The Skull Beneath the Skin (16 page)

She waited with a shiver of impatience until Ambrose had opened the door for her, then swept out, merely pausing briefly to offer him her cheek to kiss. He bent forward but was too late and his pursed lips pecked ludicrously at the air. Simon bundled up his music with shaking hands, looked round as if for help, and ran after her. Cordelia went across to where the embroidered rope hung by the side of the fireplace. Roma said: “Black marks all round. We should have realized that we’re here to applaud Clarissa’s talent not to demonstrate our own. If you plan to make a career as secretary-companion, Cordelia, you’ll have to learn more tact.”

Ivo was aware of Ambrose bending over him, of his flushed face and the black eyes bright and malicious under the strong half circles.

“Are you drunk, Ivo? You’re remarkably quiet.”

“I thought I was, but I seem not to be. Sobriety has overtaken me. But if you would open another bottle I could begin the agreeable process again. Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used.”

“But shouldn’t you keep your mind clear for the task of tomorrow?”

Ivo held out the empty decanter. He was surprised to see that his hand was perfectly steady. He said: “Don’t worry. I shall be sober enough for what I have to do tomorrow.”

Cordelia waited exactly fifteen minutes, refused Ambrose’s offer of a nightcap, then made her way upstairs. The communicating door between her room and Clarissa’s was ajar and she went through without knocking. Clarissa, in her cream satin dressing gown, was sitting at the dressing table. Her hair was tugged back from her face and tied with a ribbon at the nape of the neck; her hairline was bound with a
crêpe
band. She was scrutinizing her face in the glass and didn’t look round.

The room was lit only by one bright light on the dressing table and the softer glow of the bedside lamp. A thin wood fire crackled in the grate and threw leaping shadows over the richness of damask and mahogany. The air smelt of woodsmoke and perfume and the room, dim and mysterious, struck Cordelia as smaller and more luxurious than in its daytime brightness. But the bed was more than ever dominant, glowing under its scarlet canopy, sinister and portentous as a catafalque. Cordelia was certain that Tolly must have been there before her. The sheets were turned back and Clarissa’s nightdress had been laid out, its waist pinched. It looked like a
shroud. In the shadowed half-light it was easy to imagine that she stood in the doorway of a bedroom in Amalfi with Webster’s doomed duchess bright-haired at her toilet, while horror and corruption stalked in the shadows and beyond the half-open window a tideless Mediterranean lay open to the moon.

Clarissa’s voice broke into her mood. “Oh, here you are. I’ve sent Tolly away so that we can talk. Don’t just stand there. Find yourself a chair.” On each side of the fireplace was a low, spoon-backed chair with carved arms and feet. Cordelia slid one forward on its casters and seated herself to the left of the dressing table. Clarissa peered at herself in the glass then unscrewed a jar of cleansing pads and began wiping off her eye shadow and mascara. Thin black-stained scraps of tissue crept over the polished mahogany. The left eye, wiped clean of makeup, looked diminished, almost lifeless, giving her suddenly the mask of a lopsided clown. She peered at the denuded lid, frowned, then said: “You seem to have enjoyed yourself this evening. Perhaps I should remind you that you were hired as a detective not an after-dinner entertainer.”

It had been a long day and Cordelia couldn’t summon the energy for anger.

“Perhaps if you were honest with them and told them why I’m here they’d be less likely to treat me as a fellow guest. Private detectives aren’t expected to sing, at least I wouldn’t think so. They probably wouldn’t even want to eat with me. A private eye is hardly a comfortable dining companion.”

“What good would that do? If you don’t mix with them, how can you watch them? Besides, the men like you. I’ve seen Ivo and Simon looking at you. Don’t pretend that you don’t know it. I hate that kind of sexual coyness.”

“I wasn’t going to pretend anything.”

Clarissa was busy now with an immense jar of cleansing cream, smearing dollops of the cream over face and neck and wiping it off with strong upward sweeps of cotton wool. The discarded greasy balls were added to the mess on the dressing table. Cordelia found herself studying Clarissa’s face with as much intensity as did its owner. The eyes were a little too far apart; the skin was thick, unluminous, but almost without lines; the cheeks were flat and wide; the mouth with its pouting lower lip too small for beauty. But it was a face that could take on loveliness at Clarissa’s will and even now, bandaged, unenhanced and sunk in repose, it held the assurance of its latent, eccentric beauty.

Suddenly, she asked: “What do you think of Simon’s playing?”

“I’m not really qualified to judge. Obviously, he has talent.”

She was about to add that he might make a more successful accompanist than solo performer, then thought better of it. It was perfectly true: she wasn’t competent to judge. And she had the feeling that, ignorant though she was, some kind of decision might depend on her answer.

“Oh, talent! That’s common enough. One doesn’t invest six thousand pounds or so in mere talent. The thing is, has he the guts to succeed? George thinks not, but that he may as well be given his chance.”

“Sir George knows him better than I do.”

Clarissa said sharply: “But it isn’t George’s money is it? I’ll consult Ambrose, but not until after the play. I can’t worry about anything until then. He’ll probably damn the poor boy. Ambrose is such a perfectionist. But he does know something about music. He’d be a better judge than George. If only Simon had taken up a stringed instrument, he might eventually try for a place in an orchestra. But the piano! Still, I suppose he could always work as an accompanist.”

Cordelia wondered whether she should point out that the job of a professional accompanist, so far from being an easy option, required a formidable combination of technical ability and musicality, but she reminded herself that she hadn’t been employed to advise on Simon’s career. And this talk of Simon was wasting time. She said: “I think we should discuss the messages and our plans for the weekend, especially tomorrow. We ought to have spoken earlier.”

“I know, but there hasn’t really been time what with the rehearsal and Ambrose showing off his castle. Anyway, you know what you’re here for. If there are any more messages, I don’t want to receive them. I don’t want to be shown them. I don’t want to be told about them. It’s vital that I get through tomorrow. If I can only get back my confidence as an actress, I can face almost anything.”

“Even the knowledge of who is doing this to you?”

“Even that.”

Cordelia asked: “How many of the people here know about the messages?”

Clarissa had finished cleaning her face and now began removing the varnish from her nails. The smell of acetone overlaid the smell of scent and makeup.

“Tolly knows. I haven’t any secrets from Tolly. Anyway she was with me in my dressing room when some of them were brought in by the doorman, the ones sent by post to the theatre. I expect Ivo knows; there’s nothing happens in the West End that he doesn’t get to hear about. And Ambrose. He was with me in my dressing room at the Duke of Clarence when one was pushed under the door. By the time he’d picked it up for me and I’d opened it, whoever it was had gone. The corridor was empty. But anyone could have got in. Backstage at the Clarence is like a warren and Albert Betts used to drink and wasn’t
always on the door when he should have been. They’ve sacked him now, but he was still working there when the note was delivered. And my husband knows, of course. Simon doesn’t, unless Tolly has told him. I can’t think why she should.”

“And your cousin?”

“Roma doesn’t know and, if she did, she wouldn’t care.”

“Tell me about Miss Lisle.”

“There’s not much to tell and what there is, is boring. We’re first cousins, but George has told you that. It’s quite a common story. My father made a sensible marriage and his younger brother ran off with a barmaid, left the Army, drank and made a general mess of his life, then expected Daddy to help out. And he did, at least as far as Roma was concerned. She was always staying with us when I was a child, particularly after Uncle died. Poor Little Orphan Annie. Glum, badly dressed and perpetually miserable. Even Daddy couldn’t stand her for long. He was the most marvellous person, I adored him. But she was such a bore, and so plain, worse than she is now. Daddy was one of those people who really couldn’t bear ugliness, particularly in women. He loved gaiety, wit, beauty. He just couldn’t make himself look at a plain face.”

Cordelia thought that Daddy, who sounded like a self-satisfied humbug, must have spent most of his life with his eyes shut, depending, of course, on his standard of ugliness. Clarissa added: “And she wasn’t a bit grateful.”

“Should she have been?”

Clarissa seemed to feel that the question deserved serious thought, or as much as she could spare from the business of filing her nails.

“Oh, I think so. He didn’t have to take her in. And she could hardly expect him to treat her the same as me, his own child.”

“He could have tried.”

“But that’s not reasonable, and you know it. You wouldn’t behave like that so why expect him to. You really must guard against becoming just a bit of a prig. Men don’t like it.”

Cordelia said: “I don’t much like it myself. Someone once told me that it’s the result of having an atheist father, a convent education and a non-conformist conscience.”

There was silence between them, not uncompanionable. Then Cordelia said on impulse: “These notes—could Miss Tolgarth have anything to do with them?”

“Tolly! Of course not. Whatever put that idea into your head? She’s devoted to me. You mustn’t be put off by her manner. She’s always been like that. But we’ve been together since I was a child. Tolly adores me. If you can’t see that you’re not much of a detective. Besides, she can’t type. The messages are typed in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Cordelia said gravely: “You should have told me about her child. If I’m to help I need to know anything that might be relevant.” She waited, apprehensive, for Clarissa’s response. But the hands, busy with their self-ministrations, didn’t falter.

“But that isn’t relevant. It was all a mistake. Tolly knows that. Everyone knows it. I suppose Ivo told you. That’s typical of his malice and disloyalty. Can’t you see that he’s sick? He’s dying! And he’s eaten up with jealousy. He always has been. Jealousy and malice.”

Cordelia wondered whether she could have asked the question more tactfully, whether it had been wise to ask it at all. Ivo hadn’t asked her not to betray their conversation but presumably he had hoped for discretion. And the weekend promised to be difficult enough without setting two of the guests at each other’s throats. Direct lying had never been easy for her. She said cautiously: “No one has been disloyal. Obviously I did some
tactful research before I arrived here. These things do get talked about. I have a friend in the theatre.” Well that was true enough anyway even if poor Bevis was more often out than in. But Clarissa was uninterested in putative theatrical friends.

“I’d like to know what right Ivo has to criticize me. Do you realize how many careers he’s ruined by his cruelty? Yes, cruelty! I’ve seen actors—actors mind you—in tears after one of his reviews. If he could have resisted the impulse to be clever he might have been one of the great British critics. He could have been a second Agate or a Tynan. And what is he now? Dying on his feet. He’s no right to come here looking as he does. It’s like having a death’s head at table. It’s indecent.”

It was interesting, thought Cordelia, the way in which death had replaced sex as the great unmentionable, to be denied in prospect, endured in a decent privacy, preferably behind the drawn curtains of a hospital bed, and followed by discreet, embarrassed, uncomforted mourning. There was this to be said about the Convent of the Holy Child: the views of the Sisters on death had been explicit, firmly held and not altogether reassuring; but at least they hadn’t regarded it as in poor taste.

She said: “Those first messages, the ones that came when you were playing Lady Macbeth, the ones you threw away. Were they the same as the later ones, typed and on white paper?”

“Yes, I suppose so. It was a long time ago.”

“But you can’t have forgotten?”

“They must have been the same, mustn’t they? What does it matter? I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“It’s the only chance we may get. I haven’t been able to see you alone today and tomorrow isn’t going to be any easier.”

Clarissa was on her feet now, pacing between the dressing-table and the bed.

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t kill her. She wasn’t properly cared for. If she had been she wouldn’t have had the accident. What’s the point of having a child—a bastard too—if you don’t look after it?”

“But wasn’t Tolly at work, looking after you?”

“The hospital had no right to phone like that, upsetting people. They must have known that it was a theatre that they were calling, that West End curtains rise at eight, that we’d be in the middle of a performance. She couldn’t have done anything if I had let her go. The child was unconscious, she wouldn’t have known her. It’s sentimental and morbid, this sitting by the bedside waiting for people to die. What good does it do? And I had three changes in the Third Act. Kalenski designed the banquet costume himself: barbaric jewellery; a crown set with great dollops of red stones like blood; a skirt so stiff I could hardly move. He meant me to be weighed down, to walk stiffly like an over-encumbered child. ‘Think of yourself as a seventeenth-century princess,’ he said, ‘wonderingly loaded with inappropriate majesty.’ Those were his words, and he made me keep moving my hands down the sides of the skirt as if I couldn’t believe that I was actually wearing so much richness. And of course it made a marvellous contrast with the plain cream shift in the sleepwalking scene. It wasn’t a nightgown, they used to sleep naked apparently. I used it to wipe my hands. Kalenski said, ‘Hands, darling, hands, hands, that’s what this part is all about.’ It was a new interpretation, of course, I wasn’t the usual kind of Lady Macbeth, tall, domineering, ruthless; I played her like a sex-kitten but a kitten with hidden claws.”