P. James - The Skull Beneath The Skin

She snatched up her shoulder-bag and ran from' the room, through the echoing hall, up the wide staircase. She flung open the door of Simon's bedroom and switched on the light. The bed was made, the room empty. She fled like a wild creature from room to empty room. Only in one did she see a human face. In the soft glow of his bedside lamp, Ivo was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. As she came up to him he must have sensed her desperation. But he smiled sadly and gave a small rueful shake of the head. There was no help here.

There was still the tower to search, that and the theatre. But perhaps he wasn't any longer in the castle. The whole island was open to him, cliffs and uplands, meadows and woodlands, the black unsearchable island holding like a shell in its dark intricacies the everlasting murmur of the sea. But there was still, the business room and the kitchen quarters, unlikely as it was that he had taken refuge there. She sped down the tiled passage and flung herself at the business room door. And then she stood, arrested. The second display cabinet, the one which held the small mementoes of Victorian crime and horror had been violated. The glass had been smashed. And staring down she saw that something was missing: the handcuffs. And then she knew where she would find Simon.

She flung her shoulder-bag on the desk of the business room, taking with her only her torch. There was only one other thing she wished to have, the leather belt. But it was no longer round her waist. Somewhere and somehow during the day's activities she had lost it. She had a memory of hurriedly putting it on in the women's cloakroom of a chain store where she had stopped on her way to Benison Row. In her anxiety to find Miss Costello she must have buckled it insecurely. As she ran across the lawn and into the darkness of the wood she wished that she still felt the reassuring strength of this private talisman clasped round her waist.

The Church loomed before her, numinous and secret in the moonlight. No lights shone from the open door but the faint gleam from the east window was enough to light her to the crypt even without the aid of her torch. And that door, too, was open with the key in the lock. Ambrose must have told him where it could be found. The strong dusty smell of the crypt came up to meet her. She didn't pause to find the switch but followed the shifting pool of torchlight, past the rows of domed skulls, the grinning mouths, until it shone on the heavy iron-bound door which led to the secret passage. This too was open.

She dared not run; the passage was too twisting, the ground too uneven. She remembered that the passage lights were on a time switch and pressed each button as she passed, knowing that in a few moments the lights would go out behind her, that she was moving from brightness into the dark. The way seemed interminable. Surely that small party, only two days earlier, hadn't travelled as far as this? She had a moment of panic, fearing that she might have found and taken a hidden turning and be lost in a maze of tunnels. But then she saw the second flight of steps and there gleamed before her the low-roofed cavern above the Devil's Kettle. The single bulb suspended in its protective grille was shining steadily. The trapdoor was up, the lid resting against the wall of the cave. Cordelia knelt and gazed down into Simon's face. It strained up at her, the eyes wide and staring, the whites showing, like the eyes of a terrified dog. His left arm was stretched above his head, the wrist handcuffed to the top rail. His hand drooped from the bar of the handcuff, not the strong hand she remembered coming down on the piano keys, but tender and pale as the hand of a child. And the steadily rising water, flapping like black oil against the cave walls and glazed with light from the cavern above, was already up to his shoulders.

She climbed down beside him. The cold cut her thighs like a knife. She said: 'Where's the key?' 'I dropped it.'

'Dropped it or threw it? Simon, I have to know where.' 'I just dropped it.'

Of course. He would have no need to hurl it far. Handcuffed and helpless as he was, he couldn't retrieve it now however close it lay and however tempted or desperate he might be. She prayed that the bottom of the cave would be rock not sand. She had to find the key. There was no other way. Her mind had already done its rapid calculation. Five minutes to get back to the castle, another five to return. And where would she find a toolbox, a file sufficiently strong to cut through the metal? Even if there were someone in the castle able and willing to help her, there still wasn't time. If she left him now she would be leaving him to drown.

He whispered:

'Ambrose told me I'd be in prison for the rest of my life. That or Broadmoor.' 'He lied.'

'I couldn't stand it, Cordelia! I couldn't stand it!'

'You won't have to. Manslaughter isn't murder. You didn't mean to kill her. And you aren't mad.'

But how clearly the words of Ambrose fell into her mind. 'Who's to say what he meant? She's just as dead, isn't she, whatever he meant?'

Any additional light was welcome. She switched on her torch, resting it on the top rung. Then she gulped in a lungful of air and lowered herself carefully under the gently heaving surface. It was important not to disturb the sea bed more than she could help. The water was icy cold and so black that she could see nothing. But she felt with her hands, scraping them along the bottom, feeling the gritty sand, the spurs of sharp unyielding rock. A swathe of seaweed wound itself round her arm like a soft detaining hand. But her slowly creeping fingers found nothing that could have been the key.

She came up for air and gasped:

'Show me exactly where you dropped it.'

He whispered through his bloodless, chattering lips:

'About here. I held my right hand out like this. Then I let it fall.'

She cursed her folly. She should have taken more trouble to discover the exact place before disturbing the sand. Now she might have lost it forever. She had to move gently and slowly. She had to stay calm and take her time. But there wasn't any time. Already the water was up to their necks.

She lowered herself again trying methodically to cover the area he had indicated, letting her fingers creep like crabs over the surface of sand. Twice she had to come up for air and see briefly the horror and the despair in those staring eyes. But on the third attempt her hand found the stub of metal and she brought up the key.

Her fingers were so cold that they felt lifeless. She could hardly grasp the key and was terrified that she might drop it, that she might not be able to fit it into the lock. Watching her shaking hands he said:

'I'm not worth it. I killed Munter, too. I couldn't sleep and I was there, in the rose garden. I was there when he fell in. I could have saved him. But I ran away so that I wouldn't have to look. I pretended that I hadn't seen, that I hadn't been near.'

'Don't think about that now. We've got to get you out of here, get you warm again.'

The key was in the lock at last. She was fearful that it might not work, that it might not even be the right key. But it turned easily enough. The bar of the handcuff loosened. He was free.

And then it happened. The trapdoor crashed down in an explosion of sound physical as a blow cleaving their skulls. The noise seemed to thunder through the island, shaking the iron ladder under their rigid hands, lifting the water at their throats and bursting it against the walls of the cave in a tidal wave of concentrated fury. It seemed that the cave itself must split open to let in the roaring sea. The lighted torch, dislodged from the top rung of the ladder, curved in a shining arc before Cordelia's horrified eyes, gleamed for a second under the swirling water, then died. The darkness was absolute. And then, even before the echo of that crash had rumbled into silence, Cordelia's ears caught a different sound, the hideous rasp of metal against metal, once and then repeated, a noise so dreadful in its implication that she threw back her sea-drenched head and almost howled her protest into the blackness.