The Skull Beneath the Skin

  Love,

  Clarissa

  It was odd how soon relief could change to a new and different anxiety, even to resentment. Reading the letter for the second time he wondered why he should have been invited to the island. It was Clarissa’s doing, of course. Ambrose Gorringe didn’t know him and would hardly be likely to include him among his guests if he did. He remembered vaguely having heard about the island, the restored Victorian theatre, the plans to stage the Webster tragedy, and he sensed that the performance was important to Clarissa, amateur production though it might be. But why should he be there? He was expected to keep out of her way, not to make a nuisance of himself; that much was evident. He could disport himself in the sea or the pool. He supposed that there would be a pool and pictured Clarissa, pale and golden, stretched out in the sun and beside her this new girl, this Cordelia Gray with whom he was supposed to practise making conversation. And what else did Clarissa want him to practise? Making himself agreeable? Paying compliments? Knowing what jokes women like and when to make them? Flirting? Showing himself to be a susceptible heterosexual male? The prospect made his mouth dry with terror.

  It wasn’t that he disliked the idea of a girl. He had already created in his mind the girl he would like to be with on Courcy Island—on any island; sensitive, beautiful, intelligent, kind and yet wanting him, wanting him to do to her those terrifyingly exciting and shameful things which would no longer be shameful because they loved each other, acts which would reconcile for him in sweet responsive flesh, finally and for ever, that dichotomy which so occupied his day-dreaming hours, between romanticism and desire. He didn’t expect to meet this girl, on Courcy or anywhere else. The only girl with whom he had so far had anything to do had been his cousin Susie. He hated Susie, hated her bold contemptuous eyes, her perpetually chewing mouth, her voice which alternately whined or yelled, her dyed hair, her grubby, beringed fingers.

  But even if this girl were different, even if he liked her, how could he get to know her when Clarissa would be watching them, marking him for articulacy, attraction, wit, checking up on his social performance as she and this Ambrose Gorringe would be checking up on his musicianship? The reference to his music made his cheeks burn. He was insecure enough about his talent without having it diminished by this coy reference to his “pieces” as if he were a child showing off to the neighbours at a suburban tea party. But the instruction was clear enough. He was to bring with him something showy or popular or both, something he could play with practised bravado so that she wouldn’t be disgraced by any nervous misfingerings and she and Ambrose Gorringe would together decide whether he had enough talent to justify a final year at school, a chance to try for a place at the Royal College or the Academy.

  And suppose the verdict went against him? He couldn’t return to Mornington Avenue, to his aunt and uncle. Clarissa couldn’t do that to him. After all, it was she who had brought the order of release. She had arrived unannounced on a warm afternoon during the summer holidays, when he had been in the house alone as usual, reading at the sitting-room table. He couldn’t remember how she had announced herself, whether he had been told that the silent upright man with her was her new husband. But he remembered how she had looked, golden and effulgent, a cool, sweet-smelling miraculous vision who had immediately taken hold of his heart and his life as a rescuer might pluck a drowning child from the water and set him firmly on a sunlit rock. It had been too good to last, of course. But how marvellous in memory shone that long-dead summer afternoon.

  “Are you happy here?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t see how you could be, actually. This room’s pretty gruesome. I’ve read somewhere that a million copies of that print have been sold but I didn’t realize people actually hung it on their walls. Your father told me that you were musical. Do you still play?”

  “I can’t. There isn’t a piano here. And they only teach percussion at school. They have a West Indian steel band. They’re only interested in music where everyone can join in.”

  “Things which everyone can join in usually aren’t worth doing. They shouldn’t have put two different papers on the walls. Three or four might have been bizarre enough to be fun. Two are just vulgar. How old are you? Fourteen, isn’t it? How would you like to come and live with us?”

  “For always?”

  “Nothing is for always. But perhaps. Until you grow up, anyway.”

  Without waiting for his reply, without even looking into his face to watch his initial response she turned to the silent man at her side.

  “I think we can do better than this for Martin’s boy.”

  “If you are sure, my dear. Not a thing to decide quickly. Shouldn’t make an impulse buy of a child.”

  “Darling, where would you be if I hadn’t made an impulse buy? And he’s the only son I’m ever likely to give you.”

  Simon’s eyes were turning from one face to the other. He remembered how Sir George had looked, the features stiffening as if the muscles were bracing themselves against pain, against vulgarity. But Simon had seen the hurt, visible, unmistakable, before Sir George had turned silently away.

  She had turned to him.

  “Will your aunt and uncle mind?”

  The misery, the grievances, had spilled out. He had had to prevent himself from clutching at her dress.

  “They won’t care! They’ll be glad! I take up the spare room and I haven’t any money. They’re always telling me how much it costs to feed me. And they don’t like me. They won’t mind, honestly.”

  And then, on impulse, he had done the right thing. It was the only time he had done exactly the right thing where Clarissa was concerned. There had been a pink geranium in a pot on the window-ledge; his uncle was a keen gardener and grew cuttings in the lean- to greenhouse at the side of the kitchen. One of the flower heads was small and delicate as a rose. He had broken it off and handed it to her; looking up into her face. She had laughed aloud and taken it from him and slipped it into the belt of her dress. Then she had looked at her husband and had laughed again, a peal of happy triumph.

  “Well that seems to have decided itself. We’d better stay until they come home. I can’t wait to see the owners of this wallpaper. And then we’ll take you to buy some clothes.”

  And so, with such promise, in such an exhilaration of surprised joy, it had all begun. He tried now to recall when the dream had faded, when things had first started to go wrong. But, apart from the first meeting, had they ever really gone right? He sensed that he was worse than a failure, that he was the last of a series of failures, that earlier disappointments had reinforced her present discontent. He was beginning to dread the holidays although he saw little either of Clarissa or of Sir George. Their official life together, such as it was, was lived in the London flat overlooking Hyde Park. But they were seldom there together. Clarissa had a flat in a Regency square in Brighton, her husband a remote flint cottage on the marshes of the east coast. It was there that their real lives were lived, she in the company of her theatrical friends, he in bird-watching and, if rumour were correct, in right-wing conspiracy. Simon had never been invited to either place although he often pictured them in those other secret worlds, Clarissa in a whirl of gaiety, Sir George conferring with his mysterious, hard-faced and nameless confederates. For some unexplainable reason, these imaginings, which occupied a disproportionate part of his holiday hours, were in the guise of old films. Clarissa and her friends, dressed in the waistless shifts of the twenties, hair shingled and flourishing long cigarette holders, flung out their legs in a hectic Charleston while Sir George’s friends arrived at their rendezvous in veteran cars, trench-coated, their wide-brimmed trilbys pulled down over secretive eyes. Excluded from both these worlds, Simon spent the holidays in the Bayswater flat, looked after occasionally by an almost silent Tolly or coping on his own, eating his dinner each night, by arrangement, in a local restaurant. Recently the meals had become poorer, dishes he chose were no longer available although they
were served to others, he was shown to the worst table and kept waiting. Some of the waiters were almost openly offensive. He knew that Clarissa was no longer getting value for money, but he dared not complain. Who was he, so expensively bought and maintained, to talk about value for money?

  It was time to go if he wanted any luncheon. He crumpled the letter in his hand and stuffed it into his pocket. Shutting his eyes against the brightness of grass and trees and shimmering water, he found himself praying, petitioning the God in whom he no longer believed, with all the desperate urgency, all the artless importunity of a child.

  “Please let the weekend be a success. Don’t let me make a fool of myself. Please don’t let the girl despise me. Please let Clarissa be in a good mood. Please don’t let Clarissa throw me out. Oh God, please don’t let anything terrible happen on Courcy Island.”

  7

  It was ten o’clock on Thursday night and in her top-floor flat off Thames Street in the City Cordelia was completing her preparations for the weekend ahead. The long, uncurtained windows were fitted with wooden-slatted blinds but these were still up and as she moved from the single large sitting room to her bedroom she could see spread below her the glittering streets, the dark alleyways, the towers and steeples of the city, could glimpse beyond them the necklace of light slung along the Embankment and the smooth, light-dazzled curve of the river. The view, in daylight or after dark, was a continual marvel to her, the flat itself a source of astonished delight.

  It had only been after Bernie’s death and at the end of her own first traumatic case that she had learned that her father’s small estate had at last been wound up. She had expected nothing but debts and it had been a surprise to discover that he had owned a small house in Paris. It had, she imagined, been purchased years before when he had been comparatively well-off to provide a safe house and occasional refuge for the comrades and himself; such a dedicated revolutionary would surely otherwise have despised the acquisition of even so dilapidated and insalubrious a piece of real estate. But the area had been zoned for development and it had sold surprisingly well. There had been enough money, when the debts were paid, for her to finance the Agency for another six months and to begin her search for a London flat cheap enough to buy. No building society had been interested in a sixth-floor apartment at the top of a Victorian warehouse with no lift and the barest amenities, nor in an applicant with an income as uncertain as it was erratic. But her bank manager, apparently to his surprise as much as hers, had been sympathetic and had authorized a five-year loan.

  She had paid for the installation of a shower and for the fitting out of the small kitchen, narrow as a galley. She had done the rest of the work herself and had furnished the flat from junk shops and suburban auctions. The immense sitting room was in white with one wall covered by a bookcase made from painted planks resting on columns of bricks. The dining and working table was scrubbed oak and the heating was provided by an ornate wrought-iron stove. Only the bedroom was luxurious, an intriguing contrast to the spartan bareness of the sitting room. As it was only eight feet by five Cordelia had felt justified in extravagance and had chosen an expensive and exotic handprinted paper with which she had covered the ceiling and cupboard door as well as the walls. At night, with the window which occupied almost one wall wide open to the sky she would lie, warmly cocooned in eccentric luxury, feeling that she was drawn up in her bright capsule to float under the stars.

  She guarded her privacy. None of her friends and no one from the Agency had ever been in the flat. Adventures occurred elsewhere. She knew that if any man shared that narrow bed for her it would mean commitment. There was only one man she ever pictured there and he was a Commander of New Scotland Yard. She knew that he, too, lived in the City; they shared the same river. But she told herself that the brief madness was over, that at a time of stress and frightening insecurity she had only been seeking for her lost father-figure. There was this to be said for a smattering of amateur psychology: it enabled one to exorcise memories which might otherwise be embarrassing.

  A narrow ledge with a parapet ran outside all the windows, wide enough for rows of pots of herbs and geraniums and for a single deckchair in summer. Underneath were warehouses and offices, mysterious businesses symbolized rather than identified by a double row of ancient name-plates. By day the building had a secretive, many-tongued and sometimes raucous life. But by five o’clock this began to seep away and, at night, it held a vast, almost unbroken silence. One of the tenant firms imported spices. To Cordelia, climbing up to her flat at the end of the day, that pungent, alien smell permeating the stairs represented security, comfort, her first real home.

  The most onerous part of the preparation for this new case was deciding which clothes to pack. In her more puritanical moments Cordelia despised women who spent an inordinate amount of time and money on their appearance. Such a total preoccupation with externals must, she felt, argue a need to compensate for some deficiency at the heart of personality. But she was quick to recognize that her own interest in clothes and makeup, although spasmodic, was intense while it lasted and that she had never known the state of not in the least caring how she looked. In this, as in all matters, she preferred to travel light and the whole of her wardrobe could be comfortably accommodated within one cupboard and three drawers which were fitted along the wall of her bedroom.

  She opened them now and considered what would be necessary for a weekend which, apart from detection, might offer anything from sailing and rock climbing to amateur theatricals. The creamy fawn pleated skirt in fine wool and the matching cashmere two-piece, both bought at Harrods in the July sale, should, she felt, take care of most occasions; the cashmere’s understated extravagance might, with luck, inspire confidence in the Agency’s prosperity. If the warm weather held, her brown corduroy knickerbockers might be warm for sleuthing or walking but they were tough and she liked the jerkin and jacket, either of which looked good with them. Jeans and a couple of cotton tops were an obvious choice as was her Guernsey. The evenings were more difficult. Few people now dressed for dinner but this was a castle, Ambrose Gorringe might well be an eccentric, and anything was possible. She would need something cool and reasonably formal. In the end she packed her only long dress, in Indian cotton in subtle shades of pink, red and brown, and a pleated cotton skirt with matching top.

  She turned with relief to the more straightforward business of checking her scene-of-crime kit. It was Bernie who had first devised it, basing it, she knew, on the kit issued to the Murder Squad of New Scotland Yard. His had been less comprehensive but all the essentials had been there: envelopes and tweezers for the collection of specimens, dusting powder for the detection of fingerprints, a Polaroid camera, a torch, fine rubber gloves, a magnifying glass, scissors and a sturdy penknife, a tin of plasticine for taking impressions of keys, test tubes with stoppers for the collection of blood samples. Bernie had pointed out that, ideally, these should hold a preservative and anti-clotting agent. Neither had ever been necessary then or now. Rescuing lost cats, shadowing errant husbands, tracing runaway teenagers had required persistence, good feet, comfortable footwear and infinite tact rather than the esoteric lore which Bernie had so enjoyed teaching her, compensating, in those long summer sessions in Epping Forest of stalking, tracking, physical combat and even gun lore, for his own professional failure, trying to recreate through Pryde’s Agency the lost hierarchical and fascinating world of the Metropolitan C.I.D.

  She had made only a few alterations to the kit since Bernie’s death, dispensing with the original case and using instead a canvas shoulder bag fitted with inner pockets which she had bought in a store which sold ex-army equipment. And since her first case she had included an additional item, a long leather belt with a buckle, the belt with which that first victim had been hanged. She had no wish to dwell on the case which had promised so much and had ended so tragically, one which had left her with its own legacy of guilt. But the belt had once saved her life and she recognized an a
lmost superstitious attachment to it, justifying its inclusion with the thought that a length of strong leather always came in useful.

  Lastly she took a manilla envelope file and wrote the name CLARISSA LISLE in capitals on the cover, taking care to make the letters neat and even. She had often thought that this was the most satisfying part of a new investigation, a moment of hope spiced with anticipatory excitement, the pristine folder and crisp lettering themselves symbolic of a fresh beginning. She glanced through her notebook before adding it to the folder. Except for Sir George and his briefly seen wife, her companions on the island were still only names, a roll call of putative suspects: Simon Lessing, Roma Lisle, Rose Tolgarth, Ambrose Gorringe, Ivo Whittingham; sounds written on paper but holding the promise of discovery, of challenge, of the fascinating variety of human personality. And all of them, Clarissa Lisle’s stepson, her cousin, her dresser, her host, her friend, circling like planets round that central golden figure.

  She spread out the twenty-three quotations on the table to study them before filing them in the case folder in the order of their receipt by Miss Lisle. Then she took from her shelf her two volumes of quotations, the paperback Penguin Dictionary of Quotations and the second edition of the Oxford Dictionary. As she had expected, all the passages appeared in one or the other, all but three in the paperback. Almost certainly that had been the dictionary used; it could be bought in almost any bookshop and its size would make it easy to conceal and light to carry about. To select the quotations would take no great trouble or time, merely a look at the index under death or dying or a quick read through the forty-five pages devoted to the plays of Shakespeare, the two which covered Marlowe and Webster. And it would not be too difficult to discover which plays Clarissa Lisle had appeared in. She had been a member of the Malvern Repertory Company for three years and Shakespeare and the Jacobean dramatists were its forte. Any programme note covering her career, then or later, would list her main appearances. But it was a safe bet that, given the exigencies of a Shakespearean production with the resources of a medium-sized repertory company, she would have had at least a walk-on part in all the plays.