The Hellfire Club

Conjunctions, which almost certainly represented Martindale's taste in literature, might as well have been written in Urdu, for all she knew of their contents.

'Settle our argument,' Foil said.

Harwich said, 'You shouldn't-'

'No, it's all right,' Nora said. 'I don't think you can settle it, and I don't think you want to, because you get too much fun out of it. Speaking for myself, I like both Benjamin Britten and Morton Peldman, and they probably hated each other's music.' She looked around at the three men. Two of them were gazing at her with undisguised friendly approval, the third with undisguised astonishment.

Martindale smiled at them all and vanished.

As if following stage directions, the three of them picked up their cups and sipped the excellent coffee.

'You're right, we enjoy our ongoing argument, and part of what I like in Andrew is that he keeps trying to bring me up to date. And although Creeley's work is not the sort of thing he generally likes, he's been supportive of my efforts to publish a Collected Poems.' Foil smiled at her. 'It would be nice if your work finally permitted me to do him justice.'

Nora felt like crawling out of the house.

'Merle must be your editor.'

'Excuse me?'

'Merle Marvell. At Chancel House. Isn't he your editor?'

'Oh, yes, of course. I didn't realize you knew him.'

'We've met him a half dozen times, but I don't really know him except by reputation. As far as I know, Merle is the only person at Chancel who'd have enough courage to take on a project which might turn out less than flattering to Lincoln. In fact, I have the idea that Merle is the only real editor at Chancel House.'

Nora smiled at him, but this conversation was making her increasingly uncomfortable.

'Do you think Chancel House would be willing to publish something which puts Driver in a different light? Creeley didn't think much of him to begin with, and by the end of the summer, he positively detested the man.'

'I think they're willing to present a balanced viewpoint,' Nora said.

'Well, then.' Foil placed his cup in its saucer. 'I don't see why I shouldn't share this with you.' He picked up the thick red book. 'This is the journal Creeley kept during the last year of his life. I read it when I went through his papers after his death. Read it? I studied it. Like every suicide's survivor, I was looking for an explanation.'

'Did you find one?'

'Does anyone? He had been disappointed the day before he killed himself, but I wouldn't have thought…' He shook his head, the memory of defeat clear in his eyes. 'It still isn't easy. Anyhow, if you're interested in bringing the celebrated Hugo Driver down a peg or two, this will be useful to you. The man was a weakling. He was worse than that. It took a while for Creeley to convince anybody of the fact, but he was a thief.'61

Nora's blood seemed to slow. 'Are you saying that he stole other writers' work?'

'Oh, they all do that, starting with Shakespeare. I'm talking about real theft. Unless you're saying that Driver actually plagiarized Night Journey. But if that was your story, I hardly suppose Chancel would be backing you.' He grinned. 'Instead of giving you a contract, they'd be more likely to put one out on you, Merle Marvell or no Merle Marvell.'

Harwich chuckled, and Nora silenced him with a murderous glance. 'Are you saying that Creeley Monk saw him steal things from the other guests?'

'Not just Creeley, thank goodness. You're interested in all of them, aren't you? In everything that went on that summer?'

She nodded.

This is what I'm prepared to do.' He gestured with the book. 'I'll describe some of the contents of this journal. You continue your research while Andrew and I are on Cape Cod. When I get back, I'll talk to Merle Marvell and hear what he has to say about you and your project. I'd do that now, but we have limited time this morning. You have the most - ah, colorful - neurosurgeon in the state vouching for you, so I'm willing to go farther than I normally would, but I want to be as cautious as is reasonably possible. You have no objections, I assume?'

She thought hard for a moment while both men looked at her, Harwich shooting sparks of wrath and indignation, Foil calmly. 'Why don't I send you the chapters after they're written? If you let me borrow the journal, I could have more time to sort through all the information, and I can get it back to you at the end of the summer.'

He was already shaking his head. 'I hold Creeley's papers in trust.' Seeing that Nora was about to object, he raised an index ringer. 'However! When Merle tells me that you are indeed what you say you are, as I'm sure he will, I'll give you a copy of all the relevant pages from this diary. Do we have an agreement?'

Harwich gave her a grim, unhappy glance. Nora said, 'I think that will be fine.'

'Okay, then.' A suppressed vitality came into his features, and Nora saw how eager he had been all along to do justice to his dead lover. 'Let me tell you something about his background, so you'll be able to appreciate what sort of person Creeley was.' He paused to gather his thoughts. 'He was a year behind me at the Garand Academy, on a scholarship. We were all alike - except Creeley. Creeley was as conspicuous as a peacock in a field of geese.

'Creeley's father was a bartender, and his mother was an Irish immigrant. They lived in a little apartment above the bar, and he had to take two buses to get to school. Creeley turned up wearing big black work shoes, a hideous striped suit far too big for him, and a Buster Brown collar with a velvet bow tie. Of course, the older boys beat him up, and that was that for the Buster Brown collars, but he kept the velvet bow tie. That had been his idea. He'd read that poets wore velvet bow ties, and Creeley already knew he was a poet. He also knew, at the advanced age of fourteen, that he was sexually attracted to other males, although he pretended otherwise. In order to survive, he had to. But he didn't see any point in pretending about anything else.

'By his second year he resembled the rest of us. Because he was absolutely fearless, because he was such a character, he already had a place in the school. Everybody cherished him. It was remarkable. Here was this utterly philistine school, and Creeley Monk single-handedly made them - us - respect a literary vocation. In his junior year, he published a few poems in national magazines.'

'I went to Harvard, and he came on a full scholarship a year later. It didn't take us long to become close. Creeley and I lived together while I was at medical school, and he moved to Boston when I had my internship and residency there. He got a job writing catalogue copy for a publishing house, and we had separate apartments in the same building, which was his choice. He didn't want to do anything that might compromise my career. But in every other way we were an established couple, and when I moved back here, he did, too. Again, we had separate apartments, and I went into practice with two older men. During this time, Creeley and I were like people in an open marriage. He was devoted to me, and God knows I was devoted to him, but he was promiscuous by nature, and he was commuting to Boston almost every day, so that was how it was.'

'He began publishing in all kinds of journals and magazines, gave readings, won a few prizes. In 1937 The Field Unknown came out, and I'm happy to say it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Georgina Weatherall invited him to Shorelands for the following July, and we both saw this as a great sign.'

'In the end, he was disappointed. None of the writers he most admired were present, and two people there had not even published books - Hugo Driver and Katherine Mannheim. He had seen one story by Katherine Mannheim in a literary magazine, and rather liked it, but she had published a fair amount of poetry, which he liked a lot more. In person, she turned out be a very pleasant surprise. He had imagined her as a kind of a lost, waiflike little thing, and her sharpness and tough-mindedness came as a surprise. There was something else he liked about her, too. I'll read you some of that from the diary. Hugo Driver was another matter. Creeley had read some of his stories in little magazines and thought they were weak tea. Even before Creeley became aware of his thieving, Driver made him uncomfortable. In his first letter back to me, he said Driver was 'dank and desperate,' which turned into a running joke. After a while, he was referring to Driver as 'D&D' in the diary, and then that became 'DD,' which became 'DeDe,' like the girl's; name.'

The others were a mixed bag. Austryn Fain struck him as a clever nonentity, a sort of literary hustler who