Read Shadow of the Serpent Online
Authors: David Ashton
Shadow of the Serpent (9 page)
‘Oh, I entered into the Catholic church right enough, Sergeant Cameron wouldnae go near the place. Just built. New. Ye could smell the Pope everywhere. There was a young priest, Father Callan. I made enquiries of him but he could not help me. Ye know these Romans, the confession box or bugger all else. And the place was white as snow, the only red was the altar wine.’
He laughed but he had a memory of Father Callan’s face, a soft moonlike priestly visage though the eyes were honest enough. And there might have been something hidden in them. Obscured by the calling. A shadow on the wall. He’d pressed the priest as hard as he could but came up against a profound, sanctified silence.
Of course he was only a constable then, but even now, at the height of his considerable powers, he doubted if the little priest would have told him more. A Catholic silence is like no other.
‘So you ended up with bugger all?’
‘Precisely.’
If she had hoped to knock him back by repeating the
swearword
, it had no discernible effect.
‘It wasnae much to begin with, but the trail died that night. The man had vanished.’
She thought that he would say more, but nothing came. The room was utterly still. Rooted to the spot.
Sadie Gorman’s body on the slab. McLevy wondered then, had the past come back to haunt him. Time would tell.
‘The location of this … dreadful murder. Mae Donnachie. Was it … nearhand to the … recent event?’
‘Oh, aye. Back of the Markets. A few streets between them. Thirty years and a stone’s throw.’
‘And the present … victim. Was she also young?’
‘Sadie Gorman?’ he laughed suddenly. ‘I don’t think she would describe herself as such. She was at the other end o’ the sliding scale.’
He laid his hand on the mother-of-pearl box, and ran his fingers gently over the surface. ‘That would appear to be me, Miss Lightfoot. Now how about yourself?’
‘What lies in the box?’ she asked.
Make him wait. Make him wait.
‘Relics.’
He opened it and brought forth a broken white feather that he held carefully between thumb and forefinger.
‘This came from Sadie Gorman. She wore it in her hair. A silent witness.’
He held it up.
‘As you can see, it has also suffered injury. The proud head chopped off.’
Joanna showed little interest. He returned the feather to the box.
‘And this?’ He produced the fragment of black material. ‘This was clutched in Mae Donnachie’s hand. A remnant. A killer’s legacy.’
Her face went white at the sight of the scrap of fabric. She jerked forward convulsively and almost snatched it out of his hand, fingers trembling, holding it up to her eyes by the light of the fire.
For a moment he feared that she would throw it into the flames and tensed to hit her arm a blow which would divert any such intention, but after a moment she seemed to come to a decision. She handed the scrap back and spoke quietly.
‘Could that have … come from a stock? Such as would cover a finger, or part of a hand?’
‘I had thought about that. Not a glove; the material is too fine for that. Perhaps a stocking, or a cravat, a scarf of sorts even, but … it might be part of such a covering.’
He scrupulously replaced both relics inside the box and closed the lid.
‘Why do you ask, Miss Lightfoot. What is on your mind?’
‘What if I told you a story, inspector?’
‘I like stories,’ said McLevy. ‘But I don’t always believe them.’
‘I don’t ask for belief,’ she replied. ‘All I desire is that you listen and form your own opinion.’
She crossed back to the leather chair in front of the fire and sat herself down. McLevy warily followed suit to ensconce himself in the sister armchair opposite which had, however, a broken spring jabbing into his backside. They faced each other like subjects at a séance.
She thus began. In the manner of a story.
‘This is about a man who sat in a railway compartment with his daughter’s coffin, all the way from Euston to his own father’s house in the northern slopes of the Mearns, between Dundee and Aberdeen. A long, long journey.
‘The girl was five years old. Her name was Jessy. The medical explanation for her death was meningitis. She had lingered most cruelly for two weeks, until,’ a deep, bitter note entered the voice, ‘she was compassionately taken by her Saviour into the fold of his peace.’
‘That’s nice,’ said McLevy.
‘His own words. Please refrain from interruption.’
He glanced longingly at the empty coffee pot. This could take for ever, he’d never yet known a woman frugal in expression, their details tended to multiply like the Hydra’s teeth.
She continued. ‘He closed the blinds down in the
compartment
, so that he could be alone with her and his thoughts. His Christian thoughts.
‘But suppose his mind shifted and the demons came to feast? What if his sins had caused her death? What if it was God’s punishment for his surrender to temptation? The temptation of the flesh. How could he cleanse that from his soul? Suppose his mind was near deranged, unbalanced, trembling on the edge of the abyss?’
She took a deep breath. ‘And when he reached his father’s house, things went from bad to worse.’
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee.
JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.
Fasque, Mearns, 13 April 1850
The woman squirmed and twitched against the leather straps restraining her on the bed, the dark hair plastered against her brow. Her legs fought against the bonds, aching to spread and let Jesus in, eyes wild, as the addiction bit deep. O sweet opium, bring me your beautiful dreams, let me walk in fields of gold, let me taste the honeycomb, let me kiss the purple hem, let the incense burner trail its perfect smoke around my naked body, let the Holy Wafer melt in my mouth with fine indulgence, let Christ’s blood flow in the firmament, let me bathe in it like Cleopatra in the ass’s milk, let my Faith shine free!
Dr Purdie moved away from the writhing figure towards the man who stood watching, helplessly, as his sister continued the inner dialogue with her present God.
Both manner and dress proclaimed the doctor to be a tightly buttoned Presbyterian, but he was not an unkind man.
‘I’m afraid she took the death of your daughter Jessy very badly, Mr Gladstone,’ he said. ‘She evaded the scrutiny of her nurse and, as far as we are able to ascertain, imbued herself with near to three hundred drops of laudanum. It is a massive dose. We have had to hold her down by force while the leeches were applied and now we can only wait and pray.’
‘How is my father?’
‘Sir John is
…
resting. Upstairs. In his bed. He wishes to conserve his strength. For tomorrow.’
Outside, the rain beat against the windows, adding to the gloomy
spectral air of the room which was shrouded, the dark drapes pulled tight.
A bedside light was the only illumination and it cast their shadows on to the pale violet walls where portraits of family ancestors looked down in no great approval, as the woman jerked convulsively.
The nurse, starched like a nun, and a brawny specimen to boot, laid a cold compress on the brow. It provoked an outcry and a shiver.
Purdie noted a response from the man, hand clenched to a fist, nails dug into palm. The whole family would be on medication soon.
The man’s voice was slow, sonorous, it betrayed little of the dreadful tension within.
‘Tomorrow Jessy will be buried in the family vault. I would not wish my sister Helen to attend.’
‘I do not think her capable, sir.’
‘I would not wish it in any case.’
‘A wise decision,’ murmured Purdie who had a sudden outlandish vision of the patient in her nightgown, leaping on to the coffin and scandalising the granite slabs. This madness was catching.
‘Has she asked for me?’
The doctor coughed.
‘Not immediately. She did, in her … perturbation demand the presence of a priest but I thought it better to wait until yourself or Sir John might advise me on the matter.’
It was as if he’d shoved an iron bar into the rectal region. Purdie knew that Helen Gladstone had converted to Catholicism some eight years ago, and though the family was High Anglican, a priest would be as welcome in this house as a rat with the plague.
‘I would like to be alone with my sister.’
A command Purdie hastened to obey. He would be glad to get out of the place, the very walls seemed to be closing in and there was a feeling of being constantly observed and spied upon, eyes everywhere, the servants of the house more like sentinels. Besides the man oozed a kind of baleful power, and it was said that when he rose to speak in the House of Commons, opponents feared his oratory as they would fear a projectile from the sky.
The good doctor, who had no wish to be projected upon, signalled the nurse to leave also.
Apart from one curious glance as she passed the man by, Eileen Marshall, for that was her name, did as she was bade.
The room was now empty, save for the rigid tense figure of the man and the restless dreamer.
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.
JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.
A frenzied series of barks in the distance downstairs broke the spell. Fergus must have burnt his nose on the hot oven.
Joanna Lightfoot had fallen silent.
McLevy was like a wee boy with his face pressed up against the sweetie-shop window.
‘What followed after?’ he demanded.
‘That is for someone else to say.’
‘Such as who? The sister?’
‘She died not long ago. January past. Events may have once more been set in motion by that particular death.’
Joanna sighed and threw back her head to reveal a white throat, where McLevy could make out the faintest beating of a pulse just above the purple collar.
The fishbone was driving him mad. To hell with it.
While her eyes still glazed up at the mottled ceiling, he dug a thumbnail into his back teeth, hooked out the offending fragment and flipped it surreptitiously into the hearth.
Now, as George Cameron would have put it, let’s get tae the real business.
‘I assume you are referring to William Ewart Gladstone here.’ A sardonic edge cut under the grandiose words. ‘Yon Muckle Great Liberal. About to take Midlothian by storm and carry all before like a speeding train? Are ye talking about him by any chance? The People’s William?’
‘God help me, I am indeed.’ She replied with some feeling.
‘And are you trying to draw some connection between this pillar o’ rectitude and these two murders?’ McLevy abruptly shot out of the armchair and almost danced in agitation around the room as he continued. ‘Because so far nothing you have said would in the smallest part convince me of anything other than the fact that you possess a fearsome imagination, Miss Lightfoot.
‘Dinnae mistake me. I enjoyed the recitation but it amounts to damn all. Not worth a spit in the fire!’
She looked at him levelly, unmoved by his apparent indignation.
‘In 1843,’ she said, ‘William Gladstone shot the forefinger off his left hand in a hunting accident. He has worn a black stock ever since, to cover the loss.’
McLevy thought for a moment. ‘Serves him right for such intent tae slaughter.’
A sudden smile. Those lupine eyes caught colour from the flames and for a moment took on a yellow sheen.
‘But a scrap of cloth proves nothing.’
Joanna Lightfoot spoke in formal tones as if laying out the terms of a will.
‘The night his daughter was buried, the 14th of April, William Gladstone, informing everyone that he had sore need of solitude, went through to Edinburgh New Town to stay at the family winter house in Atholl Crescent.’
‘I know Atholl Crescent,’ cried McLevy suddenly. ‘Not a kick in the arse from Leith!’
‘Not to a man who considers twenty miles on foot to be a mere stroll,’ she replied.
He smiled. She realised her response had been too eager. Damnation.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘It’s your story.’
Nothing for it. No turning back.
‘William Gladstone did not remain at the house. The servants were told that he was too restless, he needed to walk, to clear his head. He left just after supper and returned at two o’clock in the morning. On that night Mae Donnachie was murdered.’
‘Oh there’s no argument about the date,’ said McLevy almost placidly. ‘Just the rest of your insinuations.’
He whistled softly under his breath, despite his better judgement he could feel a wee wriggle in the breadbasket.
‘Accepting for a moment, which I do not, not remotely,
nevertheless
, let us entertain a postulation that some of the events you describe may possibly have occurred, you mention a fragility of mind brought on by the weight of guilt, itself a result of a surrender to temptation.
‘Sin. I believe you may have even used the word … sin. What sort of temptation, Miss Lightfoot? What kind of sin are we talking about here?’
My goodness, he thought, was that a blush on her fair cheeks? Or were maybe her drawers getting too much warm air from the fire?
And why, he further thought, his mind entertaining these mad notions a wee touch further, would the killing of a pavement nymph expiate such sin? Then he remembered his own words to Mulholland,
‘These pillars of genteelity, they need their whores but they despise and hate themselves for it. And some of them hate the whores even worse.’
Was he wiser than even he knew? Was that possible?
He almost laughed aloud. His mind had that effect on him sometimes.
He looked into her blue eyes. There was an anguish of sorts lurking deep within, but whether it had connection to this present moment was impossible to gauge.
‘What kind of sin, Miss Lightfoot?’
She took a breath, a shudder of sorts.
‘I hope to bring you proof of that shortly. One thing I can tell you more. After addressing the crowd at Waverley Market last night, Gladstone retired to the house the Earl of Rosebery has taken for him. In George Street.’
‘That’s in the New Town as well. What a coincidence!’
Joanna ploughed on, in measured tone, regardless.
‘He insisted that he was too enlivened by the adoration of the people to rest indoors. He embarked upon an evening walk. For the good of his health, he said.’
‘When did he return?’ asked McLevy in an idle fashion.
‘After midnight.’
‘How d’ye know all this?’
‘I have a present connection. On hand.’
He waited for more but she bowed her head as if too weary to continue. ‘And what about thirty years ago? Ye certainly
werenae
on hand then. Hardly even in conception!’
A coarse laugh which she dismissed.
‘Please do not act the vulgarian, inspector. You demean both yourself and me by pretending to a brutish quality you do not possess.’
‘Oh, I would not be too sure of that and ye havenae answered the question.’
‘I cannot. Not at this moment.’
Joanna lifted a small lady’s reticule she had laid beside her on the chair, opened it and took out a folded piece of paper.
‘But, I would implore you to visit the person whose name and address are contained therein.’
She held out her hand but he did not respond in kind and she remained rather foolishly with outstretched arm.
‘Therein?’ he said mockingly. ‘What’s therein tae me?’
‘The truth. I must find it out.’
‘Then pursue for yourself.’
‘I am too personally involved.’
‘Are ye now? Do tell.’
Her arm was beginning to ache and her temper rising.
‘It is everything I have in my life. I must know the truth, you are the only person I can trust!’
‘Why me?’
‘I am told you will not be deflected from justice, high or low. And, in this case, a case of murder, you are the investigating officer.’
He pressed further. ‘A cold trail, a warm murder, and Willie Gladstone. What is your interest in all these?’
‘As I have told you. It is personal.’
‘In what way? What secret do you hug tae the bosom, Miss Lightfoot?’
For a moment her eyes glistened and her outstretched fingers trembled.
‘Come along,’ said he. ‘Ye can trust a policeman.’
‘I already have. Please. Do not make me beg.’
He still made no move. Her hand closed convulsively round the paper.
‘Take or leave. Go to hell, inspector.’
She threw the paper towards the flames of the fire, snatched up her belongings and was through the door in a trice while McLevy stood completely flummoxed by the sudden change in events.
He made as if to follow her then realised that the paper was curling up in the heat and hastily fished it out at the cost of a singed index finger. As he blew upon the injured digit, the outside door of the house slammed shut and he went swiftly to the window and threw it open.
Down below in the street he made out the tall figure of Joanna, who banged her hat upon her golden hair and strode purposefully towards the corner then round and out of sight. She had a somewhat mannish gait, strange he hadn’t remarked that fact. He stuck his head out into the night and strained to listen.
Yes. Faintly. Jingle of a carriage. The mysterious Miss
Lightfoot
, like Cinderella, had a coach at her disposal.
Interesting. A hansom cab probably and she’d been with McLevy a fair passage, that would cost, these buggers wait for no one a length of time without their pockets being lined. Money to burn, eh? And her clothes were expensive.
Was she being kept? And, if so, who was keeping her? Who was up to what with whom?
Somewhere in the night, a cat shrieked as if in terrible pain. McLevy hoped it wasn’t Bathsheba. After mating, the male would be withdrawing its member and the barb at the end would be causing sore agony, a dirty trick nature played on the female of the feline species.
He produced the paper slightly blackened round the edges, shuffled it open, and peered at it in the moonlight.
It contained a name and address. At least that much was true. But only that much.