The Man From the Diogenes Club

by Kim Newman

  ‘Will you get script approval?’ asked Fred. ‘They could make you look a proper nana if they wanted. Like they did Jamie Hepplethwaites. We work in the shadows, guv. If you get famous for being lampooned on telly, the Ruling Cabal will Not Be Best Pleased.’

  ‘That had occurred to me.’

  Richard reached across the sofa and held Barbara’s hand. She returned his grip, firmly.

  ‘Something occurs to me,’ said Vanessa. ‘You should be careful about giving away old clothes to War on Want.’

  ‘A little late for that,’ Richard admitted.

  They all looked at him.

  ‘Today, while we were out, our rooms here were broken into. Not so you’d notice, but I take precautions and I can tell.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, your closets are empty?’

  ‘No, Fred, they’re full. Exactly as they were this morning.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Barbara and I have brand new clothes. The same styles as the old ones, but different. I’m not sure, technically, what crime has been committed.’

  ‘They can’t think you wouldn’t notice,’ said Fred.

  ‘The new outfits have been aged to match the old. By Tara, the wardrobe assistant, if the faint trace of Coty’s Imprevu I whiffed around the counterfeit of my Emilio Pucci shirt is a significant clue. I understand Tara’s specialty is scrounging up dupes for established costumes. Mama-Lou will not be pleased by the girl’s involvement.’

  ‘They’re after you, guv. You and the Prof.’

  ‘Yes, Fred. They are.’

  ‘Barstards!’

  The landlady came in, like a hurry-the-plot-along bit player, and told Vanessa she had a call.

  ‘The Phantom Phoner,’ she said, and left the room.

  Richard pulled Barbara towards him. The Professor was not used to being in supernatural cross-hairs, and her mind was racing to keep up. A few weeks ago, she hadn’t even known there were such things as curses, and now she was at the sharp end of one.

  ‘I should have specialised in nineteenth-century woman novelists,’ she said. ‘My postgraduate thesis was on George Eliot. But the field was so crowded. The bloody structuralists were moving in, throwing their weight about. No one was thinking hard about television. So, here I am. I suppose I brought this on myself. You might have mentioned this was dangerous, though. If I’d stayed on campus, the worst that could happen was… well, getting burned at the stake during the next student demo… but being cursed is fairly bloody drastic.’

  Vanessa came back.

  ‘That was my agent,’ she said. ‘The one Della set us up with. Your scoop was on the money. Priscilla of the Lovely Legs is off to Nepal to find her missing father in a lamasery. She’s left a note for Ben, which will make matters worse. I don’t even get an exit scene. My pay packet is waiting at the studio and I can swap my entry lozenge for it any time in the next two days. My digs are no longer being paid for by O’Dell-Squiers. She tells me, if it’s any consolation, that “Victoria Plant” has had a ton of fan mail, plus a film offer.’

  ‘Exciting?’ asked Fred.

  ‘Not really. Sexploits of a Suburban Housewife. More in your lady friend’s line than mine.’

  Zarana, Fred’s girlfriend, was an ‘exotic dancer’ who cheerfully admitted to being a stripper and did occasional modelling and actress jobs. She had been gruesomely murdered in several movies.

  Vanessa looked glum at the sudden end of her brief television career.

  ‘Knock knock?’ said Fred.

  ‘Who’s there?’ asked Barbara, trying to cheer up.

  ‘Victoria.’

  ‘Victoria who?’

  Fred spread his hands. ‘That’s showbiz!’

  Vanessa laughed, but chucked a newspaper at him too. Which made him concentrate on business again.

  ‘If the assistant’s working against us, is this wardrobe woman behind the scam?’ he asked. ‘The voodoo princess?’

  ‘No,’ said Richard, ‘Mama-Lou is sympathetic to our cause. She knows or at least suspects what’s going on, and sees it as a transgression of her religion. She gave me a hat.’

  Fred whistled.

  ‘Not a very nice hat,’ Richard admitted. ‘But a significant hat. We’ve seen its like about the place.’

  He pulled the flat cap out of his pocket and set it on his head.

  ‘‘Ey oop, there’s trooble at t’mill,’ said Fred, in a Londoner’s impression of a Northshire accent. ‘What do you look like?’

  ‘Anyone?’ asked Richard.

  ‘You’ve got a producer’s hat on,’ said Barbara. ‘Now I remember where Squiers got it. There’s one exactly like it on the set. It’s been on a hook since the programme started. Mavis left it there where her husband hung it just before his fatal stroke.’

  ‘Da Barstow,’ said Fred. ‘Our hit-man.’

  ‘Da Barstow used to be married to Mavis,’ said Richard.

  ‘And Marcus Squiers used to be married to June,’ said Vanessa. ‘He’s put himself right in the frame.’

  ‘Literally,’ said Richard, taking off the cap. ‘Da’s wearing this in his portrait.’

  ‘So this little bald git is diabolical mastermind of the month?’ said Fred, who only knew Squiers from press cuttings. ‘Can’t say I’m surprised. He’s a dead ringer for Donald Pleasence.’

  ‘Is that a dupe?’ asked Vanessa.

  Richard looked at the stained lining-band. He had noticed how much Squiers sweated. He fingered the cap.

  ‘It may be a dupe of the cap on the set, but it’s the original “producer’s hat”. I imagine Mama-Lou’s slipped Squiers another dupe, which he’s been wearing without noticing. Are you following this, Frederick?’

  ‘The Barstards have got your clothes and you’ve got his cap.’

  ‘Very good, Fred.’

  ‘But what help is that to us?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘Level playing field, Prof,’ said Fred.

  ‘Two can do voodoo,’ said Vanessa.

  ‘Ah,’ said Barbara, catching up.

  Richard was thrilled. He recognised this was the most dangerous phase of the case. When he became excited by the problem and had a solution in mind, he was tempted to let down his guard and take silly risks. With a volunteer along for the ride, he needed to remember that when black magic got out of hand people tended to get horribly hurt.

  ‘I will not let you be harmed,’ he told Barbara.

  She smiled, showing grit. He was pleased with her.

  ‘We’ll need to call in favours,’ he told them, ‘and work fast. Squiers is ahead on points and is setting us up for a knock-out before the end of the round.’

  Fred shivered. ‘It gives me chills when you talk like Frank Bough. It only happens when we’re on a sticky wicket, up against the ropes, down to the last man, and facing a penalty in injury time.’

  ‘How many episodes does a hit take?’ asked Vanessa.

  ‘I defer to Barbara’s expertise,’ said Richard.

  ‘Typically,’ she began, ‘it’s been done over six to ten weeks, twelve to twenty shows. To get the audience involved, I suspect. You said emotional investment in the characters was a key ingredient. I imagine it’s important to get all fifteen million viewers on the hook. Of course, Squiers can usually afford to take the time to build slowly, work the relevant plot into the other things going on. None of the earlier, ah, commissions have taken over the programme completely. There’ve always been other stories running, about Mavis, Ben and the rest. Now, since we’re close to exposing him, there’s urgency. The ghost-hunters – us! – were set up on last night’s episode, and will be introduced at the end of next Tuesday’s show. They’re due to turn up for the cliffhanger, as all hell breaks loose in the lounge. In the programme, by the way, the Bleeds Bogey is Da Barstow’s angry ghost. He reckons Mavis killed him all those years ago. I estimate next Thursday’s Barstows will be the crucial episode, when “Roget” and “Canberra” are established as characters.’

  �
��That’s when the voodoo is done,’ said Richard. ‘When our “dolls” are fixed in the public mind.’

  Barbara shivered. ‘The way things are going,’ she said, ‘I suspect we’ll be horribly killed the week after. Does that sound right?’

  ‘Just about,’ said Richard.

  ‘They really are Barstards,’ spat Barbara. Good. She had progressed from fear to anger.

  ‘We’ve a week and a half to defy the Saturday Man,’ said Richard. ‘A challenge. I enjoy a challenge.’

  ‘And I enjoy breathing,’ said Barbara, ‘so rise to it, Richard.’

  XIII.

  First thing Monday morning, after a weekend spent mostly on the phone, Richard and Barbara turned up at Haslemere Studios to meet their newly costumed doppelgangers outside the sound-stage. Lionel had arranged for publicity photographs. Marcus Squiers, wearing what he fondly thought was his producer’s hat, beetled around sweatily in the background, presumably to keep an eye on the doll-making spell.

  Actors named Leslie Veneer and Gaye Brough were freshly cast as “Roget Masterman” and “Canberra Laurinz”. Veneer had not been in any films or done any television Richard had ever heard of. Having all but given up on acting in favour of work as an insurance adjuster, he no longer had an agent. His head-shot was still in Spotlight just so he could say he was an actor rather than an insurance man when talking to girls at keys-in-a-bowl parties. Gaye’s curriculum vitae was more impressive, listing page after page of seemingly everything made in the United Kingdom from A Man for All Seasons to Devil Bride of Dracula – though she admitted you’d need to run prints frame by frame through a Steenbeck to catch her face. In twenty-five years in the profession, Gaye Brough had never played a part with a character name. Essentially, she was an extra. He assumed both players had been cast purely for physical resemblance, which was considerable. When they were posed, Barbara instinctively cosied up to Veneer, and Richard had to reclaim her – prompting blushes, which Gaye instantly matched.

  Veneer, obviously shrieking inside with ambitious glee, projected an exaggerated disdain that would come across on screen as woodenness. Gaye bubbled delight and enthusiasm, and kept bumping into things – either because the sudden career jump undid her spatial sense or she usually wore thick glasses that were left at home so she could dazzle with her Barbara-like eyes.

  The quartet of interchangeables posed together. Veneer and Gaye wore Richard and Barbara’s original clothes. Richard and Barbara made do with Tara’s dupes.

  ‘With my producer’s hat on, I have to say these are perfect.’

  Squiers looked from the originals to the copies, meek but smug. From him, Richard sensed a species of hurt resentment that his racket had been tumbled, but also a belief that Marcus Squiers was the aggrieved and persecuted party, that he had every right to call on the Saturday Man for aid against those who would thwart his killing business. This was interesting, but beside the point – Richard was curious about the conjurer’s motives, but knew they weren’t important. Squiers thought he was home safe and the interlopers doomed. He was arrogant enough to play the I-know-you-know-that-I-know-you-know game and loiter to enjoy the show as his enemies were supposedly drawn deeper into his trap. Richard hoped that was a mistake.

  Richard pinched his wrist and saw Veneer rub what he thought was a gnat-bite.

  The writing pack had also turned out and were circling, admiring the casting. As several photographers took thousands of exposures, writers tossed questions at Richard and Barbara, which often bounced off onto Veneer and Gaye, who were bewildered but kept up the mysterioso brooding and glossy smiling that were their single-note performances.

  ‘Richard, do you get enough exorcise?’

  ‘Barbara, what crept into the crypt and crapped?’

  ‘Richard, have you ever laid a ghost?’

  ‘Barbara, what’s the best recipe for ectoplasm omelette?’

  Mama-Lou watched, from a distance. Richard caught her eye, and she winked. Blessings of Erzulie Freda. That was a comfort.

  After an age, it was over. Lionel shooed away the photographers, and Veneer and Gaye were ushered off to the make-up department.

  ‘They have to get head-casts made,’ said Lionel.

  That was a significant clue as to what Squiers had in mind for Roget and Canberra. A brace of severed heads should be ready for the episode to be broadcast tomorrow week.

  Richard’s neck itched. It was the wrong collar.

  The props department were calling in axes from the warehouse, to give Gerard Loss a selection to choose from.

  Next, Richard had an important interview. In June O’Dell’s trailer.

  XIV.

  Tuesday’s episode climaxed with the Bleeds Bogey manifesting a full-on telekinetic storm in Mavis Barstow’s lounge. Objects were hurled through the air on dozens of fishing lines and Ben sank to his knees pleading for mercy as invisible forces lashed his face.

  For a brief shot that took longer to set up than the rest of the episode, Dudley Finn had make-up scars applied, with flesh-coloured sticking plasters fixed over them – when the plasters were torn away by fishing lines, Ben had claw-marks on his face. Then, as Mavis shouted defiance at her late husband, the doors were torn off their hinges, a flood of dry ice fog-smoke-mist-ectoplasm poured onto the set and cleared to show Leslie Veneer and Gaye Brough posed in the doorway as if hoping for a spin-off series. Loss needed a dozen takes before he was browbeaten by Marcus Squiers – with his producer’s hat on, tapping his watch as the shoot edged ever-nearer the dreaded and never-embraced ‘Golden Time’ when union rules insisted the crew’s wages tripled – into accepting Veneer’s reading of Roget Masterman’s introductory line, ‘Avaunt, Spirit of Evil! We’ve come about your bogeys, Mrs Barstow, and not a moment too soon!’

  Having been on set during the taping, and even smarmily consulted on the finer points of psychokinesis by an unctuous Squiers, Richard felt he could skip the transmission. His associates were back at the guest house, watching the programme for him.

  Inspector Price had said it would be easy to break into the Bank of England while The Northern Barstows was on the air. It was certainly easy to slip into the studio where the show was made. Almost everyone connected with the programme was at home in front of the telly, fuming about the way June O’Dell stepped on their lines or taking notes for the 7 a.m. post-mortem in the writers’ pit the next morning.

  Wearing Marcus Squiers’s producer’s hat and a long drab coat, Richard felt like a walking manifestation of the Bleeds Bogey. He stalked through the car park and approached the stage door, which should have been accidentally left unlocked. No lozenge-filching had been required.

  When the door gave at his push, he was relieved. Mama-Lou was off her fence. The revelation about Tara, who was after the top job in Wardrobe, fully committed the woman to their cause.

  She was a believer, not a priestess – but belief was what this was all about.

  Barbara reported that the writers had been forthcoming in discussing Thursday’s episode, asking her parapsychology questions she had to invent answers for, but reticent when it came to next Tuesday’s, confirming to Richard’s satisfaction that Roget and Canberra were due for the chop then. Leslie Veneer, who now had an agent again, and Gaye Brough, who was hoping for the cover of the TV Times, didn’t yet know how short-lived their stardom was due to be.

  So, it all came down to next Tuesday’s episode – which had already been written, in semi-secret, by Marcus Squiers independent of the pack. Barbara had asked around tactfully and discovered this was standard procedure for shows with major plot developments – and, also, obviously, when Squiers was using his video voodoo to kill people. The floor taping was due on Friday, with special effects pick-up shots (decapitations?) scheduled for Monday morning.

  That gave Richard a weekend to counter the spell. He trusted making television was as easy as it looked. After a few days hanging round the production team, he thought he could wear all their hats. But he st
ill needed help from inside the enemy camp.

  It was dark on the stage. His night-senses took moments to adjust.

  Someone clapped and lights came up.

  He was in the middle of Mavis Barstow’s lounge. Prop objects were strewn everywhere, tossed by the Bogey. Cards stuck to them warned against violating continuity by moving anything.

  ‘Mama-Lou,’ he called out.

  His voice came back to him.

  He sensed something wrong. Other people were here, who he had not expected, who weren’t part of his deal.

  Strong hands gripped his arms. Two sets.

  He bent over and threw one of the men over his shoulder with an aikido move, then sank a nasty knee into the other’s goolies. Thanks to Bruce Lee and David Carradine, everyone accepted what British schoolboys used to call ‘dirty fighting’ as an ancient, noble and religious art form. Richard realised he had just floored the Tank-Top Twins. They rolled and fell and groaned and hopped, but had enough presence of mind – or fear of the consequences – not to disturb any labelled props. They got over their initial hurt and came at him, more seriously. Richard brought up his fists, and thought through six ways of semi-permanently disabling two larger, younger, stupider opponents within the next minute and a half.

  ‘Leave them alone,’ said a woman. ‘They’re expensive.’

  The instruction was for him but it made the Twins stand down and back away. Richard opened his fists and made a monster-clutch gesture while doing a ghost-moan. They flinched.

  ‘Was that necessary?’ he asked the woman.

  ‘Now I know you can take care of yourself,’ said the woman. ‘Good.’

  June O’Dell, Mavis Barstow, stood on the set as if it were really her home. In slippers, she barely came up to the mantelpiece, but still seemed to fill any spare space. Richard fancied she looked younger tonight, with a little colour in her cheeks that might come from digesting Emma. Ghost-eaters could do that, often without even knowing how they retained their youthful blush. She wore a filmy muu-muu with mandarin sleeves, diamonds at her ears and around her throat. Mama-Lou was with June, wearing a white bikini bottom augmented by a mass of necklaces, armlets, anklets, bracelets and a three-pointed tiara surmounted with the skulls of a shrew, a crow and a pike. Maybe she was more than just a believer.