The Serpent Pool (4 page)

Crag Gill basked in ever-changing coloured lights. To Hannah, it looked more like a spaceship than a home. She glanced over her shoulder. Away from the crowd, and in the shadows, Louise Kind shifted from one foot to another. Her expression was impossible to read. She didn’t like the limelight, unlike her lover.

Stuart lifted his champagne glass with a flourish and bellowed into the microphone.

‘Happy New Year, everybody!’

As people drank and marvelled at the cascades of fire above them, Hannah spotted Marc. His gait was unsteady and he kept spilling his champagne as he traced a zigzag route over the grass towards her.

‘Darling!’ Christ, he was slurring already. Just as well they’d arrived later than most of the other guests. He’d
never been a hardened boozer, and it didn’t take much to get him pissed. ‘Happy New Year!’

She tilted her glass and turned her cheek to allow him to kiss it. Instead he fumbled for her backside.

‘Come on, Marc. You’ve had enough.’

‘Why must you always be such a spoilsport?’ His breath felt hot on her neck. ‘I mean, we can’t leave yet. It would look rude.’

She had to raise her voice to make herself heard above the din of the fireworks. ‘I don’t want you falling flat on your face. We’ve had one scene here already tonight.’

He chortled. ‘Excellent, wasn’t it?’

A barrage of coloured cornets shot into the sky, transforming into graceful palms, followed by candles that soared and roared and became golden branches, seeming to reach almost to the people gathered on the ground. They gazed up to the heavens and held their breath, wondering what might come next.

Hannah feigned covering her ears as another explosion echoed in them. How many thousands of pounds going up in smoke, right in front of their eyes? Stuart Wagg never knew when to stop. He had no restraint.

‘So, you know the woman who had the hissy fit?’

He smirked. ‘You’ll never guess her name.’

‘No need to guess, though I should have recognised her from the press pictures. Louise Kind told me she is Wanda Saffell.’

Yes, the recently widowed Wanda. Out on the razzle with her husband barely cold in the grave? A bit naughty, on the face of it, but Hannah knew better than to jump to conclusions. The fact the woman had chucked her drink
at her companion and then run weeping from the room showed that her nerves were in bad shape.

‘You always know everything,’ he mumbled.

‘If only.’

‘All right, then. What was all the fuss about?’

‘Good question.’ Hannah found herself itching to know the answer.

‘Tell you one thing.’ He leant towards her. ‘You were wrong about the driver who nearly ran into us out in the lane. That wasn’t some boy racer, it was Wanda.’

‘You think so?’

‘A waitress told me she’d only arrived five minutes before us. Marched in and grabbed a glass of champagne, then knocked it back in a couple of gulps and demanded a refill.’

Hannah looked round. ‘Is she still here?’

‘Raj Doshi, one of Stuart’s partners, gave her a lift home. Said she wasn’t fit to drive in her sports car.’

‘We’ll make a detective of you yet.’

‘If you ask me, that woman has anger management issues.’

‘Psychologist as well as detective, eh? Come on, time to go.’

As she took Marc’s arm and headed back for the warm indoors, she recalled the sight of Arlo Denstone, fishing a handkerchief out of his pocket. Still with the hint of a smile on his face, he’d begun to mop his cheeks as a dull crimson stain spread across the front of his jacket.

Anyone would think Wanda Saffell had stabbed him in the heart.

New Year’s Day at Tarn Fold. The perfect moment, Daniel Kind told himself, to turn his mind to murder.

Yawning, he pulled open the living room curtains. He’d landed at Manchester Airport forty-eight hours earlier, and though he’d slept until midday and stood for the past five minutes under a hot and unforgiving shower, jet lag smothered his senses like chloroform.

Wind roared down from the fells and smashed against the windows. Spiky trees swayed like worshippers performing a sinister ritual. The sky was sulky, and a damp mist loitered over the cottage’s strange grounds, with their twisting paths, enigmatic planting, and unexpected dead ends. Beyond a reed-fringed tarn, the rocky face of Tarn Fell was dour and cheerless. He ought to brave the gusts and go for a walk to pump some air into his lungs. But Louise had said she’d call round, the perfect excuse to make himself a cup of coffee instead. The kick of caffeine might do for him what sleep could not.

January the first, a perfect day to start writing his new
book. His subject was Thomas De Quincey and how he changed the way we think about murder.

Flipping on the television, he found the regional news programme he’d set to record the previous day, before collapsing into bed. A pretty presenter was interviewing a man he’d chatted with on the phone, and corresponded with by email, but never met. Shaven-headed and tanned, stylish in black shirt and loafers. The screen caption said
Arlo Denstone, De Quincey Festival Director
.

‘Not enough people know about De Quincey,’ Arlo said. ‘If pushed, some might recall the wild hallucinations of
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
, and the savage satire of “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”.’

‘He was a friend of Wordsworth, wasn’t he?’

‘You’ve certainly done your homework, Grizelda.’ The girl simpered. ‘De Quincey idolised Wordsworth, and became his friend. He even moved into Dove Cottage after the poet left for Rydal Mount.’

‘And he worked in newspapers while he lived in the Lakes?’

‘Absolutely, Grizelda. He edited the
Westmorland Gazette
, and filled its pages with lurid accounts of trials for rape and murder.’ Arlo shook his head, like a parent tutting over the escapades of a loveable child. ‘Chesterton said he was “the first of the decadents”.’

‘Tell us about the Festival,’ Grizelda said hastily.

‘We mean to remind the world that De Quincey is one of the Lake District’s iconic figures. The Festival will celebrate his life and work with exhibitions and readings, and the historian, Daniel Kind, will open the Festival with a lecture about the way murder fired De Quincey’s imagination.
We plan to publish the text, and Mr Kind has generously waived his fee, since all the profits from the Festival are going to cancer charities.’

‘And you are a cancer survivor yourself, of course.’

‘One of the lucky ones, yes.’ Arlo lowered his eyes. ‘When the chairman of the Culture Company offered me the chance to honour a legendary man of letters, and raise funds for such a good cause, needless to say, I bit his hand off.’

A skilled self-publicist, Daniel thought, as the interview wound to an end. Arlo seemed as charismatic and persuasive in the flesh as he had been on the phone. He had a flair for picking the right buttons to press; if flattery didn’t work, he exploited your better nature. Asked to lend your support to charitable fund-raising, how could you refuse? Arlo’s accent hinted at years spent in Australia, first as an academic and later organising literary festivals, but he’d been a De Quincey fan since student days in Cumbria, and his passion struck a chord with Daniel; De Quincey’s essays were works of genius, Arlo said, there was something un-English about their utter lack of restraint. Depressive, impecunious, and brimming with malicious wit, De Quincey was a reckless fantasist whose ill health fed his addiction to drugs and voyeuristic love of violent crime. If he were alive today, he’d never be out of the tabloid headlines.

De Quincey fascinated Daniel. Common threads ran through their lives. De Quincey, too, came from Manchester and studied at Oxford before the Lakes seduced him. But he took his fascination with murder to the point of obsession. He argued that savage crimes might yet have aesthetic appeal, and he was the first to transform murder
into literary entertainment. After De Quincey, murder was never the same again.

A book about murder, and history, with De Quincey’s debaucheries thrown in? The publishers lapped up Daniel’s pitch, and even his agent had stayed off his back for the last six months. He’d trawled countless digital archives, mapping out his themes. All he had to do was to write the bloody thing.

America proved the perfect place to escape from memories of Miranda, but now he must get down to work – and where better than back in the Lakes? He’d already spent a large chunk of the publishers’ advance, and time was running out. No excuse for putting off the moment when he sat down and typed those two little words. Sometimes Daniel thought they were the two most terrifying words in the world.

Chapter One
.

He yawned again. His limbs felt heavy, his eyelids drooped, yet he couldn’t blame a night of Saturnalian excess for his fatigue. Was there any point in sitting down at the computer until Louise had come and gone? Having her live a few miles away at Stuart Wagg’s lakeside mansion would seem strange. When he’d set off for the States, she’d been teaching corporate law in Manchester. He’d never imagined that, by the time of his return, she would have jacked in her job for a post at the University of South Lakeland, let alone that she’d have struck up a relationship with a local celebrity.

The coffee burnt his throat. How long would this infatuation with Stuart Wagg last? Daniel had spent ten minutes in Wagg’s company, on the way back from the
airport, when Louise stopped off at Crag Gill to introduce them. Wagg switched on the charm for his benefit, but what else did strait-laced Louise see in a slick and fashionable lawyer? Wagg seemed to take her devotion for granted, and Daniel had seen Louise hurt too many times to be confident of a happy ending to the fairy tale.

The doorbell squealed, and he jumped to his feet. Lovers come and go, but family is for ever. Or so it should be. He flung the door open.

‘Happy New Year, Daniel.’

Louise kissed him on the cheek. No sign of her ancient anorak. The crisp new Barbour jacket was unzipped, revealing a clingy silk-and-cashmere dress that, despite the cold, showed plenty of pale skin. Her perfume was a velvety, sensual fragrance. The Stuart Wagg effect. How much had she really changed?

‘Happy New Year.’ He waved her inside and shut the door on the icy blast. ‘Good party?’

‘Um…’ Louise pursed her lips. ‘Memorable.’

She hung her jacket in the cloakroom. Her hair was windswept and her cheeks pink, as if she’d just been caught doing something she shouldn’t. In that instant he saw what men like Wagg, men who could pick and choose, saw in her. For all her reserve, she’d never had any trouble attracting admirers. Finding a partner who stuck around proved more of a challenge.

‘Tell me more.’

‘Soon.’ She considered him. ‘You look bleary. Only just got up?’

‘It is New Year’s Day.’

She clicked her tongue. A habit inherited from their late
mother, a long-suffering woman whose default instinct was to reproach.

‘I bet you haven’t started writing that book. Or even decided on a title.’

‘Grossly unfair. Not to mention untrue.’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘
The Hell Within
.’

‘Charming.’

‘No need to be sarky. It’s taken from De Quincey, his essay on
Macbeth
.’

‘What’s the quote?’

‘“The murderer has hell within him,”’ Daniel said softly, ‘“and we must look into this hell.”’

‘You’ll never guess who I met at the party last night,’ Louise said as she wiped toast crumbs from the corner of her mouth.

‘Elton John?’

‘Stone cold.’

‘Madonna?’

‘Dream on.’

‘Disappointing.’ Daniel glanced through the misty window as rain slanted down on the winter heathers. ‘I thought Stuart Wagg knows everyone who is anyone.’

‘You’re so mean about Stuart.’

‘I’ve not breathed a word.’

‘You don’t have to. The way you rolled your eyes when we called at Crag Gill said it all. Just because he’s a rich solicitor. Behave, will you?’

‘Like you did with Miranda?’

‘She deserved it.’

Was that true? He cast his mind back to the first time he’d brought Miranda here, to Brackdale. A tranquil valley in the south-east corner of the Lake District, shoehorned in between Kentmere and Longsleddale. As soon as she saw the cottage in Tarn Fold, she’d set her heart on buying it and living the dream. By the time they’d renovated the building and made it what they wanted, she was ready to pursue a different dream. Yet he had no regrets. She’d steered him through a hard time, and he owed her for that.

‘She rang last night, while you were at your party. She’d had a bit to drink.’

Louise’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘You never liked her, did you?’

‘She was wrong for you.’

People could say the same about you and Stuart Wagg, he thought, but he kept his mouth clamped shut.

‘I mean,’ Louise said in a softer tone, ‘she might have been pretty, but she was never a long-term bet.’

‘Too much the drama queen, you once told me.’

‘Someone had to say it, Daniel. So – was she all maudlin and hankering after old times?’

‘She’s split up with Ethan and he’s dropped her from the magazine. She’s working freelance for a couple of glossies at the moment, but she sounded at a loose end. Said she might come back up here sometime for a break.’

‘For God’s sake. I hope you didn’t encourage her.’ Louise uttered a theatrical groan. ‘Remember, she fell in love with the Lakes for all of five minutes before the bright lights of the big city dragged her back down south. She’s so bloody unpredictable.’

‘When she left, we agreed to stay friends. I’m glad she’s kept in touch.’

‘She used you before. She’ll use you again, if you don’t watch out. And you’ll be the one left picking up the pieces. Not her ladyship.’

Daniel perched on the arm of a leather chair. ‘That’s what people do, isn’t it? We all use each other, in one way or another. Does no harm, between consenting adults.’

‘And I thought I was the family cynic.’

‘You never told me who you met last night.’

‘Do you really want to know?’

Her gaze settled on him, cool and probing, as if he were a criminal in the dock about to be quizzed by counsel for the prosecution. How come she’d never practised as a courtroom lawyer? Her cross-examination technique would have wowed them down at the Bailey.

‘Sure.’ A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, she was amusing herself at his expense. OK, he’d hazard a guess, even if it smacked of wish fulfilment. ‘It wasn’t Hannah Scarlett, by any chance?’

‘The one and only.’ She inspected her fingernails. A vivid turquoise. He couldn’t remember her painting them in the past. ‘Father’s fancy woman.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’ He couldn’t help snapping back. ‘There was nothing between them.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘For God’s sake. Dad was so much older. He ran off with Cheryl, don’t forget. Not Hannah.’

‘No, I don’t forget.’ Her eyes glinted with satisfaction. ‘Actually, Hannah seems like a nice woman.’

‘High praise, huh?’

‘I don’t mean to sound patronising. She told me Dad taught her all she knows about detective work. She admired him.’

‘So, did I.’

A sigh. ‘Suppose I was too hard on him.’

Daniel had waited half a lifetime for that admission. She’d shared her mother’s fury at Ben Kind’s desertion. He’d walked out on all three of them and moved up to the Lake District to make a new life with a young woman. For years Louise refused to refer to her by name: she was never Cheryl, only the Blonde Bitch.

‘So, you and Hannah had a chat?’

‘Until we were interrupted by a contretemps. She was looking good, actually. Very svelte.’ Louise paused before adding, ‘She asked after you.’

‘Yeah?’ He wanted to sound casual, but knew he’d failed.

‘She hadn’t heard you were back in Britain. It seemed to come as a shock. Pleasant one, though.’

Better make it clear that he remembered Hannah wasn’t available.

‘I must visit Marc Amos’s bookshop. See if he has any local stuff about De Quincey.’

‘He was there too. When I spotted him, he was ogling one of the waitresses.’

‘Marc is a decent guy.’

Daniel had never broken up anyone else’s relationship, and he didn’t mean to start now. He was attracted to Hannah Scarlett, for reasons he couldn’t fully explain, even to himself. But she was out of bounds.

‘Stuart spends a lot of money with Amos Books. He
must be one of Marc’s best customers. Especially since that man Saffell died.’

‘Saffell?’

‘The book collector, the man who died in the fire at Ullswater. I mentioned it on the way up the M6, weren’t you listening? It all sounds very mysterious, and I know how you love a mystery.’

He scarcely remembered. After flight delays on the way back from Seattle, he’d been pretty much out of it. Happy to let her conversation wash over him.

‘Reading between the lines of the newspaper coverage, the fire didn’t start by accident. If an arsonist killed Saffell, his wife must be a suspect. She certainly has a temper.’

Daniel frowned. ‘How do you know?’

‘She showed up at the party. Stuart invited her as a matter of courtesy, he’s known her for years. He didn’t seriously expect her to come. Let alone cause a scene.’

‘What happened?’

‘She and I were talking to Arlo Denstone.’

‘You met Arlo?’

‘Stuart introduced us. He’s dying to meet you, now you’re back in England.’

‘I just watched a recording of him on TV. Not only an evangelist for De Quincey, but quite a charmer as well.’

‘He’s an intense guy. Intelligent, a bit hyper. Might dabble in the odd bit of opium-eating himself, for all I know.’