The Hellfire Club

'Solemn promise,' Dart said. 'By the time we finish dessert, they'll be begging me to come back.'

'But you practically called Georgina Weatherall a Nazi!'

'Wasn't the old girl a tad gone on the majesty of the Fatherland? Doesn't make her a bad person.'

Marian shook her head and checked to make sure that no one could overhear their conversation. 'Norman, you can't go around saying these things in front of Margaret.'

'Try to stop him,' Nora said.

'I understand,' Dart said. 'Divine handmaiden to the diviner arts. Natural aristocrat. My problem is, I can't stand women like that.'

Marian calmed down enough to say, 'We don't admit it very often, but I'm sure Georgina Weatherall could be hard to deal with.'

'Not her, Madame Director,' Dart said. 'Women like that might as well grow beards and smoke cigars. Nonetheless, I promise you a tremendously entertaining evening.' He touched a finger to her chin. 'I want you to have a glorious time. Still depending on you to drop in for that nightcap.'

'This man,' Marian said. 'You can't stay angry with him.'

Portraits lined the broad staircase. 'This one used to hang in Georgina's bedroom.' Marian was pointing at an oil painting of an elderly man in a business suit coiled in a leather chair. He had a tight, fanatical face dominated by a heavy nose and a protruding chin. 'George Weatherall.'

' 'My Heart Belongs to Daddy.''

Marian smiled at him from the top of the stairs, then conducted them down a hallway darker and narrower than the one below. Despite the framed book jackets and photographs of Main House in various stages of restoration on the walls, the second floor was more utilitarian and domestic than the first. They had moved from the public life into the private.

Nora asked, 'Why don't you let people into her bedroom?'

'Wait'll you see it. That's not the way we want people to remember Shorelands.'

'I thought you were after historical accuracy.'

'Accurate accuracy is too raw for the public. The longer I stay in this job, the more I wonder if there is any such thing as historical accuracy. But I can't say that's very helpful when you have a painting contractor standing in front of you who wants to know right now what exact shade of purple to put on the wall.'

'I thought Lily said that you were given a lot of the original paint. How could there be a problem with the shade?' Nora asked.

'We did have the original paint, but only about half the amount we needed, and it had turned into glue. The whole thing was a nightmare. In the end, we mixed whatever we could salvage in with new paint.'

'How did you know what shade it was supposed to be?'

'From Georgina's room.'

'The paint you got for Honey House was actually the kind used in Main House?'

'Nobody really knows what kind of paint was used in the cottages.' Marian gestured at the doors lining the hallway. 'The two rooms on the left are Margaret's bedroom and office, and she'd rather not have us go in there. In the old days, Georgina Weatherall kept this entire floor for her personal use. Emma Brotherhood, Agnes's sister, her personal maid, lived in this first room. The second was a wardrobe and changing room, and it's connected to the bathroom, the third door along, directly across from Georgina's bedroom. Next to that was the morning room, where Georgina wrote her letters and planned the menus. These days, that's where we store all the donations we can't use.'

Marian smiled at Dart. 'Anyhow, behind the door on the other side of the stairs is the staircase to the third floor. I have the two rooms immediately across the hall at the top of the stairs, and Lily has the two rooms next to me. Margaret's secretary, who's on her vacation this week, has the room next to Lily's. All the other rooms up there are empty. This room on the right, which we use for meetings, was where Georgina met special guests.' She opened the door to a small, efficient chamber dominated by a boardroom table. 'This was where Miss Weatherall would complain, gossip, get recommendations about new writers. And in here, people like Lily and Agnes could pass along anything she ought to know.'

'KGB,' Dart said. 'Ears at the keyhole.'

'We had a thief here once, you know.'

'You surprise me,' Nora said.

'A young woman took off with a valuable drawing just before she was to be asked to leave. Can you imagine? It was worth a fortune. By Rembrandt, or maybe Rubens, I don't remember.'

'Neither one,' Nora said. 'It was by an artist named Redon.'

'Somebody with an R name, anyhow,' Marian said, 'Georgina's bedroom is next. During the last two years of her life, she almost never left it. It's cleaned and dusted twice a week, but we never go in there ourselves. Personally, I think it's a little creepy.'

She ushered them into a dark space where dull glints of glass and metal and a sense of hovering presences suggested a spectacular jumble of objects. 'Georgina never opened her curtains, so we keep them closed. I always have a little trouble finding the light, because the switch is in back of… Here we go.'

Layer after layer, the room emerged into view. In delirious profusion, silks, faded tapestries, worn Oriental rugs, and swags of lace dripped from the top of the canopied bed and over the backs of chairs, and hung on the crowded walls, folding behind and draping over a riot of ornate clocks, mirrors, framed drawings, and photographs of a woman whose face, a replica of her father's, had been softened by enthusiastic makeup and a surround of shapeless dark hair. An impressively ugly Victorian desk lay buried beneath a drift of papers lapping against porcelain animals and glass inkwells. A gramophone with a bell-like horn stood on an ormolu table. Other small tables draped with lace held stacks of books, silver-backed hairbrushes, and much else.

The room reminded Nora of a more chaotic Honey House. A second later, she realized that she had it backwards: Honey House was a more presentable version of this room. As her eyes adjusted to the clutter, she began to take in the real condition of Georgina's bedroom. Ancient water stains had leached the purple to blotchy pink. The fabrics strewn over the furniture were ripped and discolored, and the lace canopy hung in tatters. Stains mottled the white ceiling. Beside the bed, in front of an anachronistic metal safe with a revolving dial, brown threads showed through the pattern of the rug.

'I'd better see if Agnes is up to company,' Marian said, and disappeared.

Here was the real Shorelands, the one room in all of the estate where real history was still visible. Concealed at the center of the house, it was a shameful secret too important to erase. Georgina Weatherall, whose greatest advantages had been wealth, vanity, and illusion, had risen day after day to admire herself in her mirrors, brushed her hair without ever managing to push it into shape, painted on layers of makeup until the mirrors told her that she was as commanding as a queen in a fairy tale. If she noticed a flaw, she submerged it beneath rouge and kohl, just as she buried the stains on her walls and the rents in her lace beneath layers of fabric.

Monty Chandler had never entered this room to repair the water damage: no one but Georgina and her maid had been allowed here. The maid had loved Georgina, who had so demanded love that she had seen it in people who mocked her. This monolithic ruthlessness was what was meant by a romantic conception of oneself.

Nora could almost respect Georgina Weatherall. Georgina had been sick with self-importance, and if Nora had met her at a party, she would have fled from the airless closet such people always create around themselves. But Georgina Weatherall had worked heroically in the service of her illusions. In her, perhaps for the first time in his life, Lincoln Chancel had met his match.

Marian opened the door and said, 'Wonder of wonders, you could have a word with Agnes now, if you like.'92

'She really is sick, I know, but boredom makes her cranky, and when Agnes gets cranky she lays it on a little too thick. I can't promise you more than a couple of minutes.' Marian paused. 'A couple of minutes will probably be enough.'

An irritated voice came through the door. 'Are you talking about me?'

'Why don't you let us see her alone?' Nora said. 'I know you have work to do.'

'I shouldn't.' Marian looked up and down the hallway. 'You might need help getting away.'

'We'll manage.'

'Maybe just this once. Margaret doesn't…' She bit her lower lip.