The Sirens Sang of Murder

EXTRACT FROM THE GUIDE TO COMFORTABLE TAX PLANNING

Monaco: The principality of Monaco on the south coast of France, formerly a possession of the Republic of Genoa, has since 1308 been an independent state ruled by the Grimaldi family. In the mid-nineteenth century Prince Charles III averted national bankruptcy by building the Casino, the revenues from which rapidly eliminated any need for taxation.

The principality consists of three areas: On the spur of rock to the right of the harbour is the old town of Monaco, a not unpicturesque little township surrounding the Palace and now chiefly devoted to the sale of tourist souvenirs; on the hillside to the left is the modern town of Monte Carlo, consisting of the Casino, a number of shops selling jewellery and other luxuries, and an agglomeration of hotels and apartment blocks; immediately behind the harbour, bounded by the Rue Grimaldi, is the Condamine, the business and commercial centre, where one finds the fruit and vegetable market and occasional vistas briefly reminiscent of Genoa.

Area: 375 acres. Population: 23,000. Access: By train, car, or helicopter from Nice. Principal industries: Gambling, tourism, and financial services.

Note 1: Monte Carlo is a town of steep gradients and few taxis, but exhaustion may be avoided by a perceptive use of the public lifts and escalators. If meeting a client at the Hotel de Paris, for example, after lunching with colleagues in the Condamine, on no account attempt the walk up the Avenue Monte Carlo. Take the ascenseur from the corner of the harbour to the Exotic Gardens and walk down. With care it is possible to reach almost any point in Monte Carlo from almost any other without ascending any significant gradient.

It will be, I fear, with some surprise, perhaps even with irritation, that you remark, dear reader, how many pages yet remain before my narrative reaches its conclusion, wondering, when the truth concerning the deaths of Grynne and Malvoisin is already plain, with what maundering irrelevancies I can have contrived to fill them. It would little become the Scholar, however, to sacrifice candour to vanity: whatever derision I may incur for my slow- wittedness, I am obliged to admit that to me, despite all I had learnt that day, the truth concerning these matters was still by no means clear.

To say that the evidence was as yet circumstantial rather than conclusive, or that I had had no sufficient opportunity to reflect on it, would be but paltry excuses. If I say anything in extenuation of my failure to perceive its true significance, it must be, I suppose, that the truth was of such a nature as to be, to a person of my temperament and upbringing, almost literally unthinkable.

Though I continued, as I flew southwards over France, to search for some thread of meaning in the tangled mass of information which had presented itself, all remained dark and obscure. I felt only a curious sense of foreboding — a conviction, which I could not rationally explain, that Monaco was a dangerous place for Cantrip to be and that I ought to persuade him, as a matter of urgency, to return to London.

Although Clementine had made the most admirable arrangements for my journey, including the hire of a motorcar to transport me from Nice airport to Monte Carlo, it was after midnight, by local time, before I finally arrived at the Hotel Clair de Lune. When I mentioned at the reception desk that I believed my friend Mr. Cantrip was also staying there, I had little expectation of seeing him that night. I was told, however, that I would find him in the bar.

It was a long room, furnished in devoted imitation of the Belle Epoque with crimson velvet and gilt-framed looking glasses. There were when I entered only three people in it, but if there had been thirty I daresay the woman sitting curled up on the sofa would still have been the first to attract my notice. Dressed in grey-green chiffon interwoven with silver, with some ornament also of silver shining in her auburn hair, she looked like a nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the process of transformation into a fountain, and there was about her movements a corresponding fluidity and charm which would have seduced the eye from women with better claims to be thought beautiful. She was holding a glass of champagne, and the pleasant sound of her laughter reached me as I entered. Sitting in a chair on her right was a tall dark man, evidently in his middle forties, and still with enough good looks to suggest that in his youth they must have been spectacular. On her left was Cantrip, who appeared to be the cause of her amusement.

Having been in some uncertainty whether Cantrip would welcome my unexpected arrival, I was touched to receive a greeting which seemed to express no less pleasure than astonishment. He introduced me to the Count and Contesta di Silvabianca as a person whose presence would be of inestimable value, and having demanded to know what on earth I was doing in Monte Carlo cheerfully cut off my reply after a scant three words: whatever it was, I was to stop doing it and devote my entire attention to what he termed “the Wellieboots problem.”

I had arrived, it seemed, at a council of war — in consequence of a long-standing dinner engagement, this was the first opportunity the Contessa and her husband had had since returning to Monte Carlo for any discussion with Cantrip of the events of the past three days. He had been relating to them the story of his journey through France, and resumed his narrative with such enthusiasm that there was neither time nor need for me to wonder if I should admit to any previous knowledge of it.

The Contessa’s laughter was soon accounted for. Poor Cantrip was still mystified, it seemed, by the fact of her arriving in St. Malo no later than the judge and himself, and she was too delighted by his perplexity to be in much haste to dispel it.

“Oh, look here, Gabrielle,” said Cantrip, with the beginnings of indignation. “I’ve said I can’t guess. Come on, be a sport and say how you did it.”

“But, Michel,” said the Contessa, “perhaps I do not want to be a sport. Perhaps I want to be very romantic and mysterious and to make you think I can cross the sea by magic. But I do not think I can make Hilary think so — professors at Oxford do not believe in magic.” She looked at me, still laughing.

“My dear Gabrielle,” I said, for she had invited me to address her by her first name, “I do not doubt that you have all the powers appropriate to an enchantress. I understand, however, that it is not unknown for those engaged in the profession of tax planning to make some alteration to their appearance when they cross international frontiers. I rather suspect that you left Sark in some disguise which Cantrip failed to penetrate and that you travelled on the same boat.”

“Ah, you see,” cried Gabrielle, clapping her hands, and apparently as pleased to be detected as she had been to deceive, “I knew one could not hide anything from an Oxford professor. Of course, Hilary, you are quite right. As you say, I do not like the French authorities to know my travelling arrangements. I do not like the idea that just when I am getting on a plane a gentleman may tap me on the shoulder and say ‘One moment, Madame la Comtesse, there is a little problem with your passport, please answer a few questions,’ and that somehow this little problem cannot be solved until I have told this gentleman the names of my French clients who have accounts in Geneva or Monte Carlo. No, no, no, no, I do not like this at all.” She wagged her forefinger, reproving some imaginary representative of the French fisc.

“Oh, I say,” said Cantrip, “they wouldn’t.”

“But I assure you, Michel, I have friends to whom it has happened. So when I am going to Jersey, for example, I slip into the cloakroom in my favourite cafe in St. Malo and I put on — oh, some extra clothing, you know, in case it is cold in the Channel Islands. I put on a thick black dress over my other clothes, and some thick black stockings and some good solid shoes, and a head scarf and one or two shawls. And a big pair of glasses, of course, to keep the wind out of my eyes. And somehow when I come out I do not look so much like the vice president of a wicked Swiss bank with clients who do not want to pay their taxes, but more like a respectable Breton peasant lady who has buried two husbands and has some shopping to do in St. Helier.”

“Oh, look here,” said Cantrip, “you don’t mean you were the old biddy in black? Oh, come off it, Gabrielle, you can’t have been. What about your luggage? What about your passport?”

“But of course I was, Michel — did you really never recognize me? My luggage? I keep a suitcase with some clothes in it at the hotels where I usually stay — for travel I take just a little overnight case, inside the shopping basket. And my passport? Well, I still have my French passport, which does not say that I am the Contessa di Silvabianca but that I am Gabrielle Leclerc, who is a good Frenchwoman born in Brittany in — oh, but you will not expect me to tell you in which year.”

She smiled, almost as if she guessed how much the information would have interested me. Seeing her, I had begun to sympathise with Julia’s inability to offer any useful estimate of her age. Her figure betrayed nothing — she was as slender as Clementine Derwent, though without giving the same impression of boyishness; the rich auburn