“Fortunately?” I said, with a touch of severity. “One wishes him, of course, no harm.” The smoothness of Selena’s voice was not impaired by the intervening telephone wires. “It does seem convenient, however, that Timothy is free for the time being to pursue his enquiries on Julia’s behalf without having to initiate his client into the mysteries of Schedule 5 to the Finance Act 1975.”
“Have his enquiries made any progress?”
“He hasn’t managed to see Graziella yet or talk to the police. But he’s been in touch with a man at the British Consulate who seems to know something of the matter. So far as one can tell at present, there’s nothing solid against Julia at all. It’s just that she made a rather unfortunate first impression on the police. They knew from the start, you see, about her exchanges with the young man from the Revenue: the whole affair was apparently common knowledge among the staff of the Cytherea, from the management to the chambermaids. So when they began to question her and she said she’d never heard of him, they found her attitude suspicious.”
“I can see that they might,” I said. “Why did she say that she’d never heard of him?”
“My dear Hilary, it’s quite understandable. They obviously told her that they were enquiring into the death by violence of a Mr. Edward Watson. It doesn’t immediately occur to one that a person referred to as Edward is someone one knows as Ned. And Julia, naturally, wouldn’t know his surname.”
“Would you care,” I asked, “to justify the adverb?”
“How could she have known his surname? Eleanor Frostfield doesn’t seem to have mentioned it when she introduced them. How do you suggest that she could afterwards have discovered it? Would you expect her, in the middle of telling the young man about his beautiful eyelashes and quoting Catullus, suddenly to ask his surname? Going on, perhaps, to demand such further particulars as his place of birth, his mother’s maiden name and the number of his passport? Of course not. Still less can you imagine that Julia would stoop, in search of such information, to questioning their mutual acquaintances or prying through the young man’s correspondence. My dear Hilary.” Her voice seemed to melt in a delicate mixture of amusement and reproach: an effect, I am told, which has caused a number of her opponents, realizing the absurdity of their submissions, to settle hastily over the luncheon adjournment on terms favourable to her client.
“My dear Selena,” I said, “you quite persuade me that no woman of breeding and refinement could be expected to know the surname of any young man whom she was trying to seduce. I hope that Timothy will be equally successful with the Italian police. Was there anything else that made a bad impression on them?”
“Well—” said Selena. “They seem to have got rather excited about Julia’s Finance Act. I’m sorry, Hilary, I’ll have to go — there’s someone at the door.”
I saw no prospect, until I knew why Julia’s Finance Act had disturbed the equanimity of the Italian police, of giving my attention to the concept of
For conversation, their natural tendency is to gather in the large one. I found Selena already there, repeating to Ragwort and Cantrip the news from Timothy which she had given me on the previous evening.
“Selena,” I said, “what’s all this about the Finance Act?”
“Ah yes,” said Selena. “The Finance Act. It appears that a copy of this year’s Finance Act, inscribed with Julia’s name and professional address, was found a few feet away from the corpse.”
“Oh, strewth,” said Cantrip.
“Dear me,” said Ragwort.
“The Italian police,” continued Selena, “with childish naivete, took this to be a clue. As your own more sophisticated minds will immediately perceive, it is, of course, nothing of the kind. One cannot infer Julia’s presence from the presence of her Finance Act.”
“Indeed not,” said Ragwort. “Any more than one could infer, from the presence last Thursday fortnight in Lower Liversidge County Court of a copy of Woodfall on Landlord and Tenant, clearly inscribed with my name, to indicate that it was my property, purchased out of my own resources, that I myself was appearing before that learned and august tribunal; or that I was absent from London; or that, being in London, I had no need of the volume in question for the purpose of advising my clients. It can merely be inferred that certain members of these Chambers—”
“I said I was sorry,” said Cantrip. “There’s no need to keep on about it”
“That certain members of these Chambers,” continued Ragwort, “whose names I shall not mention because they have apologized and I, as was my duty, have forgiven them, have very little notion, when it comes to books, of the difference between meum and tuum.”
“Exactly,” said Selena. Cantrip, overcome by the joy of Ragwort’s forgiveness, said nothing.
“Have you,” I asked, “heard anything more from Julia?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Selena, “there was another letter this morning. I was just going to read it.”
Terrace of the Cytherea.
Thursday evening.
Dearest Selena,
My letters to you — are they mere ephemera, stop-gap economies for telephone calls? Or are they to serve, in half a century’s time, when you are retired from high judicial office and I, too improvident to afford retirement, still pursuing the vain chimera of paying the last year’s income tax, am advising my clients from the comfort of a Bath chair — are they to serve then as a journal or memoir, when we seek diversion in reminiscence? If so, it would be absurd, though nothing I now write can reach London before me, to end the correspondence with yesterday’s letter. The postscript, it is true, will tell us that I had my way. But when you ask me how I achieved it, I shall have forgotten; and when I ask you whether I enjoyed it, you will be unable to remind me; and when we say to each other that surely there was some curious and interesting sequel, but cannot quite remember what it was, there will be nothing to recall it to our aging memories. For the avoidance of which and the resolution of all doubts, I shall continue to write until tomorrow evening.
My postscript may have occasioned you some surprise, following, as I recollect, a passage in which I spoke with some bitterness of Ned’s behaviour and announced my intention to upbraid him severely. On the way to lunch, however, I happened to call to mind some advice once given me by my Aunt Regina, who told me that the surest way to a man’s affections was to let him think he knew more about something than you did. It seemed worth trying — my Aunt Regina must be regarded as an authority on such matters, for she has had four husbands; though I cannot actually recall her thinking that any of them knew better than she did on any subject whatever.
On the previous evening, as I have told you, I had sought consolation in the Finance Act: Schedule 7 seemed a suitable subject for Ned to know more about than I did. Finding, as I had hoped, that we were the only Art Lovers present at lunch, I turned the conversation to the question of income tax.
“I suppose,” I said, “if Eleanor is hoping to persuade your Department that she is in Venice for business purposes, she might as well take the matter to its logical conclusion and claim relief under Schedule 7 of this year’s Act on the proportion of her earnings attributable to work done abroad.”
“Yes,” he said, “but she’d have to spend at least thirty days of the year working abroad.”
“Oh,” I said, “I expect she could manage that. She’d have to remember, of course, that she could only count days devoted to the duties of her employment. If she spent a week overseas and rested on the Sabbath, only six days would count.”
“No, Julia,” he said, “you’re thinking of the Bill. They amended it on its way through Parliament. If you’re abroad for at least seven consecutive days which taken as a whole are substantially devoted to the duties of your employment, they all count, even if you take a day off.” This was said with such charming modesty and so little arrogance at finding me in error that I almost felt a qualm of conscience; but I remembered his treachery of the previous day — my heart was hardened and I kept my course.
“Nonsense,” I said firmly. “The Act says that a qualifying day is a day substantially devoted to the performance of the duties of the employment. What you mean is, I suppose, that your Department has decided to make an extra-statutory concession, legislating by way of Press release. To the burden of penal taxation there is
