“But look, no one said there were two people in the Mercedes. If there were two of them someone ought to have told us, otherwise it’s not fair play.”
“The Mercedes, you will remember, had tinted windows and was driven through Parsons Haver at considerable speed — it is understandable that no one realised that there were two occupants.”
“And the Reverend said that the chap in the Mercedes was middle-aged. Sir Robert Whatsit’s a hundred if he’s a day — you can’t call that middle-aged.”
“He is in his late sixties. The Reverend Maurice, who was only a few years younger, would have described him as middle-aged. The only person he would certainly not have so described was Miss Tavistock. The thought did briefly occur to me that he might have mistaken her for a man — but it would have been for a young man. Transvestism, whether deliberate or accidental, invariably has a rejuvenating effect on women and an aging effect on men.”
“You haven’t explained,” said Selena, with a slight frown, “the most recent incident. Surely my client hasn’t found another psychic counsellor?”
Fearing that Selena might be placed in some embarrassment if I asked her not to mention it to her client, I had said nothing of the confession made to me by Miss Tavistock.
“I understand,” I said, “that you yourself suggested an explanation for that, which Sir Robert found entirely satisfactory.”
“Yes,” said Selena, “yes, I did, but — well, as you say, my client seems to be satisfied with it. And he evidently thinks it covers the earlier incidents as well, so he’s perfectly happy It would be rather a shame to upset him all over again by pointing out that they were all his own fault.”
“As it turns out,” said Julia, “it’s rather a pity that you decided not to tell your client that the source of the leaked information seemed to be in Parsons Haver — if you had, he would presumably have realised that Isabella was a person not entirely to be trusted.”
“No, Julia,” said Selena with some asperity, “that, if I may say so, is not what turns out to be rather a pity What turns out to be rather a pity is that I ever believed a single word of what my client told me. He told me, clearly and firmly, looking me straight in the eye, that the information needed for the insider dealing was known only to his codirectors, himself and Miss Tavistock. If he had added And of course my shady fortune-teller in Sussex’ I might have had rather less difficulty in assisting him with his problem.”
I sympathised with her feelings on the subject. In constructing my own hypothesis I had assumed that Sir Robert’s decisions concerning the investment of enormous amounts of other people’s money were reached on the basis of careful research and sophisticated analysis by a highly paid staff of qualified economists, rather than by methods which might have been adopted in the early years of the seventeenth century by a more than usually gullible peasant girl trying to choose a husband. This assumption being false, I had been led to erroneous conclusions.
“We quite understand,” said Julia, “that in the face of the irrational even the methods of Scholarship are powerless. You were not to know that Sir Robert was the sort of man who consults fortune-tellers.”
I was compelled, however, to decline her kindly meant exculpation: I knew that if I had studied the evidence with the care which I would have devoted to a mediaeval manuscript, I would long ago have realised that Sir Robert was incurably superstitious.
All the things he had done which appeared to be capricious — his sudden requests for conferences and equally sudden cancellations, his apparently irrational confidence that Selena could solve a problem quite outside her province, his decision just before Christmas to proceed with the acquisition of Lupilux — all these were the result of acting in accordance with his horoscope.
“But Hilary,” said Julia, “how do you know?”
“My dear Julia, from what you have told me. Sir Robert is clearly born under the same sign of the Zodiac as you are — and has even greater faith in the predictions of Madame Louisa.”
On the television screen, the horses were lining up for the race.
“I can’t understand it,” said Julia, two and a half minutes later. “I was sure that Madame Louisa was referring to the destitute Irishman. She must have meant someone entirely different.”
We returned to the table, where Julia was consoled with grappa for the disappointment of her financial hopes.
The lunch, it seemed, had been a success. Terry had the dazed expression of a carpenter who has made a firm promise to begin installing bookcases on the following Friday.
Moreover, it appeared that Regina was feeling much improved in health and spirits: the air of London, polluted as it was, had evidently a more beneficial effect on her than the air of Parsons Haver. It now seemed to her to be absurd to return straight home: she decided that after all she would remain in London for a day or two to visit exhibitions and theatres.
“Julia,” she said, as we rose to leave, “aren’t you going to open your present from Maurice?”
Julia took the flat, rectangular parcel from the shelf on which she had placed it and began carefully to undo the ribbon with which it was tied. She removed the festive wrapping and found within a white envelope some sixteen by nine inches, and a smaller envelope. She opened the smaller and read out the note which it contained.
“ ‘Dear Julia — This has brought me so much unhappiness that I can no longer bear to keep it, but I hope that you may find pleasure in it.’ ”
She took from the larger envelope a rectangle of cream-coloured parchment, a little scuffed at the edges, but now safely enclosed in a clear plastic folder. Between margins garlanded with vines, an ornate initial
The opening line, as my readers will doubtless recall, of the second of Virgil’s Eclogues.
Having no reason to return immediately to Oxford, I yielded to the temptation to spend the weekend in London, where spring seemed at last to be in the air: the pale sunshine had begun to hold a suggestion of warmth and the lawns of Lincoln’s Inn were scattered with daffodils.
There prevailed among my young friends a general sense of joie de vivre, due chiefly to the fact that Terry Carver was at last going to install the bookshelves. Moreover, it was no longer necessary to suspect him of stealing the Virgil frontispiece. How it had come to be lost — whether it had slipped behind the back of a drawer or been absentmindedly misplaced by the Reverend Maurice — we could only speculate; but whatever the explanation, it seemed clear from the fact of its reappearance that it had never left his possession.
It was also gratifying — at least to most of us, though I have to say that Cantrip seemed just a trifle disappointed — to have established that in the present case the unpleasant crime of murder had not after all been committed. Since Sir Robert’s visits to Isabella had been made not under the compulsion of blackmail but in innocent confidence in her psychic powers, there was no reason to attribute her death, or that of the Reverend Maurice, to anything but natural causes.
On the Sunday evening, since Regina’s train left from Victoria, we gathered — all or most of us, I forget quite who was there — for a final glass of wine together in the bar of the Grosvenor Hotel. Regina was in excellent spirits: three days of shops, exhibitions and theatres and a chance encounter with her favourite ex-husband had left her refreshed and invigorated. She had entirely recovered from her cold. She declined, however, to prolong her visit further, though pressed by Julia to do so: when the time for her train drew near, she made her farewells and left us.
“Julia,” said Selena, observing that her friend seemed uncharacteristically downcast, “why are you looking as if she’d left on a three-year expedition to the Amazon jungle? She’s only going to Parsons Haver.”
“I know,” said Julia. “I wish she weren’t.”
“Well, she has to go back sometime. It’s where she lives.”
“Yes, I know. But everyone seems to keep dying there. Daphne’s always saying that something awful is going to happen to people and then it always does.”
