The Skull Beneath the Skin (17 page)

It was, thought Cordelia, a novel interpretation of the part, but surely not altogether consonant with the text. But perhaps Kalenski, like other Shakespearean directors whose names
came to mind, didn’t let that bother him. She said: “But was it true to the text?”

“Oh, my dear, who cares about the text? I don’t mean that exactly, but Shakespeare’s like the Bible, you can make it mean anything. That’s why directors love him.”

“Tell me about the child.”

“Macduff’s son? Desmond Willoughby played him, an intolerable child. A vulgar Cockney accent. You can’t find a child actor now who knows how to speak English. Too old for the part too. Thank God I never had to appear with him.”

One biblical text came into Cordelia’s mind, brutally explicit in its meaning, but she didn’t speak it aloud:

Clarissa turned and looked at her. Something in Cordelia’s face must have pierced even her egotism. She cried: “I’m not paying you to judge me! What are you looking like that for?”

“I’m not judging you. I want to help. But you have to be honest with me.”

“I am being honest, as honest as I know how. When I first saw you, that day at Nettie Fortescue’s, I knew I could trust you, that you were someone I could talk to. It’s degrading to be so afraid. George doesn’t understand, how could he? He’s never been afraid of anything in his life. He thinks I’m neurotic to care. He only went to see you because I made him.”

“Why didn’t you come yourself?”

“I thought you might be more likely to accept the job if he asked you. And I don’t enjoy asking people for favours. Besides, I had a fitting for one of my costumes.”

“There wasn’t any question of a favour. I needed the job. I probably would have taken almost anything if it wasn’t illegal and didn’t disgust me.”

“Yes, George said that your office was pretty squalid. Well, pathetic rather than squalid. But you aren’t. There’s nothing squalid or pathetic about you. I couldn’t have put up with the usual kind of female private eye.”

Cordelia said gently: “What is it that you’re really afraid of?”

Clarissa turned on Cordelia, her softly gleaming, cleansed, uncoloured face looking for the first time, in its nakedness, vulnerable to age and grief, and gave a sad, rather rueful smile. Then she lifted her hands in an eloquent gesture of despair.

“Oh, don’t you know? I thought George had told you. Death. That’s what I’m afraid of. Just death. Stupid isn’t it? I always have been: even when I was a young child. I don’t remember when it began, but I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn’t see the skull beneath the skin. Nothing traumatic happened to start it off. They didn’t force me to look at my Nanny, dead in her coffin, nothing like that. And I was at school when Mummy died and it didn’t mean anything. It isn’t the death of other people. It isn’t the fact of death. It’s my death I’m afraid of. Not all the time. Not every moment. Sometimes I can go for weeks without thinking about it. And then it comes, usually at night, the dread and the horror and the knowledge that the fear is real. I mean, no one can say ‘Don’t worry, it may never happen.’ They can’t say ‘It’s all your imagination, darling, it doesn’t really exist.’ I can’t really describe the fear, what it’s like, how terrible it is. It comes in a rhythm, wave after wave of panic sweeping over me,
a kind of pain. It must be like giving birth, except that I’m not delivering life, it’s death I have between my thighs. Sometimes I hold up my hand, like this, and look at it and think: Here it is, part of me. I can feel it with my other hand, and move it and warm it and smell it and paint its nails. And one day it will hang white and cold and unfeeling and useless and so shall I be all those things. And then it will rot. And I shall rot. I can’t even drink to forget. Other people do. It’s how they get through their lives. But drink makes me ill. It isn’t fair that I should have this terror and not be able to drink! Now I’ve told you, and you can explain that I’m stupid and morbid and a coward. You can despise me.”

Cordelia said: “I don’t despise you.”

“And it’s no good saying that I ought to believe in God. I can’t. And even if I could, it wouldn’t help. Tolly got converted after Viccy died so I suppose she believes. But if someone told Tolly that she was going to die tomorrow she’d be just as unwilling to go. I’ve noticed that about the God people. They’re just as frightened as the rest of us. They cling on just as long. They’re supposed to have a heaven waiting but they’re in no hurry to get there. Perhaps it’s worse for them; judgement and hell and damnation. At least I’m only afraid of death. Isn’t everyone? Aren’t you?”

Was she? Cordelia wondered. Sometimes, perhaps. But the fear of dying was less obtrusive than more mundane worries: what would happen when the Kingly Street lease ran out; whether the Mini would pass its M.O.T. test; how she would face Miss Maudsley if the Agency no longer had a job for her. Perhaps only the rich and successful could indulge the morbid fear of dying. Most of the world needed its energies to cope with living. She said cautiously, knowing that she had no comfort to offer: “It doesn’t seem reasonable to be afraid of
something which is inevitable and universal and which I shan’t be able to experience, anyway.”

“Oh, those are just words! All they mean is that you’re young and healthy and don’t have to think about dying. To lie in cold obstruction and to rot. That was in one of the messages.”

“I know.”

“And there’s another for you to add to the collection. I’ve been keeping it for you. It came by post to the London flat yesterday morning. You’ll find it at the bottom of my jewel case. It’s on the bedside table, the left-hand side.”

The instruction as to the side was unnecessary; even in the subdued light and amid the clutter of Clarissa’s bedside table, the softly gleaming casket was an object that caught the eye. Cordelia took it in her hands. It was about eight inches by five, with delicately wrought clawed feet, the lid and sides embossed with a representation of the judgement of Paris. She turned the key, and saw that the inside was lined with cream quilted silk.

Clarissa called: “Ambrose gave it to me when I arrived this morning, a good luck present for the performance tomorrow. I took a fancy to it when I saw it six months ago but it took a time before he got the message. He has so many Victorian baubles that one less can’t make any difference. The casket we’re using in Act Three is his, well, most of the props are. But this is prettier. More valuable too. But not as valuable as the thing I’m keeping in it. You’ll find the letter in the secret drawer. Not so very secret, actually. You just press the centre of one of the leaves. You can see the line if you look carefully. Better bring it here. I’ll show you.”

The box was surprisingly heavy. Clarissa pulled out a tangle of necklaces and bracelets as if they were cheap costume jewellery. Cordelia thought that some of the pieces probably were,
bright beads of coloured stone and glass intertwined with the sparkle of real diamonds, the glow of sapphires, the softness of milk-white pearls. Clarissa pressed the centre of one of the leaves which decorated the side of the box and a drawer in the base slid slowly open. Inside Cordelia saw first a folded cutting of newsprint. Clarissa took it out: “I played Hester in a revival of Rattigan’s
The Deep Blue Sea
, at the Speymouth Playhouse. That was in 1977, Jubilee Year, when Ambrose was abroad in his year’s tax exile. The theatre’s closed now, alas. But they seemed to like me. Actually, that’s probably the most important notice I ever had.”

She unfolded it. Cordelia glimpsed the headline. “Clarissa Lisle triumphs in Rattigan revival.” Her mind busied itself for only a second on the oddity of Clarissa’s attaching so much importance to the review of a revival in a small provincial town and she noticed, almost subconsciously, that the cutting was oddly shaped and larger than the space taken by the notice. But her interest fastened on the letter. The envelope matched the one handed to her by Mrs. Munter from the morning post-bag but the address had been typed on a different and obviously older machine. The postmark was London, the date two days earlier, and like the other it was addressed to the Duchess of Malfi but at Clarissa’s Bayswater flat. Inside was the usual sheet of white paper, the neat black drawing of a coffin, the letters R.I.P. Underneath was typed a quotation from the play.

Cordelia said: “Not very appropriate. He must be getting to the end of suitable quotations.”

Clarissa tugged off her hairband. In the glass, her reflection gazed back at them both, a ghost face, hung about with pale dishevelled hair, the huge eyes troubled under their heavy lids.

“Perhaps he knows that he won’t need many more. There’s only tomorrow. Perhaps he knows—who better?—that tomorrow will be the end.”

Cordelia slept more deeply and for longer than she had expected. She was awoken by a quiet knock at the door. Instantly she was fully conscious and, throwing her dressing-gown round her shoulders, she went to open it. It was Mrs. Munter with her early-morning tea. Cordelia had meant to be up well before she arrived. It was embarrassing to be discovered sleeping behind a locked door as if she were confusing Courcy Castle with a hotel. But if Mrs. Munter was surprised at this eccentricity she gave no sign but placed the tray on the bedside table with a quiet “Good morning, Miss,” and left as unobtrusively as she had arrived.

It was half-past seven. The room was filled with the smudged half-light of dawn. Going to the window, Cordelia saw that the eastern sky was just beginning to streak into brightness and that a low mist hung over the lawn and curled like smoke between the tree tops. It was going to be another lovely day. There was no sign of any bonfire, yet the air held the smoky wood-fire smell of autumn and the great mass of the sea heaved, grey and silver, as if it exuded its own mysterious light.

She crept to the communicating door and opened it very gently. It was heavy, but it swung open without a creak. The curtains were drawn across the windows but there was enough light from her own room to show her Clarissa, still sleeping, one white arm curved round her pillow. Cordelia tiptoed up to the bed and stood very still listening to the quiet breathing. She felt a sense of relief without knowing exactly why. She had never believed that there was a real threat to Clarissa’s life. And their precautions against mischief had been thorough. Both the doors to the corridor had been locked with the keys left in the locks. Even if someone had a duplicate there was no way in which he could have got in. But she needed the reassurance of Clarissa’s untroubled breathing.

And then she saw the paper, a pale oblong gleaming against the carpet. Another message had been delivered, pushed under the door. So whoever was responsible was here, on the island. She felt her heart jolt. Then she took hold of herself, angry that she hadn’t thought of the possibility of a missive under the door, resenting her own fear. She crept across to pick up the paper and took it into her own room, shutting the door behind her.

It was another passage from
The Duchess of Malfi
, eleven short words surmounted by a skull.

The form was the same, but the paper was different. This message was typed on the back of an old woodcut headed “The Gt Me
ff
enger of Mortality.” Beneath the title was the crude figure of death bearing an hourglass and arrow followed by four stanzas of verse.

She gulped down her tea, pulled on her trousers and shirt
and went in search of Ambrose. She had hardly hoped to find him so early but he was already in the breakfast room, coffee cup in hand, gazing out over the lawn. It was one of the rooms which she had seen on Friday’s quick tour of the castle, the furniture and fittings all designed by Godwin. There was a simple refectory table with a set of fretwork-backed chairs while one long wall was entirely covered by a set of cupboards and open shelves, charmingly carved in light wood and surmounted by a tiled frieze in which orange trees in bright blue pots alternated with highly romanticized scenes from the legend of King Arthur and the Round Table. At the time Cordelia had thought it an interesting example of the architect’s move towards the simplicities of the Aesthetic Movement, but now its self-conscious charm was lost on her.

Ambrose turned at her entrance and smiled.

“Good morning. It looks as if we’re going to be lucky in the weather. The guests should arrive in sunshine and get back without risk of parting with their supper. The crossing can be treacherous in bad weather. Is our leading lady awake?”

“Not yet.”

Cordelia made a sudden resolution. It could do no harm to tell him. The woodcut almost certainly came from his house. Clarissa had told her that he already knew about the poison-pen messages. And Clarissa was his guest. Above all, she wanted to see his reaction to the paper. She held it out and said: “I found this pushed under Clarissa’s door this morning. Does it belong to you? If so, someone has mutilated it for you. Look on the back.”

He studied it briefly, then turned it over. For a moment he was silent. Then he said: “So the messages are still coming. I did wonder. Has she seen this?”

There was no need to ask whom he meant.

“No. And she won’t.”

“Very wise of you. I take it that weeding out this kind of nuisance is one of your duties as secretary-companion?”

“One of them. But does it belong to you?”

“No. It’s interesting, but not my period.”

“But this is your house. And Miss Lisle is your guest.”

He smiled and wandered over to the sideboard.

“Will you have coffee?” She watched while he went over to the hotplate, poured her cup and refilled his own. Then he said: “I accept the implied criticism. One’s guests certainly have the right not to be harassed or menaced while under one’s roof. But what do you suggest I can do? I’m not a policeman. I can hardly interrogate my other house guests. That, apart from its certain lack of success, would only result in six aggrieved persons instead of one. I doubt whether Clarissa would thank me. And, forgive me, aren’t you taking this a little too seriously? I admit that it’s a practical joke in poor taste. But is it any more than a joke? And surely the best response to this kind of nonsense is a dignified silence, even a certain amused contempt. Clarissa is an actress. She should be able to simulate one response or the other. If there is someone on the island who is trying to spoil her performance he—or more likely she—will soon give up if Clarissa demonstrates a total unconcern.”