“She told me on the phone last night that she’d hired a little Fiesta,” said Clementine. “But I don’t know the registration number or even what colour it is.”
“Patrick,” said the Count, “you will go quickly, won’t you?”
“As quickly as I can, Giovanni.”
He continued eastwards, with neat granite houses and colourful gardens to our left and to our right an expanse of damp brown sand, scattered with rocks and seaweed, stretching down to a deceptively smiling sea. Once or twice we stopped at what seemed a possible parking space but found no sign there of those we were seeking.
“Clementine,” I said, struck suddenly by a discrepancy in what I had been told, “didn’t you say earlier that it was Cantrip who had invited the Contessa rather than vice versa?”
“That’s what she told me on the phone last night,” said Clementine. “She said he’d left a message for her at her hotel.”
“But I understand,” I said, “that it was she who invited him — by telex from Monte Carlo.”
Clementine shrugged her shoulders, as at some point of tedious triviality.
The uneasiness which my supposed rationality had hitherto kept at bay laid a chilling hold on my spirits. I had thought of nothing save a direct attack, and it had not occurred to me how easily some soporific might be introduced into a flask of coffee provided for a guest by her hotel.
A little before half past nine, at the beginning of the fourth hour of the tide, we came to a place called Green Island, a beach between two small headlands, one topped with grass and the other with oak trees. Overlooking it was a little esplanade, showing signs of a modest popularity with the tourist trade: a cafe, at present closed, and a parking area, at present unoccupied save for a pink Fiesta motorcar.
On the backseat of the Fiesta was a coat which Clementine recognised as belonging to Gabrielle.
We stood looking out across the sea to where two or three minute arrowheads of rock on the far horizon were still uncovered by the incoming tide. One could not have guessed how rapidly the water was moving, for it seemed to creep inland only by inches, each successive wave breaking hardly closer than the one before; but I recalled that we were in the same area as the island of Mont St. Michel, where I had heard that when the tide is flowing the sea moves faster than a galloping horseman.
“She’s out there,” cried the Count, with a wild gesture towards the horizon. “I’m sure of it, she’s still out there.”
I felt a dreadful certainty that what he said was true, that on one of those tiny and still diminishing crests of rock were Cantrip and Gabrielle, perhaps in a drugged and oblivious sleep, perhaps now awake and too late aware of their danger, while the insatiable sea advanced hungrily upon them. As the sea gulls circled above us I saw dawning in the eyes of my companions the same terrible conviction.
Then, just above the horizon, there became discernible the rapid whirring of helicopter blades.
The hope that it offered must have seemed too fragile to risk speaking of. We pressed in silence against the railing which bounded the esplanade, straining our eyes to watch. The helicopter looked in the distance no larger than a flying insect, and when it seemed to slow and alter course we could feel no certainty that we were not deceiving ourselves. Beside me was Clementine, very pale, her left hand gripping the railing, her right arm protectively round Lilian’s shoulders.
It was some moments before I realised that the Count was no longer on the esplanade but running down the stone steps which led to the beach, tearing off his jacket as he ran and flinging it down behind him. I saw also that Patrick Ardmore had set out in pursuit. Knowing what I did, I had no choice but to follow them.
Seeing the tall dark figure running swiftly across the damp brown sand and remembering the athletic prowess of his youth, I had thought that the Count would easily outdistance his pursuer. He slipped, however, or perhaps caught his foot in one of the tangled piles of seaweed, and took some seconds to recover himself. It seemed also that the tawny-haired Irishman was a faster runner and in better condition than one might have expected of a man of easygoing temperament. He overtook the Count before he reached the water and seized hold of him. The dark man broke away and turned again towards the sea, but Ardmore brought him to the ground and held him there.
They were locked, when I came up with them, in what looked like mortal combat, the one man twisting and turning in every direction to escape the unyielding grip of the other. The Count struck out furiously in his efforts to free himself, but Ardmore, though the shorter by three or four inches, was the more powerfully built, with some advantage in weight, and the blows were too wildly directed to oblige him to release his hold. Their words, when I came close enough to hear, were painful and breathless.
“Damn you, Patrick, let me go. I must try to get to them. I must try.”
“It’s suicide. You don’t understand, Giovanni — the water will be coming through the gullies by now at a rate that would knock a wall down. It’s no use — if they’re there, you’ve no chance of saving them.”
I looked out again to the far horizon. The helicopter had settled, gently and steadily, on one of the tiny arrowheads of rock.
“And no chance,” I said, “of preventing them being saved.”
Startled by my intervention, Ardmore relaxed his grip. The Count, had he chosen to do so, might perhaps have made his escape. He, too, however, seemed at that moment to lose heart for the struggle. The two men remained motionless, staring at me, as if turned to stone in the attitudes in which I had found them. For a long time, as it seemed to me, the silence was broken only by the crying of the sea gulls.
“What do you mean?” said the Count at last, his voice hardly audible.
“I mean,” I answered, “that I know you, Count Giovanni, to be the murderer of Oliver Grynne and Edward Malvoisin, and that you have today attempted to procure the deaths of your wife, Gabrielle, and my friend Michael Cantrip.”
“Professor,” he said, fixing me with his dark tormented eyes, “suppose I were to tell you that you are talking nonsense?”
“It would be no use,” I said. “The evidence is conclusive. Your wife used the pen after her return to France, and the fact could be proved in court.”
“Ah, the pen,” he said musingly. “Yes, of course. I should have known the pen was a mistake.”
“Dear God, Giovanni,” said Ardmore, staring down at the man he still held pinned to the ground, “you can’t mean it’s true? It isn’t possible.” But I saw that all at once he knew it was.
“Of course it’s true, Patrick,” said the dark man. “As Gabrielle would tell you, one can’t deceive a professor from Oxford. Now will you let me go?”
The Irishman did not instantly comply. He looked for a moment at me, as if half thinking that the decision ought to be partly mine, but then looked away again without meeting my eyes, evidently judging it one not to be shared. At last he released his grip and allowed the other man to rise to his feet.
“Why, Giovanni? In the name of reason, why?”
“She had dishonoured me,” said the Count. “For my dishonour I must be revenged or die.”
And still not knowing, I suppose, that people do not say or do that sort of thing any more, he walked steadily out into the implacable sea, which in due course closed over him.
Far away on the horizon, the helicopter began to rise and move towards the shore.
On the evening before her departure for the Bahamas — she had been advised that it would be prudent, in all the circumstances, to take up residence outside the United Kingdom — Lilian had invited all those who had been, as she expressed it, so kind to her while she was working in Chambers, to join her for a farewell glass of champagne in the Corkscrew. She stood at the bar, blushing slightly at the competition between Cantrip and Henry to refill her glass and responding with charming smiles to the congratulations of Timothy, the improving advice of Ragwort, and the dulcet laments of Basil Ptarmigan for the loss of so decorative and skilful a telex operator. A month before she would no doubt have been embarrassed to find herself at the centre of such a circle; but to become the sole beneficiary of a trust fund worth nine million pounds sterling has a remarkable effect on a young woman’s self-
