Shadow of the Serpent

Eileen shivered, the contagion of madness, or desire, shook her to the bone.

A floorboard above creaked and she listened tensely for the sound of footsteps descending the staircase. Or footsteps anywhere. She had a feeling of being watched constantly – the various servants of the house seemed sly, observing, recording all that passed.

But mercifully nothing. Helen snuggled into her and laid one leg across so that extrication was … forestalled.

The patient comes first. A dictum Eileen had always observed. On an impulse she removed her nurse’s cap and the rich brown tresses cascaded down around her shoulders.

She closed her eyes, the better not to see.

21

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle:

She died young.

JOHN WEBSTER, The Duchess of Malfi

Eileen Marshall had told some of this, but not all, to her visitors. Enough to intrigue the inspector, and alarm Mulholland.

She had stuck to a bare recital of facts, the nuances of feeling remained her own business. McLevy could sense such, but that was not his interest.

‘You’re saying that when William Gladstone returned from Edinburgh he had changed his clothes?’

‘He had.’

‘That’s not unusual,’ Mulholland butted in. ‘Travel stained.’

‘Stained indeed,’ said the inspector. ‘But what might be a wee bit unusual is the other stuff that Helen told you, about scourging out sin with blood.’

‘But that was said in madness!’ cried Mulholland.

‘I have known many things said in madness,’ replied McLevy. ‘Things to scar the soul. But the truth is like that sometimes.’

‘And sometimes not. True or false, who knows? It was all so long ago,’ said Eileen. ‘I myself may play you false, inspector. Memory shifts.’

‘Aye, it does. Like a dog with fleas.’ McLevy grinned but his eyes were hard as pebbles. ‘Have ye spoken tae another about this?’

‘Not since that time.’

McLevy’s head was spinning. Why had Joanna Lightfoot pointed him here? Why had she not come herself? Was she afraid of what she might find, was she using him as an instrument to find the truth, or just a blunt instrument?

And how would she have suspicion of what happened thirty years ago?

The dog groaned in its sleep.

Mulholland had sunk back into his chair. He knew exactly how it felt.

‘Ye said that the house felt full of spies, eyes everywhere?’ McLevy would grind this down to powder.

‘Yes. The servants. As if we were watched. Observed.’

But where would these observations go? And how would they survive the passage of time? McLevy shook his head.

On the next meeting with Joanna Lightfoot – and there would be one, of that he had no doubt – he would have a few questions that might set her Italian boots a-tapping.

He roused himself. A remark Eileen made had lodged like that fishbone. Time to dig it out.

‘And dead?’ he asked suddenly.

‘What?’

‘I asked when you last saw Helen Gladstone. Dead or alive? ye said. Ye’ve covered the live part.’

Her face tightened, no graveyard humour this time, the memories had taken care of that.

‘She died this January. Her body, like wee Jessy’s, was brought back to Fasque for burial. I was at the display.’

‘Display?’

‘It was a display of sorts.’

‘And you were there. Friend of the family, eh?’

McLevy was being obtusely familiar thought Mulholland but he’d have a reason. He always had a reason.

‘On Helen’s deathbed, one of her last requests was that I should attend. Mrs Gladstone, who is a kind woman, informed me of such. And Helen also wrote a letter to me. When she knew her powers were … failing.’

‘What did she die of?’

‘Old age. And the ravages of the past.’

‘I don’t suppose I could see that letter?’

‘It was personal,’ was the uncompromising response.

‘And so …?’ the inspector’s mind was darting around like a wasp near jam. ‘There ye were, dressed in black, the coffin lowered, the family vault. January is a bugger of a month, ye must have all been chilled to the bone, eh?’

No response. He was losing her. Try a leap of faith.

‘Who performed the ceremony, Monsignor Wiseman?’

‘He died some time ago; it was the Archbishop of Westminster. And it was not a Catholic service.’

McLevy’s jaw dropped comically as if he could not believe his ears. He said nothing, however, childlike bewilderment on his face. She took the bait.

‘According to William Gladstone, Helen had recanted her Catholicism just before she died. She was buried in the Anglican tradition.’

‘Did you believe that?’

‘To me it does not matter. To Helen it meant a great deal. Her faith was everything.’

A sniff from Mulholland. Either he was expressing an opinion or he had just got a whiff of Albert.

‘So that would be the display part?’ McLevy’s eyes gleamed with mischief. ‘The Anglican tradition, eh?’

Eileen nodded grimly.

‘Five years before she died, Helen wrote to me that her brother had visited her in Germany and they’d had a conversation of thirteen hours, chiefly on the subject of, as he put it, the dangers of post-Vatican Council Roman Catholicism.’

‘And had it changed her mind?’

‘Not that she expressed in the letter. She merely described him as fanatical on the subject.’

‘Thirteen hours is a long stretch, right enough. What a strain on her tonsils.’

‘She would be listening mostly,’ was the dry retort.

‘And did you express these … misgivings to William Gladstone?’ asked McLevy.

‘It was family business,’ came the terse reply.

‘But ye must have said something to him? I don’t see you letting it go. For old time’s sake.’

The inspector leant forward, a winning smile on his face. Eileen Marshall was provoked enough to reach up and hammer in the nail.

‘I told him that Helen and Jessy, when he died, would be waiting for him. That their souls were as one. They would know all things. They would be waiting.’

McLevy whistled softly.