The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell

welcome to stay for supper. I didn’t think Maurice or Griselda would mind—I had quite enough food for four, and I knew they both felt sorry for her.
    It was a beautiful evening, and the garden’s at its best at the moment, so we ate out of doors. It was a very simple meal, just a salmon mousse with salad and new potatoes, and some strawberries afterwards, but it went quite well with the champagne, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
    Daphne had two helpings of everything, and said it was the best meal she’d ever had. Which, without unduly flattering myself, I could all too easily believe, poor girl.
    The conversation, I have to admit, didn’t exactly sparkle, though I’m sure that Daphne was doing her best—like a little girl at a grown-up party, trying hard to do the proper thing but not quite knowing what it is. She didn’t seem to realise that people don’t always mean exactly what they say, not because they’re insincere but because they’re making a joke about something. And she evidently expected Maurice to keep talking about religion, which of course he wouldn’t dream of doing over dinner.
    A minute or two after ten she said she had to go home, in case Isabella needed her for anything before she went to bed. Maurice said that he ought to be leaving too—he had to be up early to take morning service at a church ten miles away—and suggested that they should keep each other company across the churchyard. Dear Maurice—he’d normally have stayed much later, morning service or no morning service, but he wouldn’t have liked to let Daphne go home in the dark by herself.
    He rang a few minutes later, to say they were both safely home—he’d waited at the gate of the Rectory to make sure she got in all right, and he’d heard Isabella shout out to Daphne that she wasn’t needed and telling her to go to bed. The visitor had evidently left—Maurice said he’d seen no sign of the black Mercedes.
    So it sounded as if Daphne’s anxieties had been as misplaced as I thought.
    I usually wake up at about seven, but this morning I was woken earlier than that by the sound of someone ringing my doorbell. Not just ringingand stopping and going away again, like the postman leaving a parcel, but going on ringing, as if they didn’t mean to stop until I’d answered. I looked out of my bedroom window and saw that it was Daphne, so I put on my dressing gown and slippers and went down to let her in.
    She was in such a state of agitation, and stammering so badly, poor girl, that I could make no sense at all of what she was trying to say. All I could gather was that something was seriously wrong—or at least that she thought there was—and she wanted me to come straight back with her to the Rectory. So without being sure there was any real urgency, but not liking to take a chance on it, I put on my raincoat over my dressing gown and ran back with her across the churchyard.
    She’d left the front door open. We went straight in, and through the hallway to the black drawing room.
    The first thing I noticed was the smell—it was the first thing anyone would have noticed. A perfectly disgusting smell, acrid and sweet at the same time, mainly, I suppose, of bird droppings, but as if someone had tried to sweeten it with something else—incense or camphor or something like that. The second thing I noticed was the vulture, perched on the back of one of the chaises longues. The third was Isabella, lolling on another of them, dressed in the caftan she’d worn on my first visit, with her little black eyes staring at me without blinking, out of her white pudding face. I almost apologised for my intrusion.
    “She’s been sitting there like that since I camedown this morning,” said Daphne. “She doesn’t seem to hear what I say to her. There’s something wrong with her.”
    I knew straightaway what was wrong with her, and I could hardly believe that Daphne still hadn’t realised. I tried taking her pulse, and the other