The Skull Beneath the Skin Read online

  “Yes, the actress, Clarissa Lisle. I was staying there when it happened. I’m still supposed to be staying there. They should have sent the launch for me at six. I must get back tonight.”

  “A murdered woman. That’s nothing new for Courcy Island. I’ll be fishing off the southeast point. I’ll take you if you’re sure you want to go.”

  Neither his voice nor his face betrayed any particular curiosity. She said quickly: “I’m quite sure. I’ll pay for the petrol of course. That’s only fair.”

  “No need. The wind’s free. There’ll be enough of it out in the bay. You can crew if you like.”

  “I’m not sure that I know how. But I’ll pull on the right rope when you tell me.”

  He transferred the sandwich to his left hand, wiped the right on his jersey and held it out to help her aboard. She said: “How long do you think it will take us?”

  “The tide’s running against us. Best part of forty minutes. Maybe more.”

  He disappeared into the cabin and she waited seated in the bow, willing herself to patience. A minute later he reappeared and handed her a sandwich, two rashers of bacon, greasy and strong-smelling, wedged between thick slices of crusty bread. Until she bit into it, almost disconnecting her jaw in the process, Cordelia hadn’t realized just how hungry she was. She thanked him. He said, with a trace of boyish satisfaction at the evident success of his catering arrangements: “There’ll be cocoa once we get under way.”

  He clambered along the outside of the cabin towards the stern. A minute later the engine shuddered and the small boat began to creep from the quay.

  7

  It was almost impossible to believe that she had first seen Courcy Castle only three days earlier. In that short span of time she seemed to have lived through long, action-packed years, to have become a different person. Surely it had been some excitable expectant child who had gasped in wonder at her first sight of those sunlit walls, those patterned battlements, that high, luminous tower. But now, as the little boat turned the headland, she almost gasped again. The castle was ablaze with light. Every window shone, and from the tower, scored with pencil-slim lines of light, the high window threw a strong beam like a warning beacon over the sea. The castle seemed buoyant with light, lifted above the rocks to float in motionless serenity under an indigo sky, obliterating the nearer stars with brightness. Only the moon held her place, wan as a circle of rice paper, moving behind a thin veil of cloud.

  She stood on the quay until the boat had drawn away. For a moment she was tempted to call out to the boy to stay, at least within call. But she told herself that she was being ridiculous and fanciful. She wouldn’t be alone with Ambrose. Even if Ivo were too sick to be much support, Roma, Simon and Sir George would be there. And even if they weren’t, why should she be afraid? She would be facing someone with a motive. But motive alone didn’t make a murderer. And she agreed in her heart with Roma: Ambrose hadn’t the nerve, the ruthlessness, the capacity for hatred which drove a man to the ultimate crime.

  Light lay across the terrace like a sheet of silver. She trod it as if on air, as if she, too, were buoyant, moving silently towards the open French windows of the drawing room. And then Ambrose appeared and stood watching her approach, a dark figure silhouetted against the light. He was wearing a dinner jacket and holding a glass of red wine in his left hand. The picture had the clarity and distinction of a painting. She found herself admiring the artist’s technique: the careful positioning of the body, the artful blob of red in the glass cunningly and deftly painted in to emphasize the dark vertical lines of the figure, the splash of white at the shirt front, the dominant eyes which gave a focus and meaning to the whole composition. This was his kingdom, his castle. He was in command. He had illuminated it as if to celebrate and exult in his mastery. But when she came up to him his voice was light and casual. He might have been welcoming her home after an afternoon’s shopping on the mainland. But wasn’t that precisely what he thought he was doing?

  “Good evening, Cordelia. Have you eaten? I didn’t wait dinner, such as it is. I cooked myself some soup and a herb omelette. Would you care for one?”

  Cordelia moved into the drawing room. Here only the wall lights and one table lamp were lit, making a cosy circle of light by the fire. The corners of the room were dark and long shadows moved like fingers over the carpet and the walls. The fire must have been lit for some time. A single large log was burning steadily. She slipped off her shoulder bag and asked: “Where is everyone?”

  “Ivo’s in bed, not at all well, I’m afraid. He’ll be going home tomorrow if he’s fit for the journey. Roma has left. She was anxious to get back to London. Sir George had one of his mysterious calls to a meeting at Southampton and she took the launch with him. They won’t be returning, although they’ll both be in Speymouth tomorrow for the inquest. Simon said that he wasn’t hungry. He’s gone to bed.”

  So they were alone after all, alone except for the sick Ivo and a boy. She asked, hoping that her voice didn’t betray her dismay: “Why wasn’t the launch at Speymouth? Oldfield was supposed to meet me at six.”

  “He or I must have misunderstood. He’ll be back with Shearwater, but not until the morning. He’s visiting his daughter in Bournemouth for the night.”

  “I did ring, but whoever answered put down the receiver.”

  “I’m afraid that’s been my stock response to the telephone today. Too many calls, too many reporters.”

  They stood together in front of the fire. She took the newspaper photograph from her bag and held it out to him.

  “I went to Speymouth to find this.”

  He didn’t touch it or even glance at it.

  “I did wonder. I congratulate you. I didn’t think you’d succeed.”

  “Because you’d already cut it out of the newspaper archives?”

  He said calmly: “Yes, I destroyed it about a year ago. It seemed a sensible precaution.”

  “I found another.”

  “So I see.”

  Suddenly he said gently: “You look tired, Cordelia, hadn’t you better sit down? May I get you some claret or brandy?”

  “I’d like a glass of claret, please.”

  She had to keep her mind clear, but the thought of the wine was irresistible. Her mouth was so dry that she could hardly frame her words. He fetched a glass for her from the dining room, poured her wine and refilled his own glass, then sat with the decanter close at hand. They settled themselves one each side of the fireplace. It seemed to Cordelia that no chair had ever been more welcoming or as comfortable, no wine had ever tasted so good. He began to speak as calmly and unemotionally as if they were sitting together after dinner discussing the ordinary events of an unremarkable day.

  “I came back to visit my uncle. I was his heir and he wanted to see me. I don’t think he understood that I couldn’t return and still have a tax-free year. That wasn’t the way his mind worked. It would never have occurred to him that a man could spend a year of his life doing what he didn’t want to do, living where he didn’t want to live, because of money. I wish you’d known him. You would have liked each other. It wasn’t difficult getting here unnoticed. I flew from Paris to Dublin and took an Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow. Then I travelled by rail to Speymouth and rang the castle for my uncle’s servant, William Mogg, to meet me after dark with the launch. They’d lived together here for nearly forty years. I asked Mogg not to tell anyone that he’d seen me, but it wasn’t necessary. He never spoke of his master’s business. Three months after my uncle died he turned his face to the wall and followed him. So you see, there wasn’t really any risk. He asked me to come. I came.’

  “And if you hadn’t, perhaps he would have altered his will.”

  “Unkind, Cordelia. You probably won’t believe me, but I wasn’t influenced by that disagreeable possibility. I didn’t even believe that it was a possibility. I liked him. I seldom saw him—he didn’t encourage visits even from his heir—but when I did pay my annual homage there
was something between us which both of us recognized. Not love. I think he only loved William Mogg and I’m not sure that I know what the word means. But whatever it was, I valued it. And I valued him. He had toughness, obstinacy, courage. He was his own man. He lay in that immense bedroom like some ancient chieftain gazing out over the sea and fearing nothing: nothing, nothing. And then he asked me to get for him something he fancied, a last taste of blue Stilton. He can’t have tasted it for thirty years. He and William Mogg practically lived off the island, making their own butter and cheese. God knows what put that need into his mind. He could have asked Mogg to get it for him. But he didn’t, he asked me.”

  “So that’s why you went to Speymouth?”

  “That’s why. If I hadn’t done that simple act of filial kindness Clarissa wouldn’t have seen that press photograph, wouldn’t have forced me into staging The Duchess of Malfi, would still be alive. Odd, isn’t it? It makes nonsense of any theory of the beneficent governance of human life. But then I learned that lesson when I was eight and my mother died because she was one minute late for the plane home and the one she caught crashed. It was a matter, you see, of whether the Paris traffic lights were red or green. We live by chance and we die by chance. With Clarissa if you look back far enough, it was a matter of eight ounces of blue Stilton. Evil coming out of good if those two words mean something to you.”

  Ivo had asked her much the same question. But this time she wasn’t expected to answer.

  He went on: “A man should have the courage to live by his beliefs. If you accept, as I do absolutely, that this life is all that we have, that we die as animals, that everything about us is finally lost irrevocably, that we go into the night without hope, then that belief must influence how you live your life.”

  “Millions of people live with that knowledge and still live good and kindly and useful lives.”

  “Because goodness and usefulness and kindness are expedient. I have my share of them. It is necessary for comfort to be at least a little liked. And perhaps some of the virtuous unbelievers still retain a vestigial hope or fear that there could be an afterlife, a measure of reward or punishment, a rebirth. There isn’t, Cordelia. There isn’t. There’s nothing but darkness, and we go into it without hope.”

  Remembering how he had sent Clarissa into her darkness, she gazed appalled at the gently smiling face with its look of spurious sorrow, as if the full knowledge of what he had done had only now come home to her.

  “You smashed in her face! Not once, time and time again! You could make yourself do that!”

  “It wasn’t agreeable. And if it’s any consolation to you, I had to close my eyes. And it seemed to go on for so long. The sensation was horribly specific, softness cushioning the brittleness of bones. And so many bones. I could feel them splintering, like smashing a tin of toffee in childhood. Our old cook used to let me make it. Smashing it when it had cooled was the best part. And when I opened my eyes and made myself gaze, Clarissa wasn’t there. Of course, she hadn’t been there before, but once her face was gone I couldn’t even remember what she had looked like. More than anyone I know, Clarissa was her face. That demolished, I knew afresh what I’d always known, the ridiculous presumption of supposing that she had a soul.”

  Cordelia told herself: I won’t be sick. I won’t. And I must stay calm. I mustn’t panic.

  His voice came to her faintly but very clear: “When I was sixteen and first came to this island as a schoolboy, I knew for the first time what I wanted of life. Not power, not success, not sex, with men or women. That has always been to me an expense of spirit in a waste of shame. It wasn’t even money, except as it contributed to my passion. I wanted a place. This place. I wanted a house. This house. I wanted this view, this sea, this island. My uncle wanted to die on it. I wanted to live on it. It’s the only real passion I’ve ever known. And I wasn’t going to let a nymphomaniac second-rate actress take it from me.”

  “And so you killed her?”

  He refilled her glass and his own, then looked at her. She had the feeling that he was measuring something, her probable response, his need to confide, perhaps even how much time remained to them. He smiled, and the smile was one of genuine amusement which almost broke into a laugh.

  “My dear Cordelia! Do you really believe that you’re sitting here, sipping Château Margaux with a murderer! I congratulate you on your sangfroid. No, I didn’t kill her. I thought you understood that. I haven’t that brand of courage or ruthlessness. No, she was dead when I battered in her face. Someone had been there before me. She couldn’t feel it, you see. Nothing matters, nothing exists as long as you can’t feel it. It wasn’t living flesh that I beat into a pulp. It wasn’t Clarissa.”

  But, of course. What had made her so blind? She had reasoned all this out before. Clarissa must have been dead when he raised the marble limb and brought it down, the limb of a dead princess who, by chance, had borne the same name as that other child who, more than a century later, had died uncomforted by her mother in a London hospital bed.

  He said: “There was no upward spurt of blood. How could there be? She was already dead. It isn’t so very difficult to strike when the kill has been made. No blood, no pain, no guilt. All I did was to cover up for the murderer. Admittedly my motive was mainly self-interest. I needed to find and destroy that vital scrap of newsprint. I knew that it would be somewhere in the room. That was one of her little tricks, to keep it near her, to take it out of her handbag occasionally and pretend to read the review. But you should credit me with some disinterested concern for the killer. It pleased me to concoct for him a way of escape if he had the guts to take it. After all, I did owe him something.”

  “She could have taken photocopies of the photograph.”

  “Perhaps, although it wasn’t likely. And what would it matter if she had? They’d be found with her effects at home, trivia to be thrown away with the detritus of her essentially trivial life, the half-used jars of face cream, the dead love letters, the hoarded theatre programmes. And even if George Ralston had found it and realized its significance—an unlikely eventuality—he wouldn’t have done anything. George wouldn’t have seen it as his business to do the work of the Inland Revenue. I came back here for one day and one night to be with a dying man. Would you, or anyone you know, use that knowledge to inform on me?”

  “No.”

  “And will you now?”

  “I must. It’s different now. I have to tell, not the tax people, the police. I have to.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, Cordelia! No you don’t! Don’t try to fool yourself that you no longer have the responsibility of choice.”

  She didn’t answer. He leaned forward and refilled her glass.

  “It wasn’t the possibility of other copies that worried me. What I couldn’t risk was the police finding that one copy, and in her room. And I knew that, if it were there to find, then they’d find it. They’d be looking for a motive. Everything in that room would be collected, docketed, scrutinized, examined. There was a chance, of course, that they’d take the cutting at its face value, a critic’s notice kept for purely sentimental reasons. But why that particular notice, a not very important play in a provincial theatre? It’s never safe to rely on the stupidity of the police.”

  She said with great sadness: “So it was Simon. Poor Simon! Where is he now?”

  “In his room. Perfectly safe, I assure you. Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  “But he couldn’t have planned it! Not Simon. He couldn’t have meant it.”

  “Planned it, no. Meant it? Who’s to say what he meant? She’s just as dead, isn’t she, whatever he meant? What he told me was that she invited him to her room. He was to say that he was going for a swim, put on his swimming trunks under his jeans and shirt, wait until thirty minutes after she’d gone to rest, then knock three times at the door. She’d let him in. She said there was something she wanted to talk to him about. There was, of course. Herself. Whatever else did Clarissa ever
want to talk about? He, poor deluded fool, thought she was going to tell him that he could go to the Royal College, that she’d pay for his musical education.”

  “But why send for Simon? Why him?”

  “Ah, that I doubt whether we shall ever know. But I can make a guess. Clarissa liked to make love before a performance. Perhaps it gave her confidence, perhaps it was a necessary release of tension, perhaps she only knew of one way to stop herself thinking.”

  “But Simon! That boy! She couldn’t have wanted him!”

  “Perhaps not. Perhaps, this time, she only wanted to talk, wanted companionship. And, with all respect to you, my dear Cordelia, she had never looked to a woman for that. But she may have thought that she was doing him a service in more ways than one. Clarissa is totally incapable of believing that a man exists—a normal man anyway—who wouldn’t take her if he could get her. And to do her justice, my sex hasn’t done much to disabuse her of the idea. And what better time for Simon to begin his privileged education than on a warm afternoon after, I pride myself, an excellent luncheon and when she needed a new sensation, a divertissement to take her mind off the performance ahead? And who else was there? George, poor chivalrous booby, would lie to the death to protect her reputation, but my guess is that he hasn’t touched her since he discovered that he’s a cuckold. I’m no use to her. And Whittingham? Well, Ivo has had his turn. And can you imagine her wanting him even if he had the strength? It would be like handling the dry skin of death, infecting your tongue with the taste of death, smelling corruption in your nostrils. Given dear Clarissa’s peculiar needs, who was there but Simon?”

  “But it’s horrible!”

  “Only because you’re young, pretty and intolerant. It would have done no harm with a different boy and at a different time. He might even have thanked her. But Simon Lessing was looking for a different kind of education. Besides, he’s a romantic. What she saw in his face wasn’t desire, it was disgust. Of course, I could be wrong. She may not have thought it out very clearly. Clarissa seldom did. But she asked him to come to her. And as with me and my uncle, he came.”