By the time Camille got off the radio to Fidel, her boss had circled the vehicle's bonnet and was marching toward the crowd like a general fresh from the wars, shoulders back, unstopping. She grabbed up her bag and slammed the car door behind her, running to catch up.
One of the massive Montfort brothers noticed the Suit coming and lumbered into his path, until he saw Camille behind him. At the sight of her he grinned nervously and edged away, pulling one of his siblings along as well. The oldest Clifford sister, seeing them retreat, elbowed an in-law aside to look at what they were seeing, and before anyone else knew it, Inspector Richard Poole of the Met and his valiant Sergeant Bordey were parting the flood like a pair of matched dolphins, on their way to upholding order.
That is, until Ned Clifford, tallest and broadest of the men on the left and never one to be intimidated by authority before now, stepped forward to block them, pointing at Elaine. "I want her arrested!" he bellowed into Poole's face. "She seduced my boy into –"
"Excuse me, Mr Clifford!" Poole bellowed back, startling the man into silence. People just didn't yell at Edwyn Raedwald Clifford.
"I'll decide who is arrested," Poole advised him, coolly.
"He's the one who needs arresting!" a shrill voice behind him piped. "He's been harassing us for years –!"
Poole wheeled on Henrietta Séraphine Marie Montfort, adjusting his focus down to meet her savage eyes and ignoring the colossi around her. Camille was at his shoulder, and the male Montforts all seemed intent on giving her space. There was a story there, but just now he was too busy to ask for it.
"Madam!" he shrilled back, then ahemmed softly to bring the volume down. "You'll have your turn, madam," he crooned at her, as that tone of voice seemed to work best with French viragos.
When it looked like quiet had been restored, he shot a look at Camille to keep the crowd under control – as he knew she was more than capable of doing – and took the few steps to where Conrad and Drinkall waited, one sweating in the afternoon heat, the other smarming. Poole didn't know which was worse.
"Well, Johnny," he began, "I suppose it was you who alerted Mr Clifford, or was it Mrs Montfort, to what was going on here, and got them out in public to cause this disturbance?"
"What else could I do, Poo- uh, Inspector?" Conrad whined back, actually wringing his hands. "Eether one of 'em could ruin me with a phone call! You know I'm just a bloke tryin' to make a livin' –"
"Yes, yes, save it," Poole told him. Conrad had a list of filed misdemeanors as long as Poole's trouser leg. "Mr Drinkall," he went on, turning to Red, who showed him a wide set of sunflower yellow teeth ingratiatingly, "You weren't intending to sail Alfric and Elaine off-island for any reason, were you?"
"Sure, I was!" Drinkall trumpeted, transferring his leer to the mob on shore. "I'm goin' to marry 'em. It'll be a whole new line for me. I'm captain of me own ship. We get far enough out, I can do it at sea. See?" He chortled and shook the paper under Poole's nose.
Poole didn't rise to the bait. Drinkall's list of misdemeanors was longer even than Conrad's. "Unless you have a license for it, you can do a symbolic marriage only," he warned.
"Right here, copper!" Drinkall teased the Law with the paper again, shaking it as if summoning a particularly minor loa.
Poole gave in, snatched the thing out of Red's hand and glanced at it. "This is a master's ticket, and a restricted one at that," he said, and flicked the paper back at Red dismissively. "Do you, or do you not, have a license to perform weddings?"
"This here's it!" Red insisted, stubbornly. "I'm captain of the Sea Venture, and what I say in internashinal waters goes!"
"If a ship's captain is under UK law and is not a judge, a justice of the peace, a minister or a notary public, any wedding he performs at sea is not legally binding," Poole intoned solemnly. He loved reciting precepts of the majestic British Law. Out loud.
Red turned the color of his nickname, ready to pop. "Why?" he demanded. "'Cause I ain't a padre?"
"That, and because under the law a marriage must be held in a publicly accessible place. Your . . . 'ship'," and here Poole glanced at the barge with its tatty crepe paper hangings and tattier canvas seating, "– once it's in international waters – presuming it could ever get there – would not be publicly accessible. Now if you had a proper license, you could do the deed right here and now, in the car park – except," shaking his head firmly, "you don't."
Red broke out into some of the most vile profanity to be heard on Saint-Marie, until Henri, the oldest and heaviest of the Montfort brothers, snarled that there was a lady present. Which one of the many females on hand he considered that to be he did not bother to say, but it stopped Drinkall's mouth and apparently prodded someone across the path into speech.
"Hey, so what about the slander?" one of the Clifford Amazons demanded, and Ned immediately took it up. "Cissy's right! She's saying Alfie seduced her," he snarled, glaring at Hennie but pointing at Elaine. "My boy's good name is being –"
"Your boy?" screeched Hennie. She had a surprisingly loud voice for such a small woman, and her wrath blazed from her sunken, black-lidded eyes like the blue flame of a somewhat larger than ordinary Bunsen burner. "What about my daughter?" At which every man jack of the Montforts at that pier side began to rumble like so many miniature volcanoes set to erupt.
"Please!"
All the heads on scene swiveled at that one word, out to the ocean view that was the only pleasant thing about the Seawall Inn – until this moment when Elaine Montfort came pushing through between Drinkall and Conrad, dragging Alfric Clifford by the hand. "Please," she repeated, her lovely little face tear-stained and twisted with distress. Even with that, Poole mused as she came forward into the crowd, she was rather spectacular to look at.
He came back to reality at lightning speed when he saw she was making straight for him. "Inspector, we just want to get away and be together," she wept.
"Away?" another of the Clifford women snorted.
"Away from all the hating," Alfric called out, over-loudly and red-faced with embarrassment. Nevertheless he stood hand-in-hand with Elaine, using his own thin bulk to shield her from his own family. "And, and the threats and the lawsuits," he went on. "It's pulling the whole island apart, dad. Maybe you don't care about that, but we do. We thought, if we got married –"
"All this feuding would stop," Elaine finished. "And we could s-stop sneaking around and, and –"
But Poole was shaking his head at them. "I'm afraid not, miss - Er. Even if you had a minister here, now, it still wouldn't be legally binding. I know for a fact that Alfie here is just barely sixteen and Ellie is fifteen and a few months. If you'd bothered to ask your godfather, Mr Clifford," he went on, fixing the boy with his official stare, "the Magistrate would have told you that both of you must be sixteen and have your parents' consent to marry, under UK law."
"Which they'll never get!" Ned Clifford roared, to the rising clamor from his own side. "I'll make sure JD will bring –"
"I knew it!" Hennie Montfort screeched, amid the rising rumble from her sons. "Bribery! Corruption! If I have to go all the way to the Privy Council –!"
All this furor shut off like a switch at the sound of Camille's eardrum-destroying whistle. When she had the attention of the whole pier, she sent her famous death stare between Madam Montfort and Mr Clifford. "The Magistrate is currently on his schooner, cruising off Dominica," she announced, "as you well know, Auntie. You subscribe to his blog. And so do you, Ned!" she added, swinging around to glare up into Clifford's face.
"It's a case of the cat being away and all the mice thinking they can play the police, isn't it?" Poole asked, coldly. "Well, it's lucky for all of you he isn't here, as it means I can delay filing a charge of violent disorder against you, IF you all agree to disperse and go home. That will give you –" pointing at Ned, "and you –" at Hennie, "eight months to sort out this stupid feud and become reconciled, and stop disrupting the Queen's peace on this island!"
He paused to glare around at the hushed crowd. "If I were you, I'd buy that West Point property jointly, and give it to Alf and Ellie on their wedding day, so then both families will own it. Capiche?"