P. James: The Skull Beneath The Skin

'Killed himself, did he?'

His tone lightened. He might have been a golfing partner congratulating Bernie on a well-placed putt, while his quick glance round the office suggested that the action had been in all the circumstances entirely reasonable.

She had no need 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 decor. 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 coat-stand. 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 not to 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 waste-paper 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 said that 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 his lips with mordant satisfaction? She said:

'But they don't specifically threaten her?'

'She sees this harping on death as threatening. She's sensitive. Actresses have to be I suppose. They need to be liked. This isn't friendly. I have the notes here, the ones she kept. The first ones were, thrown away. You'll need the evidence.'

He unclicked the briefcase and took out a stout manilla envelope. From it he spilled a heap of small sheets of paper and began spreading them over the desk. She recognized the type of paper at once; it was a popular, medium-quality, white writing-paper sold in three sizes with envelopes to match over thousands of stationery counters. The sender had been economical and had selected the smallest size. Each sheet bore a typed quotation surmounted by a small drawing about one inch high of either an up-ended coffin with the initials RIP on the lid or a skull with two crossbones. Neither had required much skill; they were emblems rather than accurate representations. On the other hand, they were drawn with a certain sureness of line and decorative sense which suggested some facility with the pen or, in this case, with a black-tipped ball-point. Under Sir George's bony fingers the white slips of paper with their stark black emblems shifted and rearranged themselves like the cards for some sinister game -hunt the quotation, murderer's snap.

Most of the quotations were familiar, words which would readily come to the mind of anyone reasonably well read in Shakespeare and the Jacobeans who chose to ponder on references in English drama to death and the terror of dying. Even reading them now, truncated and childishly embellished as they were, Cordelia felt their potent and nostalgic power. The majority of them were from Shakespeare and the obvious choices were there. The longest by far – and how could the sender have resisted it? -was Claudio's anguished cry from Measure for Measure:

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods; or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendant world!…

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

It was difficult to interpret that familiar passage as a personal threat; but most of the other quotations could be seen as more directly intimidating, hinting, she thought, at some retribution for real or imagined wrongs.

He that dies pays all debts.

Oh, thou weed!

Who art so lovely fair and smellest so sweet

That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born!

Some care had been taken in the choice of illustration. The skull adorned the lines from Hamlet,

Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.

as it did a passage which Cordelia thought might be from John Webster, although she couldn't identify the play.

Being heretofore drown'd in security, You know not how to live, nor how to die; But I have an object that shall startle you, And make you know whither you are going.

But, even allowing for the sensitivity of an actress, it would take a fairly robust egotism to wrench these familiar words from their contexts and apply them to oneself; that, or. a fear of dying so strong as to be morbid. She took a new notebook from her desk drawer and asked: 'How do they arrive?'