confidence.
Withdrawing a little from the throng surrounding her, I found myself sharing a candlelit table with Clementine and Julia.
“My dear Clementine,” I said, “do tell me how exactly you discovered that it was Lilian’s uncle who established the Daffodil trust. She has been thanking me very prettily for all that I have done for her, but I felt obliged to say that so far as I am aware my own investigation played no part in the discovery.”
“I suppose you could say,” said Clementine, “that it’s Cantrip she’s mostly got to thank for it — I mean he was the one who got me to stir up our Probate Department about the books her uncle left her. You see, Oliver Grynne got the news of her uncle’s death just before that last meeting in the Cayman Islands, and he didn’t have time to do much about it except bung all the files across to Probate Department, with a note saying he’d discuss it with them when he got back. It’s perfectly normal procedure,” added Clementine rather defensively, “where we’re appointed executors of the will.”
“And no doubt,” I said, “everything would have gone quite smoothly if Oliver Grynne had in fact returned from the Cayman Islands.”
“Absolutely, but of course he didn’t. So Probate Department just went into their standard routine, which doesn’t include going through the correspondence files for the past umpteen years. They got as far as finding that the estate was worth twelve thousand quid — of course the whole idea of the settlement had been that the settlor wouldn’t have anything in his own name — and they sort of lost interest. I mean they put the case at the bottom of the pile, and when a case gets put at the bottom of the pile in Probate Department, it tends to be a century or two before it’s heard of again.”
“And when you were unable to find anything in Oliver Grynne’s files which seemed relevant to the Daffodil settlement, I suppose it would not have occurred to you…?” I paused, fearing the question to be tactless.
“To ask Probate Department? Of course it occurred to me,” said Clementine with asperity. “I rampaged up and down the office like a lunatic trying to find out whether Oliver had passed any of his files on to anyone, and they were the first people I asked. But you know what Probate Departments are like. I told them the files I was looking for were connected with a nine-million-quid trust fund and it didn’t cross their tiny minds that a fund that size could have anything to do with an estate worth twelve hundred. So it wasn’t until they had to fish the papers out again to deal with Lilian’s bequest that someone noticed a letter referring to a settlement and the penny finally dropped.”
Julia had been sitting in anxious silence, looking frequently at her watch and as often towards the doorway.
“I can’t understand,” she said, “why Selena isn’t here yet — I hope it doesn’t mean that things have gone badly.”
It was the day of Colonel Cantrip’s trial, and Selena had been prevailed upon to undertake his defence. The arm movements which Julia had observed at the cloakroom window on taking off from the helicopter club had not been the friendly waves of valediction with which one amateur of aviation bids Godspeed to another; they had been the gestures by which a financier locked in a cloakroom and from there observing the theft of his private helicopter expresses his intention to instigate criminal proceedings at the earliest opportunity. Thus it was that the triumphant landing of the Colonel and his three passengers on a beach just west of St. Helier had been slightly marred by their immediate arrest, and that he was today being tried by a bench of lay magistrates somewhere in the Home Counties on a number of charges arising out of the incident.
“I think it’s frightfully mean to go on with the prosecution,” said Clementine. “After all, if the Colonel hadn’t turned up with the helicopter, Gabrielle and Cantrip would have been drowned.”
“The financier,” said Julia, “appears to regard that as a matter of trifling importance by comparison with his meeting in Le Touquet, and has insisted on pressing charges.”
“I didn’t know,” said Clementine, “that Selena ever did any criminal work.”
“She doesn’t. But the Colonel showed a touching determination to be defended by a member of Cantrip’s Chambers, and Selena did once do a common-law pu-pillage. She didn’t seem to think it would be helpful for Cantrip and me to give evidence — indeed, she has expressly forbidden us to go anywhere near the place. Clementine, you don’t think they’d send the Colonel to prison, do you?”
“Oh no,” said the young solicitor, “I shouldn’t think so. Not at his age. Well, not for very long, anyway.”
A further bottle of champagne had appeared as if by magic on our table, but it failed to distract Julia from troubled thoughts of the Colonel. She continued to glance anxiously at the doorway in which Selena still persistently failed to appear.
Between Clementine and myself there was perhaps a certain constraint. In the hours following the death of the Count di Silvabianca I had had no opportunity for any private conversation with her. She had been occupied with the task of arranging Gabrielle’s return to the comforting refuge of her mother’s house in Brittany, while Patrick Ardmore devoted his energies to securing the release on bail of Julia and the Colonel. (He was fortunately on terms of friendship with a senior Jersey police officer, to whom he explained that they were both personally known to him and were of the highest character and respectability.) She still felt some embarrassment, I suppose, at the suddenness with which she had asked me to terminate my investigation and now seemed to think it appropriate to give some hint of her reason.
“You know, Professor Tamar,” she said, refilling my glass, “there was suddenly a ghastly moment, after I’d asked you to investigate the Daffodil case, when I thought you might suspect me of bumping off poor old Oliver and Edward myself. You didn’t ever, did you?”
“My dear Clementine,” I said, “not for a moment.” The period during which I had done so had been so brief as to make any mention of it an excess of candour.
“Because we knew, of course…” Julia paused in time to save herself from what she supposed an indiscretion. Since Cantrip was not to be undeceived as to the identity of his bedfellow on Walpurgis Night, I had thought it unwise to enlighten Julia. She was accordingly still under the impression that Clementine had an alibi. “Of course we knew, Clementine, that you would never dream of such a thing.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t think it was me. But I can see that in a way it might be quite a logical thing to think — I mean, I am engaged to one of the default beneficiaries under the settlement, so I’d have had a motive.”
“But if,” I said, “you had decided to commit murder for the motive which you suggest, you would certainly not have done so in circumstances which would direct attention towards the provisions of the settlement — a meeting of the Daffodil advisers was the very last occasion you would have chosen. The same was also true, of course, of the other beneficiaries. I therefore reached the conclusion — much later, I confess, than I ought to have done — that the fact of the deaths occurring at meetings of the Daffodil advisers made it virtually certain that they were quite unconnected with the provisions of the settlement.”
“I say,” said Clementine, “how frightfully subtle.”
“My dear Clementine,” I said, “it is kind of you to say so, but to one versed in the art or science of textual criticism it is a very simple piece of reasoning — one learns to distrust the reading which seems at first sight to be the most obvious. The question which remained was whether the deaths were, after all, merely coincidental or whether there was some other distinctive feature of the Daffodil meetings, quite apart from their subject matter, which might make them occasions for murder. One feature, of course, was that they were the occasions when Gabrielle di Silvabianca travelled abroad without her husband.”
“Hilary,” said Julia, “this is the twentieth century.”
“Quite so, my dear Julia, but the fact weighs more with some than with others. An attractive married woman, of adventurous temperament, is travelling away from home. She has the impression that someone is watching her, and two of the men in whose company she spends her time meet possibly violent deaths. A hundred years ago many people would have thought it obvious, some might think it so even nowadays, that her husband was the person responsible. If it does not seem so to us, it is not merely because we do not think of matrimonial jealousy as a sufficient motive for murder. It is also because it would not occur to us to describe what took place in the terms I have just suggested. We would tell an entirely different story — a story of trust funds and companies, in which the husband has no significant role. I was as misguided, in the initial stages of my investigation, as a person who tries to decipher an inscription in Latin believing it to be in English.”
“If one knew no Latin,” said Julia absentmindedly, “it would be difficult to perceive one’s error.”
“Certainly, but I cannot claim so complete an ignorance of human passion as to justify my obtuseness. If I had considered the possibility that the story was one of passion rather than tax planning, the truth would very soon
