The Hellfire Club

'I should have guessed the RISD part,' Davey said. Rod Clampett, Chancel's art director, had gone to RISD and liked hiring its graduates.

Paddi said, 'Don't you think all this Shorelands business is like some huge plot that you can't quite see?'

Davey began to laugh. 'Well, if you're looking for a sinister plot, Lincoln Chancel is your man. He was a tremendous crook, I'm sure. It's like the big secret in my family - the thing we don't talk about. On the way up, my dad's dad obviously stabbed everybody he met in the back, he must have stolen with both hands whenever he had the chance, he raped his way into a huge fortune…'

Davey stopped talking for a moment, a meaningless smile stuck to his face, as the crowded darkness in the center of the room seemed to thicken. He glanced down, and his eye found propped on the sofa the photograph from Shorelands. Lincoln Chancel was suddenly before him, beaming undimmed fury, rage, and frustration into his soul.

Paddi stroked his cheek with a cool finger and then stood up, held out her hand, and stepped back to lead him across the room.

'She insulted my grandfather, didn't she? That girl who disappeared.'

'Maybe your grandfather insulted her.'

Moving backwards, she drew him toward a mural in which Lord Night stood guard at the black opening of a cave, came up to the wall, and instead of bumping into it, slipped into the cave. Davey followed her through the opening.

And that, Davey said, was the end of his story.26

'How can that be the end?' Nora was trying not to yell. 'What happened?'

'This is the part that's hard to talk about.'

Davey had not finished talking about Paddi Mann. He had merely finished talking in that way.

'You remember what we saw today? Where we went?'

Nora nodded, almost dreading whatever he would say next.

He gave her no help.' That's the point.'

'Did you ever find the manuscript? What happened to her? Oh no, you're not going to tell me she was killed, are you?'

'I never did find the manuscript. Anyhow, my father told me that he'd decided against doing a scholarly edition of Night Journey.'

'That must have upset Paddi.'

Davey went back to smoothing out the bedcover, and Nora tried again. 'She was so committed to that project.'

Davey nodded, looking down and pushing his lips forward in the way he did when forced into an uncomfortable situation.

'Just tell me what happened.'

'We had that Thursday night, when I gave her the picture. On Monday, I never saw her at all, and when I got back to my apartment all the coke caught up with me and I slept for two straight days. I just conked out. Woke up barely in time to shower and put on new clothes before I went back to the office.'

'Where Alden told you he wasn't going through with your pet project. And you had to break the news to Paddi.'

'She was hanging around in the hallway when I got up to the fifteenth floor, like someone had told her what was going to happen. We Didn't really have time to talk before I went in, and she said, 'Seven-thirty?' or something like that, and I nodded, and then I went in and saw Dad. She was still there when I came out, and I gave her the bad news. She didn't say a word. Just turned around and left. So at seven-thirty, I went to her place.

'When I got up to the loft, she wasn't there, so I walked around for a little bit. I thought she might have been asleep or in the bathroom or something. I looked at her books. You know what they were? Nothing but editions of Driver novels. Hardbacks, paperbacks, foreign languages, illustrated editions.'

That's not too surprising,' Nora said.

'Wait. Then, of course, I had to go through the opening in the mural and look at the only other place in the whole loft I'd ever seen. So I walk into the cave. And my eyes bug out and my heart just about stops and I'm stuck. And after about a hundred years go by, I'm unstuck, I realize I'm not going to faint after all.'

He looked at Nora, who did nothing but look back at him. This, too, had the tone of one of Davey's inventions.

'It was like a slaughterhouse. There was blood everywhere. I was so scared. I was pretty sure you couldn't lose that much blood and still be alive, and I was gritting my teeth until I saw her body. I got to the other side of the bed, where this big smear of blood went all the way across the floor and halfway up the wall. And that almost made me puke, because I'd been sure I was going to see her there. I even looked under the bed.'

'Why didn't you call the police?' And why do I want to believe this? He's describing Natalie's room.

'I didn't know where the phone was! I don't even know if there was a phone!' Davey looked wildly around the bedroom and opened and closed his mouth several limes, as if trying to swallow this remark.

'Weren't you afraid that whoever did it was still there?'

'Nora, if I'd even thought of that, I would have had a heart attack on the spot.'

'Where did you find her body?'

'I didn't.'

'Well, where was it? It must have been somewhere.'

'Nora, that's what I'm saying. Nobody found it. It wasn't there.'

'Somebody took it?'

'I don't know!' Davey yelled. He pressed both hands to his; face, then let them drop.

'Oh. It was like Natalie, you mean. The body was gone, like Natalie.'

He nodded. 'Like Natalie.'

Nora struggled to regain a sense of control, of a world in which things made sense. 'But there can't really be any connection, can there?'

'You think I know?'

She tried again. 'I don't suppose Natalie Weil quoted Hugo Driver at you and had you rummaging around for lost manuscripts…' In the midst of this, Nora remembered the books in Natalie Weil's bedroom, and the sentence trailed off.

'No, I don't suppose;' Davey said, still not looking up.

The moment of silence which followed seemed extraordinarily crowded to Nora.

'What did you do when you realized that she wasn't there?'

Davey inhaled deeply and looked over her shoulder. 'I was too scared to go home, so I walked all the way to midtown and took a hotel room under a phony name. Around noon the next day, I called Rod Clampett and asked if Paddi had turned up yet. He said he hadn't seen her all day, but he'd tell her to give me a call when she showed up. Of course, she never did.'

'I guess you couldn't exactly look for her,' Nora said. 'But Davey, excuse me, what's the point of all this?'

'I have to get up and move around a little. Could you make some coffee or something?'

'I could make decaf,' she said, looking at the digital clock on the bedside radio. It was 2:00 A.M. She took from the couch a pale yellow robe, slipped it on, and tied its sash.

Davey was sitting up in bed and staring at nothing. For a second, he looked like someone Nora had never seen before, an ineffectual man who would always be puzzled by life. Then he glanced up at Nora and was again her husband, Davey Chancel, trying to seem less distressed than he was.

'Nora,' he said, 'do you know where that blue silk bathrobe is, the one from Thailand?'

'On the hook in the bathroom,' she said, and padded out to make coffee.27

Davey sipped his decaffeinated French Roast and winced at the heat. 'A little kummel would go nicely with this mocha Java, don't you think?'