The Sibyl in Her Grave

victim of some kind of religious persecution. All on account of the Book, of course — the enemies of the Book are the enemies of the Custodian. “If you seek for the knowledge that is hidden from others, they will persecute you as a blasphemer and heretic.” Aunt Isabella always said so.

And naturally now she’s frightened about what’s going to happen next. It must be horrible for her, having to stay in that big house all on her own — I’m sure she wouldn’t stay there another night if she didn’t have to.

Maurice has tried to persuade her that no one in Parsons Haver would do anything like this on religious grounds, but she simply doesn’t believe him. “I know what it says in your Book,” she says. “It says thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

She thinks what people have against her, you see, is that she has the power of prophecy. And now she thinks it’ll be even worse, because both her animal prophecies have come true — for Griselda and for me. I know, of course, that it must be pure coincidence, but one can’t help finding it slightly eerie.

Please tell Selena that I’ll be delighted to come and advise her about curtains, but with everything that’s happening here it may be several weeks before I can get away to London.

Yours with much love,

Reg

My first thought on the stone-throwing incident was that it could have nothing to do with the man in the black Mercedes. While admittedly showing no great concern for Daphne’s welfare, it could hardly be regarded as a serious attempt on her life: a man determined on her perpetual silence would have chosen some more reliable method.

My second, however, was that a man who wished to search the Rectory undisturbed, let us say for some incriminating document, might well look about for means to frighten Daphne away.

Though the hour now seemed to me to be suitable for lunch, none of my friends had as yet arrived in the Corkscrew. I turned to the second letter, evidently written on the previous day and presumably received that morning.

24 High Street

Parsons Haver

West Sussex

8th September

Dear Julia,

Yet another thing I’d like your advice about — you’ll think I’m becoming a perfect nuisance. Not exactly a legal problem — there’s something I’d like to find out and I thought you might know if I could. It’s because of the gravestone.

You see, Derek Arkwright, the young man I told you about, has become quite a regular visitor down here. He comes down on Friday evening and stays at the Vicarage until Sunday morning. He and Maurice spend Saturday driving round the countryside looking at churches and gardens and Roman pavements and so on.

And we all like him very much. Maurice in particular, of course, but not only Maurice — I like him, Griselda likes him, even Ricky likes him, though one wouldn’t think that they had much in common.

Everyone except Daphne, who still has this extraordinary antagonism towards him. Whenever they meet — which we all do our best to avoid happening, but it sometimes does — she practically bristles, like a dog with someone it dislikes, and sits there glowering as if she were trying to put the evil eye on him. It’s really quite embarrassing.

She goes on saying that he’s a treacherous and dangerous person and whenever he’s here there’s a shadow over Maurice’s name in the Book. That means that he’s going to do Maurice some kind of terrible harm, though exactly what she never manages to specify. The worst she’s been able to think of so far is that he encourages Maurice to drink too much — she makes dark comments on the number of empty wine bottles to be put in the dustbin after Derek’s been staying.

What she really minds, I dare say, is that when Derek’s here she can’t go running over to the Vicarage to tell Maurice about her great spiritual dilemma. Which in my view is a very good thing — she’s really been spending far too much time there. Some people are getting quite the wrong impression — I’ve been asked more than once whether invitations to Maurice ought to include Daphne. And Mrs. Tyrrell has stopped going there to clean because she thinks Daphne’s doing the housework, and she won’t have Maurice paying her for work he doesn’t need.

Ricky doesn’t go round there anymore either — he used to drop in quite often. “If you go round to see an old mate for a noggin or two and a chat about the Test Match,” says Ricky, “you don’t want to find bloody Daphne sitting there looking at him like a lovesick cow and behaving as if he was some kind of bloody saint and we all ought to kneel in his presence.”

You may think, quite rightly, that that isn’t a very nice way of putting it, but I’m afraid I do know what he means — it somehow just doesn’t seem possible to have a normal conversation with Maurice while Daphne’s there, and nowadays she almost always is. He’s too softhearted to send her away, of course, but I’m sure he’s more embarrassed than anyone about it — though I suppose any man, even one as nice as Maurice, can’t help feeling a little bit flattered by such unquestioning devotion.

I don’t at all mean that she’s in love with him — certainly not in the sense of wanting anything physical. The fact is, I think, that she’s rather frightened of sex — she’s more unattractive physically than anyone could be without actually trying — and part of what she likes about Maurice is that she can feel safe with him without feeling rejected. She has this peculiar idea, you see, that he’s taken some kind of vow of celibacy. She seems to think that’s why he’s never married—”Because for Maurice God would always come first, wouldn’t He?”

But all the same, it was turning into a rather awkward situation, so I’m inclined to look on Derek as something of a godsend. At least, I would be if it weren’t for the gravestone.

It’s true that we still don’t know very much about him — not even what he does for a living. Not rough work, certainly — one can tell by his hands. One can’t quite imagine him working in an office, but he can’t be unemployed — his car’s less than two years old and although his clothes are mostly denim they look quite expensive. I suppose he might have a large private income, but he doesn’t have quite the accent I’d associate with that — though young people have such extraordinary accents nowadays that one can never be quite sure.

When one asks him outright what he does, he just smiles engagingly and says he wants to go on being a man of mystery. I expect it only means that it’s something he thinks is unglamorous — perhaps he’s a travelling salesman or something like that — and doesn’t want to tell us about. But Daphne, of course, thinks it means he does something shady.

We don’t know exactly where he lives, either — he says he leads such a nomadic existence that it isn’t worth giving anyone an address or telephone number. He has given Maurice the address of a friend, though, who he says will pass on messages in an emergency, so I don’t think he’s planning to defraud Maurice of his life savings and disappear without trace.

Which I gather is the sort of thing that Daphne is expecting. She keeps implying, at any rate, that he must have some kind of ulterior motive for coming down here. She doesn’t believe, she says, that he’s a bit interested in stained-glass windows.

I suppose it’s a little surprising that Derek wants to spend his leisure time with someone so much older than himself, however charming and intelligent. But what ulterior motive could he have? After all, it isn’t as if Maurice were rich — he has what he’s paid by the Church and a modest private income from a family trust. If Derek were some sort of confidence trickster, what on earth could he hope to make out of Maurice that would be worth coming down here every weekend and pretending to be interested in things he isn’t?

When one says that to Daphne, though, she just beats her little fists on the table, and says, “Oh, you’re all so trusting.”

Being the fount of all wisdom doesn’t prevent Maurice from also being, in Daphne’s eyes, as credulous and gullible as a four-year-old child. She sometimes talks as if he and I had both spent our entire lives wrapped up in tissue paper and never once had anything to do with anyone the least bit wicked. Which in fact is not the case.