The Skull Beneath the Skin by P. D. James Page A

which would meet hers over the dining table could be hiding such malignancy. For the first time shewondered whether Clarissa Lisle could be right, whether there really was a threat to her life. Then she put the thought aside, telling herself that the messages were beginning to exercise their malevolence even on her. A murderer did not advertise his intention over a period of months. But was that necessarily true? To a mind consumed with hatred, might not the act of killing be too swift, too momentary in its satisfaction? Could Clarissa Lisle have an enemy so bitter that he needed to watch her suffer, to destroy her slowly with terror and failure before he moved in for the kill?
    She shivered. The warmth of the day was already dissipating, the night air, drifting through the open window, even in this city eyrie held the taste and tang of autumn. She put away the last message and closed the folder. Her own instructions had been clear: to safeguard Clarissa Lisle from any worry or distress before Saturday’s performance of
The Duchess of Malfi
and, if possible, to discover who was sending her the messages. And that, to the best of her ability, she would do.

BOOK TWO
DRESS REHEARSAL

1
    Victorian Speymouth, which to the surprise of its citizens had converted its street lamps to gas without explosion or other disaster, had seen no reason to reject the new railway or, while accepting its inevitability, to banish it as had Cambridge to an inconvenient distance from the town. The charming little station was only a quarter of a mile from the statue of Queen Victoria which marks the centre of the promenade and when Cordelia stepped out into the sunlight, bag in one hand and portable typewriter in the other, she found herself gazing down over a jumble of brightly painted houses to a stone-enclosed harbour, tiny as a pool, and beyond it to the stunted pier and the shimmering sea. She was almost sorry to leave the station. With its gleaming white paint and its curved roof of wrought iron, delicate as lace, it reminded her of the summer issues of her weekly childhood comic where the sea had been always blue, the sand a bright yellow, the sun a golden ball and the railway a highly coloured toy-town welcome to these imagined joys. Mrs. Wilkes, the poorest of all her foster mothers, had been the only one to buy her a comic, the onlyone whom Cordelia remembered with affection. Perhaps it was a happy augury that she should think of her now.
    There was already a small queue waiting for the taxis but she saw no reason to join it. The road was downhill and the quay clearly in sight. She stepped out, almost oblivious of the weight of her luggage in the pleasure of the day. The little town was bathed in sunshine and the rows of Georgian terraced houses, simple, unpretentious and dignified with elegant façades and wrought-iron balconies looked as charmingly artificial and as brightly lit as a stage set. In the bay the grey shape of a small warship rested stiffly immobile as a child’s cutout toy. She could almost imagine putting out her hand and plucking it from the water. As she made her way down a steep, cobbled street, terraces of fawn, pink and blue houses curved upwards towards a glimpse of distant hills, while below the brightly painted statue of Queen Victoria, majestically robed, pointed her sceptre imperiously towards the public lavatories.
    And everywhere there were people, jostling on the pavements, spilling from the Esplanade on to the beach, laid in sunburned rows on the gritty sand, lumped in sagging deck chairs, queuing at the ice-cream kiosk, peering from the windows of cars in search of a parking place. She wondered where they had all come from on this mid-September weekday when the holiday season was surely over, the children back at school. Were they all truants from work or schoolroom, drawn out from autumn’s hibernation by this resurgence of summer, with their mottled red faces above white necks, their glistening chests and