“Girls and darkies. We shouldn’t have them. We could go back to being the Good Fellows Four.”
“Of whom... hmmm... you were not... hmmm... one.”
“Ho, she’s awake now,” burbled Trimingham.
“The matter is clouded... hmmm... but truth will emerge, as trueness always does and... hmmm... justice will prevail.”
The Mystic Maharajah laid a hand on Catriona’s and looked deep into her eyes. Clever Dick was wrong about one thing: He wasn’t non-Caucasian, but a dyed white man whose name used to be Sid Ramsbottom. His vocal mannerisms were the same, though. Mystic Sid had been on the halls as Woozo the Wizzard.
She laughed the wrong way and champagne got in her nose.
“Sorry,” she said.
Seth let go of her hand, and seemed direly offended.
The All-Rounder picked up a bowl-sized teacup, little finger perfectly extended, and raised about a gallon to his mouth, which he sucked down in a long, noisy draught. He dabbed his lips with a napkin and excused himself from the table, bowing formally to Catriona and Lady Lucinda, then bounded across the lawn, raising divots at each clutch, followed by a footman who replaced the sods and smoothed them over by hand.
“Pongo puts in an hour in the nets every night,” said Trimingham. “Never know when the MCC will call.”
As dark gathered, lamps automatically came on, shining columns rising around the Drome, criss-crossing the lawn, playing like searchlights across the grounds.
“One of mine, you know,” said Trimingham. “Inventions.”
Every few seconds a roving lighthouse beam shone on the Hollyhocks, bleaching the cottage white.
“We have light all night,” said Captain Rattray.
“No darkness... hmmm... need apply.”
She could imagine.
* * * *
“So,” said Edwin, springing from his chair as she was admitted into the Strangers Room of the Diogenes Club, “who dun it?”
“Ha ha,” said Catriona. “Who didn’t?”
Charles Beauregard was also present, which meant that here at least she was taken seriously. In the end, if there weren’t such a horrid business at the bottom of it, her trip to Heathrow would have been ridiculous.
“Catriona, would you care for a light lunch?” offered Charles. “Then, we’ll debrief.”
“I’m fine, thank you Charles.”
She had spent the night at the Coat and Dividers, eaten a proper country breakfast prepared by Maggie Brittles (who, surprisingly, was the first person she had met who even tried to seem sorry that Peeter Blame was dead), bade Harbottle a fond farewell (though overnight he’d forgotten who she was), and taken the train up to town.
“Then, if you’d care to oblige, we’ll have your report.”
She sat in an armchair, allowing the men to return to theirs. As always with Charles in the room, Edwin was boyish, eager to please the house-captain but also concerned with demonstrating his own brand of 20th Century sharpness.
“Do I need to tell you anything? You must already know.”
At her tart tone, Charles’s face fell.
“And I can’t prove anything. You must know that too. Someone told me last night that... hmmm, justice will prevail...”
“Chandra Nguyen Ramsbottom, that’s him exactly!” exclaimed Edwin. “Mimickry, another of your talents!”
“Well, justice won’t prevail, will it? In this case, it can’t.”
“Please be assured, Catriona, that you have not been used, that there was a real purpose to what we have asked you to do.”
Despite herself, she believed Charles.
“As for proof, well... if I thought there was proof to be had, I’d have sent Edwin. No offence, young fellow, but it’s what you’re good at and if it’s not there you’re at a loss. Catriona, I wanted you to look into the murder of Peeter Blame because of your capacity for feeling....”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Nobody could like the deceased, I understand, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be fell for. What happened to him was not permissible. Do you understand?”
She was beginning to.
“So, which of ‘em was it?” asked Edwin, flashing a grin. “My ten bob is on that Pongo fellow. Long reach, plenty of cricket bats in his kit, superhuman strength...”
“In a small room, he’d have done more damage, I think,” she said. “See, I can cope with evidence and proofs too. And it took more delicate fingers to go through Mr. Blame’s files and extract all the relevant documents. That said, I wouldn’t rule Lord Piltdown out. Myfeeling, since you set so much stock in it, Charles, is that it was Rattray or Trimingham in the study with the blunt instrument, and Lady Lucinda or—and I really mean this— Clever Brat handled the file-filleting to get the Splendids off the hook.”
“So you think they all did it?”
“If all six can be roped in on a spur-of-the-moment thing, yes.”
Charles steepled his fingers and considered the case.
“To sum up,” he began, “what’s missing from the files?”
“All documentation in connection with lawsuits Blame was trying to bring against the Splendid Six, collectively or as individuals. My feeling— that word again—is that there were dozens of them. Just sitting in his cottage for a day, I saw a dozen different ways in which an ordinary person would be infuriated by having clubland heroes as next-door neighbours, and Peeter Blame was far touchier than the average.”
“You’ve ruled out any link between him and their recorded enemies? That Clockwork fellow or the Demon Ace?”
“Edwin, I thought of that. No, this had nothing to do with defending the realm or warding off villains vile. It was about roses shrivelled by passing cars and bright lights shone into the cottage at all hours of the night and people flying overhead heedless of who crawled below and grumbled. It was about the noise, and the view, and the commotion, and the flaunting, and the obnoxiousness. And frustration, because Blame could sue and sue all he liked, but no court in the land was going to haul in a hero of the age of marvels. Every complaint he lodged would have been quietly quashed. He managed to get rid of a local Justice of the Peace, remember. He must have thought that a victory which would clear the way for a new local bench to sympathise with his complaints. That’s how bloody stupid he was; he really thought that getting a JP sacked wouldn’t set the county judiciary against him forever. He believed all that stuff about impartial justice that we’re supposed to uphold. My guess is that, frustrated in his usual avenue of action, he took to complaining in person, over the hedge, at every opportunity, nagging, whining, moaning...”
Charles nodded.
“And one of them snapped,” he concluded. “Went over, maybe to make a gesture of peace, found Blame resolute, not properly respectful of a national hero. So our Splendid killed him, in a moment. The others clubbed together, tidied up, and walked away...”
“And called you to get it dealt with.”
His face darkened. “Yes, Catriona. They called me.”
“That’s what annoys you, isn’t it? That’s why you’ll have them for this. Not for the murder—after all, this is 1927, everyone we know has killed someone or something—but for treating the Diogenes Club like a window-washing service.”
“I say, Catty-Kit, that’s going a bit far...”
“I hope I’m better than that, Catriona.”
“I hope you are too.”
Charles rose. Above the fireplace hung a portrait of a corpulent man with gimlet eyes, in immaculate Victorian morning dress. One of the Club’s founders, and literally a huge figure in the secret world. Charles looked up to him, and thought.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But this business is all about getting angry. Blame was angry, permanently. His murderer lost his rag for a moment. Now it’s me and you. This is what appals me the most, the contempt. To them, Blame wasn’t even worth using their abilities. No black fist or mystic energies or invented contraption, just a plain old
common or garden cosh, as used by the dimmest thug. I admit if it were otherwise, we’d have them bang to rights. But it wasn’t calculated. Peeter Blame wasn’t really murdered, he was swatted—like a midge.”
Charles turned.
“This, Catriona, is what I will promise. The Drome will fall. A wrong done to the least of the King’s subjects is still a wrong, no matter how eminent the wrong-doer might be. The Splendid Six will be removed from the game.”
“And the game goes on?”
“Of course. But while I have anything to say about it, rules will be observed.”
Charles Beauregard turned again, and looked into the empty, cold fireplace.
Edwin held her arm and escorted her out of the Strangers Room.
* * * *
It happened over months. She perceived the fingers of Charles Beauregard pulling loose ends. Sometimes, she suspected he merely stayed his hand, suspending services that would otherwise step in to protect the Splendids from themselves.
Trimingham suffered a serious smash-up on the proving grounds, and his insurers finally cavilled at the loss, repudiating his daredevilry as a compulsive, nigh-suicidal mania for taking unnecessary risks, which drove his inventing businesses into insolvency. Lady Lucinda, turning thirty, was struck by a debilitating ailment which led to a permanent loss of her power of flight (she could still grow wings but they wouldn’t lift her). Clever Dick’s investment portfolio went down in flames with the Wall Street Crash and he became a recluse, suffering a serious case of teenage facial eruptions which led unkind souls to rename him “Spotted Dick.” Lord Piltdown, searching for his Northern roots, simply disappeared on a fjord, leaving behind an elegant but empty suit and shaggy footprints that gave out on glacial ice. The MCC missed him dreadfully and she couldn’t help but wonder if the Neolithic Nobleman hadn’t been the only true innocent among the Splendids. Captain Rattray made an unwise marriage to a mercenary Tiller girl and, fifteen days later, was the first of the Splendids actually to be hauled into court (Peeter Blame, you are avenged!). His divorce action drew mildly mocking, then outright critical, press comment, as more and more lurid detail spilled out in the dock. Noel Coward penned a witty, nasty revue sketch that made Blackfist impossible to take seriously, especially when the whole truth came out about the long-term physical alterations wrought upon his body by the Fang of Night. Chandra Seth announced to the world that he would perform a fabulous feat of endurance, buried in a glass coffin on the banks of the Thames for a month, but had to be rescued after three days when panicky humming alarmed passersby. In the wake of this fiasco, five women showed up alleging that they were deserted wives of the Mystic Maharajah, who had lived under a bewildering number of names. The line-up and thus the name fluctuated: the Splendid Five, then Three, then it was all off.
The Splendids were eclipsed in popular imagination by the dramatic and headline-hogging reappearance of a dark defender (the original Doctor Shade!) once thought dead. British Pluck suspended its serial exploits of the Six, and began to run stories of Shade, who worked alone and struck by night, travelling from his secret lair in Big Ben by autogyro to combat the enemies of decency. Catriona wondered what the point was of having a secret lair but letting everyone know the address?
“Happy now?” asked Edwin, tossing her a folded Herald.
They were in the flat, warmed by a nice coal fire as the first January of a new decade brought snow to the city. The puzzle box was on a mantelpiece, undisturbed for some months. There were new matters mysterious, requiring the attention of the Diogenes Club. And Catriona had been freshly accorded the privileged status of Lady Member, prompting a serious blood pressure condition for Sir Henry Merrivale. He was not mollified by the fact that she was obliged by oath not to own up to her status for at least fifty years after her death.
She looked at a foot-of-the-column note in the paper.
“The Heathrow Drome has been reclaimed by HM Government,” said Edwin, “set aside for purposes of military aviation.”
“That’ll gobble up the Hollyhocks as well.”
“They’d never have got an airfield sited with Blame next door to file suit against the scheme.”
“True.”
Though no longer eminent, the Splendid Six were all free. No one had ever answered in court for the murder of Peeter Blame.
“Catty-Kit, you’ve pursued this hawklike. Were they that bad?”
“They were worse, Edwin. That’s what I feel.”
He put his arms around her.
“And that’s why we value you.”
“For having feelings you know you ought to have but can’t stretch
to?”
“That’s a fairly merciless way of putting it.”
“But no argument from you.”
Charles and Edwin were clubland heroes too, veterans of wars that didn’t make it to the history books. They quietly refused the offered knighthoods and would never murder anyone who happened across their way, but they worked in the same arena as the Splendid Six and Doctor Shade, coping with the worst of the world, mulling over intelligence which would cause anarchic panic if it became public knowledge. They had to contain in their minds a big picture, the sweep of an ongoing saga of adventure.
Which was why they needed her. To ground them in the importance of the mundanities, to speak for those in whose name the great struggles were undertaken. Charles understood that deeply—she had been surprised to learn that she was not the first Lady Member associated with the Diogenes Club—and Edwin superficially, though he would grow into a proper understanding.
Without her, they might be monsters too.
<
* * * *
The Big Fish
The Bay City cops were rousting enemy aliens. As I drove through the nasty coast town, uniforms hauled an old couple out of a grocery store. The Taraki family’s neighbours huddled in thin rain, howling asthmatically for bloody revenge. Pearl Harbor had struck a lot of people that way. With the Tarakis on the bus for Manzanar, neighbours descended on the store like bedraggled vultures. Produce vanished instantly, then destruction started. Caught at a sleepy stop light, I got a good look. The Tarakis had lived over the store; now, their furniture was thrown out of the second-storey window. Fine china shattered on the sidewalk, spilling white chips like teeth into the gutter. It was inspirational, the forces of democracy rallying round to protect the United States from vicious oriental grocers, fiendishly intent on selling eggplant to a hapless civilian population.
Meanwhile my appointment was with a gent who kept three pictures on his mantelpiece, grouped in a triangle around a statue of the Virgin Mary. At the apex was his white-haired mama, to the left Charles Luciano, and to the right, Benito Mussolini. The Tarakis, American-born and registered Democrats, were headed to a dustbowl concentration camp for the duration, while Gianni Pastore, Sicilian-born and highly unregistered capo of the Family Business, would spend his war in a marble-fronted mansion paid for by nickels and dimes dropped on the numbers game, into slot machines, or exchanged for the favours of nice girls from the old country. I’d seen his mansion before and so far been able to resist the temptation to bean one of his twelve muse statues with a bourbon bottle.
Money can buy you love but can’t even put down a deposit on good taste.
The palace was up in the hills, a little way down the boulevard from Tyrone Power. But now, Pastore was hanging his mink-banded fedora in a Bay City beachfront motel complex, which was a real estate agent’s term for a bunch of horrible shacks shoved together for the convenience of people who like sand on their carpets.
I always take a lungful of fresh air before entering a confined space with someone in Pastore’s business, so I parked the Chrysler a few blocks from the Seaview Inn and walked the rest of the way, sucking on a Camel to keep warm in the wet. They say it doesn’t rain in Southern California, but they also say the U.S. Navy could never be taken by surprise. This February, three months into a war the rest of the world
had been fighting since 1936 or 1939 depending on whether you were Chinese or Polish, it was raining almost constantly, varying between a light fall of misty drizzle in the dreary daytimes to spectacular storms, complete with DeMille lighting effects, in our fear-filled nights. Those trusty Boy Scouts scanning the horizons for Jap subs and Nazi U-boats were filling up influenza wards, and manufacturers of raincoats and umbrellas who’d not yet converted their plants to defense production were making a killing. I didn’t mind the rain. At least rainwater is clean, unlike most other things in Bay City.
A small boy with a wooden gun leaped out of a bush and sprayed me with sound effects, interrupting his onomatopoeic chirruping with a shout of “die you slant-eyed Jap!” I clutched my heart, staggered back, and he finished me off with a quick burst. I died for the Emperor and tipped the kid a dime to go away. If this went on long enough, maybe little Johnny would get a chance to march off and do real killing, then maybe come home in a box or with the shakes or a taste for blood. Meanwhile, especially since someone spotted a Jap submarine off Santa Barbara, California was gearing up for the War Effort. Aside from interning grocers, our best brains were writing songs like “To Be Specific, It’s Our Pacific,” “So Long Momma, I’m Off to Yokahama,” “We’re Gonna Slap the Jap Right Off the Map,” and “When Those Little Yellow Bellies Meet the Cohens and the Kellys.” Zanuck had donated his string of Argentine polo ponies to West Point and got himself measured for a comic opera Colonel’s uniform so he could join the Signal Corps and defeat the Axis by posing for publicity photographs.
The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02] Page 26