The Sibyl in Her Grave Read online

  Well, what could I do? I thought she was talking nonsense, of course, but I didn’t have the heart to pack her off to sit on her own in the Newt. So I told her that if she’d stop crying, I’d lend her a comb and facecloth to tidy herself up with, and she was welcome to stay for supper. I didn’t think Maurice or Griselda would mind—I had quite enough food for four, and I knew they both felt sorry for her.

  It was a beautiful evening, and the garden’s at its best at the moment, so we ate out of doors. It was a very simple meal, just a salmon mousse with salad and new potatoes, and some strawberries afterwards, but it went quite well with the champagne, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

  Daphne had two helpings of everything, and said it was the best meal she’d ever had. Which, without unduly flattering myself, I could all too easily believe, poor girl.

  The conversation, I have to admit, didn’t exactly sparkle, though I’m sure that Daphne was doing her best—like a little girl at a grown-up party, trying hard to do the proper thing but not quite knowing what it is. She didn’t seem to realise that people don’t always mean exactly what they say, not because they’re insincere but because they’re making a joke about something. And she evidently expected Maurice to keep talking about religion, which of course he wouldn’t dream of doing over dinner.

  A minute or two after ten she said she had to go home, in case Isabella needed her for anything before she went to bed. Maurice said that he ought to be leaving too—he had to be up early to take morning service at a church ten miles away—and suggested that they should keep each other company across the churchyard. Dear Maurice—he’d normally have stayed much later, morning service or no morning service, but he wouldn’t have liked to let Daphne go home in the dark by herself.

  He rang a few minutes later, to say they were both safely home—he’d waited at the gate of the Rectory to make sure she got in all right, and he’d heard Isabella shout out to Daphne that she wasn’t needed and telling her to go to bed. The visitor had evidently left—Maurice said he’d seen no sign of the black Mercedes.

  So it sounded as if Daphne’s anxieties had been as misplaced as I thought.

  I usually wake up at about seven, but this morning I was woken earlier than that by the sound of someone ringing my doorbell. Not just ringing and stopping and going away again, like the postman leaving a parcel, but going on ringing, as if they didn’t mean to stop until I’d answered. I looked out of my bedroom window and saw that it was Daphne, so I put on my dressing gown and slippers and went down to let her in.

  She was in such a state of agitation, and stammering so badly, poor girl, that I could make no sense at all of what she was trying to say. All I could gather was that something was seriously wrong—or at least that she thought there was—and she wanted me to come straight back with her to the Rectory. So without being sure there was any real urgency, but not liking to take a chance on it, I put on my raincoat over my dressing gown and ran back with her across the churchyard.

  She’d left the front door open. We went straight in, and through the hallway to the black drawing room.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell—it was the first thing anyone would have noticed. A perfectly disgusting smell, acrid and sweet at the same time, mainly, I suppose, of bird droppings, but as if someone had tried to sweeten it with something else—incense or camphor or something like that. The second thing I noticed was the vulture, perched on the back of one of the chaises longues. The third was Isabella, lolling on another of them, dressed in the caftan she’d worn on my first visit, with her little black eyes staring at me without blinking, out of her white pudding face. I almost apologised for my intrusion.

  “She’s been sitting there like that since I came down this morning,” said Daphne. “She doesn’t seem to hear what I say to her. There’s something wrong with her.”

  I knew straightaway what was wrong with her, and I could hardly believe that Daphne still hadn’t realised. I tried taking her pulse, and the other things they tell one to do in first-aid classes, but I already knew she was dead. The vulture knew it too, and was looking at Isabella in a way I didn’t much care for.

  I didn’t think I was the right person to break the news—I asked Daphne who her aunt’s doctor was.

  “Aunt Isabella doesn’t believe in doctors,” she said, looking more frightened than ever. “She says that Nature has a cure for everything if you know how to look for it.”

  I said that nonetheless her aunt must have professional attention, and sent her off in the end to fetch Dr. Selkirk. He’s not the doctor I’d normally call-a bad-tempered little Scotsman, semiretired, with a bee in his bonnet about keeping fit, and not much in the way of a bedside manner—but he was the one who lived nearest. I knew at that hour of the morning he was more likely to answer the doorbell than the telephone, and I thought that with any luck she could bring him back to the Rectory in ten minutes or so.

  If I’d gone myself, I could have probably persuaded him more quickly, but I couldn’t leave poor Daphne on her own with a corpse, and we couldn’t both go. I’ve lived in Egypt and Syria, and I’ve seen what buzzards can do. So someone had to stay and discourage the vulture.

  I don’t know quite how long I waited for them—it seemed a good deal more than the mauvais quart d’heure I’d bargained for. Isabella still seemed to be staring at me with her little black-currant eyes, and from time to time the horrible Roderigo spread his wings and screeched at me. Having only my nightclothes on under my raincoat made me feel ridiculously defenceless, and I wished I’d something more effective than my bare hands to ward him off with if he tried to challenge me for his breakfast.

  The worst thing of all, though, was still the smell—it wasn’t simply disgusting but somehow narcotic, so that I felt dizzy as well as sick from it. I wondered if Isabella and her visitor had been smoking marijuana—I suppose it would be quite an effective way to heighten the atmosphere for a séance, or whatever one’s supposed to call it. It’s some years since I smoked any, and I don’t remember the effects being so unpleasant—but that was in Paris and in better company.

  There were no ashtrays, though, and no traces of smoke in the room, so perhaps I was wrong about that. There weren’t any dirty glasses, either, which struck me as rather odd. Whatever else one might say about Isabella, I wouldn’t have thought she’d have sat all evening with a visitor without offering him a drink, and having one herself. Anyway, there were two empty champagne bottles in the wastepaper basket.

  And Daphne had been sent straight to bed when she got home the night before, so she couldn’t have washed them then, and she certainly wouldn’t have stopped to do it after she found Isabella in the morning.

  Well, of course, it wasn’t really at all odd—it simply meant that Isabella had washed the glasses herself, and then come back and sat down again on the chaise longue. That’s not at all an odd thing to do—it’s what I’d have done myself. Just not what I’d have expected Isabella to do—I’d have bet almost any sum you like to mention that she’d have left them for Daphne. Which shows how one can misjudge people. Or perhaps she’d just taken them through to the kitchen, and left them there to be washed.

  It occurred to me, thinking of the kitchen, that I might find something there that I could use to ward off Roderigo. So I went quickly in there, leaving the door open so that I could keep an eye on him, and found just what I wanted—a long-handled broom, which made me feel much braver. But no dirty glasses anywhere, so Isabella must have washed them up after all. And yet somehow I still just couldn’t imagine her doing it, so I decided that it must have been her visitor—the man in the black Mercedes.

  Dr. Selkirk, when he at last arrived, declined to examine the patient in the presence of the vulture. At the cost of several savage pecks, Daphne managed to remove the bird to the conservatory. After that, we waited at the far end of the room while the doctor carried out his examination.

  “Heart,” he said, when he’d finished. “What did she expect
, carrying all that weight?” He seldom misses a chance to point out the dangers of obesity.

  “Will she have to go to hospital?” asked poor Daphne.

  “It’s not the hospital she’s needing,” said Selkirk, with his usual tact. “It’s the undertaker’s. She’s dead, lassie—been dead for hours.”

  And poor Daphne threw herself down on the floor and howled.

  You’ll understand by this time why it’s been a trying day. It’s now nearly midnight, and I thought when I came to bed that I’d go straight to sleep. But I found I couldn’t, and decided to write to you instead.

  The funeral’s on Friday, and with Daphne having no close family I somehow feel responsible for seeing that it all goes properly. There are all sorts of things that I could quite reasonably be lying awake and worrying about—like how to make Daphne presentable for it, and what to give people to eat, and whether we can find anyone to say a few words about how nice Isabella was.

  What seems to be stopping me from sleeping, though, isn’t any of those things but a perfectly idiotic question of no importance at all, which is nagging away at me like a clue in the crossword that one hasn’t managed to get the answer to. As soon as I close my eyes, the absurd question which comes into my head and starts buzzing round there is, “Do men with Mercedes cars usually wash their own glasses?”

  Yours with very much love,

  Reg

  “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.

  5

  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 gir
l 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.