The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02]

by By Kim Newman

  “Events have eventuated,” said Mr. Hay. “Your Ruling Cabal was short-sighted to green-ribbon the Harvill children. You, however, were perceptive in continuing to take an interest. Even if unsanctioned.”

  “Bad business under Regent’s Park,” commented Mr. Effe.

  Charles expected these fellows to be up on things.

  “Your assumption is that this is the same case?” asked Mr. Hay.

  He swallowed tea. The Undertaking knew full well this was the same case.

  “Mr. Effe, if you would do the honours,” said Mr. Hay, snapping his fingers.

  Mr. Effe unbuttoned his coat down the front, and reached inside.

  Charles tensed, ready to defend his corner.

  Mr. Effe produced a pinch of material, which he unravelled and let dangle. A pale green ribbon.

  “Removed from the Harvill file,” said Mr. Hay. “With the full cooperation and consultation of the Ruling Cabal.”

  “You’re official again, pally,” snapped Mr. Effe.

  Charles relaxed. He would have to make explanation to the Cabal in time, but was protected now by approval from on high (rather, down below). There was a literal dark side to this. For all its stuffinesses and eccentricities, he understood the Diogenes Club: It was a comfort and shelter in a world of shadows. The Undertaking was constituted on different lines. Rivalry between the Club and the men in smoked glasses held a potential for outright conflict. It had been said of Mycroft Holmes, chairman of the Ruling Cabal, that sometimes he was the British Government; the troubling thing about the Undertaking was that sometimes it wasn’t.

  “We’ll see your report,” said Mr. Hay.

  He remembered how tired he was. He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, he was alone.

  Something tickled on his face. He puffed it away, and saw that it was the ribbon.

  * * * *

  ii: “thrones, powers, and principalities”

  Kate’s story dominated the front page of the Pall Mall Gazette. An affront to a national treasure (for so Uncle Satt was reckoned), a gruesomely mysterious death, and rumours of supernatural agency meant Harry Cust had no choice but to give her piece prominence. However, it was rewritten so ruthlessly, by Cust himself at the type-setting bench, that she felt reduced to the status of interviewee, providing raw material shaped into journalism by other hands.

  She was cheered, slightly, by a telegram of approval from Uncle Diarmid, who ought to be reckoned a national treasure. It arrived soon after the mid-morning special was hawked in the streets, addressed not to the Gazette offices but to the Cheshire Cheese, the Fleet Street watering hole where Kate, and four-fifths of the journalists in London, took most meals. Uncle Diarmid always said half the trick of newspaper reporting was getting underfoot, contriving to be present at the most “news-worthy” incidents, gumming up the works to get the story.

  The image conjured unpleasant memories. She had ordered chops, but wasn’t sure she could face eating—though hunger pangs had struck several times through the long night and morning.

  Reporters from other papers stopped by her table, offering congratulations but also soliciting unrefined nuggets of information. Anything about Satterthwaite Bulge was news. Back-files were being combed to provide follow-up pieces to fill out this afternoon and evening editions. The assumption was that the notoriously close-mouthed Inspector Mist would not oblige with further revelations about the death of Mr. Leslie Sackham in time to catch the presses.

  Kate had little to add.

  The story about the goblins was out, and sketches already circulated (“artists’ impressions,” which is to say unsubstantiated, fantastical lies) depicting malicious, oval-headed imps tormenting Mr. Sackham before tossing him to the dynamo. Most of Uncle Satt’s elves had come forth with tales of goblin sightings or encounters in the dark. Blenkins was charging upwards of ten shillings a time for an anecdote. The rumour was that Scotland Yard were looking for dwarves. Jack Stump was in hiding. Kate wondered about other little people—like Master Timothy, the obnoxious child. How far could such a prankster go? Surely, nursery ill-manners did not betoken a heart black enough for murder. It made more sense to look for goblins. The sensation press had already turned up distinguished crackpots willing to expound at length about the vile habits of genus goblinus. Soon, there would be organised hunting parties, and rat-tail bounties offered on green, pointed ears.

  Kate’s chops were set before her. She had ordered them well-cooked, so that no red showed. Even so, she ate the baked potato first.

  There was the problem of Mr. Sackham’s obituary, which was assigned to her. The most interesting thing about the man’s life was its end, already described at quite enough length. His injuries were such that it was impossible to tell whether he had been thrown (or fallen) alive into the dynamo. Indeed, the corpse was mutilated to such an extent that if the incident were encountered in a penny dreadful, the astute reader would assume Mr. Sackham not to be dead at all but that the body was a nameless tramp dressed in his clothes and sacrificed in order to facilitate a surprise in a later chapter. The second most interesting thing about Sackham was that he had penned many of the words recently published under the byline of Uncle Satt, but Cust forbade her to mention this. Exposing hypocrites was all very well, but no newspaper could afford to suggest that Satterthwaite Bulge was less than the genial “Founder of Færie and Magister of Marvells” for fear of an angry mob of children invading their offices to wreak vengeful havoc. She was reduced to padding out a paragraph on Sackham’s duties at the Gift and the fact that he very nearly could legitimately call Uncle Satt his uncle; Leslie Sackham had been the son of his employer’s cousin.

  She finished her copy and her chops at about the same time, then gave a handy lad tuppence to rush the obit to the Gazette in the Strand. As Ned made his way out of the Cheese, he was entrusted with a dozen other scribblings—some on the reverse of bills, most on leaves torn from notebooks—to drop off at the various newspapers on his route.

  Now, she might snatch a snooze.

  “Kate.”

  She looked up, not sure how long (or if) she had dozed in her chair.

  “Charles.”

  He sat down.

  “Scotland Yard is saying it was an accident,” he said.

  Kate sensed journalistic ears pricking up all around.

  “That doesn’t sound like Mist,” she observed.

  “I didn’t say ‘Mist,’ I said ‘Scotland Yard.”‘

  She understood. Decisions had been made in shadowed corridors.

  “The Gift is declared ‘unsafe’ for the moment,” he continued. “No grand opening this weekend, I’m afraid. There’ll be investigations, by the public health and safety people and anyone else who can get his oar in. It turns out that the Corporation of London still owns the site. Uncle Satt is lessee of the ground, though he has deed and title to all structures built on and under it. There’ll be undignified arguments over whose fault it all is. In the meantime, the place is under police guard. As you can imagine, Regent’s Park is besieged by aspirant goblin hunters. Some have butterfly nets and elephant guns.”

  She looked around. The cartoonist responsible was lurking somewhere.

  “I was given this,” he said, producing a length of green ribbon.

  “The Ruling Cabal want you to continue to take an interest?”

  “They’ve no choice. Another body has made its desires known. There are thrones, powers, and principalities in this. For some reason beyond me, this matter is important. My remit is loose. While the police and the safety fellows are concerned with Sackham’s death, I am to pull the loose ends. I have leeway as to whom I choose to involve, and I should like to choose you.”

  “Again? You’ll have to put me up for membership one day.”

  She was teasing, but he took it seriously. “In a world of impossibilities, that should be discussed. I shall see what I can do.”

  Previously, when Charles involved her (or,
more properly, allowed her to become involved) in the business of the Diogenes Club, she had gathered stories that would make her name if set in type but which wouldn’t even pass the breed of editor willing to publish “artist’s impressions,” let alone Henry Cockayne-Cust. Still, she had an eternal itch to draw back the curtain. Association with Charles was interesting on other levels, if often enervating or perilous.

  “If the Gift is being adequately investigated, where should we direct our attentions?”

  Charles smiled.

  “How would you like an audience with B. Loved?”

  * * * *

  iii: “the Affair of the Dendrified Digit”

  “So this is the house that Færie built?” said Kate.

  “Bought,” he corrected.

  “Very nice. Pennies add up like details, indeed.”

  They were on a doorstep in elegant Broadley Terrace, quite near Regent’s Park and a long way from Herefordshire.

  “What’s that smell?” asked Kate, nose wrinkling like a kitten’s.

  “Fresh bread,” he told her.

  The door was opened by a child with flour on his cheeks and a magnifying glass in his hand. The boy examined Charles’s shoes and trouser-cuffs, then angled his gaze upwards. Through the lens, half his face was enlarged and distorted.

  “I be a ‘tective,” he announced.

  “What about the flour?” asked Charles.

  Kate had slipped a handkerchief out of her tightly buttoned cuff, possessed of a universal feminine instinct to clean the faces of boys who were perfectly happy as they were.

  The boy touched his forehead, then examined the white on his fingertips.

  “I be a baker too, like my Da. I be baker by day, ‘tective by night.”

  “Very practical,” said Kate. “In my experience, detectives often neglect proper meals.”

  “Are you a ‘tective too, mister?”

  Charles looked at Kate, for a prompt.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. “But don’t tell anyone. Affairs of state, you know.”

  The boy’s face distorted in awe.

  “A secret agent.... Come in and have some of my boasters. I made them special, all by myself. Though Da helped with the oven.”

  Charles let Kate step into the hallway and followed, removing his hat.

  A woman bustled into the hall.

  “Dickie,” she said, incipiently scolding, “who’ve you let in now?”

  The woman, neat and plump, came to them. Sairey Riddle, well shy of thirty, had grey streaks. In eight years, she had filled out to resemble her late mother.

  She remembered him.

  “It’s you,” she said, face shaded. “You found her.”

  “Maeve.”

  “Her.”

  He understood the distinction.

  “This is my friend, Miss Katharine Reed. Kate, this is Sairey Riddle.”

  “Sarah,” she said, careful with the syllables now.

  Dickie was clinging to his mother’s skirts. Now, he looked up again at Charles.

  “You be that ‘tective. Who found Auntie when she were lost? In the olden days?”

  “He means before he were... was born. It’s all olden days to him. Might as well a’ been knights in armour and fire-breathing dragons.”

  “Yes, Dickie. I found your Aunt Maeve. One of my most difficult cases.”

  Dickie looked through his magnifying glass again.

  “A proper ‘tective,” he breathed.

  “I do believe you’ve found a hero-worshipper,” whispered Kate, not entirely satirically.

  Charles was intently aware of a sudden responsibility.

  “Don’t mind our Dickie,” said Sarah. “He’s not daft and he means well.”

  For the first time in months, Charles felt the ache in his forearm, in the long-healed bite. It was the name, of course. By now, his son would have been almost an adult; he would have been Dickie as a child, Dick as a youth, and be on the point of demanding the full, respectful Richard.

  “Are you all right?” enquired Kate, sharp as usual.

  “Old wound,” he said, not satisfying her.

  “Have you come about the business in the park?” prompted Sarah. “We heard about poor Mr. Sackham.”

  “I’m afraid so. We were wondering if we might see Davey?”

  Sarah bit her lower lip. He noticed a worn spot, often chewed. She glanced up at the ceiling. The shadow that had fallen over this family in Hill Wood had never been dispelled.

  “It’s not been one of his good days.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “We never did find out, you know, what happened to him. To them both.”

  “I know.”

  Sarah led them into a reception room. She left Dickie with them while she went to look in on her brother.

  “Do you want to see my clues!” asked the boy, tugging Charles’s trouser pocket.

  Kate found this hilarious but stifled her giggles.

  Dickie produced a cigar box and showed its contents.

  “This button ‘nabled me to solve the Case of the Vanishing Currant Bun. It were the fat lad from down the road. He snitched it from the tray when Da weren’t looking. This playin’ card, a Jack of Hearts with one corner bent off, is the key to the Scandal of the Cheatin’ Governess. And this twig that looks ‘zactly like a ‘uman finger is a mystery whose solution no man yet knows, though I’ve not ‘bandoned my inquiries.”

  Charles examined the twig, which did resemble a finger.

  “What do you call the case?” he asked the boy.

  “It hasn’t a name yet.”

  “What about the Affair of the Dendrified Digit?” suggested Kate.

  Dickie’s eyes widened and he ran the words around his mouth.

  ‘“What be a ‘dendrified digit?’“

  “A finger turned to wood.”

  “Very ‘propriate. Are you a ‘tective too, lady?”

  “I’m a reporter.”

  “A daredevil reporter,” Charles corrected.

  Kate poked her tongue out at him while Dickie wasn’t looking.

  “Then you must be a ‘tective’sassistant.”

  Kate was struck aghast. It was Charles’s turn to be amused.

  Dickie reached into his box and produced a rusty nail.

  “This be...”

  He halted mid-sentence, swallowed, and stepped back, positioning himself so that Kate stood between the door and him.

  The handle was turning.

  Into the room came a little girl in blue, as perfectly dressed as a china doll on display. She had an enormous cloud of stiff blonde hair and a long, solemn, pretty face.

  Beside her, Dickie looked distinctly shabby.

  The girl looked at Charles and announced, “we have met before.”

  “It’s Auntie,” whispered Dickie. Charles saw the wariness the lad had around the girl; not fear, exactly, but an understanding, developed over years, that she could hurt him if she chose.

  “Maeve,” Charles said. “I am Mr. Beauregard.”

  “The man in the wood,” she said. “The hero of the day. That day.”

  Kate’s mouth was open. At a glance from Charles, she realised her lapse and shut it quickly. Dickie wasn’t quite hiding behind Kate’s skirt, but was in a position to make that retreat if needed.

  Maeve wandered around the room, picking up ornaments, looking at them and putting them down in exactly the same place. She didn’t look directly at Charles or Kate, but always had a reflective surface in sight to observe their faces.

  Instinctively, Charles wanted to know where she was at any moment.

  If Dickie were seven or eight, Maeve should be nineteen or twenty. She was exactly as she had been when he first saw her, in Hill Wood.

  “I thought you’d be taller,” said Kate.

  The girl arched a thick eyebrow, as if she hadn’t noticed Kate before.

  “Might you be Mrs. Beauregard?”

  “Katharine Reed, Pall Mall Gaz
ette,” she said.

  “Is it common for ladies to represent newspapers?”

  “Not at all.”