Sarah Caudwell - The Sibyl in Her Grave

“Neither did I, my dear, but our conference ended unexpectedly early, so I thought I’d come and look for you. Good heavens, isn’t that Professor Tamar? What an extraordinary coincidence — are you a friend of Katharine’s?”

“I hope,” I said, “that I may say so.”

“I am very pleased to have the opportunity of thanking you, Professor Tamar, for your timely intervention — you have saved me from committing a grave injustice. Katharine, my dear, you will be pleased to hear that Edgar Albany has been entirely exonerated — he has a problem with his back, poor fellow, and was receiving medical treatment throughout the morning when the call was made. And Bolton was with me, of course, so he can’t have made it either.”

“I’m so glad, Sir Robert.” Like almost all human skills, her lying had improved with practice.

“So the purchaser must have been someone who had nothing at all to do with Renfrews’. Miss Jardine has pointed out that by the time it was made our client had already placed several orders for the purchase of shares in the company — an alert stockbroker could well have read the signs and decided to back his judgement. I’m sure she’s right.”

“Oh, Sir Robert, this is good news.”

“And all thanks to your friend Professor Tamar here. Advice from a total stranger — really, quite remarkable. It troubles me to think, though, how nearly I came to making a terrible mistake. I sorely miss the guidance of — well, Katharine, you know the person I mean.”

“Yes, of course. Oddly enough, Professor Tamar asked me a few moments ago whether I knew Parsons Haver at all, and I was explaining — oh dear.” She blushed again. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything about it.”

“Oh, I think we can trust Professor Tamar with our little secret. It wouldn’t do for it to be known in the City, of course, but — I’m sure, Professor Tamar, that you are not one of those people who deride as superstition everything that is beyond our limited human understanding. If you have friends in Parsons Haver, perhaps you had the privilege of knowing Signora del Comino?”

“No,” I said, perceiving that my appalling suspicion was about to be confirmed. “No, alas, I had not.”

“A woman of remarkable gifts, Professor Tamar, quite remarkable gifts. For some years I took no major step without her guidance. Katharine used to drive me down to Sussex almost every month to consult her. But she died last year. Since then — ah well. Katharine, my dear, I’m afraid that you and I must be getting back to Lombard Street.”

He turned, with the self-confidence natural in a man who controls the financial destinies of men and institutions, and led us out through the Museum into Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Miss Tavistock and I followed a few paces behind him.

“Professor Tamar,” said Miss Tavistock, “I ought to thank you for not mentioning — well, you know what I mean. I’d somehow assumed you wouldn’t, but I realise, when I think about it, that it was rather presumptuous of me.”

“My dear Miss Tavistock,” I said. “I should like to think that we are friends. You may count on me to conceal almost any crime you commit — short, that is to say, of murder.”

She smiled at the notion.

“But Hilary,” said Selena, looking at me reproachfully over her liqueur glass, “I’ve just begun to believe in X and I want to go on believing in him. This is no time to tell me that he does not exist.”

Having said my farewells to Miss Tavistock and Sir Robert, I had returned to the restaurant and found the lunch party still in progress. Understandably anxious, however, to witness the triumph of the horse recommended to her by the destitute Irishman, Julia had adjourned with Cantrip to a downstairs room containing a television set. They had been joined there by Selena, set free by the early conclusion of her conference for a leisurely liqueur. It was to this latter group that I announced my solution to the insider-dealing problem.

Selena, however, now seemed displeased by the nonexistence of X. I enquired why she had become attached to him.

“Because if X doesn’t exist he can’t have stolen the Virgil frontispiece, and if X didn’t steal it then it must have been Terry after all. And at this very moment Julia’s aunt is having a conversation with Terry which is designed to lure him into making a firm promise to install our bookcases on a specified date within the reasonably foreseeable future. And since she clearly has a lifetime’s experience of persuading men to do what she wants them to I have every confidence that she will succeed. And if she does, I don’t want to have to start worrying about what we have to lock up while Terry’s working in Chambers.”

“I’m afraid,” I said, “that there is nothing I can do. Now that we know that every important decision taken by Sir Robert Renfrew over the past two years was taken after consultation with Isabella, we can’t doubt that he was her source of information.”

“Look here,” said Cantrip, “are you saying no one’s been blackmailed and no one’s been murdered and nothing exciting’s been happening at all?”

I was obliged to admit that that was my conclusion.

“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.