The Sirens Sang of Murder ht-3

by Sarah Caudwell

  There was something about his last twinkle that reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t remember who. I was still trying to think who it was and why it somehow made me feel a bit nervous when the light went out and I heard the bolt being drawn across the trapdoor.

  I yelled out, “What’s going on?” and all I got was, “Rest tranquil, my brave, rest tranquil.” I’ll make him rest tranquil all right if ever I get my hands on him, the double-crossing son of a six-headed rattlesnake.

  And then someone else gave a fiendish sort of laugh, like an armadillo choking on a pineapple. I’d have recognised it anywhere, specially as the last time I heard it was when I was in the Companies Court and couldn’t remember the terms of the usual compulsory order. You’re probably not going to believe it, but I absolutely swear it was old Wellieboots.

  And what I want to know is, are High Court judges allowed to lock Counsel up in cellars and, if not, what’s one supposed to do about it?

  CHAPTER 11

  This being a question preeminently suitable for consideration by leading Counsel, it was a happy coincidence that Basil Ptarmigan should at this moment return to his room. While he removed his wig and black silk gown, accepted a cup of tea, found the papers for his next consultation, and expressed in flattering terms his pleasure at my presence, the news was conveyed to him of Cantrip’s incarceration by a member of the senior judiciary.

  That Sir Arthur Welladay had power, in certain circumstances, to send Cantrip to prison seemed to Basil to be beyond dispute. If Cantrip in proceedings before him were to commit some flagrant contempt of court, as by throwing a heavy volume of the law reports at his head, the judge could quite properly instruct the tipstaff to commit him to the Tower — of that there was no doubt.

  On the other hand, to encourage a French innkeeper to lock him up in a cellar, when Cantrip had done no worse than stow inoffensively away in a motorcar — a motorcar, moreover, being driven by the judge, so far as one could tell, in his private rather than his judicial capacity — was not, in Basil’s opinion, at all the same thing. He would not say that the judge had no jurisdiction to do it — it might be overaudacious, in the absence of clear authority, to go so far as that; but if he had jurisdiction then he had exceeded it; or, if he had jurisdiction and had not exceeded it, then at the very least he had exercised it in a most improper manner.

  It would not do — something would have to be done. One should have a quiet word, perhaps, with someone at the Lord Chancellor’s office, where they would know the procedure for dealing with cases of this kind. It was true, of course, that many very eminent judges had continued to exercise their judicial functions with perfect competence while suffering from more or less serious forms of derangement. One had only to think of—

  “Basil,” said Selena, interrupting what would undoubtedly have been a most interesting account of judicial insanity since the beginning of the nineteenth century, “are you suggesting that Mr. Justice Welladay has simply gone mad?”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Basil, with that perfect equanimity in the face of the unexpected which is so vital to a successful practice at the Bar. “What other explanation can there be? It’s very sad, of course, but one should certainly have foreseen it — poor Arthur, he’s been giving some very odd judgments lately, as Julia and I both know to our cost.”

  “I know,” said Selena rather doubtfully, “that you both had cases in front of him last term and that he decided against you.”

  “But apart from that,” said Ragwort, “there have surely been no overt signs of instability?”

  “Ah, my dear Desmond, you have not known him as long as I have. On the subject of tax avoidance he has never, I think I may say, been entirely rational.”

  “It seems very hard on Cantrip,” said Julia, “to be locked up as an expert in tax planning.”

  “I suppose that Arthur regards him as guilty by association — it shows how far his affliction has gone. By the way, I should not have imagined that the cellars of French country inns were normally equipped with telex facilities — do we happen to know if Arthur let Michael out of the cellar, or did he escape?”

  Julia, thus prompted, resumed her reading of the telex. A quite deplorable possibility began, as she read, to present itself to my mind.

  Another thing that let’s not have in our book is a bit where Carruthers gets locked up in a wine cellar. It’s almost as boring as being stuck in the boot of a Renault — not so uncomfortable, because you can move about a bit, but just as dark and a lot more nervous-making, because at least with a Renault you know you’ll get out in the end.

  Mind you, it wouldn’t be so bad for Carruthers, because he’d have us on his side. We could put in a window wide enough to squeeze out of, with bars he could loosen with his penknife. I didn’t have anything like that — just solid stone walls without an opening anywhere except for the trapdoor. Or we could have some incredibly attractive bird about the place who’s fascinated by his suave sophistication and comes and lets him out. The only people I’d had any chance to fascinate were the twinkly chap and the depressed-looking barman, and it didn’t look as if I’d done frightfully well. And we could make him a smoker, so he’d have a lighter or some matches to brighten things up a bit. And while we’re about it we might let him have a packet of nice sandwiches in his pocket.

  The trouble with real life is that you don’t know whether you’re the hero or just some nice chap who gets bumped off in chapter five to show what a rotter the villain is without anyone minding too much. I hadn’t a clue why they’d locked me in the cellar in the first place, and as far as I could see it was just as likely as not that they meant to leave me there until I died of starvation — which actually felt like being in the next half hour or so. I didn’t even have the choice of drinking myself to death on vintage burgundy, because apart from the two that the twinkly chap had opened the bottles were all behind burglarproof grilles.

  I drank one glass of the wine he’d poured and tried to look on the bright side. Actually there wasn’t one, but one thing that struck me was that if you’re running a restaurant, sooner or later you have to send someone down to the wine cellar. So I decided that if anyone did come down I was jolly well going to make him let me out, whether he wanted to or not.

  I took my tie off and fastened it across the steps to the trapdoor, hoping the twinkly chap would be the first person down and break his beastly neck, or at any rate be in a good position for being biffed on the head with a bottle. Then I drank another glass of burgundy to try to keep my strength up and settled down at the bottom of the steps to see what happened, with the bottles beside me ready for biffing. After a bit I fell asleep, which actually is about all you can do when you’re locked up in a cellar in the dark.

  The next thing I knew the light had come on and someone was looking through the trapdoor saying, “Monsieur, come quickly please.”

  It sounded like a good offer, so I got up and started up the steps, I forgot about the tie and scraped my shins and swore a bit, and the chap at the top started shushing me. It was the depressed-looking barman, and I couldn’t get a word out of him except “Shush” until we were out-of-doors and well away from the restaurant.

  It was dark outside, though not as dark as in the cellar, and according to my watch it was nearly eleven — which meant I’d missed dinner as well as lunch. I wasn’t too sure where the barman chap was taking me, so I kept hold of the bottle just in case he tried to push me down a well or anything — he didn’t look like the sort of chap who pushes people down wells, but after what had happened already I didn’t feel like going by appearances.

  In the end it turned out he was just taking me back to the Peugeot — they’d put it round the back, out of sight of the road. He sort of waved me towards it and said, “Monsieur, no trouble, please?”

  Well, no one can say I’m the sort of chap who makes scenes about the steak not being rare enough or having to wait twenty minutes for coffee, but when I go into a restaurant for lu
nch and they leave me to starve in the wine cellar for nine hours I think I’m entitled to feel pretty miffed. So I told the barman chap that personally I didn’t see why there shouldn’t be trouble, lots and lots and lots of it, and if I didn’t get a jolly good explanation I was going to tell the whole story to the local fuzz, not to speak of Interpol and the British ambassador and the chaps who publish the Michelin Guide.

  Actually, of course, the last thing I was going to do was pop round to the local fuzzery, because in the first place it would have taken hours and in the second place it wouldn’t have done any good and in the third place I’d have had to tell them about Wellieboots, and you can’t go setting the foreign fuzz on a fellow member of Lincoln’s Inn, can you, even if he is pretty villainous? But I didn’t see why I should tell the barman chap that.

  His English wasn’t all that hot, so he may have missed some of the finer points of what I was saying, but I could see he was getting the gist. When I got to the bit about the Michelin Guide, he definitely looked stricken and started trying to plead with me. He said, “My uncle is an old man, monsieur,” and tapped the side of his head to indicate loopiness. “The war, monsieur.”

  I was just going to tell him pretty sternly that other people had uncles who’d been in the war as well, and it hadn’t made them loopy enough to go locking people in cellars, when I realised who it was that the twinkly chap had reminded me of with his final twinkle. He’d looked just like my Uncle Here-ward does when he’s going to do something frightful, and if I’d tried to tell the barman character that my Uncle Hereward wasn’t loopy enough to lock people in cellars, I couldn’t have looked him in the eye when I said it. So I gave up and said I comprehended absolutely.

  I did point out though that being on the verge of starvation makes people a bit edgy, and he nipped off to the restaurant and came back with a loaf of bread and a chicken leg and some pâté and some cheese and things. He stayed with me while I was eating them and we shared the bottle of wine I’d brought up from the cellar and talked about uncles and got quite matey.

  He said it hadn’t been his uncle’s idea to lock me up — he’d been egged on to do it by an Englishman, a big man with thick eyebrows and lots of teeth who was a friend of his from the old days. That was all the barman chap knew about it, but at least it showed that hearing old Wellieboots laugh hadn’t been a hallucination.

  I was getting a bit worried about Gabrielle by this time, because now I knew Wellieboots wouldn’t stick at putting people in cellars I didn’t know what he would stick at, and I felt pretty miffed with myself for not warning her about him when I had the chance. I decided the only thing for it was to go on heading south to Monte Carlo and hope he didn’t manage to do anything too serious before I could get in touch with her again. I thought if I kept going and she and her husband had stopped overnight somewhere, we’d probably get to Monte Carlo at about the same time.

  I had the roads pretty much to myself and there was a big river going the same way as I was, so I made quite good going and didn’t get lost much. I suppose I ought to have been worrying about not getting back to Chambers and Henry being frightfully miffed, but actually I wasn’t. There’s something about the stars all shining and the air being warm and smelling of oranges that makes you not think much about Henry and more about how nice it would be to write poetry and read it to someone.

  The sun was just coming up when I got to a town called Avignon. I think I’ve got a sort of intuition about the kind of places that Gabrielle might fancy — it was another of these historic-looking places with a wall all the way round it, and it struck me as soon as I saw it that she’d have wanted to stay there. I drove in through one of the gateways and half a minute later there was the Mercedes, parked in a side street next to a tremendously elegant-looking hotel.

  I did a bit of cautious pootling about, and there in the next street was the Renault, so I knew that Wellieboots was still on the trail. I didn’t think anyone would be on the move for at least a couple of hours, so I found a strategic spot to leave the Peugeot and went off to look for breakfast.

  There was a big square with a clock tower on one side of it and lots of cafés. The one at the top already had an awning up over the terrace and looked as if it was open, so I sat down there and asked for coffee and croissants.

  One thing I’d made up my mind about was not passing up another chance to warn Gabrielle what was going on, so I borrowed some paper from the café owner and wrote her a note explaining everything.

  Life being what it is, I thought if I took it myself the first person I’d run into in the lobby of the hotel would be old Wellieboots, wriggling his eyebrows and wanting to know why I wasn’t still locked in the cellar. So I asked the café owner if there was anyone who’d deliver it, and he offered to send his son, viz a quite bright-looking lad by the name of Gaston.

  I told Gaston to make sure it wasn’t just left in a pigeonhole but taken straight up to Gabrielle in her room, and to hang about a bit in case there was an answer, and to scarper prontissimo if he saw a big man with thick eyebrows and a lot of teeth. After he’d gone I started worrying in case he gave it to the wrong person, and then I started worrying even more in case it got to Gabrielle and she simply thought I’d gone loopy, but there wasn’t much I could do about it except eat another croissant.

  The café owner thought it was all fantastically romantic. He’d got the idea that I was trying to make an assignation with a beautiful married woman and the chap with eyebrows was her husband, and explaining it wasn’t like that seemed just too difficult to be worth it. He said it was like the troubadours — he said there used to be a lot of these troubadour chaps in that part of the world and they went in for having hopeless passions for beautiful married women who were tremendously virtuous. So they never got anywhere and had to spend all their time writing poetry and going off on the occasional Crusade. He said there was some Italian chap as well, who’d fallen for a bird called Laura, and Avignon was where he’d first met her.

  Gaston was away for ages and I started to think he must have got kidnapped or something. By the time I saw him coming back I’d got so pessimistic I thought the letter he was holding was probably the same one I’d sent him with. It wasn’t, though, it was from Gabrielle.

  It didn’t sound as if she thought I was loopy after all — actually it sounded as if she was pretty impressed, because it started, “Dear Michael, you are quite wonderful,” so I felt rather chuffed.

  Anyway, the gist of it was that if I carried on to Monte Garlo and booked in at the Clair de Lune, she’d get in touch with me there and we could work out a strategy for dealing with old Wellieboots. So here I am, and I’m jolly well not leaving Monte Carlo until I’ve found out what Wellieboots is up to and put a stop to him persecuting Gabrielle. Just tell Henry hard cheese and sucks boo.

  Over and out — Cantrip

  There was much indignation. Cantrip by his absence had imposed, it was felt, quite sufficient inconvenience on his fellow juniors without the additional burden of conveying to Henry the unconciliatory message suggested in his final paragraph. Ragwort was especially severe. His sense of the world’s unfairness, assuaged in respect of St. Malo and Dourdan by the thought of Cantrip starving in a wine cellar, had been rekindled by the image of him breakfasting in the ancient city of the Popes, oblivious and undeserving of its architectural and artistic glories.

  My own attention remained preoccupied by the deplorable possibility which had presented itself and was beginning, the more I reflected on it, to seem increasingly probable.

  “Basil,” I said, when at last I had a chance to be heard, “there is a question, if you would be so kind, which I should like to ask you. When you spoke a day or two ago of teasing Sir Arthur Welladay—”

  I was interrupted, however, by the reappearance of Lilian, announcing the arrival of Colonel Cantrip. Knowing his concern for the safety of his nephew, she had telephoned him at his club to tell him of the telex message, and the old soldier had los
t no time in coming round to New Square to see it for himself.

  Expressing in graceful phrases his delight at the Colonel’s visit, Basil gave no sign that he had or could have any claim on his time more pressing than the entertainment of this new and honoured guest. The Colonel was settled in a comfortable armchair and provided with a cup of tea. Julia, after a moment’s hesitation — she no doubt wondered, but sensibly not for long, if his feelings might be wounded by the reference to himself — handed him the telex.

  “My dear Hilary,” said Basil, extending his long hands in a gesture which seemed to promise a cornucopia of enlightenment, “there was some matter on which you thought that I might be of assistance?”

  “It is concerned,” I said, “with the provisions of a discretionary settlement, of the kind which I understand to have been in vogue in the early part of the 1970s. Julia was telling me a few days ago that at that time the Revenue regarded the persons entitled in default of appointment, even if they never actually received anything from the settled fund, as liable for tax on gains realised by the trustees, A practice developed, I gather — Julia called it ‘teasing the Revenue’—of naming as the default beneficiary some person professionally committed, as it were, to upholding and defending their opinion — the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for example, or the chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue. Have I understood the matter correctly?”

  “Perfectly correctly,” said Basil. “I cannot attempt to improve on Julia’s account of it. You must understand, of course, that it was not generally intended that the Revenue should ever become aware of the existence of the settlement, but it was thought that if they did, the inclusion of such a provision would embarrass them sufficiently to afford us all a little innocent amusement. Dear me, I’m afraid you will think us disgracefully frivolous.”