anything in her telex to indicate where they were to meet?”
“I will read you the full text. ‘Dear Michael — there is something in connection with the Daffodil Settlement which I would like to discuss with you in private before the meeting, but I arrive in Jersey too late to talk to you this evening. Can you get up very early and have breakfast with me at St. Clement tomorrow? I will bring some coffee and rolls from my hotel and hope to see you at quarter to seven at the place where we met before. Warmest wishes — Gabrielle di Silvabianca.’ Hilary, are you serious about someone wanting to attack Cantrip? Is St. Clement the sort of place where he might be in any danger?”
“It is the place, according to Julia, where the witches danced and the sirens sang. But I don’t think,” I added with foolish complacency, “that Cantrip can be in any danger there. The person who murdered Edward Malvoisin is here in the Grand Hotel.”
Although it still lacked a few minutes to nine o’clock, I returned to the coffee lounge to find Gideon Darkside complaining of the delay in opening the meeting. Gabrielle and Cantrip both knew perfectly well, he said, that everyone else was already there and that to wait any longer was a waste of time and money. How much longer were they going to be, and where were they anyway?
“I have been speaking,” I said, “to a colleague of Cantrip’s in London. I gather that they have gone to a place called St. Clement — they were to meet there at quarter to seven.”
The information seemed to move the Count to renewed anxiety.
“I know where they will have gone if they have gone to St. Clement. There is a rock there that Gabrielle calls the Sirens’ Rock. It’s — a favourite place of hers — one of those you can reach only at low tide. I don’t like her going there, it’s too dangerous — I’ve heard of people being cut off by the tide and drowning. But what can I do? When I say she should not go there she laughs at me.” He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.
“My dear man, of course she does,” said Patrick Ardmore. “She’s a sensible woman, Giovanni, and she knows the Channel Islands — she isn’t some silly day-tripper who doesn’t know about the tides. She’s as safe at St. Clement as by the swimming pool.”
“If we knew what time low tide was,” said Clementine, “we might have some idea of when to expect them back. Is there any way of finding out?”
“Nothing easier,” said the Irishman. “It’ll be in the
We waited in silence for his return, as if we had all begun to feel more disquiet than we cared to speak of aloud. I observed that Lilian had drawn unobtrusively closer, as though fearing to miss some news of grave import, and was sitting, pale and serious, in a straight-backed chair at the edge of the group round the coffee table.
Returning from his errand with a copy of the local paper in his hand, Patrick Ardmore seemed to me to look a trifle less carefree than when he had left us. He spoke, however, with his customary optimism.
“Low tide was at six-twenty this morning, so it must already have turned by the time they set out. Assuming it takes three quarters of an hour or so to walk out to the rock, they’d have been there by half past seven, and I’d say they’d have to start back again by about quarter to eight to be sure of getting back safely. That gives them just time to eat their breakfast. Allowing twenty minutes or thereabouts for the drive back here, my guess is that they’ll be here any moment now.” Something in his expression, however, made me think that he found the timing imprudently fine.
“And wanting more breakfast, I expect,” said Clementine. “Yes, Patrick, I’m sure you’re right.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Ardmore,” said Lilian, “but what happens if you’re not?”
The Irishman seemed disconcerted by the question, or perhaps by the identity of the questioner.
“If I’m not — I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“You said they’d have to leave that rock place by quarter to eight to be sure of getting back safely,” said Lilian, blushing at her own persistence. “What would happen if they hadn’t?”
“Well, by the third hour after low water, the gullies between the rocks and the shore start filling up with water fairly quickly — the tide’s at its fastest, you see, in the third and fourth hours after it turns. If they left it much later than that, they’d be cut off.”
“So they’d get wet,” said Darkside. “Don’t suppose it would do them any harm. They can both swim, can’t they?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Gideon,” said Ardmore, provoked by the irritation which the accountant seemed always to inspire in him to say more than I think he had intended. “The tides here are among the most powerful in the world, and the currents correspondingly dangerous. You’d have to be a very strong swimmer indeed to have any chance of making it across St. Clement’s Bay when the tide is in.” He meant, it seemed to me, that it could not be done. “It would be better to stay put on the rock and hope to be rescued — but it wouldn’t be very long before you were underwater.”
“O dear God,” said the Count.
“But it couldn’t conceivably happen to Gabrielle,” said Ardmore, becoming aware that these last remarks were less than reassuring. “It can only happen to people who don’t know about the tides or are silly enough to forget about them. It’s out of the question for Gabrielle to do such a thing.”
“Suppose…” said Lilian timidly, “suppose they fell asleep.”
“My dear girl, that really is nonsense, you know. On a hot summer afternoon, perhaps, with a couple of hours to spend out at the rock before they had to come back, I suppose it could happen. But first thing in the morning, knowing they’d only got twenty minutes out there — no, my dear, the idea’s absurd.”
I did not doubt that he was right. And yet the image having once entered my mind would not easily leave it of a dark young man and an auburn-haired woman, asleep as if spellbound on the Sirens’ Rock, while the sea crept in to surround them in its implacable embrace.
The Count rose suddenly from his chair.
“I am sorry, but I can’t bear it, simply to go on sitting here. So many terrible things have happened, and Gabrielle is my wife. How can I sit here and do nothing when she may be in danger? Please, Patrick, I know that you will think me very foolish, but will you drive me out to St. Clement?”
“If that’s what you want, Giovanni, then of course I’ll drive you there. But I’m sure there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing in this world.”
“But you see, Patrick,” said the Count sombrely, “I am not sure that it is anything in this world that I am afraid of.”
I have endeavoured throughout my account of the Daffodil affair to present the evidence to my readers in the order in which it became available to me, neither concealing any facts of which I was aware nor anticipating those of which I was as yet ignorant. It would be difficult, however, to understand clearly what occurred during the next half hour without knowing of certain other events which took place outside the range of my observation. I have accordingly thought it right — all the more readily because the contrary decision might perhaps have been attributed to a vulgar and meretricious desire to create what is termed suspense — to interpolate at this point in my narrative a letter, written by Julia, which I did not in fact see until some time later.
SOMEWHERE OVER THE CHANNEL
TUESDAY MORNING
Dearest Selena,
Although it seems far from certain when, if at all, I shall be able to send this to you, or whether, if and when I am, it will represent the most expeditious means of communication, I shall not on that account deprive myself of the consolation of writing to you and the benefit, if only in fancy, of your always invaluable advice. I am beginning to feel that I may have acted unwisely.
