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
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 girl 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.
He was rather cagey about the provisions of the will, but Maurice thought it sounded as if Daphne didn’t have much to worry about financially — it sets up some kind of trust and she’ll get the income from the whole estate. She doesn’t have much for immediate living expenses — just sixty pounds or so that Isabella had in her handbag — but Maurice has had a word with Mr. Iqbal at the supermarket, and she can go on using Isabella’s account there for the next three or four weeks, until it’s all sorted out.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else to be personally notified of Isabella’s death — she’d apparently never been married, though the name she was born with turns out to have been Isabel Cummings. Her only sister died a year or two ago. But Daphne was very anxious to have it announced in all the newspapers, national as well as local, and wanted Maurice to help her with getting the wording right.
So he told her to write out what she wanted to say and said he’d come back later and look it over. I settled her down in the garden, with a notepad and a couple of ballpoint pens, and left her to work on it.
After three hours or so she came back into the house, with ink all over her face from chewing on the ballpoint, and showed me what she’d written. It ran to about a dozen foolscap pages — at a guess, roughly twice what the
I felt I had to say that it was on the long side.
Tears of indignation. Daphne said that Aunt Isabella had been a wonderful person, and she ought to have a proper obituary — meaning, I gather, a full page in the
