P. James - The Skull Beneath The Skin

'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 locked 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, UBP. 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 resdess 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!'

'I rather hope they'll be defending me.'

'Oh, they will, Ambrose, they will! You and the multi-national corporations, the establishment, the Press barons. Clarissa's money will do its bit towards keeping the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.'

Ambrose said mischievously:

'But don't you get some of the money? And won't it come in useful to you?'

'Of course, money always does. But it isn't important. I'll be glad enough of it, I suppose, when it actually comes, but I don't need it. It certainly isn't important enough to kill for. Come to that, I don't know what is.'

'Oh, come on, Roma, don't be naive! A cursory read of the daily papers will tell you what people find important enough to kill for. Dangerous and destructive emotions, to begin with. Love, for example.'

Munter was at the door. He coughed, rather, thought Cordelia, like a stock butler in a play, and said:

'The pathologist, Dr Ellis-Jones, has arrived, sir.'

Ambrose looked for a moment distracted as if wondering whether he was expected formally to greet the newcomer. He said:

'I'd better come, I suppose. Do the police know he's here?' 'Not yet, sir. I thought it right to inform you first.' 'Where is he, the pathologist?' 'In the great hall, sir.'

'Well, we can't keep him waiting. You'd better take him to Chief Inspector Grogan. I suppose there are things he may need. Hot water, for example.'

He looked vaguely around as if expecting a jug and basin to materialize from the air. Munter disappeared.

Ivo murmured:

'You make it sound like childbirth.'

Roma swung round, her tone was a mixture of the peevish and appalled. 'But surely he's not going to do the post-mortem here!' They all looked at Cordelia. She thought that Ambrose must surely know the procedure, but he too gazed at her with a look of bland, almost amused inquiry. She said:

'No. He'll just do a preliminary examination at what they call the scene-of-crime. He'll take the temperature of the body, try to estimate the time of death. Then they'll take her away. They don't like to move the body until the forensic pathologist has seen it and certified that life is extinct.'

Roma Lisle said:

'What a lot of curious information you have acquired for a girl who calls herself a secretary-companion. But of course, I forgot. Ambrose tells us that you're a private eye. So perhaps you'll explain why we've all had to have our fingerprints taken. I found it particularly offensive, the way they take hold of your fingers and press them down on the pad. It wouldn't be so repulsive if you were allowed to do it yourself.'

Cordelia said:

'Didn't the police explain the reason? If they find any prints in Clarissa's room they want to be able to eliminate ours.'

'Or identify them. And what else are they doing, apart from grilling George? God knows they've brought enough men with them.'

'Some of them are probably scientific officers from the forensic science laboratory. Or they may be what are called scene-of-crime officers. They'll collect the scientific evidence, samples of blood and body fluids. They'll take away the bedclothes and the cup and saucer. And they'll analyse the dregs of tea to find but if she was poisoned. She could have been drugged before she was killed. She was lying very peaceably on her back.'

Roma said:

'It didn't need a drug for Clarissa to lie peaceably on her back.'

Then she saw their faces. Her own went scarlet and she cried: 'I'm sorry! I shouldn't have said that. It's just that I can't

really believe it; I can't picture her lying there, battered to death.

I haven't that kind of imagination. She was alive. Now she's

dead. I didn't like her and she didn't like me. Death can't alter

that for either of us.' She almost stumbled to the door.

'I'm going for a walk. I've got to get out of this place. If Grogan wants me he can come and find me.'

Ambrose refilled the teapot and poured himself another cup; then seated himself leisurely next to Cordelia.

'That's what surprises me about political commitment. Her cousin, the woman she was practically brought up with, is messily done to death and will shortly be carted off to be scientifically carved up by a Home Office pathologist. She's shocked, obviously. But basically she cares as little as if she'd been told that Clarissa was inconvenienced by a mild attack of fibrositis. But one mention of poor Ralston's Union of British Patriots and she's hysterical with outrage.'

Ivo said:

'She's frightened.'

'That's obvious, but what of? Not that pathetic bunch of amateur warriors?'

'They frighten me occasionally. I suppose she was right about the money and Ralston will get most of it. How much is that?'

'My dear Ivo, I don't know. Clarissa never confided the details of her personal finances, we weren't that close.'

‘I rather thought you were.'

'And even if we had been, I doubt whether she would have told. That's one surprising fact about Clarissa. You won't believe this but it's true. She loved to gossip, but she could keep a secret when she wanted to. Clarissa liked hoarding, and that included nuggets of useful information.'

Ivo said lightly:

'How unexpected, and how very dangerous.'

Cordelia looked at them, at Ambrose's bright malicious eyes, at Ivo's barely coveretl skeleton angularly disposed in his chair, at the long bony hands drooping from wrists which looked too thin and brittle to hold them, at the putty-coloured face with its jutting bones turned upwards to the stuccoed ceiling. She was seized with a confusion of feelings; anger, a deep unfocused pity, and a less familiar emotion which she recognized as envy. They were so secure in their sardonic, half-humorous detachment. Could anything really touch their hearts or nerves except the possibility of their own pain? And even physical pain, that universal leveller, they would meet with wry disgust or derisive contempt. Wasn't that how Ivo was facing his own death? Why should she expect them to grieve because a woman neither of them had greatly liked was lying upstairs with her face smashed in? And yet it wasn't necessary to affirm Donne's overworked aphorism to feel that something was owed to a death, that something in their relationships, in the castle itself, in the very air they breathed, had been touched and subtly altered. Suddenly she felt very alone and very young. She was aware of Ambrose looking at her. As if he had read her thoughts he said: