Serpent in the Heather

by Kay Kenyon

  “And what then?”

  “Then the Crown’s prosecutor will be given all the facts and will make a judgment about whether a conviction of Lady Ellesmere is likely. If the case will not go to trial, then we will remain silent. All of us.”

  She thought she knew what the government would make of Powell’s verbal confession and her theory on the alignments of the murders. She understood at one level, the logical one. “But what about justice?” she said. What had it all been for, then?

  “Two killers suffered and are dead. An old woman has lost her son and is dying of cancer. Sometimes that’s what justice looks like.”

  She turned away, murmuring, “How can you stand this job?”

  “It’s the best there is, Kim. You’ll remember that after a good night’s sleep.”

  They went in.

  40

  PENGEYLAN, WALES

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 30. The North Wales Police had taken over the dining room of the hotel for its inquiry. As Kim came down the stairs with Elsa, she saw that Martin and Awbrey were seated in the vestibule, waiting their turn. She smiled at Martin and he gave her a thumbs-up. He had nearly died but seemed remarkably cheerful about it.

  Alice sat there too, prepared to tell what she saw, for whatever the police would make of it. They exchanged looks. Her friend’s characteristic smirk and slow, eloquent nod were enormously heartening.

  The door opened and a police officer with a notepad came out, looking flustered. He closed the door behind him and took a position next to it.

  After a few minutes, Julian opened the door and motioned for Kim to come in.

  Waiting inside, sitting behind a large table, was the man from the North Wales Police, Chief Constable Stanley Doyle, a man so tall he looked folded over, sitting in his chair. His muttonchop sideburns made his long face even narrower.

  In a black uniform with gold braid, Doyle looked very official and no happier than he had been the night before to find a local castle overrun with SIS agents and a peer of the realm dead. Kim nodded to Doyle. “Chief Constable.”

  He half-rose to greet her as Julian took the chair beside him.

  Doyle invited her to sit in a straight-backed chair facing the table. “This is a preliminary inquiry, Miss Tavistock. You’ll be asked to give further evidence to the National Task Force. For now, we want to sort out a few facts in the death of Lord Ellesmere and the kidnapping of Martin Lister. I believe you can help us do that.”

  “Yes. I expect so.”

  “Agent Tavistock here has filled us in on the larger issues of a series of murders on the Continent. We won’t touch on that side of things.”

  It was so strange to see Julian there in his new role. She felt three years of doubt and hostility crumbling away, leaving her with a father she would have to get to know all over again. Thank God.

  The Chief Constable sat back in his chair. “You may notice that we do not have someone here to take down the testimony in writing. If you find that unusual, rest assured that I do as well. But Mr. Tavistock”—here he looked at Julian with undisguised resentment—“has made it clear that we will proceed in secrecy.”

  He fixed Kim with a stare he must have perfected in long years of subduing police underlings. “That being the case, you are also sworn to secrecy; the things that you know of this case, and what is discussed here, unless to the proper authorities.” He raised an eyebrow, letting her know she could speak.

  “Yes sir, I know. That is, I swear I won’t divulge anything.”

  Voyle had obviously been given to know in no uncertain terms who was in charge, and he was still sputtering over it. She could imagine that Julian had used words like “the national interest” and “the Crown’s prerogative.” Looking over at Julian, she found him completely relaxed, as though they were at tea.

  The Chief Constable began. “I understand you were undercover at Sulcliffe Castle, following a lead that Lady Ellesmere had transferred funds to the German Nazi Party. Funds that had found their way into an assassination conspiracy.”

  She only nodded, not having been asked a question that required more. Julian had warned her to be circumspect and not appear to hold opinions. The local police would be understandably skeptical of Coslett complicity and for a few hours more would have jurisdiction, or a semblance of it: an attempted murder and a suicide in their constabulary.

  “Pick a thread and lead us into this maze, Miss Tavistock.”

  “Well. For starters, Lloyd Nichols.”

  She described how the day before, Lady Ellesmere had come to her, saying that a newspaper reporter had accused her of false pretenses in her reporting assignment, claiming that she worked for the intelligence service. Julian then joined in, relating how SIS had arranged for Kim to take Lloyd Nichols’ place to write an article about Ancient Light for the London Register.

  Voyle glanced at Julian with some satisfaction, saying, “Things not as hush-hush with your lot as you might wish, then.”

  Unperturbed, Julian made an almost imperceptible nod. She was sure Nichols would receive a stiff interrogation about how he’d penetrated the operation.

  Kim went on. “Lady Ellesmere acted outraged and sent me to pack. Powell came to see me in my room. He was agitated, and told me that Martin—who he knew had run away from our home in Uxley—was being held prisoner in a cabin in the woods. He said he would help me elude his mother so that if I could manage it, I could save him. I don’t think he cared about consequences at that point. He seemed to have quite given up.”

  She glanced at Julian, to see if she had overstepped in offering an opinion about Powell’s emotional state. He gave her a reassuring smile.

  “I believe that Verhoeven heard about my identity and decided to escape by boat and, before that, to kill one last time. Powell—that is, Lord Ellesmere admitted to me that his mother was behind the idea of gathering spiritual strength from the . . . spilling of blood.”

  Voyle fixed her with a look of distaste. “The spilling of blood.”

  “As in blood sacrifice, I suppose you would call it.”

  “Let us just call it murder for now, shall we?”

  “But it goes to motive.” She saw Julian’s gaze drop to his lap. She must be circumspect.

  “I’m sure that you have your theories, Miss Tavistock. However, the facts will be decidedly more helpful.” He did not like to think of a prominent family being involved. Still less that the details were sensational. “Why would Lord Ellesmere admit involvement to you when you hadn’t confronted him with evidence?”

  “Well. It’s just a theory. . . .”

  She got a nod from Voyle.

  “I think he saw his involvement in the murders as a travesty. Somehow, he had discovered that there had never been a possibility for him to have a Talent. Perhaps Verhoeven told him. That would mean that everything he had done would have been for nothing. And so his life was over from that moment.”

  She led them through the events of the previous evening: Powell’s warning of Verhoeven’s ability to discern an aura when looking at Talents, and therefore revealing how the slain youngsters had been singled out—as well as the danger she was in with any attempt to hide from the man. She went on to recount her disabling of her driver, Idelle Coslett’s help in finding the cabin, and the freeing of Martin.

  Voyle let her talk now without interruption. She began to feel that she had worn him down with her unspooling of the facts.

  When it came time to talk about the cove, she had decided that she would obey orders. It felt wrong, even cowardly. A part of her wished for punishment, but whether she should have to pay for murder or mercy, she didn’t know.

  When she finished that piece of her tale, Julian looked satisfied but not, of course, relieved. He had a lifetime’s practice in not revealing his feelings, both as a member of his class and also as an SIS officer. It helped immeasurably with deception, not to feel anything. If you didn’t feel it, you couldn’t show it. Unfortunately for her, she must pretend to
the utmost.

  The Chief Constable did become stuck on the subject of how a German boat could come into the cove in the heavy surf. She responded that it was very dark, and she didn’t know how close the boat had actually come. When she heard a shot fired, she ran.

  Voyle nodded as though he could well imagine her running at the sound of gunfire. “If he had been taken alive, he could have confirmed Lord Ellesmere’s involvement and that of the dowager baroness,” he said with a deep sigh. “As it is . . . the evidence against them so far is merely your claim of a verbal confession.” Verhoeven also had admitted his crimes, something she could not relay. But it suffered from the same downside. In legal terms, the confessions were hearsay. Lady Ellesmere could be tied to the murder of Flory Soames, if Idelle agreed to testify and if the Crown would consider her a reliable witness.

  This wasn’t a trial. The Wales police, at least this officer, was being accorded the courtesy of a reasonably full discovery of the facts. She had the satisfaction of being able to tell him. Also the annoyance of bearing his skepticism.

  But she had one more piece, and it was a doozy.

  To tie it all together, the whole sordid plan, Kim needed a map of England.

  Julian had found a sizeable map somewhere. An agent of the Office should be able to find a map of Great Britain, even in Pengeylan, Wales, on a Sunday, and indeed he had. She asked him to unfurl the map.

  “With your indulgence, Chief Constable,” Julian said. “We have an exercise we think you should see.”

  Voyle waved his permission, and Julian brought forward a tall oriental screen that had partitioned off the entrance to the kitchen from the dining room. He hung up the map with pins. Finishing this, he affixed white squares of paper on the five crime sites where young people had been slain or attacked.

  While he did this, Kim said, “If you don’t mind, I need a yardstick. Perhaps the proprietor or his wife may have one.”

  Voyle went to the door, conferring for a moment with the constable, then returned to his seat.

  Kim took Powell Coslett’s book, Earth Powers, out of her handbag. She tore out one of the front pages, the Sulcliffe emblem.

  Voyle frowned at the map of Britain with its paper squares. “We know where the crime sites are. The sites were random, and the victims selected as opportunity provided.”

  “Except,” Kim said, “they’re all connected with Sulcliffe Castle.”

  With barely concealed sarcasm, Voyle said, “How, if you don’t mind saying?”

  In answer, Kim placed the shield design, with its castle and sword points on the map in the Irish Sea. She pinned it up so that it hung askew, swords pointed from Wales to Kent.

  A knock at the door, and the constable came in, bearing a cane. “They didn’t have a ruler. But this is pretty straight.”

  Kim took the cane, a well-crafted one of polished wood with a hawk’s head on the top. Julian held one end of the cane on the location of Sulcliffe Castle near Pengeylan. Kim moved the other end of the cane until its length passed through the town of Ely near the River Ouse in Cambridgeshire. Removing a pen from her pocket, she held the cane along this tangent and drew a line.

  Shifting the cane south, she drew another line through the white square at Stourbridge in the West Midlands all the way to the one in London. Moving the cane so the line angled further south, she lined up Portsmouth and Avebury, drawing another line.

  “They all connect in a straight line to Sulcliffe,” she finished. “And they’re the same angles from Sulcliffe as the lines formed by the swords in the Coslett emblem.”

  She looked at Voyle. While she hoped for a flicker of police interest, she steeled herself for disbelief.

  “Well,” Voyle said, not unkindly, “how long poring over a map did it take you to come up with this?”

  “About five minutes after I found the radio receiver hidden in the window seat in Powell’s room. Once I was willing to concede the high possibility of his guilt, I went with my hunch.”

  The awful events of the summer might well take on the name the “ley line murders.” Ley lines, a term that she learned from Julian, that was coined over a decade before when someone thought, probably mistakenly, that such track lines were used by Neolithic peoples as routes to important centers. But by whatever name, the lines held import to Dorothea Coslett, and she had persuaded her son that they would be his salvation. They must have known that if they spilled blood at the places like ancient cairns, standing stones, and barrows, it would have made groups involved with earth mysteries more suspect. But as lines connected with Sulcliffe, lines that they kept secret, they could exploit ancient power without drawing attention to themselves.

  Voyle rose to inspect the map more closely. He turned a questioning look at Julian.

  Julian gestured to the map as though to say, It’s all there, take a good look. After a time Voyle straightened and looked at Kim with a mixture of perplexity and revelation. “By God,” he muttered. Then: “Unfortunately, it will never hold up in court.” He went on. “From your acquaintance with Lady Ellesmere, what would you say the chances are that, confronted with this, she might confess?”

  “She would never confess. In her view, police investigators would not have spiritual authority or understanding. Especially commoners.”

  A knock at the door. The constable came in. “Scotland Yard special unit just arrived, sir.” Receiving a nod from his superior, he left, closing the door behind him.

  Voyle glanced out the parlor window where several cars had pulled up. “I’m afraid we’ll have to go through it all one more time, Miss Tavistock.”

  Julian stood. “I have to demur, Chief Constable. We will not bring anyone else into the picture until the Foreign Office approves. That briefing comes next, in London.”

  “What do you expect me to tell the task force? It’s their bailiwick.”

  “Actually, it’s ours.” He fixed Voyle with an expression devoid of ambiguity. “What you have heard this morning, you did not hear. If word of some aspects of the Coslett involvement comes up—aside from the assassin’s taking up a hiding place on the estate, which could well have happened without Coslett knowledge—you will deny it.”

  The front door of the lobby slammed. Voices outside the door.

  “Please refer their questions to me,” Julian said. “Chief Constable, it has been a pleasure to meet you.” He extended his hand, and despite his misgivings, Voyle shook it.

  Constable Voyle turned to Kim. His stern face softened with a small smile. “If you get sick of the intelligence service, Miss Tavistock, and want honest work, give me a call.”

  As Kim and Voyle shook hands, the door opened. Three men and a woman entered, a few carrying briefcases. A man in a good suit with a poppy in his buttonhole looked at Voyle.

  “Well,” he said. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

  Voyle turned to Julian. “May I present Julian Tavistock, with His Majesty’s Government.”

  Kim and Alice huddled over their tea on the hotel’s screened-in porch. It had taken a full pot of Darjeeling, but Alice had finally accepted that Kim could not say what precisely she had learned during her stay at the castle. Reading between the lines, she concluded that the Cosletts would “go free,” as she put it, though one of them had already paid with his life.

  “What happens to the dowager,” Kim said, “is a decision London will make.”

  Nor was the discussion of the Dutchman’s end more satisfying. Kim relayed her pursuit of Verhoeven down to the beach and how the Germans had shot him when they realized he could not be extracted. It was the story she’d been ordered to tell and, truthfully, she didn’t want to talk about what really happened.

  “Fancy your father being one of us!” Alice was saying. “I’m so happy for you, Kim. Now when you talk politics at table, you can just pretend to argue.” She shook her head. “He was very good indeed at playing the role, wasn’t he.”

  “Yes.” Completely convincing, she thought with
some irritation. “So, how will we ever keep all the secrets straight?”

  Alice leaned over the table. “We shall. And it will be jolly fun, too.” She sat back. “I imagine you’re gaining quite a reputation for being the golden girl. Apprehending the bad guys in two big operations in under six months.”

  “You helped. Seeing the murder of Flory Soames.”

  “Well, a magistrate will never hear that piece of evidence.”

  There was so much the courts might never hear. “It brought an SIS team to my rescue, though.”

  “Kim.” Alice fixed her with look. “You caught Verhoeven without any help from them at all.”

  “But I might have needed them. And your view of the baroness killing the girl—that trauma view will be known to the Crown. Some people will at least understand that she murdered a child.”

  Alice stared at the dregs of her tea, turning serious. “Wish I could read tea leaves. Now, that’s a Talent I’d like to have.”

  In the ensuing quiet, Kim murmured, “You spoke to James.”

  “Indeed I did.” More silence.

  “It didn’t go well, then.”

  Alice met her gaze. “Right-o. It did not. He tried to convince me I was mistaken. When that failed, he drew on shame and scripture.”

  “Oh, no—”

  “And then apologized, actually. Hearing that helped, but it’s hard to forget what he did say. I mean, when you bring God in on it . . .” She shook her head. “James has a lot to think about, and I left him to it.”

  “Alice, I’m sorry. I thought that maybe . . .” She trailed off, wondering if she had been confident in James, sure that he would finally accept the reality of Talents. That he would accept Alice in a more profound way than either of them had previously allowed.

  “Well. It’s a relief to have told him. The subject had been festering like a boil, so I ought to have had it out with him long ago. Funny. When the worst happens, sometimes it’s not as bad as you thought.” She sighed. “Maybe he’ll change his tune when he figures out I no longer care what he thinks.”