Cordelia said soothingly:
'I just want to ensure that it stays that way. If whoever is responsible should land on Courcy Island, he might make one last attempt to get a message to you. I don't in the least think that it will happen. I'm sure it won't. The notes have probably stopped for good. But I don't want to take any risks.'
Clarissa said ungraciously:
'All right. It's not a bad idea. I'll block the bottom of the door.'
There seemed nothing else to say. As Cordelia went out, Clarissa followed her, firmly closed the door on her and turned the key. The scrape of metal, the small click were faint but Cordelia's keen ears heard them distinctly. Clarissa was locked in. There was nothing more that she could do until two forty-five. She looked at her watch. It was just one twenty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was only an hour and a half to be got through, but Cordelia found herself possessed of an irritable restlessness which made the slow minutes stretch interminably. It was a nuisance that her room was barred to her and that, before locking it, she had forgotten to pick up her book. She went to the library hoping to pass an hour with old bound copies of the Strand Magazine. But Roma was there, not reading but sitting upright close to the telephone, and the look she gave Cordelia was so unwelcoming that it was obvious she was expecting or hoping for a call and wanted to take it in private. Closing the door, Cordelia thought with envy of Simon, probably even now enjoying his solitary swim and of Sir George, striding out with his binoculars at the ready. She wished that she could be with him, but her long skirt was unsuitable for walking and, in any case, she felt that she shouldn't leave the castle.
She made her way to the theatre. The house lights were already on and the crimson and gold auditorium with its rows of empty seats seemed to be waiting in a hushed, portentous, nostalgic calm. Backstage, Tolly was checking the main women's dressing-room, setting out boxes of tissues and a supply of hand towels. Cordelia asked if she needed any help and received a polite but definite refusal. But she remembered that there was something she could do. Sir George, when he was at Kingly Street, had mentioned checking the set. She wasn't sure what he had had in mind. Even if the poison pen managed to secrete a missive on the set or among the props, Clarissa would hardly open and read it in the middle of a performance. But Sir George had been right. It was a sensible precaution to check the set and the props and she was glad to have something definite to do.
But all was well. The set for the first scene, a Victorian garden outside the palace, was simple: a blue backcloth, bay trees and geraniums in stone urns, a highly sentimental statue of a woman with a lute, and two ornate cane armchairs with cushions and footrests. At the side of the stage stood the props table. She checked over the assortment of Ambrose's Victoriana assembled for the indoor scenes; vases, pictures, fans, glasses, even a child's rocking-horse. A suede glove stuffed with cotton wool was placed ready for the prison scene and did, indeed, look unpleasantly like a severed hand. The musical-box was here, as was the silver-bound jewel chest for the Second Act. Cordelia opened it, but no missive lurked in its rosewood depths.
There was nothing else she could usefully do. There was still an hour before she was due to wake Clarissa. She walked for a time in the rose garden, but the sun was less warm here on the westerly side of the castle and, in the end, she returned to the terrace and sat in the corner of the bottom step leading to the beach. It was a small sun trap; even the stones struck warm to her thighs. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun, relishing the soft air on her eyelids, the smell of pines and seaweed, and soothed by the gentle hiss of the waves on the shingle.
She must have dozed briefly, but was roused by the arrival of the launch. Ambrose and both the Munters were there to receive the cast, Ambrose already changed and wearing a voluminous silk cloak over his dinner-jacket, which gave him the appearance of a Victorian music-hall conjurer. There was a great deal of excited chatter as the cast, some of the men already in Victorian costume, jumped ashore and disappeared through the archway which led to the eastern lawn and the main entrance to the castle. Cordelia looked at her watch. It was two twenty; the launch was early. She settled down again but didn't dare risk closing her eyes. And twenty minutes later, she set off through the french windows to call Clarissa.
She paused outside the bedroom door and glanced at her watch. It was two forty-two. Clarissa had asked to be called at two forty-five but a few minutes could hardly matter. She knocked, quietly at first, and then more loudly. There was no reply. Perhaps Clarissa was already up and in the bathroom. She tried the door and to her surprise it opened and, looking down, she saw that the key was in the lock. The door opened easily with no obstructing wedge of towel. So Clarissa must have already got up.
For some reason which she was never able afterwards to understand, she felt no premonition, no unease. She moved into the dimness of the room calling gently:
'Miss Lisle, Miss Lisle. It's nearly two forty-five.'
The lined and heavy brocade curtains were drawn across the windows, but brightness pierced the paper-thin slit between them, and even their heavy folds couldn't entirely exclude the afternoon sun which seeped through as a gentle diffusion of pinkish light. Clarissa lay, ghost-like, on her crimson bed, both arms gently curved at her sides, the palms upwards, her hair a bright stream over the pillow. The bedclothes had been folded down and she was lying on her back, uncovered, the pale satin dressing-gown drawn up almost to her knees. Lifting her arms to draw back the curtains, Cordelia thought that the subdued light in the room played odd tricks; Clarissa's shadowed face looked almost as dark as the canopy of the bed, as if her skin had absorbed the rich crimson.
As the folds of the second curtain swung back and the room sprang into light she turned and saw clearly for the first time what it was on the bed. For a second of incredulous time her imagination whirled crazily out of control, spinning its fantastic images; Clarissa had applied a face mask, a darkening, sticky mess which had even seeped into the two eye-pads; the canopy was disintegrating, dripping its crimson fibres, obliterating her face with its richness. And then the ridiculous fancies faded and her mind accepted the stark reality of what her eyes had seen. Clarissa no longer had a face. This was no beauty mask. This pulp was Clarissa's flesh, Clarissa's blood, darkening and clotting and oozing serum, spiked with the brittle fragments of smashed bones.
She stood at the side of the bed, shaking. The room was full of noise, a regular drumming which filled her ears and pounded against her ribs. She thought: I must get someone, I must get help. But there was no help. Clarissa was dead. And she found that her limbs were rooted, only her eyes could move. But they saw things clearly, too clearly. Slowly she turned them from the horror on the bed and fixed them on the bedside chest. Something was missing, the silver jewel casket. But the small round tray of tea was still there. She saw the shallow cup, delicately painted with roses, the pale dregs of tea with two floating leaves, the smear of lipstick on the rim. And beside the tray there was something new: the marble limb, thick with blood, resting on top of a sheet of white paper, the chubby blood-stained fingers seeming to pin it to the polished wood. The blood had seeped over the paper, almost obliterating the familiar skull and crossbones, but the typed message had escaped that insidious stream and she could read it clearly:
Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out:
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.
And then it happened. The alarm clock on the other bedside cabinet rang making her leap with terror. Her limbs were galvanized into life. She dashed round the bed and tried to silence it, grabbing it with hands so shaking that the clock clattered on the polished wood. Oh God! Oh God! Would nothing stop it? Then her fingers found the button. The room was silent again, and in the echo of that dreadful ringing she could hear once again the thudding of her heart. She found herself looking at the thing on the bed as if terrified that the din had woken it, that Clarissa would suddenly jerk up stiff as a marionette and confront her with that faceless horror.