The Skull Beneath the Skin Read Free

to see either room through his eyes. What she saw through her own was depressing enough. She and Miss Maudsley had redecorated her office together, painting the walls pale yellow to give an impression of greater light and cleaning the faded carpet with a proprietary liquid; it had dried patchily so that the final impression reminded her of diseased skin. With its newly-washed curtains, the room at least looked clean and tidy, too tidy since the absence of clutter suggested no great pressure of work. Every surface was crammed with plants. Miss Maudsley had green fingers and the cuttings she had taken from her own plants and lovingly tended in a variety of oddly shaped receptacles picked up during her forays in the street markets had flourished despite the poor light. The resulting rampant greenery suggested that it had been cunningly deployed to conceal some sinister defect in the structure or décor. Cordelia still used Bernie’s old oak desk, could still imagine that she could trace the outline of the bowl in which he had bled away his life, could still identify one particular stain of spilt blood and water. But then there were so many rings, so many stains. His hat, with its upturned brim and grubby ribbon, still hung on the curved wooden coatstand. No jumble sale would take it and she found herself unable to throw it away. Twice she had taken it as far as the dustbin in the back yard but had been unable to drop it in, finding this final symbolic rejection of Bernie even more personal and traumatic than the exclusion of his name from the name plaque. If the Agency did finally fail—and she tried notto think what the new rent would be when the lease came up for renewal in three years’ time—she supposed that she would still leave the hat hanging there in its pathetic decrepitude for unknown hands to toss with fastidious distaste into the wastepaper basket.
    The tea arrived. Sir George waited until Miss Maudsley left. Then, measuring milk carefully into his cup, drop by drop, he said: “The job I’m offering is a mixture of functions. You’d be part bodyguard, part private secretary, part investigator and part—well, nursemaid. A bit of everything. Not everyone’s cup of tea. No knowing how it may turn out.”
    “I’m supposed to be a private investigator.”
    “No doubt. Shouldn’t be too purist in these times. A job’s a job. And you could find yourself involved in detection, even in violence, although it doesn’t seem likely. Unpleasant but not dangerous. If I thought there was any real risk to my wife or to you I wouldn’t be employing an amateur.”
    Cordelia said: “Perhaps you could explain what, exactly, you want me to do.”
    He frowned into his tea as if reluctant to begin. But when he did his account was lucid, concise and unhesitating.
    “My wife is the actress Clarissa Lisle. You may have heard of her. Most people seem to know of her although she hasn’t worked much recently. I am her third husband and we married in June 1978. In July 1980 she was employed to play Lady Macbeth at the Duke of Clarence Theatre. On the third night of the advertised six-month run she received what she saw as a death threat. These threats have continued intermittently ever since.”
    He began sipping his tea. Cordelia found herself gazing at him with the anxiety of a child hoping that her offering is acceptable. The pause seemed very long. She asked: “You saidthat she
saw
the first note as threatening. Are you implying that its meaning was ambiguous? What form exactly do these threats take?”
    “Typewritten notes. Variety of machines by the look of it. Each communication surmounted by a small drawing of a coffin or a skull. All are quotations from plays in which my wife has appeared. All the quotations deal with death or dying: the fear of death, the judgement of death, the inevitability of death.”
    The reiteration of that numinous word was oppressive. But surely it was in her imagination that he twisted it on