The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror

by Stephen Jones

  They were chuckling – even chortling!

  I replaced the telephone and said, “Gentlemen, 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 images back and forth, discarding some instantly and to others returning for a second, a third, even a fourth and fifth perusal.

  At last the barnies reared back, uttered a few nostalgic chirrups of laughter, and returned the photographs to the folders. 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 files onto my desk. “Ah me, sir, a delightful experience,” said Mr Clubb. “Nature in all her lusty romantic splendour, 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 things 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 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” that hurt 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 naïve 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 that 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 majordomo 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.”

  “My 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 upstairs and air out her bedroom.” I took pen and paper from my topmost drawer and sketched the layout of the house. “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 that looks like this.”

  I drew in the outlines of the studio in its nest of trees 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. You will know if she is there by the lights.” I saw Marguerite smiling to herself as she fit her key into the lock on the studio door, saw her let herself in and reach for the light switch. 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 an extravagant caution I recognized from my own dealings with backward clients. “Let us pause to see all ’round the matter, sir. Would 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.

  “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 missus 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 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.”

  I asked the fellow if he meant to idle away the entire afternoon in my office while I conducted my business.

  “Mr Cuff and I are never idle, sir. While you conduct your business, we will be doing the same, laying out our plans, refining our strategies, choosing our methods and the order of their use.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said, “but I trust you’ll be quiet about it.”

  At that moment, Mrs Rampage buzzed to say that Gilligan was before her, requesting to see me immediately, proof that bush telegraph is a more efficient means of spreading information than any newspaper. I told her to send him in, and a second later Morning Gilligan, pale of face, dark hair tousled but not as yet completely wild, came treading softly toward my desk. He pretended to be surprised that I had visitors and pantomimed an apology which incorporated the suggestion that he depart and return later. “No, no,” I said, “I am delighted to see you, for this gives me the opportunity to introduce you to our new consultants, who will be working closely with me for a time.”

  Gilligan swallowed, glanced at me with the deepest suspicion,
and extended his hand as I made the introductions. “I regret that I am unfamiliar with your work, gentlemen,” he said. “Might I ask the name of your firm? Is it Locust, Bleaney, Burns or Charter, Carter, Maxton, and Coltrane?”

  By naming the two most prominent consultancies in our industry, Gilligan was assessing the thinness of the ice beneath his feet: LBB specialized in investments, CCM&C in estates and trusts. If my visitors worked for the former, he would suspect that a guillotine hung above his neck; if the latter, the Skipper was liable for the chop. “Neither,” I said. “Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff are the directors of their own concern, which covers every aspect of the trade with such tactful professionalism that it is known to but the few for whom they will consent to work.”

  “Excellent,” Gilligan whispered, gazing in some puzzlement at the map and flplan atop my desk. “Tip-top.”

  “When their findings are given to me, they shall be given to all. In the meantime, I would prefer that you say as little as possible about the matter. Though change is a law of life, we wish to avoid unnecessary alarm.”

  “You know that you can depend on my silence,” said Morning Gilligan, and it was true, I did know that. I also knew that his alter ego, Afternoon Gilligan, would babble the news to everyone who had not already heard it from Mrs Rampage. By 6.00 p.m., our entire industry would be pondering the information that I had called in a consultancy team of such rarified accomplishments that they chose to remain unknown but to the very few. None of my colleagues could dare admit to an ignorance of Clubb & Cuff, and my reputation, already great, would increase exponentially.

  To distract him from the floor plan of Green Chimneys and the rough map of my estate, I said, “I assume some business brought you here, Gilligan.”

  “Oh! Yes – yes – of course,” he said, and with a trace of embarrassment brought to my attention the pretext for his being there, the ominous plunge in value of an overseas fund in which we had advised one of his musicians to invest. Should we recommend selling the fund before more money was lost, or was it wisest to hold on? Only a minute was required to decide that the musician should retain his share of the fund until next quarter, when we anticipated a general improvement, but both Gilligan and I were aware that this recommendation call could easily have been handled by telephone. Soon he was moving toward the door, smiling at the barnies in a pathetic display of false confidence.

  The telephone rang a moment after the detectives had returned to the table. Mr Clubb said, “Your wife, sir. Remember: the utmost cordiality.” Here was false confidence, I thought, of an entirely different sort. I picked up the receiver to hear Mrs Rampage tell me that my wife was on the line.

  What followed was a banal conversation of the utmost duplicity. Marguerite pretended that my sudden departure from the dinner table and my late arrival at the office had caused her to fear for my health. I pretended that all was well, apart from a slight indigestion. Had the drive up been peaceful? Yes. How was the house? A little musty, but otherwise fine. She had never quite realized, she said, how very large Green Chimneys was until she walked around in it, knowing she was going to be there alone. Had she been out to the studio? No, but she was looking forward to getting a lot of work done over the next three or four days and thought she would be working every night, as well. (Implicit in this remark was the information that I should be unable to reach her, the studio being without a telephone.) After a moment of awkward silence, she said, “I suppose it is too early for you to have identified your traitor.” It was, I said, but the process would begin that evening. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this,” she said. “I know how painful the discovery was for you, and I can only begin to imagine how angry you must be, but I hope you will be merciful. No amount of punishment can undo the damage, and if you try to exact retribution you will only injure yourself. The man is going to lose his job and his reputation. Isn’t that punishment enough?” After a few meaningless pleasantries the conversation had clearly come to an end, although we still had yet to say good-bye. Then an odd thing happened to me. I nearly said, Lock all the doors and windows tonight and let no one in. I nearly said, You are in grave danger and must come home. With these words rising in my throat, I looked across the room at Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff. Mr Clubb winked at me. I heard myself bidding Marguerite farewell, and then heard her hang up her telephone.

  “Well done, sir,” said Mr Clubb. “To aid Mr Cuff and myself in the preparation of our inventory, can you tell us if you keep certain staples at Green Chimneys?”

  “Staples?” I said, thinking he was referring to foodstuffs.

  “Rope?” he asked. “Tools, especially pliers, hammers, and screwdrivers? A good saw? A variety of knives? Are there by any chance firearms?”

  “No firearms,” I said. “I believe all the other items you mention can be found in the house.”

  “Rope and tool chest in the basement, knives in the kitchen?”

  “Yes,” I said, “precisely.” I had not ordered these barnies to murder my wife, I reminded myself; I had drawn back from that precipice. By the time I went into the executive dining room for my luncheon, I felt sufficiently restored to give Charlie-Charlie that ancient symbol of approval, the thumbs-up sign.

  III

  When I returned to my office the screen had been set in place, shielding from view the detectives in their preparations but in no way muffling the rumble of comments and laughter they brought to the task. “Gentlemen,” I said in a voice loud enough to be heard behind the screen – a most unsuitable affair decorated with a pattern of ocean liners, martini glasses, champagne bottles, and cigarettes – “you must modulate your voices, as I have business to conduct here as well as you.” There came a somewhat softer rumble of acquiescence. I took my seat to discover my bottom desk drawer pulled out, the folders absent. Another roar of laughter jerked me once again to my feet.

  I came around the side of the screen and stopped short. The table lay concealed beneath drifts and mounds of yellow legal paper covered with lists of words and drawings of stick figures in varying stages of dismemberment. Strewn through the yellow pages were the photographs, loosely divided into those in which either Marguerite or Graham Leeson provided the principal focus. Crude genitalia had been drawn, without reference to either party’s actual gender, over and atop both of them. Aghast, I began gathering up the defaced photographs. “I must insist . . .” I said. “I really must insist, you know . . .”

  Mr Clubb immobilized my wrist with one hand and extracted the photographs with the other. “We prefer to work in our time-honoured fashion,” he said. “Our methods may be unusual, but they are ours. But before you take up the afternoon’s occupations, sir, can you tell us if items on the handcuff order might be found in the house?”

  “No,” I said. Mr Cuff pulled a yellow page before him and wrote handcuffs.

  “Chains?” asked Mr Clubb.

  “No chains,” I said, and Mr Cuff added chains to his list.

  “That is all for the moment,” said Mr Clubb, and released me.

  I took a step backward and massaged my wrist, which stung as if from rope burn. “You speak of your methods,” I said, “and I understand that you have them. But what can be the purpose of defacing my photographs in this grotesque fashion?”

  “Sir,” said Mr Clubb in a stern, teacherly voice, “where you speak of defacing, we use the term enhancement. Enhancement is a tool we find vital to the method known by the name of Visualization.”

  I retired defeated to my desk. At five minutes before two, Mrs Rampage informed me that the Skipper and our scion, a thirty-year-old inheritor of a great family fortune named Mr Chester Montfort de M—, awaited my pleasure. Putting Mrs Rampage on hold, I called out, “Please do give me absolute quiet, now. A client is on his way in.”

  First to appear was the Skipper, his tall, rotund form as alert as a pointer’s in a grouse field as he led in the taller, inexpressibly languid figure of Mr Chester Montfort de M—, a person marked in every inch of his b
eing by great ease, humour, and stupidity. The Skipper froze to gape horrified at the screen, but Montfort de M— continued around him to shake my hand and say, “Have to tell you, I like that thingamabob over there immensely. Reminds me of a similar thingamabob at the Beeswax Club a few years ago, whole flocks of girls used to come tumbling out. Don’t suppose we’re in for any unicycles and trumpets today, eh?”

  The combination of the raffish screen and our client’s unbridled memories brought a dangerous flush to the Skipper’s face, and I hastened to explain the presence of top-level consultants who preferred to pitch tent on-site, as it were, hence the installation of a screen, all the above in the service of, well, service, an all-important quality we . . .

  “By Kitchener’s mustache,” said the Skipper. “I remember the Beeswax Club. Don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the night Little Billy Pegleg jumped up and . . .” The colour darkened on his cheeks, and he closed his mouth.

  From behind the screen, I heard Mr Clubb say, “Visualize this.” Mr Cuff chuckled.

  The Skipper recovered himself and turned his sternest glare up on me. “Superb idea, consultants. A white-glove inspection tightens up any ship.” His veiled glance toward the screen indicated that he had known of the presence of our “consultants” but, unlike Gilligan, had restrained himself from thrusting into my office until given legitimate reason. “That being the case, is it still quite proper that these people remain while we discuss Mr Montfort de M—’s confidential affairs?”