The Hellfire Club

rubbed her forehead. 'I'll get Tony to bring up a slicker and a pair of boots after dinner. Norma can use a raincoat of mine. And don't worry if the lights go out. We have lots of candles. Besides, our power company may be run by a bunch of hicks, but they always get the lights back on about an hour after the storms end. I promised you a special dinner, and that's what you're going to get.'

'Goody.'

'What would you like to do? I have to get some more work done in my office, and then I have to help in the kitchen, so you'll be more or less on your own.'

'I'd like to talk to Agnes some more,' Nora said.

'We'll have to save that for another day.' Three short dashes bracketed by outturned parentheses appeared in the middle of Marian's forehead, then melted away. 'Weren't you interested in Georgina's papers?'

'I'd love to see them.' The records were bound to be in the office on the second floor, and Dart had to go to the bathroom sometime.

'Can a thirsty man get a drink around here?' Dart asked.

'Absolutely,' Marian said. 'Come with me and I'll set you both up.'

Tossing back her hair, she took them into the main corridor, went down the marble steps, and looked back up at Nora. 'Don't you want to see the records?'

'Aren't they upstairs?' Nora asked.

'They were, but after a couple of writers invaded Margaret's office, we moved everything into the little room my secretary used to have, when I had a secretary.'

Marian led them to a windowless cubicle fitted with a desk, a schoolroom chair, and metal shelves half-filled with bound ledgers, files of correspondence, and boxes marked PHOTOGRAPHS. 'Norman, I'll be right back with your drink. Vodka, is that right? On the rocks?

'Drink to build a dream on.'

If there had ever been a telephone in the cubicle, it had vanished along with Marian's secretary.93

Ten minutes later. Dart repeated the first thing he had said after Marian had left them. He was leaning back in the chair with his feet up on a shelf, stirring the ice cubes in what was left of his drink with a finger. 'That story was even worse than Jane Austen's garbage.'

Nora closed one ledger and took another from the pile in front of her. Throughout the twenties and early thirties Georgina had spent a great deal of money on champagne acquired through a bootlegger named Selden, who after the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933 had apparently opened a liquor store. Models of order in one regard, the ledgers were chaotic in most others. In a hand which degenerated over the years from a Gothic upright to a barbed-wire scribble, Georgina had recorded every dollar which had entered and left Shorelands, but she'd made no distinctions between personal expenses and those of the estate. A five-dollar outlay for a new fountain pen appeared beneath one for three hundred dollars' worth of Dutch tulip bulbs. Nor had she been rigid as to dates.

'Maybe Agnes saw Chancel running down the path. Maybe she made the whole thing up one night after nipping too much amontillado, but we'll never know. You know why? Shorelands is the Roach Motel for reality. The truth goes in, but it never comes out, and the reason for that is Georgina. Do you think Georgina Weatherall was ever capable, even way back in the days before she swapped sherry for liquid morphine, of giving you an accurate account of what took place on any given day?'

'Judging by the state of her records, not really.'

'Those novelists must have felt right at home. This whole place is fiction.' He laughed out loud, delighted by his own cleverness. 'Even the name is a lie. It's called Shorelands, but it isn't on any shore. Old George thought she was beautiful and grand and universally adored, but the truth is, she was a horse-faced joke in circus clothes who got people to show up by giving them free room and board. Having famous writers suck up to her made her feel important. She couldn't stand reality, so she went around pretending the run-down shacks her servants used to live in were 'cottages'. She handed out these fancy names. I dub thee Gingerbread, I dub thee Rapunzel, and while I'm at it, I think I'll dub that mangy swamp up there the Mist Field. What does that tell you? Pretty soon a little girl with an apron is going to show up trotting after a rabbit on its way to a tea party.'

'I think I'm the little girl,' Nora said.

'There you are. Why should Agnes be any different? She spent her whole life in this illusion factory. She has no idea what really happened to that girl.'

'I think she does,' Nora said, 'and something you said a little while ago gave me an idea.'

Dart looked pleased with himself again. 'I don't believe it for a second, but how did she find out?'

'Georgina told her what happened to Katherine.'

'That makes a lot of sense. The great lady tells a servant that she helped conceal a murder? If it was a murder, which I also doubt.'

'You heard Agnes.'

'Agnes is stuck in bed while her archrival, Lily Melville, is bouncing around handing out lies to tourists. She's alone up in that room with Henry David Thoreau, and she thinks he's a liar, too.'

'They do need a little more reality around here,' Nora said.

'About eleven or twelve tonight, they'll get more than they can handle. In the meantime, find anything in those books?'

'Not yet.' She took another ledger from the pile. The entries began in June of an unspecified year with the receipt of a five-hundred-dollar check from G. W., presumably Georgina's father, and the expenditure of $45.80 for gardening supplies. The next entry was 18 June, $75 -, Selden Liq., Veuve Clicquot, so the ledger had been filled sometime after 1933. The handwriting had only just begun its deterioration.

'What a diligent little person you are, Nora-pie.' He lounged over to the shelves and pulled down a box marked PHOTOGRAPHS. Nora flipped pages of the ledger, and Dart began sifting through the box. She worked her way through another three or four pages without finding mention of any sum larger than a few thousand dollars. 'Agnes wasn't bad-looking way back then,' Dart said. 'No wonder Chancel groped her.'

He handed her a small black-and-white photograph, and she looked at the pleasant face of the young Agnes Brotherhood, whose prominent breasts plumped out the front of her black uniform. Undoubtedly the maid had been forced to swat away any number of male paws. She passed the photograph back to Dart, and the instant he took it from her, she knew how Katherine Mannheim had died. She had known all along without knowing: her own life gave her the answer.

Shaken, she turned a few pages at random, scarcely taking in the cryptic entries. A case of gin and two bottles of vermouth from the liquor store owned by Georgina's former bootlegger. Meds., $23.95. Disc, $55.65. Whl.Mt., $2.00. Mann & Ware, phtgrs., $65.

'Hold on,' Nora said. 'Did professional photographers take any of those pictures?'

'Sure. The big group photos.'

Dart rooted through the box and handed her an eight-by-twelve photograph of the usual group of men in suits and neckties surrounding a regal Georgina. Stamped on the back was the legend 'Patrick Mann & Lyman Ware, Fine Portraiture, Mann-Ware Studios, 26 Main St. Lenox, Massachusetts.'

Patrick Mann, Paddy Mann, Paddi Mann.

Lyman Ware, Madame Lyno-Wyno Ware, Lena Ware.

Shorelands, Night Journey, Davey Chancel.

Two photographers who took the group portrait every year, two fictional characters, a troubled Driver fanatic who had pursued Davey.

'A little bee is buzzing around up there.'

She handed the photograph back to him. A girl named Patricia Mann, Patty Mann, had immersed herself in the Driver world and become first Lena Ware, then Paddi Mann. Part of her entry into the world of lunatic Driver fans had been the coincidence of her name resembling that of a Lenox photographer.

Then it came home to Nora that Paddi Mann had been Katherine Mannheim's niece: family rumor had pushed her even deeper into the Driver world. She had been convinced that her father's unconventional sister had written her sacred book and had twice tried to rescue her aunt from oblivion. She had even dressed like Katherine Mannheim.

Nora riffled the pages of the ledger, and a name and a number seemed to leap up toward her.