The Shortest Way to Hades (13 page)

“I don’t imagine,” said Selena, “that he was distinguished enough to attract much notice in the newspapers, but he was certainly among the guests. Well, Cantrip told Julia, and Julia thinks it’s significant—she won’t believe that Rupert’s presence on two occasions when young women have met with unnatural deaths is merely an unfortunate coincidence. And she feels that something should be done.”

I said that I was sorry to hear it: I had rather hoped that Julia would by this time have forgotten about the whole matter.

“By no means,” said Selena. “So it’s very fortunate, Hilary, that you’re in London again: you can reassure her that you’re still investigating and all the resources of scholarship will be devoted to discovering the truth. I think you should go straight round to 63 and tell her so—it will be a great comfort to her, and leave me free to get on with my paperwork.”

In 63 New Square, however, I was told by Julia’s Clerk that she had as yet made no appearance there: in the afternoon, he added with touching confidence, I could be sure of finding her, since she had an important conference at half past two; but of her present whereabouts he had no idea.

Selena, when I returned with these tidings, was too much preoccupied to express any great curiosity. She was correcting the most recent product of the skills of the temporary typist—an Opinion on the title to certain freehold land comprised in the estate of an ancient and noble family—and the task seemed to be distressing her. She took particular exception, as I recall, to the description of the fifth Earl as the sun and air of the fourth.

“I could understand it,” she said in the tone of one trying hard to be reasonable, “if I had been dictating. Muriel has been typing for us, after all, for only six months, and cannot be expected to be familiar with technical terms. But how does she manage to do it when she’s simply copying from manuscript? ”

It was, I explained, an instance of the phenomenon known to students of textual criticism as
dictation interne—
the copyist, mentally repeating the words of the original, copies them not as he sees them but as he imagines hearing them—it is a fruitful source of error.

“Most interesting,” said Selena. “Some da y, Hilary, you must tell me all about it. Some day, that is, when I don’t have a plane to catch and three sets of papers to finish.”

I sought in vain to persuade her that she should pause from her labors for a light but nourishing lunch in the Corkscrew: she had brought sandwiches, and proposed to eat them at her desk. The other members of the Nursery being all engaged in court, I resigned myself to lunching alone.

On my way down the steps of 62 New Square, however, I encountered Ragwort, returning from the Law Courts in triumph: he had been applying, I gathered, for something called a Mareva injunction, and despite the perjured evidence and meretricious argument deployed against him, had succeeded in obtaining it. He was sufficiently elated to be prevailed on to join me in the Corkscrew.

I listened with attentive admiration to the full details of his victory; but towards the end of the meal I made some passing reference to Julia’s absence from Chambers. Ragwort frowned.

“One would not wish,” he said, “to speak critically of one’s friends. It has to be admitted, however, that Julia is not wholly free of the sin of sloth. If she woke up this morning and found herself with no immediate engagements, it is quite possible that she simply went back to sleep again. And she is capable, in that case, of failing to wake up again in time for her conference at two-thirty, which I understand to be rather important. Shall we stroll along to Bloomsbury and make sure she’s up and about?”

“By all means,” I said. “It will be an opportunity to see Carlotta, which is always delightful.”

Julia occupies as her residence the top story of a dilapidated Victorian house near the British Museum, owned by the celebrated historical novelist Carlotta Benares—my readers will doubtless be familiar with her work, though a tendency to emphasize the more sentimental aspects of history has prevented her enjoying the critical esteem which would be the just reward for her painstaking research. I am always pleased to see her, for we have several enemies in common.

She greeted us in her customary splendor of black lace and topaz, and offered us madeira and macaroons. Ragwort is a favorite in her affections, for she regards him as being “the right man for Julia”: she does not know, I think, that he has rejected Julia’s matrimonial proposals with as much firmness as those of a less honorable nature. Myself also she greeted with great goodwill, being eager to know my opinion of a colleague in the world of Scholarship who had written unfavorably, in a review of her most recent novel, of her understanding of military tactics in the reign of Richard III. The same man, as it happened, had once published an impertinent comment in one of the learned journals on a little article of my own concerning the statute De Donis: I was happy to assure Carlotta that he was a person of no intellectual consequence, and reported by a reliable source to change his underwear only once a year.

Of Julia, however, there was no sign. At about half past eight on the previous evening she had triumphantly announced that she had at last finished her Opinion on Part XV of the Taxes Act and intended to reward herself with dinner at Guido’s: Carlotta had not seen her since and was beginning to be anxious.

Returning once more to 62 New Square, we found Selena in not wholly amicable discussion with the temporary typist, who seemed to feel that she was being unduly critical of a newly typed Statement of Claim.

“You did say,” said the temporary typist, in a tone of accusation, “that you wanted it in a hurry.”

“Yes,” said Selena. “Yes, Muriel, it’s quite true I said that. But I didn’t actually mean that I wanted you to leave bits out.”

“It’s only one paragraph, Miss Jardine. I don’t suppose anyone’ll notice.”

“I know it’s only one paragraph, Muriel, but it does contain allegations which are essential to my client’s case. I really can’t just leave it out.”

“Well,” said the temporary typist, “you could write it in in handwriting, couldn’t you?”

“I suppose I shall have to,” said Selena with a small sigh, “but it’s going to look very messy. It hardly seems worth typing it at all if half of it is going to be in manuscript. It’s quite a long paragraph—I don’t understand how you came to miss it out.”

This was unreasonable, for the error was a natural one. I saw, looking over Selena’s shoulder at her draft, that the missing paragraph had begun with the same half-dozen words as that which succeeded it: the typist, having copied them for the first time, would have looked back at the draft to see what followed; the same phrase, occurring again a few lines later, would have caught her eye; and she would have continued from that point, omitting what lay between.

“It is an instance,” I said, “of the mistake known as haplography—a fruitful source of error in ancient and medieval manuscripts. I cannot doubt, Selena, that you are familiar with it: just such a blunder in the P Codex of the
Helena
is central to the argument in Sebastian’s recent article on the texts of Euripides. You will remember, moreover, from your own studies of Roman Law that Professor Daube’s brilliant reconstruction of the celebrated crux in
Celsus—”

“Hilary,” said Selena, “do you wish me to lie down on the floor and scream?” I recalled that she thought the day unseasonable for the discussion of textual criticism, and said no more on the subject.

The temporary typist having departed in dudgeon, we told Selena of our visit to Bloomsbury and of Julia’s failure to return there. Selena looked puzzled and frowned a little.

“Perhaps she spent the night somewhere and has gone straight back to Chambers. I’ll ring William and see if she’s there.”

But Julia’s Clerk was equally without news of his missing principal, and had begun to regard with some disquiet the approach of the hour appointed for her conference. Selena now looked perceptibly anxious.

“Did you say she was meaning to have dinner at Guido’s? Let’s see if they’ve any idea what’s happened to her.”

An eavesdropper on Selena’s conversation with Guido’s would have gathered that on the previous evening she had lent her umbrella—a rather pretty and distinctive umbrella, with an ivory handle carved in the shape of a horse’s head—to her friend Miss Larwood; that Miss Larwood, before departing for her morning’s engagements in the High Court, had confessed to having left it somewhere—she thought in Guido’s; and that Selena would like it back. She would be most grateful if they could look and see—there was silence while search was made.

“She didn’t?… didn’t leave anything at all? How strange—unprecedented. Was there anyone with her to remind her not to forget things?… Ah… Ah, I see… I wonder if it’s anyone I know—did you happen to catch the name?… No, I don’t think so… Well, she must have gone on somewhere else and left my umbrella there. You wouldn’t know of course—oh really?… yes… thank you, that’s most kind… yes, I’ll try there.” Replacing the telephone receiver, she began to arrange her papers in separate bundles, each neatly tied up in pink tape.

“Selena,” said Ragwort severely, “very little of that was true.”

“Losing one’s umbrella,” said Selena, “seems less eccentric, somehow, than losing Julia.”

“I gather,” I said, “that she dined at Guido’s last night. Are we to understand that there was someone with her?”

“She arrived alone, but when she was about half way through her meal a red-haired signorina came in, who seemed to be a friend of hers—that is to say, Julia seemed pleased to see her and invited her to share her table. They drank much wine and were very happy. When they had finished their meal, the red-haired signorina asked the waiter to call a taxi for them—to go, it seems, to a place called Vashti’s House. It’s a sort of nightclub in Chelsea.”

“Vashti’s?” said Ragwort with austere disapproval. “Vashti’s has a most unsavory reputation. I have heard it spoken of as a place frequented by females of unnatural propensity, seeking companions in disgraceful conduct.”

“I have heard it spoken of,” said Selena, “as an agreeable little establishment where single women may enjoy one another’s company in relaxed and convivial surroundings. Still, we’re clearly thinking of the same place.” She now rolled down her sleeves and put on the black linen jacket which would have completed the suitability of her costume for an appearance in Court. “The discotheque in the basement will be closed, of course, in the daytime. I believe, however, that there is a wine bar on the ground floor under the same management. With reasonable expedition, we should be able to get there in time to present ourselves as customers for a late lunch.”

Remembering her aeroplane and her paperwork, I did not suppose that any trifling danger to Julia’s merely moral welfare would persuade her to set forth so precipitately for Chelsea. I inquired what more there was to it.

“It seems,” said Selena, “that the name of her red-haired friend was Rowena. That was the name, you remember, of the girl at Rupert’s party—the one dressed as a parlormaid. It sounds as if Julia’s trying to investigate Rupert; and in view of the Rustington business and so forth, I’d really rather she didn’t.”

To a place of such ambiguous repute as Vashti’s my readers will wish no precise directions. Nor, indeed, am I in a position to give them: it is my custom, when being driven by Selena on any errand which she considers urgent, to keep my eyes firmly closed. When at last it seemed safe to open them, we were somewhere in that area of south-west London where the artistic overlaps the opulent, no doubt to their mutual advantage.

Having reflected during the journey on the best means of obtaining news of her missing friend, Selena had concluded that it was in the character of one who loved not wisely but too well that she was most likely to attract sympathetic assistance. She proposed, therefore, to enter the wine bar in that state of solitary dejection appropriate to one misused in an affair of the heart: Ragwort and I would appear to be strangers to her, but would endeavor to find a table in close proximity.

The interior decoration of Vashti’s House has a certain Moorish quality: arched recesses in whitewashed walls, a floor of terracotta tiles, many curls and arabesques of black wrought-ironwork. Our orders for lunch were taken by a tall, dark girl, short-haired and aquiline-nosed, dressed in a costume reminiscent of the bull-ring—very tight black trousers, white shirt and scarlet cummerbund.

It being now almost two hours since our lunch in the Corkscrew, neither Ragwort nor I found any difficulty in disposing of our slices of quiche lorraine and their accompanying salads. Selena, on the other hand, sitting alone at the next table, toyed listlessly with the contents of her plate; considering the frugality of her lunch, the performance did her credit. She drank her glass of wine, however, with unaccustomed rapidity, and forthwith asked for another.

“Are you all right, love?” inquired the girl in black trousers, as she brought the second glass.

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” said Selena, in a tone of wretchedness bravely dissimulated. “It’s only…” She concluded with a wan smile and a sad little shrug of the shoulders.

“If you’re fine,” said the dark girl, “why are you sitting there not eating anything and looking like a wet Sunday in Highgate Cemetery?” Selena repeated the wan smile and the sad little shrug, throwing in for good measure an understated but moving gesture of the hands. Construing this as an invitation to act as confidante, the girl sat down, facing her earnestly across the wrought-iron table.

“I wouldn’t like you to think,” said Selena, “that I’m jealous or possessive or anything.”

“Of course not, love,” said the girl in black trousers. “Just who is it you’re not jealous and possessive about?”

Sipping her second glass of wine, Selena explained that she had a friend of whom she was very fond; who was, she believed, fond of her; but who sometimes behaved unpredictably and as if indifferent to her feelings. On the previous evening, although aware that Selena could not accompany her, she had announced an intention to visit Vashti’s House; and she had not returned. “So you’d like to know who she came with?”