The Skull Beneath the Skin (41 page)

Cordelia would have liked to have said: “But you’ll have enough to eat. You’ll have your own roof over your head. You won’t die of cold. You’ll have your strength and your intelligence. Isn’t that more than three-quarters of the world enjoys? You’re not a Victorian shell-gatherer, waiting for a man to give purpose and status to your life. There doesn’t even have to be love.” But she knew that the words would be as futile and insulting as telling a blind man that there was always the sunset.

She turned and walked away leaving Roma still staring out to sea. She felt like a deserter. It seemed discourteous to hurry, and she waited until she reached the terrace before breaking into a run.

No one spoke during the passage to the mainland. Cordelia sat in the prow of the launch fixing her eyes on the gradually approaching shore. Mrs. Munter and Tolly settled themselves together in the stern, their bags at their feet. When
Shearwater
finally berthed, Cordelia waited until they were ashore before herself getting up. She watched while the two women, side by side but still unspeaking, made their slow way up the hill towards the station.

The town was less crowded and less busy than on the Friday morning, but it still held its slightly archaic air of cheerful sunlit domesticity. What she found extraordinary was to be so unnoticed. She had half expected that people would turn to stare at her, that she would hear the whispered word “Courcy” at her back, that she would bear an all-too-visible mark of Cain. How marvellous it was to be free of Grogan and his minions, at least for a few blessed hours, no longer one of that apprehensive, self-regarding coterie of suspects, but an ordinary girl walking an ordinary street, anonymous among the early afternoon shoppers, the last holiday visitors, the
office workers hurrying back to their desks after a belated lunch. She wasted a few minutes in a chemist’s shop behind a charming Regency façade buying a lipstick which she didn’t need, taking more than usual care over her selection. It was a small gesture of hope and confidence, a salute to normality. The only mention she saw or heard of Clarissa’s death was a couple of placards advertising national dailies with the words
“ACTRESS MURDERED ON COURCY ISLAND”
written, not printed, under the paper’s name. She bought one at a kiosk and found a brief account on the third page. The police had given the minimum of information and Ambrose’s refusal to speak to the press had obviously frustrated them in making much of a story. Cordelia wondered whether, in the end, it would prove to have been wise.

She learned from the news agent that there was now only one local paper, the
Speymouth Chronicle
, which came out twice a week on Tuesday and Friday. The office was at the northern end of the Esplanade. Cordelia found it without difficulty. It was a white converted house with two large windows, one painted with the words “Speymouth Chronicle” and the other filled with a display of newspaper photographs. The front garden had been paved to provide a parking space for half a dozen cars and a delivery van. Inside she found a blonde girl of about her own age presiding at a reception desk and simultaneously coping with a small switchboard. At a side table an elderly man was sorting pictures.

Her luck held. She had feared that old copies of the paper might be kept elsewhere or might not be readily available to the public. But when she explained to the girl that she was researching into provincial theatre and wanted to look up the reviews of Clarissa Lisle’s performance in
The Deep Blue Sea
no questions were asked and no difficulties made. The
girl called out to her companion to keep an eye on the desk, ignored a light on the switchboard, and took Cordelia through a swing door and down a steep flight of ill-lit stairs to the basement. There she unlocked a small front room from which the exciting musty smell of old newsprint rose to the nostrils like a miasma. Cordelia saw that the archives were bound in springback folders filed in chronological order on steel shelves. In the middle of the room was a long trestle table. The girl switched on the light and two fluorescent tubes glowed into harsh brightness. She said: “They’re all here, going back to 1860. You can’t take anything away and you mustn’t write on the papers. Don’t slip off without telling me. I have to come and lock up after you’ve finished. OK? See you later then.”

Cordelia approached her task methodically. Speymouth was a small town and was unlikely to have a permanent theatre company. It was almost certain, therefore, that Clarissa had played with a repertory company during the summer season, most likely between May and September. She would begin her search with those five months. She found no mention of the Rattigan play in May, but she did note that the summer repertory company, based in the old theatre, opened with each new offering on a Monday and played for two weeks. The first reviews appeared on a page devoted to the arts in each Tuesday’s edition, a commendably quick response for a small provincial paper. Presumably the reviewer telephoned his copy from the theatre. The first mention of
The Deep Blue Sea
appeared in an advertisement in early June, which stated that Miss Clarissa Lisle would be guest star for the two weeks beginning 18 July. Cordelia calculated that the notice would appear on the arts page, invariably page nine, on 19 July. She lugged the heavy bound
volume containing the editions from July to September onto the table and found the paper for that date. It was larger than the normal edition, consisting of eighteen pages instead of the usual sixteen. The reason was made apparent on the first page. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had visited the town on the previous Saturday as part of their Jubilee Year provincial tour, and the Tuesday edition had been the first one following the visit. It had been a big day for Speymouth, the first Royal visit since 1843, and the
Chronicle
had made the most of it. The account on the first page stated that further pictures were shown on page ten. The words struck a chord of memory. Cordelia was now almost sure that the reverse side of the notice she had seen had been not newsprint but a picture.

But now that success was so close she felt a sudden loss of confidence. All she would discover would be the review by a provincial reporter of a revival which hardly anyone in Speymouth would now remember. Clarissa had said that it was important to her, important enough to keep in the secret drawer of her jewel box. But that, with Clarissa, could have meant anything. Perhaps she had liked the notice, met the reviewer, enjoyed a brief but satisfactory love affair. It could have been as sentimentally unimportant as that. And what possible relevance could it have to her death?

And then she saw that the sheet she wanted wasn’t there. She checked twice. No careful turning of the newspaper disclosed pages nine and ten. She bent back the thick wedge of newsprint where it was gripped by the binder. Down the margin of page eleven she thought she could detect a thin impression as if the paper had been faintly scored with a knife or razor blade. She got out her magnifying glass and moved it slowly over the bound edges. Now she could see it
clearly, the telltale mark, in some places actually cutting the paper, showing where the sheet had been excised. She could detect, too, minute shreds of paper where the edge of page nine was still clasped in the binder. Someone had been here before her.

The girl at the desk was busy with a customer inquiring, but without any visible signs of grief, how she went about inserting a death notice and how much extra a nice bit of verse would cost. She handed over a child’s exercise book and pointed out the rounded, laboriously formed letters. Cordelia, always curious about the idiosyncrasies of her fellow humans and for a moment forgetting her own concerns, edged closer and slewed her eyes to read:

This piece of extremely dubious theology was received by the girl with a lack of interest which suggested that she had read its like before. She spent the next three minutes attempting to explain what the probable cost would be including the extras if the notice were boxed and surmounted with a wreathed cross, a consultation which was punctuated by long considering silences as they both contemplated samples of the designs on offer. But after ten minutes all was satisfactorily decided and she was then able to turn her attention to Cordelia who said: “I’ve found the right edition but the sheet I think I want isn’t there. Someone’s cut it out.”

“They can’t have. It isn’t allowed. Those are the archives.”

“Well they have. Is there another copy?”

“I’ll have to tell Mr. Hasking. They can’t go cutting the archives about. Mr. Hasking will be in a rare state about that.”

“I’m sure. But I do need to see that page urgently. It’s page nine of the edition of 19 July, 1977. Haven’t you any other back numbers I could look through?”

“Not here. The Chairman might have a set up in London. Cutting the archives! Mr. Hasking sets great store by those old copies. That’s history, that is, he says.”

Cordelia asked: “Can you remember who last asked to see them?”

“There was a blonde lady from London last month. Writing a book about seaside piers she said. They blew this one up in 1939 so the Germans couldn’t land, then the Council hadn’t any money to build it again. That’s why it’s so stumpy. She said they used to have a music hall on the end when she was a girl and artistes used to come down from London in the season. She knew a lot about piers.”

Cordelia thought that a better equipped or more efficient private detective would have come with photographs of the victim and suspects for possible identification. It would have been useful to know whether the blonde woman who was so knowledgeable about piers looked like Clarissa or Roma. Tolly, unless she had disguised herself, surely an unnecessarily dramatic ploy, was obviously out. She wondered whether Bernie would have thought of photographing the house party unseen, prepared for just such an eventuality. She hadn’t herself felt such a tricky procedure was possible or useful. But she did, after all, have the Polaroid in her kit on the island. Perhaps it would be worth a try. She could come back tomorrow. She said: “And is the pier lady the only one who has recently asked to see the archives?”

“While I’ve been here. But then, I’ve only been on the desk a couple of months. Sally could have told you about anyone
before that, but she’s left to get married. And I’m not always on the desk. I mean someone could’ve come when I was in the office and Albert was on the desk.”

“Is he here?”

The girl looked at her as if astounded at such ignorance.

“Albert? Of course he isn’t. Albert’s never here Mondays.”

She looked at Cordelia with sudden suspicion. “Why d’you want to know who else has been here? I thought you were just after seeing that review.”

“I am. But I was curious who could have cut out that page. As you said, these are important records. And I wouldn’t like anyone to think it was I. You’re quite sure there isn’t a copy anywhere else in the town?”

Without looking round, the elderly man who was still arranging new photographs in the display frame with a deliberation and an eye for artistic effect which suggested that the job could well take the rest of the day, made his suggestion.

“Nineteenth July, ’77 did you say? That’s three days after the Queen’s visit. You could try Lucy Costello. She’s kept press cuttings on the Royal family for the last fifty years. Isn’t likely she’d have missed the Royal visit.”

“But Lucy Costello’s dead, Mr. Lambert! We had an article about her and her press cuttings the day after they buried her. Three months ago, that was.”

Mr. Lambert turned round and spread out his arms in a parody of patient resignation: “I know Lucy Costello’s dead! We all know she’s dead! I never said she wasn’t dead. But she’s got a sister, hasn’t she? Miss Emmeline’s still alive as far as I know. She’ll have the cuttings books. Isn’t likely she’d throw them out. They may have buried Miss Lucy but they haven’t buried her press cuttings with her, not that I know of. I said to try her. I didn’t say speak to her.”

Cordelia asked how she could find Miss Emmeline. Mr. Lambert turned away again to his photographs and spoke gruffly, as if regretting his former loquacity: “Windsor Cottage, Benison Row. Up the High Street, second left. Can’t miss it.”

“Is it far? I mean, ought I to take a bus?”

“You’d be lucky. Catch yer death you would waiting for that Number 12. Ten minutes walk at most. No trouble for a young ’un.”

He selected a picture of a portly gentleman in a mayoral chain, whose sideways glance of salacious bonhomie suggested that the official banquet had more than fulfilled expectations, and positioned it carefully beside a photograph of a well-endowed and decidedly underclad bathing beauty, so that his eyes appeared to be gazing down her cleavage. Cordelia thought that here was a man who enjoyed his work. She thanked him and the girl for their help and set out to find Miss Emmeline Costello.

Mr. Lambert had been right about the distance. It was almost exactly ten minutes’ admittedly brisk walk to Benison Row. Cordelia found herself in a narrow street of Victorian houses curving above the town. Although there was a pleasing unity in the age, architecture and height of the cottages, they were charmingly individual. Some had bow windows, others had been fitted with wooden window boxes from which a profusion of variegated ivy, geraniums and aubrietia trailed their bright pattern against the painted stucco, while the two at the end of the row had bay trees in painted tubs set each side of the gleaming front door. Each had a narrow front garden set behind wrought-iron railings which, perhaps because of their delicate ornamentation, had escaped being sacrificed for scrap iron in the last war. Cordelia realized that she had never before seen a row of houses with their railings complete and they gave to the street, which was outwardly so English in its small-scale prettiness, a touch of charming but alien eccentricity. The little gardens rioted with colour, the warm deep reds of autumn seeming to burst against the railings. Although
it was late in the season, the air was a potpourri of lavender and rosemary. There were no cars parked at the curb, no throat-catching tang of petrol fumes. After the bustle and hot smells of the High Street, walking into Benison Row was like stepping back into the cosy simplicity of another and legendary age.