by Peter Straub
“Which was an unfortunate bit of business,” said Mr. Cuff. “Causing me to catch him in the shoulder, causing him to rear up, causing me to lose my footing what with all the blood on the floor, then causing a tussle for possession of the axe and myself suffering several kicks to the breadbasket. I’ll tell you, sir, we did a good piece of work when we took off his hand, for without the nuisance of a stump really being useful only for leverage, there’s no telling what that fellow might have done. As it was, I had the devil’s own time getting the axe free and clear, and once I had done, any chance of making a neat, clean job of it was long gone. It was a slaughter and an act of butchery with not a bit of finesse or sophistication to it, and I have to tell you, such a thing is both an embarrassment and an outrage to men like ourselves. Turning a subject into hamburger by means of an axe is a violation of all our training, and it is not why we went into this business.”
“No, of course not, you are more like artists than I had imagined,” I said. “But in spite of your embarrassment, I suppose you went back to work on . . . on the female subject.”
“We are not like artists,” said Mr. Clubb, “we are artists, and we know how to set our feelings aside and address our chosen medium of expression with a pure and patient attention. In spite of which we discovered the final and insurmountable frustration of the evening, and that discovery put paid to all our hopes.”
“If you discovered that Marguerite had escaped,” I said, “I believe I might almost, after all you have said, be—”
Glowering, Mr. Clubb held up his hand. “I beg you not to insult us, sir, as we have endured enough misery for one day. The subject had escaped, all right, but not in the simple sense of your meaning. She had escaped for all eternity, in the sense that her soul had taken leave of her body and flown to those realms at whose nature we can only make our poor, ignorant guesses.”
“She died?” I asked. “In other words, in direct contradiction of my instructions, you two fools killed her. You love to talk about your expertise, but you went too far, and she died at your hands. I want you incompetents out of my house immediately. Begone. Depart. This minute.”
Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff looked into each other’s eyes, and in that moment of private communication I saw an encompassing sorrow that utterly turned the tables on me: Before I was made to understand how it was possible, I saw that the only fool present was myself. And yet the sorrow included all three of us, and more besides.
“The subject died, but we did not kill her,” said Mr. Clubb. “We did not go, nor have we ever gone, too far. The subject chose to die. The subject’s death was an act of suicidal will. While you are listening, sir, is it possible, sir, for you to open your ears and hear what I am saying? She who might have been in all of our long experience the noblest, most courageous subject we ever will have the good fortune to be given witnessed the clumsy murder of her lover and decided to surrender her life.”
“Quick as a shot,” said Mr. Cuff. “The simple truth, sir, is that otherwise we could have kept her alive for about a year.”
“And it would have been a rare privilege to do so,” said Mr. Clubb. “It is time for you to face facts, sir.”
“I am facing them about as well as one could,” I said. “Please tell me where you disposed of the bodies.”
“Within the house,” said Mr. Clubb. Before I could protest, he said, “Under the wretched circumstances, sir, including the continuing unavailability of the client and the enormity of the personal and professional letdown felt by my partner and myself, we saw no choice but to dispose of the house along with the telltale remains.”
“Dispose of Green Chimneys?” I said, aghast. “How could you dispose of Green Chimneys?”
“Reluctantly, sir,” said Mr. Clubb. “With heavy hearts and an equal anger. With the same degree of professional unhappiness experienced previous. In workaday terms, by means of combustion. Fire, sir, is a substance like shock and salt water, a healer and a cleanser, though more drastic.”
“But Green Chimneys has not been healed,” I said. “Nor has my wife.”
“You are a man of wit, sir, and have provided Mr. Cuff and myself many moments of precious amusement. True, Green Chimneys has not been healed, but cleansed it has been, root and branch. And you hired us to punish your wife, not heal her, and punish her we did, as well as possible under very trying circumstances indeed.”
“Which circumstances include our feeling that the job ended before its time,” said Mr. Cuff. “Which circumstance is one we cannot bear.”
“I regret your disappointment,” I said, “but I cannot accept that it was necessary to burn down my magnificent house.”
“Twenty, even fifteen years ago, it would not have been,” said Mr. Clubb. “Nowadays, however, that contemptible alchemy known as Police Science has fattened itself up into such a gross and distorted breed of sorcery that a single drop of blood can be detected even after you scrub and scour until your arms hurt. It has reached the hideous point that if a constable without a thing in his head but the desire to imprison honest fellows employed in an ancient trade finds two hairs at what is supposed to be a crime scene, he waddles along to the laboratory and instantly a loathsome sort of wizard is popping out to tell him that those same two hairs are from the heads of Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, and I exaggerate, I know, sir, but not by much.”
“And if they do not have our names, sir,” said Mr. Cuff, “which they do not and I pray never will, they ever after have our particulars, to be placed in a great universal file against the day when they might have our names, so as to look back into that cruel file and commit the monstrosity of unfairly increasing the charges against us. It is a malignant business, and all sensible precautions must be taken.”
“A thousand times I have expressed the conviction,” said Mr. Clubb, “that an ancient art ought not be against the law, nor its practitioners described as criminals. Is there a name for our so-called crime? There is not. GBH they call it, sir, for Grievous Bodily Harm, or, even worse, Assault. We do not Assault. We induce, we instruct, we instill. Properly speaking, these cannot be crimes, and those who do them cannot be criminals. Now I have said it a thousand times and one.”
“All right,” I said, attempting to speed this appalling conference to its end, “you have described the evening’s unhappy events. I appreciate your reasons for burning down my splendid property. You have enjoyed a lavish meal. All remaining is the matter of your remuneration, which demands considerable thought. This night has left me exhausted, and after all your efforts, you, too, must be in need of rest. Communicate with me, please, in a day or two, gentlemen, by whatever means you choose. I wish to be alone with my thoughts. Mr. Moncrieff will show you out.”
The maddening barnies met this plea with impassive stares and stoic silence, and I renewed my silent vow to give them nothing—not a penny. For all their pretensions, they had accomplished naught but the death of my wife and the destruction of my country house. Rising to my feet with more difficulty than anticipated, I said, “Thank you for your efforts on my behalf.”
Once again, the glance that passed between them implied that I had failed to grasp the essentials of our situation.
“Your thanks are gratefully accepted,” said Mr. Cuff, “though, dispute it as you may, they are premature, as you know in your soul. Yesterday morning we embarked upon a journey of which we have yet more miles to go. In consequence, we prefer not to leave. Also, setting aside the question of your continuing education, which if we do not address will haunt us all forever, residing here with you for a sensible period out of sight is the best protection from law enforcement we three could ask for.”
“No,” I said, “I have had enough of your education, and I need no protection from officers of the law. Please, gentlemen, allow me to return to my bed. You may take the rest of the cognac with you as a token of my regard.”
“Give it a moment’s reflection, sir,” said Mr. Clubb. “You have announced the presence of high-grade
consultants and introduced these same to staff and clients both. Hours later, your spouse meets her tragic end in a conflagration destroying your upstate manor. On the very same night also occurs the disappearance of your greatest competitor, a person certain to be identified before long by a hotel employee as a fellow not unknown to the late spouse. Can you think it wise to have the high-grade consultants vanish right away?”
I did reflect, then said, “You have a point. It will be best if you continue to make an appearance in the office for a time. However, the proposal that you stay here is ridiculous.” A wild hope, utterly irrational in the face of the grisly evidence, came to me in the guise of doubt. “If Green Chimneys has been destroyed by fire, I should have been informed long ago. I am a respected figure in the town of ——, personally acquainted with its chief of police, Wendall Nash. Why has he not called me?”
“Oh, sir, my goodness,” said Mr. Clubb, shaking his head and smiling inwardly at my folly, “for many reasons. A small town is a beast slow to move. The available men have been struggling throughout the night to rescue even a jot or tittle portion of your house. They will fail, they have failed already, but the effort will keep them busy past dawn. Wendall Nash will not wish to ruin your night’s sleep until he can make a full report.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “In fact, if I am not mistaken . . .” He tilted his head, closed his eyes, and raised an index finger. The telephone in the kitchen began to trill.
“He has done it a thousand times, sir,” said Mr. Cuff, “and I have yet to see him strike out.”
Mr. Moncrieff brought the instrument through from the kitchen, said, “For you, sir,” and placed the receiver in my waiting hand. I uttered the conventional greeting, longing to hear the voice of anyone but . . .
“Wendall Nash, sir,” came the chief’s raspy, high-pitched drawl. “Calling from up here in ——. I hate to tell you this, but I have some awful bad news. Your place Green Chimneys started burning sometime around midnight last night, and every man jack we had got put on the job and the boys worked like dogs to save what they could, but sometimes you can’t win no matter what you do. Me personally, I feel terrible about this, but, tell you the truth, I never saw a fire like it. We nearly lost two men, but it looks like they’re going to come out of it okay. The rest of our boys are still out there trying to save the few trees you got left.”
“Dreadful,” I said. “Please permit me to speak to my wife.”
A speaking silence followed. “The missus is not with you, sir? You’re saying she was inside there?”
“My wife left for Green Chimneys yesterday morning. I spoke to her there in the afternoon. She intended to work in her studio, a separate building at some distance from the house, and it is her custom to sleep in the studio when working late.” Saying these things to Wendall Nash, I felt almost as though I were creating an alternative world, another town of —— and another Green Chimneys, where another Marguerite had busied herself in the studio, and there gone to bed to sleep through the commotion. “Have you checked the studio? You are certain to find her there.”
“Well, I have to say we didn’t, sir,” he said. “The fire took that little building pretty good, too, but the walls are still standing and you can tell what used to be what, furnishingwise and equipmentwise. If she was inside it, we’d of found her.”
“Then she got out in time,” I said, and instantly it was the truth: The other Marguerite had escaped the blaze and now stood, numb with shock and wrapped in a blanket, unrecognized amidst the voyeuristic crowd always drawn to disasters.
“It’s possible, but she hasn’t turned up yet, and we’ve been talking to everybody at the site. Could she have left with one of the staff?”
“All the help is on vacation,” I said. “She was alone.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Can you think of anyone with a serious grudge against you? Any enemies? Because this was not a natural-type fire, sir. Someone set it, and he knew what he was doing. Anyone come to mind?”
“No,” I said. “I have rivals, but no enemies. Check the hospitals and anything else you can think of, Wendall, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“You can take your time, sir,” he said. “I sure hope we find her, and by late this afternoon we’ll be able to go through the ashes.” He said he would give me a call if anything turned up in the meantime.
“Please, Wendall,” I said, and began to cry. Muttering a consolation I did not quite catch, Mr. Moncrieff vanished with the telephone in another matchless display of butler politesse.
“The practice of hoping for what you know you cannot have is a worthy spiritual exercise,” said Mr. Clubb. “It brings home the vanity of vanity.”
“I beg you, leave me,” I said, still crying. “In all decency.”
“Decency lays heavy obligations on us all,” said Mr. Clubb. “And no job is decently done until it is done completely. Would you care for help in getting back to the bedroom? We are ready to proceed.”
I extended a shaky arm, and he assisted me through the corridors. Two cots had been set up in my room, and a neat array of instruments—“staples”—formed two rows across the bottom of the bed. Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff positioned my head on the pillows and began to disrobe.
8
Ten hours later, the silent chauffeur aided me in my exit from the limousine and clasped my left arm as I limped toward the uniformed men and official vehicles on the far side of the open gate. Blackened sticks that had been trees protruded from the blasted earth, and the stench of wet ash saturated the air. Wendall Nash separated from the other men, approached, and noted without comment my garb of gray homburg hat, pearl-gray cashmere topcoat, heavy gloves, woollen charcoal-gray pin-striped suit, sunglasses, and malacca walking stick. It was the afternoon of a midsummer day in the upper eighties. Then he looked more closely at my face. “Are you, uh, are you sure you’re all right, sir?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I said, and saw him blink at the oozing gap left in the wake of an incisor. “I slipped at the top of a marble staircase and tumbled down all forty-six steps, resulting in massive bangs and bruises, considerable physical weakness, and the persistent sensation of being uncomfortably cold. No broken bones, at least nothing major.” Over his shoulder I stared at four isolated brick towers rising from an immense black hole in the ground, all that remained of Green Chimneys. “Is there news of my wife?”
“I’m afraid, sir, that—” Nash placed a hand on my shoulder, causing me to stifle a sharp outcry. “I’m sorry, sir. Shouldn’t you be in the hospital? Did your doctors say you could come all this way?”
“Knowing my feelings in this matter, the doctors insisted I make the journey.” Deep within the black cavity, men in bulky orange space suits and space helmets were sifting through the sodden ashes, now and then dropping unrecognizable nuggets into heavy bags of the same color. “I gather that you have news for me, Wendall,” I said.
“Unhappy news, sir,” he said. “The garage went up with the rest of the house, but we found some bits and pieces of your wife’s little car. This here was one incredible hot fire, sir, and by hot I mean hot, and whoever set it was no garden-variety firebug.”
“You found evidence of the automobile,” I said. “I assume you also found evidence of the woman who owned it.”
“They came across some bone fragments, plus a small portion of a skeleton,” he said. “This whole big house came down on her, sir. These boys are experts at their job, and they don’t hold out hope for finding a whole lot more. So if your wife was the only person inside . . .”
“I see, yes, I understand,” I said, staying on my feet only with the support of the malacca cane. “How horrid, how hideous that it should all be true, that our lives should prove such a littleness . . .”
“I’m sure that’s true, sir, and that wife of yours was a . . . , was what I have to call a special kind of person who gave pleasure to us all, and I hope you know that we all wish things could of turned out different, the same as
you.”
For a moment I imagined that he was talking about her recordings. Then I understood that he was laboring to express the pleasure he and the others had taken in what they, no less than Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff but much, much more than I, had perceived as her essential character.
“Oh, Wendall,” I said into the teeth of my sorrow, “it is not possible, not ever, for things to turn out different.”
He refrained from patting my shoulder and sent me back to the rigors of my education.
9
A month—four weeks—thirty days—seven hundred and twenty hours—forty-three thousand, two hundred minutes—two million, five hundred and ninety-two thousand seconds—did I spend under the care of Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, and I believe I proved in the end to be a modestly, moderately, middlingly satisfying subject, a matter in which I take an immodest and immoderate pride. “You are little in comparison to the lady, sir,” Mr. Clubb once told me while deep in his ministrations, “but no one could say that you are nothing.” I, who had countless times put the lie to the declaration that they should never see me cry, wept tears of gratitude. We ascended through the fifteen stages known to the novice, the journeyman’s further five, and passed, with the frequent repetitions and backward glances appropriate for the slower pupil, into the artist’s upper eighty, infinitely expandable by grace of the refinements of his art. We had the little soldiers. We had dental floss. During each of those forty-three thousand, two hundred minutes, throughout all two million and nearly six hundred thousand seconds, it was always deepest night. We made our way through perpetual darkness, and the utmost darkness of the utmost night yielded an infinity of textural variation, cold, slick dampness to velvety softness to leaping flame, for it was true that no one could say I was nothing.