The Skull Beneath the Skin

by P. D. James

  Grogan and Gorringe made the introductions. Buckley noticed that his chief expressed no sympathy, spoke no words of formal regret to the widower. But then, he never did. He had once explained why: “It’s offensively insincere, and they know it. There’s enough duplicity in police work without adding to it. Some lies are insulting.” And if Ralston or Gorringe noticed the omission, neither made a sign.

  Ambrose Gorringe did all the talking. As they moved between wide lawns towards the castle entrance, he said: “Sir George has organized a search of the castle and the island. The castle has been searched but the three groups covering the island aren’t back yet.”

  “My men will take that over now, sir.”

  “So I supposed. The rest of the cast are in the theatre. Sir Charles Cottringham would be glad of a word with you.”

  “Did he say what about?”

  “No. Merely a matter, I imagine, of letting you know that he’s here.”

  “I know that already. I’ll see the body now and then I’d be grateful for the use of a small and quiet room for the rest of the day and, possibly, until Monday.”

  “I thought that my business room would be the most suitable. If you will ring from Miss Lisle’s room when you’re ready, I’ll show you where it is. And Munter will get you anything you need. My guests and I will be in the library when you want us.”

  They moved through a large hall and up the staircase. Buckley noticed nothing of his surroundings. He walked with Sir George immediately behind Grogan and Ambrose Gorringe and listened while Gorringe gave his chief a succinct but remarkably comprehensive account of the events leading up to Miss Lisle’s death: how she came to be on the island; brief particulars of the rest of the house party; the threatening letters; the fact that she had thought it necessary to bring her own private detective with her, Miss Cordelia Gray; the loss of the marble limb; the discovery of the body. It was an impressive performance, as carefully impersonal and factual as if it had been rehearsed. But then, thought Buckley, it probably had.

  Outside the door, the party paused. Gorringe handed over three keys. He said: “I locked all three doors after the discovery of the body. These are the only keys. I take it you don’t want us to come in?”

  Sir George spoke for the first time: “When you need me, Chief Inspector, I’ll be with my wife’s stepson in his room. Boy’s upset. Natural in the circumstances. Munter knows where to find me.” He turned abruptly and left them.

  Grogan answered Gorringe’s question.

  “You’ve been very helpful, sir. But I think we can manage here on our own.”

  She was an actress even in death. The scene in the bedroom was extraordinarily dramatic. Even the set had been cleverly designed for melodrama in the grand manner, the props glittering and ostentatious, the dominant colour red. And there she lay sprawled under the crimson canopy, one white leg carefully raised to show an expanse of thigh, her face plastered with artificial blood, while director and cameraman stepped round her, contemplating the best angles, careful not to touch or disturb that artfully provocative pose. Grogan stood at the right of the bed and looked down at her frowning, as if wondering whether the casting director had been right in choosing her for the role. Then he leaned down and sniffed at the skin of her arm. The moment was bizarre. Buckley thought: “Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?” Almost he expected her to shudder with outrage, sit up and stretch out groping hands, demand a towel to wipe the mess from her face.

  The room was overcrowded but the experts in death—investigating officers, fingerprint officers, photographer and scene-of-crime searchers—were adept at keeping out of each other’s way. Grogan, as Buckley knew, had never reconciled himself to the use of civilian scene-of-crime officers, which was odd when you considered that he had come from the Met where the employment and training of civilians had gone about as far as it could go. But these two knew what they were about. They moved as delicately and confidently as a couple of cats prowling their familiar habitat. He had worked with both of them before but he doubted whether he would recognize them in the street or the pub. He stood back out of the way and watched the senior of them. It was always their hands that he watched, hands sheathed in gloves so fine that they looked like a second glistening skin. Now those hands poured the remnants of the tea into a collecting flask; stoppered, sealed and labelled it; gently eased the cup and saucer into a plastic bag; scraped a sample of blood from the marble limb and placed it in the specially prepared tube; took up the limb itself, touching it only with the tips of the fingers and lowered it into a sterile box; delicately picked up the note with tweezers and insinuated that gently into its envelope. At the bed his colleague was busy with magnifying glass and tweezers, collecting hairs from the pillow, seemingly oblivious of that shattered face. When the Home Office pathologist had completed his examination, the bedclothes would be bundled into a plastic bag, sealed and added to the other exhibits.

  Grogan said: “Doc Ellis-Jones is visiting his mother-in-law at Wareham, conveniently for us. They’ve sent an escort. He should be here within the next half hour. Not that there’s much he can tell us that we can’t see for ourselves. And the time of death is fixed within pretty tight limits anyway. If you reckon the loss of body heat on this kind of day at about one and a half degrees an hour for the first six hours, he’s unlikely to be able to put it any closer than we already know, some time between twenty past one when the girl left her alive, so Ambrose Gorringe tells us, and two-forty-three when the same girl found her dead. To be the last one to see the victim and the one to find the body suggests that Miss Cordelia Gray is either careless or unfortunate. We may be able to judge which when we see her.”

  Buckley said: “From the appearance of the blood, sir, I’d say that she died sooner rather than later.”

  “Yes. My guess would be within about thirty minutes of being left. That quotation under the marble limb. You recognized it, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. From The Duchess of Malfi, so Ambrose Gorringe informs us, the play in which Miss Lisle was cast in the title role. ‘Blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.’ I applaud the sentiment even if I couldn’t identify the source. But it isn’t particularly apposite. The blood didn’t fly upwards, or not to any great extent. This systematic destruction of the face was done after death. And we know the possible reasons for that.”

  It was rather like a viva-voce examination, thought Buckley. But this question was an easy one.

  “To conceal identity. To obscure the real cause of death. To make absolutely sure. An explosion of anger, hatred or fear.”

  “And then, after that brainstorm of violence, our literary-minded murderer calmly replaces the eye pads. He has a sense of humour, Sergeant.”

  They moved together into the bathroom. Here was a compromise between period opulence and modern functionalism. The great bath was marble and encased in a mahogany surround. The seat of the lavatory was mahogany, too, with a high flush. The walls were tiled, each tile painted in blue with a different posy of wild flowers, and there was a cheval glass, its frame decorated with cherubs. But the towel rail was heated, there was a bidet, a shower had been installed above the bath and a shelf over the handbasin held a formidable assortment of bath essences, powder and expensive wrapped soaps.

  Four white towels were untidily hung over the rail. Grogan sniffed each of them and rumpled them in his huge hands. He said: “It’s a pity about that heated rail. They’re completely dry. And so are the bath and hand-basin. There’s no way of telling whether she had time to bath before she was killed, not unless Doc Ellis-Jones can isolate traces of powder or bath essence from her skin, and even that wouldn’t be conclusive. But the towels look as if they’ve been recently used and they’re slightly scented. So is the body and it’s the same smell. My guess is that she did have time. She drank her tea, took off her makeup and bathed. If Miss Gray left her at twenty past one, that would bring us to about twenty minu
tes to two.”

  The senior scene-of-crime officer was waiting at the door. Grogan stood aside for him then went back into the bedroom and stood at the window looking out to where a hairline of purple separated the darkening sea from the sky. He said: “Have you heard of the Birdhurst Rise Poisonings?”

  “In Croydon, wasn’t it, sir? Arsenic.”

  “Three members of the same middle-class family murdered with arsenic between April 1928 and March 1929, Edmund Duff, a retired Colonial Civil Servant, his sister-in-law and her widowed mother. In each case the poison must have been administered in food or medicine. It could only have been a member of the household, but the police never made an arrest. It’s a fallacy to suppose that a small circle of suspects, all known to each other, makes a case easier to solve. It doesn’t; it only makes failure indefensible.”

  Failure wasn’t a word which Buckley could remember having heard before on Grogan’s lips. His euphoria gave way to a small weight of anxiety. He thought of Sir Charles Cottringham even now cooling his heels in the theatre, of the Chief Constable, of Monday’s publicity. “Baronet’s wife battered to death in island castle. Well-known actress slain.” This wasn’t a case which any officer ambitious for his future could afford to lose. He wondered what it had been about this room, this victim, this weapon, perhaps the air of Courcy Island itself, which had evoked that depressing note of caution.

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Then there was a sudden roar and a speedboat rounded the eastern tip of the island and swept a wide curving wake towards the quay. Grogan said: “Doc Ellis-Jones is making his usual dramatic appearance. Once he’s told us what we already know, that she’s a female and she’s dead, and has explained what we can work out for ourselves, that it wasn’t accident or suicide and it happened between one-twenty and two-forty-three, we can get down to the business of finding out what our suspects have to say for themselves, beginning with the baronet.”

  2

  It was nearly half-past four and Ambrose, Ivo, Roma and Cordelia were standing together on the jetty looking out to sea as Shearwater, taking the cast back to Speymouth, moved beyond the eastern tip of the island and out of sight. Ambrose said: “Well, they may have been done out of their moment in the spotlight but they can’t complain that the day has been dull. Clarissa’s murder will be all over the county by dinner time. That means we can expect a press invasion by dawn.”

  Ivo said: “What will you do?”

  “Prevent anyone from landing, although not with the brutal effectiveness of de Courcy at the time of the Plague. But the island is private property. And I’ll instruct Munter to refer all telephone inquiries to the police at Speymouth. They’ve presumably got a public relations department. Let them cope.”

  Cordelia, still in her cotton dress, shivered. The bright day was beginning to fade. Soon would come that transitory and lovely moment when the setting sun shines with its last and brightest rays, intensifying the colour of grass and trees so that the air itself is stained with greenness. Now the shadows lay long and heavy over the terrace. The Saturday sailors had turned for home and the sea stretched in an empty calm. Only the two police launches rocked gently against the quay, and the smooth bricks of the castle walls and turrets, which for a moment had glowed with a richer red, darkened and reared above them, ponderous and forbidding.

  As they passed through the great hall, the castle received them into an unnatural silence. Somewhere upstairs the police were busy with their secret expertise of death. Sir George was either being questioned or was with Simon in his room. No one seemed to know and no one liked to ask. The four of them, still awaiting their formal questioning, turned by common consent into the library. It might be less comfortable than the drawing room, but at least it offered plenty of material for those who chose to pretend that they wanted to read. Ivo took the only easy chair and lay back with his eyes turned to the ceiling, his long legs stretched. Cordelia sat at the chart table and slowly turned the pages of the 1876 bound copy of The Illustrated London News. Ambrose stood with his back to them, looking out over the lawn. Roma was the most restless, regularly pacing between the bookshelves like a prisoner under compulsory exercise. It was a relief when Munter and his wife brought in the tea, the heavy silver teapot, the brass kettle with the wick burning under it, the Minton tea service. Munter drew the curtains across the tall windows and put a match to the fire. It crackled into life. Paradoxically the library became at once cosier but more oppressive, enclosed in its shadowed hermetic calm. They were all thirsty. No one had much appetite but ever since the finding of the body they had craved the comfort and stimulus of strong tea or coffee, and busying themselves with cups and saucers at least gave them something to do. Ambrose settled himself beside Cordelia. Stirring his tea he said: “Ivo, you have all the London gossip. Tell us about this man, Grogan. I confess that, on first acquaintance, I don’t take to him.”

  “No one has all the London gossip. London, as you very well know, is a collection of villages, socially and occupationally as well as geographically. But theatrical gossip and police gossip do occasionally overlap. There’s an affinity between detectives and actors as there is between surgeons and actors.”

  “Spare us the dissertation. What do you know about him? You’ve spoken to someone, I suppose?”

  “I admit I did telephone a contact; from this room actually, while you were busy receiving Grogan and his minions. The story is that he resigned from the Met because he was disgusted with the corruption in the C.I.D. That, of course, was before the latest purge. He is, apparently, a proper William Morris man: “No more now my knight, or God’s knight any longer, you being than they so much more white, so much more pure and good and true.” That should reassure you, Roma.”

  “Nothing about the police reassures me.”

  Ambrose said: “I suppose I’d better be careful about offering him drink. It could be construed as an attempt to bribe or corrupt. I wonder if the Chief Constable, or whoever it is decides these things, sent him here to fail.”

  Roma said sharply: “Why should anyone do that?”

  “Better the incomer than one of your own men. And he could very easily fail. This is a story-book killing: a close circle of suspects, isolated scene-of-crime conveniently cut off from the mainland, known terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. It should be perfectly possible to tie it up—that’s the jargon, isn’t it?—within a week. Everyone will expect it to be solved quickly. But if the killer keeps his head clear and his mouth shut I very much doubt whether he or she is in real danger. All he needs to do—let’s be chivalrous and assume it’s a man—is to stick to his story; never excuse, never embellish, never explain. It isn’t what the police know or suspect; it’s what they can prove.”

  Roma said: “You sound as though you don’t want it solved.”

  “Without having strong feelings on the matter, I should prefer to have it solved. It would be tedious to spend the rest of one’s life as a suspected murderer.”

  “It’ll bring in the summer tourists though, won’t it? People love blood and horror. You’ll be able to show the scene of the crime—for an extra twenty pence, of course.”

  Ambrose said easily: “I don’t pander to sensationalism. That’s why summer visitors don’t get shown the crypt. And this is a murder in poor taste.”

  “But aren’t all murders in poor taste?”

  “Not necessarily. It would make a good parlour game, classifying the classical murder cases according to their degree of tastelessness. But this one strikes me as particularly bizarre, extravagant, theatrical.”

  Roma had drained her first cup of tea and was pouring a second. “Well that’s appropriate enough.” She added: “It’s odd that we’ve been left here alone, isn’t it? I thought that there’d be a plainclothes underling sitting in and taking a note of all our indiscretions.”

  “The police know the limit of their territory and of their powers. I’ve given them the use of the business room and, naturally, they’ve loc
ked the two guest rooms. But this is still my house and my library and they come in here by invitation. Until they decide to charge someone, we’re all entitled to be treated as innocent. Even Ralston, presumably, although as husband he has to be elevated to chief suspect. Poor George! If he really loved her this must be hell for him.”

  Roma said: “My guess is he’d stopped loving her six months after the wedding. He must have known by then that she wasn’t capable of fidelity.”

  Ambrose asked: “He never showed the least sign, did he?”

  “Not to me, but then I hardly ever saw them. And what could he do, faced with that particular insubordination? You can hardly deal with an unfaithful wife as if she were a recalcitrant subaltern. But I don’t suppose he liked it. But if he didn’t kill her and I don’t for one moment believe that he did, he’s probably not entirely ungrateful to whoever did. The money will come in useful to subsidize that Fascist organization he runs. The Union of British Patriots, U.B.P. Wouldn’t you know from the name that it’s a Fascist front?”

  Ambrose smiled: “Well, I wouldn’t expect it to be full of Trots and International Socialists certainly. It’s harmless enough. A Boys’ Own Paper mentality and a geriatric army.”

  Roma slammed down her cup and began again her restless pacing. “My God, you’re good at deceiving yourselves, aren’t you? It’s nasty, it’s embarrassing and most unforgivable of all, the people concerned actually take themselves seriously. They really believe in their dangerous nonsense. So let’s all laugh at it, and perhaps it will go away. When the chips are down, who do you think this geriatric army are going to be defending? The poor bloody proles? Not likely!”