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

by By Kim Newman

  Edwin took out a sealed envelope and pressed it into her hand.

  “Don’t think of yourself as ‘amateur,’ think of yourself as ‘unsalaried.’ This will give you all the official status you need. Guaranteed to make any bobby in the land doff his helmet and snap a salute. And, indeed, bite their lips.”

  She examined the seal.

  “Good grief. That’s...”

  “Yes, and he addressed it personally. Look.”

  She turned over the envelope and saw her name, written in a most distinguished scrawl. It was misspelled: Catrina Kay.

  “You feel like saluting yourself, don’t you?” Edwin teased.

  Actually, she felt hollow and terrified. Being noticed from on high was deeply discomfiting.

  But she had no choice.

  “And here, oh my best beloved, is a train ticket.”

  * * * *

  Rattling out of Paddington Station, Catriona had a compartment to herself. Having purchased the current number of British Pluck from the magazine stall, she read up on the latest exploits of the Splendid Six, individually and as a side.

  Teddy Trimingham, the Blue Streak, had successfully smashed his own land-speed record, in a bullet-shaped multipurpose vehicle of his own design, the Racing Swift. Lord Piltdown, the All-Rounder, had just attained his century of centuries in an exhibition match at the Oval, then celebrated by shinning up Nelson’s Column and bellowing in triumph from atop the Admiral’s stone hat, terrifying the pigeons. The Aviatrix had snatched a fleeing poisoner (and his Eurasian mistress) from a ship at sea just before the absconding pair reached the safety of international waters, and bore the miscreants back to Scotland Yard. And the Six had foiled the Clockwork Cagliostro’s grand scheme to seize Edinburgh Castle with wind-up tin soldiers, smashing his ingenious army into scrap metal and springs. Nothing unusual, there.

  Since that Bank Holiday in Brighton, she had got used to the Splendid Six and their like. She knew there had always been such unusual individuals, cheerfully eager to turn their talents to the cause of the helpless. Just as there had always been darker fellows, only marginally less gifted, who served only their own interests or flew the Jolly Roger. For every Aviatrix or Clever Dick, there was a Spring-Heel’d Jack or a Wicked William; Edwin had once theorised that the stalemate between these unique persons, clubland heroes and villains, meant that the rest of the world could get on with whatever they were doing relatively unimpaired. Some great battles of Good and Evil turned out to be little more than squabbles: The Aviatrix’s continuing campaign to bring Hans von Hellhund to international justice had more to do with her brother’s defeat than the Demon Ace’s minor postwar smuggling activities.

  Sometimes, though, the rest of the world’s business was impaired by the doings of superior individuals. Throughout last year’s General Strike, the Splendids had been staunch in helping to keep “essential services” running. Something about press photographs of the Blue Streak working as a volunteer driver (joking about the snail’s pace of a London omnibus) struck her as comical yet disturbing, while she had very definite feelings about Lady Lalla Tregellis-d’Aulney hovering over union meetings and taking a note of who spoke out the loudest. Catriona’s own sympathies had not entirely been with the government in that time of national crisis— she had rowed with Edwin throughout, and he had shown the unexpected decency not to crow at her grief when the strike failed. Many a mine-worker or factory girl, raised on British Pluck or the Girls ‘Paper, looked up in awe and admiration, but moderated their opinion when the Six flew what socialist commentators were quick to label their “true colours.” Trimingham didn’t call himself the “Red Streak,” did he? Zooming heroically through certain areas of the country, a Splendid was as liable to be the target of a tossed half-brick as the prompt of a hearty cheer.

  At the back of Pluck was a helpful article about the Drome. A plot of scrubby flatland had first been turned into a proving ground for Trimingham’s pioneering contraptions, where he could whizz and whoosh and go bang well away from the prying eyes of foreign spies or rival inventors. (Peeter “I’ll see you in court” Blame must have enjoyed living next door to that racket!) The Splendid Six first convened when the Good Fellows Four put out the call for new recruits to battle the plague hordes of the Rat Rabbi, Norwegicus Cohen, and the Celestial Schemer, Dien Ch’ing. At the successful conclusion of that exploit, the Drome became the Head Quarters of the Six, home to their famed Museum of Mystery. There, surrounded by souvenirs a good deal more impressive than a puzzle box, the Six sat around King Arthur’s original table, each in their appointed place. The round table was recovered from the Shadow Realm of Perfidious Albion during an adventure that had run in British Pluck for six consecutive numbers under the title “Against the Nights of the Underground Fable.” From the article, she deduced that at meetings the original GFF had the Aviatrix serve the tea, and put the brown-skinned Chandra Nguyen Seth, the Mystic Maharajah, on a stool in the draughty corner.

  A fold-out map of the Drome kept her busy turning the magazine upside-down to examine details. The village of Heathrow (and its railway station) was shown, but there was no indication as to which of the adjacent properties had belonged to the late Peeter Blame.

  As he saw her off, Edwin had given a final friendly suggestion.

  “If you can get this settled without even involving the Splendid Sausages, that would probably be for the best.”

  That would suit her perfectly.

  However, she had muttered “some hope.”

  She considered the portraits dotted in misty ovals around the map: bright eyes (inevitably blue with silver-grey flecks), forthright chins set against underhandedness, devil-may-care half-smiles eager for adventure, stalwart knotted brows ready for any intellectual challenge, gleaming teeth suitable for biting into a fresh red English apple, dashing signatures (and one thumb-print).

  The Splendid Six were heroes. And they terrified her.

  * * * *

  It was fortunate there was little reason for anyone to visit Heathrow. The station was tiny and dilapidated: boards missing from the platform, sign hanging askew. She alone alighted, taking care to avoid jets of steam aimed at ankle-height. The engine came to the boil again and the hissing, clanking train trundled off, picking up speed in anticipation of more interesting stops further down the line.

  An old man emerged from a hut. He tripped over someone’s left luggage, which had literally taken root. The two suitcases were furred over with moss, weeds sprouting from cracks in the leather.

  “You the missy from up Lunnon?”

  The toothless apparition wore a battered station-master’s cap on the back of his head. He had a white fringe around his collapsed face, thinning hair up top, sparse beard under his chin. He walked bow-legged with the aid of a stick. A single medal hung from his loose blue tunic.

  “I’m Catriona Kaye,” she said.

  “Come about the killin’?”

  He gurned something that might have been a smile, making a puckered black hole of his mouth.

  “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “I’m ‘Arbottle.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Harbottle.”

  “Sergeant ‘Arbottle,” he insisted.

  He snatched off his cap and looked at it with disgust.

  “Wrong ‘at. Sorry.”

  Sergeant Harbottle dashed into the hut and came out wearing a policeman’s helmet that must have been issued in Victoria’s reign. Or perhaps William and Mary’s. The chin-strap hung loose under his wattles.

  “I’m Station-Master, Post-Master, Captain of Militia, and Police Sergeant. Do the milk-round, too.”

  “Very public-spirited.”

  “No one else would take the jobs. Not since New Year’s Eve.”

  Catriona understood.

  “That might change now.”

  There wasn’t much point coming at this case from the angle of motive.

  “Sergeant, please understand I’m here only to offer you ass
istance. I have full confidence in your ability to bring this unpleasant matter to a neat conclusion.”

  “Eh?”

  “I’m sure you’ll bag the culprit.”

  “Never had one of those round here before. Culp-whatchamacallits. But you’re right, missy. Once I put my mind to something, it gets done.”

  “Should we begin by visiting the scene of the crime?”

  Harbottle went cross-eyed.

  “‘E’s been taken away. What with the warm weather, it was best. I’m sure you understand, missy. Deaders gives off a bit of a pong.”

  “So I understand.”

  “What for you be wantin’ to nose round where a deader’s been, then?”

  “Clues, Sergeant. Every sleuth needs clues.”

  “I’ve never ‘ad a clue.”

  “That, I’ll be bound, will change also.”

  Harbottle’s face set in a crumpled version of a determined look. Catriona wondered if she wouldn’t be best off on her own.

  Then again, she wasn’t “up Lunnon” now.

  “Lead the way,” she invited.

  * * * *

  Harbottle produced a collapsible bone-shaker bicycle from his shed and unfolded it into a shape to delight a Parisian surrealist. He apologised that there was no room for two and told her she’d have to keep up, then began pedaling down a muddy lane away from the station.

  She had to drag her feet to let him stay level with her. His conveyance wobbled alarmingly from side to side and his legs were too long, forcing his knees out as he pushed on the pedals. If it hadn’t been for the modest slope of the lane, adding gravity to motive power, she feared Harbottle would have made even slower progress. She didn’t like to think about his return journey.

  A jolly rustic, sat outside the Coat and Dividers, shouted “get off and milk it.”

  Harbottle spat a stream of brown juice and invective at the fellow, who lifted his pint in salute. Catriona checked the nurse’s watch pinned to her blouse. Opening time wasn’t for an hour.

  “The last sergeant,” muttered Harbottle. “Billy Beamish.”

  She looked back at the celebrating ex-copper. He toasted her too, and showed every indication of having toasted any passerby, human or animal, for the last two days.

  “Grieving hard, I see.”

  “Oh, not him. Billy Beamish hated Pee-ee-eeter Blame worse than poison. Lost his job, see. Lot of them lost their jobs. For drinkin’ after hours. Not me, though. I’m temperance.”

  The Coat and Dividers was in the fork of a Y-junction. A triangle of green with a tree and some small cottages made up the rest of Heathrow. Untended geese muddled about. It was rather pleasant, if dusty.

  Harbottle pedaled past a mile-post, then hopped off the bike with a creaking of bones and spokes. From here on, the gradient was against him. He made better time pushing the thing.

  “Here’s the Hollyhocks.”

  The cottage was set in its own grounds, very neat and tidy, with regimented rows of petunias and roses. The white filigree gate was set in an arched bower threaded through with pretty red and purple flowers, its picturesque aspect marred somewhat by a superfluity of engraved boards with black warnings: “No Hawkers or Circulars,” “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law,” “Uninvited Callers Unwelcome,” “Keep Off the Grass,” “It is Impermissible to Operate a Motorised Conveyance in This Thoroughfare,” and “Vagrancy and

  Mendicancy Are Criminal Offences—The Police Will Be Called!” Each board was signed “P Blame, Esq.”

  The gate was open. And so was the cottage’s door.

  “There’s someone inside,” said Catriona.

  “I told you, ‘e’s been taken away on account of the potential whiff...”

  “Not the owner,” she said. “Have you ever heard about the murderer returning to the scene of the crime?”

  “Why’d ‘e want to do a fool thing like that?”

  “Hard to fathom, the criminal mind. Even for sleuths such as we.”

  She opened her purse.

  “What’s that there?” asked Harbottle, eyes bulging.

  “It’s a ladylike little automatic.”

  “It’s a pop-pop gun is what it is. A concealed weapon!”

  “It’s not concealed. I’m showing it to you.”

  He thought about that.

  She ventured into the garden of the Hollyhocks and stepped up to the doorway.

  “Knock knock,” she said, rapping the open door with the barrel of her ladylike little automatic.

  “Who’s there?” came a squeak.

  “That’s what I should be asking,” she said.

  Little sharp eyes showed in the gloom inside the cottage, one much larger than the other.

  “What wight have you to quiz me, madame?”

  “I’m with the police,” she said.

  A little boy stepped into the light. He wore his oiled-down hair centre-parted, and was dressed in grey shorts and a matching blazer. His gaze was resolute, but his chin a touch underdeveloped. The child held up a magnifying glass the size of a large lollipop, which was why one of his watery blue eyes seemed four times the size of the other, emphasising the steely grey flecks.

  “You’re late,” he said. “The clues are getting cold.”

  * * * *

  There was a sticky black-red splash on the rug. The boy held his glass over it, and peered at the mess.

  “Blood, bwains, bits of bone,” he said. “Nothing intewesting.”

  Catriona stood out of the way as the boy detective poked about, examining things through his glass. The study where the body had been found was a mess. From the neatness of the garden and the rest of the cottage, it was an easy deduction that the room had been thoroughly ransacked by the murderer. Or else an earlier clue-hunt from one of the too many sleuths on this case.

  “Here, a file has been wemoved.”

  The boy solemnly pointed at a gap in the bookshelves, as obvious as a missing front tooth in a broad smile, between “Oct -Dec ‘26” and “Apr-Jun ‘27.”

  “January to March of this year,” he proclaimed.

  “Amazing,” commented Catriona, drily.

  “It’s simple, weally,” he responded, pleased. “A perspicacious person can tell from the files either side which is missing.”

  Harbottle scratched his head in admiration.

  The boy beamed a wide, not-very-pleasant smile.

  This, she knew, was Master Richard Cleaver, “Clever Dick,” the brightest eleven-year-old lad in the land. He had taken a double first in Chemistry and Oriental Languages from Oxford last year. Independently wealthy from the patent of a new, more efficient type of paperclip he had twisted out of one of his mother’s hairpins when he was seven, he divided his time between solving mysteries that baffled the police and adventuring with the rest of the Splendid Six.

  She should have brought the Chinese puzzle box. Clever Dick could probably open it in seconds.

  “This isn’t the first murder I’ve solved,” he announced, somewhat prematurely. “If it weren’t for my bwain-power, the Andover Axeman would never have been hanged. Last Whitsun half-holiday, I wecovered the Cwown Jewels. They’d been stolen by Iwish oiks. Served them wight when they got shot.”

  She reminded herself not to laugh at the child.

  His bumps of intellect might be swollen to incredible proportions, but those of humour and humility had withered away entirely.

  “I proved Nanny Nuggins was a Bolshevik spy. Stalin sent her to Sibewia for failing to kidnap me.”

  She deduced that Stalin had never met Master Richard.

  “You must have got on well with Mr. Blame,” she ventured. “You had a lot in common. An interest in the law.”

  Clever Dick made a face.

  “Ugh! No fear. That common fellow kept saying I ought to be in school. He alleged there were laws about where childwen should be.”