The Skull Beneath the Skin Read Online Free

and take leave of her at the launch. But she needs someone with her. This performance is important to her. There’s to be a revival of the play at Chichester in the spring and if she can regain her confidence she might feel that she can do it. But there’s more to it than that. She thinks that the threats may come to a head this weekend, that someone will try to kill her on Courcy Island.”
    “She must have some reason for thinking that.”
    “Nothing that she can explain. Nothing that would impress the police. Not rational, perhaps. But that’s what she feels. She asked me to get you.”
    And he had come to get her. Did he always procure for his wife whatever she wanted? She asked again: “What precisely am I being employed to do, Sir George?”
    “Protect her from nuisance. Take any telephone calls which come for her. Open any letters. Check the set before the performance if you get the chance. Be on call at night; that’s when she’s most nervous. And bring a fresh mind to the question of the messages. Find out, if you can in just three days, who is responsible.”
    Before Cordelia could respond to these concise instructions there came again that disconcerting pierce of gray from under the discordant brows.
    “D’you like birds?”
    Cordelia was temporarily nonplussed. She supposed that few people, except those afflicted with a phobia, would admit to not liking birds. They are, after all, one of the most graceful of life’s fragile diversions. But she supposed that Sir George was covertly inquiring whether she could recognize a marshharrier at fifty yards. She said cautiously: “I’m not very good at identifying the less common species.”
    “Pity. The island’s one of the most interesting natural bird sanctuaries in Great Britain, probably the most remarkable of those in private hands, almost as interesting as Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. Very similar, come to think of it. Courcy has as many rare birds; the blue-eared and Swinhold pheasants as well as Canada geese, black godwits and oyster catchers. Pity you’re not interested. Any questions—about the case I mean?”
    Cordelia said tentatively: “If I’m to spend three days with your wife, ought she not to interview me before any decision is made? It’s important that she feels she can trust me. She doesn’t know me. We haven’t even met.”
    “Yes you have. That’s how she knows she can trust you. She was having tea with a Mrs. Fortescue last week when you returned the Fortescue cat—Solomon, I think the brute’s called. Apparently you found him within thirty minutes of beginning the search so your bill was correspondingly small. Mrs. Fortescue is devoted to the animal. You could have charged treble. She wouldn’t have queried it. That impressed my wife.”
    Cordelia said: “We’re rather expensive. We have to be. But we are honest.”
    She remembered the drawing room in Eaton Square, a feminine room if femininity implies softness and luxury; a cluttered, cosy repository of silver-framed photographs, an overlavish tea on a low table in front of the Adam fireplace, too many flowers conventionally arranged. Mrs. Fortescue, incoherent with relief and joy, had introduced her guest to Cordelia as a matter of form but her voice, muffled in Solomon’s fur, had been indistinct and Cordelia hadn’t caught the name. But the impression had been definite. The visitor had sat very stillin her armchair beside the fireplace, one thin leg thrown over the other, heavily ringed hands resting on the arms. Cordelia recalled yellow hair intricately piled and wound above a tall forehead, a small, bee-stung mouth and immense eyes, deep-set but with heavy, almost swollen, lids. She had seemed to impose on the lush conformity of the room a hieratic and angular grace, a distinction which, despite the plainness of the formal suede suit, hinted at some histrionic or eccentric individuality. She had gravely bent her head and watched her friend’s effusions with