The Skull Beneath the Skin Page 18

  This time she understood. She turned and faced him, her face expressionless but so white that Cordelia, thinking she would faint, put out a hand and grasped her arm. She felt Tolly shudder, a small spasm of rejection, almost of revulsion which was unmistakable, as shocking as a blow in the face. Quickly she withdrew her hand. Tolly said: “The boy. Does the boy know?”

  “Simon? Not yet. No one knows except Sir George. We’ve only just discovered the body.”

  His voice held a trace of aggrieved impatience, like an overworked servant. Cordelia almost expected him to protest that he couldn’t see to everything at once. Tolly still fixed her eyes on him. She said: “You’ll break it gently, sir. It will be a shock to him.”

  Ambrose said curtly: “It’s a shock for us all.”

  “Not for one of us, sir.”

  She turned and left them without another word.

  Ambrose said: “Extraordinary woman! I’ve never understood her. I doubt whether Clarissa did. And why this sudden concern for Simon? She’s never shown any particular interest in the boy. Oh well, we’d better get on with telephoning the police.”

  They made their way down the stairs and through the great hall. Here preparations for the buffet supper were already under way. The long refectory table was covered with a cloth and rows of wine glasses were ranked at one end. The door to the dining room was open and Cordelia could see Munter pulling the chairs from the table and putting them in line, presumably before carrying them into the hall. Ambrose said: “Wait here a moment, will you.”

  A minute later he was back. He said: “I’ve told Munter. He’ll get down to the quay and prevent the launches from tying up.”

  They went together into the business room. Ambrose said: “If Cottringham were here, he’d probably insist on speaking to the Chief Constable personally. But I suppose the Speymouth police are the ones to ring. Ought I to ask for the C.I.D.?”

  “I should just ring the Speymouth station and leave it to them. They’ll know the procedure.”

  She looked up the number for him and waited while he got through. He gave the facts succinctly and without emotion, mentioning that Lady Ralston’s jewel box was missing. Cordelia was interested that he had noticed its absence; nothing had been said while they were in the bedroom. There was a certain amount of delay from the other end of the line and then the crackle of a voice. She heard Ambrose say: “Yes, we’ve already done that,” and, later: “That is what I propose doing as soon as I get off the line.” Shortly afterwards he put down the receiver and said: “Much as you expected. Lock the rooms. Don’t touch anything. Keep people together. Don’t let anyone land. They’re sending a Chief Inspector Grogan.”

  In the theatre the house lights were already on. A door to the left of the proscenium led backstage. From the open doors of the two main dressing rooms came laughter and a confusion of voices. Most of the cast had already changed and were now making up with a great deal of giggling advice from their friends. The atmosphere was reminiscent of an end-of-term frolic. Ambrose knocked on the closed doors of the two rooms reserved for the principals, then called out loudly: “Will you all come on stage please, immediately.”

  They tumbled out in an unruly bunch, some clutching their clothes around them. But one glance at his face silenced them and they trooped on to the stage subdued and expectant. Partly costumed and half made-up as they were, their faces white except for the garish patches of rouge, they looked, thought Cordelia, like the clients and inmates of some Victorian bawdy-house pulled out by the police for interrogation.

  Ambrose said: “I’m afraid I have some very shocking news for you. Miss Lisle is dead. It looks very much like murder. I’ve telephoned the police and they’ll be here shortly. In the meantime, they’ve asked that you all stay together here in the theatre. Munter and his wife will bring you all some tea and coffee and anything else you need. Perhaps, Cottringham, you’d take charge here. There are still people I have to tell.”

  One of the women, a blonde, pert-faced girl dressed as a parlour maid in a frilled apron and goffered cap with long streamers, said: “But what about the play?”

  It was a question born of shock which Cordelia thought she would probably remember with shame all her life. Someone gasped, and she blushed scarlet. Ambrose said curtly: “The performance is cancelled.”

  Then he turned on his heel and left. Cordelia followed. She said: “What about the search parties?”

  “I’ll leave that to Ralston and Cottringham to sort out. I’ve told the cast to stay together. I can’t cope with trying to enforce police instructions against the determination of the bereaved husband to demonstrate his competence. Where, do you suppose, are the rest of the party?”

  He sounded almost peevish. Cordelia said: “I suppose Simon is swimming. Roma was in the library, but she’s probably dressing by now. I imagine that Ivo is in his room, resting.”

  “See them, will you, and break the news. I’ll go and find Simon. Then we’d better stay together until the police arrive. I suppose it would be courteous if I kept company with my guests in the theatre but I’m not in the mood to cope with a gaggle of agitated women all hurling questions at me.”

  Cordelia said: “The less they’re told until the police arrive, the better.”

  He glanced at her with his sharp bright eyes.

  “I see. You mean we should keep quiet about the actual cause of death?”

  “We don’t know the actual cause of death. But yes, I think we should say as little as possible to anyone.”

  “But surely the cause of death was obvious. Her face had been battered in.”

  “That may have been done after death. There was less blood than one would expect.”

  “There was more than enough blood for me. You’re remarkably knowledgeable for a secretary-companion.”

  “I’m not a secretary-companion. I’m a private detective. There’s no point in carrying on the charade any longer. Anyway, I know that you’d already guessed. And if you’re going to say that I’ve been useless, I know that too.”

  “My dear Cordelia, what more could you have done? No one could have expected murder. Stop blaming yourself. We’re going to be stuck here together at least until the inquest, and it will be boring enough being grilled by the police without having you sunk in lugubrious self-reproach. It doesn’t suit you.”

  They had reached the door which led from the arcade into the castle. Glancing round, they saw Simon in the distance, towel slung round his shoulders, making his way down the long grass slope which led upwards from the rose garden between the avenue of beeches to the crown of the island. Without speaking, Ambrose went to meet him. Cordelia stood in the shadow of the doorway and watched. Ambrose didn’t hurry; his walk was little more than a leisurely stroll. The two figures came together and stood in the sun, their heads bent, their shadows staining the bright grass. They didn’t touch. After a moment, still distanced, they began walking slowly towards the castle. Cordelia passed into the great hall. Coming down the staircase was Ivo with Roma at his side. He was in his dinner jacket, Roma was still wearing her trouser suit.

  She called down to Cordelia: “Where is everyone? The place is dead as a morgue. I’ve just been telling Ivo I’ve no intention of changing and I’m not coming to the play. You two can do what you like, but I’m damned if I’ll climb into an evening dress in the middle of a warm afternoon just to watch a bunch of amateurs make fools of themselves and pander to Clarissa’s megalomania. You all indulge her nonsense as if you’re terrified of her. Someone should put a stop to Clarissa.”

  Cordelia said: “Someone has.”

  They froze on the stairway, gazing down at her.

  She said: “Clarissa’s dead. Murdered.”

  And then her control broke. She gave a gasp and felt the hot tears coursing down her face. Ivo ran down to her and she felt his arms, thin and strong as steel rods, pulling her towards him. It was the first human contact, the first sympathetic gesture which anyone had made since t
he shock of finding Clarissa’s body, and the temptation to give way and cry like a child against his shoulder was almost irresistible. But she gulped back her tears, fighting for control, while he held her gently without speaking. Looking up over his shoulder she saw, through her tears, Roma’s face hanging above her, a streaked amorphous pattern of white and pink. Then she blinked and the features came into focus: the mouth, so like Clarissa’s, hanging loose, the eyes staring wide, the whole face blazing with an emotion which could have been terror or triumph.

  She wasn’t sure how long they stayed there, she locked in Ivo’s arms, Roma staring down at them. Then she heard footsteps behind her. She broke free murmuring over and over again, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Ambrose spoke: “Simon’s gone to his room. He’s very shocked and he wants to be alone. He’ll be down as soon as he feels ready.”

  Ivo asked: “What happened? How did she die?”

  Ambrose hesitated and Roma cried out: “You’ve got to tell us! I insist that you tell us!”

  Ambrose looked at Cordelia. He gave a shrug of resigned apology. “Sorry, but I’m not prepared to do the work of the police. They have a right to know.” He looked up at Roma. “She was battered to death. Her face has been smashed to pulp. It looks as if the weapon used was the limb of the dead princess. I haven’t told Simon how she was killed and I think it better that he doesn’t know.”

  Roma sank down on the stairs and grasped the banister. She said: “Your marble? The killer took your marble? But why? How did he know it was there?”

  Ambrose said: “He, or she, took it from the display cabinet some time before seven o’clock this morning. And I’m afraid that the police are only too likely to take the view that he knew it was there because, yesterday before luncheon, I myself showed it to him.”

  5

  Ten minutes later Roma, Ivo and Cordelia stood at the drawing-room window and looked down over the terrace to the landing stage. All three of them were now outwardly calm. The first shock had been replaced by a restlessness, almost an unhealthy, prurient excitement which they recognized in themselves and each other and which was as shaming as it was unexpected. They had all resisted the temptation to take alcohol, perhaps feeling that it would be unwise to face the police with its smell on their breath. But Munter had served strong coffee in the drawing room and it had been almost as effective.

  Now they watched as the two heavily loaded launches rocked dangerously at the quayside, the passengers in their evening clothes crowding to one side like a gaudily clad cargo of aristocratic refugees fleeing from some republican holocaust. Ambrose was talking to them, with Munter standing at his shoulder like a second line of defence. There was a great deal of gesticulating. Even at this distance, Ambrose’s pose, the slightly bent head, the spread hands, conveyed regret, distress and some embarrassment. But he was standing firm. The sound of chattering came to them, faint but high like the squeaking of distant starlings.

  Cordelia said to Ivo: “They look restless. I expect they want to stretch their legs.”

  “Want to pee I expect, poor dears.”

  “There’s someone standing up on the gunwale taking photographs. If he’s not careful, he’ll go overboard.”

  “That’s Marcus Fleming. He’s supposed to be taking the pictures to illustrate my article. Oh well, he’ll be able to phone a scoop of sorts to London if they don’t capsize with excitement before they reach shore.”

  “The fat lady seems very determined, the one in mauve.”

  “That’s Lady Cottringham, the formidable dowager. Ambrose had better watch her. If she gets one foot on the quay there’ll be no holding her. She’ll dash in to give poor Clarissa the once-over, subject us all to the third degree and solve the crime before the police get here. Ah, victory for Ambrose! The launches are pulling away.”

  Roma said quietly: “And here come the police.”

  Round the corner of the island came four bright wings of spray. Two sleek, dark-blue launches were approaching, their long wakes feathering the paler blue of the sea. Roma said: “Odd that one feels so apprehensive. Stupid, too. It’s like being a schoolgirl again. One always felt and looked most guilty when one was totally innocent.”

  Ivo said: “Totally? That’s an enviable state. I’ve never managed to achieve it. But I shouldn’t worry. The police have a formula for these occasions. The suspects are ranked in strict order of priority; first, the husband, then the heirs, then the family, then close friends and acquaintances.”

  Roma said dryly: “As I’m both an heir and a relation, I can hardly find that reassuring.”

  They watched in silence as the two brightly laden launches drew clumsily away and those sleek blue hulls came rapidly closer.

  BOOK FOUR

  THE PROFESSIONALS

  1

  Sergeant Robert Buckley was young, good-looking and intelligent and well aware of these advantages. Less commonly, he was also aware of their limitations. He had gained three A-level subjects with respectable grades at the end of his two years in the sixth, an achievement which would have justified going on to university in company with friends similarly qualified. But it wouldn’t have been the university of his choice. He suspected that his intelligence, although keen, was superficial, that he couldn’t compete with real scholars, and he had no intention of joining the overeducated unemployed at the end of another three years of mildly boring academic grind. He judged that success would come quickest in a job for which he was over- rather than under-qualified and where he would be competing with men who were less rather than better educated than himself. He recognized in himself a streak of sadism which found a certain mild satisfaction in the pain of others without necessarily needing actively to inflict it.

  He was an only child of elderly parents who had begun by doting on him, moved on to admiring him and had ended by being a little afraid of him. That, too, he found agreeable. His choice of career had been natural and easy, the final decision made while he was loping with long, easy strides over the Purbeck hills, watching the earth move in streaks of fawn and green. There had only been two possibilities, the army or the police, and he had quickly rejected the first. He was aware of some social insecurity; there were traditions, mores, a public school ethos about the army for which he felt a wary distrust. This was an alien world which might expose him, even reject him, before he had had a chance to master it. The police, on the other hand, given what he had to offer, ought to be pleased to have him. And to do them justice, they had been pleased.

  Sitting now in the bow of the launch, he felt satisfied with the world and with himself. He made a practice of concealing his enthusiasm as he did his imagination. Both were like fascinating but wayward friends, to be enjoyed rarely and with caution since they had about them the taint of treachery. But as he watched Courcy Island steadily taking form and colour across a dazzle of sea, he was aware of a heady mixture of exultation and fear. He exulted at the promise that here, at last, was the murder case of which he had dreamed since he had gained his sergeant’s stripes. He feared that it might yet collapse, that they would be met at the jetty with those depressingly familiar words: “He’s waiting for you upstairs. We’ve got someone watching him. He’s in a terrible state. He says he doesn’t know what came over him.”

  They never did know what came over them, those self-confessed murderers, as pathetic in defeat as they were incompetent in their killing. Murder, the unique and ultimate crime, was seldom the most interesting forensically or the most difficult to solve. But when you did get a good one there was no excitement like it: the heady combination of a manhunt with a puzzle; the smell of fear in the air, strong as the metallic smell of blood; the sense of randy well-being; the fascinating way in which confidence, personality, morale subtly changed and deteriorated under its contaminating impact. A good murder was what police work was about. And this promised to be a good one.

  He glanced across to where his chief sat, his red hair glinting in the sun. G
rogan looked as he always did before a case, silent and withdrawn, the eyes hooded but wary, the muscles tensed under the well-cut tweed, the whole of that powerful body gathering its energies for action like the predator he was. When Buckley had been introduced to him three years earlier he had been at once reminded of pictures in his boyhood comics of an Indian brave and had mentally crowned that carved and ruddy head with ceremonial feathers. But the comparison had in some subtle way been inaccurate. Grogan was too large a man, too English and too complicated for so uncompromisingly simple an image. Buckley had only once been invited briefly into the stone cottage outside Speymouth where, separated from his wife, Grogan lived alone. It was rumoured that he had a son and that there was some trouble with the boy; what exactly no one seemed to know. The cottage had revealed nothing. There were no pictures, no mementos of old cases, no photographs of family or colleagues, few books apart from what looked like a complete set of the Famous Trials series, little but bare stone walls and a bank of expensive stereo equipment. Grogan could have packed his bags and been out of it in half an hour leaving nothing of himself behind. Buckley still didn’t understand him although after two years of working under him he knew what to expect; the alternate taciturnity and volubility during which he would use his sergeant as a sounding-board, the occasional sarcasm, the ruthlessness and the impatience. He only partly resented being used as a combination of clerk, shorthand writer, pupil and audience. Grogan did too much of the work himself. But you could learn from him, he got results, he wasn’t tainted with failure, and he was fair. And he was nearing retirement; only two years to go. Buckley took what he wanted from him and bided his time.

  There were three figures waiting for them on the jetty, motionless as statues. Buckley guessed who two of them must be before the launches had chugged to a stop: Sir George Ralston standing almost at attention in his old-fashioned shooting jacket, Ambrose Gorringe, more relaxed but incongruously formal in his dinner jacket. Both of them watched the arrivals disembark with wary formality like the commanders of a besieged castle awaiting the armistice negotiators and watching with undeluded eyes for the first hint of treachery. The third man, dark-clad and taller than the other two, was obviously some kind of servant. He stood a little behind them and gazed stolidly past them out to sea. His stance conveyed that certain guests were welcome on Courcy but that the police were not among them.