This book doesn’t have Dalgliesh in it but Cordelia Gray instead, a private detective. This is the first book about her that I read, but I see from James bibliography that she wrote one before; anyway, we’re told that she was once in a relationship with Dalgliesh but it ended. This little thing has the nice purpose of putting you in the same world as the other novels. This is not his case, he’s not involved in any way, but he exists, and you hear that he could vouch for her integrity as a non-murderess, so we’re spared the annoying ‘she’s a suspect too’ part of the investigation.
Cordelia once had a partner who eventually killed himself, so she now owns and runs her own agency. She deals mostly in lost pets :-p until Sir George Ralston comes to hire her. His wife, actress Clarissa Lisle, is scared for her life after receiving strange notes with death-related quotes from plays.
Cordelia is to accompany her to Courcy Island as a secretary-companion. Nobody really thinks that she’s in any danger, but in Clarissa’s words: “Death. That’s what I’m afraid of. Just death. I always have been. There never was a time when I didn’t see the skull beneath the skin”.
Clarissa is going there to star in an amateur production of the play “the duchess of Malfi”. She’s spoiled and vain (she’s an actress after all), has had various husbands and various lovers, always thinks about herself, considers her plays the most important thing in the world, and deep down doesn’t really care for anyone, or love anyone, other than herself. She’s charming though, and also profoundly sure that she can have anyone she wants and that she’s entitled to anything she wants.
Nobody really likes her of course, only Sir George will say “I loved her”.
The other relevant characters are: Ambrose Gorringe, the owner of the Island and the castle on it, with a restored theatre. He is a fascinating character, described by those who know him like someone incapable of strong passions, “even his horror is second hand” because among the many things he collects there are things related to past murders. He doesn’t know what love is, for his own admission, his only passion is his island and his house. He doesn’t even care for sex or company.
He has known Clarissa for years and is now putting his castle at her service.
His three servants are: Munter the butler, a bitter sarcastic man who seems to share Ambrose’s annoyance at everyone who comes to disrupt the natural order of things at the castle. His wife is the cook, and her presence is so much in the background that people there don’t even know her name. Oldfield is the boatman and general factotum, who only does what he’s told.
The other guests are: Tolly, Miss Tolgarth, is Clarissa’s dresser. She’s been at her service all her life.
She never married, but had once an affair that gave her a daughter. She loved Viccy very much, but the little girl had an accident. The hospital called her mother when she got worse, but Clarissa answered the phone. Her play was about to start, and she felt like she couldn’t do without Tolly, so she didn’t tell her and the child died without her mother. Tolly never spoke about this to anyone, and kept working for Clarissa as if ignoring what she did.
Ivo Whittingham, a drama critic whose health is so bad anyone can see at first sight that he’s dying. He once had an affair with Clarissa, a sex affair that lasted a long time, as long as he felt her charm and she found him useful with his reviews. He’s rather sarcastic now, what with his failing health, and seems to take a liking at Cordelia. He’s the one that told her about Tolly’s child and what happened. Cordelia figured out right away that he had to be the father, how else could he know that she refused any help from the child’s father, and why else would he bother to inquire at the hospital about the phone call.. he tells this story to Cordelia to warn her not to fall victim of her charm, to let her know how she really is: charming when she wants to be, but basically only thinking about herself.
Simon Lessing, her stepson, a seventeen-year-old student that Clarissa took under her care when both his parents died. She had broken his family when she married his father, and he didn’t like to live with his uncle and aunt, who only saw in him something expensive, and couldn’t afford to let him continue his piano lessons. He feels like he failed her, like her interest in him cooled down as soon as she realized that he wasn’t the great talent that she hoped to be able to show off. He lives in fear that she might send him away and that he’d have to leave his current school. He’d very much like for Clarissa to like him.
Roma Lisle is Clarissa’s cousin. Ex school teacher, now owning a failing bookshop. She’s 45 and wanted the shop to work to run it with her lover, a married man who writes to her to leave her while she’s away at the island. Had he waited for her return, she would have had her part of Clarissa’s inheritance. She had tried to ask her for money but Clarissa had turned her down badly.
Cordelia, like Sir George, doesn’t really believe that whoever sent those messages really meant to threaten her life, but the notes keep coming, so she knows that whoever is responsible is there at the island. When Cordelia is found dead, Inspector Groban (or was it Grogan?) comes to investigate. She holds back information, not wanting to disclose the story about Tolly’s child. Sir George had come to the island too after all, so he’s among the suspects too. Cordelia is sure that Simon can’t have sent the notes. Clarissa was found in her room, on her bed, with her face battered in with a marble arm purchased by Ambrose. He had told Cordelia that the arm was missing early in the morning.
Sir George has a secret too. When he was stationed there as a young soldier, he sort of let others kill a man who turns out to be Munter’s father. One night a drunk Munter enters their dining-room shouting the word “murderer” at him, and in the night he’ll die, drowned.
Of course everyone seems to have a motive, be it money or revenge, and yet nobody seems the type to kill for those reasons. Of course James play with the idea that whoever sent those messages eventually took action and actually killed her, but it’s not like that. There was the clue at the beginning of the investigation: why destroy her face? There was no doubt that Clarissa is the victim, they’re on a small island and it’s been throughly searched, and the idea of extreme rage is not convincing here, with this people, but there’s another reason, and it’s among those listed for us: to hide the real cause of death, to complicate the investigation.
As soon as she can leave the island, Cordelia goes into town to look for an old newspaper article; Clarissa had a clipping hidden in a jewel box that was found missing after her death. When Cordelia finally finds it, she realizes its importance. It shows Ambrose, physically present in town in 1977, when he was supposed to be abroad. He had written a book called Autopsia that had been very successful, and he decided to spend a year abroad to avoid paying taxes on it. Had it been known that he stepped foot in England he should have paid like 80% of his earnings (seems a bit too much, doesn’t it?) and the fact that he hid his visit might even be prosecuted, and Clarissa had known that he was in town. Just for a brief visit to his dying uncle, but that was enough. Clarissa had known how to subtly use that information to get whatever he wanted out of him, like a play in his theatre, the use of all his props, and basically whatever she fancied. Cordelia confronts Ambrose with the new clipping that she took with her, and he calmly tells her everything: yes, Clarissa was blackmailing him, but he didn’t kill her. He was responsible for the messages. Tolly had started it with a quote from the bible, the first messages that Clarissa had thrown away, not really bothered, but when those stopped Ambrose who knew about them had taken over, with quotes about death. He meant to distress her so much that she would fail, and once her career was ruined she’d have had no more use of his theatre or him. He had pretended that the arm had gone missing because he wanted to make it magically appear in front of her during her play, along with a new note. When he accidentally discovered that Simon had killed her, hitting her on the head with the jewel box, he had battered her face with the arm to disguise it as the murder weapon, retrieved the clipping and instructed the boy on how to fool the police. The boy had not planned it, it had been a sudden burst of rage upon discovering how little the real Clarissa cared about him, how she wanted to use him for sex and how she mocked him for it.
Lying had been simple, he had not seen her face afterwards, and had never seen either the arm or the messages. Munter had seen him escape through the window throwing away the jewel box, but Ambrose was confident that he’d never tell, that he could trust him. Simon had not been so sure, so when he had seen Munter fall in the water completely drunk, he did nothing and let him die. He felt guilty for that too, and was planning to kill himself while Ambrose detained Cordelia with his talking.
She finally realizes that and starts running in search of Simon, leaving her bag behind, and thus allowing Ambrose to take her clipping too. She finds Simon planning to drown himself, and as soon as she frees him of the handcuffs he had used to prevent himself from fleeing at the last moment , she heard a trapdoor locking her down. She manages to swim away to freedom, but apparently the boy didn’t, nobody sees him again. Cordelia goes to tell everything to the police, but the murderer is now dead, and there are no proof against Ambrose, no proof that he locked the trapdoor, it’s only her word against his. He sincerely tells her how sorry he is that his visit to Courcy Island was not a pleasant one, and we know that he’ll never suffer any consequence because nothing will ever be proved.
Mrs Munter who was never actually married so nobody really knows her name, leaves the place and goes living with Tolly for the time being, but I suppose that Ambrose will find other servants and will keep living on the island, the only thing he really wants.
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