The Hellfire Club

Margaret doesn't want strangers left alone with Agnes? 'Margaret doesn't have to know.'

'All right. If I can get my work done, I'll be able to come up for that nightcap.' She knocked once and opened the door. 'Here they are, Agnes. I'll look in on you later.'

'Bring me some magazines. You know what I like.'

Marian moved back, and Nora and Dart stepped into the doorway.

The old woman lying in the bed was about as thick around as a kitchen match. The straight hair, dyed black, falling from a center part on either side of her shrunken face, looked like a doll's wig. Her eyes were bright, lively, and suspicious. She had inserted one twiglike finger into the book in her lap, as if she had to see who these people were before deciding how much time to give them.

Marian introduced them and left.

'Come in, close the door.'

They walked up to the bed.

'I'm surprised she left. You'd think I was a mad dog, the way they carry on.' She examined Dart. 'You're this fellow who's supposed to be a poet? Norman Desmond?'

'And you're the historical monument, Agnes Brotherhood.'

She gave him a close inspection. 'You don't look much like a poet.'

'What do I look like?'

'Like a lawyer who spends a lot of time in bars. Should I know your name?'

'I wouldn't go that far,' Dart said. He was enjoying himself.

'Don't pretend to be modest. You don't have a modest bone in your body.' Agnes turned her eyes on Nora. 'Does he?'

'Not a one,' Nora said.

'Marian wouldn't be wasting her time on you if you were a nobody. Have you published a lot of books?'

'Alas, no.'

'Who's your publisher?'

'Chancel House.'

Agnes Brotherhood waved a hand in front of her face as if to banish a bad smell. 'You'd leave them in a hurry if you'd ever had the misfortune of meeting the founder.'

'In a class by himself,' Dart said. 'Villainy personified.'

'You might as well stay awhile. Move those chairs up to the bed.' She nodded at two folding chairs against the wall and slipped a card into her book, the Modern Library edition of Thoreau.

Agnes noticed Nora's interest. 'I reread Walden once a year. Do you like Walden, Mr Desmond?'

Dart lifted his chin and recited,'' When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself,' so on and so forth. Does that answer your question?'

'Let's hear the rest of the sentence.'

'… 'on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and made my living by the labor of my hands only.''

'Not quite the truth, I believe, but lovely all the same. Now what would you like me to talk about? The great hostess and her noble guests? What D. H. Lawrence ate for breakfast? That kind of thing?'

Dart glanced at Nora. 'You're not as reverent about the great hostess as Lily Melville, are you?'

'I knew her too well,' Agnes snapped. 'I had a job, and I did it. Lily had a cause, the adoration of Georgina Weatherall. I used to laugh at her sometimes, and she didn't like it one bit.'

'You used to laugh at Georgina?'

'At Lily. Nobody laughed at Georgina Weatherall. She had her qualities, but a sense of humor wasn't one of them. If you were going to make fun of Miss Weatherall, you had to do it behind her back, and a lot of them did, but that isn't something you're going to hear about these days. Were you on Lily's tour?'

Nora said they had been.

'Tour of the shrine, that's what you get with Lily. When the mistress got sick and she was let go, she went around being the Shorelands expert in front of all these groups.' She laughed. 'It's a lot more fun meeting people without Freckle Face listening in. She used to interrogate people from my groups to see if I'd said anything I shouldn't. Hah! As if I didn't know my job. I know more than they like, that's what bothers them. I know things they don't know.'

'Reason they keep you around,' Dart said.

Agnes frowned at him. 'I devoted my life to Shorelands. They know that much.' She nodded at a pitcher and a glass on the window ledge. 'Could you get me a glass of water? I keep asking them to get me a table on wheels, like in hospitals, but do I get one? Not yet, and it's been days.'

'Would you mind if I asked what's wrong with you?' Dart said. 'Do you have an illness?'

'My illness is called old age,' Agnes said. 'Plus a few other disorders.'

Dart peered into the pitcher. 'Empty.'

'Take it into the bathroom and fill it up, please?'

'Well——-' Dart drawled. 'Can I do that, honey? Dare I leave you alone? Hate to miss anything.'

'I'll fill you in,' Nora said.

Dart shook a warning finger at Nora and carried the pitcher from the room.

Agnes fixed Nora with bright, suspicious eyes. When Dart's footsteps had crossed the hall, Nora leaned toward her. 'Do you have a telephone?'

Agnes shook her head.

'Have you ever heard of a man named Dick Dart?'

Agnes shook her head again. Across the hall, water splashed noisily into a container.

'Can you get to a phone?'

'There's three or four in the director's office.'

'As soon as we leave, go to the office and call the police.' The water cut off. 'Say that Dick Dart is having dinner at Shorelands. Agnes, this is extremely important, it's life and death.' Footsteps left the bathroom. 'Please.'

Dart surged into the room, and water splashed out of the pitcher. 'Filled to overflowing. What have we been talking about, my dears?'

'My health,' Agnes said. 'Present and future.' She turned her puzzled, now decidedly alarmed, gaze to him.

'What are your health problems, sweetheart?' He poured several inches of water into her glass. 'Dehydration?' She reached for the glass and he pulled it back, laughed, and allowed her to take it. 'Little joke.'

'Arrhythmia. Sounds worse than it is.' She took two swallows and handed him the glass. 'Put it on the floor beside my bed. I'm going to be back on my feet in a couple of days. I can still lead a tour as well as Lily Melville.'

'Of course you can, lots better than that old fool,' Dart said. He sat down, crossed his legs, and patted Nora on the back. 'Did you miss me, my sweetie?'

'Horribly,' Nora said.

Agnes was staring at him as if she were trying to memorize his face. 'What are the names of your books, Mr Desmond?'

He looked, smiling, toward the ceiling. 'The first one was called Counting the Bodies. Surgical Notes was the name of the second.'

Her hands twitched. 'What are you especially interested in, Mrs Desmond? You don't want to waste time listening to me complain.'

'The summer of 1938.' Agnes held herself utterly still. 'I'm interested in whatever happened that summer, but especially in a poet named Katherine Mannheim.'

The old woman was staring at her with even more concentration than she had given Dart. Nora could not tell what she was thinking or feeling.