‘No escape, eh?’ he said wryly.
‘No escape.’ Her eyes met with his. ‘But you must know that, inspector. Professionally speaking.’
‘Retribution,’ said McLevy. ‘My faith in a nutshell.’
He laughed softly.
Mulholland was cross-eyed now. These two had gone down some path into a forest within the like of which he had no desire to play the little lost Hansel.
It was that damned mystical side to McLevy which took him, as Aunt Katie would have put it,
The inspector and Eileen Marshall gazed across the room at each other.
‘What was Mr Gladstone’s response to your offer of condolence?’
‘He looked as if he would like to strike me to the ground,’ she said. ‘A dreadful anger in his eyes. But then I had never found his favour.’
‘Because of your influence with Helen?’
‘Because of many things.’ Her mouth tightened in recollection. ‘He turned his back on me and walked away.’
McLevy noticed that her ankles, under the hem of the dress, were somewhat thick and misshapen. Circulation maybe not so good. Too much sitting by the bedside.
‘I saw him two nights ago,’ she said suddenly. ‘At Waverley Market, addressing the crowd. He is quite an orator. His voice rings out like a bell.’
Such ambiguity was there in her tone, but what was behind it? A delicacy of purpose, but what?
‘Did he see you?’ the inspector asked.
‘I believe he did. I was right at the front. I got there early, walking is difficult for me so I took a cab. It was surprisingly expensive. For such a short journey.’
A smile on her lips. McLevy had it now. Vengeance. What had drawn her. A neat measure of vengeance.
‘How d’ye
‘He faltered in his speech. His eyes met mine. He lost his way.’
McLevy could see it in his mind’s eye. Gladstone roaring like a righteous lion, the inspector had read in the paper twenty thousand people and those who fainted handed back over the heads of the crowd as if dead, and then in that ocean of adoring faces he finds the one he did not want to see.
Eileen Marshall, flanked by two ghosts.
‘Maybe,’ he ventured disingenuously, ‘ye reminded him of something he’d just rather forget, eh?’
‘Or he may have just stumbled. People do stumble. Words can be treacherous,’ she said. ‘But – it may have been my imagination of course – but I swear I saw such anger in his eyes. Dreadful. The same as the day of Helen’s funeral. The same as when he came back from Edinburgh, the night after Jessy had been buried. Anger. Burning. As if he would wish to strike me to the ground.’
The prospect did not seem to alarm her but give some cause for satisfaction. Not much. But as good as she would get until the day of judgement.
There was a long silence.
Two funerals, thirty years apart. Two murders, with the same separation of time.
McLevy had many other questions in his mind but he felt, somehow, that he had gained as much from the exchange as he might reasonably expect to deserve.
The dog whimpered, paws scrabbling against the carpet and Eileen looked down at it indulgently.
‘In his dreams, he believes he is hunting. Still a young dog.’
‘That’s nice,’ said the inspector motioning Mulholland to rise, who, as he did so, spoke his first words in a long, long time.
‘It was a very splendid cup of tea,’ he said.
Like a good hostess she saw them to the door. They said their goodbyes but then, perhaps because McLevy’s unexpected cessation of further questioning had left a hunger gnawing at her, she reached round her neck for a locket which he had noticed much earlier; its thin gold chain and ornamental heart-shaped purple case rather at odds with the plain and simple dark-green dress she wore.
‘Helen gave this when she left me,’ she said, and opened the case to reveal a photograph inside.
A young woman stared out at them. Even in the formal pose, it was a troubled and, it must be said, quite sultry face.
McLevy nodded. Mulholland craned over.
‘Let’s hope she’s at peace,’ he said doubtfully.
Eileen gave him a look which set his head jerking back, then closed the case with a snap.
The dog almost woke up, then returned to its scrabbling.
‘He’s still hunting,’ she murmured, looking back.
‘It’s always the way,’ said McLevy.
For a moment he looked at her with such compassion that Eileen knew it must be her purest fancy, then he turned to go. Her hand went to the nape of her neck. And rested there.
22
All her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
ROBERT BROWNING, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’
Certain discreet apartments in Edinburgh Castle had been reserved for visiting members of Her Majesty’s government who craved seclusion.
At a pinch the quarters might even admit certain
The Serpent was one of those shadows. Those he served valued him above all others. He preserved that continuity.
He stood in the middle of the room and pondered the nature of his task.
For what had said Benjamin Disraeli?
‘To uphold the aristocratic settlement of the country.’
The prime minister’s main agenda and one consistency.
‘To maintain the empire and protect the constitution.’ In Disraeli’s own officially recorded words, the purpose of the Tory party.
Many other things Disraeli said and the Jew was a man to reckon.
In his noble guise of Lord Beaconsfield, he had kissed goodbye the Commons and walked out into the streets in a long white overcoat, even though it was August in London.
The Serpent smiled. Not his style, but to each his own.
The very name had given rise to a portmanteau noun, ‘Beaconsfieldism’, clumsily created and pejoratively used by one William Gladstone to denote an unchecked, unbridled, profligate, imperialist, naked lust for power.
But power it was, and evermore shall be.
Change must be resisted. Truth kept in a pretty little box with red ribbon, wrapped around. Securely bound.
Gladstone waved it like a flag but the Serpent knew the truth for what it was. A trinket. In a box.
