The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
“That’s part of the truth.”
“Apparently your adventures have left you more unsettled than you realize. If you want to come back in the next couple of days to talk business, please do, but for the present, we have nothing more to talk about.”
“Listen to me, Alden. I know you have that manuscript somewhere. Davey once came to you with an idea that would have made you even more money from the book, and you never even bothered to look for it. He did, but you didn’t. You knew where it was, you just didn’t want him to see it. Now I want to look at it. I won’t open my mouth to a single human being. I just want to know I’m right.”
“Right about what?”
“That Driver stole most of the story from Katherine Mann-heim.”
Alden stood up and looked at her in pity. Just when she could have turned things around and joined the team, Nora had turned out to be a flake after all, what a shame. “Let me say this to you, Nora. You think you know certain facts which could damage me. I would rather not have these facts come to light, that’s true, but while they might stir up some publicity I could do without, I’ll survive. Go on, do whatever you think you have to do.”
Nora took a folded sheet of paper from her bag. “Look at this, Alden. It’s a copy of a statement you probably won’t want made public.”
Alden sighed. He came across the room to take it from her. He was bored, Nora had thrown away her last chance to be reasonable, but he was a gentleman, so he’d indulge her in one final lunacy. He took his reading glasses from the pocket of the blazer, put them on, and snapped open the paper on his way back across the room. Nora watched this performance with immense pleasure. Alden read a sentence and stopped moving. He read the sentence again. He yanked off his glasses and turned to her.
“Read the whole thing,” Nora said. Until this moment, she had wondered if he had already known. The shock and dismay surfacing through his performance made it clear that he had not. She could almost feel sorry for him.
Alden moved behind the leather chair, leaned over it, and read Hugo Driver’s confession and Georgina Weatherall’s postscript. He read it all the way through, then read it again. He looked up at her from behind the chair.
“Where did you get this?”
“Does it matter?”
“It’s a fake.”
“No, Alden, it’s not. Even if it were, would you want that story to get out? Do you want people to start speculating about your father and Katherine Mannheim and Hugo Driver?”
Alden folded the letter into one pocket, his glasses into another. He was still hiding behind his chair. “Speaking hypothetically, suppose I do have the manuscript of Night Journey. Suppose I satisfy your curiosity. If that were to happen, what would you do?”
“I’d go away happy.”
“Let’s try another scenario. If I were to offer you two hundred thousand dollars for the original of this forgery, solely for the protection of my father’s name, would you accept my offer?”
“No.”
“Three hundred thousand?”
Nora laughed. “Can’t you see that I don’t want any money? Show me the manuscript and I’ll go away and never see you again.”
“You just want to see it.”
“I want to see it.”
Alden nodded. “Okay. You and I are both honorable people. I want you to know I never had any idea that . . . I never had any idea that Katherine Mannheim didn’t just walk away from that place. You gave me a promise, and that’s my promise to you.” He recovered himself. “I still say that this is a forgery, of course. My father followed his own rules, but he wasn’t a rapist.”
“Alden, we both know he was, but I don’t care. It’s ancient history.”
He came out from behind his barricade. “It’s ancient history whether he was or wasn’t.” He moved along the bookcase and swung out a hinged section of a shelf at eye level to reveal a wall safe, another massy vault larger within than without. He dialed it open and with more reverence than she would have thought him capable of reached in and took out a green leather box.
Nora came toward him and saw what looked like the bottom of a picture frame on the top shelf of the safe. “What’s that?”
“Some drawing my father squirreled away.”
Alden pulled the drawing out and showed it to her before sliding it back into the vault. “Don’t ask me what it is or why it’s there. All I know is that when Daisy and I moved into the Poplars, he showed it to me and told me to keep it in the vault and forget about it. I think it must be stolen. Somebody probably gave it to him to pay off a debt.”
“Looks like a Redon,” Nora said.
“I wouldn’t know. Is that good?”
“Good enough.”
She took the box to the couch and looked inside. A small notebook with marbled covers sat on top of a lot of typed pages. She picked up the notebook. Katherine Mannheim’s signature was on the inside cover. She had written “Night Journey, novel?” on the facing page. Nora turned page after page filled with notes about Pippin Little” this was the embryo of Driver’s book, stolen from Katherine Mannheim’s bag. He who steals my trash steals trash. She put the notebook beside her and took the manuscript from the box. It seemed such a small thing to have affected so many lives. She opened it at random and saw that someone had drawn a line in the margin and written in a violent, aggressive hand, p. 32, Mannheim notebook. She turned to another page and saw in the same handwriting, pp. 40–43, Mannheim. Lincoln Chancel had demanded the stolen notebook, kept the manuscript, and marked in it everything Driver had stolen from Katherine Mannheim. If Driver ever ruined him, he would ruin Driver.
“Do you see?” Alden said. “Driver wrote the book. These Mannheim people don’t have a leg to stand on. He borrowed a few ideas, that’s all. Writers do it all the time.”
Nora returned the manuscript and notebook to the box. “I’m grateful to you, Alden.”
“I still don’t see why it was so important.”
“I just wanted to see it all the way through,” she said. “In a day or two, I’m going to be moving to Massachusetts for a little while. I don’t know where I’ll be after that, but you won’t have to worry about me.”
Alden told her he would say good-bye to Davey for her.
“I already did that,” Nora said.
The second of Nora’s errands took her to the post office, where she withdrew from an unsealed envelope addressed to The New York Times a letter describing Hugo Driver’s debt to the forgotten poet Katherine Mannheim and an account of the poet’s death and her burial a few feet north of the area known as Monty’s Glen in the Shorelands woods. To the letter she added, in her hasty hand, this note: “Katherine Mannheim’s original notebook and Hugo Driver’s manuscript, with Lincoln Chancel’s marginal notes referring to specific passages taken from the notebook, are in a wall safe located in the library of Alden Chancel’s house in Westerholm, Connecticut.” Having kept her promise never to speak of these matters, she refolded the letter, wrapped it around another copy of Hugo Driver’s confession, put them back into the envelope, sealed it, and sent it by registered mail to New York.
Nora’s third errand brought her to Redcoat Road. Natalie Weil’s house was still in need of a fresh paint job, but the crime scene tapes had been removed. She pulled up in front of the garage door, walked up the path to Natalie’s front door, and pressed the bell. A friendly female voice called out, and footsteps ran down the stairs to the door. As soon as Natalie saw her, she immediately tried to slam the door, but Nora thrust herself inside and backed Natalie toward the stairs. “I want to talk to you,” she said.
“I suppose you do,” Natalie said. She seemed aggrieved and reluctant, which did not displease Nora. “I know how you feel, but all of a sudden three new listings showed up, and I have to show my boss I can still do my job, besides which there’s a little problem with the police, some crap about drugs, but that won’t stick, so what the hell, right? Come upstairs and have a beer.”
&n
“You win some, you lose some. I’ll have a beer, even if you’re not going to.”
Nora went up the stairs and waited for Natalie. Despite her Westerholm weekend uniform of a faded denim shirt and khaki shorts, she looked wary and defensive, and though not as ancient as she had appeared on Barbara Widdoes’s couch, older than Nora remembered her. She pulled her refrigerator open, took out a bottle of Corona, and popped the cap. “Come on in, sit down, we’ve known each other a long time, what’s a little husband fucking between old friends? I can’t blame you for being mad at me, but it was hardly a big deal, if you want to know the truth.”
“Yes,” Nora said. “I do.” She came into the kitchen and sat opposite Natalie at her kitchen table. “That’s exactly what I want to know.”
“Join the crowd.” Natalie drank from the beer bottle and gently put it down. Her eyes looked bruised. “Hey, at least for the time being, I’m still in the real estate business. You know what that means? We sell dreams. Truth is what you say it is. Right?”
“A lot of people think so,” Nora said. The handcuff photo-graphs had been taken off the corkboard, and the refrigerator magnets had been thrown away.
Natalie took another swallow of Corona. “How do you like being famous? Is it neat? I wouldn’t mind being famous.”
“It isn’t neat.”
“But you killed Dick Dart. You wasted the bastard.” The beer in front of Natalie was not her first.
“So they say,” Nora answered.
Natalie toasted her with the Corona bottle. “You and Davey all right?”
“He moved back in with his father and I’m leaving town. So, yeah, we’re probably all right.”
“God, he’s going back to Alden.” Natalie twisted her mouth into a half smile. “I heard Daisy took off. About time. That guy is bad news, and he always was. I mean, you make mistakes, but Alden was about the worst mistake I ever made. Well, let’s drop that subject.”
“Let’s not,” Nora said. “After all, you and Alden caused me a lot of trouble. I was about to be arrested when the wonderful Dick Dart abducted me.”
“Nobody’s perfect. For what it’s worth, Nora, I’m sorry.” Natalie was having trouble looking at her. “Sometimes you do things for the wrong reasons. It’s a lousy deal, you know? You get strapped, you agree to stuff you’d never do otherwise. I never wanted to get you into trouble—shit, I like you. I always liked you. The whole thing was Alden’s idea in the first place. It was just business.”
“Bid’ness is bid’ness,” Nora said.
Natalie made a wry face. “Know how many houses sold here last year? Exactly nineteen. And not precisely at my end of the market, no siree, I get the top of the bottom end, like your place, no offense, but the office doesn’t give me the two-million-dollar properties.” She swallowed more beer and put down the bottle. “Alden’s a jerk, but he’s willing to put cash on the table, I’ll say that for him. And I got you off the hook, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Nora said. “But you almost got me arrested for kidnapping.”
Natalie took another swallow of Corona. “It was never supposed to get that far, Nora. He just wanted to jerk Davey around, that’s all. He was pissed off. We didn’t know that whole thing with Dick Dart was going to happen, who could know that?”
“Tell me about the blood in your bedroom.”
Natalie smiled at her like a conspirator. “One of Alden’s brilliant ideas. He wanted to get everybody worked up, tie my thing into the murders. Stir the pot, you know? He got this pig blood from a butcher and wrecked my bedroom. But you’re okay now, aren’t you? I went through my act, it’s all over, what’s the difference?”
“If you don’t know, I’ll never be able to explain it to you,” Nora said.
Natalie turned her head away.
“Natalie,” Nora said, and Natalie looked at her again. “You disgust me. Alden bought you, and you ruined my life.”
“You didn’t like your life anyhow. How could you, married to that baby?”
“How much did he pay you?” Nora asked.
“Not nearly enough,” Natalie said. “Considering what’s probably going to happen to me. I’d like you to leave my house, if you don’t mind. I think we’re done. If you ask me, I did you a favor. You came out of this deal a lot better than I did.”
“I didn’t volunteer,” Nora said. “I was drafted.”
An unfamiliar car was nosed in toward Nora’s garage door, and thinking it belonged to yet another reporter or to one of the unknown men who had proposed to her, she nearly drove on to the end of Crooked Mile Road until she saw Holly Fenn get out of the car and walk toward her front door. Nora turned into her drive-way, and Fenn waved at her and started moving slowly back to the garage. She pulled in beside his car, got out, and walked toward him. He needed a haircut, he was wearing the ugliest necktie she had ever seen, and there were weary bags under his eyes. He looked great.
“So there you are,” he said. “I called a couple of times, but all I got was your machine.”
“I’m not answering my phone all that much.”
“I bet. Anyhow, I wanted to see you, so I thought I’d take a chance and come by.” He tucked in his chin, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and looked at her from under his eyebrows. A spark of feeling jumped between them. “I have something to tell you, but mainly I just wanted to see how you were.”
“How am I?”
“Holding up pretty good, I’d say. I like your new hair. Cute.”
“Thanks, but you’re lying. You liked it better the old way. I did, too. I’m going to let it grow out.”
Fenn nodded slowly, as if agreeing with her on a matter of great importance. “Good. You getting your life back together okay?”
“I’m taking it apart pretty well, so I guess I am, yes. It isn’t the same life, that’s all. Holly, would you like a cup of coffee or something?”
“Wish I could. I have to be somewhere in five minutes. But I thought you ought to know something I learned about that old nursery school on the South Post Road. It occurred to me that I didn’t know who held the lease on that building, so I checked. The lease is made out to a guy in New York named Gerald Ambrose. I called him up, and he told me that a citizen here in Westerholm rented it from him for the rest of the summer.”
“Ah,” Nora said. “You’re a good cop, Holly.”
“Yeah, maybe, but I turn out to be a little on the slow side. If I’d checked this out before, I could have saved you a lot of trouble.”
She smiled at him. “I don’t blame you, Holly. Who rented the building?”
He smiled back. “Do I get the feeling you already know, or am I making that up?”
“I have an idea, but tell me.”
“The citizen who rented the building is a big-time publisher who told Ambrose he needed temporary storage for some overstock. Are you on good terms with your father-in-law?”
“My soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law and I have a long history of mutual loathing.” She remembered Alden Chancel stroking her arm and saying I’d like to get to know you better. “Holly, if you stop in on Natalie Weil, she’ll probably tell you an interesting story. I just saw her, and she’s sort of killing time until her world caves in.”
Fenn wiped his hand over his sturdy mustache and nodded, taking in both the remark and Nora. “Your friend put on a pretty good show.”
“She even fooled Slim and Slam.”
Fenn’s eyes crinkled. “I gather some money changed hands.”
“Not enough, according to Natalie.”
Fenn grinned at the driveway, marveling at the ingenuity of the human capacity for committing serious error. “And you called me a good cop.”
“I think you’re pretty good all the way around,” Nora said. “You stuck by me.”
“Yeah, well, I tried.” He gave her a rueful glance which managed to encompass compassion for what she had endured and anger at having been unable to s
“If you must.” She walked him to his car.
“Look, maybe this is none of my business, but did you say that you were leaving your husband?”
“I already left.”
Fenn looked away. “Are you going to stay in town?”
“I think I’ll go to Northampton for a while. I can work with a woman who runs a catering business for a couple of weeks. I want to get away from the telephone and clear my head. After that, who knows?”
Fenn nodded his big, shaggy head, taking this in. “After I’m through with Mrs. Weil and your soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law, do you suppose I could come back here and take you out for coffee or something?”
“Holly, are you asking me for a date?”
“I’m too old for dates,” he said.
“Me, too. So come back later and we won’t have a date, we’ll just knock around together. I want to hear about your encounter with Alden. You can tell me all your favorite war stories.”
Fenn smiled at her with every part of his face. “And I promise not to ask to hear yours.”
“Or tell me any lies.”
“I wouldn’t know how to lie to you.”
“Then it’s a deal,” Nora said.
“Well, okay.” He lowered himself into his car, winked at her through the windshield, and backed away from the garage. A few seconds later, he was gone.
More praise for
THE HELLFIRE CLUB
“The Hellfire Club scares you bad, and that’s good.”
—New York Daily News
“A complex literary puzzle brimming with old-fashioned clues and red herrings.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Intricately layered, fiendishly complex.”
—The Miami Herald
“The Hellfire Club is one hell of a novel. Peter Straub has done a brilliant job in creating two unforgettable characters: a terrific dame and a hair-raising monster. Wow, did I lose sleep over this one!”
—SUSAN ISAACS
“Peter Straub is a national treasure.”
—LAWRENCE BLOCK
“The Hellfire Club is a generous novel, rich in character, voluptuous in storytelling, lit by sympathy and a dangerous humor.”