The Hellfire Club

  “I could help you with that,” Dart said. “No problem at all.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  Dart shrugged and nodded. The young woman looked at Nora.

  “He means it,” Nora said.

  “Artists are so . . . extraordinary. So . . . unexpected.”

  “I’m a little more in touch with my feminine side than the average guy,” Dart said.

  Marian brought them through the door marked PRIVATE, down a functional hallway to an unmarked door, and into a tiny office with a window on the entrance. A photograph of a young soldier in uniform had been pinned to the bulletin board. She moved behind the desk, took a form from the top drawer, and smiled at Dart. “Mr. Desmond, since I suppose you will be filling this out, perhaps you should take the chair? I wish I had two, but as you can see, there’s no room.”

  Dart examined the form. Grinning, he took a pen from her desk and began writing.

  Marian looked brightly up at Nora. “Now that I know who you are, I’m so glad we’re putting you and Mr. Desmond in Pepper Pot. Pepper Pot is where Robert Frost stayed when he was Miss Weatherall’s guest in 1932.”

  “And where Merrick Favor and Austryn Fain stayed in 1938.”

  Marian tilted her chin, and her hair swung to the back of her neck. If the poetic Mr. Desmond appreciated freckles, she intended to give him a good view. “I don’t think I know those names.”

  “My wife has a special interest in the summer of 1938.” He smiled as if to suggest that wives must be expected to have their foibles, and Marian smiled back in indulgent understanding.

  “We’ll have to see what we can do to help you.” She read what Dart had written on the form. “Oh, isn’t that cute. Your names are Norma and Norman.”

  “Language poetry strikes again.”

  She smiled and gave her head a flirtatious shake. Norman Desmond was a hoot. “There’s a tour beginning in forty minutes, which would give you more than enough time to settle in. Afterwards, I’ll take you into the parts of the house normally off-limits. We’re not really a hotel, so we can’t provide valet or room service, but if you have any special needs, I’ll do my best.”

  Dart turned a rueful smile to Nora. “We’re gonna have to tell her, Norm.”

  Nora had no idea what he thought they had to tell Marian Cullinan. “I guess so.”

  “Truth is, we don’t have our bags. Stolen out of our car at a rest stop this morning. All we have is in Norma’s handbag and what we’re wearing.”

  Marian looked stricken. “Why, that’s terrible!” She ripped a sheet off a yellow pad. “I’ll have Tony pick up some toothbrushes and toothpaste in town, and whatever else you need. A razor? Shaving soap? Tell me what you need.”

  “Thankfully, we have all the toiletries we need, but there are some other items I’d be grateful for.”

  “Fire away,” Marian said.

  “We enjoy a nightcap in the evenings. Could your lad pick up a liter of Absolut vodka? And we’d like an ice bucket to go with that.”

  “Sounds sensible to me.” She wrote. “Anything else?”

  “I’d like two more items, but I don’t want you to think they’re strange.”

  She positioned her pen.

  “A twelve-foot length of clothesline and a roll of duct tape.”

  She looked up to see if this was another of his little jokes.

  “Doesn’t have to be clothesline,” Dart said. “Any smooth rope about a quarter inch in diameter is dandy.”

  “We aim to please.” She wrote down his requests. “We do have a lot of rope coiled up in the bathroom down the hall. The workmen store it there, even though I’ve asked and asked . . .”

  “Too rough,” Dart said.

  “Would you mind if I asked . . . ?”

  “Medical supplies,” Dart said. “Repair work.”

  “I don’t quite . . .”

  He tapped his right knee. “Not the leg I was born with, alas.”

  “Excuse me. It should all be in your room by the time you’re finished with the tour.” She looked stricken again. “Unless you need something right away.”

  “No hurry. The old joint’s had a bit of a workout, little loose, little floppy, and I want to stiffen it up later.”

  “Our pleasure. And you, Mrs. Desmond? Is there anything I can do for you? I hope I might call you Norma.” She gave Nora a closer look. “Are you all right?”

  “Are some of the people who were at Shorelands at the end of the thirties still here? If so, I’d like to speak to them.”

  Brilliant smile. “Lily Melville is a fixture here, and she was a maid in those days. When the trust came into being, Lily was so helpful that we put her on the staff. You might have seen her leading a group through the lounge.”

  “White hair? Five two?” Dart asked. “Pink Geoffrey Beene knockoff, cultured pearls?”

  “Why, yes.” She was delighted with him. “Norman, you are an amazing man.”

  “Sweet old darling,” Dart said.

  “Well, she’s going to get a kick out of you, but don’t let on you know it isn’t a real Geoffrey Beene.”

  Dart held up his hand as if taking a vow. Nora broke in on their rapport. “Is Lily Melville the only person left from that time?”

  “Another former maid, Agnes Brotherhood, is still with us. She’s been under the weather lately, but it might be possible for you to talk to her.”

  “I’d like that,” Nora said.

  “Hugo Driver,” Marian said, pointing at Nora. “I knew there was something about 1938. So you are a Hugo Driver person.” She smiled in a way which may not have been entirely pleasant. “We don’t see as many Driver people as you might expect. As a rule, they tend not to be much like ordinary readers.”

  “I’m not only a Driver person,” Nora said. “I’m a Bill Tidy, Creeley Monk, and Katherine Mannheim person, too.”

  Marian gave her a doubtful look.

  “Fascinating group,” Dart said. “Class of ‘38. Tremendous interest of Norma’s.”

  “You’re involved in a research project.”

  “According to Norma,” Dart said, “Night Journey wouldn’t exist without the Shorelands experience. Essential to the book.”

  “That is incredibly interesting.” Marian pushed herself back from the desk and folded her hands in front of her chin. “Given Driver’s popularity, we ought to be doing more with him anyhow. And if we can claim that Shorelands and these people you mention are central to Night Journey, that’s the way to do it.” She stroked her perfect jawline and gazed out of the window, thinking. “I can see a piece in the Sunday Times magazine. I can certainly see a piece in the book review. If we got that, we could put on Hugo Driver weekends. How about an annual Driver conference? It could work. I’ll have to run this past Margaret, but I’m sure she’ll see the potential in it. To tell you the truth, attendance has been suffering lately, and this could turn things around for us.”

  “I’m sure Leonard Gimmel and Teddy Brunhoven would be delighted to participate,” Nora said.

  Marian swung toward her and raised her eyebrows.

  “Driver scholars,” Nora said.

  “With luck, we could have everything in place by next spring. Let’s discuss these matters with Margaret during dinner, shall we? Now, the rate for your accommodations is ninety-six twenty with the tax, and if you give me a card, you can be on your way to Pepper Pot.”

  “Always use cash,” Dart said. “Pay as you go.”

  “That’s refreshing.” She watched Dart take his wallet from his trousers and marveled at the number of bills.

  Marian made change from a cash box and handed him two keys attached to wooden tabs reading PEPPER POT. “You’ll meet Lily outside the lounge, and I’ll be waiting for you when the tour ends. I think we’ll all have a lot of fun during your stay.”

  “My plans exactly,” Dart said.

  87

  “SHOULD HAVE BECOME a poet a long time ago. If the spouse hadn’t been present, I could
have planked our new friend right there in her office.”

  “You made a big impression on her,” Nora said.

  “I bet Maid Marian has freckles in her armpits. For sure she has freckles on the tops of her udders, but do you think she has them on the undersides, too?”

  “She probably has freckles on the soles of her feet.”

  They had left Main House by the front door and taken the path angling into the woods on the far side of the walled court. Tall oaks interspersed with birches and maples grew on either side of the path. A signpost at a break in the wall pointed to GINGERBREAD, PEPPER POT, RAPUNZEL.

  “Isn’t it wonderful how everything falls into place when we’re together? We show up as ordinary slobs, and two minutes later we’re VIPs. We have the run of the place, and on top of that, they’re giving us one of the historic old-time Shorelands dinners. Do you understand why?”

  “Marian thinks you’re hot stuff.”

  “That’s not the reason. Here’s this big place, four or five people in it full-time, tops. Night after night, they have soup and sandwiches in the kitchen, complaining to one another about how business is falling off. Rope in someone they can pretend is a VIP, they have a pretext for a decent meal. These people are starved for a little excitement. In the meantime, we get to see how many people are in the house, find out where their rooms are, check the place out. Couldn’t be better.”

  Another wooden signpost came into view on the left side of the path. A brown arrow pointed down a narrow lane toward GINGERBREAD.

  She looked over her shoulder. “I wish you hadn’t asked for the rope and the duct tape. There’s no need for those things.”

  “On the contrary. I’ll need them twice.”

  They reached the sign. Nora looked to her left and saw the faint suggestion of a gray wooden building hidden in the trees. A window glinted in the gray light.

  “Twice?”

  His mouth twitched. “In your case, we can probably dispense with the tape. But our old darling is another matter. Physical restraint adds a great deal to the effect. Which one do you fancy, Lily or Agnes?”

  She did not reply.

  “Like the sound of Agnes. Touch of invalidism, less of a fight. Thinking of your best interests, sweetie.”

  “Very kind of you.”

  “Let’s press on to dear old Salt Shaker or Pepper Grinder or whatever the place is called.”

  Wordlessly Nora turned away from Gingerbread, where Katherine Mannheim had probably died in a struggle with Hugo Driver, and began moving up the side of the path. Dart patted her shoulder, and she fought the impulse to pull away from his touch. “You’re going to do fine.” He ruffled the hair at the back of her head.

  The path curved around an elephant-sized boulder with a rug of moss on its rounded hips. On the other side of the path a double signpost at the edge of the trees indicated that RAPUNZEL lay beyond a wooden bridge arching over a narrow stream, and PEPPER POT at the end of a narrow trail leading into the woods to their right.

  Dart hopped neatly over four feet of glistening mud onto a flat rock, from there onto the grassy verge. He rattled the heavy keys in the air. “Home, sweet home!”

  Nora moved a few feet along her side of the path and found a series of stones and dry spots which took her across.

  The trail slanted upward through Douglas firs with shining needles. A small hewn-timber cottage gradually came into view at the end of a clearing. Extending from a shingle roof, a canopy hung over a flat porch. A brick fireplace rose along the side of the cottage, and big windows divided into four panes broke the straight lines of the timbers on both sides of the front door. An addition had been built onto the back by workmen who had attempted to match the timbers with machine-milled planks. No telephone lines came into the house.

  “Hear the banjo music?” Dart said. “The Pinto put me in a shitkicker’s cabin.”

  “Two or three people made this place by hand,” Nora said. “And they did a good job.”

  Dart drew her up two hewn-timber steps onto the porch. “Your simple midwestern values make me feel so decadent. In you go.”

  They entered a dark room with double beds and pine desks against the walls at either end. In the center of the room a brown sofa and easy chair flanked a coffee table. Along the far wall were a counter, kitchen cabinets, a sink beneath a square window, and an electric range. Heavy clothespresses occupied the far corners of the room, and the apron of the stone fireplace jutted into the wooden floor. Dart locked the door behind them and flipped up a switch, turning on a shaded overhead light and the lamps on the bedside tables.

  “Fucking Dogpatch.” He wandered into the kitchen and opened and closed cabinets. “No minibar, of course.”

  “Aren’t you getting a bottle?”

  “If you don’t have choices, you might as well live in Russia. How much time do we have? Twenty-five minutes?”

  “Just about,” said Nora, grateful that it was not enough for Dick Dart’s idea of an enjoyable sexual experience.

  “Do you suppose this dump has an actual bathroom?”

  She pointed at a door in the rear wall. “Through there.”

  “Let’s go. Take your bag.”

  Nora questioned him with a look.

  “Want to repair your makeup. I can’t stand the sight of that mess you made of my work.”

  88

  THE SHORT, WHITE-HAIRED guide trotted up the steps and bustled forward. She was energetic and cheerful, and she seemed to know several of the people in the group.

  “Hello, hello!” Two men in their sixties, like Dick Dart in jackets and ties, one with a gray crew cut, the other bald, greeted her by name. Her smile congealed for a moment when she noticed Dart.

  “Here we are,” she said. “I don’t usually lead groups back to back, but I was told that we have a promising young poet with us, and that he specifically asked for me, so I’m delighted to be with you.” She turned her smile to a dark-haired young man who looked like an actor in a soap opera, one of Daisy’s Edmunds and Dmitris. “Are you Mr. Desmond?”

  Edmund/Dmitri looked startled and said, “No!”

  “I’m afraid that’s me,” Dart said.

  “Oh, now I understand,” she said. “You have strong opinions, that’s only natural. From time to time, Mr. Desmond, please feel free to share your insights with the rest of us.”

  “Be honored,” Dart said.

  She smiled at the group in general. “Mr. Norman Desmond, the poet, will be giving us his special point of view as we go along. I’m sure we’ll all find him very interesting, but I warn you, Mr. Desmond’s ideas can be controversial.”

  “Little me?” Dart said, pressing a hand to his chest. Some members of the group chuckled.

  “I also want to inform you that two other creative people, old friends of ours, are with us today. Frank Neary and Frank Tidball. We call them the two Franks, and it’s always a pleasure when they join us.”

  The two older men murmured their thanks, mildly embarrassed to have been identified. Their names sounded familiar to Nora. Frank Neary and Frank Tidball, the two creative Franks? She didn’t think that she had ever seen them before.

  “You might be interested in how this old lady in front of you learned so much about Shorelands. My name is Lily Melville, and I’ve spent most of my life in this beautiful place. Lucky me!”

  One of those people capable of saying something for the thousandth time as though it were the first, Lily Melville told them that Georgina Weatherall had hired her as a maid of all work way back in 1931, when she was still really just a child. It was the Depression, her family’s financial situation meant she had to leave school, but Shorelands had given her a wonderful education. For two years she had helped cook and serve meals, which gave her the opportunity to overhear the table talk of some of the most famous and distinguished writers in the world. After that, she took care of the cottages, which put her into even closer contact with the guests. Regrettably, in the late forties Miss We
atherall had suffered a decline in her powers and could no longer entertain her guests. During the years following her departure from Shorelands, Miss Melville frequently had been sought out by writers, scholars, and community groups for her memories. Soon after the trust had acquired the estate in 1980, she had been hired as a resident staff member.

  “We’ll begin our tour with two of my favorite places, Miss Weatherall’s salon and private library, and proceed from there. Are there any questions before we begin?”

  Dick Dart raised his hand.

  “So soon, Mr. Desmond?”

  “Isn’t that very attractive suit you’re wearing a Geoffrey Beene?”

  “Aren’t you sweet! Yes, it is.”

  “And am I wrong in thinking that I caught a trace of that delightful scent Mitsouko as you introduced yourself so eloquently?”

  “Mr. Desmond, would you join me as we take our group into the salon?”

  Dart skipped around the side of the group and took her arm, and the two of them set off down the hallway ahead of Nora and the others.

  They had visited the salon, library, lounge, and famous dining room, where a highly polished table stood beneath reproductions of paintings either owned by Georgina or similar to those in her collection. Like her library, her paintings had been sold off long ago. They had strolled along the terrace and descended the steps to admire the view of Main House from the west lawn. Lily spoke with the ease of long practice of her former employer’s many peculiarities, representing them as the charming eccentricities of a patron of the arts” she invited the remarks, variously startling, irreverent, respectful, and comic, of the poet Norman Desmond, who now accompanied her down the long length of the west lawn toward the ruins of the famous gardens, restoration of which had been beyond the powers of the trust.

  Nora fell in step with the two Franks and wondered again why their names seemed familiar. Certainly their faces were not. Without quite seeming to be academics, both Franks had the bookish reserve of old scholars and the intimate, unintentionally exclusive manner of long-standing collaborators or married couples. They had been amused by some of Dick Dart’s comments, and the Frank with the gray crew cut clearly intended to say something about Mrs. Desmond’s interesting husband.