The Skull Beneath the Skin

  She said: “What happened? How did you find out?”

  “I lied to Grogan about the time I left my room. I changed at once and quickly so that just after twenty minutes to two I was passing Clarissa’s door. At that moment Simon looked out. The encounter was completely fortuitous. We stared at each other. His face was ghastly—ashen-white, the eyes glazed. I thought he was going to collapse. I pushed him back into the bedroom and locked the door. He was wearing only his swimming trunks and I saw his shirt and jeans in a heap on the floor. And Clarissa was lying sprawled on the bed. She was dead.”

  “How could you be sure? Why didn’t you get help?”

  “My dear Cordelia, I may have led a sheltered life but I know death when I see it. I did check. I felt for a pulse. None. I drew the corner of my handkerchief across the eyeball, a disagreeable procedure. No response. He had brought the jewel box crashing down on her head and smashed the skull. The box was actually lying there on her forehead. Oddly enough, there was very little bleeding, a small smudge on his forearm where the blood had spurted upwards, a thin trickle running from her left nostril. It had almost dried when I saw her and yet she had only been dead for ten minutes. It looked like a crooked gash, a disfigurement above the gaping mouth. That’s one last humiliation which none of us can do anything about, looking ridiculous in death. How she would have hated it! But then you know. You saw her.”

  Cordelia said: “You forget. I saw her later. I saw her when you’d finished with her. She didn’t look ridiculous then.”

  “Poor Cordelia! I’m sorry. I would have spared you that if I could. But I thought it would look suspicious if I went up early to call her myself. That’s something I’ve learnt from popular fiction. Never be the one to find the body.”

  “But why? Did he say why?”

  “Not very coherently. And I was more concerned to get him away than to discuss the psychological complications of the encounter. But neither of them had got what they wanted. She must have seen the shame and the disgust in his eyes. And he saw the loss of all his hopes in hers. She taunted him with his sexual failure. She told him that he was as useless to her as his father had been. I think it was at that moment when she lay there half-naked on the bed smiling at him, mocking him and his dead father together, destroying all his hopes, that his control snapped. He seized the jewel casket, the only weapon to hand, and brought it down.”

  “And after that?”

  “Can’t you guess? I told him precisely what he must do. I schooled him in his story to the police. He was to say that he’d gone to swim after lunch as he told us all that he would. He’d walked along the beach until about an hour after the end of the meal and had then entered the water. He had started off back to the castle at about a quarter to three to dress for the play. I made sure that he had it by heart. I took him into Clarissa’s bathroom and washed off the small spot of blood. Then I dried the basin with toilet paper and flushed it down the W.C. I found the newspaper cutting. It didn’t take long. Her handbag or the jewel box were the two obvious places. Then I took him next door and instructed him how to get down the fire escape from your bathroom window being careful not to touch any of the rungs with his hands. He was like a dutiful child, obedient, extraordinarily calm. I watched while he managed the fire escape, carrying the box under his arm, then as he went to the edge of the cliff and hurled it out to sea as I’d instructed him. And if the police do succeed in dredging it up, they’ll find that the valuable jewels are missing. I took them out and flung them into another part of the sea. Forgive me if I don’t demonstrate my confidence in you by saying precisely where. But it would never have done if all that the police found missing in the casket was one reputed sheet of newsprint. Then he dived and I watched him strike out strongly towards the west cove.”

  “But someone else was watching too: Munter from the tower room window, the only window which overlooks the fire escape.”

  “I know. He managed to make that plain to us in his drunken ramblings when Simon and I were helping him to his room. It wouldn’t have mattered. Munter was absolutely safe. I told Simon not to let it worry him. Munter would have taken any secret of mine to the grave.”

  Cordelia said: “He took it to the grave conveniently early. And could you really trust a drunkard?”

  “I could trust Munter, drunk or sober. And I didn’t kill him. And nor, as far as I know, did Simon. That death, at least, was accidental.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I had to work quickly. But the haste and the risk were remarkably stimulating. My plotting of this real-life mystery was almost as ingenious as it was in Autopsy. I cleaned the makeup from Clarissa’s face so that the police wouldn’t suspect that she’d invited a visitor to her room. Then I set out to destroy the evidence of how precisely she was killed and to substitute a weapon which Simon couldn’t have brought with him because he didn’t know it existed, a weapon which would deceive the police into thinking that the murder was connected with the threatening quotations. I didn’t tell Simon what I proposed and I didn’t touch the body until he’d left. His ignorance was his greatest safeguard. He never saw Clarissa’s shattered face.”

  “And you had the limb with you, I suppose, in the inside pocket of your cloak?”

  “I had both of them ready, the marble and the note. I was intending to put them in the casket which Clarissa would open in the second scene of Act Three. It would have had to be done under cover of the cloak and at the last minute, requiring some sleight of hand. But I think I might have managed it. And I assure you the result would have been spectacular. I doubt whether she would have got through the scene.”

  “And is that why you took the job of assistant stage manager and occupied yourself with the props?”

  “That’s why. It was natural enough. People assumed that I wanted to keep an eye on my belongings.”

  “And after you’d destroyed Clarissa’s face, I suppose you took Simon’s clothes to the cove, also hiding them under your cloak.”

  “How well you understand duplicity, Cordelia. I should have liked to have left them further down the shore but there wasn’t time. The small cove beyond the terrace was as far as I could manage. And then I entered the theatre by the arcade and checked the props with Munter. I should mention that I didn’t have to worry unduly about fingerprints when I was in Clarissa’s room. This is my house. The furniture and the objects, including the marble, belong to me. It was perfectly reasonable that they should bear my prints. But I did wonder about my palm print on the communicating door. That could have shown that I was the last person to touch it. That’s why I took good care to open it after we found the body.’

  “And the threatening quotations, you sent those too? You took over when Tolly stopped?”

  “So you know about Tolly? I think I’ve underestimated you, Cordelia. Yes, it wasn’t difficult. Poor Tolly took to religion as an opiate for grief, and I continued the good work but in a rather more artistic form. It was only then that Clarissa called the police. It wasn’t a development I welcomed, so I suggested a little ploy to her that effectively scotched their interest. Clarissa really was an extraordinarily stupid woman. She had instinct but absolutely no intelligence. My success depended on two things about Clarissa: her stupidity and her terror of death. So when Tolly’s little notes with their remarkably apt biblical reference to millstones around necks ceased, I initiated my own brand of unpleasantness with the occasional help of Munter. The object was, of course, to destroy her as an actress and give me back my privacy, my peaceable island. It was only as an actress that Clarissa had any power over me. She would never return to Courcy if its theatre was the scene of her final humiliation. Once her confidence and her career were effectively and totally destroyed, I should be free. To do her justice, she wasn’t a common blackmailer. She didn’t need to be. She first saw that newspaper cutting in 1977. Clarissa liked to pamper her ego with discreditable secrets about her friends and this was one she hugged to herself for three ye
ars before she needed to make use of it. It was my bad luck that the restoration of the theatre and the crises in her career should coincide. Suddenly there was something she wanted of me. And she had the means to get it. I assure you, that blackmail was carried out with the greatest delicacy and discretion.”

  Suddenly he leaned towards her and said: “Look, Cordelia, it isn’t going to be possible to shield him for much longer. He’s beginning to drink. You must have seen it. And he’s making mistakes. That gaffe which Roma noticed, for example. How could he have known what the jewel box was like if he hadn’t seen or handled it? And there will be others. I like the boy and he’s not without talent. I’ve done all I can to save him. Clarissa destroyed his father and I didn’t see why she should add the son to her list of victims. But I was wrong about him. He hasn’t the guts to see this through. And Grogan is no fool.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I told you. In his room as far as I know.”

  She looked into his face, at the smooth womanish skin burnished by the light of the fire, the eyes like black coals, the perpetually half-smiling mouth. She felt the persuasive force flowing towards her rooting her into the comfort of her chair. And then as if the claret had mysteriously cleared her mind, she knew exactly what he was doing. The careful explanations, the wine, the almost companionable chat, the seductive comfort folded like a shawl around her tiredness, what were they but a ploy to waste time, to keep her at his side? Even the place had conspired with him against her: the cheerful domesticity of the fire, the sense of unreality induced by the long restless shadows, the windows wide to the disorientating blackness of the night and the ceaseless, sleep-inducing susurration of the sea.

  She snatched up her shoulder bag and ran from the room, through the echoing hall, up the wide staircase. She flung open the door of Simon’s bedroom and switched on the light. The bed was made, the room empty. She fled like a wild creature from room to empty room. Only in one did she see a human face. In the soft glow of his bedside lamp, Ivo was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. As she came up to him he must have sensed her desperation. But he smiled sadly and gave a small rueful shake of the head. There was no help here.

  There was still the tower to search, that and the theatre. But perhaps he wasn’t any longer in the castle. The whole island was open to him, cliffs and uplands, meadows and woodlands, the black unsearchable island holding like a shell in its dark intricacies the everlasting murmur of the sea. But there was still the business room and the kitchen quarters, unlikely as it was that he had taken refuge there. She sped down the tiled passage and flung herself at the business room door. And then she stood, arrested. The second display cabinet, the one which held the small mementos of Victorian crime and horror, had been violated. The glass had been smashed. And staring down she saw that something was missing: the handcuffs. And then she knew where she would find Simon.

  8

  She flung her shoulder bag on the desk of the business room, taking with her only her torch. There was only one other thing she wished to have, the leather belt. But it was no longer round her waist. Somewhere and somehow during the day’s activities she had lost it. She had a memory of hurriedly putting it on in the women’s cloakroom of a chain store where she had stopped on her way to Benison Row. In her anxiety to find Miss Costello she must have buckled it insecurely. As she ran across the lawn and into the darkness of the wood she wished that she still felt the reassuring strength of this private talisman clasped round her waist.

  The church loomed before her, numinous and secret in the moonlight. No lights shone from the open door but the faint gleam from the east window was enough to light her to the crypt even without the aid of her torch. And that door, too, was open with the key in the lock. Ambrose must have told him where it could be found. The strong dusty smell of the crypt came up to meet her. She didn’t pause to find the switch but followed the shifting pool of torchlight, past the rows of domed skulls, the grinning mouths, until it shone on the heavy iron-bound door which led to the secret passage. This too was open.

  She dared not run; the passage was too twisting, the ground too uneven. She remembered that the passage lights were on a time switch and pressed each button as she passed, knowing that in a few moments the lights would go out behind her, that she was moving from brightness into the dark. The way seemed interminable. Surely that small party, only two days earlier, hadn’t travelled as far as this? She had a moment of panic, fearing that she might have found and taken a hidden turning and be lost in a maze of tunnels. But then she saw the second flight of steps and there gleamed before her the low-roofed cavern above the Devil’s Kettle. The single bulb suspended in its protective grille was shining steadily. The trapdoor was up, the lid resting against the wall of the cave. Cordelia knelt and gazed down into Simon’s face. It strained up at her, the eyes wide and staring, the whites showing, like the eyes of a terrified dog. His left arm was stretched above his head, the wrist handcuffed to the top rail. His hand drooped from the bar of the handcuff, not the strong hand she remembered coming down on the piano keys, but tender and pale as the hand of a child. And the steadily rising water, flapping like black oil against the cave walls and glazed with light from the cavern above, was already up to his shoulders.

  She climbed down beside him. The cold cut her thighs like a knife. She said: “Where’s the key?”

  “I dropped it.”

  “Dropped it or threw it? Simon, I have to know where.”

  “I just dropped it.”

  Of course. He would have no need to hurl it far. Handcuffed and helpless as he was, he couldn’t retrieve it now however close it lay and however tempted or desperate he might be. She prayed that the bottom of the cave would be rock not sand. She had to find the key. There was no other way. Her mind had already done its rapid calculation. Five minutes to get back to the castle, another five to return. And where would she find a toolbox, a file sufficiently strong to cut through the metal? Even if there were someone in the castle able and willing to help her, there still wasn’t time. If she left him now she would be leaving him to drown.

  He whispered: “Ambrose told me I’d be in prison for the rest of my life. That or Broadmoor.”

  “He lied.”

  “I couldn’t stand it, Cordelia! I couldn’t stand it!”

  “You won’t have to. Manslaughter isn’t murder. You didn’t mean to kill her. And you aren’t mad.”

  But how clearly the words of Ambrose fell into her mind. “Who’s to say what he meant? She’s just as dead, isn’t she, whatever he meant?”

  Any additional light was welcome. She switched on her torch, resting it on the top rung. Then she gulped in a lungful of air and lowered herself carefully under the gently heaving surface. It was important not to disturb the sea bed more than she could help. The water was icy cold and so black that she could see nothing. But she felt with her hands, scraping them along the bottom, feeling the gritty sand, the spurs of sharp unyielding rock. A swath of seaweed wound itself round her arm like a soft detaining hand. But her slowly creeping fingers found nothing that could have been the key.

  She came up for air and gasped: “Show me exactly where you dropped it.”

  He whispered through his bloodless, chattering lips: “About here. I held my right hand out like this. Then I let it fall.”

  She cursed her folly. She should have taken more trouble to discover the exact place before disturbing the sand. Now she might have lost it forever. She had to move gently and slowly. She had to stay calm and take her time. But there wasn’t any time. Already the water was up to their necks.

  She lowered herself again trying methodically to cover the area he had indicated, letting her fingers creep like crabs over the surface of sand. Twice she had to come up for air and see briefly the horror and the despair in those staring eyes. But on the third attempt her hand found the stub of metal and she brought up the key.

  Her fingers were so cold that they felt lifeless. She could h
ardly grasp the key and was terrified that she might drop it, that she might not be able to fit it into the lock. Watching her shaking hands he said: “I’m not worth it. I killed Munter, too. I couldn’t sleep and I was there, in the rose garden. I was there when he fell in. I could have saved him. But I ran away so that I wouldn’t have to look. I pretended that I hadn’t seen, that I hadn’t been near.”

  “Don’t think about that now. We’ve got to get you out of here, get you warm again.”

  The key was in the lock at last. She was fearful that it might not work, that it might not even be the right key. But it turned easily enough. The bar of the handcuff loosened. He was free.

  And then it happened. The trapdoor crashed down in an explosion of sound physical as a blow cleaving their skulls. The noise seemed to thunder through the island, shaking the iron ladder under their rigid hands, lifting the water at their throats and bursting it against the walls of the cave in a tidal wave of concentrated fury. It seemed that the cave itself must split open to let in the roaring sea. The lighted torch, dislodged from the top rung of the ladder, curved in a shining arc before Cordelia’s horrified eyes, gleamed for a second under the swirling water, then died. The darkness was absolute. And then, even before the echo of that crash had rumbled into silence, Cordelia’s ears caught a different sound, the hideous rasp of metal against metal, once and then repeated, a noise so dreadful in its implication that she threw back her sea-drenched head and almost howled her protest into the blackness.

  “Oh no! Please God, no!”

  Someone—and she knew who it must be—had kicked down the trapdoor. Someone’s hand had shot home the two bolts. The killing ground had been sealed. Above them was unyielding wood, surrounding them the rock face, at their throats the sea.