Martin Edwards - The Serpent Pool

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?’