“Is there any possibility that he might have committed suicide?”
“Oh no, Professor Tamar, not with Edward. Poor Edward, he may not have been popular with everyone, but he was always popular with himself.”
“It could still have been an accident, however. Were it not for the previous death, you would suspect nothing more sinister.”
“I suppose not,” said Clementine. “But I don’t actually see how it could have happened. Edward was quite heavily built, and the railings would have come up to his waist. If he’d simply stumbled, they’d have stopped him going over the edge. If he’d been leaning over them, I suppose he might have overbalanced, but why on earth should he lean over, specially in the pitch dark? I just don’t see how it could have happened, unless…” She shivered and looked towards the window, as though seeing in the distance beyond not the sunlit thoroughfares of the City but the remote and desolate clifftop, which played, as I now recalled, so prominent and sinister a role in the folklore of Sark.
“Unless?”
“Unless there was something there he was so afraid of that he climbed over the railings to escape it.”
I experienced again a sensation of coldness. I was seized at that moment, for no reason rationally explicable, by a curious conviction that the death of Edward Malvoisin had nothing at all to do with such modern and sophisticated things as settlements and companies but with something altogether darker and more ancient.
CHAPTER 7
Confidential as the interview had been, it would have been the height of pedantry to withhold its substance from those who were already familiar with the greater part of the story and on Cantrip’s return would undoubtedly learn the rest. At lunch in the Corkscrew I accordingly did not hesitate to give my companions an account of it.
I observed as I approached the conclusion of my narrative that Selena was regarding me with a rather curious expression, such as in the genre of literature aspired to by Cantrip and Julia might have been described as quizzical. I invited her to explain its significance.
“I was only thinking,” said Selena, “that Clementine’s theory would require the person responsible for the two deaths to satisfy a number of rather unusual conditions. First, he or she must be one of the descendants of Sir Walter Palgrave, or so closely connected with one of them as to have an interest in their financial advancement. Secondly, he or she must also know a great deal about the Daffodil Settlement — not only that it exists, but enough about how it’s run to foresee the problems that would be caused by the death of Oliver Grynne. That suggests someone, doesn’t it, who has worked in one of the offices of the trust company or its professional advisers?”
“Moreover,” said Ragwort, “it would have to be someone who could persuade Edward Malvoisin to go for a walk along the cliffs late on a dark and windy night. From what one has heard of his character, that surely suggests a young woman. A personable young woman, no doubt, but at the same time physically capable of pushing the unfortunate man over the cliff — a young woman, one might imagine, with a measure of training in some form of unarmed combat.”
“So if Clementine’s theory were right,” said Selena, “which I don’t for a moment say it is, then she herself would be the obvious suspect. One would have to assume that by asking for your assistance she was trying to make use of you in some devious kind of double bluff. We would not wish you, Hilary, to find yourself in a position of any embarrassment.”
I pointed out that the capacity for rational thought was not confined, as Selena and Ragwort evidently believed, to the members of Lincoln’s Inn, and that the possibility they mentioned had not escaped me. A little further reflection, however, had satisfied me that it could be excluded.
“I suppose you will agree,” I said, “that Cantrip’s account of the events of Monday evening may be accepted as truthful?”
“I fear that it must,” said Ragwort sadly.
“Very well then. Cantrip left the bar of the hotel at about a quarter past ten on Monday evening together with Clementine and the Contessa, and Edward Malvoisin was then alive and well. From then on, apart from the brief interval required to change into night attire, Clementine and Cantrip remained in each other’s company until the moment when the drunken handyman came galloping into the garden — that is to say, until after the accident which blocked the entrance to the Coupee. We have no way of knowing whether Edward Malvoisin’s death occurred before or after the accident, but in either case Clementine can have had no hand in it. If it was before, then it was while she was with Cantrip. If after, then at a place where it was physically impossible for her to have been at that time — unless you imagine, I suppose, that she could have scrambled down the cliffs and reached it by boat.”
“No,” said Selena, “I don’t suggest that. I’ve done some sailing in the Channel Islands, and there’s no where on Little Sark to land a boat. And the currents are some of the most dangerous in the world — it would be suicidal to try to swim across.” She sipped her wine, evidently still doubting the soundness of the conclusion. “I wonder if Clementine’s fiancé really is still in Hong Kong.”
As it happened I was able to reassure her on this point. Clementine had telephoned her fiancé on the previous evening and had found him in his office. No means of transport, however jet-propelled, could have achieved his presence at that time in Hong Kong if he had been in Sark on Monday night. It was true, of course, that my source of information was Clementine herself, but she would hardly have deceived me on a matter so easily verified.
During this discussion Julia had been lost in thought — or so at least I supposed, since I could see nothing in the composition of her prawn salad to cause her to sit gazing at it with such bemused perplexity. When she roused herself from her reverie it was to invite me to attend a seminar on international tax planning which she was to address on the following morning; she believed that the chairman, in view of my academic standing, would think it proper to waive the attendance fee.
“My dear Julia,” I said kindly, “I am sure that it will be a most interesting and instructive occasion. I fear, however, that there is little hope of my acquiring an instant expertise in so recondite an area.”
“I was not proposing,” said Julia, “that you should attempt to do so. I have been provided with a list of those expected to attend, and it includes Gideon Dark-side. I thought you might welcome an opportunity to meet him.”
“From all I have heard of him,” I said, “that seems most improbable. You mean, I take it, that you think I ought to meet him. Have you any reason to think that he knows anything about the descendants of Sir Walter Palgrave?”
“None at all,” said Julia. “But your enquiry, as I understand it, is not merely genealogical — you are hoping to discover who, if anyone, is responsible for the alarmingly high mortality rate among the advisers to the Daffodil Settlement. It would be rather premature, don’t you think, to exempt from suspicion all those who do not happen to be descended from Sir Walter Palgrave? You haven’t forgotten, I suppose, that Oliver Grynne’s death occurred at a most convenient moment from the point of view of Gideon Darkside.”
We were all at least agreed that Cantrip could be in no danger — his acquaintance with the Daffodil Settlement was plainly too recent and too slight to present a threat. We must nonetheless, I fancy, have begun to feel a faint stirring of uneasiness about him. In the hope of now finding him safely at his desk, we rose from lunch rather earlier than usual and walked back to 62 New Square with uncustomary briskness.