bit in case there was an answer, and to scarper prontissimo if he saw a big man with thick eyebrows and a lot of teeth. After he’d gone I started worrying in case he gave it to the wrong person, and then I started worrying even more in case it got to Gabrielle and she simply thought I’d gone loopy, but there wasn’t much I could do about it except eat another croissant.
The cafe owner thought it was all fantastically romantic. He’d got the idea that I was trying to make an assignation with a beautiful married woman and the chap with eyebrows was her husband, and explaining it wasn’t like that seemed just too difficult to be worth it. He said it was like the troubadours — he said there used to be a lot of these troubadour chaps in that part of the world and they went in for having hopeless passions for beautiful married women who were tremendously virtuous. So they never got anywhere and had to spend all their time writing poetry and going off on the occasional Crusade. He said there was some Italian chap as well, who’d fallen for a bird called Laura, and Avignon was where he’d first met her.
Gaston was away for ages and I started to think he must have got kidnapped or something. By the time I saw him coming back I’d got so pessimistic I thought the letter he was holding was probably the same one I’d sent him with. It wasn’t, though, it was from Gabrielle.
It didn’t sound as if she thought I was loopy after all — actually it sounded as if she was pretty impressed, because it started, “Dear Michael, you are quite wonderful,” so I felt rather chuffed.
Anyway, the gist of it was that if I carried on to Monte Garlo and booked in at the Clair de Lune, she’d get in touch with me there and we could work out a strategy for dealing with old Wellieboots. So here I am, and I’m jolly well not leaving Monte Carlo until I’ve found out what Wellieboots is up to and put a stop to him persecuting Gabrielle. Just tell Henry hard cheese and sucks boo.
Over and out — Cantrip
There was much indignation. Cantrip by his absence had imposed, it was felt, quite sufficient inconvenience on his fellow juniors without the additional burden of conveying to Henry the unconciliatory message suggested in his final paragraph. Ragwort was especially severe. His sense of the world’s unfairness, assuaged in respect of St. Malo and Dourdan by the thought of Cantrip starving in a wine cellar, had been rekindled by the image of him breakfasting in the ancient city of the Popes, oblivious and undeserving of its architectural and artistic glories.
My own attention remained preoccupied by the deplorable possibility which had presented itself and was beginning, the more I reflected on it, to seem increasingly probable.
“Basil,” I said, when at last I had a chance to be heard, “there is a question, if you would be so kind, which I should like to ask you. When you spoke a day or two ago of teasing Sir Arthur Welladay—”
I was interrupted, however, by the reappearance of Lilian, announcing the arrival of Colonel Cantrip. Knowing his concern for the safety of his nephew, she had telephoned him at his club to tell him of the telex message, and the old soldier had lost no time in coming round to New Square to see it for himself.
Expressing in graceful phrases his delight at the Colonel’s visit, Basil gave no sign that he had or could have any claim on his time more pressing than the entertainment of this new and honoured guest. The Colonel was settled in a comfortable armchair and provided with a cup of tea. Julia, after a moment’s hesitation — she no doubt wondered, but sensibly not for long, if his feelings might be wounded by the reference to himself — handed him the telex.
“My dear Hilary,” said Basil, extending his long hands in a gesture which seemed to promise a cornucopia of enlightenment, “there was some matter on which you thought that I might be of assistance?”
“It is concerned,” I said, “with the provisions of a discretionary settlement, of the kind which I understand to have been in vogue in the early part of the 1970s. Julia was telling me a few days ago that at that time the Revenue regarded the persons entitled in default of appointment, even if they never actually received anything from the settled fund, as liable for tax on gains realised by the trustees, A practice developed, I gather — Julia called it ‘teasing the Revenue’—of naming as the default beneficiary some person professionally committed, as it were, to upholding and defending their opinion — the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for example, or the chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue. Have I understood the matter correctly?”
“Perfectly correctly,” said Basil. “I cannot attempt to improve on Julia’s account of it. You must understand, of course, that it was not generally intended that the Revenue should ever become aware of the existence of the settlement, but it was thought that if they did, the inclusion of such a provision would embarrass them sufficiently to afford us all a little innocent amusement. Dear me, I’m afraid you will think us disgracefully frivolous.”
“And may I ask,” I continued, “whether you ever happened—”
Henry entered, his brow dark with displeasure, to apologise with heavy sarcasm for interrupting the tea party and to inform Basil of the arrival of those attending his next consultation: “Mr. Netherspoon, sir, of Netherspoon and Co. With his client, sir — and you know what His Grace is like if he’s kept waiting. I did remind you this morning, sir, I didn’t think you’d have forgotten again already.”
“I hadn’t forgotten, Henry,” said Basil. “I simply didn’t expect them quite so soon, if punctuality is the politeness of princes, then it seems rather presumptuous of a mere duke to be so ostentatiously on time. Dear me, how extremely tiresome. Colonel Cantrip — Hilary — I’m afraid, as you see, that you’ll have to excuse me.”
Selena had already begun to collect teacups, Ragwort to plump up cushions, and Julia to shepherd the Colonel towards the door.
“Basil, forgive me,” I said, “but I must ask you one further question. Did you ever happen, by any chance, to combine your teasing of the Revenue with your teasing of Sir Arthur Welladay by making him the default beneficiary under such a settlement?”
“Why yes,” said Basil, his attention already almost entirely engrossed by the papers for his consultation. “Yes, Hilary, now that you mention it, I believe I sometimes did. I don’t think I ever mentioned him by name — that would somehow have seemed rather crude. It seemed more elegant to bring him in by way of a class gift.”
“To the descendants of a named individual?”
“Exactly.”
“You would have had to know the name, then, of one of his parents or grandparents.”
“Yes, obviously.” He smiled gently at the notion of this presenting any difficulty. “But everyone knows, of course, that Arthur is a grandson of that very eminent judge, the late Sir Walter Palgrave.”
“I cannot imagine,” I said with some asperity, “how any of you can hope to attain eminence in your profession when you are so shamefully ignorant of matters regarded as common knowledge by those whom you seek to emulate. If someone had told me yesterday that Mr. Justice Welladay was a descendant of Sir Walter Pal- grave…” I was obliged to pause, for I could not immediately think what use it would have been to me to have learnt this a day earlier.
“You would have wasted a great deal of time,” said Selena, taking rather unfair advantage of my involuntary aposiopesis, “trying-to arrange to meet him, when as it turns out he was busy chasing countesses across France and locking people up in cellars.”
We had adjourned by common consent to the first floor, where the Colonel, installed as by right of kinship at the desk usually occupied by his nephew, was continuing his perusal of the telex, chortling from time to time at
