The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  I opened my mouth to object and found I could not.

  Every profession occasionally must draw upon the resources of impartial experts - consultants. Every institution of every kind has known the visitations of persons answerable only to the top and given access to all departments - consultants. Consultants are supposed to be invisible. Again I opened my mouth, this time to say, “Gentlemen, we are in business.” I picked up my telephone and asked Mrs Rampage to order immediate delivery from Bloomingdale’s of an ornamental screen and then to remove the breakfast tray.

  Eyes a-gleam with approval, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff stepped forward to shake my hand.

  “We are in business,” said Mr Clubb.

  “Which is by way of saying,” said Mr Cuff, “jointly dedicated to a sacred purpose.”

  Mrs Rampage entered, circled to the side of my desk, and gave my visitors a glance of deep-dyed wariness. Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff clasped their hands before them and looked heavenward. “About the screen,” she said. “Bloomingdale’s wants to know if you would prefer one six feet high in a black and red Chinese pattern or one ten feet high, Art Deco, in ochres, teals, and taupes.”

  My barnies nodded together at the heavens. “The latter, please, Mrs Rampage,” I said. “Have it delivered this afternoon, regardless of cost, and place it beside the table for the use of these gentlemen, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff, highly regarded consultants to the financial industry. That table shall be their command post.”

  “Consultants,” she said. “Oh.”

  The barnies dipped their heads. Much relaxed, Mrs Rampage asked if I expected great changes in the future.

  “We shall see,” I said. “I wish you to extend every cooperation to these gentlemen. I need not remind you, I know, that change is the first law of life.”

  She disappeared, no doubt on a beeline for her telephone.

  Mr Clubb stretched his arms above his head. “The preliminaries are out of the way, and we can move to the job at hand. You, sir, have been most exceedingly, most grievously wronged. Do I overstate?”

  “You do not,” I said.

  “Would I overstate to assert that you have been injured, that you have suffered a devastating wound?”

  “No, you would not,” I responded, with some heat.

  Mr Clubb settled a broad haunch upon the surface of my desk. His face had taken on a grave, sweet serenity. “You seek redress. Redress, sir, is a correction, but it is nothing more. You imagine that it restores a lost balance, but it does nothing of the kind. A crack has appeared on the earth’s surface, causing widespread loss of life. From all sides are heard the cries of the wounded and dying. It is as though the earth itself has suffered an injury akin to yours, is it not?”

  He had expressed a feeling I had not known to be mine until that moment, and my voice trembled as I said, “It is exactly.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “For that reason I said correction rather than restoration. Restoration is never possible. Change is the first law of life.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, trying to get down to brass tacks.

  Mr Clubb hitched his buttock more comprehensively onto the desk. “What will happen will indeed happen, but we prefer our clients to acknowledge from the first that, apart from human desires being a deep and messy business, outcomes are full of surprises. If you choose to repay one disaster with an equal and opposite disaster, we would reply, in our country fashion, there’s a calf that won’t suck milk.”

  I said, “I know I can’t pay my wife back in kind, how could I?”

  “Once we begin,” he said, “we cannot undo our actions.”

  “Why should I want them undone?” I asked.

  Mr Clubb drew up his legs and sat cross-legged before me. Mr Cuff placed a meaty hand on my shoulder. “I suppose there is no dispute,” said Mr Clubb, “that the injury you seek to redress is the adulterous behavior of your spouse.”

  Mr Cuff’s hand tightened on my shoulder.

  “You wish that my partner and myself punish your spouse.”

  “I didn’t hire you to read her bedtime stories,” I said.

  Mr Cuff twice smacked my shoulder, painfully, in what I took to be approval.

  “Are we assuming that her punishment is to be of a physical nature?” asked Mr Clubb. His partner gave my shoulder another all-too hearty squeeze.

  “What other kind is there?” I asked, pulling away from Mr Cuff’s hand.

  The hand closed on me again, and Mr Clubb said, “Punishment of a mental or psychological nature. We could, for example, torment her with mysterious telephone calls and anonymous letters. We could use any of a hundred devices to make it impossible for her to sleep. Threatening incidents could be staged so often as to put her in a permanent state of terror.”

  “I want physical punishment,” I said.

  “That is our constant preference,” he said. “Results are swifter and more conclusive when physical punishment is used. But again, we have a wide spectrum from which to choose. Are we looking for mild physical pain, real suffering, or something in between, on the order of, say, broken arms or legs?”

  I thought of the change in Marguerite’s eyes when I named the — Hotel. “Real suffering.”

  Another bone-crunching blow to my shoulder from Mr Cuff and a wide, gappy smile from Mr Clubb greeted this remark. “You, sir, are our favorite type of client,” said Mr Clubb. “A fellow who knows what he wants and is unafraid to put it into words. This suffering, now, did you wish it in brief or extended form?”

  “Extended,” I said. “I must say that I appreciate your thoughtfulness in consulting with me like this. I was not quite sure what I wanted of you when first I requested your services, but you have helped me become perfectly clear about it.”

  “That is our function,” he said. “Now, sir. The extended form of real suffering permits two different conclusions, gradual cessation or termination. Which is your preference?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it. I opened it again and stared at the ceiling. Did I want these men to murder my wife? No. Yes. No. Yes, but only after making sure that the unfaithful trollop understood exactly why she had to die. No, surely an extended term of excruciating torture would restore the world to proper balance. Yet I wanted the witch dead. But then I would be ordering these barnies to kill her. “At the moment I cannot make that decision,” I said. Irresistibly, my eyes found the bottom drawer containing the file of obscene photographs. “I’ll let you know my decision after we have begun.”

  Mr Cuff dropped his hand, and Mr Clubb nodded with exaggerated, perhaps ironic slowness. “And what of your rival, the seducer, sir? Do we have any wishes in regard to that gentleman, sir?”

  The way these fellows could sharpen one’s thinking was truly remarkable. “I most certainly do,” I said. “What she gets, he gets. Fair is fair.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Mr Clubb, “and, if you will permit me, sir, only fair is fair. And fairness demands that before we go any deeper into the particulars of the case we must examine the evidence as presented to yourself, and when I speak of fairness, sir, I refer to fairness particularly to yourself, for only the evidence seen by your own eyes can permit us to view this matter through them.”

  Again, I looked helplessly down at the bottom drawer. “That will not be necessary. You will find my wife at our country estate, Green . . .”

  My voice trailed off as Mr Cuff’s hand ground into my shoulder while he bent down and opened the drawer.

  “Begging to differ,” said Mr Clubb, “but we are now and again in a better position than the client to determine what is necessary. Remember, sir, that while shame unshared is toxic to the soul, shame shared is the beginning of health. Besides, it only hurts for a little while.”

  Mr Cuff drew the file from the drawer.

  “My partner will concur that your inmost wish is that we examine the evidence,” said Mr Clubb. “Else you would not have signalled its location. We would prefer to have your explicit command to do so, but in the a
bsence of explicit, implicit serves just about as well.”

  I gave an impatient, ambiguous wave of the hand, a gesture they cheerfully misunderstood.

  “Then all is . . . how do you put it, sir? ‘All is . . .’ “

  “All is in order, all is in train,” I muttered.

  “Just so. We have ever found it beneficial to establish a common language with our clients, in order to conduct ourselves within terms enhanced by their constant usage in the dialogue between us.” He took the file from Mr Cuff’s hands. “We shall examine the contents of this folder at the table across the room. After the examination has been completed, my partner and I shall deliberate. And then, sir, we shall return for further instructions.”

  They strolled across the office and took adjoining chairs on the near side of the table, presenting me with two identical, wide, black-clothed backs. Their hats went to either side, the file between them. Attempting unsuccessfully to look away, I lifted my receiver and asked my secretary who if anyone had called in the interim and what appointments had been made for the morning.

  Mr Clubb opened the folder and leaned forward to inspect the topmost photograph.

  My secretary informed me that Marguerite had telephoned from the road with an inquiry concerning my health. Mr Clubb’s back and shoulders trembled with what I assumed was the shock of disgust. One of the scions was due at two p.m., and at four a cryptic gentleman would arrive. By their works shall ye know them, and Mrs Rampage proved herself a diligent soul by asking if I wished her to place a call to Green Chimneys at three o’clock. Mr Clubb thrust a photograph in front of Mr Cuff. “I think not,” I said. “Anything else?” She told me that Gilligan had expressed a desire to see me privately - meaning, without the Captain -sometime during the morning. A murmur came from the table. “Gilligan can wait,” I said, and the murmur, expressive I had thought of dismay and sympathy, rose in volume and revealed itself as amusement.

  They were chuckling - even chortling!

  I replaced the telephone and said, “Gentlemen, please, your laughter is insupportable.” The potential effect of this remark was undone by its being lost within a surge of coarse laughter. I believe that something else was at that moment lost . . . some dimension of my soul ... an element akin to pride . . . akin to dignity . . . but whether the loss was for good or ill, then I could not say. For some time, in fact an impossibly lengthy time, they found cause for laughter in the wretched photographs. My occasional attempts to silence them went unheard as they passed the dread photographs back and forth, discarding some instantly and to others returning for a second, even a third, even a fourth and fifth, perusal.

  And then at last the barnies reared back, uttered a few nostalgic chirrups of laughter, and returned the photographs to the folder. They were still twitching with remembered laughter, still flicking happy tears from their eyes, as they sauntered grinning back across the office and tossed the file onto my desk. “Ah me, sir, a delightful experience,” said Mr Clubb. “Nature in all her lusty romantic splendor, one might say. Remarkably stimulating, I could add. Correct, sir?”

  “I hadn’t expected you fellows to be stimulated to mirth,” I grumbled, ramming the foul thing into the drawer and out of view.

  “Laughter is merely a portion of the stimulation to which I refer,” he said. “Unless my sense of smell has led me astray, a thing I fancy it has yet to do, you could not but feel another sort of arousal altogether before these pictures, am I right?”

  I refused to respond to this sally but feared that I felt the blood rising to my cheeks. Here they were again, the slugs and maggots.

  “We are all brothers under the skin,” said Mr Clubb. “Remember my words. Shame unshared poisons the soul. And besides, it only hurts for a little while.”

  Now I could not respond. What was the “it” which hurts only for a little while - the pain of cuckoldry, the mystery of my shameful response to the photographs, or the horror of the barnies knowing what I had done?

  “You will find it helpful, sir, to repeat after me: It only hurts for a little while.”

  “It only hurts for a little while,” I said, and the naive phrase reminded me that they were only barnies after all.

  “Spoken like a child,” Mr Clubb most annoyingly said, “in as it were the tones and accents of purest innocence,” and then righted matters by asking where Marguerite might be found. Had I not mentioned a country place named Green . . .?

  “Green Chimneys,” I said, shaking off the unpleasant impression which the preceding few seconds had made upon me. “You will find it at the end of— Lane, turning right off— Street just north of the town of —. The four green chimneys easily visible above the hedge along — Lane are your landmark, though as it is the only building in sight you can hardly mistake it for another. My wife left our place in the city just after ten this morning, so she should be getting there ...” I looked at my watch.”. . . in thirty to forty-five minutes. She will unlock the front gate, but she will not relock it once she has passed through, for she never does. The woman does not have the self-preservation of a sparrow. Once she has entered the estate, she will travel up the drive and open the door of the garage with an electronic device. This door, I assure you, will remain open, and the door she will take into the house will not be locked.”

  “But there are maids and cooks and laundresses and bootboys and suchlike to consider,” said Mr Cuff. “Plus a major-domo to conduct the entire orchestra and go around rattling the doors to make sure they’re locked. Unless all of these parties are to be absent on account of the annual holiday.”

  “The servants have the month off,” I said.

  “A most suggestive consideration,” said Mr Clubb. “You possess a devilish clever mind, sir.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, grateful for the restoration of the proper balance. “Marguerite will have stopped along the way for groceries and other essentials, so she will first carry the bags into the kitchen, which is the first room to the right off the corridor from the garage. Then I suppose she will take the staircase up to her bedroom and air it out.” I took pen and paper from my topmost drawer and sketched the layout of the house as I spoke. “She may go around to the library, the morning room, and the drawing room, opening the shutters and a few windows. Somewhere during this process, she is likely to use the telephone. After that, she will leave the house by the rear entrance and take the path along the top of the bluff to a long, low building which looks like this.”

  I drew in the well-known outlines of the studio in its nest of trees on the bluff above the Hudson. “It is a recording studio I had built for her convenience. She may well plan to spend the entire afternoon inside it, and you will know if she is there by the lights.” Then I could see Marguerite smiling to herself as she fit her key into the lock on the studio door, see her let herself in and reach automatically for the light switch, and a wave of emotion rendered me speechless.

  Mr Clubb rescued me by asking, “It is your feeling, sir, that when the lady stops to use the telephone she will be placing a call to that energetic gentleman?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, only barely refraining from adding you dolt. “She will seize the earliest opportunity to inform him of their good fortune.”

  He nodded with the extravagant caution I was startled to recognize from my own dealings with backward clients. “Let us pause to see all ‘round the matter, sir. Will the lady wish to leave a suspicious entry in your telephone records? Isn’t it more likely that the person she telephones will be you, sir? The call to the athletic gentleman will already have been placed, according to my way of seeing things, either from the roadside or the telephone in the grocery where you have her stop to pick up her essentials.”

  Though disliking these references to Leeson’s physical condition, I admitted that he might have a point.

  “So, in that case, sir, and I know that a mind as quick as yours has already overtaken mine, you would want to express yourself with the utmost cordiality when the mis
sus calls again, so as not to tip your hand in even the slightest way. But that I’m sure goes without saying, after all you have been through, sir.”

  Without bothering to acknowledge this, I said, “Shouldn’t you fellows really be leaving? No sense in wasting time, after all.”

  “Precisely why we shall wait here until the end of the day,” said Mr Clubb. “In cases of this unhappy sort, we find it more effective to deal with both parties at once, acting in concert when they are in prime condition to be taken by surprise. The gentleman is liable to leave his place of work at the end of the day, which implies to me that he is unlikely to appear at your lovely country place at any time before seven this evening, or, which is more likely, eight. At this time of the year, there is still enough light at nine o’clock to enable us to conceal our vehicle on the grounds, enter the house, and begin our business. At eleven o’clock, sir, we shall call with our initial report and request additional instructions.”