Shadow of the Serpent

Another look to the window. Nothing. Damnation. Run through the strategy again.

She would move back as if to allow Gladstone a time of private prayer with his daughter, then render him a moment unconscious. She had been taught well in that particular skill. Drag out the body of McLevy from its hiding place, God grant it wasn’t too bloody and she didn’t see the face. Then press the axe into Gladstone’s hand, wait for him to show signs of recovery, run back to the top of the steps and scream back into the house till people arrived.

The story would be simple. Gladstone had used her as cover for a rendezvous, knowing her to be a simple and obedient soul. He had instructed her to wait outside the crypt but she heard shouts and then a single scream and, taking her courage in both hands, crept timidly down the steps to find a hideous carnage.

Sir Edward Graham, an honoured guest and high official in Her Majesty’s security forces, would lead the pack and take command.

And there he was! Out of the corner of her eye she observed him stroll elegantly through the french windows. Her lover. The Serpent.

The timing was perfect. Gladstone, for a moment, had separated from the crowd. Perhaps he sought adoration from a different source and she would supply that.

She waited for the signal. The Serpent would take out a cigar, light it up, then move into the throng.

But he did not. Instead he looked at her. This broke the rules. Direct contact was to be avoided until the task was completed, and then the most strenuous consummation might be enjoyed but not till then!

She had to meet his gaze. The intensity brought her eyes round to lock with his. He smiled. A clumsy servant jostled him, and the black silk scarf parted to reveal a spreading patch of blood on the white shirt.

This time, the death she saw in the Serpent’s eyes was his own.

He fell to his knees and sprawled out his length upon the floor.

One of the maids screamed and dropped a tray of glasses. The sharp noise cut through the babble to produce a most profound silence.

And in that silence, to fill the Serpent’s place in the opening to the outside world, as if by magic, stepped the figure of James McLevy.

A bloody axe in hand which he laid upon a silver tray and, noticing a cup nearby, availed himself of a jolt of coffee before turning to stare, slate-grey eyes in the white face, straight at her.

The inspector knew. The game was up. Her lover was dead. What did it matter?

She had stood there paralysed but now she slowly removed the thick glasses from the bridge of her nose and dropped them on the floor. She reached up for the wig, pulled it from her head and shook the golden hair free.

Then, like the Serpent, she spread her fingers and passed them deliberately over her face.

The pinched features spread and relaxed.

Then the stooped hunched figure of Jane Salter straightened to become Joanna Lightfoot. And stayed that way. Transformed unto herself.

McLevy did not seem surprised.

The silence was broken by the voice of William Gladstone.

‘God preserve us!’ he announced.

41

That was all! And yet through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night.

HENRY LONGFELLOW, Tales of a Wayside Inn

When Lieutenant Roach, in his hours-of-darkness sleep, dreamed about golf, the route to the hole consisted of inaccessible staircases and weird conduits which became more and more difficult with each nightmarish twist.

But once, only once, he had dreamt of a verdant fairway sloping gently upwards and had then hit a drive which soared a bisecting arc to the most perfect lie.

When he reached the ball, however, he noticed with a sinking heart that the green which lay fairy-bower-like on a small plateau, was just as far from him now as it had been when he first struck the shot.

Progress is an illusion.

For some reason this had come into his mind as he looked across the desk at James McLevy.

The inspector stood at attention, freshly shaved and pomaded, hair for once in some kind of order. He had even pressed, or someone had, his uniform, trousers and tunic all shipshape and made ready.

He looked like a man you could trust, a man for an emergency, a man who also knew his place in the great grand scheme of things.

It was a truly sinister sight.

Mulholland stood a little behind him to the side, which is where the young man belonged. How could he hope to match this resplendent vision?

‘I don’t know how you did it, McLevy,’ said Roach. ‘But you have somehow redeemed your stupidity. If I had been where you found yourself, against instruction and flouting every rule in the book, I would have had a cardiac seizure and had to lie down in the long grass.

‘You must have a guardian angel, that’s all I can say, because your ignorance of common sense is matched only by a complete inability to recognise danger when it is full in your face and ready to strike home!’

The inspector could have said much but he averted his eyes modestly. Besides, he sensed that Roach’s heart wasn’t fully committed to further reprimand.

Chief Constable Grant had been summoned before the even higher heid-yins to be told that a crisis of state had been averted by the prompt action of a humble inspector from Leith station.

The precise detail had not been released and never would be, but Leith was now the toast of the Edinburgh force and its gallant leader, Lieutenant Roach, to be commended.

Through gritted teeth, the chief constable had done so, and the lieutenant had enjoyed every moment of watching his bullying superior crawl up his own backside.

Mason or no mason, Brother Grant owed Brother Roach an apology and it would get round the lodge in no time.

Brother Roach would see to that.

For a second there was something that almost approached a smile on Roach’s face, then, catching McLevy’s eye, he reached into his bag of frowns and stuck one on.

‘You redeemed yourself. By the skin of your teeth. The next time, you may not be so lucky. And let there not be a next time, because if there is, then, as I have already just remarked, you may not be so lucky, and that is undeniable and a fact!’

The lieutenant had got himself in a fankle. Not for a moment did McLevy’s face register this.

‘I’ll bear all that in mind, sir,’ he replied. ‘How did your own investigation proceed?’

This innocent-sounding query provoked some tension between Roach and the constable.

‘It got nowhere!’ Roach’s jaws snapped together. ‘The constable spent most of his time shaking his head over my suggested lines of enquiry.’

McLevy turned to look in seeming astonishment at Mulholland whose mouth had set in stubborn lines.

‘Diagrams. With all due respect, sir. Lines going from one spot to another. On a piece of paper.’

Roach’s lips thinned. ‘I was applying scientific theory.’

‘In my experience,’ Mulholland thought to hell with it, I’ll never get that leave anyhow, ‘the only place to solve a crime is where it was committed. On the street.’

‘In your experience?’