The Hellfire Club

by Peter Straub

  “She didn’t write the good one,” Nora said. “She wrote the other two.”

  Dart opened his mouth as if to make a point. Then he regarded her in pure appreciative amazement. “Bravo. They came out in the sixties. How’d you find out?”

  “You’d never see it unless you compared the Driver books with her horror novels, but once you do it’s obvious. Daisy has certain trademark expressions she uses over and over. There was never any reason for anyone to read her horror books side by side with the last two Drivers, so no one ever noticed.”

  Dart grinned. “Hate poetry, love poetic justice. Once you start questioning Hugo Driver, everything he owns is up for grabs. That’s why he called my old man.” He tapped the gun barrel against his lips. “If Driver wrote Night Journey, why did he give the copyright to Lincoln Chancel?”

  “I think something went on at Shorelands that nobody but the two of them knew about. After they came back, they were partners. Chancel even had Driver stay overnight at the Poplars a couple of times. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have bothered to spit on a weasel like Hugo Driver, even one who made a lot of money for him.”

  “So Driver had something on him.”

  “Or he had something on Driver, and he wanted to make sure that Driver didn’t forget it.”

  “Could only be one thing,” Dart said. “Tell me what it is. Get it right, I’ll do you a big favor.”

  “Hugo Driver killed Katherine Mannheim. Maybe he didn’t mean to, but he killed her anyhow, and Lincoln Chancel knew it. Chancel helped him hide the body in the woods, and Driver was in his power ever after.”

  Dart nodded. “Desperate man, desperate act. Why? What happened?”

  “One day Bill Tidy spotted Driver doing something fishy with her bag. Maybe he stole a notebook and found enough to realize that all he needed to pull himself out of his hole was a little more of the story. Driver was a thief” he did what came naturally to him, he stole her ideas. Maybe he broke into Gingerbread looking for more material, and Katherine surprised him. She said something cutting to him—she was good at that, you wouldn’t have liked her at all. Maybe he hit her. Whatever he did, she died. Driver wasn’t ruthless enough to be a killer, like Lincoln Chancel.”

  Another thought came to her. “It almost has to have been something like that. She would never have invited Driver into Gingerbread, but he was inside it because in the book he used a photograph she kept on her desk.”

  Dart smiled up at the roof of the car and hummed a few bars of “Too Marvelous for Words.” His smile broadened. “Turn this buggy around and pick up 9. I’ve just had a particularly lovely idea.”

  “Didn’t you say something about a favor?”

  “I believe I did. This is going to mean a lot to you.”

  She glanced at his gleeful face.

  “The time ever comes I have no choice but to kill you, I’ll do it quickly. Goes against the grain, making a sacrifice here, but I guarantee you won’t suffer.”

  “You’re quite a guy, aren’t you, Dick?”

  “Go to the wall for my friends,” he said.

  84

  WHEN THEY GOT to Pittsfield, Dart manacled a hand to her elbow and guided her through shops for shaving supplies, a toothbrush, a glossy silk tie, boxer shorts, and over-the-calf socks. Outside of town, he asked her to drive into a gas station and pulled her into the men’s room. Nora looked away as he filled the tiled cubicle with a fine sea-spray. “If cars could run on piss, I’d be a national resource.” Dart removed his cap and leaned over the sink to inspect the bandage wound around the sides of his head. “Cut this off me.” Nora found the scissors and worked the tip of one blade under the topmost layer of cloth. Soon she was unwinding a long white strip from around his head.

  “Who did this for you?”

  He gave her a glance of weary irony.

  When the last of the bandage came away, Dart tilted his head and probed his hair with his fingers while scrutinizing himself in the mirror. “What’s a couple of lumps to an adventurous soul, eh? Hurt pretty good at the time, though. Distinct memory of pain. Flashes of light behind my eyes. Second biggest headache of my life.”

  “What was the biggest?”

  Dart lowered his hand and his suddenly expressionless eyes met hers in the mirror. In the hot little box of the bathroom, Nora went cold. “Popsie Jennings. Old whore landed a solid one with her andiron. Still hurts worse than either of yours.” He looked away and fingered a spot on the back of his head. “I have to shave, brush my teeth, make myself pretty for Shorelands. What’s my name again?”

  It took her a moment to understand what he meant. “Norm. Norm Desmond.”

  He smiled at her and took the razor and shaving cream from a paper bag. “Tonight Mrs. Desmond is going to bestow upon Mr. Desmond a particularly deep marital pleasure. At least twice. You have to work off your debt.” He squirted shaving cream onto his fingers and began working it into his stubble.

  “I want to tell you about the fun we’re going to have at Shorelands. Going to be a great pleasure for both of us.” He rinsed his fingers and began drawing the razor down the right side of his face. “You want to talk to the old ladies, right? Win them over, pump them for information?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let’s do it the stand-up way. Scare the shit out of some old dame, she’ll spill everything she knows. You did it to Natalie Weil, so do it to one of them.”

  Nora watched him shave. Unlike any other man she had known, Dart cleared an area of foam and whiskers, then ran the razor back over the same patch of skin in the opposite direction, in effect shaving himself twice. “You want me to kidnap one of the maids.”

  “Tie her up, beat the crap out of her, whatever. Get her out of the house and into the car. She says whatever she says, and then I kill her. Be interesting. Lot of entertainment in an old lady.” He threw out his arms, splattering foam on the tiles. “I award myself the Dick Dart Prize for Superior Achievement in Twisted Think-ing. I’ll be your support group, give you all the help you need to do your thing.” He finished shaving his face, ran water over the head of the razor, and began on his neck. “Afterwards, we have to trust each other. It’ll be you and me, babe, the Dream Team. After the first one, cops don’t care how many murders you commit. In death-penalty states they don’t bring you back to execute you all over again. Shows how fucked up they are, the low value they put on life.” He ran the razor over a few patches of foam, reversed direction and shaved the same places again, then rinsed his face with cold water and reached for a handful of paper towels.

  “How do you see us ending up? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  Dart blotted his face, threw the wadded towels on the floor, and looked meditative for a moment before taking the new toothbrush from the bag. He snapped the case in half and tossed it aside. “Toothpaste.”

  Nora rooted in her bag and brought out her toothpaste. “Well?”

  “Roadblock. A million cops and us. Hey, if we get to Canada, we might have a whole year. Essential point is, we do not under any circumstances allow ourselves to be arrested. We broke out of one jail, we’re not going to wind up in another one. Live free or die.” He bent forward and attended to his teeth.

  85

  AT THE BRONZE SHORELANDS TRUST sign, they drove between overgrown stone pillars into a tangle of green. “The drums, the beastly drums,” Dart intoned, “will they nevah cease, Carruthers?”

  Crowded on both sides by trees, the path angled right and disappeared. Nora reached the curve and saw the path divide at a wooden signpost standing on a grass border. One branch veered left, the other right, into a muddy field. As they approached the sign, the words grew legible. MAIN HOUSE. GINGERBREAD. HONEY HOUSE. PEPPER POT. RAPUNZEL. CLOVER. MONTY’S GLEN &” THE SONG PILLARS. MIST FIELD. All of these lay somewhere up the left-hand path. VISITOR PARKING pointed to the field.

  Nora drove out of the woods and turned right. A man in khaki work clothes pushed himself out of a lawn chair next to
a trailer on a cement apron and came forward, admiring the car.

  “What a beauty,” he said. “Godalmighty.” He had furrowed cheeks and small, shining eyes. Dart snickered.

  “We like it,” Nora said, giving Dart a sharp look.

  The man stepped back and licked his lips. “Don’t make them like this baby anymore.”

  “By gum, they shore don’t, Pops,” Dart said.

  The man glanced at Dart and decided to pretend he wasn’t there. “Ma’am, if you’re here on a day visit, there’s a ten-dollar entrance fee. If you’re an overnight guest, pull right into the lot there and check in at Main House after I find your name on the list.”

  “We’re staying overnight. Mr. and Mrs. Desmond.”

  “Back in a jiffy.” After another lingering look at the car, he went into the trailer.

  “Did a little prison time, but not for anything interesting,” Dart said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Wait.”

  The man came out of his trailer holding a clipboard with a pen dangling from a string. He thrust it through the window and pointed at a blank space on a form. “Sign right there, Mrs. Desmond. Hope you enjoy your stay.”

  Dart leaned forward with a wicked smile. “What did they put you in for, old-timer?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Knife a guy in a bar, or was it more like stealing bricks off a construction site?”

  Nora handed him the clipboard. “I apologize for my husband. He thinks he’s a comedian.”

  “Not all comedians is funny.” The man’s face had gone rigid, and the light had disappeared from his eyes. He grabbed the clipboard, stamped across the cement, climbed into his trailer, and slammed the door.

  “This may come as a surprise to you,” Nora said, “but you have an unpleasant streak.”

  “Now you want to bet that I can’t quote all of ‘To a Sky- Lark’?”

  The field squished under the Duesenberg’s oversized tires. “No.”

  “How about every third word? Slightly adjusted for effect?”

  “No.” She put the car in a spot at the far right end of the field.

  “Too bad. It’s a lot better my way.

  Thee, bird wert— Heaven it full profuse unpremeditated still from thou a fire. Deep and still and singest.

  There are a lot of ways to be a genius. I’m going to feel right at home here.”

  Nora picked her way across the field, stepping over the muddy patches. “I’m not sure it’s an act of genius to hang on to that car.”

  Dart moved along behind her. “After you perform your kidnapping stunt, we’ll liberate another one. In the meantime there isn’t a safer place in the whole state for the Duesie than right here. This was a brilliant idea.”

  Nora circled a mudhole and realized with a sinking of her heart that she had brought this madman into a private playpen. After the trust had decided to rent out cottages, they must have put in telephones. Dart could not watch her every minute” by now, he didn’t even feel that he had to. They were partners. As soon as possible, she would call the local police and escape into the woods.

  The path leading into the center of Shorelands held long, slender pockets of water, and the raised sections gleamed with moisture. Sometime during the night it had rained. While the sidewalks and highways had dried in the sun, open land had not. She looked up. Heavy clouds scudded across a mottled sky.

  “Going to be good for both of us,” Dart said.

  “Imagine how I feel,” Nora said.

  Her short heels sank into the earth, and she moved onto a wet, stony ridge. The trees on either side seemed to close in. Dart began humming “Mountain Greenery.” They came out of the trees and moved toward a gravel court surrounded by a low stone wall topped with cement slabs. The wall opened onto a white path between two narrow lawns, and the path led up four wide stone steps to the centerpiece of this landscape, a long stone building with three rows of windows in cement embrasures, some dripping water stains like beards. At every second window the facade stepped forward, so that the structure seemed to spread its wings and fold out from the entrance. Near the far end, a workman halfway up a tall ladder was scraping away a section of damaged paint, and another was repairing a cracked sill on the ground floor. Dick Dart linked his arm in hers and led her up the path to Main House.

  86

  WHITE-HAIRED MEN AND WOMEN lingered inside a gift shop across from a black door marked PRIVATE STAFF ONLY. Beyond, marble steps ascended to a wide corridor with high peach walls broken by glossy plaster half columns. In the big lounge across the corridor, a group of about twenty people, most of them women, listened to an invisible guide. French doors opened onto a terrace. Dart pulled Nora up the steps. At the left end of the hallway, a knot of tourists emerged from a room at the front of Main House and pursued a small, white-haired woman into another across the corridor. To their right, a curved staircase led past a gallery of paintings to the second floor. Nora thought of screaming for help, and words thrust up into her throat until she realized that if she released them, Dart would yank the revolver from his pocket and murder as many of these people as he could. The group in the lounge began shuffling after their guide through an interior arch on the far side of the fireplace.

  Dart tilted his head to admire the plaster palmettes and ara-besques spread across the barrel-vaulted ceiling. “Hell with the roadblock and the violent demise. We lie low for a while, then I touch my old man for a couple million dollars. We go to Canada, buy a place like this. I put in a couple hidden staircases, state-of-the-art operating theater, big gas furnace in the basement. Have a ball.”

  The short, white-haired guide led her party into the big room across the corridor and spread her arms. “Here we have the famous lounge, where Miss Weatherall’s guests gathered for cocktails and conversation before their evening meal. If you’re wishing you could listen in, I can tell you one thing that was said in this room. T. S. Eliot turned to Miss Weatherall and whispered, ‘My dear, I must tell you . . .’ ”

  In a carrying voice, Dart announced, “That stuffed shirt Eliot stayed here exactly two days, and all he did was complain about indigestion.”

  Most of the tourists who had been listening to the guide turned to look at Dart.

  “ ’The breeding of land and dull spring, us, earth, snow, life, tubers.’ Every third word of the beginning of ‘The Waste Land,’ with certain adjustments for poetic effect, ’Us, the shower” we went sunlight. Hofgarten coffee.’ Heck of a lot punchier, don’t you think? My ‘Prufrock’ is even better.”

  The guide was trying to shepherd her charges into the next room.

  “Can you do that with everything?” Nora asked.

  “Everything. ’Go, and the spread, the patient upon” Let through muttering, restless hotels, restaurants, shells insidious. Lead an . . . Oh, ask it.’ ”

  A voice behind them asked, “Are you a poet?”

  A tall woman in her late twenties, her face strewn with freckles and her strawberry-blond hair hanging straight to her shoulders, stood behind them, one foot on the top of the stairs. She wore a simple off-white suit, and she looked charming.

  Dart smiled at her. “How embarrassing. Yes, I hope I may claim that honor.”

  The young woman came toward them, holding out a deeply freckled hand. “Mr. and Mrs. Desmond?”

  Dart enfolded her hand in both of his. “I’ll tell, if you will.”

  “Marian Cullinan. One of my jobs here is being in charge of Guest Services. Tony let me know you were coming, and I’m sorry to be late, but I had to take care of a few things at my desk.” Dart released her. “You had no trouble finding us, I hope?”

  “None at all,” Dart purred.

  “Good. And please, don’t be embarrassed that we inspired you to think about your work. We hope we have that effect on all the writers who visit us. Are you published, Mr. Desmond?”

  “A fair bit, I’m happy to say.”

  “Wonderful,” said Marian. “W
here? I should know your name. I do my best to keep up with people like you for our reading series.”

  Dart glanced at Nora and presented Marian with a shy, modest face. “Here and there.”

  “You can’t get out of it that way. I’m interested in contemporary poetry. I bet your wife will tell me where you’ve placed your work.”

  Nora struggled to remember the magazines on Mark Foil’s coffee table. “Let’s see. He’s published quite a bit in Avec and Conjunctions. And Lingo.”

  “Well!” She looked up at Dick Dart with a quick increase of interest and respect. “I’m impressed. I thought you must be a Language poet. I’d love to ask you about a thousand questions, but I don’t want to be rude.”

  “Might be enjoyable,” Dart said. “Poets don’t get a great deal of attention, all in all.”

  “Around here they do. We’ll have to make sure you get our VIP treatment. When good writers do us the honor of visiting, we like to extend our hospitality a little further than we can with the usual guest.”

  “Isn’t that sweet as all get out?” Dart looked at Nora with dancing eyes.

  “This is wonderful. I can show you Miss Weatherall’s photo archive, her private papers—really anything you might care to see—and tonight you must have dinner with Mrs. Nolan, Margaret Nolan, the director of the trust, and me in the dining room. It would be such a treat for us. We’ll have a splendid dinner, we do that for our literary guests, something off the original Shorelands menu. Margaret and I love the opportunity to re-create the old atmosphere. Does that sound like something you’d like to do?”

  “Honored,” Dart said.

  “Margaret will be thrilled.” Marian looked as if she wanted to give Dart a hug. “We’d better take care of the paperwork so I can start organizing matters. Would you come into my office?”

  “Putty in your freckled little hands,” Dart said.

  She gave him an uncertain glance before deciding that what he had said was hilarious. “My freckles used to make me feel self-conscious, but I don’t think about them anymore. Sometimes, I confess, I’d still like to cover them up, if I could find a cosmetic that worked.”