The Song of the Siren

“You are wrong,” I cried. “That was not how it happened. He was a spy. He did not come here for me. He came to spy against the Jacobites.”

“He came because of you. That was his excuse for coming. He came for you.”

“It is not true. He worked here with a nursery governess in this household. He was caught.... There were papers on him that proved him to be a spy.”

She shook her head. “I know my son. He was like his father. He would pursue what he wanted until it was his. He wanted you and he came here to get you and Hessenfield was jealous. He is hard and a ruthless man. He killed him. I heard about it. I was told that it was a crime passionnel.”

“You are wrong ... wrong....”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It is the end,” she said. “Soon for me and for you.

You must die. I knew that there was something fatalistic about you when I met you in that house. Beauty such as yours has something evil in it. It is not a gift from God but from the devil.”

She was looking at me strangely, her eyes glittering. She is mad, I thought. The death of Matt has unhinged her mind.

“You are like the legendary mermaid who sits on the rock singing and luring mariners to come to her, and to go to her is certain death, jt is ... the song of the siren.

Come to me and I will be all to you that you most desire. That is the song. But it is not so. You are luring them to death.”

“This is nonsense, Mistress Pilkington.”

She shook her head. “Beau died because of you. But for you he would not have gone down to Eversleigh. He would not have found that woman he was blackmailing. He would have been alive today. I might have been married to him. Matt would be here. But you came with your strange wild beauty. It was more than your fortune he wanted.

So he pursued you and found not a beautiful bride and a fortune, but death. Then Matt, he heard your song too. He was lured into the rocks of destiny. And where did it lead? To death in the Seine. My son ... my darling son ... And your husband-what unhappiness have you brought to him? Even your present lover, Hessenfield, has not escaped. He thought he was clever. He thought he was in command ... but Death is waiting for him now....”

“I must ask you to go,” I said. “I have much to do.”

“Yes, make a shroud for your lover. Make one for yourself. .. and for me....”

I felt sick with horror, for I knew that she was telling the truth.

She went on: “I planned to destroy you. It is better that no others should suffer through you. Three men all dead ... and all because of you-although I do not blame you for Beau. You see, you are disaster. You are the siren. Even involuntarily you deal death. You have to go. There is no way for it. I contrived the meeting. I disguised myself for fear you should remember me. But we met only once and I was one of the best actresses on the London stage. I listened to all I could of those long ago poison trials. I talked to people who remembered ... and I decided what I should do. I did not believe that there could be poisons which could be transmitted through the skin.

But there are ? ? ? there are.... And if you know where to go for them and if you are Prepared to pay ... So I went and I paid and I had the gloves made. Lord Hessenfield has been more virulently attacked. He must have worn the gloves I sent him for a long time.

You are less so. And I even less. But we are all doomed. I no less than you, although mine will be a more lingering death. I have the poison in my blood just as you have.... You see, I have destroyed the siren and my son’s murderers, but in doing so I have destroyed myself.”

I stood up uncertainly. These were the ravings of a mad woman.

I must get rid of her. I must get back to Hessenfield. I must call the doctors and tell them what this woman had told me.

I left her. I heard her walk out unsteadily behind me.

I went up to the bedroom Hessenfield was lying white and still on his bed ... unnaturally still.

I knew that he was dead.

Till then I had not believed her. I had told myself that she was lying about the poison. Such things might have happened thirty years ago but they could not happen now. But I had heard such strange stories of those long ago poisonings and the subtleties of the Italian art of producing deadly substances which could attack in many different ways. There were still Italian poisoners in Paris, still men who worked out their secrets in dark places and grew rich on them.

I was bewildered. It was too much to grasp. All that time Beau had been lying under the soil near Enderby. And Leigh, whom I had looked on as my father, had buried him; my mother was involved too, and Matt was Beau’s son.

I could not believe it. And yet everything that had happened clothed it with reasonable truth.

Beau ... dead all those years. Matt and I together. No wonder I was drawn to him.

There was a grain of comfort in that. It had not been such a wild whim.”