Black and grey line drawing of a winged serpent holding a skeleton key in its mouth, beside a heart-shaped padlock with butterflies.

Winged serpent with key and heart padlock

Black and grey · Flash

A winged serpent coils through the left side of the image, its jaws clamped around a chain that hangs down to an ornate skeleton key. On the right, a heart-shaped padlock with filigree scrollwork and a keyhole sits beside small butterflies and leaves. The linework is bold and clean, with grey tonal shading and open white space around both motifs.

Dragon Serpent Wing Key Padlock Heart Butterfly Filigree Leaves Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third key on the board is the wrong one, and Mrs Pargeter has known it since Easter, which is why she hands you the ring without looking up from the ledger. The brass tag says nine. You carry it up four flights of Gull Terrace, past the damp stain shaped like Ireland, while the wind off the Channel rattles every sash on the landing. A winged serpent is stamped into the bow of the ring, its tail curled round the hoop as if it means to keep whatever it holds.

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Room nine has a heart-shaped padlock fixed to the inside of the door, a thing nobody in the house admits to fitting. Its scrollwork has gone grey with salt, and someone has tucked a sprig of sea holly into the keyhole. You try the key, and it turns with no more fuss than a spoon in tea, which is worse. It means the padlock has been waiting for this key all along, and the lodger who left in March never locked anything at all.

Under the bed there is a biscuit tin. Inside are letters tied with garden twine, all addressed to Mrs Pargeter in the same looping hand, each postmarked from a different harbour. The last one is still sealed. Pressed into the lid, in a fingernail's scratch, are the words: keep the key, I'll keep the rest.

You sit on the bed with the tin on your knees and turn the ring until the serpent faces you. Its wings look less like a dragon's than a sailor's joke, cut from the same canvas as the curtains. When you finally go down, Mrs Pargeter is already at the foot of the stairs, one hand held out, palm up, as though she has known since Easter exactly how long this would take.