The Hellfire Club (47 page)

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 Weatherall 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.

Here are your telephones,
Nora told herself.
You can get these guys to go to the police. But how to convince them?

“Your husband is an unusual man,” said Gray Crew Cut. “You must be very proud of him.”

“Can I talk to you for a second?” she asked. “I have to tell you something.”

“I’m Frank Neary, by the way, and this is Frank Tidball.” Both men extended their hands, and Nora shook them impatiently. “We’ve taken Lily’s tour many times, and she always comes up with something new.”

Tidball smiled. “She never came up with anything like your husband before.”

Dart and Lily had paused at the edge of a series of overgrown scars, the remains of one section of the old gardens. Past them, an empty pedestal stood at the center of a pond. Lily was laughing at something Dart was saying.

“You can hardly be a poet if you don’t have an independent mind,” said Neary. “Where we live, in Rhinebeck, up on the Hudson River, we’re surrounded by artists and poets.”

Nora took an agonized look across the lawn. Dart spoke to Lily and began walking quickly toward the group moving in his direction, Nora and the two Franks a little apart from the others.

“Wasn’t there something you wanted to say?” Neary asked.

“I need some help.” Dart advanced across the grass, smiling dangerously. “Would you please take my arm? I have a stone in my shoe.”

“Certainly.” Frank Neary stepped smartly up beside her and held her elbow.

Nora raised her right leg, slipped off her shoe, and upended it. “There,” Nora said, and the two men politely watched the fall of a nonexistent stone. “Thank you.” As Neary released her arm, she watched Dart striding toward her with his dangerous smile and remembered where she had heard their names. “You must be the Neary and Tidball who write the Chancel House crossword puzzles.”

“My goodness,” Neary said. “Frank, Mrs. Desmond knows our puzzles.”

“Isn’t this
lovely,
Frank?”

Nora turned to smile at Dart, who had noticed the tone of her conversation with the Franks and slowed his pace.

“You know our work?”

“You two guys are great,” Nora said. “I should have recognized your names as soon as I heard them.”

Dart had come within hearing distance, and Nora said, “I love your puzzles, they’re so clever.” Something Davey had once said came back to her. “You use themes in such a subtle way.”

“Good God, someone understands us,” Neary said. “Here is a person who understands that a puzzle is more than a puzzle.”

Dart settled a hand on Nora’s shoulder. “Puzzles?”

“Norman,” she said, looking up with what she hoped was wifely regard, “Mr. Neary and Mr. Tidball write those wonderful Chancel House crossword puzzles.”

“No,” said Dart, instantly falling into his role, “not the ones that keep you up late at night, trying to think of an eight-letter word for smokehouse flavoring?”

“Isn’t that great?”

“I’m sure you three have a lot to discuss, but we should catch up.” Dart smiled at the two Franks. “I
wondered
what you were talking about. Do you have an editor over there at Chancel House?”

“Yes, but our work doesn’t need any real editing. Davey makes a suggestion now and then. He’s a sweet boy.”

The four of them came up beside the rest of the group, and Lily said that after viewing the pond, they would be going on to Honey House, at which point the official tour would conclude. Anyone who wished to see the Mist Field, the Song Pillars, and Rapunzel was free to do so.

“You gentlemen come here often?” Dart asked.

Together, swapping sentences, Neary and Tidball told their new friends that they tried to visit Shorelands once a year. “Five years ago, we stayed overnight in Rapunzel, mainly so we could walk through Main when it wasn’t filled with tourists. It was tremendously enjoyable. Agnes Brotherhood was full of tales.”

“What kind of tales?”

Neary looked at Tidball, and both men smiled. Neary said, “There’s a big difference between Lily and Agnes. Agnes never liked Georgina very much, and back then she was willing to gossip. Frank and I heard stories that will never be in the history books.”

Lily had begun to speak from the raised flagstone ledge surrounding the pond. Frank Neary raised a finger to his lips.

After telling two mildly prurient anecdotes about the accidental unclothed encounters of writers of opposite sexes, Lily hopped off the ledge and declared that their final stop, Honey House, the only cottage restored to its original condition, was the perfect conclusion to their tour.

An overgrown stone path curved away from the pond and led into the trees. At the rear of the group, Nora and Dart walked along just behind the puzzle makers, and the others strung out in pairs behind Lily’s pink suit. The air had darkened.

“Might rain,” Dart said.

“It will,” Tidball said. “It’s getting here a little ahead of schedule, which is good for them. Rain cuts into attendance quite a bit. Shorelands gets muddy when it rains. If it’s going to happen, they’d rather have it now instead of on the weekend.”

“Cuts into attendance?” Neary asked. “I should
say.
Rain has the same effect on attendance that the fellow in the papers, Dart, had on his victims.”

Lily and the couple behind her stepped onto a bridge over the stream which wandered through the northern end of the estate. Their shoes rang on the bridge,
trip trap, trip trap,
like the three billy goats gruff in the fairy tale.

“Heard anything new about good old Dart?” Dart asked. “What a story! We couldn’t make much sense out of it. Fellow was accused of murder but never charged. What was the woman doing in the police station? More there than meets the eye. Still on the loose, this odd couple?”

“Oh, yes,” said Neary. “According to the radio, Dart is supposed to be in Northampton, and that’s not far from here.” His eyes had become large and serious. “I agree that more is going on than meets the eye. Frank and I have a connection with the woman.” He leaned in front of Nora to look into Dart’s face. “You asked about our editor, Davey Chancel. Well, she’s his wife. If you ask me, Nora Chancel had something going with this Dart.”

“I should say that’s a definite possibility,” Dart said. “What do you know about this woman, your editor’s wife?”

The others had crossed over the bridge, and now the two Franks, followed closely by Nora and Dick Dart, stepped onto it.
Trip trap, trip trap.

“We’ve heard rumors,” Tidball said.

“Go on,” said Dart. “I’m absolutely riveted.”

“Apparently the woman is an unstable personality. We think they were in cahoots. When he got arrested, she went to the police station and staged her own ‘kidnapping,’ quote unquote, to get him out. She’s probably more dangerous than he is.”

Neary laughed, and a second later Nora laughed, too.

They followed the others toward a cabin tucked away at the base of the trees. Lily stood at the front door facing them.

“Quite a saga, isn’t it?” Dart asked.

“I can hardly wait for the movie,” Nora said.

Lily held up a hand as if taking an oath. “We here at Shorelands are very proud of what you are about to see. The planning began four years ago, when our director, Margaret Nolan, said to us at dinner, ‘Why don’t we make it possible for our guests to walk into one of our cottages and experience the world created by Georgina Weatherall? Why not re-create the past we celebrate here?’ We all fell in love with Margaret Nolan’s vision, and for a year we assembled records and documents in order to reassemble a picture of a typical cottage interior from approximately 1920 to approximately 1935. We vowed to cut no corners. Let me tell you, when you begin a project like this, you find out how much you don’t know in a hurry!”

Polite laughter came from everyone but Nora and Dart.

“You are wondering how we chose Honey House. I’ll be frank about that. Expense had to be a consideration, and this is one of the smallest cottages. Our last great general renovation was in 1939, and the task before us was enormous. With the help of Georgina Weatherall’s records, we covered the walls with a special fabric obtained from the original manufacturer. It had been out of production since 1948, but several rolls had been preserved at the back of the warehouse, and we bought all of them. We learned that the original paint came from a company which had gone out of business in 1935, and nearly lost hope, but then we got word that a paint supplier in Boston had fifteen gallons of the exact brand and color in his basement. Donations poured in. About a year and a half ago, it all came together.

“This should go without saying, but I must insist that you touch none of the objects or fabrics inside. Honey House is a living museum. Please show it the respect it deserves, and allow others to enjoy this restoration for many years to come. Am I understood?”

Dart’s cry of “Absolutely!” rang out over the mutter of assent from the group.

Lily smiled, turned to the door, took a massive key from a pocket of the pink suit, and looked over her shoulder. “I love this moment.” She swung the door open and told the young couple directly in front of her to switch on the lights.

The boy led the first of the group through the door. Soft sounds of appreciation came to those still outside.