“I’ll be the one in trouble if the press gets wind of this, not you,” Oaten said. “As long as you understand that.”
The academic nodded and leaned closer. “Fire away.”
“Right.” The chief inspector lowered her voice. “I imagine you’ll have heard about the murders of the priest in Kilburn and the old lady in Chelmsford.”
Lizzie Everhead looked blank. “No, I don’t read the papers or listen to the news. Radio 3 is my cup of…” She glanced down at the table. “…hot water.” She saw how serious Oaten’s expression was. “Sorry. Tell me.”
So the D.C.I. did, leaving out only one detail. There was a strange kind of gratification in seeing the face of the distinguished scholar of violent tragedy go paler than a sheet when confronted with real-life violence.
“How utterly awful,” Lizzie said, taking an ironed handkerchief from her bag and dabbing her lips. “Unbelievable.”
“There’s more,” Karen said, and told her about the quotations that had been found in the bodies.
The academic sat back and fanned her face with the tissue. “I’m…I’m speechless. A very…a very unusual condition for me, I can tell you.” She drank from her cup and dabbed her lips again. “Lines from Webster’s White Devil? Hidden in the mouth and the…” She left the sentence unfinished. “I’m…I’m at a loss.”
Karen Oaten leaned even closer, her face more composed than it had been when she’d described the bodies. “Lizzie, you have to think. Is there any reason why the murderer would have left those particular lines from that particular play?”
Lizzie Everhead sat perfectly still for several minutes before she spoke. “Are you familiar with the concept of revenge, Karen?”
“I have run into it occasionally in my line of work,” Oaten replied dryly.
“No, I’m talking about revenge as in revenge tragedy. For the playwrights and audiences of the early seventeenth century, revenge wasn’t just a personal motivation or a way of restoring family honor. It was much more than that. It was a recasting of the traditional concept of justice, the Old Testament dictum of an eye for an eye and-”
“A tooth for a tooth,” Karen completed. “I remember that from religious studies at school.”
“Mmm,” Lizzie Everhead acknowledged. “You see, it was a time when people were beginning to doubt the old certainties. Bear in mind that a Catholic king, the Scottish James VI, had been foisted on England after the death of the Protestant Good Queen Bess. And James’s son Charles drove the country to division and ended up by paying with his head. So we can see in revenge tragedy the first shoots of revolutionary thinking-that the King is not all-powerful and that a different kind of justice, one more attuned to free-thinking human beings, might apply.”
Karen Oaten looked confused. “What’s that got to do with the murders?”
“Well, for one thing, you said both the victims were Catholics.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m interested by that. You see, Jacobean tragedy tended to use foreign settings such as Italy and Spain. Catholic countries that were regarded as having more bloodthirsty customs, particularly concerning personal and family honor.”
“I understand there were quite a few plays of this kind. Why has the killer or killers chosen The White Devil?”
Lizzie gave an impatient smile. “I was coming to that. White Devils are hypocrites, people who hide their true base nature beneath a layer of respectability. Could that apply to either of your victims? It sounds like the priest was a prime example of a White Devil.”
Karen nodded. “We’re looking into the ex-schoolteacher, too.”
“Maybe she was harsh. Or maybe she had some family secret.”
“Maybe,” Karen said noncommittally. “What about the lines themselves?”
“Right. ‘What a mockery hath death made of thee.’ That is spoken by Flamineo the revenger, when he sees the ghost of his dead master, Brachiano. Flamineo himself is soon punished for his misdeeds. He describes his life as ‘a black charnel,’ that is, if you like, a mortuary. The point is, sin is repaid by death. There’s a strong parallel with the Catholic vision of damnation, of eternal suffering in Hell.”
“You mean for the person who seeks revenge?” Oaten said, her forehead furrowed. “As if the killer knows he’s going to die and suffer torment.”
“Exactly. I would guess that he or-I suppose there’s at least a small possibility-she was brought up a Catholic.”
The chief inspector made a note. “What about the other line-‘Only persuade him teach the way to death; let him die first’?”
Lizzie stroked her chin with long fingers. “That is spoken by Zanche, the handmaid of Vittoria, Flamineo’s sister. It’s probably fair to say that the latter pair are the greatest of the White Devils alluded to by the title. Vittoria is little more than a high-class whore who connives in the murder of both her husbands. Here, she and Flamineo, the second husband Brachiano’s supposedly loyal servant, are plotting against each other, despite the fact that they supposedly love each other.”
“So sin outweighs even family ties?”
The academic nodded. “Yes. But I can’t take it any further than that. Unless the dead woman had a husband who predeceased her.”
Karen shook her head. “She had a brother, though.”
Lizzie caught her eye. “Interesting. There’s a strong undercurrent of incest in The White Devil, as in many plays of the time.”
“How is that going to help me catch the killer?”
“I can’t say. But it’s certainly possible that incest is an important element in this whole ghastly affair… oh!” The doctor sat back in her chair and unraveled her legs. “How absolutely extraordinary!”
“What?” Karen said, her curiosity piqued.
Lizzie Everhead held up the delicate fingers of her left hand, as if she had plucked something out of the air. “I’ll have to check the texts, but there’s a contemporary crime novelist who’s written a series set in the 1620s. How very strange.”
“What?” the chief inspector said in exasperation.
“Well, one of my other fields of expertise is crime fiction,” Lizzie said, looking back at Karen. “This writer-his name is Matt Stone-has a detective-hero called Sir Tertius Greville. I’m almost certain there’s a murder similar to your priest’s in one of the books, and the removal of an arm in another.”
Karen Oaten stood up. She’d already bought Blood, Lust and Gender, Dr. Everhead’s study of revenge tragedy. “Thanks very much for your help,” she said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the crime section is?”
The academic nodded. “I’ll show you the way,” she said with a crooked smile.
14
Dr. Bernard Keane looked at his gold Cartier watch. It was nearly two-thirty. He seldom allowed his Saturday clinic to overrun, as he liked to spend the afternoon with his horses, but in this patient’s case he’d been prepared to make an exception. The man’s address in Docklands was exclusive. He knew a politician with a flat in the renovated building-the man, a terrible snob if truth be told-had whispered to him that he’d paid more than two million for it. So Mr. John Webster was obviously a major player and a welcome addition to his list. He’d understood fully his prospective patient’s request for complete privacy-in particular, that his address shouldn’t be entered into the practice records.
The doctor got up from his mahogany desk and opened the gauze curtains. Harley Street. When he’d started off as a newly qualified general practitioner in the run-down East End, he’d never imagined that he would achieve his ambition. The increase in demand for slimming therapies-the public’s absurd desire for the perfect body-had enabled him to specialize in that area. He had developed his own treatment, cobbled together from various well-known books, and, to his amazement, it had worked-no doubt because he stressed discipline. The simple fact was that people responded well to discipline, even when they had to apply it themselves.
The bell rang. Dr. Keane went to answer the door himself. He’d let his petite but well-stacked receptionist, Marianne, leave. It wouldn’t be long before he had her over his desk, as he’d done with all her predecessors. There was an underlying coarseness to her that he knew he could manipulate.