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

by By Kim Newman

  The girl had said nothing yet, but sat quietly in an oversized chair in his study, huddled inside one of Haskins’s old dressing gowns. Mrs. Cully, his housekeeper, had got the poor child out of her filthy clothes and given her a bath. She had wanted to throw away the ruined garments, but Haskins insisted they be kept for expert examination. Much would hinge on those dirty rags. If it could be proven that they were of more recent provenance than 1872, then this was not Rose Farrar.

  Haskins sat at his desk, unable to think of his sermon. His glance was continually drawn to the girl. Now she had stopped keening, she seemed a demure little thing. She sat with one leg tucked up under her and the other a-dangle, showing a dainty, uncallused foot. With her face clean and her hair scrubbed—she insisted on having her silver ribbon back—she could have been any well-brought-up child waiting for a story before being packed off to bed.

  Telegrams had arrived all morning. And the telephone on his desk had rung more often than in the last six months. He was to expect a pair of investigators from London. Representatives from Lord Northcliffe’s Mail and Lord Beaverbrook’s Express had made competing overtures to secure the “rights” to the story. Many others had shown an interest, from charitable bodies concerned with the welfare of “a unique orphan” to commercial firms who wished “the miracle girl” to endorse their soap or tonic. Haskins understood that the girl must be shielded from such public scrutiny, at least until the investigators had assessed her case.

  One telegram in particular stirred Haskins. A distinguished person offered Rose any service it was within his power to perform. Haskins had replied swiftly, inviting the author-knight to Angel Down. If anyone could get to the bottom of the matter, it would be the literary lion whose sharpness of mind was reputed to be on a par with that of the detective he had made famous and who had worked so tirelessly in his later years to demonstrate the possibility of the miraculous here on Earth.

  The girl seemed unaware of Haskins’s fascination with her. She was a Victorian parent’s idea of perfection—pretty as a picture, quiet as a mouse, poised as a waxwork. Haskins wondered about the resemblance to Sam Farrar. It had seemed so strong in the first light of discovery but was now hard to see.

  He got up from his desk, abandoning his much-begun and little-developed sermon, and knelt before the child. He took her small hands, feeling bird-like bones and fragile warmth. This was a real girl, not an apparition. She had been vigorously bathed and spent the night in the guest bedroom. Ghosts did not leave dirty bathwater or crumpled sheets. She had consumed some soup last night and half an apple for breakfast.

  Her eyes fixed his and he wanted to ask her questions.

  Since she had stopped making her peculiar noise, she had uttered no sound. She seemed to understand what was said to her but was disinclined to answer. She did not even respond to attempted communication via rudimentary sign language or Mrs. Cully’s baby-talk.

  “Rose?” he asked.

  There was no flicker in her eyes.

  Sam had produced pictures, yellowed poses of the Farrar children from the dawn of photography. One among a frozen gaggle of girls resembled exactly this child. Sam reluctantly confirmed the child in the portrait as his vanished Aunt Rose, the Little Girl Who Went With the Angels.

  “What happened to you, Rose?”

  According to the stories, she had been swept up to the Heavens in a column of starlight.

  Haskins heard a buzzing. There was a wasp in the room!

  He held the girl’s hands too tightly. Her face contorted in pain. He let go and made an attempt to soothe her, to prevent the return of her screeches.

  Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  The wasp was still here. Haskins was horribly aware of it. His collar was damp and his stomach shifted.

  There was more than one.

  The buzzing grew louder. Haskins stood up and looked about for the evil black-and-yellow specks.

  He looked again at Rose, suddenly afraid for her. The girl’s face shifted and she was his sister, Jane.

  It was like an injection of wasp venom to the heart.

  Her mouth was a round aperture, black inside. The wasp shrill was coming from her.

  Haskins was terrified, dragged back to his boyhood, stripped of adult dignities and achievements, confronted with his long-dead victim.

  He remembered vividly the worst thing he had ever done. The stick sinking into the nest. His cruel laughter as the cloud swarmed from the sundered ovoid and took flight, whipped away by strong wind.

  Jane stood on the chair, dressing gown a heavy monk’s robe. She still wore her silver ribbon. She wasn’texactly Jane. There was some Rose in her eyes. And a great deal of darkness, of something else.

  She reached out to him as if for a cuddle. He fell to his knees, this time in prayer. He tried to close his eyes.

  The girl’s mouth was huge, a gaping circle. Black apparatus emerged, a needle-tipped proboscis rimmed with whipping feelers. It was an insectile appendage, intricate and hostile, parts grinding together with wicked purpose.

  Her eyes were black poached eggs overflowing their sockets, a million facets glinting.

  The proboscis touched his throat. A barb of ice pierced his skin. Shock stopped his heart and stilled his lungs, leaving his mind to flutter on for eternal seconds.

  * * * *

  V: “a funny turn”

  Angel Down Rectory was a nice little cottage close by the church, rather like the home Catriona had grown up in. Her kindly father was a clergyman in Somerset, in the village where Edwin’s distant father had owned the Manor House without really being Lord of the Manor.

  Colonel Winthrop had been literally distant for most of his later life, stationed in India or the Far East after some scandal which was never spoken of in the village. An alienist might put that down as the root of a streak of slyness, of manipulative ruthlessness, that fitted his son for the murkier aspects of his business. Recognising this dark face, fed with blood in the trenches and the skies, as being as much a part of Edwin’s personality as his humour, generosity, and belief in her, Catriona did her best to shine her light upon it, to keep him fixed on a human scale. The Reverend Kaye mildly disapproved of her spook-chasing and changed the subject whenever anyone asked about his daughter’s marriage plans, but was otherwise as stalwart, loyal, and loving a parent as she could wish.

  They had found the village with ease, homing in on a steeple visible from a considerable distance across the downs. For such a small place, Angel Down was blessed with a large and impressive church, which was in itself suggestive. If a site can boast an ancient stone circle and a long-established Christian church, it is liable to have been a centre of unusual spiritual activity for quite some time.

  There was something wrong. She knew it at once. She made no claim to psychic powers, but had learned to be sensitive. She could almost always distinguish between an authentic spectre and a fool in a bedsheet, no matter how much fog and shadow were about. It was a question of reading the tiniest signs, often on an unconscious level.

  “Careful, dearest,” she told Edwin, as they got out of the car.

  He looked at her quizzically. She couldn’t explain her unsettling feeling, but he had been with her in enough bizarre situations to accept her shrug of doubt as a trustworthy sign of danger ahead. He thrust a hand into his coat pocket, taking hold of the revolver he carried when about the business of the Diogenes Club.

  She heard something. A sound like an insect, but then again not. It was not within her experience.

  Edwin rapped on the door with his knuckles.

  A round pink woman let them in. Upon receipt of Edwin’s card, the housekeeper—Mrs. Cully—told them they were expected and that she would tell the rector of their arrival.

  The narrow hallway was likeably cluttered. A stand was overburdened with coats and hats, boots lined up for inspection nearby, umbrellas and sticks ready for selection. A long-case clock ticked slow, steady seconds.

  T
here was no evidence of eccentricity.

  Mrs. Cully returned, pink gone to grey. Catriona was immediately alert, nerves singing like wires. The woman couldn’t speak, but nodded behind her, to the rector’s study.

  With his revolver, Edwin pushed open the door.

  Catriona saw a black-faced man lying on the carpet, eyes staring. His hands were white.

  Edwin stepped into the room and Catriona followed. They both knelt by the prone man. He had a shock of red-grey hair and wore a clerical collar, taut as a noose around his swollen throat.

  The Reverend Mr. Haskins—for this could be none other—was freshly dead. Still warm, he had no pulse, heartbeat, or breath. His face was swollen and coal-coloured. His mouth and eyes were fixed open. Even his tongue was black and stiff. Droplets of blood clung to his hard, overripe cheeks.

  “Snakebite?” she asked, shuddering.

  “Could be, Cat,” he said, standing up.

  She was momentarily troubled. Did she hear the soft slither of a dire reptile winding across the carpet? She was not fond of the beasts. A criminal mandarin-sorcerer had once tried to murder Edwin with a black mamba delivered in a Harrod’s hamper. She had been unfortunate enough to be sharing a punt with him when the scheme came to hissing light. She had cause to remember that snakes can swim.

  “And who have we here?” he asked.

  She stood. Edwin had found the girl, sat calmly in an armchair, wearing a man’s large dressing gown, leafing through a picture book of wild flowers. The supposed Rose Farrar was a tiny thing, too sharp-featured to be considered pretty but with a striking, triangular face and huge, curious eyes. Her expression was familiar to Catriona. She had seen it on shell-shocked soldiers coming home from a war that would always be fought in their minds.

  She wanted to warn Edwin against touching the girl. But that would have been ridiculous.

  “Little miss, what happened?” he asked.

  The girl looked up from her book. For a moment, she seemed like a shrunken adult. The real Rosie would be almost sixty, Catriona remembered.

  “He had a funny turn,” the child said.

  That much was obvious.

  “Do you have a name, child?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, disinclined to reveal more.

  “And what might it be?” Catriona asked.

  The little girl turned to look at her, for the first time, and said, “Catriona.”

  It was a tiny shock.

  “I am Catriona,” Catriona said. “And this is Edwin. You are...?”

  She held up her book. On the page was a picture of a wild rose, delicate green watercolour leaves with incarnadine petal splashes.

  “Rose,” the girl said.

  This was considerably more serious than a hoax. A man was dead. No longer just a puzzle to be unpicked and forgotten, this was a mystery to be solved.

  A panicked cough from the doorway drew their attention. It was Mrs. Cully, eyes fixed on the ceiling, away from the corpse.

  “There’s another come visiting,” she said.

  Catriona knew they must have been racing newspapermen to get here. There would be reporters all over the village, and soon—when this latest development was out—front-page headlines in all the papers.

  “Is it someone from the press?” Edwin asked.

  The woman shook her head. A big, elderly man gently stepped around her and into the room. He had a large, bushy moustache and kindly eyes: She knew him at once.

  “Sir Arthur,” said Edwin, “welcome to Angel Down. I wish the circumstances of our meeting had been different.”

  * * * *

  VI: “venomous lightning”

  Winthrop shifted his revolver to his left hand, so he could extend his right arm and shake hands with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The author was in his mid-sixties, but his grip was firm. He was an outdoor-looking man, more Watson than Holmes.

  “You have me at a disadvantage, sir.”

  “I am Edwin Winthrop, of the Diogenes Club.”

  “Oh,” said Sir Arthur, momentously, “them.”

  “Yes, indeed. Water under the bridge, and all that.”

  Sir Arthur rumbled. He had clearly not forgotten that the Diogenes Club had once taken such a dim view of his mentioning their name in two pieces placed in the Strand magazine that considerable pressure had been brought to ensure the suppression of further such narratives. While the consulting detective was always slyly pleased that his feats be publicised, his civil servant brother—Beauregard’s predecessor—preferred to hide his considerable light under a bushel. Sir Arthur had never revealed the exact nature of the Club and Mycroft’s position within it, but he had drawn attention to a man and an institution who would far rather their names were unknown to the general public. No real lasting harm was done, though the leagues who followed Sherlock Holmes were tragically deprived of thrilling accounts of several memorable occasions upon which he had acted as an instrument of his older brother and his country.

  “And this is Miss Catriona Kaye,” Winthrop continued.

  “I know who she is.”

  The sentence was like a slap, but Catriona did not flinch at it.

  “This woman,” Sir Arthur said, “has made it her business to harass those few unselfish souls who can offer humanity the solace it so badly needs. I’ve had a full account of her unwarranted attack this morning on Mademoiselle Astarte of Chelsea.”

  Winthrop remembered that Sir Arthur was a committed, not to say credulous, Spiritualist.

  “Sir Arthur,” said Catriona, fixing his steely gaze, “Mademoiselle Astarte is a cruel hoaxer and an extortionist. She does your cause—nay, our cause—no credit whatsoever. I too seek only light in the darkness. I should have thought, given your well-known association with the most brilliant deductive mind of the age, you would see my activities as a necessary adjunct to your own.”

  She had him there. Sir Arthur was uncomfortable, but too honest a man not to admit Catriona was right. In recent years, he had been several times duped by the extraordinary claims of hoaxers. There was that business with the fairies. He looked around the room, avoiding Catriona’s sharp eyes. He saw the body of Mr. Haskins. And the girl curled up in the chair.

  “Good Lord,” he exclaimed.

  “This is exactly the scene we found,” Winthrop said.

  “I heard a noise earlier, as we arrived,” Catriona revealed. “Something like an insect.”

  “It seems as if a whole hive of bees has stung him.”

  Sir Arthur had trained as a doctor, Winthrop remembered.

  “Could it have been poison?” he asked.

  “If so, someone’s tidied up,” Sir Arthur said, confidently turning the swollen head from side to side. “No cup or glass with spilled liquid. No half-eaten cake. No dart stuck in the flesh. The face and chest are swollen but not the hands or, I’ll wager, the feet. I’d say whatever struck him did so through this wound here, in the throat.”

  A florin-sized red hole showed in the greasy black skin.

  “It is as if he were struck by venomous lightning.”

  Sir Arthur found an orange blanket in a basket by the sofa and spread it over the dead man. The twisted shape was even more ghastly when shrouded.

  “The girl says he had a ‘funny turn,’“ Winthrop said.

  For the first time, Sir Arthur considered the child.

  “Is this Rose? Has she spoken?”

  The girl said nothing. She was interested in her book again. At her age, she could hardly be expected to be much concerned with grown-up things.

  If she was the age she seemed.

  Sir Arthur went over to the chair and examined the girl. His hands, steady as a rock when patting down a gruesome corpse, trembled as they neared her hair. He touched fingertips to the silver ribbon that held back her curls, and drew them away as if shocked.

  “Child, child,” he said, tears in his eyes, “what wonders have you seen? What hope can you give us?”

  This was not the dispassio
nate, scientific interrogation Winthrop had planned. He was touched by the old man’s naked emotion. Sir Arthur had lost a son in the War, and thereafter turned to Spiritualism for comfort. He betrayed a palpable need for confirmation of his beliefs. Like the detective he had made famous, he needed evidence.

  The possible Rose was like a child queen regarding an aged and loyal knight with imperious disdain. Sir Arthur literally knelt at her feet, looking up to her.

  “Do you know about the Little People?” she asked.