Book of a lifetime: The Bishop and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

From The Independent archive: Eoin McNamee finds disturbing connections in a volume that came to him seemingly by fate

Anton Chekhov’s stories are full of light and shadow (Getty)

A friend gave it to me. A 1930 Chatto & Windus edition of The Bishop and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov. He had bought it for a few pounds in a second-hand shop and he knew what he’d got. When I opened to the bookplate on the inside cover, I felt as if someone had placed an icy hand on the back of my neck. The bookplate, dated 1950, showed a diabolic imp sitting on a book. Underneath the imp is printed, “THIS BOOK BELONGS TO”, and beneath it, in careful grammar-school handwriting, is “Curran, The Glen, Whiteabbey”.

In 1952, Judge Lance Curran’s 19-year-old daughter, Patricia, was murdered in the grounds of their home, The Glen in Whiteabbey, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Curran’s behaviour on the night of his daughter’s murder suggests cover-up, scandal, white mischief at large in the shadows. Iain Hay Gordon was convicted of the murder, the conviction being overturned in 2000. Nine years later, Lance Curran sat in judgment on Robert McGladdery, on trial for his life for the murder of another 19-year-old girl, Pearl Gamble. McGladdery was hanged in December 1961. The evidence was circumstantial and McGladdery maintained his innocence to the end. There did not seem to be any contemporary disquiet as to why the father of a murdered girl should be allowed to sit in judgment over a man accused of murdering another 19-year-old girl in similar circumstances.

I have been writing about the Currans for 25 years. Patricia, the independent and beautiful daughter; Doris, the mother, brought up in Broadmoor as the daughter of the superintendent, ending her days in Holywell Mental hospital, that dark equilibrium the only one she found. Desmond was the proselytising barrister turned Catholic, then turned missionary priest. And standing over, and apart from them, the judge, Lance Curran.