The Sibyl in Her Grave (10 page)
Read The Sibyl in Her Grave Online
Authors: Sarah Caudwell
“Didn’t he even want to know about Bolton’s educational background?” The fervent pursuit by the young of certificates, diplomas and degrees, of impressive curricula and favourable references—was it all mere wasted effort?
“Well, it was clear from his accent that he hadn’t been to the kind of school Sir Robert had. He mentioned having been to a grammar school in Lancashire and then to some sort of college in some town in the Midlands. Sir Robert didn’t see any point in pressing him for details—he was happy to accept him as more or less self-educated and rather admired him for it.”
“But when he started work at Renfrews’, weren’t there forms to fill in? What about income tax and national insurance and pension schemes and all that sort of thing?”
“If he’d spent all his working life outside the United
Kingdom, you wouldn’t expect him to have been paying tax or insurance. When you come down to it, the only document one needs to prove that one exists is one’s birth certificate. The bank’s personnel department has a copy of Geoffrey Bolton’s birth certificate and I dare say he was born when it says he was. But after that there’s a period of over forty years unaccounted for.”
He had been with Renfrews’, however, for over five years: it seemed to me inconceivable that none of his colleagues should in that time have learnt any more about his previous career than had been known when he was first appointed. In the course of his ordinary day-to-day conversations, he must surely sometimes have said something, however trivial, which would give some hint of what he had done, whom he had known, where he had lived, during his twenties and thirties.
“Apparently not. He sometimes mentions things that he did in New York, but apart from that he simply never talks about his past. I suppose,” said Selena, sounding, however, as if she thought otherwise, “that he may just think that people wouldn’t be interested.”
It seemed likely, I had to agree, that he had some more powerful motive for avoiding the subject.
“And I gather,” I said, remembering what I had heard from Miss Tavistock, “that he’s equally reticent about his private life—none of his colleagues has ever met his wife or visited his house?”
“Never once. You see, he insisted when Sir Robert offered him the post that he must be allowed to keep his business and private lives completely separate. Sir Robert rather assumed that it was actually his wife who’d insisted—that she didn’t want to be a company wife and have to go to office cocktail parties and entertain clients at weekends and so on. So that was part of
the deal, though I’m not sure my client expected to be held to it quite so strictly.”
“If your client were determined to find out what Bolton did out of office hours, I imagine there would be ways of doing it.”
“Private detectives? Well, I did suggest that possibility when he first asked me about the problem, but it didn’t go down well—he thought it wouldn’t be gentlemanly. That’s to say, he thought he’d be found out and Bolton would be so angry he’d resign. And if after all it was Albany who turned out to be the insider dealer, that would be a rather major disaster for the bank. So you see what I mean, Hilary, when I say that no one knows who Geoffrey Bolton is. At Renfrews’, he’s a respectable banker. Outside Renfrews’, he could be—anyone or anything.”
I understood why she thought Bolton a likely subject for blackmail.
It was again in the Corkscrew, three or four evenings later, that Julia read to us her aunt’s account of the funeral.
24 High Street
Parsons Haver
West Sussex
Saturday, 26th June
Dear Julia,
Oh dear, I always forget what a romantic sort of girl you are, probably because of all those Georgette Heyer novels I lent you when you had measles. I
suppose I’ve led you to expect a Cinderella story and I’m afraid I have to disappoint you.
The Chanel dress didn’t transform Daphne into a raving beauty. No charming man fell instantly in love with her. And no one came to the funeral.
No one, that is, of the sort that she seemed to have been expecting. Ricky and Griselda were both there, of course, and a handful of people from the village, either because they were sorry for Daphne or because they were curious about who else would come. Fewer than a dozen in the whole congregation, and only one that I didn’t recognise—a rather good-looking young man in grey corduroy. Daphne said she’d never seen him before and had no idea who he was.
She delivered the eulogy without bursting into tears or stammering too much, so I suppose one ought to say that she did rather well. She spoke in a very portentous little voice, like an archbishop announcing the death of a senior statesman, and always referred to Isabella by her full name, as if she were one of the greatest figures of our time. It was along the same lines as the obituary she wrote—all about Isabella’s great gifts for guidance and healing and how she’d been a caring and wonderful person who’d devoted her life to helping others. With many quotations, of course, from Isabella herself, and a bit about Daphne being sad but proud to be left to carry on her work.
She’d evidently written out what she wanted to say, and was reading from her notes, but they didn’t seem to start or finish anywhere in particular—in fact, I began to wonder whether they’d finish at all.
I had the distinct impression, after twenty minutes or so, that she’d got back to her starting point and was beginning all over again. Maurice must have thought the same, because he took advantage of what I suspect was only meant to be a pause to say, “Daphne, thank you—that was most moving” and make a signal to the organist.
Still, it seemed to make Daphne feel better, which I suppose is the main thing. Griselda and I stood beside her as the coffin was put in the grave, and she was calmer than we’d expected her to be.
Maurice stopped and had a word with the young man in grey corduroy and it turned out that he was there by mistake. He’d come into the churchyard to see if he could find the grave of his great-grandfather, who he thought was buried there—he was quite right, actually, and Maurice was able to show him the gravestone—and then been tempted inside by our beautiful stained-glass windows. He’d felt that it wouldn’t be respectful to walk out again when he found there was a funeral going on, so he’d just stayed and listened. Poor Maurice, I could see he was longing to tell the young man all about our stained-glass windows—it’s one of his favourite subjects—but he saw that Daphne was getting slightly fretful, and restrained himself.
As there were so few people, and I felt that the young man had behaved rather nicely about not leaving in the middle of the service, I suggested to Daphne on the way across the churchyard that I might run back and invite him to join us for the funeral breakfast. Daphne wouldn’t hear of it, though. For some reason she’d taken an instant
dislike to him—she said he had an untrustworthy aura.
Why she should have thought that I’ve no idea—perhaps she simply meant he was too good-looking. It’s true, of course, as I suppose you know by now, that very good-looking men usually aren’t to be trusted, but you must also remember that even quite ugly men often aren’t to be trusted either. So in the end you might just as well enjoy yourself and be let down by the good-looking ones.
Now the only thing left to worry about is what to do with all the sandwiches. Not to speak of the éclairs and meringues. Not to speak of a couple of dozen little sponge cakes which Daphne made herself and are quite undoubtedly the worst sponge cakes I have ever eaten, or for the sake of politeness tried to eat—like slices of rubber cooked in rancid oil, but not so appetising. Daphne’s convinced they’re delicious, though—they’re made from a recipe Isabella taught her.
Well, I don’t know that one could call it a successful funeral exactly, but at least we’ve got Isabella safely buried.
Yours with very much love,
Reg
A number of people, I imagined, would be hoping that Isabella’s secrets were safely buried with her. I rather wished that Daphne had not announced so publicly as she had her intention to carry on Isabella’s work: the phrase seemed to me to be open to misconstruction.
IT WOULD BE
an impertinence little becoming the modesty of the Scholar to trouble you, dear reader, with matters ungermane to my present narrative. I therefore refrain from any account of my own activities—though these, on some other occasion, might be not without interest—during the six or seven weeks which followed Isabella’s funeral.
On the second Friday in August I again found myself in London, where I intended to spend the weekend before travelling by aeroplane to the United States of America. At the hour of the afternoon when tea is customarily taken I made my way to 62 New Square.
My first impression was that a small civil war had broken out, the result, possibly, of some unhappy disagreement between the Bar and the Law Society, and that 62 New Square had been chosen as a particular object of hostile bombardment. The air was heavy with the dust of shattered plaster; the walls and timbers shuddered at the pounding of hammers and the pitiless reverberation of electric drills; muscular men in string
vests were attacking the building with blowtorches. In short, the builders were in.
In such conditions, an offer of tea seemed unlikely: I retreated to the Chambers next door. Even there, though tea was available in generous quantities, the level of noise remained too high for civilised discourse. Moreover, Julia had an urgent Opinion to write on the provisions of the latest Finance Act. She proposed, therefore, that while drinking my tea I should read the most recent letters from her aunt Regina.
“Some rather odd things,” said Julia, “seem to be going on in Parsons Haver. I’m beginning to feel slightly worried about it.”
24 High Street
Parsons Haver
West Sussex
Friday, 16th July
Dear Julia,
I’m sorry I had to cancel our lunch. In London nowadays, I suppose, you’re all quite used to people being burgled and wouldn’t dream of letting it interfere with your social engagements. Down here, though, it’s still something of an event.
It happened just before midnight last night. Daphne was asleep in bed, but she was woken up by the vulture screeching. It doesn’t usually do that at night, she says, so she knew that something was wrong. She ran downstairs in her nightdress and into the drawing room and saw a man trying to
break open the display cabinet—the one that contains the Book.
She screamed and he turned around. He had a knife or a chisel or something like that in his hand and she was frightened that he was going to attack her. She ran out through the front door and across the road to the Vicarage, still screaming, and rang the doorbell until Maurice answered it.
Maurice rang the police and then me, so I was up most of the night soothing Daphne and making tea for people. Which is why I didn’t feel at all like catching the train to London this morning.
The police came in the form of a young sergeant and an even younger woman police constable. They were quite pleasant and sympathetic, but they didn’t seem very hopeful of catching the burglar. One can’t really blame them—he had a black balaclava over his head and a long black raincoat over the rest of him, so Daphne wasn’t able to give them much of a description. She said that she thought he was quite tall, but that seemed only to mean that he was taller than she is.
They’re treating it as a fairly amateur sort of crime. They think that the burglar found the back door unlocked—it was open when they went round the house—and was simply making the most of his chances. Daphne, on the other hand, swears that it was locked when she went to bed and he must have used something quite sophisticated, like a skeleton key, to open it. She’s convinced that he broke in on purpose to steal the Book.
But when the police asked if they could examine it she wouldn’t let them—in fact she
became almost hysterical at the idea. It isn’t lawful for anyone except the Custodian to read the Book or even touch it, and if they do, something terrible will happen to them. The police didn’t find this very helpful.
Even Maurice can’t persuade her to explain sensibly what the Book is supposed to be or what’s in it or why anyone might want to steal it. She simply says that the Book has its enemies and the enemies of the Book are the enemies of the Custodian, but it isn’t lawful for her to try to explain who they are.
She’s quite worryingly peculiar on the subject. If the idea of being the Custodian cheered her up and gave her a bit of confidence in herself one wouldn’t mind, however silly it was, but in fact I think it rather frightens her. She talks about the Book as if it weren’t a thing but a person—not a very nice person either, someone rather cruel and vindictive, who’ll punish her if she doesn’t do what it wants her to.
She also thinks she can read the future in it. She came round a couple of days ago, when Griselda was working in my garden, to warn her very earnestly that during August she should keep away from animals—not the most practical advice to a woman with three cats.
According to the Book, apparently, August is going to be the Month of the Animals. This means that animals are going to be very significant in all our lives and intensify the effect of all the other influences. For some reason August is a dangerous month for Griselda, so it’ll be particularly dangerous for her to have anything to do with
animals. For me, on the other hand, it’s going to be rather prosperous, so something involving animals should be especially lucky for me.
I’m afraid we treated all this fairly lightheartedly, and poor Daphne became quite upset—she really seemed to believe that “something terrible” was going to happen to Griselda because of an animal. So Griselda had to promise to keep away from farms and zoos and wildlife parks, and be very careful of the bad-tempered Alsatian in the garden next door to the Vicarage.
Well, if that’s the best the Book can do in the way of prophesying the future I don’t think anyone’s likely to go to the trouble of stealing it. I expect the police are right and the burglar was just a casual sneak thief, but the trouble is that Daphne doesn’t think so and is frightened that he’ll come back.
We’re all hoping that when Isabella’s estate is dealt with and the Rectory can be sold Daphne will forget all this nonsense about the Book and get on with having a proper life in a sensible sort of way. The house alone must be worth between three and four hundred thousand, so she should be able to manage pretty comfortably on the income from the proceeds. Griselda and I have all sorts of plans for her—we’re going to transform her appearance and move her to a nice little flat in Brighton and enroll her in some not too demanding training course and make some nice friends for her of her own age. We haven’t quite got round to finding her a suitable husband yet, but I dare say we will.
So her future, as you see, is in good hands, but none of it can actually happen until the solicitors
have sorted out the estate. And lawyers, if you don’t mind my saying so, don’t seem to deal with things very quickly.
Yours with much love,
Reg