Shadow of the Serpent (18 page)

There was a breathless excited quality to her speech which McLevy found unsettling; he wished she would hold her tongue because it was the devil’s own job to decipher this writing. He muttered what fragments he could make out.

‘Saw P.L. A singular case indeed. More harm
…
trod the path of danger.’
Another entry caught his eye.
‘I have
…
courted evil
…
deluded in the notion of doing good.’

Again Joanna spoke, this time in the curiously formal manner which he recognised from their first meeting.

‘It is common knowledge that Gladstone would walk near the Argyle Rooms in Great Windmill Street where the upper classes indulged in every kind of dissipation. He would approach these women of the night under the guise of rescuing them from a life of sin, at least that is how it was presented to the outside world.’

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and swallowed hard as if some vision in her mind had perturbed her, then got back on track.

‘But these entries might show that when he was alone, feasting his eyes upon them … who was the sinner, and who was sinned against?’

‘Aye. A fallen woman’s a great temptation,’ said McLevy cheerily. ‘But even if he did. What then?’

In response she pointed at one of the curious markings at the foot of an entry. McLevy strained to make sense of the words which came before the sign.

‘My trysts are carnal or the withdrawal of them would not
…
leave such a void.’

Then after that came
‘Returned to
…’ followed by the strange symbol.

‘It looks a wee bit like a whip,’ he hazarded.

‘It is the Greek symbol lambda. The letter L. I believe it represents the lash. The whip, as you say. The scourge.’

McLevy’s eyebrows shot up; this was approaching value for his lost whisky. ‘Are you saying these women
whipped
him?’

‘No!’ she said impatiently. ‘It was self-administered. He scourged his own body. Many times. To drive out the terrible guilt. The impurity within. To suffer is to be released. But only for a time, and then it returns, even stronger.’

Her eyes upon him were hot and zealous; McLevy felt as if he needed space to draw breath.

‘I knew an embezzler had one of those leathers,’ he said, with a scholarly air. ‘Studded with nails. I think he got it from France. I believe they were all the fashion.’

Joanna would not be deflected.

‘There were many women, Emma Clifton, Elizabeth Collins, you may find their names, and he writes of his sympathy being corrupted, how he must limit and scourge himself, but back he goes, again and again!’

She took a deep breath to control what seemed to him to be a rising hysteria. ‘And then … came the punishment of God. In the middle of all this, his daughter died.’

Joanna had alluded to this in their previous tête-à-tête but it was another turn of the screw.

‘Ye think this might be the root cause of our two murders,’ he mused. ‘You cannot control the guilt within, so you kill the cause of it, without. First his daughter, and then the sister’s recent death set it all off again.’

‘He may not even know he does it,’ she said. ‘He may be split from it. Like the branch from the tree.’

McLevy sniffed. He had no time for these sorts of daft notions; anyway part of his attention had shifted to a scene about to happen at the bar.

No. Not yet. The recent arrival, Andra, had turned from the counter to survey in benign fashion the tobacco smoke which spread like a cloud through the bar.

The old man added to it by lighting up his pipe and puffing contentedly. The chance has gone, Johnnie. Wait for the next time, eh?

‘How did you get these papers?’ he asked suddenly.

She hesitated. ‘A friend. They were loose inside one of his … official diaries.’

‘You have someone in Gladstone’s employ?’

She nodded unwillingly.

McLevy sat back. No point in asking the name of her provider; she would return to ‘I cannot tell’. There would be a time, either in the interrogation room, or when he had some leverage on her, like a headlock perhaps.

He smiled at the thought but was there not some element of attraction in this vision? Her head against his chest, his arm across her throat? And did she not invite this, by her very nature?

He flicked the pages over to her with an idle finger. ‘It’s a good read, what I can glean, but it says nothing. Proves nothing. Nothing worth a damn.’

His voice was flat, his face stony, as if he had completely lost interest. She tried to hold down her mounting desperation. He had to believe her!

‘There is another book. A private diary. Kept under lock and key. Always. If I can get my hands on it, I know it will contain his innermost thoughts and deeds. Then we will know the truth. You must help me, you must – ’

His hand shot out like a snake and grasped her firmly on each side of the jaw. She shuddered as he bent her face close to his, like lovers.

‘The truth?’ he said softly. ‘What is your commerce in all this, Miss Lightfoot? Tell me your own truth, and I will see where to lay the brand of justice.’

Without taking her eyes from his, she reached into the bag and took out another page of the paper. He let go her face and she bowed her head as he looked upon the page.

‘Saw P.L. indoors and said it must be the last time. My thoughts of P. Lightfoot must be limited and purged.’

He looked up to find a single tear finding a path over the high cheekbone down to the corner of her mouth, where she licked at it like a child.

‘Pauline Lightfoot,’ her voice was low and agonised. ‘My mother. She left this vale of tears when I was five years old.

‘She had given up the streets when I was born, a sum of money had been settled on her. When she died, I was taken away by a guardian and looked after till I was old enough to make my own way in the world.’

Joanna let out a sigh which a softer heart than McLevy’s would have found quite piteous.

‘I told you the truth. A private income, I have, of sorts. Each month a sum was deposited in a bank account under my name. My guardian arranged this, but, like my mother, would not tell me the identity of my father.’

The inspector’s eyes were watchful, this woman was full of stories. They all are.

‘So, you have fixed on the People’s William?’ He whistled a melody under his breath as he awaited her answer.

‘God help me. I have.’

‘Why in particular? Your mother must have had many … visitors in her time?’

She looked away, and put her hand up to her throat.

‘When my guardian died, this is most shameful to relate, I went through all of his papers. I found evidence that a large sum of money had been passed to him from a lawyer acting on behalf of an unnamed benefactor. The money was to be settled on my mother and myself. The rest was easy.’

‘Was it now?’ McLevy’s eyes widened in what she had come to recognise as his idiot look. ‘And how did ye persuade the lawyer to divulge the name of this here benefactor? They are
mean-mindit
, small-mouthed creatures. Their whole profession is dedicated to guarding others’ secrets. How did you do that, I wonder?’

Joanna smiled crookedly.

‘I seduced him, Mr McLevy. I came to his bed at night and dropped the seventh veil. These wiles are in my blood.’

McLevy again whistled softly under his breath and gazed back out into the bar. All quiet. So far.

‘Since then, I have made it my business to find out every single thing about William Gladstone. I have used recommended … investigators and now I have my friend. A friend at court.’

‘Would it not be easier just to go up and ask the man?’

A simple enough question but her eyes filled up and she bit into her lip with such force that he feared a bloody response.

‘The name the lawyer gave me was by the spoken word. Not by written proof.’

‘Your seduction had its limitations, then?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, then drew another deep breath.

‘I am afraid he will deny me. And I am even more afraid that he may have committed murder. The least I owe myself is to know the truth of that before I knock upon his door.’

As McLevy brooded on this and turned his face once more away from her, she drew the pages towards her bag.

‘He stays tonight in George Street. It is his habit to go walking of an evening. Who knows – ’ her voice almost broke, ‘what he may accomplish? I wish that you might follow him. Perhaps you may find out the truth this night. For me. And for justice.’

He made no reply, his eyes fixed towards the bar. She looked down to put the papers into her bag and when she raised her eyes once more McLevy was no longer opposite.

She looked out into the crowd and there was no sign of him. He had vanished into the smoke-filled room.

Johnnie Martin was good at his trade and on the point of exercising it. The mark was fuddled with drink which made the delving even easier. He slid his fingers into the man’s side pocket where he had previously noted the purse tae reside, prepared to lurch into him, blame the whisky, grin his apologies and be out with the lift before –

An iron hand gripped his where he held the wallet, and he looked up with a sinking heart to see McLevy’s big face leering through the smoke at him like a warwolf.

‘Well, Johnnie,’ said the inspector softly, ‘we’ll not make a fuss. Slip the retainers on, just tae keep you honest, eh?’

The little man sagged back as McLevy deftly clipped the cuffs around his wrists, removed the wallet from his unresisting hands and tapped Andra on the shoulder.

‘I think this belongs to you, sir,’ he said.

The old man had noticed nothing.

‘I must have dropped it on the floor,’ he muttered.

‘I think not,’ replied the inspector.

Still holding firmly on to the pickpocket, he glanced back to see if Joanna had witnessed his small triumph.

The cubicle was empty. A draught of cold outside air hit him on the back of the neck, and the street door shook gently as if a ghost had left the tavern.

For a moment he was tempted to race after but she would be long gone with these long strides. Never mind. He would hand Johnnie over to one of the constables on the beat, and then go about his business.

‘Can I see my way tae buy you a drink, sir?’ said the grateful Andra, puffing his pipe fit to bust.

‘I believe I may have a whisky,’ responded McLevy. ‘I lost the last one in mysterious circumstances.’

Mulholland took a deep, soul-satisfied breath. This was the life. A grand destination.

He’d worried in the coach all the way back from West Calder, cursing the weakness for sheep’s head which had let McLevy inveigle him out there in the first place, chewing a bitter lip that he’d be late – but no, just made it in time.

Slipped in at the back as the first note quavered in the air. This was the life.

The recital had unfolded with one sweet mystery after another. To begin. A succession of young ladies who held their violins like newborn lambs as they sawed their graceful way through compositions by various, by the sound of it, foreigners.

And then to follow some songs which delighted the ear, while the eye was being entertained as the daughters of the Muse swayed tastefully to the constrained passion of the melody. They never moved their legs though. Good breeding saw to that.

Madrigals and pastoral fancies,
chansons
and
saluts d’amour
, the notes ascended to the corniced ceiling like rose petals in a high wind.

One piece which particularly impressed the constable was
andante sostenuto
, slow and deliberate like a herd of cows coming home to be milked of an evening, steam rising from their flanks. The fellow must have had a decent farm
somewhere
in his background. What was the name now? He’d want to be wafting it in front of McLevy first thing in the morning, unless it was some false coiner from Naples.

Donizetti! Your very man. Italian by the sound but none the worse for all that.

Indeed had Mulholland known the fate of Gaetano
Donizetti
, the poor songsmith dying mad, eaten up by
cerebrospinal
syphilis, he may have reflected that fine music, like most things, comes at a cost.

But he did not know that. And his attention had been captured by one particular young lady who had played piano accompaniment for the various performers.

Emily Forbes was her name. Her father Robert sat at the front, stern but proud, a widower of three years.

The whole society seemed to be in mourning for someone or other, from the Queen downwards. A nation of glum faces, surrounded by black crape.

Mulholland had sat at the front beside Mrs Roach, the lieutenant holding to the outer reaches of the audience, and the constable could have sworn that Emily had cast some sidelong glances in his direction though she might have just been following the pages of the score.

There was the satisfied buzz of honey-laden bees as, recital over, the young ladies congratulated each other and were in turn complimented by the sons of upright citizens.

The constable found himself rather isolated, suddenly
conscious
of his low rank. These fellows were of a different breed, a confident assumption of their own self-worth wafting around them like horse-breath in November. Money does that.

One of them, a fellow Mulholland had disliked on sight, was making great play over Emily who seemed not to notice what a potato-head the man had on him and laughed, no doubt in pity, at some presumed witticism.

Roach, seeing his constable lurking like a night-thief at the back of the crowd, crossed over amid the tinkling of teacups and crunch of ginger biscuits.