Sarah Caudwell - Thus Was Adonis Murdered

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"Highly intelligent and educated half-wit" Julia goes on a holiday to Venice where she's accused of murder. Her friends back home in London, mainly barristers, take it upon themselves to solve the crime and prove Julia's innocence. It is narrated by Hilary Tamar, Oxford don of unspecified gender, and told largely although not exclusively through Julia's letters to her friends and their commentary on such. Very witty and funny, full of intelligent and only slightly eccentric people, the series about Professor Tamar is excellent.

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My postscript may have occasioned you some surprise, following, as I recollect, a passage in which I spoke with some bitterness of Ned’s behaviour and announced my intention to upbraid him severely. On the way to lunch, however, I happened to call to mind some advice once given me by my Aunt Regina, who told me that the surest way to a man’s affections was to let him think he knew more about something than you did. It seemed worth trying — my Aunt Regina must be regarded as an authority on such matters, for she has had four husbands; though I cannot actually recall her thinking that any of them knew better than she did on any subject whatever.

On the previous evening, as I have told you, I had sought consolation in the Finance Act: Schedule 7 seemed a suitable subject for Ned to know more about than I did. Finding, as I had hoped, that we were the only Art Lovers present at lunch, I turned the conversation to the question of income tax.

“I suppose,” I said, “if Eleanor is hoping to persuade your Department that she is in Venice for business purposes, she might as well take the matter to its logical conclusion and claim relief under Schedule 7 of this year’s Act on the proportion of her earnings attributable to work done abroad.”

“Yes,” he said, “but she’d have to spend at least thirty days of the year working abroad.”

“Oh,” I said, “I expect she could manage that. She’d have to remember, of course, that she could only count days devoted to the duties of her employment. If she spent a week overseas and rested on the Sabbath, only six days would count.”

“No, Julia,” he said, “you’re thinking of the Bill. They amended it on its way through Parliament. If you’re abroad for at least seven consecutive days which taken as a whole are substantially devoted to the duties of your employment, they all count, even if you take a day off.” This was said with such charming modesty and so little arrogance at finding me in error that I almost felt a qualm of conscience; but I remembered his treachery of the previous day — my heart was hardened and I kept my course.

“Nonsense,” I said firmly. “The Act says that a qualifying day is a day substantially devoted to the performance of the duties of the employment. What you mean is, I suppose, that your Department has decided to make an extra-statutory concession, legislating by way of Press release. To the burden of penal taxation there is now added the tyranny of secret law-making — as it is, when one cannot advise one’s clients without ferreting through correspondence columns for proclamations of Revenue policy.”

My indignation almost caused me to forget the business in hand; but Ned brought back my attention to it by repeating, rather crossly, that the day-off-abroad provision was not embodied in a Press release but in the Act itself.

“My dear Ned,” I replied, “I am prepared to bet you a bottle of wine that it isn’t.”

“By all means,” he said. “But I’ll have to wait for my wine until we get back to England. We can’t settle it without a Finance Act.”

“We can settle it right away,” I said. “I have the Finance Act in my room.”

And thus it was that the beautiful Ned returned with me across the bridge to the annexe.

It is a great advantage in an enterprise of this nature to know that one’s room will have been cleaned and tidied. How often has some promising pursuit been brought to a standstill by my recalling the chaos and squalor of my bedroom? I looked with gratitude, therefore, as we went through the entrance-way to the annexe, at the little group of chambermaids, as pretty as a flock of angels in some Renaissance painting, who gather there to rest in the afternoon. They smiled at me, I thought, with an eye of complicity, as if knowing and approving my purpose. We went up the staircase and came to my room.

“Sit down,” I said, “while I find my Finance Act.” There being nothing else to sit on — the chair by

the dressing table was occupied by a pile of clothes — he sat down on the bed, on the edge nearer to the door. I was careful, having found my Finance Act, to hand it to him from the other side of the bed, thus drawing him down from a perpendicular to a horizontal position — lying, that is to say, across the bed, rather than sitting on the edge of it. I sat down beside him on the edge further from the door.

“Show me,” I said, “this mythical amendment.”

It is hardly possible, when two people are sitting on the same bed and trying to read the same copy of the Finance Act, for all physical contact to be avoided. I, indeed, made no attempt to avoid it; but neither, it seemed to me, did Ned. This gave me some encouragement — one would not wish, as a woman of principle, to impose attentions actually distasteful.

The advice of yourself and my Aunt Regina, excellent as both had proved to be, could take me, I felt, no further — it was time to put complete reliance in that given by the dramatist Shakespeare. Leaning across Ned’s shoulders, I rested my hand on the area of the bed which lay on the further side of them. So that when, in due course, he looked up from the statute to say, with forgivable complacency, “Here you are, Julia — sub-paragraph (b) of paragraph 2 of the Schedule,” he found himself, as it were, encircled.

“Why, you are perfectly right,” I said, “and I owe you a bottle of wine. But I hope you are too kind to insist on immediate payment.”

“Oh, Julia,” he said, opening his eyes very wide with reproach, “how can you be so shameless?”

“Ah, Ned,” I answered, “because you are so beautiful.” And met with no further resistance.

“It just shows one,” said Ragwort sadly, “how dangerous it is to gamble. Even when one knows one is right.”

“Come off it,” said Cantrip. “Going off with Julia to her bedroom in the middle of the afternoon — you can’t tell me he didn’t think she’d make a pass.”

“Quite so,” said Selena. “But the charge is not one of ravishment.”

Delicacy precludes any more detailed account of the afternoon. This letter may be read in the presence of the virtuous and lovely Ragwort — one would not like to make him blush. That is to say, one would like very much to do so — nothing could be more delightful. But I shall resist the temptation. I shall merely say that the dramatist Shakespeare, in imputing to the forthright and vigorous approach a merely limited success, was shown to have been less than candid.

Afterwards, as is the way with beautiful young men when they wish to show in spite of the evidence that they are not creatures of easy virtue, the lovely Ned put on an expression of prim decorum, as one disapproving of all that has occurred and accepting no share of responsibility for it. Such a look, at such a time, inspires a particular tenderness; for after the horse has been persuaded to bolt, the careful locking of the stable door is extraordinarily endearing.

“Julia,” he said, “you will keep quiet about this, won’t you? I wouldn’t like Ken to know about it.”

I assured him that he might count on my discretion. I had already established, as you know, that it was logically impossible for Kenneth to be distressed by anything that might occur between Ned and myself; but Kenneth, being an artist, has perhaps not studied logic and is unaware of the impossibility.

The great danger of such an episode is the sense which it induces of benevolent euphoria, the consequences of which are almost always disastrous. After washing and changing for dinner, I had made my way to the bar of the Cytherea with a view to consuming a refreshing Campari soda and writing you a full account of my success. There, however, I found the Major, looking dejected and reading The Times.

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