The Hellfire Club (51 page)

94

DART CLOSED MARIAN’S
door and whispered, “Be a smart girl, now.” Smiling, he waved her to the telephone. When Nora picked up the receiver, he came up beside her and pressed his head next to hers.

Nora said, “Jeffrey? It’s nice of you to call.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Jeffrey said. “I called before, but some woman told me you were on a tour. Why didn’t you phone me?”

“There are hardly any telephones in this place, and I’ve been pretty busy. I’m sorry you were worried, Jeffrey.”

“What did you think I’d be? Anyhow, I made it most of the way there before the rain stopped me. How did you manage to get to Shorelands?”

“It’s not important. Once I saw all those policemen at the hotel, I went out by a side door and ran into a friend who gave me a ride. I’m sorry I couldn’t get in touch with you. Where are you now?”

“A gas station outside Lenox. It looks like I’ll have to stay here a couple of hours. Look, Nora, I have some important things to tell you.”

“You must have walked into all those cops.”

“Did I ever. I spent most of the day at the police station. I was sure I was going to be arrested, but they finally let me go.”

“I saw Davey just before I left. Did he meet your mother?”

“That’s one of the things I want to tell you. He came to her house with a couple of FBI agents. It was quite a scene. Davey broke down and cried. Even my mother was touched. From what she told me, all hell broke loose in Westerholm this morning. Davey went to his father with what you told him last night, and Alden threw him out of the Poplars. Davey’s falling apart. He wants you back. I didn’t know how you’d feel about that, so instead of calling him after I talked to my mother, I wanted to get in touch with you. I’d prefer to be doing it in person, but from here on the road is underwater.”

“Instead of calling him? Why would you call Davey?”

“To tell him you might have gone to Shorelands. Or, what I was afraid of, that Dick Dart had managed to get ahold of you again.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s because you don’t know the rest of my news. After I get to Shorelands, you’ll probably want to come back to North-ampton with me. Or I could drive you back to Connecticut, if that’s what you want to do.”

Dart pulled the knife from his belt sheath and held it in front of her face.

“Jeffrey, slow down. I have to stay here tonight, and I don’t want you to come until tomorrow. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. How could I go back to Connecticut, anyhow?”

“Well, it’s kind of strange, but everything’s cleared up,” he said. “You’re not wanted anymore.”

Dart’s eyes flicked toward her.

“What happened? How do you know, anyhow?”

“My mother. Nobody really understands this yet, but one of the FBI men said that Natalie Weil has completely recanted. She told the police that you didn’t kidnap her after all.”

“I’m in the clear?”

“As far as I know. The whole thing seems very confused, but I guess Natalie did say that she was wrong or mistaken or something, and she’s sorry she ever involved you.”

Dart’s gaze had become flat and suspicious. Nora said, “I don’t understand that.”

“I get the impression that Natalie has everybody a bit baffled, but it’s certainly good news as far as you’re concerned. The only thing the police want to talk to you about now is Dick Dart. He got out of Northampton by stealing an antique Duesenberg, if you can believe that.”

“Did he really?” Nora asked.

“Why don’t I pick you up as soon as I can and take you wherever you want to go?”

“I know it’s a tremendous inconvenience, but I want to stay here and wrap up the work I’m doing.”

“You want me to wait at this gas station until the rain stops and then drive back to Northampton?” He seemed almost dumbfounded.

“I wish there were a way to do this that would be easier on you.”

“So do I. Can you call me tomorrow? After about eight in the morning, I’ll probably be at my mother’s house.” His voice was flat.

“I’ll call you.”

“You want me to call Davey and tell him you’re okay?”

“Please, no.”

“You must be on to something pretty interesting, to want to stay there.”

“I know you deserve better than this, Jeffrey. You’re a good friend.”

“Have I earned the right to give you some advice?”

“More than that.”

“Leave him. He’ll never be anything but what he is right now, and that isn’t good enough for someone like you.”

“So long, Jeffrey.”

Dart set down the telephone. “I think you broke his heart. Jeffrey wanted to spend the night with my own Nora-pie. But let’s consider a more crucial matter. Little Natalie has recanted. You never kidnapped the whore after all.” He waved his hands in circles at the sides of his head. “The curse of Shorelands strikes again” we’re wading through lies.” Dart put the point of the knife under her chin and brushed it against her skin. “Help me out here.”

“I can’t explain it.” Nora raised her chin, and Dart jabbed her lightly, indenting her skin without breaking it. “You heard him. Nobody understands what Natalie’s doing.”

“Give it your best shot.”

“Natalie’s been medicated for days. I don’t think she can even remember what happened. And she takes drugs. Davey told me the cops found a bag of cocaine somewhere in her house.”

“Adventurous Natalie.”

“Maybe she can’t remember what I did. Maybe she has some other reason for lying. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I was going to kill her.”

He stroked her cheek. “These threats of unexpected visitors make me uncomfortable. Let me tell you what I want to do tonight. Everything is going to work out fine. Daddy has a new plan.”

95

AT A LITTLE
past six, Marian returned to say that dinner would be ready in a few minutes. She had applied a pale pink lipstick and a faint eyeliner and put on a necklace of thin gold links which drooped over her clavicles like a pet snake. “I hope you’re hungry again,” she said to Dart, who was bored and grumpy because he had not been offered a second drink.

“I’m always hungry. I tend to be on the thirsty side, too.”

“Could that be a hint? Margaret opened a bottle of wine, and I think you’ll enjoy her selection.”

“Only one?” Dart held out his glass. “Why don’t you do your best to guarantee high spirits by arranging at least one more bottle to go with our feast?”

Her smile slightly strained, Marian took the glass and stepped behind Nora. “Find anything useful?”

Nora had seen two more entries of payments from Lincoln Chancel, one for thirty thousand dollars, the other for twenty thousand. Each had been followed by outlays to dressmakers, milliners, fabric shops, and the ubiquitous Selden. After spending most of the first fifty thousand on the estate, Georgina had devoted the second to herself.

“I’m getting there,” she said.

“You could come back here after dinner, if you like.”

This suggestion dovetailed with Dart’s new plans for the night, and Nora forced herself to say, “Thank you, I might want to do that.”

“I’d better tend to your thirsty husband or he won’t be in a good mood.”

“Damn right,” Dart said. “Speaking of moods, how’s Lady Margaret’s? Has she bounced back?”

“Margaret doesn’t bounce,” Marian said. “But I’d say there’s still hope for a civilized evening.”

“Boring. Let’s get down and dirty.”

“I’d better hurry up with that drink.”

The chandelier had not been turned on, and all the light in the room came from sconces on the walls and candles in tall silver holders. Five places had been set with ornate blue-and-gold china. Reflected candle flames shone in the silver covers of the chafing dishes and the dark windows. Invisible rain hissed onto the lawn. Margaret Nolan and Lily Melville turned to Dart and Nora, one with an expression of neutral welcome, the other with an expectant smile. Lily danced up with her hands folded before her.

“Isn’t this storm
terrible
? Aren’t you happy this didn’t happen when we were on our tour?”

“Rain was invented by the devil’s minions.”

“Big storms always scare me, especially the ones with thunder and lightning. I’m always sure something awful is going to happen.”

“Nothing awful is going to happen tonight.” Margaret came toward them. “Except for the usual power failure, and we’re well equipped to deal with that. We’re going to have a lovely evening, aren’t we, Mr. Desmond?”

“Are we ever.”

She turned to Nora. “Marian says that you’ve been roaming through our old ledgers in aid of a project related to Hugo Driver. I hope you’ll share your thoughts with us.”

Margaret was willing to overlook Dart’s provocations for the sake of the business to be brought in by Hugo Driver conferences. Nora wondered what she could say to her about the importance of Shorelands to Driver’s novel.

“What became of Marian? We expected her to come in with you.”

“Arranging a libation,” Dart said.

Margaret raised her eyebrows. “We have a good Châteauneuf for the first course, and something I think is rather special, a 1970 Château Talbot, for the second. What did you ask Marian to bring you?”

“A double,” Dart said. “To make up for the one she forgot.”

“You are a poet of the old school, Mr. Desmond. Mrs. Desmond? A glass of this nice white?”

“Mineral water, please,” said Nora.

She went to the bottles as Marian hurried in with the refilled glass. “Margaret, I hope you won’t mind,” she said, handing off the drink, “but Norman felt that one bottle of the Talbot might not be enough, so I looked around and opened a bottle of Beaujolais. It’s down on the kitchen counter.”

Margaret Nolan considered this statement, which included the unspoken information that the second bottle was perhaps a tenth the price of the first, and cast a measuring glance at Dart. He put on an expression of seraphic innocence and swallowed half his vodka. “Very intelligent, Marian. Whatever our guest does not drink, we can save for vinegar. Please, help yourself.”

Marian poured herself a glass of white wine. “I called Tony and asked him to bring up rain clothes for Norman and leave them inside the front door. The telephone lines might go down, and the poor man has to get back to Pepper Pot. I can loan Norma some things of my own.”

“Another intelligent decision,” said Margaret Nolan. “Since you are on a first-name basis with our guests, all of us should be. Is that agreeable?”

“Completely, Maggie.” Dart raised his glass to his mouth and gulped the rest of the vodka.

With elaborate ceremoniousness, Margaret indicated their seats: Norman to the right of the head of the table, Nora across from him, Marian next to Norman, Lily beside Nora. “Please go to the sideboard and help yourselves to the first course. Once we are seated, I will describe our meal, as well as some aspects of this wonderful room not covered during the normal tours. Lily, will you start us off?”

Lily skipped to the sideboard, where she lifted the cover from an oval platter next to a basket of baguettes. On either side of a mound of pale cheese strips lay broiled peppers, sliced and peeled, red to the left, green to the right, flanked with black olives and topped with anchovies. Quarters of hard-boiled eggs had been arranged at either end of the platter. An odor of garlic and oil rose from the peppers. Lily took a salad plate from the stack next to the platter and held it up before Dart. “This is Georgina’s own china. Wedgwood.”

“ ‘Florentine,’ ” Dart said. “One of my personal faves.”

“Norman, you know everything!”

“Even beasts can learn,” Dart said.

Lily gave herself minute portions of both kinds of peppers, a few olives, and a single section of hard-boiled egg. Dart took half the red peppers, none of the green, most of the olives, half of the eggs and cheese, and all but three of the anchovy slices. Atop it all he placed a six-inch section ripped from the French bread. The others followed, choosing from what was left.

Dart sat down, winked at Lily, and filled his wineglass with white wine from the bucket.

Margaret took her seat and gave his plate a lengthy examination. “This is what Miss Weatherall called her ‘Mediterranean Platter.’ Monty Chandler grew the peppers, along with a great many other things, in a separate garden north of Main House.”

While she spoke, Dart had been shoveling peppers into his mouth, demolishing the hard-boiled eggs, loading strips of cheese onto chunks of bread and chomping them down. As she finished, he bit into the bread and tilted in wine to moisten it all. His lips smacked. “Weird cheese.”

“Syrian.” Margaret gravely watched him eat. “We get it from a gourmet market, but Miss Weatherall ordered it from an importer in New York. Nothing was too good for her guests.”

Dart waggled the bottle at her. “Yes, please.” He gave her half a glass and then filled Marian’s.

A blast of wind like a giant’s hand struck the house. Lily crushed her napkin in her hands. “Lily, you’ve lived through thousands of our storms,” Margaret said. “It can’t be as bad as it sounds, anyhow, because the power’s still on.”

At that moment the wall sconces died. The reflections of the candle flames wavered in the black windows, and again the wind battered the windows.

“Spoke too soon,” Margaret said. “No matter. Lily, stop
quivering.
You know the lights will come on soon.”

“I know.” Lily thrust her hands between her thighs and stared at her lap.

“Eat.”

Lily managed to get an olive to her mouth.

“Marian, perhaps you’d better take a candle up to Agnes. She has eaten, hasn’t she?”

“If you can call it eating,” Marian said. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. And I’ll bring back more candles, so we can see our plates.”

“And will you check the phones?” She turned to Dart. “One of the few drawbacks of living in a place like this is that when the lights go out, fifty percent of the time the phones do, too. They’re too miserly to put in underground phone lines.”

“Curse of democracy,” Dart said. “All the wrong people are in charge.”

Margaret gave him a look of glittering indulgence. “That’s right, you share Georgina Weatherall’s taste for strong leaders, don’t you?”

Lily looked up, for the moment distracted from her terror. “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s true, the mistress did say that powerful nations should be led by powerful men. That’s why she liked Mr. Chancel.
He
was a powerful man, she said, and someone like that should be running the country.”

Dart beamed at her. “Good girl, Lily, you’ve rejoined the living. I agree with the mistress completely. Lincoln Chancel would have made a splendid president. We need a man who knows how to seize the reins. I could do a pretty good job myself, I venture to say.”

“Is that right,” Margaret said.

Dart took the last of the white wine. “Death penalty for any-one stupid enough to be caught committing a crime. Right there, give the gene pool a shot in the arm. Public executions, televised in front of a live audience. Televise trials, don’t we? Let’s show ’em what happens after the trial is over. Abolish income tax so that people with ability stop carrying the rabble on their backs. Put schools on a commercial basis. Instead of grades, give cash rewards funded by the corporate owners. So on and so forth. Now that the salad part of the meal has been taken care of, why don’t we dig into whatever’s under those lids?”

Margaret said, “It occurs to me that a playful conversation like this, with wild flights of fancy, must be similar to those held here during Miss Weatherall’s life. Would you agree, Lily?”

“Oh, yes,” Lily said. “To hear some of those people talk, you’d think they’d gone right out of their heads.”

“One of the paintings in this room was actually here in those days. Along with the portrait of Miss Weatherall’s father on the staircase, it’s all that survives from her art collection. Can you tell which one it is?”

“That one.” Nora pointed to a portrait of a woman whose familiar face looked out from beneath a red hat the size and shape of a prize-winning pumpkin.

“Correct. Miss Weatherall, of course. I believe that portrait brings out all of her strength of character.” Marian came back into the room with a candlestick in each hand and two others clamped to her sides.

“I think you might remove the hors d’oeuvres plates, Marian, and give me the others so that I can serve up the main course. How is poor Agnes?”

“Overexcited, but I couldn’t say why.” Marian began collecting the plates. “The phones are out. I suppose they’ll be working again by morning.”

“I’d love to see Agnes once more,” Nora said.

Margaret lifted a silver cover off what appeared to be a large, round loaf of bread. Flecks of green dotted the crust. “Norma, I’m sure that Lily and I can be at least as helpful as Agnes Brotherhood. What is this project of yours? A book?”

“Someday, maybe. I’m interested in a certain period of Shorelands life.”

Margaret cut into the crust. With two deft motions of the knife, she ladled a small section of the dish onto the topmost plate. Thin brown slices of meat encased in a rich gravy slid out from beneath the thick crust. To this she added glistening snow peas from the other serving dish. “There are buttermilk biscuits in the basket. Norma, would you please pass this to Lily?”

Dart watched the mixture ooze from beneath crust. “What is that stuff?”

“Leek and rabbit pie, and snow peas tossed in butter. The rabbit is in a
beurre manié
sauce, and I’m pretty sure I got all the bay leaves out.”

“We’re eating a rabbit?”

“A good big one, too. We were lucky to find it.” She filled another plate. “In the old days, Monty Chandler caught three or four rabbits a month, isn’t that what you said, Lily?”

“That’s right.” Lily leaned over and inhaled the aroma.

“Marian, would you bring us the Talbot?” She arranged the remaining plates, and Marian poured four glasses of wine.

As soon as she sat down, Dart dug into his pie and chewed suspiciously for a moment. “Pretty tasty for vermin.”

Margaret turned to Nora. “Norma, I gather that the research you speak of concentrates on Hugo Driver.”

Nora wished that she were able to enjoy one of the better meals of her life. “Yes, but I’m also interested in the other people who were here that summer. Merrick Favor, Creeley Monk, Bill Tidy, and Katherine Mannheim.”

Lily Melville frowned at her plate.

“Rather an obscure bunch. Lily, do you remember any of them?”

“Do I ever,” Lily said. “Mr. Monk was an awful man. Mr. Favor was handsome as a movie star. Mr. Tidy felt like a fish out of water and kept to himself. He didn’t like the mistress, but at least he pretended he did. Unlike
her. She
couldn’t be bothered, sashaying all around the place.” She glared at Nora. “Fooled the mistress and fooled Agnes, but she didn’t fool me. Whatever happened to that one, it was better than she deserved.”

The hatred in her voice, loyally preserved for decades, was Georgina’s. This too was the real Shorelands.

Margaret had also heard it, but she had no knowledge of its background. “Lily, I’ve never heard you speak that way about anyone before. What did this person do?”

“Insulted the mistress. Then she ran off, and she stole something, too.”

A partial recognition shone in Margaret’s face. “Oh, this was the guest who staged a mysterious disappearance. Didn’t she steal a Rembrandt drawing?”

“Redon,” Nora said.

“Made you sick to look at. It was a woman with a bird’s head, all dark and
dirty.
It showed her private bits. Reminded me of
her
, and that’s the truth.”

“Norma, perhaps we should forget this unfortunate person and concentrate on our Driver business. According to Marian, you feel that Shorelands may have inspired
Night Journey.
Could you help me to understand how?”