Edward Kane and The Voice of the Spider. Chapter 2: And in the Middle of that Circle

The Cockney manservant turned a sizzling sausage with a long-pronged fork. ‘Thing is – that Lady Carmunnock – she weren’t born rich. At least, that’s what they say.’

‘Well, my friend, she is now…’

‘She was the old Lord’s nurse. After his wife died, the old bloke went gaga and the nurse got her hooks into him. Got the old bloke to marry her.’

Kane shook his head: ‘Best not to engage in idle tittle-tattle, Mr Horse.’

Despite the admonition, Horse pressed on: ‘“No breeding”, as the toffs say. He imitated an upper-class accent (badly): “No breeding, moi dear”. Common as you and me.’ The manservant glanced over at his master and revised his comment: ‘Well, as common as me, anyway, sir’

‘Then we should toast her good fortune – since she, my friend, will be the one paying our bill.’

Horse grinned and pointed the fork in the direction of his master: ‘You got me there, sir. Got me there. That old woman – she got bags of money. The Carmunnocks got all them factories, ain’t they. Glass factories.’ He shepherded three fat sausages onto a plate and carried it over to the table.

Horse nodded towards the sausages: ‘There you go, Mr K – three sizzling bags of mystery.’

‘The only mystery, Mr Horse, is what this whole case is going to be about.’ He nodded towards the plate: ‘Now, my good man, could I trouble you for a fork?’

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Mystery indeed, thought Kane as he waited in the offices of the solicitors in Heriot Row. The letter of instruction – Messrs Blane and Urquhart present compliments to Mr Kane in the above matter in which they act on behalf of the pursuer – had been perfectly formal but discreet to the point of obscuring any real information. His musing was interrupted by a friendly voice: ‘Mr Kane?’

The Advocate stood up: ‘Mr Blane.’

Each gave a little bow. The solicitor smiled: ‘I apologise for keeping you waiting. Lady Carmunnock can be very…very particular.’

‘I quite understand.’

The Advocate was led into a large meeting room. Beside the great table, sat in her bath-chair was the ancient Lady, a nurse standing by her side. The Lady looked up: ‘Ah – it is the under-fed Advocate. You are late, sir!’

Kane – who had been waiting to be seen for a good ten minutes past the appointed time – forced a smile: ‘I would suggest that I have been waiting outside at your ladyship’s pleasure…’. She scrunched up her already-wrinkled face and turned to her solicitor: ‘What did he say, Stephen? He’s talking in riddles.’ The solicitor leaned into the client: ‘It was not his fault, my Lady. We required him to wait while you were made… comfortable.’ The Lady nodded. ‘So you say…’. She pointed over to the young Advocate: ‘Can we get him something to eat? Look at him. Still scrawny….’

There followed a good few minutes where the young Advocate required to refuse a plate of sandwiches, a round of biscuits, a cup of tea and pinch of snuff before they could get down to business. The Lady told her tale with a sigh in her voice:

‘I was not born a lady. You have probably heard that from the wagging tongues of Edinburgh’. (In fact, Kane recalled it from the wagging tongue of his Cockney manservant at breakfast time) ‘At first, I was my husband’s nurse. And then his wife passed away. And I suppose…’ (at this point, she gave a croaky little chuckle) ‘…I suppose he just needed someone to keep the bed warm. And I was happy to do that. Married in secret at the little parish church in Carmunnock. And that was that.’

The lady in the chair was lost in reverie now, smiling to herself in happy memory. Then, a change of mood and tone: ‘We were happy, yes. But I always felt that was something lacking in the house…’. Was she blushing? Impossible to tell under the heavy, heavy layers of make-up plastered on a granite face. ‘A child.’ She nodded to herself: ‘Yes, a child. You see, by the time that we were able to marry, I was…I was beyond…I hesitate to be indelicate…I was beyond child-bearing years.’ She paused for a moment, then looked puzzled. She looked over to her solicitor: ‘I have quite lost my train of thought, Stephen – what was I talking about?’

The solicitor leaned over: ‘I imagine, Lady Carmunnock, that you were coming to the part about the spider…’

The Advocate gave an inward sigh. The tale was already mysterious enough without the sudden introduction of an eight-legged creature…

The old lady nodded: ‘Yes, yes – thank you. You, see, Mr Kane, when I was ten years old…’

This time, Kane gave an inward groan. This lady was as old as the hills, and now we were going back to her childhood.

‘…as I said earlier, I did not come from money. Schooling was an intermittent affair for me. But one day I recall in particular. It was that time of day when the children were let out into the open air, so that they could relieve themselves and whatnot. I looked over the schoolyard, and a crowd of boys had formed a large circle with something happening in the middle. I slipped through the crowd to see what it was.’ She gave a mirthful little croak: ‘Yes – I was always an impetuous child, Mr Kane.’ She resumed her narrative: ‘And when I got to the front of the crowd, I could see what the event was. One of the older boys had taken a piece of chalk and he had drawn a circle on the ground. And in the middle of that chalk circle, there stood a little spider. Standing still. I asked one of the other boys what was happening, and he said: “Billy has drawn a circle around the spider. If the spider stays inside the circle until the school bell rings, then the spider will live. If the spider walks outside the circle before the bell rings, then Billy will kill it.”

Edward Kane, Advocate listened, tapping his finger against his lip. Strange that a tale about a schoolchild and a spider – a story that must have happened (what?) over seventy years ago should command his attention so.

The lady croaked on: ‘And so we waited. And waited. For what seemed like a very long time. And – finally – the master rang the school bell. And the spider had remained inside the circle.’ It seemed to Kane that the old lady gave a sigh of relief at this point. ‘I turned to the boy next to me and said: “We did it. The spider is safe.” But the boy just laughed and nodded towards the circle of chalk. And there was Billy. Killing the spider with the brick. Smashing the brick down – I can see it now – four times, until that pitiful little creature was nothing more than a dirty smudge on the ground.’

At this point, the lady began to sob. Silent tears ran down her face. The solicitor handed her a handkerchief and she gave a whispered ‘thank you’. She dabbed her eyes: ‘All I could think was “That poor, poor spider. Helpless and alone in a stupid and cruel world. A helpless creature with no one to speak for it. And I thought to myself “One day…one day, I will be…the voice of the spider…”’

Tomorrow in The Scotsman: The Creature Had Taken a Different Form

Edward Kane and Mr Horse: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories. Available from Amazon and Kindle