The Sibyl in Her Grave (16 page)

“I was in Cannes for five days, and the sun shone on every one of them, from dawn until dusk. The sky was blue and the sea was even bluer. There were boats bobbing round in the bay that I was longing to sail in and restaurants all round it that I was longing to eat in. And I was cooped up in the villa, drafting offer documents from eight in the morning until nearly midnight and eating sandwiches because we didn’t have time for proper meals. I admit that we were working outdoors, on a rather attractive roof terrace, and the sandwiches, as sandwiches go, were excellent. Even so—”

We agreed that in the circumstances it would have been more tactful of it to have rained continuously.

Her second complaint concerned what might be called the social aspect.

“If you’re with two men who both want the same job and a third who’s going to decide which gets it, the atmosphere tends to get rather strained. And you see, there wasn’t anyone else there to dilute the tension. My instructing solicitor was on holiday in Cornwall and thought that as I was there to deal with the legal side it was quite enough if he kept in touch by telephone. Lady Renfrew doesn’t enjoy business meetings and had gone to stay with friends in Switzerland until it was all over. Katharine Tavistock was there, of course, to deal with the word processing and communications and so forth—she’s the only one of them who actually understands how to operate their computer system—but she hardly counts as an outsider. The only other people at the villa were the housekeeper and her husband, who’s the chauffeur and general handyman.”

Her third complaint concerned the accommodation.

“It sounds ungrateful, but I found it a little awkward being a guest in my client’s villa. It was very luxurious, of course, but in that situation it’s difficult to tell where one’s professional responsibilities end and one’s social obligations begin. Sir Robert turned out to expect rather more of me than is generally required of Counsel in a professional capacity.”

“My dear Selena,” said Ragwort, preparing to be deeply shocked, “you surely don’t mean—”

“No, no, of course not, Ragwort, nothing of that kind at all. What I mean is that he wanted me to act as a spy.”

This was the first major takeover with which Renfrews’ had been concerned since Sir Robert had become aware of the insider-dealing problem: it would represent, he believed, an irresistible temptation to the insider dealer and thus an ideal opportunity to identify
him. Neither Albany nor Bolton had known before arriving at the villa which company was the target of the proposed takeover; by the time they left, the information would be public knowledge: in order to profit by it, they would have to communicate with their brokers during the period of their stay there. Sir Robert was satisfied that any attempt to do so from the villa itself would be detected: Miss Tavistock was in charge of the communication systems and all telephone calls were automatically recorded.

“People have mobiles,” said Cantrip.

“Not the directors of Renfrews’—Sir Robert thinks they’re ungentlemanly.”

Sir Robert was satisfied that if either Bolton or Albany wished to instruct a broker he would go outside the villa and telephone from elsewhere. This, he accepted, he could not prevent them from doing: not even the most high-handed of chairmen could place his codirectors under house arrest. They were in Cannes, however, for work, not pleasure, and therefore unlikely to go out often. When they did, he was relying on Selena and Miss Tavistock—the only people, he said, whom he could completely trust—to ensure that they would be accompanied or discreetly followed.

“Some people have all the luck,” said Cantrip. “None of my clients ever ask me to spy on anyone.”

“Cantrip means,” said Ragwort, “that we all understand what an invidious and embarrassing position you were placed in.”

Selena had not felt it possible to refuse. Quite apart from the fact that Sir Robert was her most valued client, she had felt sorry for him. It was clear that he had been greatly distressed by the whole insider-dealing business, to an extent which she thought was even affecting his
health: he seemed to her to be looking far less fit than he had done a few months before.

She had considered again whether she should mention to him the part we believed Isabella to have played in the affair: if our conclusions were right, it seemed likely that there would be no more incidents of insider dealing and the surveillance of Albany and Bolton was doomed to failure. She still believed, however, that to tell him about Isabella would aggravate rather than alleviate his distress.

“Besides, suppose we’d turned out to be completely wrong? Or suppose whichever one it was decided to do some insider-dealing for his own benefit, instead of Isabelle’s? If I’d told him there couldn’t be another insider-dealing incident, and then after all there had been, it would have been rather embarrassing. So I promised I’d do what I could to help with his surveillance plan.”

For the first three days she had not been called on to give effect to her promise. They had all been fully occupied with the preparation of the documents relating to the takeover and no one had left the villa.

“You see, all the drafting took about three times as long as it needed to, because Edgar was trying to score points. As Geoffrey is the technical expert and all the documents were fairly technical, we’d begin with Geoffrey explaining what they wanted to do and then I’d draft a document that did it. And then Edgar would suggest amendments, just to show Sir Robert that he understood the technicalities after all. Which in fact he didn’t, so then I had to explain tactfully why his amendments would make nonsense of the whole document. It was all rather time-consuming.”

On Wednesday evening, however, when they had finished their labours relatively early, Geoffrey Bolton had
said that he felt like going for a stroll along the Croisette, which he referred to as the Crozzit.

“Edgar said it was called the Kwuzzit, which I didn’t think actually sounded much better, but Edgar was always trying to score points on the basis that he knew French and Geoffrey didn’t.”

Sir Robert had at once suggested that Selena should go too, saying that she had been shamefully overworked and he was sure she would enjoy a stroll around Cannes if she had someone to escort her. Even the bluntest of Lancastrians could hardly have said that he would prefer solitude; nor could Selena, under Sir Robert’s pleading eye and remembering her promise to him, decline Geoffrey Bolton’s invitation to keep him company. They had accordingly walked down towards the Casino and drunk liqueurs in a pavement café looking out across the bay.

“Right,” said Cantrip. “So did you manage to get the conversation round to where you could just sort of casually mention Parsons Haver?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I remembered the difficulty you had had in introducing the subject convincingly, and I didn’t feel that I would succeed any better. Besides, I wasn’t really trying to find out anything from him—I was more worried that I might tell him something that he wasn’t supposed to know. You see, he was obviously slightly puzzled about what had happened. He said—well, he said that Sir Robert had always been rather a Puritan and it wasn’t like him to send one of his directors for a walk in the moonlight with an attractive woman. Or words to that effect.”

By candlelight, it was difficult to be certain that she blushed; my impression was that she did.

“So he was wondering, he said, what the old boy was
up to. I said that as Geoffrey was a simple innocent Lancastrian in a wicked foreign city Sir Robert probably thought he needed someone to keep him out of trouble. And he laughed. And then he said something about the Chairman being ‘proper mithered abaht summat’ and that he wished he knew what it was. I said that a man in Sir Robert’s position no doubt had a number of important matters to worry about. And he laughed again and said, ‘Ah, well, lass, if tha knows nowt, tha knows nowt, and if tha knows owt, likely tha’ll tell nowt, so I’ll not vex thee wi’ asking.’ So we talked of other things.”

It would somehow have seemed indiscreet to seek particulars. Whatever the subject of the conversation, she had learnt nothing more of Geoffrey Bolton’s past or private life than she already knew. She could say with confidence, however, that while outside the villa he had made no attempt to communicate with his stockbroker.

In their absence, an unpleasant scene had taken place between the Chairman and Edgar Albany. Selena heard of it on the following day from Miss Tavistock, who was too angry with Edgar to be unduly discreet about it. Edgar, apparently, had tried to persuade Sir Robert that he ought not to delay any longer before announcing the date of his retirement and the appointment of his successor. It was bad for the bank, he said, for people not to know when the next Chairman was going to take office and whether he was going to be someone with a more or less suitable background or a jumped-up little bank clerk from nowhere. Sir Robert had replied that he was not yet ready to make a decision; Albany had lost his temper and become extremely offensive. His behaviour had so much distressed Sir Robert that he had become quite unwell.

None of the party left the villa again before midday
on Friday, when the bid became public. There had been no significant alteration in the price of the shares. On Friday evening the Chairman took them all out to dinner to celebrate the successful completion of their task.

“We went to a Moroccan restaurant, quite near the villa. It was a very good restaurant—the
moules marinières
were simply delicious.” Selena spoke wistfully, as if the excellence of the mussel soup were somehow a matter for regret. I assumed that she was merely wishing that she could have eaten more of them.

“Well,” said Julia, “at least you had one evening devoted entirely to pleasure.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Selena, “describe it quite like that.”

“Oh dear,” said Julia. “How
would you
describe it?”

“Well, at the beginning I’d have described it as rather sad. You see, I thought Sir Robert had been rather looking forward to having a celebration dinner—his dinner jacket smelt of mothballs, so it obviously wasn’t the kind of thing he did very often when he was in Cannes. But he’d somehow caught one of those horrible summer colds that make one feel utterly miserable and he wasn’t well enough to enjoy it. He’d completely lost his appetite and his sense of taste.”

Julia, a notoriously sentimental woman, was visibly moved by the pathos of the old gentleman’s disappointment.

“And then it also became embarrassing, because Edgar started making unpleasant remarks about Geoffrey never introducing his wife to anyone at Renfrews’. Remarks like ‘I say, old boy, I hope you haven’t made her think we’re all frightful snobs and look down on anyone who isn’t from the same social background? You know we’re not like that, old boy, you must know, if anyone does.’ I suppose he was hoping
that Geoffrey would lose his temper. But Geoffrey just sat and smiled, and said ‘Ah, she’s a good lass, my wife, but she’d not feel at home in company like this.’ ”

“Dear me,” said Ragwort. “Can it be that the relationship between the two directors is not one of friendly rivalry based on deep mutual respect?”

“No, it’s one of bitter hostility based on deep mutual dislike. Or rather—Geoffrey deeply dislikes Edgar. Edgar, I think actually hates Geoffrey. Geoffrey’s threatening to take something, you see, that Edgar’s always looked on as his by right—that is to say, the chairmanship of Renfrews’ after Sir Robert retires.”

“It doesn’t sound,” said Julia, “as if having them at the same table would be conducive to an agreeable dinner party. One begins to see why you say that it wasn’t an evening of unmixed pleasure.”

“After that it got worse—quite considerably worse. Sir Robert suddenly seemed to get terribly angry about something—he went very red in the face and began shouting, talking about disloyalty and betrayal and not being able to trust anyone. He sounded as if he were drunk, but I knew he couldn’t possibly be. We’d all had a glass of champagne on the roof terrace before we left the villa, but in the restaurant he’d hardly touched his wine—he was drinking mineral water. For a minute or two we all tried to pretend that nothing odd was happening, but then Katharine said, ‘Sir Robert, you’re not well—let me take you home.’ And he stood up and then he collapsed—he seemed to be having some kind of convulsions.”

At the hospital to which Sir Robert was taken he had been diagnosed as suffering from food poisoning. The doctors had at first had grave doubts of his survival and
Lady Renfrew had been summoned urgently from Switzerland. Anxiety on his behalf had somewhat overshadowed Selena’s enjoyment of her weekend in Paris. He had now, however, been pronounced out of danger.

“Poor old chap,” said Cantrip. “What rotten luck—he must have got a dodgy mussel.”

“Yes,” said Selena, turning her wineglass between her fingers. “Yes, that’s what everyone seems to assume. But the trouble is—it’s true he ordered the
moules marinières
for his first course, we all did. But the trouble is—I was sitting next to him and I particularly noticed—he didn’t actually eat any of them, or even a spoonful of the soup they were in. He took them out of their shells and then just put them back in the soup, so that the waiters wouldn’t notice he wasn’t eating. That’s when he told me that he’d lost his appetite and I began to feel so sorry for him. And the second course hadn’t been served by the time he was taken ill. So as far as I can see, he hadn’t actually eaten anything since the lunchtime sandwiches at the villa. It does seem rather bad luck to get food poisoning when one hasn’t eaten any food.”

She fell silent, frowning slightly at her wineglass. It required little skill in telepathy to guess the thought that troubled her: Ricky Farnham had been some thousands of miles away from the scene of Sir Robert’s mysterious attack; the man in the black Mercedes had been at the same dinner table.

Of the Reverend Maurice there was still no news. The only further communication received from Parsons Haver during the month of September was a letter from Griselda.