The Sibyl in Her Grave (12 page)
Read The Sibyl in Her Grave Online
Authors: Sarah Caudwell
I experienced, on reading this, a sudden sharp sense of apprehension, which I could not at once account for. It was Daphne, if anyone, on whose behalf I had felt a certain uneasiness; Daphne whom someone might suspect of being the heir to some still-dangerous secret. What cause had I for any disquiet regarding the Reverend Maurice?
I remembered, after a few moments, that he was the only person in Parsons Haver, indeed perhaps anywhere, who could identify the man in the black Mercedes.
The sound of drilling had been replaced by the thudding of gigantic hammers; Julia was still writing her Opinion; I continued my reading.
He wasn’t in the Newt and Ninepence this morning, as he usually is on a Saturday, but at first I didn’t even think of being worried about him.
Griselda and I went and sat out in the garden, with our drinks and our crosswords, and grumbled a bit about not having anyone to tell us how to spell Sibylline. Or Sybilline, whichever it may be. Ricky turned up and bought another round of drinks, and we all just sat and talked about how hot it was, not worrying about Maurice or anything else.
Then Daphne arrived looking for him, and very agitated that he wasn’t there. It wasn’t clear why she wanted him so urgently—it seemed to have something to do with a lobster that she’d bought him for his lunch. We told her he’d probably turn up sooner or later and in the meanwhile she’d better sit down and have a glass of wine with us. Which she did, and sat quite quietly, apart from a few sighs and sniffles, while we went on with the crossword.
And then, completely out of the blue, there was a scene—ridiculous, but quite disagreeable—all on account of a clue in the
Times
crossword. Or perhaps the
Guardian
, I forget which.
Ricky is one of those people who never start a crossword on their own but always want to help when someone’s halfway through. So we let him have the
Times
or the
Guardian
, whichever it was, and he was looking at the clues we hadn’t done and sometimes reading them out—you know how one does.
In the course of this, he suddenly seemed to find something enormously amusing, and said, “Ah, here’s one for you, Daphne.” And he read out the clue for Sibylline, or Sybilline, whichever it is, which we only hadn’t filled in because we didn’t know how to spell it.
I don’t know if you happened to see it? “Bein’ silly, very silly, like prophetic book.”
Instant rage from Daphne. She jumped up, knocking her chair over and spilling her wine, and started shouting that the Book wasn’t silly, it was the crossword that was silly, and Ricky who was silly, and everyone in Parsons Haver who was silly. Apart from Maurice, who was a brilliant scholar and a true priest and could have been one of the great princes of the Church if he hadn’t buried himself in a silly little tinpot village where no one could appreciate him. (No need to ask where she got that idea from.) And it was typical of us that we could just sit there doing our silly crossword and not caring where he was or what had happened to him. All this with floods of tears.
Ricky, having started it, simply walked out, saying he couldn’t stand any more, leaving Griselda and me to mop up Daphne. I’m really feeling quite cross with Ricky—he’s invited me to go to the races with him next week, but I’m feeling so cross that I’ve a good mind to say no.
We bought her a couple of ham sandwiches and another glass of wine and tried to explain about crosswords, and eventually she stopped crying. She was sorry, she said, she hadn’t meant to be rude or upset anyone, it was just that she was so worried about Maurice. He’d told her he was going to be at home this morning, working on his sermon, and then come over to the Newt, but he hadn’t been at home when she rang on his doorbell and he wasn’t in the Newt, and she didn’t know what could have happened to him.
We pointed out to her that he was a grown
man in possession of all his faculties, and if he decided to go for a walk on a sunny Saturday morning he probably wouldn’t feel that he had to notify all his friends in advance. But it was no use—she kept saying she was sure that he was in some kind of danger—in a dangerous place, or with a dangerous person, and she didn’t know what to do.
When we asked what made her think so, she said that she’d read it in the Book. She’d seen his name there and it had a shadow over it.
Of course, I know really that it’s all complete nonsense. But it’s after six o’clock and he still isn’t back, and I can’t help feeling slightly anxious.
There were several further pages of the letter. My perusal of them, however, was delayed: Cantrip arrived, carrying a pair of guns.
IT WAS, AS I
have mentioned, the second week of August: that season of the year when the warm days of summer draw luxuriantly towards their fruitful and abundant climax and there is an almost universal impulse to give thanks in some way for the richness and generosity of the earth; that is to say, in the case of an upper-class Englishman, to go out and kill something. Cantrip was on his way to the grouse moors of Perthshire, and had looked in to say good-bye to Julia.
“Cantrip,” said Julia, looking nervously at the guns, “did you have to bring those horrible things in with you?”
“They’re not horrible things, they’re beautiful. They were a present for my twenty-first from my uncle Hereward. That reminds me, he sends you his love. He’s always saying what a good sport you are.”
For reasons of which some of my readers will be aware, the mention of the distinguished old soldier caused Julia to turn slightly pale; but she bravely instructed Cantrip to give his uncle her warm regards.
“Now, listen, Hilary,” said Cantrip in a tone of accusation, “how are you getting on with the Isabella case?”
“My dear Cantrip,” I said, perhaps a trifle defensively, “I am not getting on at all with the Isabella case, since I remain of the view that no such case exists.”
“Come off it,” said Cantrip. “The chap in the Mercedes was the chap she was blackmailing—Albany or Bolton, whichever of them it was. And he was the last person to see her alive. What more do you want—jam and custard on top?”
“The evidence is still entirely consistent with her having died of natural causes. And even if she did not, I hardly see why it should fall to me to investigate the matter further—it does not appear to be one on which the methods of Scholarship could shed particular light. There are other claims on my time and energies. I have responsibilities—to my pupils, to my College, to the whole University of Oxford. One is not appointed a Fellow of St. George’s merely in order to enjoy oneself, as the Bursar constantly reminds me.”
“Oh well,” said Cantrip, “if all you’re interested in these days is cosying up to the Bursar—”
I shuddered at the thought.
“Moreover,” I said, yielding to the impulse to justify my inaction, “I think that if there were anything sinister about Isabella’s death we would by now have heard something more of the man in the black Mercedes. If he had had any hand in it, he would surely be desperately anxious to learn what had happened since—he would have made efforts to find out whether anyone suspected anything, whether the police were pursuing any enquiries, whether he had left any incriminating evidence. There has been no sign, so far as I am aware, of his having done so.”
“Look here, Hilary,” said Cantrip, “you can’t expect him to go bowling into Parsons Haver in the Mercedes
and ask the local fuzz if they happen to want him for murder. What he’d do is send a henchman.”
“A henchman?” said Julia, as if unfamiliar with the word.
“A chap to do the dirty work,” said Cantrip. “Like your aunt said about the glasses, if you’re rich enough to have a Mercedes you get someone else to do it. So I expect that’s what he’s done—there’s probably been a man in dark glasses and a false moustache snooping round Parsons Haver for weeks, pretending to read gas meters.”
I perceived that Julia, for what reason I could not imagine, found this remark disturbing.
“Anyway, Hilary, if you’re not in the mood for doing your Sherlock Holmes bit, that’s all right with me, but you’re going to feel pretty silly when I crack the case single-handed.”
“I shall be happy, if you do so, to sit in admiration at your feet. What method of investigation are you proposing to adopt?”
“I’m going to interrogate Edgar Albany—he’s one of the chaps I’m going shooting with this weekend. Which is what I was just going to tell you, but then you said you weren’t interested in the Isabella case, so I thought I wouldn’t bother.”
“Cantrip,” I said with some alarm, for with all his faults I am fond of the boy, “please do nothing rash. Are you sure that the best time to question a murder suspect is when he has a gun in his hand?”
“I’ll probably do it over dinner. Anyway, don’t worry, I’m going to be tremendously subtle about it. You can’t just go up to a chap you’re shooting with and ask if he’s poisoned any fortune-tellers lately, it would be bad form. I’ve worked out how I’m going to do it. What I’m
going to do, first chance I get, is bring the conversation round to a point where I can just sort of casually mention Parsons Haver. And then I
will
mention Parsons Haver, just sort of casually, and if he looks guilty, that’ll be jolly significant. And if he doesn’t, that’ll be jolly significant as well, because it’ll mean it was probably the other chap that did in Isabella.”
Only after Cantrip had left us, when I resumed my reading of her aunt’s letters, did I begin to understand why Julia had seemed troubled by his reference to a mysterious stranger appearing in Parsons Haver.
Thursday, 12th August
Having left this unfinished and unposted in my bureau for nearly a week, I’m in two minds now about posting it at all. You’ll probably say that I’m turning into a silly old woman, and I don’t like to think of you being so impertinent—you used to be such a nice child.
Maurice came back, of course, perfectly safe and well, on Saturday evening. It was ridiculous to have thought of him as having disappeared—he’d simply been out for a drive.
I mentioned, didn’t I, the young man called Derek Arkwright, who came to Isabella’s funeral by mistake and showed such an interest in our stained-glass windows? Maurice invited him then to come down again and be given a proper tour of St. Ethel’s and some of the other Sussex churches, and he said he’d love to—well, people have to say that, of course, and one doesn’t expect them to mean it. But on Saturday morning there he was on the doorstep of the Vicarage, saying that he’d driven down from
London on the spur of the moment and wondered if Maurice might happen to be free.
So they spent the day driving all over West Sussex, looking at stained-glass windows and Norman fonts and mediaeval misericords. They arrived back in Haver at about seven and stopped here so that Derek and I could be properly introduced—we’d hardly spoken at the funeral. Maurice was in such high spirits that at first I thought he was tipsy—but he wasn’t, he’d just been enjoying himself. They seemed to have eaten strawberries and cream in every café between here and Chichester, with Maurice telling all his favourite stories about Sussex saints who played jokes on the devil and pushed their mothers round the countryside in wheelbarrows.
“And since Maurice is a man of the cloth,” said Derek, looking demure, “I had to believe every word.”
He’s really a most attractive young man. Very nice to look at, very willowy—just your sort of thing, so it’s lucky you weren’t here. I don’t quite know what he does for a living. When I asked him, he said, “Oh, whatever I can get someone to pay me for, Mrs. Sheldon.”
Maurice is clearly extremely taken with him and hoping he’ll come down again. He’s even shown him the Virgil frontispiece, which is an exceptional privilege on such a short acquaintance. It isn’t on display, you see—Maurice thinks some of his parishioners might find it slightly improper. So he keeps it in a drawer in the desk in his study and only shows it to people he’s sure will like it. For example, he’s never shown it to Daphne.
And do you think Daphne admits that her premonition or whatever one calls it was entirely wrong? Not a bit of it. Derek has a dark and untrustworthy psychic aura, and she knew right away that he was a treacherous and horrible person—it’s dangerous for Maurice to spend any time with him, so she was absolutely right! She’s getting quite silly and tiresome about it—she told Maurice all about the dangerous aura and tried to make him promise not to see Derek if he came down here again. When he refused, she came round here wanting
me
to try to persuade him.
I tried to explain to her that one simply can’t ask one’s friends for that sort of promise and she sat saying yes from time to time, as if I were making some kind of impression on her. After about half an hour of which, she said, “But I’m sure he’d promise if you asked him,” and I saw that I might as well have been talking Swahili—there are times when I could shake her.