The Serpent and the Scorpion

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

“Of course I’m fascinated with early-twentieth-century women and Ursula Marlow is a shining example of the Oxford-educated woman before WWI. Suffragette and business owner, she becomes a player on the world stage. The book sweeps from the steamy bazaars of Egypt to proper English drawing rooms as Ursula battles international intrigue and her own sensuous nature. Dorothy Sayers would be proud of her Oxford sister.”

—RHYS BOWEN, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE MOLLY MURPHY AND ROYAL SPYNESS MYSTERIES

 
“
The Serpent and the Scorpion
is an evocative, wise, and affecting book, which also just so happens to be a page turner. I can’t wait to see more of Ursula and Lord Wrotham. May this series continue forever!”

—CHARLES FINCH, AUTHOR OF THE CHARLES LENOX MYSTERIES

 
“Ursula Marlow is a true woman of daring; a gorgeous suffragette with the mind of Hercule Poirot and the spunk and daring of Nellie Bly. She’s the perfect match against assassins, Bolsheviks, and spies in this exciting adventure laced with intrigue and romance.”

—SUZANNE ARRUDA, AUTHOR OF THE JADE DEL CAMERON MYSTERY SERIES, INCLUDING
The Serpent’s Daughter
AND
The Leopard’s Prey
(JANUARY 2009)

 
“
The Serpent and the Scorpion
is an absolute delight. Clare Langley-Hawthorne has once again captured Edwardian London in deft strokes. Forward-thinking Ursula Marlow is a character readers will want to meet again and again; her wit, intelligence, and compassion are irresistible.”

—TASHA ALEXANDER, AUTHOR OF
Elizabeth: The Golden Age

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE SERPENT AND THE SCORPION

Clare Langley-Hawthorne was raised in England and Australia. She was an attorney in Melbourne before moving to the United States, where she began her career as a writer. She lives in Oakland, California, with her family.
The Serpent and the Scorpion
is the second book in the Ursula Marlow series.

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) •Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Penguin Books 2008

 
Copyright © Clare Langley-Hawthorne, 2008

All rights reserved

Publisher’s Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Langley-Hawthorne, Clare.
The serpent and the scorpion : an Ursula Marlow mystery / Clare Langley-Hawthorne.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-143-11339-3

1. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 2. Young women—Fiction. 3. Great
Britain—History—Edward VII, 1901-1910—Fiction. 4. Murder—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3612.A584S47 2008
813’.6—dc22 2008015696

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Acknowledgments

I owe a debt of gratitude to all those who provided me with valuable research, advice, and unfailing support. Without them, my writing would be languishing in a drawer somewhere. As always, a huge thank-you to my parents, who are always willing to read the manuscript one more time, to my mother-in-law, Marie, who provides support from afar, to my husband for making it all financially viable, and to my twin sons, Samuel and Jasper, for proudly telling everyone that Mummy is a writer.

I am privileged to have Randi Murray as my agent and Alicia Bothwell as my editor and am grateful for their wise counsel and passionate commitment to my work. I also need to thank: Brett Kelly, my previous editor; Ann Day, my publicist at Penguin; and Hilary Redmon, my editor (and enthusiastic supporter) while Ali was on maternity leave. I feel extremely fortunate to be surrounded by such an amazing group of accomplished women.

Thank you to Professor Yossi Ben Artzi and his assistant, Riva Fried-man, at the University of Haifa for advising me on early-twentieth-century settlements in Palestine. Professor Ben Artzi’s grandparents settled in Hartuv, thankfully without any murder or mystery, but nevertheless they provided me with a seed of inspiration for the story. I am also grateful for Margot Badran’s insight on the nascent feminist and nationalist movements in Egypt, Phil Jarrett’s timely input on the airplanes of the day, and the historian at the RAC’s practical advice on motorcars in Britain in 1912. I need to write another series of books to do justice to all the information my experts provided me.

Finally, I still owe so much to my writing group, who helped launch Ursula Marlow into print. I continue to be grateful for all their support and send a huge thank-you to Winifred for her much-needed input and advice on the first draft of
The Serpent and the Scorpion.

Prologue

Palestine
FEBRUARY 1912

 
The Blériot monoplane circled above the bleached, dry valley. To the east the Judean hills crumpled and folded beneath the deep blue sky, like a golden sable coat left carelessly in the sun.

The pilot shouted and pointed to the ground below. The woman in the rear seat replied, but her words were soon lost in the wind. The plane rolled, the wheels tipped, and they started the rough descent, finally bouncing along the sand and stones before coming to a halt beside a small wooden watchtower. The pilot clambered out of the plane and placed two blocks against the wheels. Once the beat of the propellers was gone, the air was silent. The pilot assisted his female passenger down before taking off his goggles and smoothing back his blond hair. Her face remained shrouded in the hood of her cloak, which she kept drawn in close, despite the heat of the midday sun.

In the distance, at the edge of the valley, was a huddle of houses, barely visible except for the reflection of whitewashed walls in the sun. Out of the corner of his eye, the pilot saw a rider approaching, a cloud of dust his only companion. The rider slowed when he was about twenty feet away, dismounted, and walked toward them cautiously. He had a rifle slung across his back, and a round of bullets across his chest. A pistol in a leather holster hung off his belt at the hip. He wore shabby loose-fitting trousers and a short narrow jacket. On his head was perched a brightly woven
kippah.
He had a long beard, black curly hair, and two dark ringlets hung just above his ears.

“Wait for me no more than one hour.” The woman passenger spoke to the pilot in imperious, heavily accented English.

The pilot nodded; her instructions to him had been quite clear.

The rider remounted the horse, then swung the woman up to sit behind him. As they left, the pilot turned back and walked over to his plane. He slid his hand lovingly over its cloth-covered wood frame before grabbing a canvas bag from the cockpit. He then propped himself up on a boulder, took out his compass, and proceeded to check the map for the return journey to Jaffa.

An hour and a half later his female passenger returned. She did not seem surprised that he had waited longer than the appointed hour, nor that he did not question the reason for her delay. She did not guess, however, that it was her very countenance that had silenced him. Gone was her glorious pomposity, gone was her haughty tone. She looked like a lost and forgotten child, with eyes that reflected such anguish that the pilot could think of no words to say.

The return flight to Jaffa was turbulent. An early
hamsin
swirled up from Egypt, turning the late-afternoon sky from blue to topaz. By the time they landed on the makeshift airstrip near the orange groves east of the German Colony, a thick, sand-stung twilight had descended. Her driver was waiting by a black horse-drawn carriage. A sudden gust of wind rattled the carriage door and ruffled the horses’ manes. The pilot and the woman said their good-byes, raising their voices to be heard above the rising sandstorm. She paid him generously for both his services and his silence. As she pulled away in the carriage, he caught a final glimpse of her white face staring out into the darkness.

Early the next day she sailed out on a steamship bound for Alexandria. The boat slipped the moorings, slid back in the sleek clear water, and made its way out of the harbor just as the sun began to rise above the port of Jaffa. She stood on the deck, wrapped in the shawl her mother had given her the day they left Russia. Its soft deep hues mirrored the blue of the morning sky. She shielded her eyes as the sun came into fiery view, creating a halo of bright light around the houses and towers of the old port.

Without a word she made her way through the throng of passengers and down belowdecks to her cabin. The morning sun streamed through the portholes, forming pools of light on the floor beneath her feet. She passed her husband in the narrow hallway. He reached out to take her hand, but she shook her head and walked on by. Bitter disappointment registered on his face as he retreated into the shadows.

Once in her suite, she removed her shawl, splashed some cool water on her face from a blue-and-white ceramic jug, and sat down at the wooden desk beneath the window. All her movements were mechanical and deliberate, without expression or emotion. She held her head in her hands but could not cry. She remained sitting there, alone in the gathering light, for nearly an hour before picking up the gold-tipped fountain pen that lay on the desk. She shook the pen and with quiet deliberation began to write on a piece of cream-colored paper.

 
A month later Katya Vilensky was dead.

Part One

England

One

London, England
TWO MONTHS EARLIER
DECEMBER 31, 1911

 
The banner over the fireplace read “New Year Greetings 1912.” Made of die-cut embossed paper and strung up with red ribbon, the words, encircled by roses and angels, were suffused in the golden light of the fire beneath. Ursula Marlow wrapped her ermine stole tightly around her and sighed. She didn’t feel much like celebrating tonight. Although it was almost two years since her father’s murder, this festive season seemed worse than the last. Having lost her mother to tuberculosis when she was just three, Ursula was used to feeling wistful at this time of year, but the last few weeks she had felt the absence of family acutely. Tonight, surrounded by the elite of London society, she felt more alone than ever. Her father’s absence was like a steel blade that slid into her abdomen. Its cold, sharp tip could never entirely retract—one flinch, one unbidden recollection, and the blade pierced her anew.