The Sibyl in Her Grave

by Sarah Caudwell

  A certain despondency fell upon the gathering. If the revival of Terry’s enthusiasm for his work depended on Daphne’s ceasing to make trouble, it seemed likely to be long delayed. Moreover, tolerant as she hoped she was of other people’s little weaknesses, Selena had begun to reflect with some anxiety on the possible disadvantages of employing a carpenter with a tendency to steal antique manuscripts.

  Though Ragwort and Julia both firmly maintained their belief in Terry’s innocence, it soon became apparent that their confidence was founded, in Ragwort’s case, on personal friendship and, in Julia’s, on length of eyelashes. Selena found these arguments unpersuasive.

  I thought it right to say that I also, for less sentimental reasons, did not believe that Terry had stolen the frontispiece.

  “If you can suggest any other explanation of the evidence,” said Selena, “then please do so, Hilary, and we shall all do our utmost to be convinced. Why don’t you believe that Terry stole the frontispiece?”

  “Because I don’t believe,” I said, “that the frontispiece was stolen.”

  “Hilary,” said Selena, “you’re making this rather difficult for us.”

  “I believe that it was not the frontispiece that was stolen, but the photographs. That is to say, the photographs were the object of the theft—the frontispiece was taken only because it was in the same drawer and the thief had no time to sort out what he wanted from what he did not.”

  “The photographs? Do you mean the photographs that the Reverend Maurice had taken on holiday in France? Why on earth should anyone want to steal those?”

  “I rather think,” I said, “because they included one or more photographs of the man in the black Mercedes.”

  They ordered further cups of coffee and indicated that I had their attention.

  “I would invite you,” I said, “to consider a number of significant facts, and to do so with that scrupulous attention to the chronology of events which was always insisted on by the immortal Bentley.” The name of that great progenitor of the art or science of textual criticism carried, I fear, less weight with them than it deserved.

  “The first significant fact is that the Reverend Maurice was the only person in Parsons Haver who had seen and could recognise the man in the black Mercedes—to whom, for the sake of brevity and in accordance with established convention, I shall refer to as X. We know, of course, that X was supplying Isabella with information known only to the directors of Renfrews’ Bank and that he must therefore be either Edgar Albany or Geoffrey Bolton. Remember, however, that the Reverend Maurice did not know that. All he knew about X was what he looked like—he did not know his name, address or profession or anything else which would have enabled him to find X if he wished to do so.”

  “We know all that,” said Cantrip. “Come on, Hilary—how about cutting to the action?”

  “By all means,” I said. “Forgive me if I have trespassed unduly on your patience. The position, then, was as I have described it until September of last year, when a very significant event occurred: the Reverend Maurice went to France on holiday and while there saw and recognised X.”

  “Hang on a minute,” said Cantrip. “Is that just a guess, or have you found out something you haven’t told us about? Because if you have it’s cheating and you don’t get points for it in the ace detective stakes.”

  “My dear Cantrip,” I said, “I assure you that I have no more information than you do on the subject. When I say, however, that while on holiday the Reverend Maurice saw and recognised X, that is so far from mere conjecture as to be a virtual certainty. We now know, which we did not at the time, that he was a guest at Benjamin Dobble’s flat in Cannes, where Ragwort stayed during Christmas. And unless, my dear Ragwort, I have much misunderstood your account of the place, anyone staying there would be likely to spend at least part of the day sitting on the drawing-room balcony?”

  “Yes,” said Ragwort, “I suppose they would. It’s very comfortable and has a quite superb view of the Mediterranean.”

  “And also of the roof terrace of Sir Robert Renfrew’s villa, where Selena and the directors of Renfrews’ Bank spent several days during the same period. And since we know that X must be either Albany or Bolton, it is almost inconceivable that the Reverend Maurice should not have seen him.”

  From that point my reasoning became, of necessity, somewhat more speculative. I could not pretend to know precisely what thoughts had passed through the clergyman’s mind on seeing the man who a few months before had been the object of so much interest in Parsons Haver.

  I imagined, however, that he had found himself in a dilemma. He realised, as we knew from his conversation with Julia at Christmas, that X’s connection with Isabella had in some way involved the crime of insider dealing; but he was uncertain of the moral gravity of the offence. To bring disgrace and punishment on someone he did not think guilty of any serious wrongdoing would have been repugnant to him. Ought he to take steps to identify X and expose him as a criminal, or should he take no action?

  He would not have wanted to make an immediate decision—he needed time to reflect and perhaps seek the advice of others. Besides, he would have been reluctant to be distracted from his idyll with Terry. But he would have seen that X was merely a temporary visitor at the villa, as he himself was at Benjamin’s flat, and might leave at any moment. If he did nothing now, how would he find X again if he decided that he ought to do so? What would enable him to act later without committing him to act at once? He had his camera with him and he was an enthusiastic photographer. His solution would have been to take a photograph.

  With a photograph, he could reasonably expect to have little difficulty in identifying X Once he showed it to someone familiar with people in financial circles—someone, for example, like Ricky Farnham—he had every chance of learning not only the man’s name, but enough about him to judge what action to take.

  But before he could show the photographs to anyone—

  “They were stolen,” said Julia.

  “Crumbs,” said Cantrip, “you mean it was X who swiped them?”

  “From the sequence of events that Hilary has described,” said Ragwort, “that certainly seems a reasonable conclusion.”

  Selena gave a deep sigh.

  “You all seem to have forgotten,” she said, “that the theft took place at night, when Terry and the Reverend Maurice were the only people in the house.”

  “My dear Selena,” I said, “the security arrangements in a country Vicarage are unlikely to be comparable to those of the Bank of England. It would require, I imagine, very little skill in housebreaking to obtain entry by a downstairs window.”

  “And to find what one wanted in a strange house, at night, without making a mess of anything or disturbing the occupants?”

  “Maurice and Terry looked at the photographs in the study, which faces onto the street, and afterwards put them away in a drawer in the same room. Someone who had been watching through the window from the darkness outside would have had little difficulty in finding them.”

  “And how would X even know that Maurice had taken his photograph or that it was anything for him to worry about?”

  “A man with a crime to conceal notices when he is being watched, even more when he is being photographed. Once X discovered, as he could have done by a few very simple enquiries, that the person taking the photographs had an address in Parsons Haver, the danger would have been clear to him. You seem determined, if I may say so, to dislike my theory.”

  “On the contrary,” said Selena, “I like it very much. I think it’s a perfectly charming theory. That’s why it seems such a pity that there isn’t any evidence for it.”

  Selena is sometimes inclined to take a rather narrow view of what constitutes evidence: it was hardly reasonable to expect me, in all the circumstances, to provide bloodstains and fingerprints. I had not said that the matters I had referred to were conclusive; I had said merely that they were suggestive.

  And, in add
ition, there was also the matter of Daphne’s burglary.

  “Do explain, by all means, what Daphne’s burglary can possibly have to do with the matter.”

  “We have been told by Terry that Isabella kept a filing cabinet, which she called her little box of secrets, containing documents which she used for the purposes of fortune-telling. And also, no doubt, for the purposes of blackmail. The filing cabinet is presumably in Daphne’s possession and still at the Rectory. If X was being blackmailed by Isabella, the filing cabinet almost certainly contains documentary evidence of whatever it was that she knew to his discredit. In short, it appears probable that the victims of the theft and of the attempted burglary both had something in their possession which X would have wished to destroy. Do you think it unduly fanciful to suggest a connection?”

  “Well,” said Selena, sighing again, “if I say to myself every night before I go to sleep, ‘The frontispiece was not stolen by Terry, but by a man called X,’ I dare say I may come to believe it.”

  The others, however, embraced my theory with more wholehearted enthusiasm, too pleased with it for exonerating Terry to observe that it might also have less agreeable consequences. I felt obliged to draw their attention to a further sequence of events, which if subjected to such reasoning would point to a similar but more sinister conclusion.

  “We must remember,” I said, “that the loss of the photographs did not quite restore the position to what it had been before. The Reverend Maurice now knew something—that is to say, an address at which X had at least stayed for a few days—which would have given him, had he been determined to identify X, a possible avenue of enquiry. He might, for example, have written a discreetly phrased letter to the owner of the villa. In fact, however, his distress at the loss of the frontispiece drove the whole matter from his mind. We can safely assume that he took no further action until shortly before Christmas.”

  “Why should we think that he did anything then?”

  “A few days before Christmas he had a conversation with Julia, in which he seemed anxious to learn whether the man in the black Mercedes was guilty of a serious crime. Julia’s answers would evidently have confirmed that he was. On the following day, at the same time that Julia was posting a letter to Ragwort, the Reverend Maurice also posted a letter. On the morning that Ragwort received Julia’s letter, Sir Robert Renfrew, in the same postal area, apparently received a communication which caused him suddenly to summon his fellow directors to Cannes. I am suggesting that it was the letter posted by Maurice.”

  “Oh nonsense,” said Selena. “He summoned his fellow directors because he’d decided that the time was ripe for the takeover of a company called Lupilux—as it happens, I’m working on the documents now. There’s nothing secret about that—the bid became public nearly a month ago, and has been widely commented on in the financial press.”

  “I am suggesting that that was merely a pretext for the invitation. I cannot say, of course, exactly what the Reverend Maurice may have said in his letter, but it must have been enough to indicate to Sir Robert that one of his codirectors had been seen in Parsons Haver in circumstances which seemed suspicious. He naturally concluded that this had something to do with the insider-dealing business which had been worrying him for so long.”

  “So he decided to get them both down to Cannes,” said Cantrip, “and then just sort of casually mention Parsons Haver and see how they reacted?”

  “Something, no doubt, very much along those lines. It appears that he did not succeed in identifying the culprit—if he had, Selena would be aware of it. On the other hand, it is likely that whatever he said would have been enough to warn X of the danger. Albany and Bolton returned to England on 22nd December. On Christmas Eve the Reverend Maurice was taken ill. By the morning of Boxing Day he was dead.”

  “But Maurice was at home by himself all day on Christmas Eve,” said Julia. “Hilary, you talk as if X could walk through locked doors, and come and go without anyone seeing him.”

  Poor Julia is of an imaginative and superstitious disposition. I perceived that she was alarmed by the image of a nameless and faceless figure, gliding silent and unseen through the night, leaving death behind.

  “My dear Julia,” I said. “I am not suggesting that X has any supernatural quality. He is invisible only in the same way as any other stranger whom you might pass in the street without taking any particular interest in. One must imagine him, of course, to be a man of some ability—not only physically agile, but quick-witted and decisive, always ready to calculate risk against opportunity.”

  “It’s pure moonshine,” said Selena, with unusual asperity, “and high time that we went back to Chambers and did some work.” Of the two men who might be X, I had not described the one she liked least.

  I myself would have preferred not to reach the conclusion I had; but two people who had known something that X would have wished to conceal had met unexpected deaths. I could no longer feel confident that Isabella and Maurice had died of natural causes; nor did I think it unreasonable for Daphne to be afraid.

  17

  THOUGH MY ACADEMIC duties called me back ineluctably to Oxford, these matters for some days lingered in my mind. I had little hope, however, that further speculation would prove fruitful: my present information was insufficient for me to determine the identity of X; without meeting personally either of those I suspected I could see no way of adding to it. I tried in vain to think of anyone in banking circles whom I knew well enough to ask to arrange an apparently casual meeting.

  My College was at this time engaged—as nowadays, indeed, when is it not?—in what the Bursar referred to as a resources enhancement exercise; that is to say, we were trying to raise money. To this end, a reception was to be held by the Senior Common Room for a carefully chosen group of former students whose success in later years might be supposed to have inspired them with gratitude for their education and provided them with the means to express it in concrete form.

  The Bursar, I need hardly say, regarded this project as far outweighing in importance the pursuit of any scholarly research or the tuition of our present students. By St. Valentine’s Day he had already circulated three memoranda advising us how we should dress, what we should talk about and generally as to our conduct and demeanour. Finally, evidently suspecting that I had not read these with the care they deserved, he called on me in my rooms to give me my instructions in person and to hand me a typewritten list of those guests to whom I was to pay particular attention.

  The venue chosen for what he termed this exciting project was the Library. Though not in truth among the most ancient of the College buildings, it has undeniably a grandeur and elegance suggesting centuries of learning and civilised discourse—made possible, we were to remind our guests, by the liberality of various distinguished benefactors. Moreover, its high Gothic windows command an admirable view of our picturesque fourteenth-century chapel, behind which, as we gathered, a pale and graceful moon had obligingly risen.

  Noting on my arrival that the Bursar was in the northeast corner of the room, I made my way towards the southwest. Not wishing, however, to be thought neglectful of my responsibilities, I joined a group which included two of the eminent barristers mentioned on his list and was soon sufficiently absorbed in anecdotes of judicial indiscretion to become oblivious of him.

  It was thus a rather disagreeable surprise suddenly to hear his voice immediately behind me, braying about the bottom line or the interface or something of that sort. Fearing that he might add me to his audience, I was careful not to turn my head. He was interrupted by an attractive baritone voice saying, “But Bursar, if you knew anything about economics—”

  “As it happens,” said the Bursar, with an unspontaneous laugh which failed, or perhaps was not intended, to conceal the degree of offense taken, “I am the senior Economics Fellow of this College.”

  “Yes, I know,” said the baritone voice cheerfully. “But that only explains why the students here don’t know anythin
g about economics.”

  Unable to resist observing the Bursar’s response to this, I risked a backward glance. I saw to my astonishment that the other party to the conversation was Geoffrey Bolton. Though admittedly I had seen him only once before, I did not think it possible that I could be mistaken; but what was he doing in the Library of St. George’s? And why had I heard no trace in his voice of the North Country accent on which all accounts of him had commented? The Scholar in pursuit of knowledge will make almost any sacrifice: with scarcely a moment’s hesitation I turned and greeted the Bursar.

  Though his response was less than cordial, he could not well avoid effecting an introduction. I had not been mistaken—the owner of the attractive voice was indeed Geoffrey Bolton. I was able, however, to exchange no more than a few words with him before the Bursar, whispering furiously, “That’s not one of yours, Hilary, that’s one of mine,” led me away, more or less by force, to meet yet another eminent lawyer.

  Still, I supposed that I had ample time to contrive another and more fruitful encounter, especially since I saw shortly afterwards that Bolton was engaged in conversation with our Romance Languages Fellow, Felicity Dorset, an amusing and attractive woman whom I regarded as a friend and ally. I could not imagine that a man of taste and judgement, having secured a place at her side, would relinquish it in less than twenty minutes: nothing would be easier, once I was able to conclude my present conversation, than to cross the room and join them.

  My feelings need not be described—they will be all too easily imagined—at seeing, a mere five minutes later, that Felicity was talking to someone else, having nothing whatever to do with my investigation, and that Geoffrey Bolton was in the doorway, unmistakably making his farewells to the Warden.

  This development took me entirely unawares: it had not occurred to me that a man who had come so far for such an occasion would not stay to the end. To attempt to speak to him now would be worse than useless: a breathless pursuit across the quad would not be a convincing prelude to an apparently casual conversation.