The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  “One Driver person told her about another, and she floated through this seedy underworld devoted to Pippin Little, living in Driver houses. These people spend their lives acting out scenes in the book. Nobody knew where she was. A couple of years later, she managed to fake her way into the Rhode Island School of Design, I can’t imagine how, and Sabina sent her money, but Patty refused to see her. She was there maybe a year, then she vanished again. Sabina got one postcard from London. She was in another art school and living in another Driver house. Lots of drugs. Then she moved to California—same situation—and wound up in New York, moving back and forth between the East Village and Chinatown, completely submerged in this crazy Driver world. That must have been when she zeroed in on Davey. Anyhow, she took off again, and nobody knew where she was until she died of a heroin overdose in Amsterdam and the police got in touch with Sabina.”

  There had been less decoration in Davey’s story than Nora had thought. “Thanks for telling me,” she said. “But I still don’t understand why she was so fixated on the manuscript and Katherine Mannheim.”

  “Stop asking questions, and tell me about your childhood or how you met Davey. Tell me what you think of Westerholm.” He would go no further.

  “I can’t stand Westerholm, I met Davey in a Village bar called Chumley’s, and my father used to take me on fishing trips. Jeffrey, where am I going to sleep tonight?”

  “There’s a nice old hotel in Northampton. You can stay there as long as you like.”

  A few minutes later they passed beneath the highway and came into Northampton from the east. Rows of shops and grocery stores lined the street. At the bottom of a hill, the buildings became taller and more substantial, and the MG moved slowly amid a lot of other cars. They passed beneath a railway bridge, and young people moved along the broad sidewalks and stood in clusters at the immense intersections. Jeffrey pointed down a wide, curving street at the Northampton Hotel, an imposing brown pile with a flowery terrace before a glassy new addition.

  “When we’re all through at my mother’s place, I’ll bring you back, get you a room. Over the next couple of days we can talk about what you ought to do. We can probably have lunch and dinner together most of the time, if you like.”

  “This great cook doesn’t feed you?”

  “My mother isn’t very domestic.”

  Nora looked out at pleasant, pretty Main Street with its lampposts and restaurants advertising wood-fired brick oven pizzas, tandoori chicken, and cold cherry soup” at galleries filled with Indian art and imported beads” at the pretty throngs and gatherings of the attractive young, mostly women, strapped into backpacks in their sawed-off jeans and halter tops or T-shirts” and said to herself: What am I doing here?

  “Almost there,” Jeffrey said, and followed a flock of young women on bicycles out of the traffic into a quieter street running alongside a tract like a parkland where dignified oaks grew alongside well-seasoned brick buildings connected by a network of paths. The young women on bicycles swooped down a drive with a Smith College plaque. Jeffrey executed a smooth U-turn in front of a large, two-story, brown clapboard building with a roofed porch wide enough for dances on the front and left side. It looked like a small resort hotel in the Adirondacks. A sign set back from the sidewalk said HEAVENLY FOOD &” CATERING.

  Jeffrey turned to her with an apologetic smile. “Just let me go in and prepare her, will you? I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m coming?”

  “It’s better that way.” He opened his door and put one leg out of the car. “Five minutes.”

  “Fine.”

  Jeffrey got out, closed the door, and leaned on it for a moment, looking down at her. If he had been tempted to say something, he decided not to.

  “I won’t run away,” she said. “Go on, Jeffrey.”

  He nodded. “Be right back.” He went up the long brick walkway, jumped up the steps, and glanced back at Nora. Then he walked across the porch and opened the front door. Before he went inside, he took off his cap.

  Nora leaned back, stretched her legs out before her, and waited. An insect whirred in the grass beneath the sign. Across the street a dog woofed three times, harshly, as if issuing a warning, then fell silent. The air had begun faintly to darken.

  After five minutes, Nora looked up at the porch, expecting Jeffrey to come through the door. A few minutes later, she looked up again, but the door remained closed. Suddenly she thought of Davey, at this moment doing something like arranging his compact discs on Jeffrey’s shelves. Poor Davey, locked inside that jail, the Poplars. She got out of the MG and paced up and down the sidewalk. Could she call him? No, of course she couldn’t call him, that was a terrible idea. She looked up at the porch again and felt an electric shock in the pit of her stomach. An extraordinarily beautiful young black woman with a white scarf over her hair was looking back at her from the big window. The young woman turned away from the window and disappeared. A moment later, the door finally opened and Jeffrey emerged onto the porch.

  “Is there a problem?” Nora asked.

  “Everything’s all right, it’s just sort of hard to get her attention.”

  “I saw a girl in the window.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “I’m surprised you didn’t see a dozen.”

  She preceded him up the slightly springy wooden steps and walked across the breadth of the porch to the front door. Jeffrey said, “Here, let me,” and leaned in front of her to pull it open.

  Nora walked into a big open space with a computer in front of an enormous calendar on the wall to her right, and a projection-screen television and two worn corduroy sofas on its other side. At the far end a wide arch led into an even larger space where young women in jeans bent over counters and other young women carried pots and brimming colanders to destinations farther within. One of the pot carriers was the striking black woman she had seen in the window. A slender blonde in her mid-twenties who had been watching a cartoon looked up at Nora and said, “Hi!”

  “Hello,” Nora said.

  “You’re the first woman Jeffrey ever brought here,” the blonde said. “We think that’s cute.”

  On the other side of the arch, ten or twelve young women chopped vegetables and folded dumplings on both sides of two butcher-block counters. Copper pots and pans hung from overhead beams. In front of two restaurant ranges, more women, most of them in white jackets and head scarves, attended to simmering pans and bubbling vats. One briskly stirred the contents of a wok. A stainless-steel refrigerator the size of a Mercedes stood beside a table at which two young women were packing containers into an insulated carton. Beyond them, a long window looked out onto an extensive garden where a woman in a blue apron was stripping peas. All the women in the kitchen looked to Nora like graduate students—the way graduate students would look if they were all about twenty-five, slim, and exceptionally attractive. Some of the women at the counters glanced up as Jeffrey led her toward the cluster in front of the nearest range.

  Slowly, like the unfolding of a great flower, they parted to reveal at their center a stocky woman in a loose black dress and a mass of necklaces and pendants stirring a thick red sauce with a wooden spoon. Her thick, iron-gray hair had been gathered into a tight bun, and her face was unlined and imposing. She looked at Jeffrey, gave Nora an appraising, black-eyed glance, and turned to the woman Nora had seen at the window. “Maya, you know what to do next, don’t you?”

  “Hannah’s mushrooms, then the other ones, and then it all goes into the pot with Robin’s veal, five minutes, and bang, out the door.”

  “Good.” She slapped her hands together and took two steps away from the range. “Let’s get Sophie doing something useful. How’s the packing going?”

  “Almost done with this one,” said one of the girls at the table.

  “Maribel, get Sophie to help you carry them out to the van.” A tall, red-haired girl with round horn-rim glasses moved toward the arch. The older woman lo
oked at her watch. “Jeffrey picked a busy day to drop in. We’re doing the Asia Society at nine, and a dinner party in Chesterfield just before that, but I think everything is running on schedule.” She made another quick inspection of her troops and turned to Nora. “So here you are, the woman we’ve all been reading about. Jeffrey says you want to talk to me about Katherine Mannheim.”

  “Yes,” Nora said. “If you can spare me some of your time.”

  “Of course. We’ll get out of here and sit in the front room.” She held out her hand and Nora took it. “Welcome. I gather that you may have to conceal yourself for a time. If you like, you could pitch in here. I can’t give you a room, but you could sleep on a sofa until we find something nicer for you. I can always use another hand, and the company’s enjoyable for the most part.”

  “I think I’ll get her a room at the Northampton Hotel,” Jeffrey said.

  Jeffrey’s mother had not taken her eyes off Nora. “Do whatever you please, of course, but if you’re at loose ends, you can always pitch in here.”

  “Thank you. I’ll remember that.”

  “I’d be happy to help the woman who married Davey Chancel.”

  Nora looked in surprise at Jeffrey, and his mother said, “I take it that my son left the explanations to me.”

  “Would I dare do anything else?” Jeffrey asked.

  Sophie and Maribel had paused on their way to the table to help themselves to Swedish meatballs from a steaming platter, and the older woman said, “Pack the van, my little elves.” Chewing, they hurried across the kitchen. “Let’s go to the front room and sit down. I’ve been on my feet all day.”

  She gestured toward the sofa where Sophie had sprawled in front of the television. Nora sat, and Jeffrey put his hands in his pockets and watched his mother switch off the set. She placed herself at the end of Nora’s sofa and rested her hands on her knees. “Jeffrey didn’t introduce us, and I gather that you have no idea of who I am, apart from being this person’s mother.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t,” Nora said. “You knew Katherine Mannheim? And you know the Chancels, too?”

  “Naturally,” she said. “Katherine was my older sister. I met Lincoln Chancel at Shorelands, and before I knew what was what, he hired me to work for him. I was still there when your husband was just a little boy.”

  Nora looked from the older woman to Jeffrey.

  Jeffrey cleared his throat. “Mr. Chancel disliked the sound of Italian names.”

  “When Mr. Chancel hired me, I was Helen Deodato, but you may have heard of me as Helen Day,” his mother said. “I got so used to it that I still call myself Helen Day. When Alden Chancel and his wife took over the house, they used to call me the Cup Bearer.”

  BOOK VIII

  THE CUP BEARER

  FOR A LONG TIME, PIPPIN SAT IN THE WARMTH AND THE FLICKERING LIGHT OF THE FIRE WITHOUT SPEAKING. HE GAZED INTO THE OLD WOMAN’S FACE. AFTER ALL SHE HAD TOLD HIM, THE WHITE WHISKERS SPROUTING FROM HER UPPER LIP AND POINTED CHIN NO LONGER FRIGHTENED HIM. NOT EVEN THE SKULL FROM WHICH SHE DRANK HER FOUL BROWN POTION, NOR THE HEAP OF SKULLS BEHIND HER, FRIGHTENED HIM NOW. HE WAS TOO INTERESTED IN HER STORY TO BE AFRAID. “I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” HE SAID. “YOU ARE HIS MOTHER, BUT HE IS NOT YOUR SON?”

  73

  FOR WHAT SEEMED to her an endless succession of seconds, Nora could not speak. She could not even move. The decisive old woman before her, her necklaces of antique coins, of heavy gold links, of pottery beads, silver birds, silver feathers, and shining red and green stones motionless on her chest, her broad hands planted on her knees, sat tilted slightly forward, taking in the effect of her announcement as Nora stared at the firm black eyebrows, clever black eyes, prominent nose, full, well-shaped lips, and rounded chin of Helen Day. The Cup Bearer, O’Dotto—Day and O’Dotto, the two halves of her last name—unknown to Davey because his grandfather had thought Italian names too proletarian to be used in his house.

  The woman said, “Jeffrey, you should have told her something, at least. Springing all this on her at once isn’t fair.”

  “I was thinking about being fair to you,” Jeffrey said.

  “I’ll be all right,” Nora said.

  “Of course you will.”

  “It’s a lot to take in all at once. I’ve heard so much about you from Davey. You’re legendary. They still talk about your desserts.”

  “Whole family has a sweet tooth. Old Mr. Chancel could eat an entire seven-layer cake by himself. Sometimes I had to make two, one for him and one for everyone else. Little Davey was the same way. I used to worry about his getting fat when he grew up. Did he? No, I suppose not. You wouldn’t have married him if he’d been a great lumbering bag of guts like his grandfather.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have, and he isn’t.”

  “Who am I to talk, anyhow?” Helen Day seemed almost wistful. “Davey must have missed me after his parents got rid of me. Poor little fellow, he’d have had to, with those two for parents.”

  Nora said, “He once told me he thought you were his real mother.”

  “His real mother hardly spent much time with him. Hardly knew he was in the house, most of the time.”

  “And of course even she wasn’t his real mother,” Nora said. “You must have been at the Poplars when the first child died.”

  Helen Day put a forefinger to her lips and gave Nora a long, thoughtful look. She nodded. “Yes, I was there during the uproar.”

  “Daisy and Alden didn’t even want a child, did they? Not really. It was Lincoln who made them adopt Davey.”

  Another considering pause. “The old man let them know he wanted an heir, I’ll say that. There weren’t too many quiet nights on Mount Avenue during that time.” She looked away, and her handsome face hardened like cement. “According to Jeffrey, you wanted to talk to me about my sister.”

  “I do, very much, but can I ask you a few questions about other people in your family first?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Other people in my family?”

  “Is Sabina Mann your sister?”

  The old woman flicked her glance toward Jeffrey.

  “We had to see Ev Tidy,” Jeffrey said. “His number is unlisted, so I called Sabina and asked her to invite him to her house.”

  “Which she was delighted to do, I’m sure. I bet she bustled in and out with lots of cheap cookies and cups of Earl Grey.”

  “It was Gunpowder, and she only bustled in once. I have to admit that she was peeved with me.”

  “Gunpowder,” said Helen Day. “Dear me. She’ll get over it. You wanted to talk to Everett about Shorelands because of his father, I suppose.”

  “That’s right,” Nora said.

  “And was he helpful?”

  “He had some ideas,” Jeffrey said, with a warning glance at Nora which did not escape his mother’s notice.

  “I won’t pry. It isn’t my business, except for what concerns my sister. But from what I remember of Everett’s father, he couldn’t have had much to say about Katherine. It was my impression that he’d scarcely talked to her. Couldn’t be much there to excite poor old Effie and Grace.” When Nora looked confused, Helen Day added, “My sisters. They’re the fools who saw that movie and hired a lawyer.”

  “You’re right,” Jeffrey said. “Bill Tidy had no idea what Katherine was writing.”

  “Hardly a surprise. The whole idea is mad. Now I am informed that this madness has infected the wretched man who stole you out of a police station.” She shook her head in disgust. “Let me answer your question. No, Sabina Mann is not my sister, thank the Lord. She was Sabina Kraft when she married my brother Charles. Thereby completing the severing of relations between my brother and myself which began when he changed his name.”

  “Why did he change his name?”

  “Charles hated my father. Changing his name was no more than a way to cause him pain. He did it as soon as he turned twenty-one. The disgrace nearly cost Effie and Grace what little minds they have. Katherine didn’t car
e, of course. It didn’t mean anything to her. Katherine was like a separate country all her life.”

  Nora was thinking that Helen Day, who had apparently not protested Lincoln Chancel’s desire to change her own last name, was no less idiosyncratic than her sister.

  “You weren’t close to Charles or your two other sisters?”

  “I got along with the Deodatos a lot better than my own family, if that’s what you’re after. Good, sensible, warmhearted people, and they were delighted to take Jeffrey in when it became obvious that I couldn’t cope with being a single mother. I certainly wasn’t going to subject my little boy to Charles, never mind Sabina, and Effie and Grace could scarcely take care of themselves. But here was this glorious clan, full of cooks and policemen and high school teachers. I was so fond of them all, and they had no problems with my way of life, so there was never any difficulty about my seeing Jeffrey whenever I could. When I left the Chancels, I knew I had to come back to this part of Massachusetts. This was my home, and it was where my husband died. It’s the one place in the world I’ve ever really loved. Jeffrey understood.”

  “I did,” Jeffrey said. “I still do.”

  “I know you do. I just don’t want Nora to judge me harshly. Anyhow, between us all, we did a pretty good job with Jeffrey, didn’t we? He’s done a lot of interesting things, even though his Mannheim half meant that other people had a lot of trouble understanding them. There’s a lot of me in Jeffrey, and a lot of Katherine, too. But Jeffrey is much nicer than Katherine ever was. Or me either, come to that.”

  “Katherine wasn’t nice?”

  “Am I? You tell me.”

  “You’re beyond niceness,” Nora said. “I think you’re too good to be nice.”

  Tiny pinpoints of light kindled far back in the old woman’s eyes. “You just described my sister Katherine. I’d like you to remember my offer. If you ever find yourself in need of a safe place, you’d be welcome here. You would learn to cook every sort of cuisine, and you’d be able to put away some money. We operate on a communal basis, and everybody shares equally.”