The Hellfire Club

Nora shook her head, then changed her mind. 'What the hey.'

Davey went to the cupboard and took out a bottle of Hiram Walker kummel, all Nora had been able to find on her last visit to the liquor store. He frowned at the label to remind her that she should have gone to another liquor store, if not to Germany, to find decent kummel, and filled his cup to the brim. Then he moved behind Nora and tipped perhaps half an inch of the liquid into her cup. A smell of caraway and drunken flowers filled the kitchen.

'Well?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'Yes, what?' She sipped what tasted like a poison antidote with an accidental similarity to coffee.

'Yes, there is more. Yes, I'm kind of leery of telling you about it.'

She found herself taking another sip of the mixture, which seemed less ghastly than before.

'I left out one thing about the last time I was in Paddi's loft.'

'Oh, no.'

'It wasn't anything I did, Nora. I'm not guilty of anything.'

Then why do you look so guilty? she wondered.

'Okay, I did something.' He drank again and tilted back his head as if, like a bird, he had to do that to swallow. Then he lowered his head and folded his hands around his cup. 'I told you about looking under her bed.'

Nora suddenly felt that whatever Davey said next would forever change the way she felt about him. Then she thought that his story about Paddi Mann had already changed the way she thought about Davey.

'I saw something under there.'

'You saw something,' she said.

'A book.'

Is that all? Nora thought. No severed head, no million dollars in a paper bag?

'After I fished it out, I thought she might even have left it for me. What do you think it was?'

'The Egyptian Book of the Dead? The, uh, that Lovecraft thing, the Necronomicon?'

'Night Journey. A paperback.'

'Forgive me,' she said, 'but that doesn't actually seem too startling.'

Davey held her eyes with his own and took another swig of his doctored coffee. 'Uh huh. I opened it up. You know, maybe there was a note or something in it for me. But there wasn't anything in it except what was supposed to be there. And her name.'

'Her name,' Nora said, feeling like an echo.

'Written on the flyleaf. At the top. Paddi Mann.'

'She wrote her name in it.'

'That's right. I shoved the book in my pocket and took it away with me. A few days later I tried to find it, but the damn thing was lost.'

'It fell out of your pocket.'

'Here we go,' he said, and set his cup down. 'Hold on. I'll be right back.' Davey stood up and walked out of the kitchen, nervously straightening his blue robe.

Nora heard him return to the bedroom. A closet door opened and closed. In a moment, he reappeared holding a familiar black paperback. As if reluctant to surrender it, he sat down and held it up before him in both hands before offering it to Nora.

'Well, I don't suppose this is…' Nora noticed that she was as reluctant to take the book as he was to let go of it. She stopped talking and accepted it. Printed on the flyleaf, which had become slightly discolored, in small clear letters with a ballpoint pen, was PADDI MANN. Beneath her name, Davey had signed his own.

'So it turned up,' Nora said.

'Where, do you suppose?'

'How should I know?' She took her hands off the book, thinking that she did not actually care where the book had surfaced, and for some reason hoping that she would not have to find out. She braced herself for another of Davey's inventions.

'Natalie Weil's bedroom.'

'But-' Nora closed, then opened her mouth. No longer able to bear the expression in Davey's eyes, she looked down at her fingers spread on the edge of the table as if she were about to play the piano. 'This book, the same book.'

'This same book. I saw it when we went in, and after that big cop took us out, I went back, remember? I opened it up and just about passed out. Then I shoved it in my pocket.'

'What made you go back in? Did you suspect that it might be-?'

'Of course not. I wanted to take a closer look at it.' He shrugged his shoulders.

'You don't know how it got there.'

'I didn't put it there, if that's what you mean.'

'You never gave Natalie a copy of Night Journey.'

He looked at her in real exasperation. 'Do I have to spell it out for you?'

Nora guessed he did.

'Someone took it from me. He killed Paddi and left the book for me to find. Later that week he stole it from me. And the same person killed Natalie and left it in her bedroom.

'The wolf killed Paddi Mann?' Nora asked, too confused to speak clearly.

'Lord Night? What does he have to do with it?'

'No, sorry, I mean our wolf - the Westerholm Wolf.' She waved her hands in front of her, as if she were erasing a blackboard. 'That's what I call the… the guy. The man who murdered Natalie and the others.'

'Our wolf.' Davey seemed disturbed, and Nora feared that his disturbance was caused by her appropriation of an animal sacred to Hugo Driver. 'Yeah. It was the same guy. Okay. It has to be. He's not much like Lord Night though.'

'Davey,' she said, 'not everything is related to Huge Driver.'

'Night Journey is. Paddi Mann was certainly interested in Driver.'

She had made him defensive. 'Davey, all I meant is that he couldn't have left Paddi Mann's copy of Night Journey in Sally Michaelman's bedroom, or in Annabelle Austin's, or any of the others. And maybe he didn't steal yours. He probably found it.'

Davey was vigorously shaking his head. 'I bet there's some correspondence between the women he killed and certain parts of the book. In fact, that's obvious.'

'Why is it obvious?'

'Because of Paddi,' he said. 'Paddi was obviously Paddy don't you think?'

'Paddi was Paddi,' she said. 'I don't get it.'

'In the book. The mouse. The mouse named Paddy, who tells Pippin Little about the Field of Steam. Jesus, don't you remember anything? Paddy is… Sometimes I wonder if you ever even read Night Journey.'

'I read parts of it.'

'You lied.' He was looking at her in absolute astonishment.

'You told me you finished it, and you were lying to me .'

'I skipped around,' she said. 'I apologize. I realize that this is important to you -'

'Important.'

'- but aren't you maybe a little upset that a man who killed five women is -'

'Is what?'

'- somehow connected to you? I don't know how to say it, because I don't really understand it.' A flash of pain exploded behind the right half of Nora's forehead and sent a hot tendril down into her pupil. She leaned back in her chair and placed her hand over her eye.