of her hair might have owed much or little to art, and her face, dominated by large eyes of the ambivalent aquatic colour that Cantrip had remarked upon, was of the structure that changes little between the ages of thirty and fifty. There were some signs, it is true, of recent strain — faint shadows and hollows which suggested a loss of sleep and appetite, but this evening, at any rate, she seemed in the highest spirits. She rang for more champagne, saying that we must celebrate.
“Carissima,” said her husband, regarding her with slightly mournful dark eyes, “I am happy that you are happy, but I do not quite understand what it is that we are celebrating. When I hear that you — my wife — the Contessa di Silvabianca — have been hunted across France like a wanted criminal, I do not see that it is something to celebrate.” His voice grew warm with indignation at the affront to his aristocratic name.
“Because I know who is hunting me,” said Gabrielle, reaching out to press his hand. “Giovanni, you know how worried I have been this past year.”
“Of course, carissima, how should I not? You go away to these meetings about this Daffodil business and afterwards you are pale and nervous and frightened and not at all like my happy, beautiful wife.” He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. “What can I do? I have begged you to give up the Daffodil case and leave it to Patrick to look after and you will not.”
“Ah, Giovanni,” said his wife, “I know why you do not like my beautiful Daffodil Settlement. It takes me away from home and you have no one to look after you. But I cannot give it up — it is my favourite portfolio and we have done wonderful things together. But it is true that I have been frightened. You see, Hilary, I have thought for more than a year now that someone was following me, spying on me, always when I was away, and always when I was working on this particular case — I must ask you to be discreet, we do not usually mention names. But I could not be certain, you see — I could not say ‘There is the same man with the big nose and black beard that I saw yesterday.’ It was a matter of instinct, of impression.”
“Had you any idea,” I asked, “who might be doing such a thing?”
“At first, of course, I thought that it was someone from the French Revenue authorities. But — there was something about it somehow that was not quite their style. I began to think that it was someone more sinister, more dangerous, and I was afraid, as Giovanni says. And at other times I wondered if I was imagining things and becoming a little bit mad perhaps. But now — now Michel has discovered that it is only Mr. Justice Wellieboots, who sits in court all day and wriggles his eyebrows at my friend Julia, and who does not frighten me in the least. I do not give that for Mr. Wellieboots.” She snapped her fingers, “Yes, Giovanni, of course it is something to celebrate.”
It was no doubt a sufficient explanation for her present high spirits; but I wondered if she might not have some further, undisclosed reason to be confident that Mr. Justice Welladay would intend no ill towards her.
“If we could be sure that this man could do you no harm,” said her husband, “then it would be something to celebrate. But I do not see how we can be sure of it. I suppose that a judge is a very powerful person, and it is not safe for you to click your fingers at him. Why has he been following you? What does he want? What does he mean to do next? For myself, I cannot be happy until we know these things.”
“It is evident what he wants, cheri. Michel has told us that he does not like people to avoid tax — he has heard something somehow about my Daffodil settlement, which has made such beautiful capital gains, and he thinks that if he can find out who the beneficiaries are he can make them pay tax, millions of pounds of tax. Poor Mr. Wellieboots, he doesn’t know that he could follow me for a hundred years and read all my letters and listen to all my telephone calls and still not discover who the beneficiaries are, because I do not know it myself.” She evidently found this thought irresistibly entertaining.
Cantrip, however, made haste to concur in her husband’s opinion — he is not a young man to be easily persuaded, once launched on a career of knight errantry, that the damsel can deal with the dragon by herself. It would be a nightmare, he said, for Gabrielle to spend her life thinking that at any moment Mr. Justice Welladay might pop out of the bushes at her; something must be done to put a stop to it once and for all.
“Besides,” he continued, “the more I think about it, the more I don’t think the way he’s acting is the way English judges are supposed to act. I mean, we’ve got things in England like the Bill of Rights and habeas corpus and things, and what they say is that judges can’t go locking people up without giving them a chance to defend themselves. Well, I haven’t done any constitutional law for a couple of years, so I can’t swear that’s exactly what they say, but that’s the gist of it. So what I think is that Wellieboots has gone round the twist.”
“Forgive me,” said the Count, “I do not quite understand.”
“Off his onion,” said Cantrip helpfully. “Loopy. Nutty as a fruitcake. And the problem about people going nutty is that it’s jolly difficult to tell whether they’re harmlessly nutty or dangerously nutty. Anyway, that’s why it’s going to be so frightfully useful having Hilary here — I mean, Oxford dons are always going nutty, so if you can manage to chat to him for a couple of minutes, you’ll be able to tell how serious it is, won’t you, Hilary?”
“Michel,” said Gabrielle, “I expect that Hilary has come to Monte Carlo to do something quite serious and important and will not at all wish to be involved in this matter of Mr. Justice Wellieboots.”
Though perfect candour would have been injudicious, I wished so far as possible to avoid deception. I accordingly took the opportunity to explain that I myself was in Monte Carlo for reasons connected with the Daffodil settlement, that I had been commissioned by Clementine to investigate the genealogy of the Palgrave family, and that by a curious coincidence my researches had led me to the South of France. There were, I added, one or two points on which I would be grateful for Gabrielle’s assistance, if she were able to spare the time to discuss them.
She seemed delighted to learn that we were all, in a manner of speaking, colleagues — that evening indeed she seemed delighted by everything — and promised me any help that she had power to give. She and Cantrip had had it in mind to meet again for lunch next day, and she suggested that I should join them. Perceiving, however, that he supported the invitation with something less than enthusiasm, I invented a pretext for refusal and arranged instead to lunch with her on the following Monday.
“I wonder,” said Gabrielle as we were finishing our champagne, “how Mr. Wellieboots managed to steal my pen, and why he wanted it.”
“Carissima,” said her husband, “please do not start worrying again about this pen. I do not believe that anyone has stolen it — you have put it down somewhere and forgotten it. Such things happen.”
“No, Giovanni, I have told you — I am always very careful with it, and I am sure that I could not have done that.” She turned towards Cantrip and myself. “You see, I had a rather pretty gold fountain pen, with my initials on it, which Giovanni gave me for a present — I think you have seen it, Michel. And the other evening, when we were dining in Dourdan, I found that it was missing.”
“Look,” said Cantrip, “have you tried to remember when you last used it?”
“Of course I have, Michel, but I simply cannot. I know I must have been using it on Monday afternoon, when we were signing the company documents — I have grown up in an old-fashioned Swiss bank, you know, I would not have used a ballpoint for that. But I can’t be sure that was the last time,”
“Try looking in your handbag again,” said Cantrip, no doubt recalling occasions when a fifth or sixth excavation of the multitudinous contents of Julia’s handbag had at last brought to light some object long lamented as lost. When Gabrielle opened hers, however, we saw at once that it contained only an elegant minimum of necessary items — diary, chequebook, comb, scent spray, and so forth. There were two ballpoint pens and a pencil, but no gold fountain pen was lurking in its depths.
“Is it possible,” I said, “that you lent it to someone? To one of your colleagues, perhaps?”
“Oh, no, I would not dream of it, Hilary — it would ruin the nib, you know, if someone else used it.”
So much then for Patrick Ardmore’s explanation. I could of course have reassured her that the pen was safe; but I had no wish to disclose my knowledge of the matter, nor did I think that it would ease her mind to learn of the circumstances in which it had been found. No doubt she would be hearing soon enough from Ardmore.
“I was sure it had been stolen. And I was sure it had been taken by the person who was following me — not because it was pretty and quite valuable, but for some different reason — perhaps to compromise me in some way, because my initials were on it. But I do not see what chance Mr. Wellieboots would have had to take it, so perhaps after all I am mistaken.” The thought seemed to cause her disproportionate uneasiness.
“Carissima,” said her husband, “you have worried too much about this pen. Am I the kind of husband who is angry with you, and says you do not love me because you have lost my present, or is jealous and says that you have given it away to someone else? You know I am not. I will buy you another one and we will not think of it anymore. But all the same I wish that you would give up this Daffodil business. You do not take me seriously when I say there is something dangerous about it, but two people have been killed — isn’t that enough to make you think it
