Sarah Caudwell - The Sibyl in Her Grave

It is thought, however, that most institutional investors would prefer to see Renfrews’ facing the twenty-first century under the chairmanship of Geoffrey Bolton, the very able forty-eight-year-old director of corporate finance. Born and brought up in Lancashire, Bolton was wooed back to London five years ago from the Leibnitz Bank of New York to revitalise an investment department which had frankly ceased to sparkle. His success in this area is a personal triumph for Sir Robert, who was directly responsible for his recruitment.

It was thus, entirely by chance, that I first learnt the identity of Selena’s client and something of the two men whom he suspected.

The remarkable coincidence that the names of the same companies appeared on both their lists had at once seemed to Selena and Julia, too remarkable to be a coincidence: they thought it virtually certain that Ricky Farnham had obtained his information from someone who was in some way involved in the insider dealing.

This had placed them in something of a dilemma. They had reached their conclusion on the basis of evidence obtained from two separate and confidential sources: what use, if any, could properly be made of it in connection with the problem troubling Selena’s client? None, it went without saying, which might cause Mrs. Sheldon the slightest embarrassment; but there could be no harm, thought Julia, in adding a tactfully worded paragraph to her letter, asking if her aunt by any chance happened to know the source of Ricky Farnham’s information.

I wondered, as I walked along Chancery Lane towards the Public Record Office, whether she might by now have received an answer. The report in the Scuttle had awakened in me a greater degree of curiosity about the insider-dealing affair than I had felt when the two suspects were merely letters of the alphabet. I looked forward with interest to learning whether Mrs. Sheldon could shed any light on it.

Selena had kindly invited me to a meeting of the 62 New Square Chambers Restoration Committee, which was to be held at lunchtime in the Corkscrew. The Committee, I gathered, consisted of the three most junior members of Chambers — Selena herself, Desmond Ragwort and Michael Cantrip — and was responsible for the overall organisation of certain building works intended to be carried out in Chambers during the Long Vacation. The meeting was also to be attended by a representative of their neighbours in 63 New Square — that is to say, Julia. The proceedings were to include lunch: it was in this aspect of them that I was invited to participate.

The architect of the Corkscrew, as I believe I have mentioned elsewhere, does not seem to have cared much for daylight or windows. Arriving there shortly after midday, I paused for a moment in the doorway to accustom myself to the dimness of the interior after the midsummer sunlight outside.

Selena was sitting at one of the round oak tables between two young men in some respects similar — both thin, and of pale complexion — but at the same time presenting a pleasing contrast, as if created by two different artists: Ragwort by one working in watercolours to convey the subtle tints of autumn; Cantrip by some no less skilled but more impatient draughtsman, using a few strokes of charcoal on a background of white paper. A bottle of Nierstein had already been purchased, and a glass had been filled for me by the time I reached the table.

“Tell me,” I said, not wishing to be accused of distracting them from the business for which they were gathered, “what exactly is the purpose of this building work for which you are responsible?”

“We’re going to be modernised,” said Cantrip triumphantly. “Hot-and-cold running everything and state-of-the-art communication systems. When the twenty-first century hits us, we’ll be there waiting to hit back.”

“We intend,” said Ragwort, “to restore Chambers to the simple yet dignified elegance which prevailed in Lincoln’s Inn during, let us say, the reign of the later Stuarts.”

These objectives seemed to me to be not identical. I wondered if it might have been prudent, before engaging builders, to make a choice between them.

“Not at all,” said Selena. “It’s simply a question, you see, of how you look at it. On the one hand, as I hope you know, Hilary, we yield to no one in our respect for the great traditions of the English Bar. On the other hand, it has sometimes occurred to us that it might be possible, without gravely compromising those traditions, to make certain minor improvements to our working environment.”

“Such as central heating that actually works,” said Ragwort.

“And a proper computer system,” said Cantrip, “instead of a couple of laptops that our junior Clerk got cheap because they’d been obsolete for ten years.”

“And even,” said Selena rather wistfully, “somewhere to have a shower before one goes out for the evening. But whenever we suggest anything of that kind — I don’t know, Hilary, whether you’ve ever heard Basil Ptarmigan pronounce the word ‘modernisation’?”

“Seldom,” I said, “and only in accents of the utmost distaste, as if picking up some unpleasant object with his fingertips and holding it as far away as possible.” I could imagine that Basil Ptarmigan, QC, the most silken of Chancery Silks, would have little sympathy for any proposal requiring the use of the word.

“Basil takes the view,” said Ragwort, “that modernisation goes hand in hand with reform, and we all know what that leads to. Some of the older members of our Chambers do tend to be a little conservative in their thinking.”

“The way they see it,” said Cantrip, “everything’s been pretty much going to pot since someone went and abolished the rule in Shelley’s Case. And that was in 1925.”

“And naturally,” said Ragwort, “we’ve always felt that we must defer to their wisdom and experience.”

“Because they’d have to put up most of the cash,” said Cantrip.

It had seemed that there was an impasse and that dreams of showers and computer systems must remain mere dreams. The possibility of a solution revealed itself unexpectedly, when Ragwort was invited to a small drinks party by Benjamin Dobble—

“Whom, of course, you know,” said Ragwort, for Benjamin is a fellow scholar and, I hope I may say, a friend of mine. I have described him elsewhere: he plays too small a part in my present narrative to justify my repeating the description.

The party was intended to celebrate the recent refurbishment of his flat in Grafton Street. His guests had been called upon to admire in particular the oak-panelled cupboards and bookcases, Jacobean in style, which concealed the collection of filing cabinets, computers, printers, fax machines and other impedimenta nowadays considered indispensable to the pursuit of learning. The craftsman responsible for designing and building them, a young man by the name of Terry Carver, had naturally been the guest of honour.

Congratulating Terry Carver on his achievement, Ragwort had been inspired to ask whether he might be interested in carrying out a similar scheme of refurbishment at 62 New Square.

“So Terry came round to Lincoln’s Inn,” said Selena, “and measured things and took photographs and so on and seemed rather excited at the idea — he said he was thinking Inigo Jones.”

“Inigo Jones?” I said. “Isn’t that rather early for New Square?”

This comment, however, being thought unconstructive, I hastily withdrew it.

“And in due course he sent us some drawings, showing how we could have as many showers and computer terminals as we liked and at the same time look like a set of Chambers where Lord Nottingham’s just invented the Rule against Perpetuities. We showed them to Basil and the others, and they were even more impressed than we’d hoped.”