'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:
'Part of the horror of murder is that it does the dead out of their rights. I don't suppose anyone in this room is personally desolated by Clarissa's death. But if she'd died a natural death, at least we'd be mourning her in the sense that we'd be thinking of her with that confused mixture of regret, sentimentality and sympathetic interest which is the normal tribute to the recently dead. As it is, all we're thinking of is ourselves. Well, aren't we? Aren't we?'
Ivo said:
'I don't think Cordelia is.'
The library enclosed them again in its silence. But their ears were abnormally alert to every creak and three heads jerked upwards simultaneously at the sound of muffled footfalls across the hall and the distant thud, faint but unmistakable, of a closing door. Ivo said quietly:
'I think they're taking her away.'
He moved silently behind one of the curtains and Cordelia followed. Between the wide lawns, frosted by moonlight, four dark and enlongated figures, shadowless as phantoms, bent to their task. Behind them paced Sir George, stiff-legged and erect, as if his sword clanked at his side. The small procession looked like a group of mourners surreptitiously burying their dead according to some esoteric and prohibited rite. Cordelia, drained by shock and tiredness, wished she could feel some personal and appropriate response of pity. But there came into her mind instead a whisper of atavistic horror, images of plague and secret murder, de Courcy's men disposing of his victims under the cloak of night. It seemed to her that Ivo had stopped breathing. He didn't speak but she sensed through the contact of his rigid shoulder the intensity of his gaze. Then the curtains parted and Ambrose stood behind them. He said:
'She arrived in the morning sun and leaves by moonlight. But I should be out there. Grogan should have told me they were ready to take her away. Really, that man's behaviour is becoming intolerable!'
And so it was, thought Cordelia, that Clarissa left on her final journey from Courcy Island, on that note of slightly peevish complaint.
An hour later the door opened and Sir George came in. He must have been aware of their inquiring looks, of the question which no one cared to ask. He said:
'Grogan was perfectly civil, but I don't think he's formed any theories. I suppose he knows his business. That red hair must be a disadvantage – disguise you know.'
Ambrose said gravely, controlling the twitching of his mouth:
'I think detection at this level is chiefly desk-work. I don't suppose he does much lurking in the undergrowth.'
'Must do some field work, keep his hand in. He could dye it I suppose.'
He picked up the Spectator and settled himself at the chart table as much at ease as if he were in his London club. The others stood and regarded him in baffled silence. Cordelia thought: We're behaving like candidates at an oral examination who'd rather like to know what questions to expect but feel that it would be taking an unfair advantage actually to ask. The same thought must have struck Ivo. He said:
'The police aren't running a competition for their favourite suspect of the year. I confess to some curiosity about their strategy and technique. Reviewing Agatha Christie at the Vaudeville is a poor preparation for the real thing. So how did it go, Ralston?'
Sir George looked up from his journal and appeared to give the question serious thought. 'Much as you'd expect. Where exactly was I and what was I doing this afternoon? I told them I was bird-watching on the west cliffs. Told them, too, that I'd seen Simon coming ashore through my binoculars on the way home. Seemed to think that was important. Asked about Clarissa's money. How much? Who gets it? Grogan wasted twenty minutes asking me about bird-life on Courcy. Trying to put me at my ease, I suppose. A bit odd, I thought.'
Ivo said:
'Trying to catch you out more likely with cunning traps about the nesting habits of non-existent species. What about this morning? Are we expected to detail every waking moment of the day?'
His voice was carefully casual, but all four of them knew what it was he was asking and the importance of the reply. Sir George took up his journal again. Without looking up he said:
'Didn't say more than I needed. Told them about the visit to the Church and the Devil's Kettle. Mentioned the drowning but didn't give names. No point in confusing the investigation with old history. Not their concern.'
Ivo said:
'You reassure me. That's rather the line I propose to take. I'll have a word with Roma when the opportunity arises and you, Ambrose, might speak to the boy. As Ralston says, there's no point in confusing them with old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago.'
No one replied, but Sir George suddenly looked up over his journaclass="underline"
'Sorry, I forgot. They want to see you now, Cordelia.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Cordelia could understand why Ambrose had offered the business room for the use of the police. It was appropriately furnished as an office, it wasn't too large and it kept them well out of his way. But as she seated herself in the mahogany and cane chair and faced Chief Inspector Grogan across the desk, she wished that Ambrose had chosen any room other than this private museum of murder. The Staffordshire figures on the wall shelf behind Grogan's head seemed to have grown, no longer quaintly fashioned antiques but real people, their bland, painted faces glowing and twisting into life. And the framed Victorian broadsheets with their crudely drawn scaffolds and death cells were intrusive in their horror, stark celebrations of the cruelty of man to man. The room itself was smaller than she remembered and she felt herself closeted with her interrogators in frightening and claustrophobic proximity. She was only half aware that there was a uniformed woman police officer sitting almost motionless in the corner by the window, watchful as a chaperone. Did they think that she would faint or accuse Grogan of assaulting her? She wondered briefly whether it was the same anonymous officer who had helped move her clothes and belongings from the De Morgan room to her new bedroom. She had no doubt that they had been thoroughly examined before being neatly arranged on the bed.