The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  Agnes glared at Dart.

  “He doesn’t care what happened to Katherine Mannheim,” Nora said.

  To indicate his indifference to the disappearances of female poets, Dart faked a yawn.

  “I might be the only person you’ll ever meet interested enough in this to talk to people who knew Bill Tidy and Creeley Monk.”

  “Those poor men,” Agnes said. “Mr. Tidy was a good, honest soul, and Mr. Monk, I liked him, too, because he could make you laugh like anything. Didn’t matter to me if he was a . . .”

  “A wagtail?” Dart said. “A prancer? A tiptoe boy?”

  Agnes gave him a disdainful glance. “There’s a lot of ways to be a good person.” She returned to Nora. “Those two didn’t know anything. They were here, that’s all. Even if they heard anything, they wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

  Nora remembered something Everett Tidy had told her. “On the night Katherine Mannheim disappeared, Bill Tidy thought he heard poachers.”

  Agnes shook her head. “Wasn’t a poacher in a hundred miles who’d risk his hide at Shorelands, not in those days. Monty Chandler gave one a load of bird shot and caught another in a mantrap, let him starve for two days, and that was it for poachers.”

  “So he heard something else.”

  Agnes pulled her robe closer to her neck. “Guess he did.”

  Almost against her will, Nora pushed forward. “I have some ideas. What if I tell you about them, and you tell me if I’m right?”

  Agnes squinted at her and nodded once. “I could do that.” She took in a great breath and pushed it out. “After all this time . . .” She began again. “That girl had a little sister. Kept her picture on her desk. The sister came here. Fine young lady. If she’s still alive, she deserves to know the truth.” She gave a flickering, almost frightened glance at Nora.

  Nora tried to look as if she knew what she was doing. “I don’t think Katherine Mannheim ran away from Shorelands. I think she died. Is that right?”

  “Yes.” Agnes’s upper lip began to tremble.

  “I think Hugo Driver had something to do with her death. Am I right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t she come into Gingerbread and find Driver looking through her papers? Wasn’t there a struggle?”

  “No! That’s all wrong.” Agnes’s chin began to tremble.

  Nora’s impersonation of confident authority began to evaporate. Her favorite theory had just been destroyed. “She died that night. Her body had to be hidden.”

  A tear slipped from Agnes’s right eye.

  “She’s buried somewhere on the estate.”

  Agnes nodded.

  “And you know where.”

  “No, I don’t. I’m glad I don’t.” She glanced at Nora. “I have to do tours, you see. Couldn’t go where they put her.”

  “Hugo Driver and Lincoln Chancel.”

  “Did everything together, those two.”

  “That’s why you still hate Lincoln Chancel.”

  Agnes shook her head with surprising vehemence. “I hated Mr. Chancel from the beginning. That man thought he had a right to touch you. Thought he could do anything he wanted and then make it all right with money.”

  “He offered you money?”

  “I told him he was trying his dirty tricks with the wrong girl. He laughed at me, but he kept his hands to himself after that.”

  As interesting as this digression was, Nora wanted to get back to the main subject. She tried another approach. “Georgina knew that Katherine Mannheim hadn’t just disappeared, didn’t she? When she led everyone up to Gingerbread after dinner the next night, she already knew that the girl was dead.”

  “I hate to say it, but she did.”

  “She knew the door was unlocked even before she opened it.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Agnes said miserably. “But Miss Weatherall knew.”

  “How did you know her door was unlocked? Did you tend to Gingerbread?”

  She nodded. “When I went to do the cleaning that morning, the door was unlocked and she wasn’t inside. I hoped she was probably out in the gardens. At noon I put her box lunch in front of her door, because that was what we did, and it was still there the next morning.”

  “You didn’t know that she was never going to come back.”

  “How could I? The mistress told me she’d run away. ‘Climbed the wall,’ she said. Made me feel funny. Especially after . . . after what happened.”

  A hint of understanding came to Nora. The reason that Geor-gina Weatherall had known her troublesome guest was gone before she opened the door to Gingerbread was directly in front of her, becoming more troubled with every second. “Did you say something to her, Agnes? Did you see something that disturbed you and tell Georgina about it?”

  “I wish I never had.” She held herself stiffly for a moment, and then another bolt of emotion went through her, and she began to cry.

  Perfectly at ease, Dart twisted his mouth into a smile.

  Nora tried to work out what Agnes had seen and remembered that Creeley Monk had seen Driver and Lincoln Chancel on the grounds late that night. “Tell me if I’m right. Did you take walks at night?” Agnes glanced fearfully at her, then nodded. “The night Katherine Mannheim died, you took one of your walks. You went up the path toward Gingerbread.” Agnes lifted her head and gave her another frightened glance. “Were they carrying her body? Is that what you saw?”

  “No! No!” She covered her eyes with her hands. “Then I would have known right away, don’t you see? I saw . . . you have to tell me.”

  “You saw them.”

  Agnes shook her head.

  “You saw Hugo Driver.”

  Agnes looked at her in furious disappointment. “No!”

  “Lincoln Chancel,” Nora said. A great deal of what was as yet unspoken fell into place. “You saw Lincoln Chancel leaving Gingerbread. My God, Lincoln Chancel killed her.”

  Dick Dart took his hands from behind his head and leaned forward, malicious delight alive in his face.

  Nora said, “He was going back to Rapunzel to get Driver. I’m right, aren’t I, Agnes? You saw him going through the woods, but you didn’t know why.”

  Agnes forced herself to take a deep breath. “He was running. I couldn’t tell what the noise was. I thought it was some animal. I was by the big boulder up on the path. We used to have bears in our woods back then, and sometimes we still do. I hid behind the boulder, and the noise got closer and closer. Then I heard a man swearing. I knew it was Mr. Chancel. I peeked out. Here he comes out of the path, racing like a crazy man up toward Rapunzel. He went over the bridge, bang! bang! bang! I was so afraid. I wished it was a bear! I should have . . .” She drew up her knees and buried her face in the covers.

  Nora moved onto the bed and embraced her.

  “Female bonding,” Dart said.

  “You thought you should have gone to the cottage,” Nora said. Agnes sighed in her arms. “But you were afraid. You were right to be afraid. They might have caught you.”

  “I know.” Agnes leaned into Nora’s chest and took another deep breath. “I started back to Main House, and then I decided I had to look in on Miss Mannheim after all, but I heard Mr. Chancel and Mr. Driver coming down from Rapunzel, so I stayed behind the boulder. They came over the bridge, clump clump clump, and went up the Gingerbread path.”

  She pulled away from Nora and patted her face with the bedcovers. “You can sit down again.”

  “Are you sure?” Agnes shrank from another attempt at an embrace, and as Nora got off the bed, she collapsed onto her pillow. “I went flying back to Main House. I got upstairs, and the mistress was standing in the hallway. What’s going on, Agnes, she says, why are you running around in the middle of the night, I demand an explanation. I told her. She says, Agnes Brotherhood, you leave this to me. She slapped on her big red hat and out she went. The mistress loved that big red hat, but it was the silliest thing you ever saw.” Agnes glowered at the cei
ling.

  “You waited for her to come back,” Nora said.

  “Waited and waited. After a long time she looks around my door and says, Agnes, Miss Mannheim is one of those women who require male companionship when their spirits are low. Mr. Chancel chose to protect himself from scandal. Put the entire matter out of your mind, she says.”

  “And you tried to do that.”

  Agnes gave an unhappy nod. “I asked if Miss Mannheim was all right, and she said to me, Women like that are always all right.” Dart grunted in approval. Agnes scowled at him. “I’m not saying there aren’t women like that, but Miss Mannheim was a fine person.”

  “The next day you must have thought that she’d run away.”

  “I thought she left. There’s a big difference between running away and leaving. Miss Mannheim wouldn’t have run away from anything.”

  Agnes tugged her robe around her and looked at Nora with frustrated defiance. She had told her story, but at the center of the story was a vacuum.

  A knock at the door cut off whatever she might have said next. Marian Cullinan peeked in. “We must be having a wonderful time, you’ve been in here so long.”

  “High point of the tour,” Dart said. “Fantastic tales of the good old days.”

  “Wonderful.” She approached the bed.

  Nora looked at Agnes to see if she remembered what she had been asked to do, and the old woman dipped her head a fraction of an inch.

  Marian stepped between them. “Agnes, you know the rules. I bet your blood pressure is through the roof.”

  “I want to say something to Mrs. Desmond, Marian.”

  “One little teeny-tiny thing, and then I have to take these nice people away.”

  Agnes reached for Nora’s hand. “You have to hear the rest.”

  Marian laughed. “You want to tell these people your life story, Agnes? Mrs. Desmond will stop in again, I’m sure.”

  “Tonight,” Agnes said, clutching Nora’s hand.

  Marian displayed a trace of impatience. “That won’t be possible, Agnes. We have to protect your health.”

  Agnes dropped Nora’s hand. “You’re not my doctor.”

  “Well, on that note.” Marian smiled at Nora. “Shall we?”

  She bustled them out with a complicitous glance at Dart and a pained smile for Nora. “I hope that wasn’t too awful.”

  “You kidding?” Dart said. “That was better than Psycho.”

  Shaking her head, she took them toward the staircase. “I don’t know how we’re going to tell her that she can’t lead any more tours. I mean, look at her, would you want to follow Agnes around the estate?”

  A door clicked open behind them.

  “Now what?” Marian said.

  Clutching her bathrobe about her, Agnes hobbled out of her bedroom.

  Marian put her hands on her hips. “I see it, but I don’t be-lieve it.”

  “Last roundup,” Dart said.

  Marian hurried up to the old woman and whispered to her. Agnes tottered forward another step. Roughly, Marian turned her around and marched her back to her room. Agnes shot Nora a look of bleak humiliation. A few seconds later, Marian came out and locked the door.

  “Honestly. I’ve had my difficulties with Agnes, but I never had to lock her in her room before. She said she had to go to the office, can you imagine?”

  “It can’t really be necessary to lock her up,” Nora said. “What if she has to go to the bathroom?”

  “She can hold it until she gets her dinner. Margaret’s already in a fine old state, thanks to Norman and his jackboots. By the time dinner is over, I’m going to need that nightcap.” Marian took them to the staircase. “I’m not sure what to suggest. Ordinarily you’d want to go back to Pepper Pot or walk around Lenox, but it looks like we’re building up to a rainstorm, and when that happens our paths turn into mudslides. Let’s go down and see what it’s doing outside.”

  A gust of wind slammed against the building. Somewhere beneath them, windows rattled in their frames. “As we speak,” Marian said. Rain struck the front of the house like buckshot, fell away for a second, and then came back in a stronger, continuous wave.

  The lights had been turned on in the lounge. The windows showed a dark sky sheeting down rain onto a sodden lawn. “At least the last tour ended before we had a lot of would-be lawyers demanding their money back.” In the distance, trees bent before the wind. “It’s a wild one.” She turned to Dart. “What do you want to do? We have umbrellas, but they wouldn’t last a second out there. You could make a run for Pepper Pot if it dies down, but you’d be covered with mud by the time you got there.”

  “Screw that,” Dart said. “I hate getting wet. Mud drives me up the wall.”

  Beyond the splashing lawn, the trees threw up their arms. “It looks like you’re stuck here until the end of dinner. We might be able to scrounge some boots for you, Norma, but Norman, what do we do about you?” Marian rubbed her forehead. “I’ll get Tony to bring up a slicker and a pair of boots after dinner. Norma can use a raincoat of mine. And don’t worry if the lights go out. We have lots of candles. Besides, our power company may be run by a bunch of hicks, but they always get the lights back on about an hour after the storms end. I promised you a special dinner, and that’s what you’re going to get.”

  “Goody.”

  “What would you like to do? I have to get some more work done in my office, and then I have to help in the kitchen, so you’ll be more or less on your own.”

  “I’d like to talk to Agnes some more,” Nora said.

  “We’ll have to save that for another day.” Three short dashes bracketed by outturned parentheses appeared in the middle of Marian’s forehead, then melted away. “Weren’t you interested in Georgina’s papers?”

  “I’d love to see them.” The records were bound to be in the office on the second floor, and Dart had to go to the bathroom sometime.

  “Can a thirsty man get a drink around here?” Dart asked.

  “Absolutely,” Marian said. “Come with me and I’ll set you both up.”

  Tossing back her hair, she took them into the main corridor, went down the marble steps, and looked back up at Nora. “Don’t you want to see the records?”

  “Aren’t they upstairs?” Nora asked.

  “They were, but after a couple of writers invaded Margaret’s office, we moved everything into the little room my secretary used to have, when I had a secretary.”

  Marian led them to a windowless cubicle fitted with a desk, a schoolroom chair, and metal shelves half-filled with bound ledgers, files of correspondence, and boxes marked PHOTO-GRAPHS. “Norman, I’ll be right back with your drink. Vodka, is that right? On the rocks?”

  “Drink to build a dream on.”

  If there had ever been a telephone in the cubicle, it had vanished along with Marian’s secretary.

  93

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Dart repeated the first thing he had said after Marian had left them. He was leaning back in the chair with his feet up on a shelf, stirring the ice cubes in what was left of his drink with a finger. “That story was even worse than Jane Austen’s garbage.”

  Nora closed one ledger and took another from the pile in front of her. Throughout the twenties and early thirties Georgina had spent a great deal of money on champagne acquired through a bootlegger named Selden, who after the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933 had apparently opened a liquor store. Models of order in one regard, the ledgers were chaotic in most others. In a hand which degenerated over the years from a Gothic upright to a barbed-wire scribble, Georgina had recorded every dollar which had entered and left Shorelands, but she’d made no distinctions between personal expenses and those of the estate. A five-dollar outlay for a new fountain pen appeared beneath one for three hundred dollars’ worth of Dutch tulip bulbs. Nor had she been rigid as to dates.

  “Maybe Agnes saw Chancel running down the path. Maybe she made the whole thing up one night after nipping too much amontillado, but we�
�ll never know. You know why? Shorelands is the Roach Motel for reality. The truth goes in, but it never comes out, and the reason for that is Georgina. Do you think Georgina Weatherall was ever capable, even way back in the days before she swapped sherry for liquid morphine, of giving you an accurate account of what took place on any given day?”

  “Judging by the state of her records, not really.”

  “Those novelists must have felt right at home. This whole place is fiction.” He laughed out loud, delighted by his own cleverness. “Even the name is a lie. It’s called Shorelands, but it isn’t on any shore. Old George thought she was beautiful and grand and universally adored, but the truth is, she was a horse-faced joke in circus clothes who got people to show up by giving them free room and board. Having famous writers suck up to her made her feel important. She couldn’t stand reality, so she went around pretending the run-down shacks her servants used to live in were ‘cottages.’ She handed out these fancy names. ‘I dub thee Gingerbread, I dub thee Rapunzel, and while I’m at it, I think I’ll dub that mangy swamp up there the Mist Field.’ What does that tell you? Pretty soon a little girl with an apron is going to show up trotting after a rabbit on its way to a tea party.”

  “I think I’m the little girl,” Nora said.

  “There you are. Why should Agnes be any different? She spent her whole life in this illusion factory. She has no idea what really happened to that girl.”

  “I think she does,” Nora said, “and something you said a little while ago gave me an idea.”

  Dart looked pleased with himself again. “I don’t believe it for a second, but how did she find out?”

  “Georgina told her what happened to Katherine.”

  “That makes a lot of sense. The great lady tells a servant that she helped conceal a murder? If it was a murder, which I also doubt.”

  “You heard Agnes.”

  “Agnes is stuck in bed while her archrival, Lily Melville, is bouncing around handing out lies to tourists. She’s alone up in that room with Henry David Thoreau, and she thinks he’s a liar, too.”

  “They do need a little more reality around here,” Nora said.