The Sibyl in Her Grave (25 page)

“And so,” said Ragwort, “you never saw her again?”

“Well, only once, and I’m afraid I wished I hadn’t. I suppose it was mostly curiosity, but—well, after a while it occurred to me that Aunt Izzie was the only close relative I had left and she’d been quite nice to me and I ought to find out if she were starving or anything. So I rang her up and suggested I might come and see her. She seemed quite keen on the idea, and down I went to Parsons Haver.

“She’d sent Daphne out for the evening and not told her I was coming—she seemed to think that Daphne would be jealous if she knew. So there were just the two of us, plus a rather disagreeable vulture, drinking champagne and trying to pretend this was just like the old days. Which of course it wasn’t. She’d put on a lot of weight and her clothes were rather dirty and her stories were all about people who didn’t matter anymore. The horrible thing was that she seemed to have got so much more like Cousin Dolly—not just the way she looked but the way she talked. She’d decided that she had psychic powers as well and she obviously took it all seriously. It was as if, when Dolly died, Izzie had somehow inherited her personality.”

“Still,” said Julia, “at least you didn’t think she was going to eat you?”

“Well, no, I didn’t exactly think that, but—well, you see, she’d always sort of flirted with me a bit—it didn’t mean anything, it was a kind of game. And she was still doing it, but somehow I felt it wasn’t quite a game anymore—she seemed to keep wanting to touch me. And I didn’t want her to.

“Still, I did my best to be amusing and she evidently enjoyed the evening and expected me to come back again. I was still wondering how long I could leave it without hurting her feelings when I saw that she’d died—Daphne didn’t write to me, I saw it in the newspaper. Poor Aunt Izzie, I’m afraid I felt rather relieved. So I thought the least I could do was go to her funeral.

“I didn’t particularly think about what I’d say to Daphne—I suppose I meant to go up to her at some point and say, ‘Hello, I’m your cousin Terry’ But for some reason she seemed to take an instant dislike to me—she was simply radiating hostility all through
the service. I don’t know why—it can’t have been that she recognised me, I’d changed far too much. So I thought the best thing would be to slip away quietly. But then there was this clergyman, you see, with a face like an eagle and the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard, and I—” He sighed. “Silly, isn’t it?

“When it was all over, he came over to talk to me and asked who I was. I’d just begun to tell him when I realised that Daphne was only a few feet away, still oozing hostility from every pore, and if I said ‘Terry Carver’ she’d know I was her cousin and everything would be spoilt. So I said my name was Arkwright—I’d seen it on one of the tombstones. As I say, it was just an impulse—I’m sorry if it makes things difficult.”

“We can all understand,” said Ragwort magnanimously, “that sometimes on the spur of the moment one does things one afterwards regrets. But surely, once you and the Reverend Maurice were on terms of friendship, you could have explained the position?”

“You’re perfectly right, Desmond, as of course you always are—that’s what I ought to have done. But you see, I rather enjoyed being Derek Arkwright. I somehow thought of him as someone slightly different from me—someone travelling light, with no past, no responsibilities, no bookcases to make, no VAT forms to fill in. It was rather delicious. And I felt that it was part of my—what was that discreet phrase of yours?—my being on terms of friendship with Maurice. I felt that as long as I was Derek I could keep it as something secret and special, but if I turned back into Terry I’d somehow be breaking the spell. And as it turned out, I was absolutely right.

“Poor Maurice, I didn’t really mean to mislead him
about the kind of person I was. I never told him anything about myself that wasn’t true—I just didn’t tell him very much at all. But he must have built up some extraordinary fantasy about me as someone terribly glamorous and interesting—God knows exactly what. And when he found out that I was just an ordinary, boring sort of chap doing an ordinary boring sort of job, he felt terribly hurt and disillusioned.”

“My dear Terry,” said Julia, “no one could conceivably think you either ordinary or boring.”

“Your profession is one,” said Ragwort, “which a clergyman should hold in particular esteem. And Benjamin thinks you one of the finest craftsmen in London.”

The young man shrugged his shoulders and smiled his satirical smile.

“It was my impression,” I said, “that the Reverend Maurice never knew any more about you than you had told him yourself. How did his disillusionment come about?”

“I don’t know—I just know that it happened. I mean, I don’t know who told him about me or what they said exactly. We’d been away on holiday together and everything was marvellous—at least I thought it was. I did have a few anxious moments, because it turned out that Selena was staying at the house opposite. I was afraid we might run into her in one of the cafés or somewhere and she’d say, ‘Hello, Terry, why aren’t you working on bookcases?’ before I had a chance to ask her not to.”

“Yes,” said Ragwort. “Yes, I dare say she would have said that.”

“But she wasn’t there very long and she seemed to be working the whole time, so it didn’t happen. And the
weekend after we got back to England I went and stayed with Maurice again and everything was still marvellous, or at least I still thought it was. I was beginning to feel quite serious and long-term about things. And then two days later I had a letter from him—it was the only one he ever sent me. It was a terrible letter, all about me deceiving him and not being the person he thought I was—he practically made it sound as if I’d done something criminal.”

“But he didn’t make any specific accusation?”

“No, I suppose not—but he made it clear enough that he didn’t want to see me again.”

“He made no mention of the Virgil frontispiece?”

“No,” said the young man, with every appearance of bewilderment. “Why should he mention that?”

As frequently happens when the heart’s affections are engaged, there seemed to have been a misunderstanding: Terry until now had known nothing of the theft of the frontispiece.

Nor was he able, after hearing Julia’s account of the matter, to suggest any explanation for its disappearance. He had a perfectly clear recollection of the last evening he had spent at the Vicarage: he remembered seeing Maurice put it back in the drawer where it was usually kept.

“And I can’t be mixing it up with another evening, because I remember him putting the photographs in the same drawer—the ones he’d taken while we were on holiday—and we’d only collected them that day. And there was no one else in the house, so if the frontispiece was missing next morning—poor Maurice, no wonder he was upset with me. And I’ve no idea how it can have happened—I only know I didn’t take it.”

“It’s extraordinary,” said Julia. “But there must be some explanation.”

“Julia dear, from everyone’s point of view except mine, the explanation is perfectly simple—I took the frontispiece and now I’m lying about it.”

The Leonardo smile was infinitely disarming.

“I DON’T SUPPOSE,”
said Selena wistfully, “that you felt able, at any stage of this conversation, to allude to the bookcase question?”

“Just sort of casually,” said Cantrip. “You know, like saying you couldn’t advise Terry about his case because you couldn’t find the right books and why you couldn’t find them was because all our books are in chaos and why they’re in chaos is that we haven’t got any bookcases to put them in.”

In the coffeehouse on the following morning, Ragwort’s account of our meeting with the young carpenter was proving something of a disappointment to an audience who had evidently had high hopes of it: there was in the air a sense of not quite unspoken reproach.

“One must remember,” said Julia, “that the making of bookcases is a creative process, similar to painting a picture or writing a poem. You can’t expect Terry to work on it when he’s still so upset about Maurice.”

“Quite so,” said Ragwort. “And I’m afraid the recovery of his usual spirits is being impeded by this unpleasantness about the will. Until it’s resolved, I doubt very
much whether he will be able to concentrate properly on our bookcases.”

“But Ragwort,” said Selena, turning pale, “contested probate proceedings might take years.”

“He assured us,” said Ragwort, “that the will was not made in his presence and indeed that until about two weeks ago he had no idea of its provisions. I would hope to persuade the executors, in these circumstances, that any suggestion of undue influence is manifestly absurd and they can safely disregard it, without the expense and delay of a full-scale probate action.”

“Right,” said Cantrip. “And I suppose they’re professional executors, so before they decide if they can or not they’ll spend two years looking up their insurance policies and getting Counsel’s opinion from everyone in sight and in the meantime we still won’t have any bookcases. No, what we’ve got to do is shut up this Daphne bird. So what you’ve got to do, young Larwood, is write and tell her she’s talking codswallop and if she doesn’t stop she’ll get put in prison for slander.”

“I have a feeling,” said Julia apologetically, “that it might not be entirely proper for me to write to her in quite those terms. I’m proposing to tell her that Derek Arkwright turns out to be someone I know and that means I can’t advise on the matter, even on an informal basis. Moreover, I think that you underestimate the difficulty of making Daphne shut up about anything—she’s the sort of girl who tends, once started, to go on. And indeed on. I had a letter this morning from my aunt which you may all find instructive.”