P. James: The Skull Beneath The Skin

'Darlings, I was actually in the theatre when she dried, Clarissa Lisle, I mean. It was ghastly. It wasn't just that she forgot the lines, though I don't see how anyone can forget Lady Macbeth, the part practically speaks itself. She dried completely. We could hear the prompter positively shrieking at her from where Peter -he was my friend – and I were sitting. And then she gave a kind of gasp and ran offstage.' Bevis's outraged voice recalled Miss Maudsley from her happy recollection of Orpen portraits and William Morris tapestries.

'Poor woman! How terrible for her, Bevis.'

'Terrible for the rest of the cast. For us, too. Altogether shame-making. After all, she is a professional actress with something of a reputation. You don't expect her to behave like a hysterical schoolgirl who's lost her nerve at her first amateur performance. I was amazed when Metzler offered her Vittoria after that Macbeth. She started all right and the notices weren't that bad, but they say that things got pretty dodgy before it folded.'

Bevis spoke as one who had been privy to all the negotiations. Cordelia had often wondered at the assurance which he assumed whenever they spoke of the theatre, that exotic world of fantasy and desire, his promised land, his native air. He said:

'I'd love to see the Victorian theatre on Courcy Island. It's very small – only a hundred seats – but they say it's perfect. The original owner built it for Lillie Langtry when she was mistress to the Prince of Wales. He used to visit the island and the house party would amuse themselves with amateur theatricals.'

'How do you get to know these things, Bevis?'

'There was an article about the castle in one of the Sundays soon after Mr Gorringe had completed the restoration. My friend showed it to me. He knows I'm interested. The auditorium looked charming. It even has a royal box decorated with the Prince of Wales feathers. I wish I could see it. I'm madly envious.'

Cordelia said:

'Sir George told me about the theatre. The present owner must be rich. It can't have been cheap, restoring the theatre and the castle and collecting the Victoriana.'

Surprisingly, it was Miss Maudsley who replied: 'Oh, but he is! He made a fortune out of that bestseller he wrote. Autopsy. He's A. K. Ambrose. Didn't you know?' Cordelia hadn't known. She had bought the paperback, as had thousands of others, because she had got tired of seeing its dramatic cover confronting her in every bookshop and supermarket and had felt curious to know what it was about a first novel that could earn a reputed half a million before publication. It was fashionably long and equally fashionably violent and she remembered that she had indeed, as the blurb promised, found it difficult to put down, without now being able to remember clearly either the plot or the characters. The idea had been neat enough. The novel dealt with an autopsy on a murder victim and had told at length the stories of all the people involved, forensic pathologist, police officer, mortuary attendant, family of the victim, victim and, finally, the murderer. You could, she supposed, call it a crime novel with a difference, the difference being that there had been more sex, normal and abnormal, than detection and that the book had attempted with some success to combine the popular family saga with the mystery. The writing style had been nicely judged for the mass market, neither good enough to jeopardize popular appeal nor bad enough to make people ashamed of being seen reading it in public. At the end she had been left dissatisfied, but whether that was because she had felt manipulated or because of a conviction that the pseudonymous A.K. Ambrose could have written a better book had he chosen, it was hard to say. But the sexual interludes, cunningly spaced, all written with undertones of irony and self-disgust, and the detailed description of the dissection of a female body certainly had a salacious power. Here at least the writer had been himself.

Miss Maudsley was anxious to disclaim any implied criticism in her question.

'It's not surprising that you didn't know. I wouldn't have known myself, only one of the members on the summer outing had a husband who keeps a bookshop and she told us. Mr Ambrose doesn't really like it to be known. It's the only book he's written I believe.'

Cordelia began to feel a lively curiosity to see the egregiously talented Ambrose Gorringe and his off-shore island. She sat musing on the oddities of this new assignment while Bevis collected the coffee cups, it being his turn to wash up. Miss Maudsley had fallen into a pensive silence, hands folded in her lap. Suddenly she looked up and said:

'I do hope you won't be in any danger, Miss Gray. There's something wicked, one might say evil, about poison-pen letters. We had a spate of them once in the parish and it ended very tragically. They're so frighteningly malevolent.'

Cordelia said:

'Malevolent, but not dangerous. I'm more likely to be bored by the case than frightened. And I can't imagine anything very terrible happening on Courcy Island.'

Bevis, precariously balancing the three mugs, turned around at the door.

'But terrible things have happened there! I don't know what exactly. The article I read didn't say. But the present castle is built on the site of an old medieval castle which used to guard that part of the Channel, so it's probably inherited a ghost or two. And the writer did mention the island's violent and bloodstained history.'

Cordelia said:

'That's just a journalistic platitude. All the past is bloodstained. That doesn't mean that its ghosts still walk.'

She spoke entirely without premonition, glad of the chance of a real job at last, happy at the thought of getting out of London while the warm autumnal weather still lasted, seeing already in her mind the soaring turrets, the gull-loud marshes, the gentle uplands and woods of this miniature England, so mysterious and beautiful, lying waiting for her in the sun.

Ambrose Gorringe now visited London so rarely that he was beginning to wonder whether the subscription to his town club was really justified. There were parts of the capital in which he still felt at home, but too many others in which he had previously walked with pleasure now seemed to him grubby, despoiled and alien. When business with his stockbroker, agent or publisher made a visit desirable, he would plan a programme of what he described to himself as treats, an adult re-enactment of school holidays, leaving no portion of a day so unprovided for that he had time to ponder on his stupidity in being where he was. A visit to Saul Gaskin's small antique shop near Notting Hill Gate was invariably in his programme. He bought most of his Victorian pictures and furniture at the London auction houses, but Gaskin knew and partially shared his passion for Victoriana and he could be confident that there would be, awaiting his inspection, a small collection of the trivia which was often so much more redolent of the spirit of the age than his more important acquisitions.

In the unseasonable September heat the cluttered and ill-ventilated office at the back of the shop smelt like a lair in which Gaskin, with his white, pinched face, precise little hands and grubby moleskin waistcoat scurried around like a tenacious rodent. Now he unlocked his desk drawer and reverently laid before this favoured customer the scavengings of the last four months. The Bristol blue decanter engraved with a design of grapes and vineleaves was attractive, but there were only five glasses and he liked his sets complete, while one of a pair of Wedgwood vases designed by Walter Crane was slightly chipped. He was surprised that Gaskin, knowing that he demanded perfection, had bothered to keep them for him. But the ornately trimmed menu for the banquet given by the Queen at Windsor Castle on 10th October 1844 to celebrate the appointment of King Louis Philippe of France as a Knight of the Garter was a happy find. He played with the idea that it would be amusing to serve the same meal at Courcy Casde on the anniversary, but reminded himself that there were limits both to Mrs Munter's culinary skills and to the capacity of his guests.