Clementine looked embarrassed.
“Well, actually — actually, Professor Tamar, this latest development means it’s not really necessary for you to go on with your investigation. I’m awfully sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing — if I’d known you were thinking of coming, I’d have tried to let you know.”
“I see,” I said, reflecting on the significance of this unexpected turn of events. “You will recall, my dear Clementine, that there were two aspects of the matter which you wished me to consider. The identity of the descendants now living of Sir Walter Palgrave and — a further question which you believed might be related. Am I to understand that you now regard both aspects of the enquiry to be otiose?”
“Well, yes,” said Clementine. She looked uncomfortable, but at the same time slightly belligerent. “I’m sorry, Professor Tamar, but when we first talked about this I was in a bit of a state. In view of what’s happened since, I know I was just imagining things. So I’d really be awfully grateful if you’d just forget the whole thing — subject to our settling your account for the work you’ve already done, of course.”
It was perhaps fortunate, since I was in some uncertainty how to proceed, that at this point a waiter entered the coffee lounge to enquire whether we included among our number a Miss Larwood, a Mr. Cantrip, or a Professor Tamar — a Miss Jardine telephoning from London wished to speak to any one of those named. I rose and left my companions with, I confess, some relief.
Despite the distance which divided us, I detected in Selena’s voice an uncharacteristic note of agitation — she seemed to be accusing me of having encouraged Julia to elope with the Colonel. I protested in bewilderment that I had done nothing of the kind.
“About ten minutes ago,” said Selena, “I arrived in Chambers and found on my desk a note from Julia, apparently written in some haste in the early hours of the morning. She says that she and Colonel Cantrip are going to Jersey and she has no time to explain why, but that the items of correspondence enclosed will make everything clear to me. By ‘enclosed’ she seems to mean ‘attached by means of a paper clip,’ and by ‘clear’ she seems to mean ‘totally obscure’—I suppose one can’t expect a very high standard of precision at five o’clock in the morning. The correspondence to which she refers consists of the following items. Item one — a telex message from Clementine to Cantrip, sent at lunchtime yesterday, asking him to attend a meeting at the Grand Hotel this morning and to telephone to confirm the arrangement. Item two — a telex message to Cantrip from the Contessa di Silvabianca, transmitted in Monaco yesterday afternoon, inviting him to have breakfast with her. Item three — item three, Hilary, is a telex message from you to Julia, apparently dispatched from Monte Carlo late last night, indicating that if Cantrip goes to Jersey he will be in danger of a murderous attack from the same person who is responsible for the death of Edward Malvoisin. I really can’t imagine what you expected Julia to do about it.”
“I certainly didn’t expect her,” I said, “to come to Jersey herself. In any case, there’s no sign of her here, or of the Colonel. I daresay the plane was full and they’re still at Heathrow or Gatwick. I really don’t think that you need to worry about her.”
“Don’t you? Well, in that case I can concentrate on worrying about Cantrip. Have you seen anything of him?”
“I have only just arrived, and he has not yet returned from breakfasting with the Contessa. Selena, is there anything in her telex to indicate where they were to meet?”
“I will read you the full text. ‘Dear Michael — there is something in connection with the Daffodil Settlement which I would like to discuss with you in private before the meeting, but I arrive in Jersey too late to talk to you this evening. Can you get up very early and have breakfast with me at St. Clement tomorrow? I will bring some coffee and rolls from my hotel and hope to see you at quarter to seven at the place where we met before. Warmest wishes — Gabrielle di Silvabianca.’ Hilary, are you serious about someone wanting to attack Cantrip? Is St. Clement the sort of place where he might be in any danger?”
“It is the place, according to Julia, where the witches danced and the sirens sang. But I don’t think,” I added with foolish complacency, “that Cantrip can be in any danger there. The person who murdered Edward Malvoisin is here in the Grand Hotel.”
Although it still lacked a few minutes to nine o’clock, I returned to the coffee lounge to find Gideon Darkside complaining of the delay in opening the meeting. Gabrielle and Cantrip both knew perfectly well, he said, that everyone else was already there and that to wait any longer was a waste of time and money. How much longer were they going to be, and where were they anyway?
“I have been speaking,” I said, “to a colleague of Cantrip’s in London. I gather that they have gone to a place called St. Clement — they were to meet there at quarter to seven.”
The information seemed to move the Count to renewed anxiety.
“I know where they will have gone if they have gone to St. Clement. There is a rock there that Gabrielle calls the Sirens’ Rock. It’s — a favourite place of hers — one of those you can reach only at low tide. I don’t like her going there, it’s too dangerous — I’ve heard of people being cut off by the tide and drowning. But what can I do? When I say she should not go there she laughs at me.” He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.
“My dear man, of course she does,” said Patrick Ardmore. “She’s a sensible woman, Giovanni, and she knows the Channel Islands — she isn’t some silly day-tripper who doesn’t know about the tides. She’s as safe at St. Clement as by the swimming pool.”
“If we knew what time low tide was,” said Clementine, “we might have some idea of when to expect them back. Is there any way of finding out?”
“Nothing easier,” said the Irishman. “It’ll be in the Evening Post I’ll see if they’ve got a copy at the reception desk.”
We waited in silence for his return, as if we had all begun to feel more disquiet than we cared to speak of aloud. I observed that Lilian had drawn unobtrusively closer, as though fearing to miss some news of grave import, and was sitting, pale and serious, in a straight-backed chair at the edge of the group round the coffee table.
Returning from his errand with a copy of the local paper in his hand, Patrick Ardmore seemed to me to look a trifle less carefree than when he had left us. He spoke, however, with his customary optimism.
“Low tide was at six-twenty this morning, so it must already have turned by the time they set out. Assuming it takes three quarters of an hour or so to walk out to the rock, they’d have been there by half past seven, and I’d say they’d have to start back again by about quarter to eight to be sure of getting back safely. That gives them just time to eat their breakfast. Allowing twenty minutes or thereabouts for the drive back here, my guess is that they’ll be here any moment now.” Something in his expression, however, made me think that he found the timing imprudently fine.
“And wanting more breakfast, I expect,” said Clementine. “Yes, Patrick, I’m sure you’re right.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Ardmore,” said Lilian, “but what happens if you’re not?”
The Irishman seemed disconcerted by the question, or perhaps by the identity of the questioner.
“If I’m not — I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“You said they’d have to leave that rock place by quarter to eight to be sure of getting back safely,” said Lilian, blushing at her own persistence. “What would happen if they hadn’t?”
“Well, by the third hour after low water, the gullies between the rocks and the shore start filling up with water fairly quickly — the tide’s at its fastest, you see, in the third and fourth hours after it turns. If they left it much later than that, they’d be cut off.”