She shivered. The warmth of the day was already dissipating, the night air, drifting through the open window, even in this city eyrie held die 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.

PART TWO. Dress Rehearsal

CHAPTER EIGHT

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 stadon 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 only one 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 facades 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 cut-out 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 the 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 arms, recently covered against September's chills, revealing again the unlovely evidence of harsher suns? The day itself smelt of high summer, of seaweed, hot bodies and blistering paint.

The busy little harbour was a confusion of rocking dinghies and furled sails but the launch with Shearwater painted on its bow was soon identified. It was about thirty feet long with a central, low-roofed cabin and a slatted seat in the stern. One wizened seaman seemed to be in charge. He was squatting on a bollard, his thin legs clamped, wearing seaboots and a blue jumper with Courcy Island emblazoned across the chest. He looked so like Popeye that Cordelia suspected that the pipe, which he slowly took from his apparently toothless gums on seeing her approach, was sucked for effect rather than solace. He touched his hat and grinned when she gave her name but didn't speak. Taking the typewriter and her bag he stowed them in the cabin, then turned to offer her his hand. But Cordelia had already jumped on board and had seated herself in the rear. He resumed his seat on the bollard and, together, they waited.

Three minutes later a taxi drew up at the mouth of the quay and a boy and a woman got out. The woman paid the fare – not, it seemed, without some argument – while the boy stood uneasily to one side, then loitered to the edge of the quay to stare down at the water. She joined him and they moved together to the launch, he a little behind her like a reluctant child. This, thought Cordelia, must be Roma Lisle with Simon Lessing in tow, neither apparently pleased with the chance that had forced them into sharing a taxi. Cordelia observed her as she allowed herself to be handed aboard. Superficially, she had nothing in common with her cousin except the shape of the lower lip. She too was fair, but it was an ordinary Anglo-Saxon blondness in which the strong sun already revealed the glint of grey. Her hair was short and expensively shaped to her head. She was taller than her cousin and moved with a certain assurance. But her face, with its lines scored across the forehead and from nose to mouth, had a look of brooding discontent and there was no peace in the eyes. She was dressed in an extremely well-tailored fawn trouser-suit with blue braid facing the collar and a high-necked sweater striped in fawn and pale blue, an outfit which seemed to Cordelia to combine superficial suitability for a holiday weekend with an inappropriate smartness, perhaps because she was wearing it with high-heeled shoes which made the descent into the launch less than graceful. The colour, too, was unflattering to her skin. It was impossible not to recognize that here was a woman who cared about clothes without having any clear idea what suited either her or the occasion. About the young man there was less chance to make a judgement, sartorial or otherwise. He glimpsed Cordelia in the stern, blushed and scuttled into the cabin with an alacrity which suggested that he was unlikely to add to the gaiety of the weekend. Miss Lisle seated herself in the bow while the boatman again took his seat on the bollard. They waited in silence while the launch gently rocked against the fender of old tyres slung against the stones of the quay and small boats gently edged past them on the way to the open sea. After a few minutes Miss Lisle called out:

'Oughtn't we to be moving off? We're expected for lunch.'

'One more acomin'. Mr Whittingham.'

'Well, he couldn't have been on the nine thirty-three. He'd have been here by now. And I didn't recognize him at the station. Perhaps he's driving down and has got delayed.'

'Mr Ambrose said he'd be acomin' by train. Said to wait for him.'

Miss Lisle frowned and gazed fixedly out to sea. Two more minutes passed. Then the boatman called out:

'Here he be. He's acomin' now. That'll be Mr Whittingham.' The triple assurance given he rose, and began making ready to move off. Cordelia looked up and saw through a distorting dazzle of sun what seemed at first like a death's head on stilts jerking across the quay towards her, its skeleton fingers grasping a canvas

holdall. She blinked and the picture composed itself, moved into focus, became human. The skull clothed itself in flesh, stretched and grey over the fineness of the bones, but still human flesh. The sockets moistened into eyes, keen and a little amused. The figure was still the thinnest and most desperately sick man she had ever seen moving on his own feet but the voice was firm, and the words were easy and comfortable.