The Skull Beneath the Skin Read online

  It was impossible now to will herself to sleep. But she must have dozed at last if only fitfully for it was nearly four when she next awoke. She was too hot. The bedclothes lay heavily on her like a weight of failure and she knew that there would be no more sleep that night. The sea was louder than ever, the air itself seeming to throb. She had a vision of the tide rising inexorably over the terrace, sweeping into the dining room, floating the heavy table and the carved chairs, rising to cover the Orpens and the stuccoed ceiling, creeping up the stairs until the whole island was covered except for the slender tower rising like a lighthouse above the waves. She lay rigidly, longing for the first flush of day. It would be Monday, a working day in Speymouth. She would be able to get away from the island, if only for a few hours, visiting the local newspaper office, trying to trace the cutting about Clarissa’s Jubilee performance. She had to do something positive however unlikely it was to prove successful and significant. It would be good to feel free, free of Ambrose’s ironic, half-secret smile, Simon’s misery, Ivo’s gaunt fortitude; free most of all from the eyes of the police. She had no doubt that they would be back. But, short of arresting her, there was nothing they could do to prevent her spending a day on shore.

  Now it seemed that the morning would never come. She gave up the attempt at sleeping and got out of bed. Pulling on her jeans and Guernsey she went to the window and drew back the curtains. Below her lay the rose garden, the last overblown heads drooping on their spiky branches, bleached pale by the moon. The water in the pond looked as solid as beaten silver and she could see clearly the smudge of lily leaves, the gleam of their blossoms. But there was something else on the surface, something black and hairy, an immense spider crawling half submerged, spreading and waving its innumerable hairy legs under the shimmering water. She gazed in fascinated disbelief. And then she knew what it was and her blood ran cold.

  She wasn’t aware of her flight down to the door which led from the passage to the garden. She must have banged on bedroom doors as she ran, indiscriminately, aware only that she might need help, not waiting for a response. But others must have been sleeping lightly. By the time she had reached the door into the garden and was straining upwards to shoot back the top bolt, she was aware of muffled footsteps padding down the passageway, a confused murmur of voices. And then she was standing at the edge of the pool with Simon, Sir George and Roma beside her and viewed clearly for the first time what it was she knew that she had seen: Munter’s wig.

  It was Simon who threw off his dressing gown and waded into the pool. The water came up to his thrashing arms. He gulped then dived. The rest of them watched and waited. The water had scarcely steadied after the flurry of his disappearance when his head shot up, sleek as a seal’s. He called: “He’s here. He’s caught on some wire netting where the lilies are rooted. Don’t come in. I think I can free him.” He disappeared again. Almost at once they saw two black shapes surfacing. Munter’s bald head, face upwards, looked as swollen as if it had been in the water for weeks. Simon pushed the body towards the side of the pool, and Cordelia and Roma bent and tugged at the sodden sleeves. Cordelia knew that it would be easier to take his hands, but the bloated fingers, yellow as udders, repelled her. She bent over his face and shifted her grasp to his shoulders. The eyes were open and glazed, the skin as smooth as latex. It was like pulling a dummy from the water, some discarded manikin with a stuffed-sawdust body, waterlogged and inert in its ridiculous formal coat. The clown’s mask with its sagging jaw seemed to be gazing into hers with a look of piteous inquiry. She could imagine that she smelt his breath, stinking with drink. She was suddenly ashamed of the repugnance which had rejected the sad remnant of his humanity, and in a spasm of pity she grasped his left hand. It felt like a taut bladder, fleshless and cold. And it was in that moment of touch that she knew he was dead.

  They tugged him on to the grass. Simon pulled himself out of the water. He folded his dressing gown under Munter’s head, forced back his neck and felt in the gaping mouth for dentures. There were none. Then he fastened his mouth over the thick lips and began the kiss of life. They watched silently. No one spoke even when Ambrose and Ivo came up quietly and stood among them. There was no sound but the squelch of sodden clothes as Simon bent to his task and the regular gasp of his intaken breath. Cordelia glanced at Sir George, wondering a little at his silence. He was gazing down at the bloated inverted face, at the half-shut and unseeing eyes with a look of great intensity, almost of incredulous recognition. And in that moment, Cordelia’s heart jolted. Her eyes met his and she thought they flashed a warning. Neither spoke but she wondered whether he had shared her revelation. There came into her mind an old incongruous picture: the music room at the Convent, Sister Hildegarde stretching wide her mouth and eyes in an anticipatory mime, raising the white baton. “And now my children, the Schumann. Happy, happy! Mouths wide. Ein munteres Lied.”

  She dragged her mind back to the present. There was no time to think about her discovery or to explore its implications. She forced herself to look again at the sodden lump of flesh on which Simon was so desperately working. He was close to exhaustion when Ambrose bent and felt for the pulse at Munter’s wrist. He said: “It’s no good. He’s dead. And he’s icy cold. He’s probably been in the water for hours.”

  Simon didn’t reply. He went on mechanically pumping breath into the inert body as if performing some indecent and esoteric rite. Roma said: “Ought we to give up? I thought you were supposed to go on for hours.”

  “Not when the pulse has gone and the body’s cold.”

  But Simon took no notice. The rhythm of his harsh, indrawn breath and the antics of his crouched body seemed to have become more frantic. It was then that they heard Mrs. Munter’s voice, low but harsh: “Leave him be. He’s dead. Can’t you see that he’s dead?”

  Simon heard her. He stood up and began to shiver violently. Cordelia took his dressing gown from under Munter’s head and wrapped it round his shoulders. Ambrose turned to Mrs. Munter.

  “I’m so very sorry. When did it happen, do you know?”

  “How can I tell?” She paused, then added, “sir. I don’t sleep with him when he’s drunk.”

  “But you must have heard him go out. He can’t have walked steadily or quietly.”

  “He left his room just before three-thirty.”

  Ambrose said: “I wish you had let me know.”

  Cordelia thought: He sounds as peevish as if she’s proposing to take a week’s holiday without consulting him.

  “I thought you paid us to protect you from trouble and inconvenience. He’d made enough for one night.”

  There seemed to be nothing to say. Then Sir George came forward and beckoned to Simon.

  “Better get him indoors.”

  There was a new note in Mrs. Munter’s voice. She said quickly: “Don’t bring him into the servants’ flat, sir.”

  Ambrose said soothingly: “Of course not, if that’s how you feel.”

  “That’s how I feel.”

  She turned and walked away. The rest of the party looked after her.

  Then Cordelia ran and caught her up.

  “Please let me come with you. I don’t think you should be alone.”

  She was surprised that the eyes lifted to hers could hold so much dislike.

  “I want to be alone. There’s nothing the likes of you can do. Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill myself.” She nodded towards Ambrose. “You can tell him that.”

  Cordelia returned to the group. She said: “She doesn’t want anyone with her. She says to tell you that she’ll be all right.”

  No one answered. They were still standing in a circle looking down on the body. Dressing-gowned as they were, their feet muffled by slippers, they loomed over the corpse like a group of oddly clad mourners: Sir George in shabby checked wool, Ivo’s dark-green silk through which his shoulders stuck like wire hangers, Ambrose’s sombre blue, faced with satin, Roma’s padded and flowered nylon, Simon’s brown bathrobe. W
atching the circle of bent heads Cordelia half expected them to rise in concert and wail a threnody in the thin air. Then Sir George roused himself and turned to Simon: “Shall we get on with it?”

  Ivo had wandered a little way along the edge of the pool and was contemplating the remnants of the water lilies as if they were some rare marine vegetation in which he had a scientific interest. He looked up and said: “But ought you to move him? Isn’t it usual not to disturb the body until the police arrive?”

  Roma cried: “But that’s only in a case of murder! This is an accident. He was drunk, he staggered and he fell in. Ambrose told us that Munter couldn’t swim.”

  “Did I? I can’t remember. But it’s perfectly true. He couldn’t swim.”

  Ivo said: “You told us so at dinner. But Roma wasn’t there.”

  Roma cried: “Someone told me, Mrs. Munter perhaps. What does it matter? He was drunk, he fell in and he drowned. It’s perfectly obvious what happened.”

  Ivo resumed his contemplation of the water lilies. “I don’t think anything is ever perfectly obvious to the police. But I dare say you’re right. There’s enough mystery without making more. Are there any marks of violence on the body?”

  Cordelia said: “Not that I can see.”

  Roma said obstinately: “We can’t leave him here. I think we should take him indoors.”

  She looked at Cordelia as if inviting her support. Cordelia said: “I don’t think it matters if we move him. It isn’t as if we found him like this.”

  They all looked at Ambrose as if waiting for instructions.

  He said: “Before we move him, please come with me all of you. There’s something we have to decide.”

  5

  They followed him towards the castle. Only Simon glanced behind him at the ungainly lump of cold flesh, still spread-eagled, which had been Munter. His glance conveyed an embarrassed regret, almost a look of apology that they should have to desert him, leave him so uncomfortably circumstanced.

  Ambrose led them into the business room and switched on the desk lamp. The atmosphere was at once conspiratorial; they were like a gang of dressing-gowned schoolchildren planning a midnight prank. He said: “We have a decision to make. Do we tell Grogan what happened at dinner? I think we ought to agree on this before I telephone the police.”

  Ivo said: “If you mean, do we tell the police that Munter accused Ralston of murder, why not say so plainly?”

  Simon’s hair, plastered over his brow and dripping water into his eyes, looked unnaturally black. He was shivering under the dressing gown. He looked from face to face, astounded.

  “But he didn’t accuse Sir George of … well, of any particular murder. And he was drunk! He didn’t know what he was saying. You all saw him. He was drunk!” His voice was getting dangerously close to hysteria.

  Ambrose spoke with a trace of impatience.

  “No one here thinks it of any importance. But the police may. And anything that Munter did or said during the last hours of his life will obviously interest them. There’s a lot to be said for saying nothing, for not complicating the investigation. But we have to give roughly the same account. If some tell and the others don’t, those who opt for reticence will obviously be placed in an invidious position.”

  Simon said: “Do you mean that we pretend that he didn’t come in through the dining room windows, that we didn’t see him?”

  “Of course not. He was drunk and we all saw him in that state. We tell the police the truth. The only question is, how much of the truth?”

  Cordelia said quietly: “It isn’t only Munter’s shouted accusation at Sir George. After you and Simon had taken Munter out Sir George told us about an army friend of his who had drunk in just that compulsive way …”

  Ivo finished the sentence for her: “And had been drowned in just that way. The police will find that an interesting coincidence. So unless Sir George told you both the same story on a different occasion—which I take it he didn’t—Cordelia and I are already in what you might call an invidious position.”

  Ambrose took in this information in silence. It seemed to give him some satisfaction. Then he pronounced: “In that case the choice would seem to be: do we all give a truthful account of the evening’s proceedings or do we omit Munter’s shout of ‘murder’ and the story about Ralston’s unfortunate friend?”

  Cordelia said: “I think we should tell the truth. Lying to the police isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

  Roma said: “You speak from experience perhaps.”

  Cordelia ignored the note of malice and went on: “They’ll question us closely. What did Munter say when he burst in? What did the rest of us talk about when Ambrose and Simon were helping him to bed? It isn’t only a question of omitting embarrassing facts. We have to agree on the same lies. That’s apart from any moral considerations.”

  Ambrose said easily: “I don’t think we need complicate the decision with moral considerations. Doing evil that good may come is a perfectly valid option whatever the theologians tell you. Besides, I imagine that we all did a little judicious editing in our interviews with Grogan. I did. He seemed to feel that my staging the play for Clarissa required explaining, so I told him that she gave me the idea for Autopsy. An ingenious but quite unnecessary lie. So our first decision is easy. We tell the truth, or we agree on a story. I suggest we take a secret ballot.”

  Ivo said quietly: “Here, or do we all repair to the crypt?”

  Ambrose ignored him. He turned first to where Simon stood, his chattering mouth half open, his washed face pale under the feverish eyes, and thought better of it. He said to Cordelia with formal courtesy: “Would you be good enough to bring me two cups from the kitchen? I think you know the way.”

  The short journey, the incongruous errand, seemed to her of immense significance. She walked down the empty passages and into the kitchen and took down two breakfast cups from the dresser with grave deliberateness as if an unseen audience were watching the grace of every movement. When she got back to the business room it seemed to her that no one had moved.

  Ambrose thanked her gravely and placed the cups side by side on the desk. Then he went out to the display cabinet and returned carrying the round board with its coloured marbles, Princess Victoria’s solitaire board. He said: “We each take a marble. Then we close our eyes—no peeping I implore you—and drop them into one of the cups. We’ll make it easy to remember. The left cup for the more sinister option, the right for righteousness. You’ll see that I’ve even aligned the handles appropriately so there’s no excuse for confusion. When we’ve heard the five marbles drop we open our eyes. It’s convenient that Roma wasn’t at dinner. There’s no possibility of a tie.”

  Sir George spoke for the first time. He said: “You’re wasting time, Gorringe. You’d better ring for the police now. Obviously we tell Grogan the truth.”

  Ambrose took his marble, selecting it with some care and examining its veining as if he were a connoisseur of such trifles.

  “If that’s what you want, that’s what you vote for.”

  Ivo said: “Do you then intend to take a second ballot to decide whether we tell the police about the first ballot?”

  But he took a marble. Sir George, Simon and Cordelia followed. She closed her eyes. There was a second’s silence and then she heard the first marble tinkle into the cup. The second followed almost immediately, then a third. She stretched out her hands. They were briefly brushed by ice-cold fingers. She felt for the cups and placed a hand on each so that there could be no mistake. Then she dropped the marble into the right-hand cup. A second later she heard the last marble fall. The sound was unexpectedly loud; it must have been dropped from a height. She opened her eyes. Her companions were all blinking as if the period of darkness had lasted for hours, not seconds. Together they looked into the cups. The right-hand one held three marbles.

  Ambrose said: “Well, that simplifies matters. We tell the truth, apart, of course, from mentioning this little divertissement.
We came together into the business room and you all sat here together appropriately subdued while I rang the police. We’ve only spent a few minutes so there will be no embarrassing hiatus of time to account for.”

  He replaced the marbles, after carefully scrutinizing each one, handed the two cups to Cordelia, and took up the telephone receiver. As she was returning the cups to the kitchen two thoughts chiefly occupied her. Why had Sir George waited until the ballot was inevitable before announcing that he favoured the truth, and which of the other two of them had dropped their marbles into the left-hand cup? She did briefly wonder whether anyone could have transferred someone else’s marble in addition to dropping his own, but decided that this would have required some sleight of hand even if done with open eyes. Her own ears were exceptionally sharp and they had detected only the four clear tinkles as the other marbles fell.

  Ambrose was apparently practising a policy of togetherness. He waited until she returned before ringing the Speymouth police station. He said: “It’s Ambrose Gorringe speaking from Courcy Island. Will you tell Chief Inspector Grogan that my butler Munter is dead. He was found in the pool here, apparently drowned.”

  Cordelia thought that the statement was notable for being brief, accurate and carefully non-committal. Ambrose for once was keeping an open mind on the cause of Munter’s death. The rest of the conversation was monosyllabic. Ambrose eventually replaced the receiver. He said: “That was the duty sergeant. He’ll let Grogan know. He says not to move the body. The less interference the better until the police arrive.”