Sebastian, she had paid a merely fleeting visit to Chambers to enquire if there were anything which urgently required her attention.
Though there was by now an autumnal sharpness in the evening air, she was still dressed in sandals and cotton, with a look about her of summer and southern warmth. Her mood, however, seemed thoughtful, one might almost have said subdued. When asked whether she had enjoyed herself in Cannes, she reflected for some moments and gave an equivocal answer.
Her first complaint was about the weather.
“I was in Cannes for five days, and the sun shone on every one of them, from dawn until dusk. The sky was blue and the sea was even bluer. There were boats bobbing round in the bay that I was longing to sail in and restaurants all round it that I was longing to eat in. And I was cooped up in the villa, drafting offer documents from eight in the morning until nearly midnight and eating sandwiches because we didn’t have time for proper meals. I admit that we were working outdoors, on a rather attractive roof terrace, and the sandwiches, as sandwiches go, were excellent. Even so—”
We agreed that in the circumstances it would have been more tactful of it to have rained continuously.
Her second complaint concerned what might be called the social aspect.
“If you’re with two men who both want the same job and a third who’s going to decide which gets it, the atmosphere tends to get rather strained. And you see, there wasn’t anyone else there to dilute the tension. My instructing solicitor was on holiday in Cornwall and thought that as I was there to deal with the legal side it was quite enough if he kept in touch by telephone. Lady Renfrew doesn’t enjoy business meetings and had gone to stay with friends in Switzerland until it was all over. Katharine Tavistock was there, of course, to deal with the word processing and communications and so forth — she’s the only one of them who actually understands how to operate their computer system — but she hardly counts as an outsider. The only other people at the villa were the housekeeper and her husband, who’s the chauffeur and general handyman.”
Her third complaint concerned the accommodation.
“It sounds ungrateful, but I found it a little awkward being a guest in my client’s villa. It was very luxurious, of course, but in that situation it’s difficult to tell where one’s professional responsibilities end and one’s social obligations begin. Sir Robert turned out to expect rather more of me than is generally required of Counsel in a professional capacity.”
“My dear Selena,” said Ragwort, preparing to be deeply shocked, “you surely don’t mean—”
“No, no, of course not, Ragwort, nothing of that kind at all. What I mean is that he wanted me to act as a spy.”
This was the first major takeover with which Renfrews’ had been concerned since Sir Robert had become aware of the insider-dealing problem: it would represent, he believed, an irresistible temptation to the insider dealer and thus an ideal opportunity to identify him. Neither Albany nor Bolton had known before arriving at the villa which company was the target of the proposed takeover; by the time they left, the information would be public knowledge: in order to profit by it, they would have to communicate with their brokers during the period of their stay there. Sir Robert was satisfied that any attempt to do so from the villa itself would be detected: Miss Tavistock was in charge of the communication systems and all telephone calls were automatically recorded.
“People have mobiles,” said Cantrip.
“Not the directors of Renfrews’—Sir Robert thinks they’re ungentlemanly.”
Sir Robert was satisfied that if either Bolton or Albany wished to instruct a broker he would go outside the villa and telephone from elsewhere. This, he accepted, he could not prevent them from doing: not even the most high-handed of chairmen could place his codirectors under house arrest. They were in Cannes, however, for work, not pleasure, and therefore unlikely to go out often. When they did, he was relying on Selena and Miss Tavistock — the only people, he said, whom he could completely trust — to ensure that they would be accompanied or discreetly followed.
“Some people have all the luck,” said Cantrip. “None of my clients ever ask me to spy on anyone.”
“Cantrip means,” said Ragwort, “that we all understand what an invidious and embarrassing position you were placed in.”
Selena had not felt it possible to refuse. Quite apart from the fact that Sir Robert was her most valued client, she had felt sorry for him. It was clear that he had been greatly distressed by the whole insider-dealing business, to an extent which she thought was even affecting his health: he seemed to her to be looking far less fit than he had done a few months before.
She had considered again whether she should mention to him the part we believed Isabella to have played in the affair: if our conclusions were right, it seemed likely that there would be no more incidents of insider dealing and the surveillance of Albany and Bolton was doomed to failure. She still believed, however, that to tell him about Isabella would aggravate rather than alleviate his distress.
“Besides, suppose we’d turned out to be completely wrong? Or suppose whichever one it was decided to do some insider-dealing for his own benefit, instead of Isabelle’s? If I’d told him there couldn’t be another insider- dealing incident, and then after all there had been, it would have been rather embarrassing. So I promised I’d do what I could to help with his surveillance plan.”
For the first three days she had not been called on to give effect to her promise. They had all been fully occupied with the preparation of the documents relating to the takeover and no one had left the villa.
“You see, all the drafting took about three times as long as it needed to, because Edgar was trying to score points. As Geoffrey is the technical expert and all the documents were fairly technical, we’d begin with Geoffrey explaining what they wanted to do and then I’d draft a document that did it. And then Edgar would suggest amendments, just to show Sir Robert that he understood the technicalities after all. Which in fact he didn’t, so then I had to explain tactfully why his amendments would make nonsense of the whole document. It was all rather time-consuming.”
On Wednesday evening, however, when they had finished their labours relatively early, Geoffrey Bolton had said that he felt like going for a stroll along the Croisette, which he referred to as the Crozzit.
“Edgar said it was called the Kwuzzit, which I didn’t think actually sounded much better, but Edgar was always trying to score points on the basis that he knew French and Geoffrey didn’t.”
Sir Robert had at once suggested that Selena should go too, saying that she had been shamefully overworked and he was sure she would enjoy a stroll around Cannes if she had someone to escort her. Even the bluntest of Lancastrians could hardly have said that he would prefer solitude; nor could Selena, under Sir Robert’s pleading eye and remembering her promise to him, decline Geoffrey Bolton’s invitation to keep him company. They had accordingly walked down towards the Casino and drunk liqueurs in a pavement cafe looking out across the bay.
“Right,” said Cantrip. “So did you manage to get the conversation round to where you could just sort of casually mention Parsons Haver?”
“No, I’m afraid not. I remembered the difficulty you had had in introducing the subject convincingly, and I didn’t feel that I would succeed any better. Besides, I wasn’t really trying to find out anything from him — I was more worried that I might tell him something that he wasn’t supposed to know. You see, he was obviously slightly puzzled about what had happened. He said — well, he said that Sir Robert had always been rather a Puritan and it wasn’t like him to send one of his directors for a walk in the moonlight with an attractive woman. Or words to that effect.”
By candlelight, it was difficult to be certain that she blushed; my impression was that she did.
“So he was wondering, he said, what the old boy was up to. I said that as Geoffrey was a simple innocent Lancastrian in a wicked foreign city Sir Robert probably thought he needed someone to keep him out of trouble. And he laughed. And then he said something about the Chairman being ‘proper mithered abaht summat’ and that he wished he knew what it was. I said that a man in Sir Robert’s position no doubt had a number of important matters to worry about. And he laughed again and said, ‘Ah, well, lass, if tha knows nowt, tha knows nowt, and if tha knows owt, likely tha’ll tell nowt, so I’ll not vex thee wi’ asking.’ So we talked of other things.”
It would somehow have seemed indiscreet to seek particulars. Whatever the subject of the conversation, she had learnt nothing more of Geoffrey Bolton’s past or private life than she already knew. She could say with confidence, however, that while outside the villa he had made no attempt to communicate with his stockbroker.
In their absence, an unpleasant scene had taken place between the Chairman and Edgar Albany. Selena
