Dark Mirror (29 page)

‘Any ideas?’

‘I’d like to search his office at the university.’

‘We’ll get a warrant in the morning.’

‘I’d rather tonight, before he has a chance to remove anything. He’s forewarned now.’

‘Okay. You go and see to it. I’ll keep going with him.’

It was almost eleven that night before Kathy delivered Tony da Silva back to his front door. Before he could get his key in the lock it was opened by his wife, who said not a word as he trudged in. From the look on her face Kathy guessed that his evening of interrogation had only just begun.

She continued on into the centre of the city, to the Strand campus of the university, where she located the night security staff and presented her warrant. After making a couple of phone calls, one of the guards escorted her to the Department of European Literature, and the office of Dr da Silva.

‘Don’t need me, do you?’ he said, switching on the lights. ‘I’ve got rounds to make, be back in an hour.’

‘Fine.’ She put on latex gloves and looked around.

She saw it straight away. Among the rank of copies of da Silva’s biography of Rossetti, there was one more worn and battered than the rest. She laid it on the desk and opened it at the title page. There, in the rather florid script she knew from her own copy, she saw a dedication:

To M.
He sees the beauty
Sun hath not looked upon,
And tastes the fountain
Unutterably deep . . .
Tony da Silva

The rest of the book was annotated with comments in another hand—Marion’s. Kathy closed the book and slid it into one of the plastic bags she’d brought.

It took her longer to find them, but when she did come across it, tucked into a hanger of one of his filing cabinets, she discovered he’d made things easy for her by keeping everything together in a single buff envelope. When she opened it and tipped out its contents, the first thing that slid into view was the picture of Madeleine Smith. The buzz of recognition was followed by a rising excitement as Kathy began to scan the documents that followed out of the envelope. There were photocopies of entries from a diary, written in a flowing copperplate style and dated from the late 1850s through to 1869. There was also a sheaf of colour scans of portrait paintings of Pre-Raphaelite women and various other reference notes and photocopies. Kathy spread these out and came to the last item, some pages clipped together, which seemed to be the draft of part of an essay or academic paper. The top page was numbered four, the earlier pages apparently missing, but her heart gave a leap when she read the italic header at the top of each sheet. It said,
Murder, literal and phenomenal, in the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti—Marion Summers
.

already well aware of Madeleine Smith, having followed her trial for murder at the time that he was working with Morris and Jones on the Oxford Union project, where he was overheard stating that she would never be hanged because she was a ‘stunner’,
¹³
and they met for the first time not long after she arrived in London with her
brother Jack in 1858.
¹⁴
It is the author’s contention that he painted her portrait no less than nine times during the following two years. The models for these pictures have been variously identified as Jane Burden,
¹⁵
Annie Miller,
¹⁶
and ‘Unknown’,
¹⁷
as well as, confusingly, Ellen Smith,
¹⁸
a ‘laundress of uncertain virtue’
¹⁹
who sat for a number of other paintings by Rossetti. However an overwhelming case can be made for Madeleine Smith as the subject of all these nine portraits, and is set out in a separate paper by the author.
²⁰
Guenevere (1859), fig. 3, in particular bears a striking resemblance to a contemporary photograph of Madeleine Smith, fig. 4.

It is also now clear that Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Madeleine Smith became lovers during this period. The crucial evidence for this and other events to be discussed in this paper is provided in the diary of Henry Haverlock, an artist on the periphery of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and friend of Jack Smith. This diary was discovered recently by the author, hidden in a London archive.
²¹

(note: expand on predatory nature of R’s relationships with his models—also lover of Jane Burden at this time)

According to Haverlock,
²²
the affair came to an end when Elizabeth Siddal, Rossetti’s former mistress, whose whereabouts are unknown during this period, reappeared, apparently on the point of death, and ‘manipulated’
²³
him into fulfilling his earlier promise to marry her. Soon after this was accomplished, Madeleine Smith married George Wardle, becoming Lena Wardle.

The circumstances of the married life of Dante and Lizzie Rossetti are well known: the late-term miscarriage of a child in 1861, Lizzie’s depression and increasing use of laudanum, and finally her death in February 1862. There has always been speculation about the coroner’s verdict of accidental death as a result of an overdose of laudanum.
²⁴
The couple had gone out to dinner with the poet Swinburne, who said that she had been in good spirits. When they got home Lizzie went to bed, but Rossetti left again, ostensibly to
work, though it was rumoured that he went to visit a lover. When he returned at half past eleven he claimed that she was in a deep sleep, with a suicide note pinned to her nightgown, and that he was unable to wake her. He then removed the note, alerted his landlady and a neighbour, and sent for a doctor who lived nearby. The doctor pumped out Lizzie’s stomach, but was unable to revive her. Other doctors were called, and Rossetti then walked to the home of his friend Ford Maddox Brown in Kentish Town and showed him the note, which they burnt. They both returned to Blackfriars in time to witness Lizzie’s death. At the inquest the housekeeper, who was devoted to Rossetti, made a point of saying that she had no suspicions about the circumstances.
²⁵

However, the Haverlock diary now contradicts this version of events. It confirms that Rossetti had resumed his affair with Lena Wardle in the latter stages of Lizzie’s earlier pregnancy in 1861, and was increasingly impatient with his wife’s erratic moods and embarrassing behaviour in public. According to Haverlock,
²⁶
it was Lena that Rossetti visited after his wife went to bed that fatal night, to beg her to help him to put an end to the torment of his intolerable marriage. Haverlock records that she gave him a preparation of one-fifth of an ounce of arsenic, enough to kill forty men, the same amount as she had given the unfortunate Emile L’Angelier in Glasgow. Rossetti returned to his wife, whom he woke and gave the preparation, disguised in laudanum. Her known addiction to laudanum, the presence of the empty laudanum bottle by her bedside, and the strong smell of laudanum from her stomach contents, all persuaded her doctors to look no further for the cause of her death. The suicide note was apparently a fabrication of Rossetti’s, in case doubts were raised.

Haverlock tells us something else about the events of that fatal night. It seems that Rossetti waited some time for the arsenic to take effect before calling for help, and during this time Lizzie became
alarmed by her condition. She already suspected that he had been to see his mistress, and it is likely that the taste and gritty texture of Lena Wardle’s preparation had registered with her. When she began to experience intense stomach pains, she was able to write a short note to the housekeeper, Sarah Birrill, which she hid under her pillow. Sarah found this the following day, but kept the contents to herself. Torn by conflicting loyalties, and unwilling either to destroy or reveal the note, she later contrived to have it buried with Lizzie in her coffin.

Rossetti’s extreme distress and remorse following the death of Lizzie is well attested, affecting all of his immediate circle, including his brother William, Swinburne, and the painter and poet W.B. Scott, as they became embroiled in his attempts to contact the spirit world through séances.

(note: phenomenal murder as a trope in the poetry and paintings of DGR following 1862)

The story revealed by Haverlock reaches its bizarre climax in 1869. In his diary for that year he tells us that,
²⁷
seven years after Lizzie’s murder, Sarah Birrill finally told Rossetti about Lizzie’s note. It was apparently this that provoked his extraordinary efforts to reopen Lizzie’s grave, in order, as he claimed, to recover poems that he had buried with her body.
²⁸

The revelations contained in Haverlock’s account overturn much of the existing scholarship on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s life and work. In particular it raises fundamental questions about: the identification of models in a number of his paintings and as subjects of his poetry; the interpretation of his work and actions for the critical period 1858 to 1869 and beyond; the psychology of the man; the interpretation of images and metaphors of death in his work after 1862. Clearly the complete corpus on Rossetti is now superseded, and will have to be rewritten.

‘All right there, love?’

Kathy looked up, startled by the security guard’s voice. ‘Yes, thanks. Fine.’

‘Ready to go, or are you staying all night?’

‘No, I’m finished. I’ll just leave a note of what I’m taking.’ She gathered up the contents of the buff envelope and put them into a second plastic bag, then wrote out an official docket, ripped off the top copy and left it in the centre of da Silva’s desk.

‘Don’t suppose he’ll be best pleased when he gets that in the morning,’ the man said.

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I don’t suppose he will.’

W
hen Kathy arrived at the office the next morning DC Pip Gallagher brought her a cup of coffee.

‘You look as if you need this,’ she said. ‘Late night?’

‘Yes. Good one, though.’

‘Aha.’ Pip gave her a wink. ‘I’d heard rumours.’

‘What?’

Pip just smirked.

‘Pip! What are you talking about?’

‘Nothing. Just when the Summers case is hotting up too. I wish I was back with you again. What I’m doing now is dead boring.’

‘Well, you could help me with something if you’ve got a bit of time to spend with Google.’

‘Sure, what is it?’

Kathy gave her a copy of the dedication written in the front
of the da Silva book. ‘See if you can trace the quotation, assuming it is one.’

‘Any clues?’

‘It could be from a Pre-Raphaelite poem, Dante Gabriel Rossetti maybe.’

‘Okay, I’ll have a go.’

She wandered off and Kathy got down to work. There were test reports to wait for, and in the meantime CCTV footage from the British Library to check. Some of the witnesses who had been there the previous day would have to be reinterviewed to see if they could identify da Silva.

Towards noon she got a call from Brock. ‘He wants to see us with his lawyer.’

‘Julian Fenwick?’

Brock laughed. ‘He didn’t say. Two o’clock, all right?’

‘Fine.’

When she went out to a nearby café for a sandwich and drink, Kathy was aware of herself gingerly tasting each before she ploughed into them. She suspected that all across London people were doing the same.

•

Tony da Silva’s lawyer wasn’t Fenwick. Instead he’d come with a female solicitor Kathy had met a couple of times before, and she wondered if it was a deliberate choice for someone on the point of being accused of murdering two women.

‘Yes, Dr da Silva?’ Brock began. ‘You want to add something to our interview last night?’

Da Silva didn’t look as if he’d slept, his face pale and puffy, his voice limp. ‘When I went to my office at the university this morning,’ he said, ‘I found this.’ He unfolded Kathy’s docket in
front of them, as if hoping it might still turn out to be a mistake.

‘Yes?’

Da Silva glanced at his lawyer with a look of desperation, and she frowned and said, ‘My client is anxious to have his property returned. The material listed on this paper is of academic interest only and of no relevance to your inquiries.’

‘Of very considerable academic interest, I would have said. And highly relevant to our inquiries. But perhaps Dr da Silva could enlighten us as to how they came to be in his possession. The book, for instance?’ Brock lifted it from his bag and thumped it down on the table between them.

Da Silva’s eyes opened wider, staring at it in its clear plastic bag. ‘I am the author of that book,’ he said, his voice unsteady and slightly hoarse, as if his throat was dry. ‘It is one of my copies.’

‘Really? Your handwritten dedication at the front is addressed “To M.” Who’s that?’

Da Silva swallowed and shook his head.

‘Sorry?’

‘Can’t recall,’ he whispered, almost inaudible.

‘Well, let me help you,’ Brock said. ‘You see the tear at the top of the cover on the spine? And the crease lower down, across the R in Rossetti?’ He reached again to his bag and brought out two packets of photographs. From the first he selected a picture of Marion’s bookshelves. ‘Scene-of-crime photograph taken at Marion Summers’ home at 43 Rosslyn Court, Hampstead, on Friday the sixth of April. See the date at the bottom?’

The solicitor was leaning forward, adjusting her glasses to see the photo. Da Silva didn’t move.

‘And on the shelf here . . .’ Brock pointed, ‘a copy of that very same book, with identical tear and crease on the spine cover.’ He gave the lawyer time to examine it. She glanced back at da Silva, who didn’t meet her eyes.

‘And here is another photograph of the same bookshelves, taken on Tuesday the tenth, four days later. The book has disappeared, from a locked house.’ Brock reached out and spread his hand on the plastic pouch. ‘And now here it is, in the possession of Dr da Silva, its pages covered from back to front with the handwritten notes and fingerprints of the dead woman, Marion—“M”.’

The silence stretched painfully, and the solicitor finally snapped it with a crisp, ‘I’d like a break to discuss matters with my client.’

‘No.’ Da Silva shook his head, hunched between his shoulders. ‘I want to explain.’ He took a deep breath, eyes fixed on the table in front of his fingers. ‘Nine months ago Marion came to me with some ideas about Rossetti and Madeleine Smith. She had noticed a resemblance between Madeleine and some portraits painted by Rossetti. No one had ever made such a connection before, and the dates of the portraits were significant, because they were painted before either Rossetti or Smith were married. Rossetti was famous by this stage and a notorious womaniser, and Marion speculated that the chemistry would have been irresistible to each of them, for their own reasons. Madeleine, you remember, was an infamous figure, more or less in exile from her home and loved ones, and desperate to make a new start in London.