The Hellfire Club

'Marian, perhaps you'd better take a candle up to Agnes. She has eaten, hasn't she?'

'If you can call it eating,' Marian said. 'Don't worry, I'll take care of it. And I'll bring back more candles, so we can see our plates.'

'And will you check the phones?' She turned to Dart. 'One of the few drawbacks of living in a place like this is that when the lights go out, fifty percent of the time the phones do, too. They're too miserly to put in underground phone lines.'

'Curse of democracy,' Dart said. 'All the wrong people are in charge.'

Margaret gave him a look of glittering indulgence. 'That's right, you share Georgina Weatherall's taste for strong leaders, don't you?'

Lily looked up, for the moment distracted from her terror. 'I've been thinking about that. It's true, the mistress did say that powerful nations should be led by powerful men. That's why she liked Mr Chancel. He was a powerful man, she said, and someone like that should be running the country.'

Dart beamed at her. 'Good girl, Lily, you've rejoined the living. I agree with the mistress completely. Lincoln Chancel would have made a splendid president. We need a man who knows how to seize the reins. I could do a pretty good job myself, I venture to say.'

'Is that right,' Margaret said.

Dart took the last of the white wine. 'Death penalty for anyone stupid enough to be caught committing a crime. Right there, give the gene pool a shot in the arm. Public executions, televised in front of a live audience. Televise trials, don't we? Let's show 'em what happens after the trial is over. Abolish income tax so that people with ability stop carrying the rabble on their backs. Put schools on a commercial basis. Instead of grades, give cash rewards funded by the corporate owners. So on and so forth. Now that the salad part of the meal has been taken care of, why don't we dig into whatever's under those lids?'

Margaret said, 'It occurs to me that a playful conversation like this, with wild flights of fancy, must be similar to those held here during Miss Weatherall's life. Would you agree, Lily?'

'Oh, yes,' Lily said. 'To hear some of those people talk, you'd think they'd gone right out of their heads.'

'One of the paintings in this room was actually here in those days. Along with the portrait of Miss Weatherall's father on the staircase, it's all that survives from her art collection. Can you tell which one it is?'

'That one.' Nora pointed to a portrait of a woman whose familiar face looked out from beneath a red hat the size and shape of a prize-winning pumpkin.

'Correct. Miss Weaiherall, of course. I believe that portrait brings out all of her strength of character.' Marian came back into the room with a candlestick in each hand and two others clamped to her sides.

'I think you might remove the hors d'oeuvres plates, Marian, and give me the others so that I can serve up the main course. How is poor Agnes?'

'Overexcited, but I couldn't say why.' Marian began collecting the plates. 'The phones are out. I suppose they'll be working again by morning.'

'I'd love to see Agnes once more,' Nora said.

Margaret lifted a silver cover off what appeared to be a large, round loaf of bread. Flecks of green dotted the crust. 'Norma, I'm sure that Lily and I can be at least as helpful as Agnes Brotherhood. What is this project of yours? A book?'

'Someday, maybe. I'm interested in a certain period of Shorelands life.'

Margaret cut into the crust. With two deft motions of the knife, she ladled a small section of the dish onto the topmost plate. Thin brown slices of meat encased in a rich gravy slid out from beneath the thick crust. To this she added glistening snow peas from the other serving dish. 'There are buttermilk biscuits in the basket. Norma, would you please pass this to Lily?'

Dart watched the mixture ooze from beneath crust. 'What is that stuff?'

'Leek and rabbit pie, and snow peas tossed in butter. The rabbit is in a beurre manie sauce, and I'm pretty sure I got all the bay leaves out.'

'We're eating a rabbit?'

'A good big one, too. We were lucky to find it.' She filled another plate. 'In the old days, Monty Chandler caught three or four rabbits a month, isn't that what you said, Lily?'

'That's right.' Lily leaned over and inhaled the aroma.

'Marian, would you bring us the Talbot?' She arranged the remaining plates, and Marian poured four glasses of wine.

As soon as she sat down. Dart dug into his pie and chewed suspiciously for a moment. 'Pretty tasty for vermin.'

Margaret turned to Nora. 'Norma, I gather that the research you speak of concentrates on Hugo Driver.'

Nora wished that she were able to enjoy one of the better meals of her life. 'Yes, but I'm also interested in the other people who were here that summer. Merrick Favor, Creeley Monk, Bill Tidy, and Katherine Mannheim.'

Lily Melville frowned at her plate.

'Rather an obscure bunch. Lily, do you remember any of them?'

'Do I ever,' Lily said. 'Mr Monk was an awful man. Mr H Favor was handsome as a movie star. Mr Tidy felt like a fish out of water and kept to himself. He didn't like the mistress, but at least he pretended he did. Unlike her. She couldn't be bothered, sashaying all around the place.' She glared at Nora. 'Fooled the mistress and fooled Agnes, but she didn't fool me. Whatever happened to that one, it was better than she deserved.'

The hatred in her voice, loyally preserved for decades, was Georgina's. This too was the real Shorelands.

Margaret had also heard it, but she had no knowledge of its background. 'Lily, I've never heard you speak that way about anyone before. What did this person do?'

'Insulted the mistress. Then she ran off, and she stole something, too.'

A partial recognition shone in Margaret's face. 'Oh, this was the guest who staged a mysterious disappearance. Didn't she steal a Rembrandt drawing?'

'Redon,' Nora said.

'Made you sick to look at. It was a woman with a bird's head, all dark and dirty. It showed her private bits. Reminded me of her, and that's the truth.'

'Norma, perhaps we should forget this unfortunate person and concentrate on our Driver business. According to Marian, you feel that Shorelands may have inspired Night Journey. Could you help me to understand how?'

Nora was grateful that she had just taken a mouthful of the rabbit pie, for it gave her a moment's grace. She would have to invent something. Lord Night was a caricature of Monty Chandler? Gingerbread was the model for the Cup Bearer's hovel?

A gust of wind howled past the windows.

Sometime earlier, following Lily on the tour, she had sensed… had half-sensed… had been reminded of…

'We should visit the Song Pillars,' Marian said. 'Can you imagine how they sound now?'

Lily shuddered.

A door opened in Nora's mind, and she understood exactly what Paddi Mann had meant. 'The Song Pillars are a good example of the way Driver used Shorelands,' she said.

Dart put down his fork and grinned.

'He borrowed certain locations on the estate for his book. The reason more people haven't noticed is that most Driver fanatics live in a very insular world. On the other side, Driver has never attracted much academic attention, and the people who know Shorelands best, like yourselves, don't spend a lot of time thinking about him.'

'I never think about him,' Margaret said, 'but I think I am about to make up for the lapse. What is it you say we haven't noticed?'

'The names,' Nora said. 'Marian just mentioned the Song Pillars. Driver put them into Night Journey and called them the Stones of Toon. Toon, song? He changed the Mist Field into the Field of Steam. Mountain Glade is-'