Cordelia said:

'And this morning? What is planned for the three hours between breakfast and luncheon? I think we should try to stay together.'

'We shall all stay together. Ambrose has suggested that we might like a trip round the island in Shearwater but I've told him that we're not a party of his five-pounds-a-day summer trippers. I've thought of a better plan. There are sights on Courcy that he hasn't shown us yet. I don't think you need worry about being bored. We'll start with a visit to the skulls of Courcy.'

Cordelia said:

'The skulls of Courcy? Do you mean real skulls, here in the castle?'

Clarissa laughed.

'Oh, they're real enough. In the crypt of the Church. Ambrose will recite the famous legend. They should put us all nicely in the mood for the horrors of Amalfi.'

Tolly with the tea-tray and Sir George arrived simultaneously. He was received very prettily. Clarissa held out a languid arm.

He raised her hand to his lips then bent with a stiff,, graceless movement and briefly laid his face against hers. She cried, her voice high and brittle:

'Darling, how lovely! And how clever of you to find someone to bring you across.'

He didn't look at Cordelia. He said gruffly:

'You're all right?'

'Darling, of course. Did you think I wasn't? How touching! But, as you see, here I am, Duchess of Malfi still.'

Cordelia left them. She wondered whether Sir George would find an opportunity of speaking to her privately and, if so, whether she should tell him about the woodcut pushed under the door. It was, after all, he who had employed her. But it was Clarissa who had sent for her, Clarissa who was her client, Clarissa she was paid to protect. Some instinct urged her to keep her counsel, at least until after the play. And then she remembered the missing marble. In the surprise of Sir George's arrival it had slipped from the front of her mind. But now its pale image gleamed in her imagination with all the sinister force of an omen. Ought she at least to warn Sir George that it was missing? But warn him against what? It was only the carved replica of a baby's limb, the limb of a long-dead princess. How could it harm anyone? Why should it hold in its chubby fingers such a weight of portentous power? She couldn't even explain to herself why she thought it so important that Clarissa wasn't told about the loss, except that the marble had repelled her and that any mention of it would be upsetting. Surely she had been right in asking Ambrose to say nothing, at least until after the play? So why tell Sir George? He hadn't even seen the limb. It would be time enough for them all to be told when Ambrose started inquiring and looking for it after the play. And that would be this evening. There was only today to be got through. She was aware that she wasn't thinking very clearly. And one thought in particular surprised and fretted her. Surely the presence of Clarissa's husband on Courcy Island ought to make her job easier? She should be feeling relieved at a sharing of responsibility. Why then should she see this unexpected arrival as a new and unwelcome complication? Why should she feel for the first time that she was caught in a charade in which she stumbled blindfold, while unseen hands spun her round, pushed and pulled at her, in which an unknown intelligence watched, waited and directed the play?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Breakfast was a long-drawn-out meal to which the members of the house party came singly, ate at leisure and seemed reluctant to finish. The food would have done justice to Herbert Gorringe's Victorian notions of a proper start to the day. As the lids of the silver dishes were raised, the discordant smells of eggs and bacon, sausages, kidneys and haddock filled the breakfast room, stifling appetite. Despite the early promise of another warm day Cordelia sensed that the party was ill at ease and that she wasn't the only one present who was mentally counting the hours to nightfall. There seemed to be an unspoken conspiracy not to upset Clarissa, and when she announced her plan to visit the Church and the crypt the murmur of agreement was suspiciously unanimous. If anyone would have preferred a trip round the island or a solitary walk no one admitted it. Probably they were well aware how precarious was her control before a performance and no one wanted to risk being held responsible if that control broke. As they walked in a group along the arcade, past the theatre and under the shadow of the trees which led to the Church, it seemed to Cordelia that Clarissa was surrounded by the solicitous care afforded to an invalid or – and the thought was disagreeable – to a predestined victim.

Sir George was the one most at ease. When they entered the Church and the rest of the party gazed round with the air of people resolved to find something positive to say, his reaction was immediate and uncompromising. He obviously found its nineteenth-century fusion of religious enthusiasm with medieval romanticism unsympathetic and viewed the richly decorated apse with its mosaic of Christ in glory, the coloured tiles and the polychromatic arches with a prejudiced eye.

'It looks more like a Victorian London Club – or a Turkish bath come to that – than a Church. I'm sorry, Gorringe, but I can't admire it. Who d'you say the architect was?'

'George Frederick Bodley. My great-grandfather had quarrelled with Godwin by the time he came to rebuild the Church. His relationships with his architects were always stormy. I'm sorry you don't like it. The paintings on the reredos are by Lord Leighton, by the way, and the glass is by William Morris's firm who specialized in these lighter hues. Bodley was one of the first architects to use the firm. The east window is considered rather fine.'

'I don't see how anyone could actually pray in the place. Is that the War Memorial?'

'Yes. Put up by my uncle from whom I inherited. It's the only architectural addition he ever made to the island.'

The memorial was a plain stone slab set in the wall to the south of the altar which read:

In memory of the men of Courcy Island who fell on the battlefields of two world wars and whose bones lie in foreign soil.

1914-1918

1939-1945

This at least met with Sir George's approval.

'I like that. Plain and dignified. Wonder who put the wreath there. Been there some time by the look of it.' Ambrose had come up behind them. He said:

'There'll be a fresh one on nth November. Munter makes them from our own laurels and hangs one up each year. His father was killed in the war, in the Navy I think. Anyway, he was drowned. He told me that much.'

Roma asked:

'And do you assist at this charade?'

'No, he hasn't asked me. It's a purely private ceremony. I'm not sure I'm even supposed to know that it happens.' Roma turned away.

'It throws a new light on Munter though. Who would suspect him of that streak of romanticism? But I wouldn't have thought that the memorial was particularly appropriate. His father didn't live or work on the island, did he?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'And if he drowned, his bones won't be buried in any soil, foreign or otherwise. It all seems rather pointless. But then, Remembrance Day is pointless. No one seems to know any longer what it's supposed to be for.'

Sir George said:

'It's for remembering the good chaps who've gone. Once a year. For two minutes. You wouldn't think that was too much to ask. And why degrade it into a sentimental mass love-in? At our last Parade the padre preached a sermon about the Third World and the World Council of Churches. I could see that some of the older chaps in the Legion were getting restless.'

Roma said:

'I suppose he thought his sermon had something to do with world peace.'