The Skull Beneath the Skin (45 page)

She didn’t answer. He leaned forward and refilled her glass.

“It wasn’t the possibility of other copies that worried me. What I couldn’t risk was the police finding that one copy, and in her room. And I knew that, if it were there to find, then they’d find it. They’d be looking for a motive. Everything in that
room would be collected, docketed, scrutinized, examined. There was a chance, of course, that they’d take the cutting at its face value, a critic’s notice kept for purely sentimental reasons. But why that particular notice, a not very important play in a provincial theatre? It’s never safe to rely on the stupidity of the police.”

She said with great sadness: “So it was Simon. Poor Simon! Where is he now?”

“In his room. Perfectly safe, I assure you. Don’t you want to know what happened?”

“But he couldn’t have planned it! Not Simon. He couldn’t have meant it.”

“Planned it, no. Meant it? Who’s to say what he meant? She’s just as dead, isn’t she, whatever he meant? What he told me was that she invited him to her room. He was to say that he was going for a swim, put on his swimming trunks under his jeans and shirt, wait until thirty minutes after she’d gone to rest, then knock three times at the door. She’d let him in. She said there was something she wanted to talk to him about. There was, of course. Herself. Whatever else did Clarissa ever want to talk about? He, poor deluded fool, thought she was going to tell him that he could go to the Royal College, that she’d pay for his musical education.”

“But why send for Simon? Why him?”

“Ah, that I doubt whether we shall ever know. But I can make a guess. Clarissa liked to make love before a performance. Perhaps it gave her confidence, perhaps it was a necessary release of tension, perhaps she only knew of one way to stop herself thinking.”

“But Simon! That boy! She couldn’t have wanted him!”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps, this time, she only wanted to talk, wanted companionship. And, with all respect to you, my dear
Cordelia, she had never looked to a woman for that. But she may have thought that she was doing him a service in more ways than one. Clarissa is totally incapable of believing that a man exists—a normal man anyway—who wouldn’t take her if he could get her. And to do her justice, my sex hasn’t done much to disabuse her of the idea. And what better time for Simon to begin his privileged education than on a warm afternoon after, I pride myself, an excellent luncheon and when she needed a new sensation, a divertissement to take her mind off the performance ahead? And who else was there? George, poor chivalrous booby, would lie to the death to protect her reputation, but my guess is that he hasn’t touched her since he discovered that he’s a cuckold. I’m no use to her. And Whittingham? Well, Ivo has had his turn. And can you imagine her wanting him even if he had the strength? It would be like handling the dry skin of death, infecting your tongue with the taste of death, smelling corruption in your nostrils. Given dear Clarissa’s peculiar needs, who was there but Simon?”

“But it’s horrible!”

“Only because you’re young, pretty and intolerant. It would have done no harm with a different boy and at a different time. He might even have thanked her. But Simon Lessing was looking for a different kind of education. Besides, he’s a romantic. What she saw in his face wasn’t desire, it was disgust. Of course, I could be wrong. She may not have thought it out very clearly. Clarissa seldom did. But she asked him to come to her. And as with me and my uncle, he came.”

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 years 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.