The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  Dart moved forward and peered into his eyes in the mirror, twirled around, and sat on the toilet, regarding her almost paternally. “Couldn’t help but notice you experienced some discomfort during our encounter.” He put a sarcastic stress on the last word. “To facilitate matters I’m going to do what I do with my old dears and buy some K-Y. Lubrication will eliminate about half of your problem, but if you don’t relax, you’re going to keep on getting hurt.”

  Nora closed her eyes. A demon flapped up and hissed, “You’re going to get hurt!”

  She opened her eyes.

  “Embarking on the great adventure of menopause, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” she said, startled.

  “Irregular periods, vaginal dryness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Irritability?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Hot flashes?”

  “Just started.”

  “Formication?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sensation of an insect crawling on your skin.”

  She astounded herself by smiling.

  “Doing any hormone replacement therapy? You should, but you have to experiment with the dosage levels before you get it right.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I suggest a shower and a shampoo before we visit Home Cooking. Time for the next step in your education.”

  He bestowed another hyena smile upon her and walked out. Moving as if in a trance, Nora dialed a disk at the end of the tub, and the bathwater gurgled into the drain. She pulled herself to her feet, waded through the froth, and twisted both dials at once. Water shot from the faucet. She flipped the lever directing the water to the showerhead, and freezing water shattered against her body.

  BOOK V

  LORD NIGHT

  THE HUGE BLACK ANIMAL MIGHT HAVE BEEN GRINNING AT HIM. “WHY, NOW THAT YOU HAVE LEARNED ABOUT YOUR FEAR, YOU MUST LEARN TO TRUST IT, OF COURSE.”

  48

  “OF COURSE IT’S about money.” Dart put down his fork and grinned. He had taken her to the hotel’s gift shop, where he bought toothbrushes and toothpaste, a pack of disposable razors and shaving cream, two combs, mouthwash, a deodorant stick, a black polo shirt with MASSACHUSETTS stitched across the left breast in small red letters, and a copy of Vogue. His teeth were no longer so yellow, and without the stubble his cheeks were almost pink. Nora had heard only something like half of what Dart said, and half of that had disappeared into the demonic buzz filling her head. “Hey, this is America! Bid’ness is bid’ness. When you see the other side is likely to rake in a hell of a lot more money than you are, what do you do? Switch sides. Here, what we have on the table adds up to four or five million smackers. Put that against a pissy billing of maybe ten thousand tops, you’ve got what the boys call a no-brainer.”

  “From Night Journey.” This, along with the name of the young woman who had mysteriously disappeared from Shorelands, was most of what she had been able to retain from Dick Dart’s explanation.

  “Absolutely. You prove that Hugo Driver stole the manuscript, fifty-four years’ worth of royalties, not to mention all future royalties, go to the real heirs. And if you can prove that the publishing house cooperated in this fraud, all of their profits from the book, plus a whopping payment in damages, go into the pot. On top of that, there’s all the money from foreign editions.”

  Nora’s legs felt like rubber, and the center of her body sent out steady waves of pain. She looked at her plate. Beside a nest of french fries glistening with grease, a rectangle of processed cheese drooped over a mound of whitish paste on a slice of toast.

  “So the old man cut a deal with this Fred Constantine, the old ladies’ lawyer. Constantine knows he’s in over his head, little practice in Plainfield, does a few penny-ante divorces and real estate closings, sixty-five years old, hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom since he got out of law school. Imagine his relief when after making him piss blood for a couple of weeks the great Leland Dart suggests—suggests, mind you—that an accommodation might be arranged. Whoopee! If Mr. Constantine could settle for a payment of something on the order of a hundred thousand dollars, Dart, Morris might be willing to render some assistance to his poor defrauded clients, who would no doubt be delighted to receive fifty percent of the ultimate proceeds. Mr. Constantine, who has no idea how much money is at stake, thinks he’s getting a great deal!”

  A bitten-off portion of a french fry lay on Nora’s tongue like a mealworm. She spat it into her hand and dropped it on her plate. “How can they do something like that?”

  “Very carefully.” His eyes glowing, he pushed the remains of his first cheeseburger into his mouth and wiped his fingers with his napkin. “Operative word? Buffers. By the time you’re done, you’re in a fortified castle a thousand miles away, and, baby, the drawbridge is up.”

  “I mean, how can they do it?”

  Holding his second cheeseburger a few inches from his mouth, Dart looked away and giggled. “Nora-pie, you’re so touching. I mean that sincerely. Bid’ness is bid’ness, I told you. What’s the name of our economic system? Isn’t it still called capitalism?” He shook his head in mock incredulity and took an enormous bite out of the cheeseburger. Frilly lettuce bulged from the back of the bun, and pink juice drooled onto his plate.

  Nora closed her eyes against a wave of nausea. Alden Chancel and Dick Dart thought alike. This discovery would be amusing, had she the capacity to be amused. Leland Dart, who shared Alden’s moral philosophy, used it to justify betraying his own client. Presumably this moral philosophy reached its fulfillment in the lunatic cheerfully demolishing a cheeseburger across the table.

  Nora remembered a detail from the Poplars’ terrace. “I heard Alden tell Davey that your father might be playing both ends against the middle.”

  Dart swallowed. “Do the Chancel boys talk about this in front of you?”

  “Davey was taking notes on the movie of Night Journey, and when I asked him why, he said there was some problem with the Driver estate.” The night in the family room seemed to have taken place on the other side of an enormous hole in time. “A little while later, he told me something about two old ladies in Massachusetts who found some notes in their basement.”

  She realized that she was having a civil conversation in a restaurant with Dick Dart as if such occasions were absolutely normal.

  “Notes on the movie. What a schlump. Katherine Mannheim’s sisters never read the book, of course, they remembered the movie when they found the notes, but I mean really . . .”

  “I suppose you want to kill the sisters.” Nora poked her fork into the white paste and transported a portion the size of a pencil eraser to her mouth. It seemed that she had ordered a tuna melt.

  “Absolutely not. The people I want to kill might help the case against Chancel House. We’ll be protecting Hugo Driver’s name, something I am pleased to do because I always liked Hugo Driver. Not the last two, you know, only the good one.”

  “You like Night Journey?” That Dick Dart had enjoyed any book surprised her.

  “Favorite book, bar none,” he said. “Only novel I ever really liked. To keep up with some of my old ladies, I had to pretend to swoon over Danielle Steel, but that was just work. Agatha had a pash for Jane Austen, so I plowed through Pride and Prejudice. What a waste. Literally about nothing at all. But I reread Night Journey every couple of years.”

  “Amazing.” Nora ate another forkful of her tuna. If you peeled off the plastic cheese and avoided the bread, it was edible after all.

  “Amazing? Night Journey is one twisted motherfucker of a book. Whole thing takes place in darkness. Almost everything happens in caves, underground. All the vivid characters are monsters.”

  It was like a warped echo of Davey” for the thousandth time she was listening to a man rave about the book. In asking him to research the case against Chancel House, Leland Dart had exploited his son’s one conventional passion. The recognition that Alden Chancel had done the same thin
g with Davey brought with it an upwelling of her nausea.

  “I never read it,” she said.

  “Davey Chancel’s wife never read Night Journey? You lied to him, didn’t you? You told him you’d read it, but you were lying.”

  Nora turned her head to stare at the two elderly couples at separate tables in front of the window. The big reversed letters on the window arched over them like a red rainbow.

  “You did, you lied to him.” Another dirty explosion of laughter. He went back to work on the second cheeseburger. “Don’t suppose you ever heard of a place called Shorelands.”

  “Hugo Driver was there. And Lincoln Chancel. In 1938.”

  “Bravo. Do you remember who else was there that summer?”

  “A lot of people with funny names.”

  “Austryn Fain, Bill Tidy, Creeley Monk, Merrick Favor, Georgina Weatherall. The maids. A lot of gardeners. And Katherine Mannheim. Did Davey tell you anything about her?”

  Nora thought for a moment. “She was good-looking. And she ran away.”

  “Upped and vanished.”

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  “Her sisters say she had a ‘weak heart,’ whatever that means. Supposed to avoid exertion, but she refused to be an invalid. Rode bikes, went on trips. If she’d lived like Emily Dickinson, she might still be alive.”

  “You read Emily Dickinson?”

  He made a sour face. “Florence. One of my ladies. Besotted with Emily Dickinson. Had to put up with reams of that stuff. Even had to read a biography. Bitch makes Jane Austen look like Mickey Spillane.” He closed his eyes and recited.

  “There’s a certain Slant of light,

  Winter Afternoons—

  That oppresses, like the Heft

  Of Cathedral Tunes—

  Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—

  We can find no scar,

  But internal difference,

  Where the Meanings, are—“

  He opened his eyes. “It’s not even actual English, it’s this gibberish language she made up. Read page after page of that vapor for Florence, and now it’s stuck in my mind, along with everything else I ever read.”

  The lines had swept into Nora like an inexorable series of waves. “That’s too bad,” she said.

  “You have no idea. Anyhow, I guess the Mannheim girl croaked, and in the confusion Driver swiped her manuscript. Night Journey was published the next year, and what do you know, pretty soon every other person in the world was reading it.”

  “I saw soldiers carrying it in Vietnam,” Nora said.

  “You were in Nam? Excuse me, the Nam. No wonder you have this wild streak. Why were you there?”

  “I was a nurse.”

  “Oh, yes, I recall a certain adventure involving a child, yes, yes.”

  She looked down at her plate.

  “Nora fails to demonstrate excitement. Very well, let us return to our subject. Most, I repeat, most unusually, Mr. Driver makes over the copyright to his book to his publisher in exchange for an agreement that he shall be paid all royalties due during the course of his and his wife’s lifetime, all rights thereafter to revert to said publisher, who agrees to remit a smaller portion to Driver child or children for the course of their lives. This was supposed to be a gesture of gratitude, but doesn’t it seem a bit excessive?”

  “You’ve been doing a lot of work.” Acting on its own instructions, her hand detached another wad of tuna and brought it to her mouth.

  “Made stacks and stacks of notes, none of them currently available, due to the interference of our local fuzz. Fortunately, I retain all of the essentials. I’d like to visit a library during our busy afternoon, continue my research, but let me distill our mission for you.” He looked sideways to ensure that the waitress was still seated at the counter. “You know three of these scribblers offed themselves.”

  She nodded.

  “Austryn Fain. No wife, no little Fains. Creeley Monk was a perv, so of course he left behind no weeping widow or starving children. But luck is with us, for in the summer of 1938 Mr. Monk was sharing his life with a gentleman still with us, a doctor in fact, named Mark Foil. Dr. Foil, bless him, still lives in Springfield, the very same city in which he dwelt with our poet. I very much want to think that he occupies the same house, along with lots and lots of Monk memorabilia. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an address for him, but once we get to Springfield, I’m sure we will be able to unearth it.”

  “Then what?” Nora asked.

  “We telephone the gentleman. You explain that you are doing research for a book on the events at Shorelands in 1938. You feel that the other guests, Creeley Monk in particular, have been unfairly overshadowed by Hugo Driver. Since you happen to be in Springfield, you would be extremely grateful if Dr. Foil could give you an hour of his time to discuss whatever he remembers of that summer—anything Monk might have said to him, written to him, or put in a diary.”

  Even in her present condition, encased within a tough, resistant envelope which at the cost of prohibiting any sort of action protected her from feeling, Nora remarked upon the oddity of this creature’s obsessions so closely resembling Davey’s. What Dart was asking her to do seemed as abstract as the crossword puzzles concocted by Davey’s two old men in Rhinebeck. She filled in a square with a question. “What if Monk never even mentioned Hugo Driver?”

  “Very unlikely, but it doesn’t matter. After we get inside I have to kill the old boy.”

  The hyena within Dick Dart displayed its teeth. “He’ll see us, baby. If we get lucky down the line, the old guy is going to put things together. Next stop is Everett Tidy, son of Bill. Everett lives in Amherst, he’s an English professor. Don’t you think the name Tidy in a headline will catch Foil’s eye? Gots to cover our tracks.”

  The smell of cigarette smoke floated toward them, and Nora turned to see the waitress approaching their table.

  Dart said, “Let’s shop and do the library while we can still use the Lincoln.”

  49

  MAIN STREET, OF what town? Dart pulled her into women’s clothing stores, shooed away the clerks, and hand in hand drew her up and down the aisles, flicking through dresses, blouses, skirts. Here a sand-colored linen suit, skirt knee-length, jacket without lapels (“Your interview suit,” Dart said), in the next shop brown pumps and a cream silk jersey, short sleeves, collarless. No, she did not have to try them on, they would fit perfectly. And they would” without asking, he knew her sizes. Into a barn where summer-school students with lumpy backpacks prowled the long aisles and Dart heaped up jeans, hers and his, T-shirts, ditto, a dark blue cotton sweater, hers. A minimalist boutique, a conference with another charmed clerk, the production of six Gitano bras, white, six pairs of Gitano underpants, white, six pairs of Gitano pantyhose. Around the corner, his and hers low-cut black Reeboks.

  Two wheeled carry-on black fabric suitcases. Into Main Street Pharmacy for quick selections under the eye of a blond-gray mustache with granny glasses: L’Oréal Performing Preference hair color, Jet Black and Starlight Blonde” LaCoupe sculpting spritz” Always ultra plus maxi with wings, her brand, though Dart had not asked” Cover Girl Clean Make-up, Creamy Natural” Cover Girl Lip Advance, Poppy” Maybelline Shine Free Sunset Pink eye shadow (“Glimmer, don’t glitter,” said Dart)” K-Y” Cover Girl Long ‘N Lush mascara” Vidal Sassoon Ultra Care shampoo and conditioner” Neutrogena bath bars” Perlier Honey Bath and Shower Cream” Revlon emery boards and cuticle sticks” OPI Nail Lacquer, a smooth, quiet blush she could not catch before he tossed it into the basket” a dram of Coco by Chanel” a jug of Icy Cool Peppermint Scope mouthwash” Hoffritz finger- and toenail clippers, styling scissors, tweezers, nail cleaner. From behind the digital register where the numbers mounted past one hundred dollars, the mustache declared, “Mister, I’ve seen savvy husbands before, but you take the cake.”

  Back to the car. Dart angled in before a bowfront shop, Farnsworth &” Clamm, and drew Nora into an air-conditioned club room
where another mustache marched smiling toward them through glowing casements hung with suits. Yes, Dart murmured, 46 extra long—this one, this one, a double-breasted blue blazer, four blue shirts, four white shirts, cotton broadcloth, spread collars, 17 neck, 36 sleeves, eight boxer shorts, 38 waist, eight pairs calf-length black socks, a dozen handkerchiefs, pick out some ties too, please. Alterations immediately, if poss. Nora deposited in a stiff leather chair near the tall mirror, a stooping man with a tape measure around his neck summoned from the depths, Dart disappeared into the changing room for an eye blink before emerging in the first of his new suits. Another stooping figure materialized to whisk away the suit while Dart twinkled into number two. Dart and his reflection preened. The fittings completed, Dart inhabited another club chair and the mustache presented a bottle of Finnish vodka, two glasses, a bucket of ice. While you wait, sir. The presentation of the bill. Nora looked over and saw that Dart had purchased six thousand dollars’ worth of clothes.

  “Nearest really good library?” Dart asked.

  He swung the Lincoln into the exit near the Basketball Hall of Fame, and Nora realized that, wherever they had been before, now they were in Springfield, where Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Harwich lorded it over Longfellow Lane. If she could escape from Dick Dart, would the doctor and his wife give her shelter in their basement? Answer cloudy, ask again. Three years before, a semi-radioactive Nora had whirled into Springfield on what she imagined was a sentimental visit, wound up in a bar, then a motel, with a strange, embittered Dan Harwich, who afterward talked her into coming home with him. Ten-thirty at night. The Mrs. Harwich of the time, Helen, who had microwaved her half of dinner an hour earlier and dispatched it with several vodka tonics, started shouting as soon as they came through the door. Nora had attempted an exit, but Harwich had settled her in a chair, presumably as a witness. What she had witnessed had been an old-time marital title bout. Helen Harwich ordered them both out, Dan to return the next morning to pick up some clothes and depart for good. Back to the motel, Harwich uttering evil chuckles. The next morning, he promised to call her soon. Soon meant two days later, another call a week later, a third after another two weeks. After that, intermittent calls, intermittently. Two years later, a wedding announcement accompanied by a card reading, In case you wondered. The new Mrs. Dr. Harwich was named Lark, née Pettigrew.