“A case about a vulture?”
“No, no, about a pet tortoise, which the testator had evidently held in high esteem and wished to make provision for. Ragwort represented the trustees of the will and Selena represented the residuary beneficiary.”
“Who represented the tortoise?”
“No one—this placed it, I’m afraid, at something of a disadvantage. So with the benefit of their advice I was able to send my aunt a comprehensive account of the current law relating to testamentary dispositions for the benefit of animals, with particular reference to the provisions of Section 106 of the Settled Land Act. The gist of it was that if Daphne wanted to challenge the will she’d have to go to the Court of Appeal, if not the House of Lords, and the costs of the action would be prohibitive.”
“And you were unable, I suppose, to suggest any other solution?”
“On the contrary,” said Julia with some degree of indignation. “We suggested a perfectly sensible and practical alternative involving almost no expense at all. The will provided, you see, that Daphne was to have the income of the estate during her lifetime or until she ceased to live at the Rectory and provide a home there for Roderigo and the ravens.”
“Yes,” I said, “I gathered that.”
“And subject to that, everything went to Isabella’s sister, Marjorie, or if Marjorie predeceased Isabella, to Marjorie’s child or children. Which meant that Daphne and Marjorie, or Marjorie’s children, were together absolutely entitled to the whole estate and if they agreed to divide it up between them there was nothing Isabella, or indeed the vulture, could do to stop them. So we suggested that Daphne should approach Marjorie or her children with a view to doing a deal—selling the house and sharing the proceeds and putting the vulture in the care of the community.” She sighed. “But you know what beneficiaries are like.”
The drilling began again with redoubled vigour; I resumed my reading.
24 High Street
Parsons Haver
West Sussex
Saturday, 7th August
Dear Julia,
Thank you for all those interesting stories about people leaving money to cats and donkeys—I’m afraid I must have put you to more trouble than I realised, and as it turns out completely wasted.
Maurice has explained your suggestion to Daphne, about coming to some sensible arrangement to divide up the estate, and Daphne says she’d rather starve. She’d rather beg. She’d rather go on the streets. (This isn’t a very practical idea—there’s not much scope for that sort of thing in Parsons Haver, and even if there were I frankly don’t think it’s something she’d have a talent for.)
Isabella’s sister Marjorie died a year or two ago, leaving one son. Isabella’s sister, according to Daphne, was an unkind and horrible person and hadn’t been to Daphne’s mother’s funeral (so Daphne didn’t go to hers) and hadn’t spoken to Isabella for nearly fifteen years. So it obviously follows that her son is also an unkind and horrible person and Daphne doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. And anyway, there can be no question of dividing up the estate, because Aunt Isabella wanted her to stay at the Rectory and keep the birds there and she could never even think of betraying Aunt Isabella’s trust in her.
Naturally, Julia, I think it’s very proper for a niece to regard her aunt’s wishes as sacred, but in the present case it simply isn’t practical. What is Daphne to live on?
She seems to imagine that everything will go on just as it did when Isabella was alive, and refuses to understand that it can’t—they were living on the income from the fortune-telling business, which seems to have been quite profitable, and an annuity Isabella had bought which ended on her death. (How like Isabella!) But Daphne doesn’t seem to understand that this means that she has to make some money—she just goes on blaming poor Mr. Iqbal, and saying that he’s insulted her.
“She says he ought to know,” said Maurice, “that she isn’t the kind of person who doesn’t pay their debts.”
“If she hasn’t the money to pay them,” I said, “what other kind can she be?”
“She’s the Custodian,” said Maurice. “The Custodian does not break faith. I wonder, Reg, if I could have a spot more gin?”
Poor Maurice, I’m afraid he’s finding the whole thing rather wearing. You see, it isn’t just her practical problems that she expects him to help her with, it’s her great spiritual problem—can the Custodian go to church? She wants to go to church, so that she can listen to Maurice’s sermons and help him with his important work, but the Custodian must keep faith with the Book, and she doesn’t know if she can do both.
She apparently regards this as the most agonising spiritual dilemma that anyone’s ever had to face since the Temptation in the Wilderness, which makes it perfectly reasonable for her to expect Maurice to spend hours every day discussing it.
The fact is that Maurice isn’t all that keen on having Daphne in his congregation—she’s a little on the intense side for St. Ethel’s—but he feels rather conscience stricken about not wanting her.
“Because after all, Reg, one’s supposed to believe that in the eyes of God every human soul is infinitely precious, and I suppose one’s supposed to believe that He likes them all coming to church, though I’ve never quite understood why, so who am I to say that He wouldn’t be pleased to see Daphne sitting in a pew in St. Ethel’s? I mean, for all I know He’d be thrilled to bits. Anyway, she thinks He would be and if I suggest He wouldn’t she’ll be terribly hurt. So I’ve simply told her that God is very broad-minded nowadays and if she feels it wouldn’t be right for her to go to church He’ll quite understand and do His best to manage without her. But of course that wasn’t the end of it.”
Which with Daphne it wouldn’t be. She isn’t the kind of girl, you see, who asks for one’s advice and then either takes it or doesn’t and leaves one to get on with something else. She’s the kind who asks for one’s advice and looks as if she’s listening to it and comes back next morning to ask for it all over again.
One certainly can’t accuse her of not being grateful to Maurice for the help he’s given her—she’s always saying how kind he’s been and how lucky she is that he’s there to give her spiritual guidance. And she’s always trying, poor girl, to find ways to repay him—she goes round to the Vicarage every day to take his rubbish out to the dustbin and ask if he wants any shopping done and see if she can do anything to make herself useful. The trouble is, though, that Maurice doesn’t really need anyone to do things for him—he has Griselda to help with the garden and Mrs. Tyrrell to clean for him two mornings a week and otherwise he’s quite good at looking after himself.
He came round for supper with me yesterday and we spent nearly the whole evening talking about Daphne’s problems, drinking more gin than was good for us and not getting anywhere. With great difficulty—she evidently thought it beneath the dignity of the Custodian—he’s persuaded her to ask for some money from the Social Security people. He helped her to fill in the forms and they’re supposed to give her enough to keep her from starving. Apart from that, it’s hard to know what to suggest.
I wondered for a while whether perhaps she could go on with the fortune-telling business—if she’s going to go on claiming to be the guardian of some sort of sacred text I thought she might as well make some money out of it. But Maurice isn’t sure it’s something he could encourage—he feels it rather savours of witchcraft.
“And you might think, Reg, that in these ecumenical times that wouldn’t matter much. But the Bishop’s very down on witchcraft, almost as down as he is on ordaining women, and you know how he feels about that.”
Besides, if it was the kind of business that Ricky says it was, it’s out of the question—she couldn’t get information by the same methods as Isabella, and even if she could, of course, it would be very wrong. It’s rather a pity in a way, though, because she actually sometimes seems—
I don’t mean I think that she can see into the future—that would be too ridic
ulous. But some quite sensible people do believe in telepathy, and she does sometimes say things—
Two or three weeks ago in the Newt and Ninepence, Ricky was buying a round of drinks and asked her what she would like. She hesitated a bit and then she said, “Oh well, as you’re getting all that money next week, I’ll have a glass of wine.”
Ricky wasn’t expecting any money, and asked her what she meant. She looked slightly bewildered, as if she didn’t quite know why she’d said it, and said, “I just thought you were going to get some money—for some medicine you’d sold, or something.”
Ricky was most amused by this—rather more noisily, in fact, than was quite kind or polite, and I told him so afterwards—and said he’d never sold medicine to anyone in his life.
But two days later, when he opened the post in the morning, he found he’d got quite a large dividend from a pharmaceutical company he had shares in. Poor Ricky, he was quite shaken—mind you, it serves him right for making fun of poor Daphne.
And then there was the day she came round to give me a box of chocolates, to thank me for helping her with the funeral and so on—very sweet, squishy chocolate creams, actually not at all what I like—it breaks my heart to think of her spending her money on them. Still, she ate several while she was here, so at least she did get some pleasure out of it. Just as she was leaving, she said, “Oh—give all my best to Mrs. Tyrrell. I hope she finds whatever it is she’s lost.”
I said that I didn’t think Mrs. Tyrrell had lost anything—she’d been here that morning, and hadn’t said anything about it. And again Daphne looked rather bewildered, and said, “Oh, I thought she’d lost something quite important—something to do with someone who’s dead.”
And half an hour later there was Mrs. Tyrrell at the door, saying she couldn’t find her ring and wondering if she’d left it here. It’s a very pretty ring and rather valuable—late Victorian, turquoise set in silver—left to her by her grandmother, so naturally she was quite upset. We looked everywhere for it, and I’m glad to say we found it—she must have taken it off when she was cleaning the bathroom, and it had rolled behind the sink.
But the extraordinary thing is that the moment she discovered it was missing must have been almost exactly the same moment that Daphne told me she’d lost something.
Yes, Julia, I know it’s all very trivial and I dare say it’s only coincidence, but I can’t help finding it slightly eerie. Which is why I’m feeling a little bit worried about Maurice, who seems to have disappeared.
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.
8
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.”
The Sibyl in Her Grave Page 9