“Anyway, if he does, that’ll jolly well prove he’s as nutty as a fruitcake and ought to be put away somewhere he can’t do any harm — House of Lords or somewhere. So at least he’ll stop bothering Gabrielle. I say, you’ll be seeing Gabrielle, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “We are lunching together on Monday.”
“You’ll explain why I’ve left Monte Carlo, won’t you? I wouldn’t want her to think I’d just gone off and left her in the lurch.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”
“And the other thing you might do is give something to that rather jolly chambermaid for me. I know she talked a lot of rot about me being keen on Gabrielle, which was all bilge, of course, but she was right about me winning at the Casino, so I sort of feel she ought to get a slice of the winnings. If I give you a tenner when we get to the airport, will you pass it on to her?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, certainly.” His requests fell on my ear with a dismally testamentary ring.
Having delivered the motorcar to a representative of the company from which he had hired it, we joined the line of prospective travellers waiting for boarding cards. I saw, a few places ahead of us, the tall figure of the judge. He glanced briefly towards us as he strode away towards the departure gate, and for the first time that morning I perceived in my young friend’s eyes a flicker of apprehension.
“My dear Cantrip,” I said, “perhaps after all it would be better not to take this flight.”
“Don’t talk rot, old thing,” said Cantrip. “If I don’t go on this one, Wellieboots won’t either, and we’ll be back at square one.”
“But if you really think—”
“I’m not worried about him trying to bump me off. It’s just that I’d forgotten how he looks at you, like one of those things that turn people to stone — you know, an obelisk.”
He meant, I suppose, a basilisk, but I had not the heart to dispute with the poor boy.
It consoled me but little to reflect, during my return journey to Monte Carlo, that if he were now travelling in the company of a murderer I would not myself be lunching with one in two days’ time. Admittedly, if Gabrielle was not Welladay’s daughter — and it would hardly be logical to accept his evidence on all other issues and reject it on that — she was not a descendant of Sir Walter Palgrave and accordingly not a potential beneficiary of the Daffodil fund. I had believed from the outset, however, and saw no reason now to alter my opinion, that so far as motive was concerned the professional advisers to the settlement were as worthy of suspicion as the beneficiaries. And what of Gabrielle’s fountain pen? All those who had been in her company on Sark and might have found an opportunity to steal it seemed now to be excluded from suspicion. It appeared then that she herself must have dropped it: for her to have done so by any innocent accident at the very place where Malvoisin had fallen would surely be… a most remarkable coincidence.
A telephone call on Saturday afternoon assured me of Cantrip’s safe arrival in London, unmolested by any homicidal attention from Mr. Justice Welladay. I was sufficiently relieved to be able to spend the remainder of the weekend in almost unalloyed enjoyment of the pleasures of the Mediterranean. On the Monday morning, however, I woke with a sense of apprehension, which I realised after a few moments was attributable to the prospect of lunching with the Contessa.
Shortly after breakfast I encountered, for the first time since Cantrip’s departure, the gipsy-eyed chambermaid, and made haste to honour my undertaking to give her a suitable share of his winnings.
“I do wish,” I said, “that you would tell me how you knew of my friend’s attachment to an auburn-haired lady who wears Houbigant’s Raffiné.”
“Oh,” she said, with a teasing smile, “don’t you wish I would tell you how I knew he would win at the Casino?”
“No, mademoiselle, I don’t think I need to ask you that. I would rather suppose that you tell all visitors of a certain type that they will be lucky at the Casino. If they are not, they will hardly venture to reproach you. If they are, they will think it just to give you a share of their winnings. Inexperienced as I am in the ways of the world, I can guess so much of the art of prophecy.”
“Oh,” said the girl, “I am afraid you are a very cynical person. Professor. Well, if you can guess my secrets so easily, I do not see why I should tell you any more.”
“Mademoiselle, I beg you,” I said. “Take pity on the curiosity of a poor harmless Scholar.”
She could not at once be persuaded to relinquish the pleasure of teasing; but she was a good-natured girl at heart, and well disposed to me on account of Cantrip’s present.
“Well, Professor, it is very simple after all — I am surprised that you could not guess. When one finds three pretty auburn hairs on the jacket of someone’s pyjamas, and it still smells just a little of Raffiné, it is not so difficult to tell his fortune.”
“Mademoiselle,” I said, “are you quite sure about the brand of perfume? Could you have made a mistake?”
“I am from Grasse, Professor. I do not make mistakes about perfume.”
I left in excellent spirits for my lunch with the Contessa, knowing that whatever her failings she had not murdered Edward Malvoisin.
She had suggested a restaurant in the Condamine, at the junction between the Rue de Millo and the Rue Terrazani, within five minutes’ walk both of my hotel and of her own office. Its Provençal cooking and an admirable wine list are mentioned with approval in The Guide to Comfortable Tax Planning.
Though she seemed to me to have a little less sparkle in her large eyes than when I had last seen her, she was nonetheless charming company. Having considered the menu with the care it deserved and ordered a bottle of pale pink Provençal wine, we somehow fell to exchanging small items of harmless scandal — on her side of those residents of Monaco sufficiently noted for their wealth or other distinction to be of interest to me, on mine of various friends and colleagues whose names were known to her from her professional reading. She seemed to feel that she had the best of the bargain.
“I am afraid,” she said sadly, “that Monte Carlo gossip is not so interesting as the gossip of Oxford and London. It is a very small place, you see — one is always meeting the same people and hearing the same stories. And always about how much money they have spent — how much on the new yacht, how much on the new mistress, how much on the new Picasso. It is so parochial, I sometimes think I shall suffocate — I have to walk across the border to Roquebrune just to feel that I can breathe.”
“But, Gabrielle,” I said, “your skills are of an international nature, and the Edelweiss Bank has offices all over the world. Could you not arrange to be transferred to somewhere more congenial?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps it could be arranged. But Giovanni feels at home here, you see — he would not like to move.”
“At least,” I said, “your work provides you with opportunities to travel.”
“Not so many as you would think — with the telephone and the telex and the tele-this and the tele-that, it is hardly possible nowadays to find an excuse to leave one’s office. Oh, all this technology, it’s taken the fun out of everything. I travel in connection with the Daffodil Settlement, as you know, but that is rather exceptional — oh, my darling Daffodil, what should I do without you? I should go nowhere and meet no one.”
“You cannot meet many new friends in connection with that. I gather that all those connected with it have known one another for many years.”
“Yes, of course that is true, but sometimes one makes new friends. This time there was Michael.”