Shadow of the Serpent

by David Ashton

  ‘Can ye sing?’ he demanded hoarsely.

  ‘I know very few melodies,’ was the response.

  The sergeant waved his hand in decree, he could not trust the words to emerge.

  Damn it, he was on the verge of weeping buckets, this was not the way to go.

  ‘Sing!’ he commanded

  The constable, with quavering voice, gave issue.

  Shock pulled Cameron from death’s door.

  ‘That’s a Jacobite air!’

  ‘A friend of my mother, she sang it. Jean Scott. When I was a wee boy. It’s the only tune I can carry.’

  ‘Was this friend of Jacobite persuasion?’

  ‘I never asked her.’

  The sergeant smiled crookedly.

  ‘Tell ye the truth, son, I sometimes wished I could have fought by Charlie’s side. I’d rather die from a bayonet than a bastard penknife.’

  He motioned for more melody, then a random thought struck and he laughed with a feverish glee.

  ‘But, it wasnae the knife that did for me, it was the blackness crusted, the tobacco on it that poisoned. A dangerous damned thing. Tobacco.’

  He closed his eyes without farewell and James McLevy sang the Highlander out, tears dripping down his face.

  ‘Charlie is my darling … the young chevalier…’

  The thick glasses glinted. But the light was gone.

  14

  And find

  What wind

  Serves to advance an honest mind.

  JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.

  There was one man who could put fear into Joanna Lightfoot by the blankness of his gaze, now she had found another. She took a pace back as McLevy slowly returned from where her words had transported him.

  ‘Mae Donnachie,’ he said, voice slurred from a muddy past. ‘Her first night out whoring. She was fifteen years old. She had a family to support.’

  He turned away and shook his head as though to rid it of certain images then swung back and reached out his hand towards her, fingers crooked, as if to hold her by the throat. Then he dropped the hand and was perfectly still.

  ‘How do you know about this?’

  She had her nerve back now. A calm reply.

  ‘Tell me what you found, and I shall respond in kind.’

  He moved to the fire and, using the tongs, carefully put individual lumps of coal one on top of the other, building a fortress amid the flames.

  ‘She’d come down across the bridges from the Royal Mile, the competition would be too savage up there. She didnae know the streets of Leith, she was just a young lassie. Desperate. Her brother’s lungs were shot tae hell, she wanted to get him medicine; the father drank what the mother earned with washing and the like. The mother had six further children. Lived in the one room, eleven feet or so each way. One o’ the wynds off the High Street. A common enough tangle.’

  ‘What a dreadful life.’

  He sensed a distance to that remark, just a wee touch of looking down from on high; so he jumped on it like a dog on a bone. Teeth first, arse to follow.

  ‘Ye must have seen the same in Liquorpond Street, if what you tell me is true, that you were born there?’

  ‘I was … removed at an early age.’

  ‘Lucky you. Mae Donnachie stayed where she was.’

  He crossed to a small cupboard, and banged the side of his fist against the wood. The door sprang open and she jumped a little at the unexpected noise. As he scrabbled inside for something, he carried on the tale.

  ‘It wasnae our parish but the City police were a wee touch on the brutal side, so we broke the sad tidings to the Donnachies ourselves.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Sergeant Cameron and me. I was a babe in arms then.’

  ‘Hard to imagine.’

  He ignored the remark, and brought out something wrapped in tissue paper. He held it cupped carefully in his hands, as he made towards the table at the window.

  ‘The brother was stricken with guilt. He died soon after. A short-lived family.’

  ‘Terrible times.’

  ‘They have not changed.’

  ‘Surely there are civic policies on hand to alter all that? Improvements?’

  ‘They must have passed me by,’ McLevy said dryly.

  ‘But surely, Social reform – ’

  ‘Politicians have no interest in the poor. The poor have no power. They cannot vote. The only choice they have is which bucket to be sick in.’

  He had laid a small mother-of-pearl box on the table; it was a pinky-white colour which took on some of the radiance of the moonlight coming in through the window pane.

  McLevy blew upon the casing and wiped away a minuscule speck of dirt with the tissue. He concentrated his gaze as if the box contained some deep secret and seemed to have completely lost interest in their conversation.

  ‘Mae Donnachie, how did she die?’ Joanna prompted.

  ‘Split to the bone.’

  ‘Did you find the murderer?’

  ‘Not a trace.’

  He straightened up and smiled. ‘But you would know that, surely?’

  She avoided his eyes for the moment. She was beginning to catch on to his methods. Always keep the subject off balance, come in from an angle, break up the rhythms, truly the fellow was more devious than appearances warranted.

  ‘You must have found something?’ she ventured.

  ‘A man was seen running through St Andrews Street, towards the Kirkgate. Well dressed, a fine head of hair.’

  ‘Hair?’

  ‘He was seen from above, through a dirty window by an auld wifie on her last legs.’

  He laughed but there was a bitter edge.

  ‘So far gone, she didnae even mind talking to the police. We knocked on every door, stuck our heads to places a starving dog wouldnae creep in to die. We’d have talked to the very rats themselves, had they but been witness.’

  ‘It sounds a personal quest.’

  ‘You might put it that way.’

  He was now looking at her with a measure of hostility. That suited Joanna just fine.

  ‘So the result of your labours, was … nothing?’

  ‘A drunkart claimed he saw a man o’ that ilk, but the fellow was in delirium with bad whisky, kill-me-deadly, he would have sold his birthright for another drink.’

  ‘Which you gave him?’

  A wolfish grin.

  ‘The price we had to pay, Miss Lightfoot. The price we had to pay. He claimed the man near jumped over him where he lay on the ground. The man was clad in black, a red stain all down his front. He didnae glimpse the face. The man ran off towards the Maris Chapel on Constitution Street.’

  ‘But you did not believe him? This … drunkard?’

  ‘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.’

  15

  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.

  16

  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.