The Vesuvius Club

by Mark Gatiss

  We had stopped at the library door and saw the lock was shattered. Stint pushed it open. ‘The library was empty.’

  I looked over at the wheeled-chair – the imprint of the exoccupant’s arse plain in its faded orange cushion – and then at his desk. Nothing leapt out as being particular although the atmosphere of the room was unusually stifling even allowing for the weather and Quibble’s infernal over-heating. Moreover the windows were open…

  ‘The question being then, how does a crippled man escape via the French windows?’

  ‘It is unthinkable, sir. That the windows were open at all is most singular given Sir Emmanuel’s horror of cold.’

  I nodded absently. ‘The post you brought. Of what did it consist?’

  Stint pointed towards the desk. ‘There they are, sir.’

  I looked down. Spread out on the blotter were a quantity of envelopes. I reached towards them and then, thinking better of it, took out my handkerchief and, covering my hand, spread them out in a fan.

  ‘Nine, all told,’ I mused. ‘But only four have been opened.’ Bending down, I peered at the opened letters. ‘Invitations all, it seems. Hello! What’s this?’

  Almost obscured by the blotter was a tenth envelope, a tell-tale mauve in colour and edged in black. I picked up the letter knife and worried it from its hiding place.

  ‘Addressed to Sir Emmanuel,’ I said, flipping it over.

  Stint moved closer to the desk. ‘But no enclosure, sir?’

  I shook my head. ‘Where did you find your master?’

  ‘He was over there by that bookshelf. Between Decline of the Procreative Urge by H. H. Nunstead and Pothan’s On the Efficacy of Tarmacadam.’

  I looked up at him.

  ‘Hard not pick up the master’s habits, sir,’ he said with a sniff.

  I crossed to the bookshelf and took the place occupied by the late scientist. I glanced over at the cold, empty grate of the fire.

  ‘There was, of course, a fire burning?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Over here! Mr Box!’

  I turned at Charlie’s cry and moved swiftly to where he stood, swinging one of the French windows open and shut. He stepped outside and pointed to the exterior lock. A swift examination told me all I needed to know.

  Striding to the fireplace I again folded my handkerchief over my hand and began to root about in the blackened embers.

  ‘Ah!’ I cried, my fingers fastening upon a small fragment of charred mauve paper. ‘Here is that enclosure, Stint. Or what remains of it.’

  I held the scrap of paper close to my face. A strong odour at once assailed me. It was pungent and familiar.

  ‘D’you smell that, Charlie?’ I cried, waving it under the boy’s nose. ‘I’d say…I’d say this paper has been impregnated. Impregnated with a chemical with which you and I have had some little acquaintance!’

  ‘Good grief!’ gasped Stint. ‘You mean you are addicted to some drug?’

  ‘Eh? No, no!’ I stood up straight. ‘This is what I believe happened here this morning. The letter in the mauve envelope was a lure, containing some bogus message and instructions that it was to be burnt upon receipt. Your master did as he was told and was then overcome by the noxious substance in which the letter had been soaked.’

  Stint bit his lip anxiously. ‘And then he threw open the windows in an effort to clear the fumes?’

  ‘Nay, for the windows have been forced open from the outside as Mr Jackpot here discovered! Whoever sent this letter lay out there in wait. When they saw that their plans were working they broke open the windows and grabbed Sir Emmanuel. They then left the windows ajar to allow the toxin to escape.’

  ‘But who, sir? Who would do such a thing?’

  The odour of that vile chemical contained in the mauve letter was unmistakable. The purplish dust on Verdigris’s desk! The charred paper in Sash’s grate! All three must have received a mauve envelope. Whatever had been written therein must also have contained instructions to burn its deadly enclosure.

  Now I knew how – just not by whom.

  It was time to test just what Stint had absorbed. I took the scrap from my waistcoat pocket. ‘What do you make of that, Stint?’

  The butler peered at it.

  I thrust my hands into my pockets. ‘A cross-section of some kind. I wonder if you could point us to a volume or two on the structures of modern machines?’

  Stint shook his head. ‘Oh no, sir.’

  ‘No? Why not?’

  ‘It’s not a machine, sir. It is a volcano,’ he said.

  XVII

  THE LAIR OF MR LEE

  ‘IS it, by George!’

  I looked over his shoulder and indicated a double line that had been inked into the shape on the chart. ‘And this?’

  ‘I believe it is known as a vent, sir. A fissure in the rock through which the magma flows to the surface.’

  Charlie took the fragment from him. A series of arrows had been drawn by hand inside the lines. ‘Then why are these arrows pointing towards the inside of the volcano?’

  ‘I really cannot say,’ sniffed the butler.

  We advanced towards the book shelves. ‘Tell me, Stint. Do you think, by any chance, we could track down the particular volcano?’

  A smile fluttered over his pale lips. ‘Every chance, I should think, sir. I’m sure Sir Emmanuel would be very happy to know his collection is being put to good use. I believe we shall need the steps, sir, if you’d be so kind.’

  Charlie pulled the revolving library steps from their shadowy niche. Before I could protest, he had mounted the steps and began pushing his way along the shelves. The steps’ wheels squealed appallingly.

  ‘Hmmph,’ said Stint, disapprovingly. ‘Now then,’ he said and pointed upwards. ‘Third shelf. What do you see?’

  In the feeble light Charlie passed treatise after dreary treatise. There were atlases, text-books…

  ‘Manlove’s Tectonic Activity,’ Charlie read. ‘Vulcanism in the Pacific Rim…The Lava Bomb…’

  ‘We’re getting warmer, you might say.’

  Images are removed here

  Charlie had stopped with one hand on the shelf, preparing to push himself off again when a hefty book in a cloth-bound cover seemed to catch his attention. ‘Magnetic Viscosity?’ he called hopefully.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Stint.

  ‘Maxwell Morraine,’ I cried.

  Stint looked over at me. ‘Yes, sir? What of him?’

  ‘It never occurred to me to ask you, Stint. What do you know of your late master’s colleague, Morraine? He threw me out of the house at the very mention of his name.’

  Stint shrugged. He seemed suddenly weary. Charlie came down the steps and stood by him, handing him the book. Stint began to flick through it as he spoke. ‘You are far too young to remember, sir, but it was quite a tragedy. Professor Morraine went…funny.’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘In the head, sir. They do say it was on account of his wife running off with some gent but Sir Emmanuel told me Mr Morraine had always been a little touched. Even when they were students together.’

  ‘Yes. I had heard they attended the same college. And they came out here, didn’t they, to work?’

  Stint nodded vigorously, then paused, comparing the fragment of chart with an illustration within the great book. ‘Sir Emmanuel’s father had this house and he always loved the Italian countryside. Seemed like a natural place to pursue their researches. All Greek or Italian to you and me, I suppose, sir, but Professor Morraine had theories about the massive potential energy contained within the lava, within the very stuff of the earth’s core! But it all came to naught. Then there was the fire and poor Mrs Morraine…well. Aha! I have found the volcano, sir.’

  He held the book aloft, the piece of chart pressed against the relevant page. To no one’s great surprise, it was a cross-section of Mount Vesuvius.

  Emmanuel Quibble’s extraordinary library was proving to be invaluable. Foll
owing the positive identification of the geological chart, we began digging for a clue as to the identity of the strange chemical used on the old man.

  Charlie sat down and put his feet up on the desk, pulled off his boots and began to pick at his toes, earning fierce stares from Stint.

  ‘Make yourself useful,’ I ordered, tossing him a copy of Arsenical Poisoning and its Causes.

  ‘I am. Being useful, I mean. I’m thinking.’

  ‘Ha! I am on His Majesty’s service. You are on mine.’

  He put his hands behind his head. Is it possible to swagger whilst sitting down?

  ‘Seems to me there is a connection between this purple stuff and what I told you about Venus’s fella.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘The House of the Lightning Tree. Remember?’

  His face dimpled into a cock-eyed smile.

  ‘Opium?’ I cried.

  And within a very few minutes, thanks to Stint’s cross-referencing, we had it. ‘A distillation of the seeds of the manganese poppy,’ I read, tracing a finger over the delicate colour-plate showing the flower.

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. Grows only in certain parts of the Himalayas. Now, get your boots on, Charlie, you’re going back out.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yes. Arrange some transport for our visit to this den. We’ll reconvene in the lobby of the Santa Lucia at ten.’

  ‘Righto, chief.’ Charlie got up and struggled into his boots, holding the door frame for support.

  ‘Oh, and Charlie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do mind out for yourself. I fear you are becoming indispensable.’

  The boy smiled and I felt a curious twinge as he closed the door after him. I thought at first it must be some undigested fancy from the Café Gambrinus but I finally recognized it as an almost alien emotion. Fondness.

  I took my leave of Stint and returned to the hotel. Quibble, Verdigris, Bella, Reynolds, Charlie – my head was spinning. After a long bath I soon felt more like myself. I felt myself so much, in fact, that I ended up having one off the wrist, imagining the wondrous Bella wrapped in my fevered embrace.

  We dined together that evening and Miss Pok looked more glorious than ever, I thought, glowing like a moonbeam in the gilded shadows of the restaurant. I apologized again for the unseemly hastiness of my departure from the funicular.

  ‘There’s really no need,’ she said lightly. ‘You did warn me you might have to…pop off a little hastily now and then.’

  ‘Did that Italian chap see you back all right?’

  ‘Oh yes. He was quite charming.’

  She smiled and raised her glass. ‘To you, Lucifer.’

  I responded, clinking my crystal against hers. ‘No, to us.’

  ‘You have not though, been entirely frank with me,’ she said after sipping her wine.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Unless you felt a pressing need to sketch the crowd, it did look very much like you were chasing someone.’ ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Umm…’

  She held up her hand. ‘Don’t say anything. I know you would tell me if you were able. There are matters of great import on hand, are there not?’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘And this business with Mr Miracle is somehow part of it.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  She nodded. ‘Then one day, perhaps, you will tell me about it.’

  I liked the sound of that. It promised a future. Together.

  We said goodnight at her hotel room door and, for the first time, I was allowed a kiss on her smooth cheek.

  Ah, me!

  Anticipating a night’s work, I returned to my own room and changed into a Norfolk jacket, nautical sweater and light but sensible tweed trousers. On the stroke of ten, I slipped down to the lobby and found Charlie waiting for me.

  I looked about for a four-wheeler but Charlie pulled at my sleeve. ‘No carriages. They’ll hear us coming a mile off.’

  To my amazement, he pulled aside a quantity of canvas that lay in a bundle in the street. Beneath it, at an angle to the wall, was a tandem bicycle.

  ‘Is that the best you could do?’ I cried.

  ‘Needs must,’ he grinned. ‘I nicked it.’

  I have never been a, shall we say, fan de cycle, and was not in the best of moods for mounting one. However, Charlie was right – it would be a far less conspicuous way of approaching Naples’ premier opium den than a cab. I grudgingly acquiesced and dragged the machine from its hiding place. Together we managed to mount it. After a few wobbly moments, we mastered the thing and began peddling feverishly up the slopes to Capodimonte, following Charlie’s directions. I was grateful, at last, for all those bone-shaker lessons my governess forced me to take.

  At length, we turned into some kind of rookery, a shambolic collection of semi-ruined villas adjacent to a vast olive grove. The rotten plasterwork of the structures was visible even in the starlight; the eaves of the buildings practically merged into one another like a line of guardsmen toppling on the parade ground.

  I hopped off the bicycle and held it steady so that Charlie too could dismount. Then we began to push it quietly along the road. Before us was a large and disreputable-looking building with a blackened, twisted olive tree dominating its façade.

  ‘That looks like it,’ whispered Charlie.

  I nodded – even in this town of curiosities, what else could it be? – and indicated that we should lay down the bicycle on the parched earth.

  I felt glad of my reloaded revolver as we advanced into that filthy hole.

  Torches burned in sconces on the fronts of some of the dwellings and it was possible to see figures huddled in the shadowed gloom. That they meant us ill was obvious and I raised the gun and cocked it in as blatant a fashion as I could.

  ‘Stay close by me, Charlie,’ I hissed.

  The shadows fell back a little but we hurried briskly along past walls of blotched green plaster.

  Charlie hammered repeatedly on the door of the big house.

  I slipped into a shadowed niche, watching as the figures that surrounded us grew bolder. I distinctly saw a great bear of a man with a kerchief knotted around his head grinning at me in the flickering torch-light. In his hand he carried a thick cudgel and he was slapping it repeatedly into his palm.

  ‘Let’s cut along, eh, Charlie?’ I said quietly.

  Suddenly, the door creaked open and an indisputably Chinese face loomed out of the darkness.

  ‘What you want?’ squawked the newcomer, his scantily bearded face appearing as a strip of red flesh in the torch-light.

  I surged forward through the door and pushed him backwards. Charlie bounded inside, darted past him and slammed the door shut behind us.

  ‘What you do? What you do? You cannot come in here!’ barked the little man. He was round as a pudding and clad in a filthy muslin robe.

  I levelled the revolver at him. ‘I think this will do as my passport,’ I hissed in his face.

  ‘No need for this!’ cried the Chinaman in a hoarse whisper. ‘Why you come like this? We all friends here. You want pipe?’

  ‘No. Yes. Let’s get inside,’ I urged.

  We followed the Chinaman through a warren of rubbish-strewn corridors, emerging eventually into a large chamber that might once have been a sitting room. The walls were festooned with cobwebs and damp-blossoms. What was visible of the floor showed naked and broken floor-boards leading to some noisome cellar beneath.

  The prevailing impression, however, was of a terrible fug, a poisonous atmosphere rich in the unmistakable scent of the poppy. Opium smoke hung in wreaths over the heads of the multitude that crammed the room, their slack jaws and rolling eyes speaking of days and weeks lost to the pipe. Like so many sacks, the addicts lay strewn over the floor, gurgling happily as they sucked, the shining black beads of opium glowing like fireflies.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m no prude and like a pipe as much as the next man. But all things in mode
ration, as Genghis Khan used to say.

  Our Chinese host was threading his way through the heaps of human detritus, lantern in hand. ‘My name Mr Lee. You fine gentlemen. I have office. We talk there.’

  The ‘office’ was at least clean. Two chairs and a table comprised the only furniture. I sat in one and Charlie sat down heavily on the other. Lee set the lantern on the table and giggled most unpleasantly.

  ‘I have extra fine poppy for you, English. Very cheap –’

  ‘No thank you. I have very expensive tastes. I want some of the purple poppy.’

  Lee’s blinked then laughed. ‘I not understand. House of Lightning Tree have many pipes. But no purple poppy. Come. Relax.’

  I stood up, seized him by his filthy robe and pushed him up against the wall. ‘My friend and I are in something of a rush, do you see? We need to know to whom you supply the purple poppy?’

  His fat face flushed in alarm and he shot an appealing look over my shoulder at Charlie.

  ‘You crazy! You crazy! Please!’

  Charlie got to his feet. ‘I can’t help you,’ he said to Lee. ‘This fella’s a painter. He’ll as like bite your ear off unless you tell him what he wants to know.’

  Lee gave a gulp and his chins wobbled. ‘I know nothing.’

  I slammed him against the rotten plaster. ‘Tell me, you glorified tobacconist.’

  ‘There no such thing as purple poppy!’ he squealed.

  I nudged the barrel of the pistol into the folds of fat around his wet mouth. ‘Believe me, I will take a professional interest in seeing the red of your blood running against the yellow of your skin.’

  Lee looked at us desperately, wringing his chubby hands. ‘I tell you! I tell you!’

  Shaking with terror, Lee sank back against the rotten plaster. His pin-prick eyes closed momentarily. ‘Purple poppy come over especial from Shanghai. Most rare. Most precious. It is much dangerous. It has many faces. Up, down, forget some, even kill you. Must be very, very careful. Needs expert. No good for you nice gentlemen!’