Shadow of the Serpent

‘Ye returned some time after midnight and then insisted on an immediate carriage to bring you back here. Is that correct as well?’

‘It is. I realised that what I needed most of all was the soothing presence of my wife.’

‘She wasn’t with you, then?’

‘She had remained at Dalmeny. The throng tires her.’

William shook out a large handkerchief and blew his nose vigorously.

Whatever benefits Mrs Gladstone uxoriously provided, it would seem unblocking the sinuses was not one of them.

‘When ye walked, where did ye go?’

The Great Man blinked at such a direct question.

‘I am afraid I cannot tell you,’ was his concise reply.

‘Why not?’

‘The mist. The fog. It was so devilish thick. I was like a lost sheep. Sore perplexed. I wandered for what seemed like an eternity. It took me some hours even to retrace my steps home to recover from what I must confess was an error of judgement on my part. But the Lord saw me through; he often does to my enemy’s discouragement and my own salvation.’

This had tripped off the tongue with an ease of practice. He then switched subject. Politicians do that.

‘I am reading from Sir Walter Scott, these hectic days. The story of Guy Mannering.’ A smile of sorts twisted the harsh mouth, but his eyes were watchful. ‘I find it most … illuminating. Do you know the tale?’

‘It is about treachery.’

‘And salvation, sir. A man’s salvation!’

‘But not through God. Through human agency. An auld gypsy woman and a Lowland farmer.’

‘God is behind every human act, sir.’

Gladstone laughed abruptly as if he had scored a debating point. He looked back towards Dalmeny House where a door opened and the figure of the skinny, hunched woman emerged, thick glasses pointing towards them. Gladstone, from his sitting position, waved vigorously and she lifted her hand a moment in reply before going back swiftly into the house.

‘My personal secretary,’ said Gladstone. ‘I would be lost without her.’

He laughed again and clapped his hands together as a sign perhaps that the exchange was drawing to a close, but the inspector was not to be deflected.

‘Ye say ye wandered in the mist?’ he pursued.

‘I did indeed. Sore perplexed.’

‘Would your footsteps have led you as far as Leith?’

‘As I have already informed you I knew not where I was,’ rejoined Gladstone with a tinge of asperity. ‘But I doubt I ventured as far as Leith. You seem to have, if I may say so, sir, an obsessive regard for the place.’

‘A young lassie was murdered there, last night,’ said McLevy flatly. ‘Cut down in the streets. Not far from the church of St Thomas which your own father founded.’

The great man bowed his head as if in prayer or he may have been reflecting that the inspector’s previous ignorance of the Gladstone family connections to Leith when they spoke at West Calder had been miraculously converted.

‘How dreadful,’ he murmured.

‘A hazard of her profession.’ McLevy’s mouth had gone dry. He was near the edge and dying for a cup of coffee.

‘Ah. A fallen woman.’

‘Especially after she was battered,’ replied McLevy, with savage black humour.

Gladstone’s head came up sharply.

The inspector made no secret of his eye’s journey to where the axe lay on the tree. ‘Chopped tae buggery.’

William’s mouth tightened at the brutal tone. He inclined his head questioningly as if to say, and what is my part in all this?

‘A man of your favour was seen in the neighbourhood,’ McLevy’s mouth got even drier, ‘and I was wondering …’

Now, as Mulholland’s Aunt Katie would say, ye’re walking on the hen’s eggs here, Jamie boy. Watch where ye put your big sclaffie feet.

‘I was wondering if you might have seen something?’

‘See? What could I see? I was nowhere near the place and blinded by the fog.’

McLevy persisted. ‘Perhaps a man running. Glimpsed through the haar. Reflected in a shop window. Blood on his hands. Looking at you.’

‘I saw nothing.’

‘Thirty years ago, there was a similar crime. A divine punishment perhaps. A scourge of the unworthy. Did ye see nothing then?’

‘Thirty years ago?’

‘Aye. Ye walked the streets then. After the funeral of your daughter.’

There was a dreadful flash of anger in the Great Man’s eyes, then he launched himself bolt upright.

‘How dare you!’

‘It is only a question.’

‘It is an insult!’

‘I am sorry you perceive it so.’

Gladstone looked into the cold, slate-grey eyes of the inspector and struggled to contain a mounting fury.

‘I trust these insinuations are not what I perceive them to be, inspector. There is, however, a limit to my patience and you have gone far beyond it. Far beyond!’

As if in response to his outburst, there was a call from the house as the figure of Horace Prescott emerged followed by three other men.

McLevy knew he had but little time.

‘That aroma from you, sir. Is it identifiable?’

‘What? What?’ The People’s William almost jumped up and down in exasperation.

The inspector sniffed. ‘It has a sort of tarry redolence. I was trying to place it.’

‘It is carbolic soap. I use it every morning. For sanitary purposes!’ Gladstone almost snarled.

‘Very healthy,’ agreed McLevy as Prescott, hastily dressed and moving it must be said somewhat stiffly, arrived with his bully boys.

One of them, a small podgy specimen, put his hand on the inspector’s shoulder only to be shaken off, but any further confusion was stilled when William Gladstone raised a controlling hand aloft.

It was an orator’s gesture but there was enough power in it to stop them all where they stood, including McLevy.

Horace was addressed in a voice which brooked nothing but complete obedience. Gladstone in command once more.

‘I shall explain the circumstances later, Mr Prescott, but for the moment, be so good as to escort this man from the estate and make sure that he does not return. Good-day, Mr McLevy.’

Gladstone then spun on his heel and marched off without a backward glance, dismissing past events and exchanges out of hand.

The hoodie crows returned to the field, their squawks filling the silence.

‘Well, well, inspector, it would seem as if you have strayed into the most severe reprimand it is within my power to arrange. Your stupidity demands no less,’ said Prescott, a cruel glint in his pale-blue eyes.

McLevy had fallen quiet, his eyes on the departing Gladstone as he walked rather jerkily towards the house.

‘I shall make it my business to inform your superior officer, the fellow with the fishy name, Roach, that’s the