The Sibyl in Her Grave (7 page)
Read The Sibyl in Her Grave Online
Authors: Sarah Caudwell
“Dear me,” said Selena, turning her wineglass between her fingers, “it almost sounds as if she thought—” “She can’t really be suggesting—” said Ragwort.
“She thinks there’s something fishy about it,” said Cantrip, his eyes brightening with innocent enthusiasm at the thought of homicide. “The way she sees it, when you’re rich enough to have a Mercedes, you leave the dirty work to someone else. So if you suddenly start offering to help with the washing up, it’s a definite sign of fishiness. Bet you anything she’s right.”
“On the other hand,” said Selena, “isn’t it just possible that it was simply an act of politeness?”
“Though perhaps,” said Ragwort, “a rather officious one. One doesn’t normally offer to do the washing up if one’s simply been having drinks with someone—one would think they might feel embarrassed if they hadn’t tidied the kitchen. It’s different, of course, if they’re family, or if one’s staying the night.”
“Right,” said Cantrip. “So he didn’t do it to be polite, he did it because Isabella’s had cyanide in the bottom.”
“Surely not cyanide?” said Julia. “According to all that I have read on the subject—which I may say includes the complete works of the late Dame Agatha Christie and other almost equally distinguished authorities—the effect of cyanide is virtually instantaneous. When Maurice took Daphne home, the black Mercedes had already gone and Isabella was still well enough to shout out to Daphne that she didn’t want her for anything.”
“Oh, all right then,” said Cantrip, “arsenic or something—there are lots of poisons that take an hour or two to work. So at some stage in his chat with Isabella he slips whatever it is into her glass and sticks around until she’s finished drinking it. Then he does his New Man bit and washes up the glasses before he goes. He drives off, and Daphne and the Reverend get back ten minutes later, before whatever it is has started to work.”
“I defer,” said Selena, “to those who have read more
widely than I have on the subject, but isn’t it considered usual for murderers to have some sort of motive?”
“Certainly,” said Julia. “But Isabella sounds like the sort of woman practically everyone wants to murder.”
“But not the man in the black Mercedes. He was a regular client and presumably valued her advice. Why should a satisfied client want to murder his fortuneteller?”
“Lots of reasons,” said Cantrip. “I expect she told him it was a good day for travel and romance and he’d got stuck in traffic on the M21 and had a blazing row with his bird. So he got miffed and poisoned her. Which is good, because now you can do your ace detective bit, Hilary, and unmask the villain and put it all in a book. ‘The Case of the Vulture, the Vicar and the Virgin’ is what you want to call it, and you’d better make this Daphne bird a gorgeous-looking blonde. Then you’ll make pots of money out of it and you can take us out to dinner.”
“My dear Cantrip,” I said, “alluring though these prospects are, I fear I must disappoint you. Julia’s aunt Regina is without question a shrewd and observant woman, but I think that in the present case she is being unduly fanciful. There are many possible explanations, all more commonplace and therefore more probable than murder, for the absence of unwashed glasses. I see no reason to doubt that Isabella died, as most people do, from perfectly natural causes.”
As I have already admitted to my readers, during my investigation of these events I was on several occasions entirely mistaken.
DEL COMINO—Isabella, suddenly on 22nd June at her home in Sussex. A wonderful and caring person whose great gifts as a healer and teacher were devoted to helping others. Her wisdom and guidance will be missed above all by her niece, Daphne, who will humbly but proudly strive to continue her work. Funeral 12 noon on Friday, 25th June, at St. Ethel’s Church, Parsons Haver.
[Deaths column of the
Times
]
IT WAS A FRIDAY
suitable to funerals, the sky sombre with the threat of unseasonable rain and an unpleasant clamminess in the air. Rather earlier than usual—a document crucial to my researches had been capriciously removed to Kew—I left the Public Record Office and made my way to the coffeehouse at the top of Chancery Lane, expecting it to be some time before I was joined there by any of my friends.
Soon afterwards, however, Selena appeared and began to talk about men, expressing herself on that subject with unusual bitterness. Thinking that this must signify
some unhappy rift in her relationship with my young friend and colleague Sebastian Verity, the customary companion of her idler moments, I enquired with some concern what he had done to displease her.
“When I speak of men,” said Selena, “I do not mean Sebastian. Sebastian is not a man in the sense in which I am at present using that term—that is to say, he is not a man who undertakes any kind of building work. Three weeks ago I arranged to have a site meeting at nine-thirty this morning with the carpenter, the plumber and the electrician, to work out exactly what was going to be done when and how they were all going to fit in together. Since when, rather than cancel it, I’ve turned down a very nice little brief in the Companies Court. And now the plumber’s rung up to say that his van’s broken down and he can’t be here before midday. And the electrician’s rung up to say that he has an emergency in High Barnet and can’t be here until the afternoon. And the carpenter’s rung up to say that he has a family bereavement and can’t be here at all. Hilary, do you think men in the building trade always behave like this?”
“No, no,” I said soothingly. “I’m sure it’s most unusual.” What was unusual, from all I had ever heard of such matters, was not their failure to arrive but their telephoning to give notice of it; I did not think it constructive to mention this.
“Still, I suppose there’s a bright side. Sir Robert Renfrew’s suddenly decided he wants another conference—he’s coming round at eleven-thirty At least I don’t have to worry about him being showered with carpenters.” She gave a small sigh, as if nonetheless expecting the conference to present her with further troubles.
I asked if Sir Robert was still expecting her to advise him on the choice of his successor.
“I’m afraid so. His latest idea is that if I meet the two directors concerned I’ll somehow be able to tell which of them is the insider dealer. He’s bringing them along so that I can have a look at them. They don’t know that’s why, of course—ostensibly I’m advising on the documents for the next takeover.”
“It’s gratifying, at least, that he has such faith in your judgment.”
“Well, it would be if it weren’t utterly absurd—I’m beginning to feel like the girl in the fairy story who was expected to spin straw into gold.”
Julia arrived: she had received a further letter from her aunt.
24 High Street
Parsons Haver
West Sussex
Thursday, 24th June
Dear Julia,
I had a rather strange conversation with Ricky yesterday, and he told me why he advised us to buy those shares you were interested in—this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write to you about it. I seem to have spent as much time on Isabella’s funeral as if she’d been my dearest friend—which, as you know, she wasn’t.
Maurice is in rather the same position—he’s been spending as much time on it as if she’d been his most devout parishioner, which she also wasn’t. Still, it does make things a bit easier that he’s going to conduct the service, and that it’s going to be at
St. Ethel’s. I’d have expected her to want Stonehenge, with the Archdruid presiding, but Daphne seems quite sure she’d have wanted Maurice to do it—”She always said you were her adversary, Father Dulcimer, but an honourable adversary and a true priest.” Oh dear, poor Maurice.
He seems at the moment to be the only person who can deal with Daphne—she’s still very upset, poor girl. Understandably, of course, as Isabella was all she had, even if—well, never mind. I brought her back here with me on Tuesday morning and Mrs. Tyrrell fed her on tea and chocolate cake while I rang the undertakers and so on, but it was only when Maurice arrived that she began to calm down at all. I dare say Isabella would have seen this as a sign of his “great spiritual authority.”
He asked Daphne the name of her aunt’s solicitor—a Mr. Godwin, living in London—and rang him up and told him what had happened. It seems that Isabella made a will about two years ago, soon after she moved here, and Mr. Godwin is appointed the executor—it doesn’t say anything about funeral arrangements, except that she wanted to be buried rather than cremated. Mr. Godwin said he couldn’t come down for the funeral, but he’d be getting in touch with Daphne in due course.
He was rather cagey about the provisions of the will, but Maurice thought it sounded as if Daphne didn’t have much to worry about financially—it sets up some kind of trust and she’ll get the income from the whole estate. She doesn’t have much for immediate living expenses—just sixty pounds or so that Isabella had in her handbag—but
Maurice has had a word with Mr. Iqbal at the supermarket, and she can go on using Isabella’s account there for the next three or four weeks, until it’s all sorted out.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else to be personally notified of Isabella’s death—she’d apparently never been married, though the name she was born with turns out to have been Isabel Cummings. Her only sister died a year or two ago. But Daphne was very anxious to have it announced in all the newspapers, national as well as local, and wanted Maurice to help her with getting the wording right.
So he told her to write out what she wanted to say and said he’d come back later and look it over. I settled her down in the garden, with a notepad and a couple of ballpoint pens, and left her to work on it.
After three hours or so she came back into the house, with ink all over her face from chewing on the ballpoint, and showed me what she’d written. It ran to about a dozen foolscap pages—at a guess, roughly twice what the
Times
would allow for a senior statesman or Nobel Prize winner. There wasn’t much in the way of factual detail—when Isabella was born, or where she’d lived, or what she’d actually done that was at all remarkable—but a great deal about what a wonderful, caring person she’d been, and a wide selection of her views on life, death, and the nature of the universe.
I felt I had to say that it was on the long side.
Tears of indignation. Daphne said that Aunt Isabella had been a wonderful person, and she ought to have a proper obituary—meaning, I gather, a full
page in the
Times
. Aunt Isabella would have
wanted
a proper obituary, not a stupid little two-line notice, as if she were just anybody, and if she couldn’t have one it wasn’t fair.
At this stage, luckily, Maurice came back. I must say, he coped splendidly. Truly gifted and remarkable people, he said, very seldom get the recognition they deserve in their own time. Some of the greatest thinkers and prophets, including Socrates and the founder of the Christian Church, would quite possibly not have been given a full-page obituary in the
Times
. The
Times
—and all the other newspapers, even the
Guardian
—were essentially Establishment minded and conservative in their thinking, and couldn’t be expected to appreciate someone whose ideas leapt over the traditional boundaries. After about an hour of this, Daphne agreed to cut down what she’d written to a length which could be inserted at reasonable cost in the deaths column.
She stayed here all day and Griselda joined us for supper and to offer condolences. I’m afraid that by the time we’d finished I was rather longing to have the house to myself again, but it seemed wretched for Daphne to have to go back and spend the night on her own at the Rectory. The undertakers had removed the body, of course, but even so—I felt I had to ask if she’d like to sleep in the spare bedroom.
“Oh no,” she said, “I have to stay at the Rectory. If Aunt Isabella’s dead, I’m the Custodian.”
“You could go and put out food for the birds,” I said, “and then come back here.”
“Not of the birds,” she said, looking very anxious and solemn. “Of the Book. I’m the Custodian of the Book.”
So I didn’t feel I had to argue any more about it. Griselda very kindly walked back to the Rectory with her, and I went off to bed expecting to go straight to sleep.
But as you know I didn’t, and instead sat up writing you a ridiculous letter all about dirty glasses—please take no notice, it was simply because I was tired.
I woke up next morning worrying about something completely different—who was going to give the eulogy at Isabella’s funeral? You know the kind of thing I mean—a little speech about nice things she’d done and how everyone would miss her.
What really worried me was that if there was no one else Daphne might expect me to do it, and I’d have to say no. It’s all very well for Maurice—clergymen have to get used to saying things they don’t mean, just like lawyers—but I simply didn’t think I could do it.
And then I thought of Ricky. It seemed like rather a brain wave, because he’d known her longer than anyone else in Haver and was actually a friend of hers. So I rang Maurice and asked him to sound out Ricky to make sure he’d say yes if Daphne asked him to do it. Maurice said it would be better if I did the sounding out—he’d already talked to Ricky and felt that he’d like it if I got in touch.
So I rang Ricky and explained that I was helping Daphne with the funeral arrangements and there were one or two things it would be nice to
discuss with him. I was really rather glad to have a reason for ringing him—I thought he might be feeling upset about Isabella and want someone to talk to, and I wouldn’t have liked him to feel he couldn’t come round and see me just because I’d been a bit cross with him. On the other hand, not being sure exactly what terms he’d been on with her, I couldn’t very well offer anything like formal condolences.
He came round bringing a bottle of Sancerre, and we sat out in the garden drinking it. I still didn’t quite know what to say about Isabella. In the end, I thought that the best thing was simply to begin by talking about the funeral arrangements, and leave it to him to say how sad he was she was dead, or whatever he wanted to say. Instead of that, he suddenly interrupted me, and said, “Reg—about those shares you thought I told her about.”
Of course I told him not to be silly—it was all water under the bridge and there was no need to mention it.
“No,” he said. “No, I want to explain—I didn’t tell Isabella about those shares.”
“Now really, Ricky,” I said, almost beginning to feel a bit impatient, because after all no one else could have done.
“I didn’t tell her about them,” said Ricky. “She told me.”
Not long after she moved here, and she and Ricky renewed their acquaintance, she’d said that she’d like to give him a present—he was a friend, and she liked to give presents to her friends. The present was simply a free prediction—the
shareholders in a particular company were going to have something to celebrate within the next month—he could make as much or as little of it as he liked.
Well, Ricky couldn’t see any reason for the shares to go up, but so that she wouldn’t be offended he bought a few. A couple of weeks later there was a takeover bid, and they doubled in value almost overnight. By the time Maurice and Griselda and I asked him for his advice, this had happened three or four times and he thought that the best thing he could do for us was to give us the benefit of Isabella’s predictions.
“But look here,” I said. “You don’t actually believe that Isabella could foretell the future?” From the way he’d told me the story, it seemed to be the only explanation.
“Oh,” said Ricky, “anyone can foretell the future, if their information’s good enough.”
According to Ricky, Isabella hadn’t always been a fortune-teller. In her younger days, she was a hostess at a London nightclub which was popular at that time with businessmen and stockbrokers and so on. In the course of her conversations with customers—well yes, Julia, I think that probably is a slightly expurgated version—she learnt a great deal about what was going on in financial circles, including a lot of things that no one was supposed to know were going on and some things that weren’t supposed to be going on at all. That, in Ricky’s view, was the basis of her success as a fortuneteller.
I was surprised, if her information was as reliable as that, that she hadn’t simply used it to make money on the stock market, instead of
bothering with the fortune-telling business. But she seems to have had some kind of superstition about that—she thought it would be unlucky for her to invest in shares herself, and she never did.
“But Ricky,” I said, “all this must have been at least twenty or thirty years ago. How could she still go on getting information?”
“Information’s like money,” said Ricky. “Once you’ve got it, you can use it to get more. You can buy one secret by keeping another. ‘I’m keeping your secret because you’re my friend—prove you’re my friend by telling me—’ Well, whatever it is you want.”
I thought this was all beginning to sound rather unpleasant—almost as if Isabella had been a professional blackmailer.
“Yes,” said Ricky. “That’s right. That’s what she was. There must be quite a number of people who aren’t sorry she’s dead—as a matter of fact, I’m one of them. I’ve had a pretty rotten two years of it, Reg.”
I didn’t really feel, after this, that I could ask him to deliver the eulogy.
