The Serpent Pool by Martin Edwards Read Free Book Online

could not.
    January the first, a perfect day to start writing his newbook. 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 murderinto 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?