Free The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell Page A

eulogy.
    Selena had allowed her first cup of coffee to grow cold. She ordered another and sat gazing at it with a look of judicial severity, as if it were a witness she suspected of being evasive.
    “According to Madame Louisa,” said Julia, “this ought to be a good day for me to solve problems. But she doesn’t seem to mean that I can be any help with yours—knowing that Ricky Farnham’s information came from Isabella doesn’t really take you any further.”
    “Oh,” said Selena, “I wouldn’t say that exactly. At least it means I know what question I’m trying to answer. I thought what I had to guess was which of the directors wanted money enough to take the risk of insider dealing. Whereas what I actually have to guess is which of them was being blackmailed by Isabella into giving her confidential information.”
    “You sound quite sure that that’s what was happening.”
    “How else could she have known about the shares? Unless she really did have prophetic powers, of course—but it would be rather odd, wouldn’t it, if they only applied to takeovers involving one particular investment bank?”
    “But how could she make use of the information if she never invested in the stock market?”
    “Oh, by selling it—that’s to say, by passing it on to one or two favoured clients in the form of a psychic prediction. But the fee, I imagine, would have been considerably larger than people usually get for crystal gazing or reading tea leaves. It’s really rather clever—it would be almost impossible to prove that any offence had been committed.”
    “Well,” said Julia, “if you’d like to tell your client about Isabella, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t—it can’t cause any embarrassment to my aunt.”
    “No,” said Selena, frowning slightly. “No, I suppose not, but—all the same, I don’t think I’ll tell him. What he knows at present is that one of his codirectors is guilty of insider dealing. He doesn’t know which and it’s making him very unhappy. If I tell him about Isabella, he’ll know that one or the other of them must also be guilty of something else—something serious enough tobe blackmailed for—and he still won’t know which. I don’t think that’s going to make him feel any happier. And since it’s the duty of Counsel, so far as humanly possible, to keep the client happy, I’m not going to tell him.”
    Her decision was taken, as my readers will have observed, with full and proper regard to the interests of her client. If I say that it might have been better had she decided otherwise, I speak with the benefit of hindsight.
    Anyway, as it turned out, I needn’t have worried at all about the eulogy—Daphne wants to do it herself. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t, of course—we all just assumed that she’d be too upset, and nervous of speaking in public.
    The only problem now is making her look presentable—we really can’t let her go to the funeral looking like some sort of vagrant, especially if all Isabella’s friends from London are going to be there. So I’m giving her my grey silk Chanel dress, with the little jacket—I’d have to lose half a stone to wear it again and I’m quite resigned to never doing that.
    I’ve told her to come round here to change into it, in good time for me to see that it fits properly—it needed a bit of taking in—so I’ll be able to make sure she’s properly washed and brushed and doesn’t have a chance to get it dirty before the funeral.
    She had some idea at first that this wasn’t a suitable time to be worrying about her appearance, but I told her that it would be disrespectful toIsabella not to try to look her best. I said that if
my
niece didn’t wash her hair and wear a nice dress for
my
funeral I’d be so cross I’d jump out of my coffin—and I would, so don’t dare forget it when the time comes. Anyway, Maurice said he agreed with me and since, in Daphne’s eyes, he is now the fount of all