I felt a dreadful certainty that what he said was true, that on one of those tiny and still diminishing crests of rock were Cantrip and Gabrielle, perhaps in a drugged and oblivious sleep, perhaps now awake and too late aware of their danger, while the insatiable sea advanced hungrily upon them. As the sea gulls circled above us I saw dawning in the eyes of my companions the same terrible conviction.
Then, just above the horizon, there became discernible the rapid whirring of helicopter blades.
The hope that it offered must have seemed too fragile to risk speaking of. We pressed in silence against the railing which bounded the esplanade, straining our eyes to watch. The helicopter looked in the distance no larger than a flying insect, and when it seemed to slow and alter course we could feel no certainty that we were not deceiving ourselves. Beside me was Clementine, very pale, her left hand gripping the railing, her right arm protectively round Lilian’s shoulders.
It was some moments before I realised that the Count was no longer on the esplanade but running down the stone steps which led to the beach, tearing off his jacket as he ran and flinging it down behind him. I saw also that Patrick Ardmore had set out in pursuit. Knowing what I did, I had no choice but to follow them.
Seeing the tall dark figure running swiftly across the damp brown sand and remembering the athletic prowess of his youth, I had thought that the Count would easily outdistance his pursuer. He slipped, however, or perhaps caught his foot in one of the tangled piles of seaweed, and took some seconds to recover himself. It seemed also that the tawny-haired Irishman was a faster runner and in better condition than one might have expected of a man of easygoing temperament. He overtook the Count before he reached the water and seized hold of him. The dark man broke away and turned again towards the sea, but Ardmore brought him to the ground and held him there.
They were locked, when I came up with them, in what looked like mortal combat, the one man twisting and turning in every direction to escape the unyielding grip of the other. The Count struck out furiously in his efforts to free himself, but Ardmore, though the shorter by three or four inches, was the more powerfully built, with some advantage in weight, and the blows were too wildly directed to oblige him to release his hold. Their words, when I came close enough to hear, were painful and breathless.
“Damn you, Patrick, let me go. I must try to get to them. I must try.”
“It’s suicide. You don’t understand, Giovanni — the water will be coming through the gullies by now at a rate that would knock a wall down. It’s no use — if they’re there, you’ve no chance of saving them.”
I looked out again to the far horizon. The helicopter had settled, gently and steadily, on one of the tiny arrowheads of rock.
“And no chance,” I said, “of preventing them being saved.”
Startled by my intervention, Ardmore relaxed his grip. The Count, had he chosen to do so, might perhaps have made his escape. He, too, however, seemed at that moment to lose heart for the struggle. The two men remained motionless, staring at me, as if turned to stone in the attitudes in which I had found them. For a long time, as it seemed to me, the silence was broken only by the crying of the sea gulls.
“What do you mean?” said the Count at last, his voice hardly audible.
“I mean,” I answered, “that I know you, Count Giovanni, to be the murderer of Oliver Grynne and Edward Malvoisin, and that you have today attempted to procure the deaths of your wife, Gabrielle, and my friend Michael Cantrip.”
“Professor,” he said, fixing me with his dark tormented eyes, “suppose I were to tell you that you are talking nonsense?”
“It would be no use,” I said. “The evidence is conclusive. Your wife used the pen after her return to France, and the fact could be proved in court.”
“Ah, the pen,” he said musingly. “Yes, of course. I should have known the pen was a mistake.”
“Dear God, Giovanni,” said Ardmore, staring down at the man he still held pinned to the ground, “you can’t mean it’s true? It isn’t possible.” But I saw that all at once he knew it was.
“Of course it’s true, Patrick,” said the dark man. “As Gabrielle would tell you, one can’t deceive a professor from Oxford. Now will you let me go?”
The Irishman did not instantly comply. He looked for a moment at me, as if half thinking that the decision ought to be partly mine, but then looked away again without meeting my eyes, evidently judging it one not to be shared. At last he released his grip and allowed the other man to rise to his feet.
“Why, Giovanni? In the name of reason, why?”
“She had dishonoured me,” said the Count. “For my dishonour I must be revenged or die.”
And still not knowing, I suppose, that people do not say or do that sort of thing any more, he walked steadily out into the implacable sea, which in due course closed over him.
Far away on the horizon, the helicopter began to rise and move towards the shore.
CHAPTER 18
On the evening before her departure for the Bahamas — she had been advised that it would be prudent, in all the circumstances, to take up residence outside the United Kingdom — Lilian had invited all those who had been, as she expressed it, so kind to her while she was working in Chambers, to join her for a farewell glass of champagne in the Corkscrew. She stood at the bar, blushing slightly at the competition between Cantrip and Henry to refill her glass and responding with charming smiles to the congratulations of Timothy, the improving advice of Ragwort, and the dulcet laments of Basil Ptarmigan for the loss of so decorative and skilful a telex operator. A month before she would no doubt have been embarrassed to find herself at the centre of such a circle; but to become the sole beneficiary of a trust fund worth nine million pounds sterling has a remarkable effect on a young woman’s self-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.