The Sibyl in Her Grave (28 page)

“And he’d given the same idea to the people I was going to be working with, who happened to include a man I find rather irritating. He’s also a public-school man. He couldn’t resist sneering at me for being an ignorant working-class northerner and I couldn’t resist teasing him by living down to his expectations. So instead of toning down the accent, I found myself making it broader. And the worst of it was that I somehow developed a persona to match—I began to turn into a sort of caricature of the kind of person he assumed I was. I suppose I was trying to find out how far I could go before he realised I was teasing—but he never did. So the result is that I’ve turned myself into this appalling stereotypical northerner—I hate foreigners and I don’t hold with books and I probably beat my wife if she’s late getting my supper on the table. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde, and I simply don’t know how to get out of it.”

He did not appear, however, to be unduly cast down by the thought of this: indeed, he gave every sign of regarding it with the liveliest amusement. I reminded him that he had spoken of his Oxford education as a financial disadvantage.

“Well, it would be if the Chairman found out about it. You see how dangerous it would be to spoil his illusions. They’re not just illusions about me—they’re illusions about himself. He prides himself on having
recognised my abilities in spite of my having no formal qualifications—it would take the gilt off the gingerbread if he ever discovered that I had quite a good degree from Oxford. Well, a First actually” He sighed. “If he found out, I don’t think he’d ever forgive me.”

He again refilled my glass. I protested again that he should not give me all the wine. I saw that his own glass, though he had not replenished it, was still three-quarters full.

“Oh, I can’t drink much this evening. I have an urgent meeting—with the Chairman, as it happens—first thing in the morning. It wouldn’t do to have a hangover. So you see what I mean when I say that my Oxford education, in my present circumstances, is a financial disadvantage rather than an asset? Absurd, isn’t it?”

“It would be going rather far to blame St. George’s.”

“Oh, certainly. Besides, St. George’s was not my College.”

“Wasn’t it?” I remembered a fragment of conversation reported by Ragwort. “I suppose you’re a Worcester man?”

“Yes, that’s right. How did you know? Oh, I was forgetting that you’re a detective.”

I was disconcerted, almost unpleasantly so. My renown in the field of criminal investigation is not so widespread that I could expect my name alone to be sufficient to inform him of my connection with it: I had supposed him to know nothing more of me than might have been gathered from our meeting and conversation that evening.

“I can lay no claim,” I said, “to any such description.”

“My dear Professor Tamar, you are too modest.
Felicity has told me that you have successfully investigated several mysterious crimes.”

“Felicity?” I said, increasingly bewildered. “Do you mean Felicity Dorset?”

“Yes, of course.” He laughed. “Oh, perhaps you didn’t know, in spite of being a detective—I’m Felicity’s husband. That’s why I was at this evening’s do.”

I had known, certainly, that Felicity had a husband somewhere or other, whose name she did not use in her professional capacity; I must also have known, since I had imagined him to be American, that she had met him some years before while teaching at Columbia. The discovery that he was Geoffrey Bolton astonished me almost as much as the idea that Felicity was Bolton’s socially disadvantaged wife.

Bolton showed a flattering interest in what he termed my detective activities. He began to ask me about my previous investigations and whether I believed that there was any quality which all murderers had in common—whether there was such a thing as the homicidal character.

“Character is a myth invented by novelists for the sake of adding interest to the narrative. Human beings are not so different one from another as the authors of fiction would have us believe. Some people do kind things and are described as kind, but they are not incapable of acts of cruelty. People who shrink from danger are described as cowardly, but they may be capable of acts of heroism. In real life almost anyone might do almost anything.”

“Do you mean that perfectly ordinary people whom one meets every day are capable of murder?”

“Why not? We know that in wartime most people are quite capable of killing other human beings.”

“Is there no common factor?”

“I think it’s a question of knowing what they most care about. It is always a dangerous thing to come between anyone and the thing they most desire.”

To my regret, I was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he was saying, even more so to answer with any degree of coherence. I seemed to be curiously disoriented by the movement of the train as it rattled and lurched through the night and the unfathomable darkness outside.

He seemed particularly interested in knowing whether I was currently engaged in any such investigation. These enquiries, which in other circumstances I would have found pleasantly flattering, were in these something of an embarrassment. I told him that at present I was engaged in nothing of that kind and that all my time and energies were required for my academic duties; but he gave me a smile which seemed to express a degree of disbelief.

My head ached and my perception of things seemed to be in some way slightly distorted. The reflection of Bolton’s face in the window beside him looked strangely different from the reality: the crooked smile that had seemed so attractive now had a slightly malicious, almost diabolical quality. It seemed important to persuade him that I was telling the truth when I said that I was not at present engaged in any investigation.

“My dear Professor Tamar,” he said with apparent concern, “you are very pale—are you feeling quite well?”

“Yes,” I said with some effort. “Yes, perfectly well, thank you.”

I felt as if I were suffering from a fever of some kind. I could scarcely remember where I was or what I
was doing there. I reminded myself with what seemed enormous difficulty that I was travelling on a train, somewhere between Reading and London, and that in quite a short space of time I would arrive at Paddington Station. I knew that I was there because I particularly wanted to talk to Geoffrey Bolton, but I could no longer remember why. Eventually I recalled that it was because he was the principal suspect in a case of poisoning.

The bottle stood empty on the table between us. Bolton’s glass was still half full.

Timothy, I am the first to admit, has all the qualities which one would most hope to find in a former pupil: in particular an unhesitating readiness, upon unexpectedly finding his former tutor ill and exhausted on the doorstep, to offer a bed and a modest supper.

He has also developed, perhaps even to excess, that questioning and independent attitude of mind which as his tutor I had always striven to encourage. When I explained to him that I had been poisoned, he chose to attribute my symptoms to a combination of excessive alcohol and auto-suggestion.

“My dear Timothy,” I said, “if you wish to take that view, I fear that I am in no state of health to argue with you about it. If you see nothing strange or sinister in the fact of Bolton, having purchased a whole bottle of wine, electing to drink less than half a glass of it …”

“If he’d put anything really lethal in it, surely he wouldn’t have drunk even that much? And as I understand it, he didn’t actually force you to drink the rest of the bottle. But of course, if you’re really feeling ill, I’ll
drive you over to the Emergency Department at St. Thomas’s.”

I explained the unwisdom, weakened as I already was, of my undertaking such a journey. Moreover, I feared that the poison used would be identifiable only after numerous tests, possibly in themselves dangerous, and too late for any effective antidote to be administered. We were dealing with a man of intelligence and sophistication: he would not have poisoned me with anything commonplace or obvious.

If he had indeed poisoned me. By the following morning I was sufficiently recovered not only to accept Timothy’s offer of scrambled eggs but to consider the possibility that he might be right in his opinion of the causes of my malaise. My consumption of alcohol had been, I need hardly say, in no sense immoderate. I remembered, however, that I had set out for London having eaten nothing since lunch; in the expectation of dining, I had drunk freely of the sherry provided at the reception, which owing to one of the Bursar’s more ludicrous economies was of indifferent quality; and the wine on the train was perhaps also somewhat inferior to what I am accustomed to: all these factors might have affected me more than I had realised.

“Yes, exactly,” said Timothy.

On the other hand, I had unquestionably been extremely ill and was even now feeling very far from robust.

“What a pity,” said Timothy. “I was hoping you’d be well enough to join us for lunch.”

“Lunch?” I said. His tone had seemed to suggest an occasion of festivity.

“Julia’s aunt is coming up to London this morning to
see some solicitors in the Gray’s Inn Road. They want her to swear a statutory declaration identifying Terry Carver as the person she knows as Derek Arkwright. Terry’ll have to be there as well, of course, and Selena thought it would be a nice idea to invite them both out to lunch—she thinks it will be an ideal chance to talk to Terry about bookcases. We’d all be delighted if you were able to join us.”

I assured him that if my strength permitted I would be happy to accept his invitation.

THE TABLE IN THE
Italian restaurant was laid for eight: covered by a cloth of cream-coloured damask and set with sparkling glass and silverware, it had an encouragingly festive look. Timothy and Julia were already present and drinking champagne, in celebration of Julia winning a large sum of money on a horse called Vagrant Folly.

Since the race in which this animal was to triumph was not to be run for another three hours the celebration seemed to me to be slightly premature; but Julia said that the running of the race was a mere formality She had backed the horse on the advice of a destitute Irishman whom she had met that morning in High Holborn and to whose living expenses she had made a modest contribution.

“And in this morning’s
Scuttle
Madame Louisa said that I should not ignore advice, even from a total stranger, because it might prove unexpectedly helpful. So I regard success as assured.”

I perceived, however, that Julia had not that expression
of unclouded contentment which might have been expected in such circumstances.

“I’m feeling slightly worried about Reg. When she first arranged to come to London she was planning to stay for a night or two and go to exhibitions and so on, but she rang me yesterday to say she was going to go straight back to Sussex after she’d seen the solicitors—she said she was feeling under the weather. I managed to persuade her that she ought at least to stay for lunch, but it’s made me rather anxious. It isn’t at all like her to give way to feeling ill.”

But if Regina was feeling at less than her best, there was, when she entered the restaurant, no immediate sign of it. She was laughing as she came in, looking back over her shoulder at Terry Carver, who had evidently said something to amuse her. Dressed in turquoise and black, a silk scarf draped round her shoulders and fastened with an antique brooch of silver and amber, her smooth dark auburn hair framing her slightly mediaeval features, she gave an impression of easy and comfortable elegance. The Italian waiters, with welcoming murmurs of
“Buon giorno, signora,”
gathered round her to take her coat, pull back her chair and fill her glass with champagne.

She and Terry, it was clear, were delighted to be in each other’s company: any embarrassment there might have been about the Virgil frontispiece was forgotten or resolved. They had spent a satisfactory morning with Maurice’s solicitors, who had given them sherry and biscuits, thanked Regina very nicely for her help and assured Terry that they would complete the administration of the estate as soon as possible. There was now, they said, no obstacle to their doing so, other than the unpleasant insinuations which continued to be made by his cousin Daphne.

“But Terry,” said Julia, “if Maurice instructed them in person and executed the will in their office, they must know the whole idea of undue influence is absolute nonsense.”

“Oh yes,” said Terry “And they’ve told Daphne that, so now she’s suggesting something much more sinister. She’s written them a letter going on about how suddenly he died and me being the last person to see him. She’s practically saying that I made away with him to get my paws on his savings. It’s all rather upsetting.”

“It’s perfectly monstrous,” said Julia. “But never mind—no one takes any notice of anything Daphne says. Did you tell her, Reg, that you were coming to London to give evidence for Terry?”

“Certainly not,” said Regina. “She’d have made a scene about it and I really didn’t feel like coping with one of Daphne’s scenes. I just told her that I was going to London on business. And even so, she was quite difficult about it. She’s been having an attack of the Cassandras—she keeps saying she’s afraid something awful is going to happen to me and she can’t bear it and she doesn’t know what to do. Telling her I was coming to London seemed to be the last straw—she got into a terrible state and said I mustn’t. I’m afraid I had to be rather sharp with her.”