The Skull Beneath the Skin Read online

  So Clarissa Lisle had been confident that she would take the job. And why not? She had taken it. And she was apparently equally confident of being able to get her way with Ambrose Gorringe. Her excuse for including a secretary in the party was surely rather thin and Cordelia wondered how far it had been believed. To arrive for a country-house weekend accompanied by one’s private detective was permissible for royalty, but in any less elevated guest showed a lack of confidence in one’s host, while to bring one incognito might reasonably be regarded as a breach of etiquette. It wasn’t going to be easy to protect Miss Lisle without betraying that she was there under false pretences, a discovery which would hardly be agreeable for either her host or fellow guests. She said: “I need to know who else will be on the island and anything you can tell me about them.”

  “There’s not much I can tell. There’ll be about one hundred people on the island by Saturday afternoon when the cast and invited audience arrive. But the house party is small. My wife, of course, with Tolly—Miss Tolgarth—her dresser. Then my wife’s stepson, Simon Lessing, will be there. He’s a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, the son of Clarissa’s second husband who was drowned in August 1977. He wasn’t happy with the relatives who were his guardians so my wife decided to take him on. I’m not sure why he’s invited, music’s his interest. Clarissa probably thought it was time he met more people. He’s a shy boy. Then there’s her cousin, Roma Lisle. Used to be a schoolmistress but now keeps a bookshop somewhere in north London. Unmarried, aged about forty-five. I’ve only met her twice. I think she may be bringing her partner with her but, if so, I can’t tell you who he is. And you’ll meet the drama critic Ivo Whittingham. He’s an old friend of my wife. He’s supposed to be doing a piece about the theatre and the performance for one of the colour magazines. Ambrose Gorringe will be there, of course. And there are three servants: the butler, Munter, and his wife and Oldfield, who is the boatman and general factotum. I think that’s all.”

  “Tell me about Mr. Gorringe.”

  “Gorringe has known my wife since childhood. Both their fathers were in the diplomatic. He inherited the island from his uncle in 1977, when he was spending a year abroad. Something to do with tax avoidance. He came back to the U.K. in 1978 and has spent the last three years restoring the castle and looking after the island. Middle-aged. Unmarried. Read history at Cambridge I believe. Authority on the Victorians. I know no harm of him.”

  Cordelia said: “There’s one last question I have to ask. Your wife apparently fears for her life, so much so that she is reluctant to be on Courcy Island without protection. Is there any one of that company whom she has reason to fear, reason to suspect?”

  She could see at once that the question was unwelcome, perhaps because it forced him to acknowledge what he had implied but never stated, that his wife’s fear for her life was hysterical and unreal. She had demanded protection and he was providing it. But he didn’t think it was necessary; he believed neither in the danger nor in the means he was employing to reassure her. And now some part of his mind was repelled by the thought that his wife’s host and her fellow guests were to be under secret surveillance. He had done what his wife had asked of him, but he didn’t like himself any the better for it.

  He said curtly: “I think you can put that idea out of your head. My wife has no reason to suspect any of the house party of wishing to harm her, no reason in the world.”

  2

  Nothing more of importance was said. Sir George looked at his watch and got to his feet. Two minutes later he said a curt goodbye at the street door, neither mentioning nor glancing at the offending nameplate. As she climbed the stairs, Cordelia wondered whether she could have managed the interview better. It was a pity that it had ended so abruptly. There were questions which she wished she had thought to ask, in particular whether any of the people she was to meet on Courcy Island knew of the threatening messages. She would have to wait now until she met Miss Lisle.

  As she opened the office door, Miss Maudsley and Bevis looked up over their typewriters with avid eyes. It would have been heartless to deny them a share in the news. They had sensed that Sir George was no ordinary client and curiosity and excitement had virtually paralysed them. There had been a suspicious absence of clacking typewriters from the outer office during his visit. Now Cordelia told them as little as was compatible with telling them anything worth hearing, emphasizing that Miss Lisle was looking for a companion-secretary who would protect her from an irritating but unimportant poison-pen nuisance. She said nothing about the nature of the threatening messages nor of the actress’s conviction that her life was seriously threatened. She warned them that this assignment, like all jobs, even the most trivial, was to be treated as confidential.

  Miss Maudsley said: “Of course, Miss Gray. Bevis understands that perfectly well.”

  Bevis was passionate in his assurances.

  “I’m more reliable than I look. I won’t utter, honestly. I never do, not about the Agency. But I’ll be no good if anyone tortures me for information. I can’t stand pain.”

  Cordelia said: “No one’s going to torture you, Bevis.”

  By general consent they took an early lunch hour. Bevis fetched sandwiches from the Carnaby Street delicatessen and Miss Maudsley made coffee. Sitting cosily in the outer office they gave themselves over to happy speculation about where this interesting new assignment might lead. And the hour wasn’t wasted. Unexpectedly, both Miss Maudsley and Bevis had helpful information to give about Courcy Island and its owner, pouring out a spate of antiphonal chat. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Their more orthodox skills might be suspect, but they not infrequently provided a bonus in the way of useful gossip.

  “You’ll enjoy the castle, Miss Gray, if you’re interested in Victorian architecture. My brother took the Mothers’ Union to the island for their summer outing the month before he died. Of course, I’m not a full member, I couldn’t be. But I usually went on the outings, and this one was so interesting. I particularly enjoyed the pictures and the porcelain. And there’s one delightful bedroom which is almost a museum to the Victorian arts and crafts movement: De Morgan tiles, Ruskin drawings, Mackmurdo furniture. It was quite an expensive outing, I remember. Mr. Gorringe, he’s the owner, only allows parties once a week during the season and he restricts the numbers to twelve at a time, so I suppose he has to charge rather a lot to make it worth while. But no one grumbled, not even Mrs. Baggot who was always, I’m afraid, rather inclined to complain at the end of the day. And the island itself, so beautiful and varied, and such peace. Low cliffs, woods, fields and marshes. It’s like England in miniature.”

  “Darlings, I was actually in the theatre when she dried, Clarissa Lisle, I mean. It was ghastly. It wasn’t just that she forgot the lines, though I don’t see how anyone can forget Lady Macbeth, the part practically speaks itself. She dried completely. We could hear the prompter positively shrieking at her from where Peter—he was my friend—and I were sitting. And then she gave a kind of gasp and ran offstage.” Bevis’s outraged voice recalled Miss Maudsley from her happy recollection of Orpen portraits and William Morris tapestries.

  “Poor woman! How terrible for her, Bevis.”

  “Terrible for the rest of the cast. For us, too. Altogether shame-making. After all, she is a professional actress with something of a reputation. You don’t expect her to behave like a hysterical schoolgirl who’s lost her nerve at her first amateur performance. I was amazed when Metzler offered her Vittoria after that Macbeth. She started all right and the notices weren’t that bad, but they say that things got pretty dodgy before it folded.”

  Bevis spoke as one who had been privy to all the negotiations. Cordelia had often wondered at the assurance which he assumed whenever they spoke of the theatre, that exotic world of fantasy and desire, his promised land, his native air. He said: “I’d love to see the Victorian theatre on Courcy Island. It’s very small—only a hundred seats—but they say it’s perfect. The original o
wner built it for Lillie Langtry when she was mistress to the Prince of Wales. He used to visit the island and the house party would amuse themselves with amateur theatricals.”

  “How do you get to know these things, Bevis?”

  “There was an article about the castle in one of the Sundays soon after Mr. Gorringe had completed the restoration. My friend showed it to me. He knows I’m interested. The auditorium looked charming. It even has a royal box decorated with the Prince of Wales feathers. I wish I could see it. I’m madly envious.”

  Cordelia said: “Sir George told me about the theatre. The present owner must be rich. It can’t have been cheap, restoring the theatre and the castle and collecting the Victoriana.”

  Surprisingly, it was Miss Maudsley who replied: “Oh, but he is! He made a fortune out of that bestseller he wrote. Autopsy. He’s A. K. Ambrose. Didn’t you know?”

  Cordelia hadn’t known. She had bought the paperback, as had thousands of others, because she had got tired of seeing its dramatic cover confronting her in every bookshop and supermarket and had felt curious to know what it was about a first novel that could earn a reputed half a million before publication. It was fashionably long and equally fashionably violent and she remembered that she had indeed, as the blurb promised, found it difficult to put down, without now being able to remember clearly either the plot or the characters. The idea had been neat enough. The novel dealt with an autopsy on a murder victim and had told at length the stories of all the people involved, forensic pathologist, police officer, mortuary attendant, family of the victim, victim and, finally, the murderer. You could, she supposed, call it a crime novel with a difference, the difference being that there had been more sex, normal and abnormal, than detection and that the book had attempted with some success to combine the popular family saga with the mystery. The writing style had been nicely judged for the mass market, neither good enough to jeopardize popular appeal nor bad enough to make people ashamed of being seen reading it in public. At the end she had been left dissatisfied, but whether that was because she had felt manipulated or because of a conviction that the pseudonymous A. K. Ambrose could have written a better book had he chosen, it was hard to say. But the sexual interludes, cunningly spaced, all written with undertones of irony and self-disgust, and the detailed description of the dissection of a female body certainly had a salacious power. Here at least the writer had been himself.

  Miss Maudsley was anxious to disclaim any implied criticism in her question.

  “It’s not surprising that you didn’t know. I wouldn’t have known myself, only one of the members on the summer outing had a husband who keeps a bookshop and she told us. Mr. Ambrose doesn’t really like it to be known. It’s the only book he’s written I believe.”

  Cordelia began to feel a lively curiosity to see the egregiously talented Ambrose Gorringe and his offshore island. She sat musing on the oddities of this new assignment while Bevis collected the coffee cups, it being his turn to wash up. Miss Maudsley had fallen into a pensive silence, hands folded in her lap. Suddenly she looked up and said: “I do hope you won’t be in any danger, Miss Gray. There’s something wicked, one might say evil, about poison-pen letters. We had a spate of them once in the parish and it ended very tragically. They’re so frighteningly malevolent.”

  Cordelia said: “Malevolent, but not dangerous. I’m more likely to be bored by the case than frightened. And I can’t imagine anything very terrible happening on Courcy Island.”

  Bevis, precariously balancing the three mugs, turned around at the door.

  “But terrible things have happened there! I don’t know what exactly. The article I read didn’t say. But the present castle is built on the site of an old medieval castle which used to guard that part of the Channel, so it’s probably inherited a ghost or two. And the writer did mention the island’s violent and bloodstained history.”

  Cordelia said: “That’s just a journalistic platitude. All the past is bloodstained. That doesn’t mean that its ghosts still walk.”

  She spoke entirely without premonition, glad of the chance of a real job at last, happy at the thought of getting out of London while the warm autumnal weather still lasted, seeing already in her mind the soaring turrets, the gull-loud marshes, the gentle uplands and woods of this miniature England, so mysterious and beautiful, lying waiting for her in the sun.

  3

  Ambrose Gorringe now visited London so rarely that he was beginning to wonder whether the subscription to his town club was really justified. There were parts of the capital in which he still felt at home, but too many others in which he had previously walked with pleasure now seemed to him grubby, despoiled and alien. When business with his stockbroker, agent or publisher made a visit desirable, he would plan a programme of what he described to himself as treats, an adult re-enactment of school holidays, leaving no portion of a day so unprovided for that he had time to ponder on his stupidity in being where he was. A visit to Saul Gaskin’s small antique shop near Notting Hill Gate was invariably in his programme. He bought most of his Victorian pictures and furniture at the London auction houses, but Gaskin knew and partially shared his passion for Victoriana and he could be confident that there would be, awaiting his inspection, a small collection of the trivia which was often so much more redolent of the spirit of the age than his more important acquisitions.

  In the unseasonable September heat the cluttered and ill-ventilated office at the back of the shop smelt like a lair in which Gaskin, with his white, pinched face, precise little hands and grubby moleskin waistcoat scurried around like a tenacious rodent. Now he unlocked his desk drawer and reverently laid before this favoured customer the scavengings of the last four months. The Bristol blue decanter engraved with a design of grapes and vineleaves was attractive, but there were only five glasses and he liked his sets complete, while one of a pair of Wedgwood vases designed by Walter Crane was slightly chipped. He was surprised that Gaskin, knowing that he demanded perfection, had bothered to keep them for him. But the ornately trimmed menu for the banquet given by the Queen at Windsor Castle on 10th October 1844 to celebrate the appointment of King Louis Philippe of France as a Knight of the Garter was a happy find. He played with the idea that it would be amusing to serve the same meal at Courcy Castle on the anniversary, but reminded himself that there were limits both to Mrs. Munter’s culinary skills and to the capacity of his guests.

  But Gaskin had saved the best until last. He now brought out, with his customary grave air of serving some secular Mass to a devotee, two heavy mourning brooches, beautifully wrought in black enamel and gold, each with a lock of hair intricately twisted into whorls and petals; a widow’s black peaked bonnet, still in the hatbox in which it was delivered, and a marble carving of a baby’s plump truncated arm reposing on a purple velvet cushion. Gorringe took the cap in his hands stroking the goffered satin, the streamers of ostentatious woe. He wondered what had happened to its owner. Had she followed her husband to an untimely grave, desolated by grief? Or had the bonnet, an expensive contraption, merely failed to please? Both it and the brooches would be an addition to the bedroom in Courcy Castle which he called Memento Mori and where he kept his collection of Victorian necrophilia: the death masks of Carlyle, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, the black-edged memorial cards with their weeping angels and sentimental verses, the commemorative cups, medals and mugs, the wardrobe of heavy mourning garments, black, grey and mauve. It was a room Clarissa had only once entered with a shudder and now pretended didn’t exist. But he had noted with pleasure that those of his guests who were lovers, acknowledged or furtive, liked occasionally to sleep there rather, he thought, as eighteenth-century whores had copulated with their clients on the flat tops of tombs in London’s East End graveyards. He watched with a sardonic and slightly contemptuous eye this symbiosis of eroticism and morbidity, as he did all those human foibles which he happened not to share.

  He said: “I’ll take these. And probably the marble too. Where did you fin
d it?”

  “A private sale. I don’t think it’s a memorial piece. The owner claimed that it was a duplicate of one of the marble limbs of the royal children at Osborne carved for Queen Victoria. This one is probably the arm of the infant Princess Royal.”

  “Poor Vicky! What with her formidable mother, her son and Bismarck, not the happiest of princesses. It’s almost irresistible, but not at that price.”

  “The cushion is the original. And if it is the arm of the Princess, it’s probably unique. There’s no record as far as I know of any duplicates of the Osborne pieces.”

  They entered into their usual amicable pattern of bargaining, but Gorringe sensed that Gaskin’s heart wasn’t in it. He was a superstitious man and it was apparent to Gorringe that the marble, which he seemed unable to bring himself to touch, both fascinated and repelled him. He wanted it out of his shop.

  Hardly had the business concluded than there was a ring on the locked street door. As Gaskin left to answer it, Gorringe asked if he might use the telephone. It had occurred to him that with some slight hurry he could catch an earlier train. As usual, it was Munter who answered the ring.

  “Courcy Castle.”

  “Gorringe, Munter. I’m ringing from London. I find that I shall, after all, be able to catch the two-thirty train. I should be at the quay by four-forty.”

  “Very good, sir. I will instruct Oldfield.”

  “Is all well, Munter?”

  “Quite well, sir. Tuesday’s dress rehearsal was hardly a success but I understand that this is considered propitious for the actual performance.”

  “The lighting rehearsal was satisfactory?”

  “Yes, sir. If I may say so, the company is more fortunate in the talent of its amateur electricians than in its actors.”

  “And Mrs. Munter? Have you been able to get all the help she needs for Saturday?”