The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
“Norman’s work often has that effect,” Nora said.
“It’s like something reduced to its essence,” Margaret said. “Have you spoken to Norman about our poetry series, Marian?”
“Not yet, but this is the perfect time. Norman, can we talk about your coming back to do a reading?”
Once again Marian had unknowingly assisted Dart’s plans for the night. He pretended to think it over. “We should take care of that tonight. The only problem is that I’m going to need my appointment book, and it’s in the room. But if you decide you want that nightcap, you could come up later.”
“And let my appointment book talk to your appointment book? Yes, why don’t I do that?”
“You young people,” Margaret said. “You’re going to have hours of enjoyment talking about all sorts of things, and I’m going to fall asleep as soon as I fall into bed. But before that, Marian, you and I have to see to the kitchen.”
“Let me help,” Nora said. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Nonsense,” Margaret said. “Marian and I can whip through everything in half an hour. Anyone else would just get in our way.”
“Margaret, dear,” Dart said. “It’s only seven-thirty. You can’t mean you’re really going to go to bed as soon as the dishes are done.”
“I wish I could, but I have an hour or so of work to get through in the office. Marian, let’s take the dishes down and attack the kitchen.”
Dart glanced at Nora, who said, “Marian, I’d like to spend more time with the records and photographs, but I want to rest for a little bit first. So that you won’t have to jump up and down answering the door, do you think you could give me a key?”
“Why don’t we just leave the door unlocked?” Margaret said. “We’re completely safe here. When were you planning on coming back?”
“Nine, maybe? The storm should be over by then. I could get some work done while Norman and Marian match their schedules.”
“Oh?” Marian glanced at Dart. “That works for me. I’ll leave the downstairs lights on and come over to Pepper Pot about nine. Does that sound all right to you?”
“Perfect,” Dart said. “Did I hear a promise of rain gear?”
“Let’s take care of that right now.” Marian left the room, and Nora helped Margaret stack the dishes. Soon Marian returned with green Wellingtons, a shiny red raincoat with snaps, and a wide-brimmed matching hat. “My fireman outfit. Don’t worry, I have lots of other stuff to get me over there dry. And Norman, Tony’s gear is just inside the door.”
Nora removed her shoes and pulled on the high boots. Marian had big feet. She put on the shiny coat and snapped it up, and Dart put down his empty glass. “Very fetching.”
The sound of the rain was stronger at the front of the building. Dart examined Tony’s dirty yellow slicker with revulsion, and he wiped his handkerchief around the interior of the hat before entrusting his head to it. His shoes would not go into the boots, so he too took off his shoes and jammed them into the slicker’s pockets. “Almost rather get wet,” he muttered.
“Wait! Don’t go yet!” Marian called from behind them, and appeared at the top of the marble steps with Nora’s bag and four new candles. “You’ll find matches on the mantelpiece. Good luck!”
96
THE WORLD PAST the front door was a streaming darkness. Chill water slipped through Nora’s collar and dripped down her back. Water rang like gunfire on the stiff hat. Dart grasped her wrist and began running toward the gravel court. When they reached the path, she nearly went down in the mud, but Dart wrenched her upright and tugged her forward. Water licked into her sleeves. The trees on either side groaned and thrashed, and hallucinatory voices filled the air.
Nothing had worked” she had been unable to speak to any of her possible saviors, and Dart was going to kill Marian Cullinan and spend a happy two hours dissecting her body while waiting for the older women to sink into sleep. Then he would pull her back through the deluge to Main House, where he looked forward to watching her murder Agnes Brotherhood. As he had said to her, genius was the capacity to adapt to change without losing sight of your goal. “Let’s face it,” he had said, “we’re stuck here for the night, so the kidnapping is out. We have to take care of them all—those three old Pop-Tarts, too. They’re calling me a serial killer, I might as well have a little fun and act like one. First of all, we convince everybody that you’ll be coming back here by yourself. When we’re through with the Pinto, we trot back here and visit the bedrooms so kindly pointed out to us. No alarms or telephones. Safety, ease, and comfort. When we’re done, we enjoy a champion’s breakfast of steak and eggs in the kitchen, and depart in the Pinto’s car.”
Trying to match her pace to Dart’s, Nora bent over and ran, able to see no more than the rain sheeting off the brim of the red hat and the mud rising to her ankles. Dart yanked at her hand, and she lost her grip on the bag, which dropped into the mud. The cleaver, the carving knife, and much else tumbled out. Dart yelled something inaudible but unmistakable in tone, dragged her back, and bent down to scoop what had fallen out into the bag. Off to the right, a branch splintered away from a tree and crashed to the ground. Dart rammed the bag into her chest, whirled her around, and pushed her through the mud to the PEPPER POT sign and the ascending path. Her feet slipped, and she slid backwards into him. He pushed her again. Rain struck her face like a stream of needles. Nora tried to walk forward, and her right foot slipped out of the lower part of the boot. Dart circled her waist and lifted her off the ground. Her foot came out of the boot. Dart kicked it aside and carried her up the path.
He set her down on the porch and unfastened the clasps of the slicker to pull the key from his jacket pocket. Rain drummed down onto the roof. An unearthly moaning came from the woods. Hell again, Nora thought. No matter how many times you go there, it’s always new. Dark puddles formed around them. A film of water covered her face, and her ribs ached from Dart’s grip. He opened the door and pointed inside.
His hat and slicker landed on the floor. Nora put down the bag and fished the candles from the pockets of Marian’s coat. Dart took the candles, locked the door, and made shooing motions with his hands. Nora hung Marian’s things on a hook beside the door and lifted her foot out of the remaining boot. “Hang up that garbage I had to wear and find the matches. Then put your bag in the bathtub and get back here to help me pull off these disgusting boots.”
“Put my bag in the tub?”
“You want to destroy a Gucci bag? I have to clean it off and try to dry it.”
Nora carried the dripping bag across the lightless room into the bathroom. Was there a window in the bathroom, a back door? A gleaming black rectangle hung in the far wall. She moved forward until her legs met the bathtub, stepped inside, dropped the bag, and ran her hands along the top of the window. Her fingers found a brass catch. The slide refused to move. “What are you doing?” Dart shouted.
“Putting down the bag.” She pulled at the slide, but it was frozen into place.
“Get back in here.”
A column of darkness against a background of lighter darkness ordered her to the fireplace on the far side of the room. Holding her hands before her, Nora put one foot in front of another and made her way across the room.
Apparently able to see in the dark, Dart directed her to the fireplace and matches, then told her to walk fifteen paces forward, turn left, and keep walking until she ran into him.
Dart grabbed the matches out of her hands, lit a candle, and walked away. She could see nothing but the flame. He jammed the candle into a holder from the windowsill, lit the other two, and put them into the candlesticks on the table in the center of the room. The rope and duct tape lay beside an ice bucket and a liter of Absolut. Dart took two gulps of vodka and drew in a sharp breath. Muddy bootprints wandered across the floor like dance instructions. “Sounds like the inside of a bass drum.” He dropped into a chair and stuck out one leg. “Do it.”
Nora put her hands on the sli
“Take my clothes off?”
“So you can prop my legs against your hip and push. Don’t want to wreck that suit.”
While she was undressing, Dart sent her to the kitchen for a glass. He blew into it, held it up to the flame for inspection, and pulled a dripping handful of slivers from the bucket. Before drinking, he drew a circle in the air with the glass, and Nora walked back to the bed and removed the rest of her clothes. “Hang up your things. Have to look good until we can get new clothes.” He followed her with his eyes. “Okay, get over here, and put your back into it this time.”
She pulled his outthrust leg into her side. His trousers were sodden, and an odor of wet wool came from him. She held her breath, gripped his leg with her left hand, pushed at the heel, and the boot came away. “Let my people be!” Dart swallowed vodka. “One down, one to go.”
When the second boot surrendered, Nora staggered forward and felt an all too familiar surge of warmth throughout her body. Dizziness, a sudden sweatiness of the face, a hot necessity to sit down. “Oh, no,” she said.
“Mud washes off,” Dart said. Then he bothered to look at her. “Oh Christ, a hot flash. God, that’s ugly. Wipe off the mud and lie down.”
She got to the bathroom and splashed water on her face before erasing the clumps and streaks from her body.
When she came out, Dart pointed to the bed. “Women. Slaves to their bodies, every one.” She was vaguely aware of his giving her another disgusted look. “Seven-hundred-dollar Gucci bag, covered with mud. Here I go, doing your work for you again.”
He poured more vodka. “And wouldn’t you know it, the ice is all gone.” Nora watched the ceiling darken as he carried a candle into the bathroom.
Her body blazed. Water ran. Dart spoke to himself in tones of complaining self-pity. Nora wiped her forehead. She could feel her temperature floating up. Bug, where are you, little bug? A hot flash is hardly complete without a touch of formication. Shall we formicate? Come on, let’s try for the brass ring. Dick Dart is repulsed by female biology, let’s have the whole menopausal circus. Give me an F, give me an O, give me an R. Formication, of thee I sing. The riot in her body swung the bed gently up and back. A rustle of leathery wings and a buzz of glee came from beyond the fireplace. Begone, fiends, I don’t want you now. She wiped her face with a corner of the sheet, and it came away slick with moisture.
Dart poked his head through the bathroom door and announced that if she wasn’t ready by the time the Pinto came, she’d be sorry. I’m plenty sorry right now, thank you very much.
Having enjoyed itself for some three or four minutes, the hot flash subsided, leaving behind the usual sense of depletion. From the bathroom came swishing sounds accompanied by Dartish grumbles. Nora remembered that he had put the gun in his desk drawer. Surprise, surprise! She wiped her body with her hands and swung her legs off the bed. The sounds of running water and exclamations of woe testified to the absorption of Mr. Dart in his task. Despite her ignorance of revolvers and their operation, surely she could work out how to fire the thing once she got her hands on it. She moved silently toward the middle of the room and observed that the desk drawer appeared to have been pulled open. Another six tiptoe steps brought her to the desk. She lowered her hand into the drawer and touched bare wood. What’s the matter, Dick? Don’t you trust me?
She moved to the door, put on the slicker, and snapped it shut. In the bathroom, Dart was bent over the tub, his sleeves pushed up past his elbows. A candle stood at the bottom of the tub, and flickering shadows swarmed over the walls. Dye dripping from Dart’s hair had stained the top of his shirt collar black. A thick line of grit ran from the middle of the tub to the drain, and limp bills had been hung over the side to dry. The cleaver and the carving knife lay encased in mud beside the bag. Various bottles and brushes and other cosmetic devices had already been washed and placed atop the toilet.
He took in the slicker with contempt. “Grab a towel. One of the little ones.”
She gave him a hand towel, and he passed it under the running tap. “Wipe up the mud out there before it dries.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Nora took the towel into the room to swab muddy footprints. By the time she returned, Dart was holding the bag out before him.
“This thing might survive after all.” He handed her the wet bag. “Get it as dry as you can. Tear the pages out of one of those books, wad a towel into the center of the bag, and cram the pages between the towel and the inside of the bag. Don’t forget the corners. Do it in here, so I can make sure you do it right.”
She brought the paperbacks into the bathroom and placed them on the floor beside the toilet to buff the handbag with the towel.
“Blot up as much water as you can. Ram it into the bottom corners.”
Nora pushed the towel around the inside of the bag, and Dart bent over the tub to rinse the towel she had used on the floor under hot water, rub soap into it, and begin washing the cleaver.
“You memorize everything you read, and you never forget it?”
He sighed and leaned against the tub. “I told you. I don’t memorize anything. Once I read a page, it stays in there all by itself. If I want to see it, I just look at it, like a photograph. All those books I had to read for my old ladies, I could recite backwards if I wanted to. Let me feel that.”
He swiped his fingers on her towel and ran them across the lining of the bag. “Wad toilet paper down in there. Would you like to hear the complete backwards Pride and Prejudice? Austen Jane by? Almost as bad as the forward version.”
Nora stuffed toilet paper into the corners of the bag and began ripping pages out of Night Journey.
Dart ran the cleaver under hot water and soaped it again. “How do you think I got through law school? Name a case, I could quote the whole damn thing. If that was all you had to do, I’d have made straight A’s.”
“That’s amazing.” She plastered the first pages against the sodden silk lining.
“You’ll never know how relieved I was when I got assigned someone like Marjorie West. Seventy-two years old, rich as the queen of England, never read a book in her life. Four dead husbands and never happier than when talking about sex. Ideal woman.”
Nora had met Marjorie West, whose Mount Avenue house was even grander than the Poplars. She was herself a structure on the grand scale, though much reconstructed, especially about the face. Nora found that she did not wish to think about Marjorie West’s relationship with Dick Dart. These days, Marjorie West probably did not want to think too much about it, either. Nora tore another twenty pages out of Night Journey. “So you could quote from this book, too.”
“You heard me quote from that book.” He placed the cleaver on the rug and addressed the carving knife.
“Tell me about that massy vault, the one that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside.”
“You have the book right in front of you.”
“I can’t read in this light. What does the vault look like?”
Dart grimaced at the amount of mud still clinging to the knife. “What does it look like on the outside? I’ll have to give you the whole sentence so you get the atmosphere. ’With many a fearsome and ferocious glance, many a painful jab about the ribs, many an adjustment of her enormous hat, Madame Lyno-Wyno Ware led Pippin through the corridors of her spider-haunted mansion to a portal bearing the words most private, thence into a chamber of gloomy aspect and to another such door marked most most private, into a far gloomier chamber and a door marked most most most privately private, which creaked open upon the gloomiest of all the chambers, and therein extended her gaudy arm to signify, concealed beneath a tattered sofa, a homely leaden strongbox no more than a foot high.’ That’s all, ‘homely leaden strongbox no more than a foot high.’ From there on, it’s about Pippin’s disappointment, that little thing can’t be the famous massy vault, but the boy bites the bullet and forges ahead, says the right words, and it all
He rinsed the carving knife, brought it near his eyes for inspection, and rubbed the soapy cloth into the crevices around the hilt.
“The golden key brings him to Madame Lyno-Wyno Ware?”
“Lie? No. Why, nowhere.” Dart picked up his glass with a dripping hand and finished the vodka. “The truth is all-important, can’t lie to Mrs. Lyno-Wyno Ware, nope.” Twitching with impatience, he watched her stuff paper into the bag. “That’ll do. Scamper into the kitchen and get me a refill.”
When she returned, Dart took a mouthful, set down the glass, and meticulously dried the knives. A hard red flush darkened his cheekbones. “Clean the mess out of the tub. Work fast, I have a lot to do, must prepare for the arrival of sweet Marian.”
Nora knelt in front of the bathtub. A few dimes and quarters glinted in the slow-moving brown liquid. The thunder of rainfall on the roof suddenly doubled. The window over the tub bulged inward for a second, and the entire cottage quivered.
Nora came out of the bathroom. Dart was staring at the ceiling. “Thought the whole thing was going to come down. Put the bag on the table and bring me the rope. Hardly need the tape, wouldn’t you agree?”
She placed the bag on the table. “Coat.” Dart removed his tie and draped it over a shoulder of the suit. Nora unsnapped the red slicker, put it on the hook, and, her heart beating in time to the drumfire on the roof, carried the rope toward him. “Slight possibility I may have overdone the vodka, but all is well.” He concentrated on arranging his shirt on a hanger.
Aligned with Dart’s usual care, the knives had been placed beneath the pillow on the left side of the bed. “Rope.” She came close enough to hand him the coil of clothesline. He yanked off his boxer shorts. “Sit.”