The Skull Beneath the Skin

by P. D. James

  So she had been right. Clarissa had sent that one message. But she might be wrong about the reason. It had, after all, been clumsily done, and had it really exonerated Sir George? But it had ensured that the police took no further interest in what they must have seen as the time-wasting mischief of an attention-seeking and probably neurotic woman. And that would have suited the real culprit very well. Had anyone suggested to Clarissa that she should send that one note herself? And had it been the only one for which she had been responsible? Could the whole sequence of quotations be an elaborate conspiracy between herself and one other person? But Cordelia rejected that theory almost as soon as it came into her mind. Of one thing she was sure: Clarissa had dreaded the arrival of the messages. No actress could have simulated that fear. She had been convinced that she would die. And she had died.

  Cordelia was aware that the two men were looking at her intently. She had been sitting silently, hands curved in her lap, eyes lowered, occupied with thought. She waited for them to break the silence and when the Chief Inspector spoke she thought she could detect a different note in his voice which could have been respect.

  “Did you deduce anything else about these notes?”

  “I thought that they might have been sent by two different people, apart from Miss Lisle, I mean. I wasn’t shown the first half dozen which she received. I thought it possible that they might have been different from the later communications. And most of the ones I saw, the ones I’ve handed over to you, can be found in The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations. I think that whoever typed them had that book in front of him and typed from the text.”

  “On different machines?”

  “That wouldn’t be difficult. They aren’t new machines and the makes are different. There are numerous shops in London and the suburbs which sell new and reconditioned typewriters and which put out a machine or two for people to try. It would be almost impossible to trace a machine if one went from shop to shop and typed a few lines in each.”

  “And who do you suggest did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what about the original anonymous correspondent, the one you might say who had the bright idea in the first place?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  That was as far as she was willing to go. She had told them enough, perhaps too much. If they wanted motives, let them grub around for themselves. And there was one motive for the poison pen that she would never divulge. If Ivo Whittingham had kept silent about Tolly’s tragedy, then so would she.

  And then Grogan was speaking again, leaning over the desk towards her so that the powerful body, the strong coarse voice surged towards her, palpable as a force.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, shall we? Miss Lisle was battered to death. You know what happened to her. You saw the body. Now, she may not have been a good or likeable woman. That has nothing to do with it. She had as much right to live her life to the last natural moment as you or I or any creature under the Queen’s peace.”

  “Of course. I don’t see why that needs saying.”

  Why did her own voice sound so small, almost peevish?

  “You’d be surprised what needs saying in a murder investigation. It’s the most powerful mutual protection society in the world, the trade union of the living. It’s the living you’ll be thinking about, wanting to protect, yourself most of all of course. My job is to think of her.”

  “You can’t bring her back.”

  The words, torn out of her, fell between them in all their sad banality.

  “No, but I can stop someone else from going the same way. No one is more dangerous than a successful murderer. I’m boring you with platitudes because I want you to get one thing straight. You may be too bright for your own good, Miss Gray. You’re not here to solve this crime. That’s my job. You’re not here to protect the living. Leave that to their lawyers. You’re not even here to protect the dead. They’re beyond needing your condescension. On doit des égards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la vérité. You’re an educated young woman. You know what that means.”

  “ ‘We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.’ It’s Voltaire, isn’t it? But I was taught a different pronunciation.”

  As soon as the words were out she was ashamed. But to her surprise his only response was a bellow of laughter.

  “I bet you were, Miss Gray. I bet you were. I taught myself with a primer and a key to phonetics. But think about it. There’s no better motto for a detective, and that includes female private eyes who would like to help the police but still be able to lie abed with a good conscience. It can’t be done, Miss Gray. It can’t be done.”

  She didn’t reply. After a moment, Grogan said: “What surprises me a little, Miss Gray, is how much you noticed and how carefully when you found the body. Most people, and not only young women, would have been in a state of shock.”

  Cordelia thought that he was entitled to the truth, or as much as she herself understood of it.

  “I know. That has surprised me too. I think what happened was that I couldn’t bear to feel too much emotion. It was so horrible that it was almost unreal. My intellect took over and made it into a kind of detective puzzle because, if I hadn’t concentrated on detaching myself from the horror, examining the room, noticing little things like the lipstick smear on the cup, it would have been unbearable. Perhaps that’s how doctors feel at the scene of an accident. You have to keep your mind on procedures and techniques because, otherwise, you might realize that what you have lying there is a human being.”

  Sergeant Buckley said quietly: “It’s how a policeman trains himself to behave at the scene of an accident. Or a murder.”

  Without taking his eyes from Cordelia, Grogan said: “You find that credible then, do you Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fear sharpens perception as well as the senses. Glancing at Sergeant Buckley’s handsome, rather heavy face, at the controlled self-satisfied smile, Cordelia doubted whether he had ever in his life needed such an expedient against pain and wondered whether he was trying to signal his sympathy or was colluding with his superior in some pre-arranged interrogatory ploy. The Chief Inspector said: “And what exactly did your intellect deduce when it had so conveniently taken over from your emotions?”

  “The obvious things: that the curtains had been drawn although they weren’t when I left, that the jewel box was missing, that the tea had been drunk. And I thought it odd that Miss Lisle had cleaned the makeup from her face but that there was a lipstick stain on the cup. That surprised me. I think she has—she had—sensitive lips and used a creamy lipstick which does smear easily. So why hadn’t it come off when she ate her lunch? It looked as if she must have made up her lips again before she drank her tea. But if so, why had she taken off the rest of her makeup? The balls of stained cotton wool were all over the dressing table top. And I noticed that there wasn’t as much blood as one would expect from a head wound. I thought it possible that she might have been killed some other way and the injuries to her face made afterwards. And I was puzzled about the pads over her eyes. They must have been put there after death. I mean, it wouldn’t be possible for them to stay so neatly in place while her face was being destroyed.”

  After she had finished there was a long silence. Then Grogan said, his voice expressionless: “You’re sitting on the wrong side of the desk, Miss Gray.”

  Cordelia waited. Then she said, hoping that she wasn’t doing more harm than good: “There’s one thing more I ought to tell you. I know that Sir George can’t have killed his wife. I’m sure that you wouldn’t suspect him, anyway, but there is something you should know. When he first arrived in the bedroom and I blurted out how sorry I was he looked at me with a kind of amazed horror. I realized that he thought for a moment that I’d killed her, that I was confessing.”

  “And you weren’t?”

  “Not to murder. Only to failure to do what I was here for.”

  He changed
the tack of his questioning again.

  “Let’s go back to the Friday night, the time when you were with Miss Lisle in her room and she showed you the secret drawer in her jewel box. That review of the Rattigan play. Are you sure that that is what it in fact was?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “The paper wasn’t a document or a letter.”

  “It was a newspaper cutting. And I read the headline.”

  “And at no time did your client—and she was your client, remember—ever give you the least indication that she knew or suspected who it was threatening her?”

  “No, never.”

  “And she had no enemies as far as you know.”

  “None that she told me of.”

  “And you yourself can throw no light on why and by whom she was killed?”

  “No.”

  It must, she thought, feel like this to be in the witness box, the careful questions, the even more careful answers, the longing to be released.

  He said: “Thank you, Miss Gray. You’ve been helpful. Not, perhaps, as helpful as I’d hoped. But helpful. And it’s early days yet. We shall be talking again.”

  4

  After Cordelia had left, Grogan relaxed in his chair:

  “Well, what do you think of her?”

  Buckley hesitated, uncertain whether his chief wanted an assessment of the last interviewee as a woman or as a suspect. He said cautiously: “She’s attractive. Like a cat.” Since this evoked no immediate response he added: “Self-contained and dignified.”

  He was rather pleased with the description. It had, he thought, a certain cleverness while committing him to nothing. Grogan began doodling on the blank sheet in front of him, a complicated mathematical design of triangles, squares and precisely interlacing circles spread over the page and reminding Buckley of the more obscure of his school geometry problems. He found it difficult not to fix his eyes obsessively on isosceles triangles and bisecting arcs. He said: “Do you think she did it, sir?”

  Grogan began filling in his design.

  “If she did, it was during those fifty-odd minutes when she claims she was taking the sun on the bottom step of the terrace, conveniently out of sight and sound. She had time and opportunity. We’ve only her word that she locked her bedroom door or that Miss Lisle actually locked hers. And even if both doors and the communicating one were locked, Gray is probably the only person Lisle would have let in. She knew where the marble was kept. She was up and about early this morning when Gorringe first discovered that it was missing. She has a locked cabinet in her room where she could have kept it safely hidden. And we know that the final message, like the one typed on the back of the woodcut, was typed on Gorringe’s machine. Gray can type and she had access to the business room where it’s kept. She’s intelligent, and she can keep her head even when I’m trying to needle her into losing it. If she did have a hand in it, my guess is that it was as Ralston’s accomplice. His explanation of why she was called in sounded contrived. Did you notice how she and Ralston gave almost identical accounts of his visit to Kingly Street, what he said, what she said? It was so neat it could have been rehearsed. It probably was.”

  But Buckley could think of an objection and he voiced it.

  “Sir George was a soldier. He’s used to getting his facts right. And she has a good memory, particularly for important events. And that visit was important. He probably paid well, and it could have led to other jobs. The fact that they gave the same account, got the details right, speaks as much for innocence as guilt.”

  “According to both of them, that’s the first time they met. If they are conspirators, they must have got together before then. Whatever there is between them, it shouldn’t be too difficult to grub it out.”

  “They’re an unlikely couple. I mean, it’s difficult to see what they have in common.”

  “Politics rather than bed I imagine. Although, when it comes to sex, nothing is too bizarre to be ruled out. Police work teaches you that if nothing else. She could have taken a fancy to being Lady Ralston. There must be easier ways of getting money than running a detective agency. And Ralston will have money, remember. His wife’s, to be specific. And I don’t suppose that will come before it’s needed. He must be spending a packet on that organization of his—the U.B.P. or whatever they call it. And that’s an odd business if you like. I suppose you can argue a case for an amateur force trained and ready to support the civil power in an emergency, but isn’t that what General Walker has in hand? So what exactly do George Ralston and his geriatric conspirators think they’re up to?”

  As Buckley didn’t know the answer and had, in fact, hardly heard of the Union of British Patriots, he wisely kept silent. Then he said: “Did you believe Gray when she said that Sir George thought that she was confessing?”

  “What Miss Gray thought she saw in Sir George’s face isn’t evidence. And no doubt he did look amazed if he thought he heard her confessing to a murder he’d done himself.”

  Buckley thought about the girl who had just left them; saw again that gentle, uplifted face, the immense and resolute eyes, the delicate hands folded like a child’s in her lap. She was keeping something back, of course; but didn’t they all? That didn’t make her a murderess. And the idea of her and Ralston together was ludicrous and disgusting. Surely the Chief hadn’t yet reached the age when he needed to start believing that pathetic old lie with which the middle-aged and the elderly deceived themselves, that the young find them physically attractive? What they can do, the old goats, he told himself, is to buy youth and sex with money and power and prestige. But he didn’t believe that Sir George Ralston was in that market or that Cordelia Gray could be bought. He said stolidly: “I can’t see Miss Gray as a murderess.”

  “It takes an effort of the imagination I grant you. But that’s probably what Mr. Blandy thought of Miss Blandy. Or L’Angelier of Miss Madeleine Smith, come to that, before she so unkindly handed him his cocoa and arsenic through the basement railings.”

  “Wasn’t there a verdict of not proven in that case, sir?”

  “A fainthearted Glasgow jury who should have known better and probably did. But we’re theorizing in advance of facts. We need the p.m. result and we need to know what, if anything, was in that tea. Doc Ellis-Jones will probably get her on the slab tomorrow, Sunday or no Sunday. Once he’s got his hands on the body he’s quick enough at his butchering, I’ll say that for him.”

  “And the lab, sir. How long are they likely to take?”

  “God knows. It’s not as if we’ve any idea what they’re supposed to be looking for. There isn’t an unlimited number of drugs which can put you out, or kill you, within a short time and with no obvious signs on the body. But there are enough to keep them busy for the next few days if this is the only murder on the stocks. We may get a clue from the p.m. of course. Meanwhile we get on with the London end. How well did any of these people know each other before they arrived on the island this weekend? What, if anything, do the Met know about Cordelia Gray and her agency? What did Simon Lessing really feel about his benefactress and how, exactly, did his father die? Is Miss Tolgarth quite the devoted dressercum-family retainer that we’re supposed to believe? What sort of money is Sir George spending on his toy soldiers? How much exactly is Roma Lisle going to get under the will and how badly does she need it? And that’s just for starters.”

  And none of it, thought Buckley, was the kind of information people came running to give you with happy smiles. It meant talking to bank managers, lawyers, friends, acquaintances and colleagues of the suspects, most of whom would know to a word just how far they needed to go. In theory everyone wanted murderers caught, just as in theory they all approved of hostels for the mentally ill in the community, provided they weren’t built at the bottom of their garden. It would be simpler for the police as well as reassuring to the house party at the castle if they did discover those convenient young burglars hiding terrified somewhere on the island. But he didn’t believe that they ex
isted and nor, he suspected, did anyone else. And it would be a tamely disappointing ending to the case. What glory would there be in pulling in a couple of terrified local villains who’d killed on impulse and wouldn’t have the nous even to keep their mouths shut until they got a brief. There was an intelligence at work here. The case was exactly the kind of challenge he enjoyed and which police work so seldom provided.

  “There are facts. There are suppositions. There are beliefs. Learn to keep them separate, Sergeant. All men die: fact. Death may not be the end: supposition. There’s pie in the sky when you die: belief. Lisle was murdered: fact. She received anonymous communications: fact. Other people were there when they arrived. They threatened her life: supposition. They were a bloody sight more likely to put her off her stroke as an actress. They terrified her: supposition. That’s what her husband tells us and what she told Miss Gray. But she was an actress, remember. The thing about actresses is that they act. Suppose she and her husband concocted the whole scheme, threatening messages, apparent terror and distress, breakdown in the middle of a play, calling in a private eye, the lot.”

  “I don’t see why, sir.”

  “Nor do I, yet. Would any actress willingly humiliate herself on stage? God knows. Actors are an alien breed to me.”

  “If she knew that she was finished as an actress, could she and her husband have concocted the messages to provide a public excuse for failure?”

  “Over-ingenious and unnecessary. Why not just pretend that her health has failed? And she didn’t make the messages public. On the contrary, she seems to have taken care to prevent the news getting out. Would any actress wish her public to know that someone hated her that much? Don’t they crave to be loved by all the world? No, I was thinking of something rather more subtle. Ralston somehow persuades her into pretending that her life is threatened, and then kills her, having, as it were, seduced her into conniving at her own murder. My God, that would be neat. Too neat, perhaps.”