The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01]

by By Kim Newman

  “See,” said Lionel. “Star is born.”

  Lovely Legs wore only a shortie bathrobe and stockings. She did indeed have lovely legs.

  “Odd stage-name,” Lionel admitted. “She’s really called Victoria Plant.”

  The alias had been Fred’s idea. Vanessa was a plant, so she might as well be called one.

  “That girl knows you,” Barbara said to Richard, perceptively. “She looked over here, then away. Really fast.”

  “What’s that, ducks?” asked Lionel.

  “Nothing that matters,” said Richard. “She’s a very pretty girl.”

  “Just watch what happens when Mavis Upstairs clocks her. She’ll be out of that nightie and into floor-length winceyette with mud on her face and her hair in curlers for the next scene. It’s always the way. Still, enjoy the view while it lasts, eh?”

  Richard had an insight. “You’re not even slightly homosexual are you, Lionel?”

  “Shush, luv, think of my position if talk like that gets out. For shame. You can’t get a job in telly PR unless you’re bent as a twelve-bob note. ‘Sides, I like the frocks.”

  He pantomimed another wrist-slap.

  Richard shook his head.

  “Look, this really is how I talk, dearie. Can’t help that. Blame Round the Home.”

  Another victim of the media. When he’d first seen Barbara, Lionel hadn’t been envying her blouse but trying to peer down it.

  “If you need a proper poof for some reason, apply to Dudley Finn over there, a.k.a. Beefy Ben Barstow. Forget all those stories about him in nightclubs with models and pinup girls. I planted them all personally. When those long legs wrap round his middle, he’s not going to enjoy this scene one bit. Dud the Dud and Geordie the Security Guard make a lovely couple. Oh, slap my wrist and call me Mabel, I’ve done it again. Talking out of school.”

  Richard had learned a valuable lesson. No one around here was who they pretended to be, and most of them weren’t even the people they seemed to be behind the obvious pretence at being someone else again. The onion layers peeled off, and there were sour little cores in the middle.

  As it turned out, watching The Northern Barstows be made was even duller than watching it on television. Even the rapid pace of twice-a-week production meant an enormous amount of waiting around for things to happen, while tedious tasks were repeated ad infinitum. Barbara, of course, was rapt—like a historian with a personal time machine rubbernecking at the first read-through of Hamlet at the Globe or the huddle of commanders around Alexander as he scratched out battle plans in Assyrian dirt.

  He found a quiet space behind some flats—painted backdrops of Bleeds that hung outside windows on several different sets as if every home and workplace in the city had the same view—and let down his guard, extending mental feelers, opening himself to the ebb and flow of immeasurable energies. This could be dangerous, but he had to do a full psychic recce. It wasn’t an exact science. The emotional turmoil around regular humans at the studio was complicated enough to blot obvious traces of the supernatural. Many paraphenomena were overspill from ordinary people’s heads, anyway. No ghosts, demons or extradimensional entities were required to whip up a mindstorm of maelstrom proportions. Maybe a little ritual, conscious or unconscious, to unlock the potential, but it could just be a crack in the skull, allowing boiling steam to jet into the aether.

  Of course, Haslemere Studioswere haunted. If you knew how to look, everywhere was haunted. Richard had already noticed three separate discarnates on the premises. Tattered flags planted long ago, incapable of doing harm in the immediate vicinity, let alone reaching across distances and forcing others to do their bidding. In an arclight pool, he came across a faded wraith who had been a film actress in the 1920s, almost a star when talking pictures came in and her mangle-worzel accent disqualified her from costume siren roles. Pulled from a historical film begun silent but revamped as a talkie, losing the role of Lady Hamilton to a posher actress, she’d drowned herself in the studio tank, waterlogged crinolines floating like a giant lily among miniature vessels ready to refight the Battle of Trafalgar. All this he gathered from letting her flutter against his face, but the only name he could pick up for her was “Emma,” and he didn’t know if it was hers or Lady Hamilton’s.

  He tried to ask about theBarstows curse, but Emma was too caught up in her own long-ago troubles to care. Typical suicide. She chattered in his skull, Mummerset still thick enough to render her wailing barely comprehensible. The only spectral revenge Emma might have wreaked would be on Al Jolson—and he had never shot a film at Haslemere. Richard asked if any other presences were here, recent and ambitiously malevolent. It was often a profitable line of questioning, like a copper squeezing underworld informants. No joy. If anything floated around capable of hurt on that scale, Emma would have known at once what he was asking about. Communing with the ghost left his face damp and slightly oily. When he moved on, she scarcely noticed and went back to exaggerated gestures no one else here could see. She wrung her hands like a caricature spook, but he guessed that was just silent picture acting style.

  On set, Vanessa was giving the hot-and-cold treatment to Dudley Finn. It was textbook “slap and kiss,” “come here but go away,” “wrapping around the little finger” business. Richard saw Vanessa was enjoying herself as Lovely Legs, not so much the acting but thepretending. As she made faces, she let the whirring wheels show, daring anyone to call her a fake. Barbara was watching, critically. Having picked up the connection between Richard and Vanessa, she was looking for more clues. He should let the two clever women know they were on the same side or else they’d waste time suspecting each other.

  He looked at the faces watching from darker corners. Squiers stood between the director Gerard Loss, a toothbrush-moustached military type, and the floor-manager Jeanne Treece, an untidy blond woman with a folder full of script pages and notes. Squiers wore a stained flat cap that failed to match his guru threads. At the script conference, Squiers had several times used the expression “with my producer’s hat on,” and now—swallowing a bark of laughter—Richard realised there really was such a garment, and it served an actual purpose in demarcating his functions on the show.

  A great many other people watched, most with reasons to be there, none with a mark of Cain obvious on their foreheads. Richard picked up many emotions, all within the usual range. Jealousy from Geordie the Security Guard as “Ben” clinched with “Lovely Legs.” Boredom from seen-it-all grips and minders. Frustration from a cameraman with ambitions to art, shackled to an outdated camera with three lenses that could be revolved with all the ease and grace of rusty nineteenth-century agricultural equipment. Severe cramps from Jeanne Treece. Concern from a wardrobe assistant who knew there was only one dupe of Vanessa’s top and that if what she was wearing got torn in the tussle, she’d have to match the rip on the backup. Quite a few people in the room idly thought of killing quite a few of the rest, but that too wasn’t exactly unusual.

  So, how did the Barstows reach out and possess people?

  It was possible that someone here at the studio was a human lens, a focus for energies summoned in script conferences and unleashed during production, who could channel malignancies into the actual broadcast. A talent like that might slip by without disturbing a ghost, like a light that isn’t switched on—but would flare as bright as a studio filament when in use, probably burning out quickly. Raw psychic ability, perhaps not even recognised by its possessor, amplified and sent out to every switched-on television set in the land. Even if people weren’t dying, Richard would have been troubled by the concept. If there was a person behind this, they needed to be shut down. Richard dreaded to consider what might happen if the advertising industry discovered this possible psychic anomaly and tried to replicate the process of affecting reality via cathode rays.

  There was a slap, a rip, and a clinch. Richard felt the wardrobe assistant’s inner groan and the security guard’s spasm of hate.

  There wa
s no shortage of suspects.

  “That’s a wrap for the day,” said Loss, though not before getting a nod of the producer’s hat from Squiers. “The talent are released. The rest of you strike the boardroom and throw up”—Squiers whispered in the director’s ear—”Mavis’ lounge, for tomorrow.”

  Squiers clapped, and the orders were followed. Television was not a director’s medium.

  Vanessa threw Richard a look, then slipped out with the other dismissed persons. Her costar had a quiet, hissy row with Geordie. Lionel shrugged and angled his head, tossing off a “told you so” flounce, sneaking a gander under his shades at Vanessa’s departing legs. Richard was amused but not yet ready to write off the PR as comedy relief. In this soap, anyone could be anything. No rule said killers couldn’t be amusing.

  He stood by Barbara.

  “Is it all you expected? Or are you faintly disappointed?”

  She smiled. “You’re sharp, but try not to be too clever. I’m interested in The Northern Barstows and what it means, in why it’s popular, why so many people find it important. Whether it’s, in objective terms, ‘any good’ is beside the point.”

  “So these people aren’t the new Dickens or Shakespeare.”

  “No, though Dickens and Shakespeare might have been the old ‘these people.’ Come back in a century and we’ll decide whether the Marcus Squiers method counts as art or not.”

  “Method?”

  “Crowd control is a method, Richard.”

  “Is he in control?”

  “Not completely. He knows that, you can tell. June O’Dell—who, you’ll note, hasn’t been around all day—has more say, if only negatively, in what goes out on the show. In the end, the audience has the conductor’s baton. If they switch off a storyline, it gets dropped. If they tune in, it’s extended. This is all about showing people what they want to see and telling them what they want to hear.”

  “Wonderful. Fifteen million suspects.”

  Barbara laughed, pretty lines taut around her mouth and eyes. “If it were an easy puzzle, it wouldn’t be a Diogenes Club case.”

  “You pick up a lot.”

  “So do you. Tell me, is this place really haunted?”

  “Of course. Want to meet a ghost?”

  She laughed again, then realised he meant it.

  “There’s a ghost?”

  “Several.”

  He led her to Emma’s arc-light patch. The lamp was off, but she was still tethered to her spot.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “I’m not surprised. Hold out your hand.”

  He took her wrist, easing back filigree bracelets and her sleeve, enjoying the warmth of her skin, and puppeteered her arm. She stretched her fingers, which slid into the ghost’s wet dress.

  “Feel that?” he asked.

  “Cold ... damp?”

  She took her hand back, shivering, somewhere between fear and delight.

  “A frisson. I’ve always wondered what that meant. It really was a frisson. Tell me, what should I see?”

  “You don’t have to see anything. I can’t see anything, though I have an image in my mind.”

  “Like a recording?”

  Richard realised Emma was in black and white. She had been around before films were in colour.

  “That’s one type of ghost,” he said. “Empty, but going through the motions. A record stuck in a groove. This is a presence, with the trace of a personality. Very faint. She probably won’t last much longer.”

  “Then where will she go?”

  “Good question. Search me for an answer, though. We have to let some Eternal Mysteries stand.”

  “You know more than you’re letting on.”

  He really didn’t want to answer that. But he had reasons other than shutting off this line of questioning for kissing Barbara Corri.

  She had reasons for kissing him back, but he didn’t feel the need to pry.

  “You two, watch out, or the fire marshal will bung a bucket of sand over you,” shrilled Lionel. “Come away and exeunt studio left. Pardon me for mentioning it, but you’re an unprofessional pair of ghost-hunters. It’s a wonder you can find so much as a tipsy pixie the way you carry on.”

  Richard and Barbara held hands, fingers winding together.

  The studio was dark now, floor treacherous with cables and layers of sticky tape. Lionel led them towards the open door to the car park.

  As they stepped outside, Richard felt a crackle nearby, like a lightning strike. He flinched, and Barbara felt his involuntary clutch. She squeezed his hand, and touched his lapel.

  “Nothing serious,” he said.

  She lifted aside his hair and whispered, “You are such a poor liar” into his ear.

  * * * *

  VII

  They had two rooms at a guest house near the studio. As it happens, they only had use for one room.

  Richard decided the unnecessary expense wouldn’t trouble the accountants of the Diogenes Club. After an “it’s not just the precious metal, it’s the workmanship” argument over a bill for silver bullets, his chits tended to get rubber-stamped without query.

  He let Barbara sleep on, primping a little at her early-morning smile, and went down for his full English. Framed pictures of supporting players who’d stayed here while making forgotten films were stuck up on the dining room wall. The landlady fussed a little, but lost interest when he told her he wasn’t an actor.

  The third pot of tea was on the table and he was well into toast and jam when Fred arrived. He had come down from London on his old Norton and wore a leather jacket over his Fred Perry. The landlady frowned at his heavy boots, but became more indulgent when Richard introduced him as a stuntman who had worked on Where Eagles Dare. More toast arrived.

  Fred had new information. He was fairly hopping with it.

  “Guv, this is so far off your beat that it has got to be a false trail,” he said, “but I’ve tripped over it more times than is likely, and in so many places I’d usually rule out coincidence.”

  Barbara appeared, light blue chiffon scarf matching her top, tiny row of sequin buttons down the side of her navy skirt. Her hair was up again, fashioned into the shape of a seashell. She joined them at the breakfast table.

  Fred, quietly impressed, waited for an introduction.

  “This is Professor Corri, Fred. Barbara, this is Fred Regent. He’s a policeman, but don’t hold it against him. Continue with your input, Fred. We keep no secrets from the Professor.”

  Fred hesitated. Barbara signalled for the “continental breakfast”: grapefruit juice, croissants, black coffee.

  “I’m all ears,” she announced, nipping at a croissant with white, even, freshly brushed teeth whose imprint Richard suspected was still apparent on his shoulder. “Input away.”

  Fred cleared his throat with tea and talked.

  “I’ve been calling in favours on the force and the crook grapevine, asking about as requested. I started with Jamie the Jockey, since he’s our most recent case. Then I looked into Sir Joseph and Prince Ali. Plus a few we didn’t think about, Queenie Tolliver and Buck D. Garrison.”

  Richard furrowed his brow.

  “Queenie Tolliver ran nightclubs in Manchester,” put in Barbara.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” said Fred.

  “Very well. She was, what would you call her, a gang boss? The Godmother, the press said in her obits. Choked on a fishbone at her sixtieth birthday party. Just when—”

  “I can guess,” said Richard. “The same thing happened on The Northern Barstows to a character based on her.”

  ‘“Lady Gulliver,’ Cousin Dodgy Morrie’s backer, and Mavis Barstow’s deadly enemy last year,” said Barbara. “Garrison I’ve never heard of. But there was a Texas tycoon called ‘Chuck J. Gatling’ on the Barstows. Drowned in a grain elevator just after he tried to buy up a controlling interest in Barstow and Company.”

  Fred flipped his notebook. “I was iffy about listing Garrison as a
curse victim. He died just like Gatling, but on his own spread in Texas. He’d never visited Britain. He’d probably never heard there was a character like him on some English TV show. But he’s where I first tripped over the Thing.”

  “The Thing?” prompted Richard

  “The Strange Thing. Actually, the Non-Strange Thing. Professor, we don’t do regular police-work. We look for the unbelievable. What happened to Buck D. is all too believable. He annoyed some business rivals, and the FBI say he was hit.”

  “Hit? I really must frown upon this Yankee slang, Frederick.”

  “Sorry, guv. You know what I mean. Hit. Assassinated. Killed. By a professional. High-priced, smooth, hard to catch. In, out and dead.”

  “He was rubbed out by a torpedo?” blurted Barbara. “Don’t look so aghast, Richard. I teach a course on Hollywood Gangster Cinema.”