No one spoke. Ambrose got to his feet and moved forward. Munter brushed him aside and shambled up to Sir George until their faces almost touched. Sir George stayed in his seat. Not a muscle moved. Then Munter spoke, throwing back his head and almost howling the words:
'Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!'
Cordelia wondered when Sir George would move, whether he would wait until Munter's fingers were actually at his throat. But Ambrose had moved behind and had seized the shuddering arms. At first the contact seemed to calm Munter. Then he gave a violent wrench. Ambrose said breathlessly:
'Could one of you help?'
Ivo had begun peeling a peach. He seemed totally unconcerned. He said:
'I'd be no use in this particular emergency, I'm afraid.'
Simon got up and grasped the man's other arm. At his touch Munter's belligerency left him. His knees buckled and Ambrose and Simon moved closer, supporting his sagging weight between them. He tried to focus his eyes on the boy, then slurred out a few words, guttural, unintelligible, sounding hardly English. But his final words were clear enough.
'Poor sod. God, but she was a bitch that one.'
No one else spoke. Together Ambrose and Simon urged him to the door. He gave no further trouble but went as obediently as a disciplined child.
After they had left, the two men and Cordelia sat in silence for a minute. Then Sir George got up and closed the french windows. The noise of the sea became muted and the wildly flickering candles steadied and burned with a clear flame. Returning to the table he selected an apple and said:
'Extraordinary fellow! I was at Sandhurst with a chap who drank like that. Sober for months at a time, then paralytic for a week. Torpedoed in the Med in the winter of '42. Foul weather. Picked up from a raft three days later. Only one of the party to survive. He said that it was because he was pickled in whisky. D'you suppose Gorringe lets Munter have the key to his cellar?'
'I shouldn't think so.' Ivo sounded amused.
Sir George said, 'Extraordinary arrangement, a butler who can't be trusted with the keys. Still, I suppose he has other uses. Devoted to Gorringe obviously.'
Ivo asked:
'What happened to him; your friend I mean?'
'Fell in his own swimming pool and drowned. The shallow end. Drunk at the time, of course.'
It seemed a long time before Ambrose and Simon reappeared. Cordelia was struck with the boy's pallor. Surely coping with a drunken man couldn't have been so horrifying an experience. Ambrose said:
'We've put him to bed. Let's hope he stays there. I must apologize for the performance. I've never known Munter to behave before in such a spectacular way. Will someone please pass the fruit bowl?'
After dinner they gathered in the drawing-room. Mrs Munter had not appeared and they poured their own coffee from the glass percolator on the sideboard. Ambrose opened the french windows and one by one, as if drawn by the sea, they walked out on the terrace. The moon was full, silvering a wide swathe to the horizon and a few high stars pin-pricked the blue-black of the night sky. The tide was running strongly. They could hear it slapping against the stones of the quay and the distant whisper of the spent waves hissing on the shingle beach. The only other sound was the muted footfalls of their walking feet. Here in this peace, thought Cordelia, it would be easy to believe that nothing mattered, not death, nor life, nor human violence, nor any pain. The mental picture of that splodge of battered flesh and congealed blood which had been Clarissa's face, scored as she thought forever on her mind, became unreal, something she had imagined in a different dimension of time. The disorientation was so strong that she had to fight against it, to tell herself why she was here and what it was she had to do. She came out of her trance to hear Ambrose's voice.
He was speaking to Simon. 'You may as well play if you want to. I don't suppose a half hour of music would offend anyone's susceptibilities. There must be something appropriate between a music-hall medley and the "Dead March" from Saul'
Without replying, Simon went over to the piano. Cordelia followed him into the drawing-room and watched while he sat, head bowed, silently contemplating the keys. Then, suddenly hunching his shoulders, he brought down his hands and began playing with quiet intensity and she recognized the slow movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. Ambrose called from the terrace:
'Trite but appropriate.'
He played well. The notes sang into the silent air. Cordelia thought it interesting that he should play so much better with Clarissa dead than he had when she was alive. When he had finished the movement she asked: 'What's going to happen, about your music I mean?'
'Sir George has told me not to worry, that I can stay on at Melhurst for a final year and then go to the Royal College or the Academy if I can get in.'
'When did he tell you this?'
'When he came to my room after Clarissa was found.'
That was a remarkably quick decision, thought Cordelia, given the circumstances. She would have expected Sir George to have had other things on his mind just then than Simon's career. The boy must have guessed her thoughts.
He looked up and said quickly:
'I asked him what would happen to me now and he said that I wasn't to worry, that nothing would change, that I could go back to school and then on to the Royal College. I was frightened and shocked and I think he was trying to reassure me.'
But not so shocked that he hadn't thought first of himself. She told herself that the criticism was unworthy and tried to put it out of her mind. It had, after all, been a natural childish reaction to tragedy. What will happen to me? How will this affect my life? Wasn't that what everyone wanted to know? He had at least been honest in asking it aloud. She said:
'I'm glad, if that's what you want.'
'I want it. I don't think she did. I'm not sure I ought to do something she wouldn't have approved of.'
'You can't live your life on that basis. You have to make your own decisions. She couldn't make them for you even when she was alive. It's silly to expect her to make them now that she's dead.'
'But it's her money.'.
'I suppose it will be Sir George's money now. If it doesn't worry him I don't see why it need worry you.'
Watching the avid eyes desperately gazing into hers Cordelia felt that she was failing him, that he was looking to her for sympathy, for some reassurance that he could take what he wanted from life and take it without guilt. But wasn't that what everyone craved? Part of her wanted to respond to his need; but part of her was tempted to say: You've taken so much. Why jib at taking this? She said:
'I suppose if you want to salve your conscience about the money more than you want to be a professional pianist, then you'd better give up now.'
His voice was suddenly humble.
'I'm not all that good, you know. She knew that. She wasn't a musician, but she knew. Clarissa could smell failure.'
'Oh well, that's a different issue, whether you're good enough or not. I think you play very well, but I can't really judge. I don't suppose that Clarissa could either. But the people at the colleges of music can. If they think you're worth accepting, then they must think you have at least a chance of making a career in music. After all, they know what the competition's like.'
He looked quickly round the room and then said, his voice low:
'Do you mind if I talk to you? There are three things I must ask you.'
'We are talking.'
'But not here. Somewhere private.'
'This is private. The others don't seem likely to come in. Is it going to take long?'
'I want you to tell me what happened to her, how she looked when you found her. I didn't see her, and I keep lying awake and imagining. If I knew it wouldn't be so awful. Nothing is as awful as the things I imagine.'