The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  Neary refused to be intimidated. “Georgina’s trust fund wasn’t large enough to pay for all the servants and upkeep or the food and drink for the guests. Her father indulged her for a long time, but in 1938 he lost patience. He cut her off, or seriously cut her back, I’m not sure which. Georgina was almost hysterical.”

  “Lily Melville told us that she had the whole place renovated the next year,” Nora said.

  “He must have relented. I’m sure that he was used to giving her whatever she wanted.”

  “Tale of Two Bitches,” Dart said.

  “I’ve spent enough time with this madman,” Neary said. “Let’s go.” Tidball was staring at Dick Dart. Neary touched his elbow as if to awaken him, and Tidball spun away and marched toward the edge of the clearing. Neary followed him without looking back. They passed through the Pillars and moved toward the path with a suggestion of flight.

  “Let’s amble back to the house and meet the dear little Pinto. Something has occurred to me. Can you guess what?”

  Before Nora could tell Dart that she could not read his mind, she read his mind. “You want Marian Cullinan.”

  He patted her head and grinned. “Probably time for me to bid farewell to older women. And Maid Marian has two great advantages.”

  She began to walk over the matted grass toward the boulders. “Which are?”

  “One, you don’t like her. She’s fair Natalie all over again, wants to steal your man. Let’s punish the cow—hey, it’s what you want to do anyhow.”

  “And the second advantage?”

  “Marian undoubtedly owns a nice car.”

  Heads down, moving a little faster than was necessary, Neary and Tidball were already most of the way across the meadow. Dart indulgently watched them wade through the long grass. “Lots of fun in store for us tonight, sweetie-pie.”

  90

  MARIAN CULLINAN’S EAGER face appeared at her window as they approached the front of Main House, and when they came inside she was waiting for them, taking in Dart with theatrical awe. “Norman, you made Lily’s day. She wants to take you on all of her tours.”

  “Entirely reciprocated. Reminds me of some of my dearest friends.”

  “Isn’t he off the scale when it comes to charm, Mrs. Des-mond?”

  “Completely,” said Nora. This dopey woman, so bored that she made passes at married male guests, probably represented her last hope of getting the police to Shorelands. “But please, call me Norma.”

  “Why, thank you!”

  “Maybe you could join us for a nightcap up at good old Salt Shaker after dinner,” Dart said. “So much to talk about, so many avenues to explore.”

  Marian’s freckles slid sideways with a knowing twitch of the mouth. “That depends on how much paperwork I can get done. I used to have an assistant, but the Honey House restoration ate up most of our budget.” Most of her bright, spurious eagerness reappeared. “And of course we’re very proud of the result. Didn’t you just love it?”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Dart said. “Can we get you up there tonight, Marian, or are we going to have to abduct you?”

  “You’d be doing me a favor.” She sighed and pantomimed exhaustion. “Would you like to see the rooms upstairs?”

  Nora asked if they could talk to Agnes Brotherhood.

  Marian closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her forehead. “I forgot to check on that. I’d have to look in to see how she’s doing. Why don’t we go upstairs?”

  “Does this VIP treatment extend to a sandwich before we start laying our hands on history?”

  “A sandwich? Now?”

  “Circumstances deprived me of my usual healthy breakfast. Could gobble up the Girl Scouts along with their cookies.”

  Marian laughed. “In that case, we’d better take care of you. How about you, Norma?”

  Nora said she could wait for dinner.

  Dart grasped her wrist, killing her hopes of getting to a telephone while he gobbled up any nearby Girl Scouts. “When it comes to appetite, Norm Desmond has never been found wanting.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Marian said. “Let’s see what damage you can do to our kitchen.” An unmarked door at the right side of the marble stairs opened onto a steep flight of iron steps. “You’ll be all right on these, with your . . . ?” She touched her knee.

  “All is well.”

  Marian started down the staircase. “Would you mind if I asked how . . . ?”

  “ ‘Nam. Pesky land mine. Your brother was there, wasn’t he?”

  She looked back up at him. “How did you know about my brother?”

  “Handsome picture on your bulletin board. I gather he was killed in action. Hope you will accept my condolences, even after all this time. As a former officer, I regret the loss of every single man in that tragic conflict.”

  “Thank you. You seem so young to have been an officer in Vietnam.”

  He barked out a laugh. “I’m told I was one of the youngest officers to serve in Vietnam, if not the youngest.” He sighed. “Truth is, we were all boys, every one of us.”

  Nora felt like pushing him down the stairs.

  “I’m going to make you the best sandwich you ever had in your life,” Marian said.

  “I have the distinct impression that you went to a Catholic girls’ school. Please don’t tell me I’m mistaken.”

  “How can you tell?” Marian began to descend the clanging stairs again, looking up at him with the smile of a woman who had never heard a compliment she didn’t like.

  “Two kinds of women hatch out of Catholic girls’ schools. One is sincere, hardworking, witty, and polite. Best manners in the world. The other is unconventional, intellectual, bohemian. They’re witty, too. Tend to be a bit rebellious.”

  At the bottom of the stairs Marian waited for Dart and Nora to come down into a good-sized kitchen with a red-tiled floor, a long wooden chopping block, glass-fronted cabinets, and a gas range. There was a teasing half smile on her face. “Which kind am I?”

  “You fall into the best category of all. Combination of the other two.”

  “No wonder Lily enjoyed your tour.” Smiling, Marian opened a cabinet, took down a plate and a glass, and opened the refrigerator. “Dinner is going to be one of our specials, so I’d better let that remain a surprise, but here’s some roast beef. I could make you a sandwich with this whole-wheat bread. Sound good?”

  “Yum yum. You got some mustard, mayo, maybe a couple slices of Swiss cheese to go with that?”

  “I think so.” She bent down to root around on a lower shelf, giving Dart a good view of her bottom.

  “Any soup?”

  She laughed and looked at Nora. “This man knows what he wants. Minestrone or gazpacho?”

  “Minestrone. Gazpacho isn’t soup.”

  Marian began pulling things out of the refrigerator.

  Dart was wandering around and inspecting the kitchen. “Norma can give you a hand.”

  “Once an officer . . .” Nora said.

  Marian told her where to find the can opener. Nora picked up a saucepan and poured the soup into it. After she had set the pan on the stove, she looked up to find Dart staring into her eyes. He glanced at her bag, which she had dropped on the counter, back at her, and then at a spot above the counter behind Marian’s back. The handles of at least a dozen knives protruded from a wooden holder fastened to the wall. Dart smiled at her.

  Marian took a bag of leftover lettuce from the refrigerator and dropped it on the counter. “Men are amazing,” she said. “Where do they put it all?”

  “Norman puts it in his hollow leg,” Nora said. Standing behind the other woman, she looked at the knife holder and shrugged. She could not steal a knife without Marian’s noticing.

  Nearly undressing Marian with a smile, Dart said, “Might some beer have found its way into the refrigerator?”

  “That’s a distinct possibility.”

  “Don’t like invading strange refrigerators. Let’s hunker down, survey the vint
ages.”

  Marian glanced at Nora, who was stirring the soup. She set down her knife and moved toward the refrigerator, where Dart beamed at her, rubbing his hands.

  “ ’Open thy vault most massy, most fearsome, Madame Ware,’ ” Dart said, quoting something Nora did not recognize.

  “I know that!” Marian cried. “It’s from Night Journey, the part near the end where Pippin meets Madame Lyno-Wyno Ware. He has to talk that way because, um . . .”

  “Because the Cup Bearer told him he had to, or she wouldn’t tell the truth.”

  “Yes! And the vault disappoints him because it’s only a metal box, but when she opens it up he sees that inside it’s the size of his old house, and Madame Ware says . . . something about a book, the mind . . .” She snapped her fingers twice. “They’re bigger on the inside.”

  ” ‘My vault, like a woman’s heart or reticule, is larger within than without. Even a little pippin was once held within a seed.’ “

  Nora had been backing away from the stove and was now nearly within reaching distance of the knife rack.

  “Right! That’s it!” Marian spun around and pointed a shapely, freckled finger at Nora. “See? I’m not completely ignorant about Hugo Driver. We can work together.”

  “Marian,” Dart said, an impatient edge in his voice, “open the massy vault, will you?”

  She turned her back on Nora and made an elaborate business of opening the refrigerator.

  “Hunker, Marian. Can you hunker?”

  “With the best of them.” She squatted down before the crowded shelves knee to knee with Dart. “Behold the beer.”

  “I don’t see any beer.”

  She leaned over to point, in the process brushing a breast against Dart’s arm. “Are you a Corona kind of guy?” Marian asked.

  Dart glanced at Nora over the top of the other woman’s head, and she stepped back and lifted the first knife out of the holder.

  “In weak moments.” Dart looked at the hefty, workmanlike carving knife in Nora’s hand, nodded minutely, and glanced again at the holder.

  “What are your feelings about Budweiser?” She leaned into him more firmly.

  “I think I like the looks of the one beside it.”

  Nora pulled a cleaver from the rack, and Dart’s eyes crinkled. “Yes, that’s a lovely shape. Pull it out, so I can get a good look at it.”

  Marian reached into the refrigerator, bringing herself into closer contact with Dart. “Grolsch does have a nice shape, doesn’t it?”

  Nora carried the knife and the cleaver to the counter. While Dart and Marian Cullinan admired different sorts of vessels, she opened her bag and slipped them inside. She moved over to stir the soup, and the other two stood up. Marian gave her an uncertain smile. Her face seemed a little flushed along the tops of her cheekbones.

  Nora poured the soup into a bowl, and Marian found a soupspoon and a bottle opener in a drawer.

  Dart raised the Grolsch bottle and took a long swallow.

  Nora slid her bag off the counter and took it to a chair beneath a wall-mounted telephone.

  “Don’t hang back, darling spouse. Join the party.”

  Nora considered her bag. Dart still had his back to her. “Are you abandoning us?” Marian asked, smiling at Nora as she assembled beef, Swiss cheese, and lettuce on top of a slice of toast. Dart waved her forward, and she walked away from the fantasy of ramming a carving knife into his back.

  Nora patted a spot beneath his left shoulder blade. “Are you happy now?”

  Dart sang the first phrase of “Sometimes I’m Happy” and pushed away the empty bowl. “Bring on the meat.”

  “I didn’t imagine you could actually quote Hugo Driver,” Marian said to him.

  Dart said something unintelligible through a mouthful of food, apparently quoting more of Night Journey.

  “Don’t get him started,” Nora said.

  “Could we get him to recite some of his poetry during dinner?”

  Dart uttered a gleeful “Ungk!” around the sandwich. His eyes sparkled.

  Forced to deal directly with Nora, Marian fell back on cliché. “What was your favorite part of the tour?”

  “Can I ask you about the restorations?”

  “That’s practically an obsession with us. Lily must have told you about how hard we worked to put Honey House together. I could tell you lots of horror stories.”

  “I wasn’t thinking so much of Honey House.”

  “Main House is a more interesting problem, I agree. As great as Georgina Weatherall was, she had been going downhill for some time before her death, and toward the end she pretty much retired into one room on the second floor. Which meant that the roof leaked in a hundred places, and there was water damage just about everywhere. As you probably saw when you came in, we’re still having work done. The next big project is restoring the gardens, and that’s a huge job.”

  “Are any of the former gardeners still around?”

  “No. Georgina had to let everyone but Monty Chandler, the head gardener, go. You saw the Song Pillars and Monty’s Glen?”

  “We did.”

  “When you were up there, did you hear the stones singing?”

  “They sing?” Nora asked.

  “When there’s any kind of a wind, you can hear them make this music. Eerie.”

  “I suppose Monty Chandler is dead.”

  “He passed away a couple of years before Georgina, which was another reason things got out of hand. Monty Chandler kept things in line by being a sort of handyman–carpenter–security force. There used to be problems with poachers and people breaking into the cottages, but Monty scared them all off. And when he wasn’t overseeing the gardens, he was patching roofs and doing other repairs. That’s why Georgina could get by for so long without bringing in workmen. I know she spent a lot of money fixing the place up when her father gave it to her, but she didn’t have to do that again until the late thirties!”

  “I understand she was having some money troubles then,” said Nora.

  Footsteps sounded on the metal staircase.

  “Margaret and Lily are coming down to start dinner. We’d better do the second floor.”

  Heavy lace-up brown shoes topped with swollen ankles appeared on the stairs, followed by a long, capacious navy blue cotton dress buttoned up the front, then a wide arm, and finally an executive face, broad in the cheeks and forehead, and gray hair clamped into place with a tightly wound scarf, also navy blue. Margaret Nolan reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped, her hand on the railing, taking them in with an alert curiosity which did not completely disguise her mild irritation. Lily Melville smiled at Dart from over her shoulder.

  “Our special guests have an interest in the kitchen, Marian?”

  “One of them had a special interest in a snack,” Marian said.

  Margaret inspected Dart with a level glance. “Looking at Mr. Desmond, I don’t suppose it will affect his performance at dinner.” She pushed herself away from the stairs and came puffing toward them.

  “Margaret Nolan.” She extended a wide, firm hand to Dart. “I run this madhouse. We are delighted to have your company, Mr. Desmond, though I must confess that I’ve never read your work. Marian tells me that it’s very exciting.”

  Dart said, “We do what we can, we can do no more.”

  Margaret turned to Nora with the air of having chosen to ignore this remark. Her handshake was quick and dry. “Mrs. Desmond. Welcome to Shorelands. Are you happy with Pepper Pot?”

  “It’s great,” Nora said.

  “I’m pleased to hear it. But now, if we are to meet our schedule, we must begin. You’ll forgive us, I hope?”

  “Certainly,” Nora said. Here before her, five feet, eight inches tall, weighing one hundred and eighty pounds, chronically short of breath, radiating decisiveness, common sense, and strength of character, was her answer. This woman would take in Nora’s situation and figure out a way to resolve it in three seconds flat. She would need half as m
uch explanation as Frank Neary, and a tenth as much as Marian Cullinan. But when could she get her aside? After dinner she would volunteer to carry the plates down to the kitchen—something, anything—to be alone with Margaret Nolan and whisper, He’s Dick Dart. Call the police.

  “All right, then.” Margaret smiled as briskly as she had shaken Nora’s hand. “Lily?”

  Lily trotted to the side of the kitchen to take two white aprons from a hook on the far side of the wall telephone, and paused at the chair on the way back. “Isn’t this your bag, Mrs. Des-mond?”

  “Oh, it is, I’m sorry.” Nora took a step toward Lily and the chair, but Margaret stopped her with a touch. “Bring it to her, Lily.”

  Lily picked up the bag. “What do you have in here, brass knuckles?”

  “I never go anywhere without my weapons collection,” Nora said.

  Marian said, “We should go upstairs and let them work their wonders.”

  “Where is that carving knife?” Margaret asked. “It couldn’t have just walked away.”

  “I’m so curious,” Dart said. “What treat are you two wonderful ladies going to whip up?”

  Looking at Dart as if she were a second-grade teacher faced with an impertinent student, Margaret turned from the rack and put on her apron. “We are going to prepare one of Ezra Pound’s favorite meals.”

  “Georgina liked Ezra, didn’t she?”

  “She did.”

  “Real-world politics,” Dart said. “None of that guff about equality our leaders spout while they plunder the till. I’m on their side. Let’s call a jackboot a jackboot, okay?”

  Both Lily and Margaret were staring at him. Dart held up a hand. “Hey. What was good enough for Ez is good enough for me.” Smiling at the two women frozen behind the chopping block, he pulled Nora toward the stairs.

  91

  MARIAN CLOSED THE door with a bang. “Norman, don’t you understand that I could lose my job?”

  “Solemn promise,” Dart said. “By the time we finish dessert, they’ll be begging me to come back.”

  “But you practically called Georgina Weatherall a Nazi!”

  “Wasn’t the old girl a tad gone on the majesty of the Fatherland? Doesn’t make her a bad person.”