The Hellfire Club

'Or wanted to be,' said Tidy. 'Georgina was outraged. Here's what my father says:

'Miss Weatherall tugged her layers of purple and crimson around her shoulders. Her face turned bright red beneath her makeup. She muttered that she would convey Miss Mannheim's compliments to the maid. Hugo Driver, next in line, began by praising Miss Weatherall's generosity and went on to speak at such length of the meals, the gardens, the conversations, that by the time he finished with a panegyric to our hostess, a genius whose greatness lay in this, that, and the other, no one noticed that he had never bothered to mention his writing.

'As a result,' Tidy concluded, 'we don't actually know what either one of them was working on during that summer.'

'Driver saw a chance to hide behind a smoke screen,' Nora said.

'Maybe because he wasn't making much progress, which would mean that he was more and more dependent on Lincoln Chancel. Anyhow, when it was my father's turn, he spoke as much to Chancel as to Georgina Weatherall. My father continued to hold out hope even after he came back home.'

'Did he ever finish his book?' Nora asked.

Tidy inhaled sharply, then swiveled his chair to face her with all of his suppressed intensity visible in his eyes. 'Let me ask you this. Have you been told what happened to the novel Merrick Favor was working on?'

'It was torn to pieces.'

'As was my father's book. Shredded, carbon and all.'

Jeffrey spoke for the first time since they had come into the library. 'What are you saying, Ev?'

With what seemed to Nora a deliberate and momentary relaxation of his iron self-control, Tidy looked up at his father's photograph. 'So here we are, at the serious matter.'

'Don't keep us in suspense,' Jeffrey said.

'I'll try not to.' Tidy glanced at Nora, then back up at the photograph.' The winter after he came back from Shorelands, my father told my mother that he was pretty sure he could finish his book in two or three weeks if he could work without interruptions. The upshot was that we were invited back to Key West - when my father was done, he was invited down, too, to celebrate. Boogie Ammons said, 'It's worth a few hamburgers to finally get that book out of you.' A little more than two weeks later, a policeman came to the hotel and told my mother that my father had killed himself.'

'I couldn't read anything he wrote until I was teaching here and had a family of my own. His journals were in a trunk in my basement. One night when everyone else was in bed, I drove to this library, took out Our Skillets, brought it home, opened a bottle of cognac, and stayed up until I finished the book. It was an incredibly emotional experience. Then I had to read his journals. When I finally felt strong enough to face the last one, I found something completely unexpected. A week before we went to Florida, his agent had written to tell him that he'd been approached by Lincoln Chancel, who was interested in making a confidential exploration of my father's situation. Chancel had liked what he'd heard of the new book, wondered how close the book was to completion and whether my father might be willing to consider his publishing it. My father wrote back, saying that he was close to finishing the book and wanted to show it to Chancel. He didn't mention any of this to my mother.'

'About a week later, he got some exciting news. Since he was writing for himself, he wasn't very specific about this in his journal. See what you make of this.

'I left my typewriter to answer the telephone. I spoke my name. What a great change came then. There is to be a royal visit. The Royal Being will come alone. I am to tell no one, and if I violate this condition by so much as hinting about this matter, even to my wife, all is off. Only He and I are to be present. The great event is to take place in three days. I don't know what I expected, but THIS, well, THIS beats all.'

He looked over at Nora. 'Well?'

'It's like Creeley Monk,' she said. 'Was the visit called off?'

'Here's the last thing my father wrote.

'Cancellation. No explanation. I can hardly pick myself up off the floor. Can I continue? Do I have a choice? I have no choice, but how can I continue when I feel like this?

'It's exactly what happened to Creeley Monk a few days later. Do you think it can be a coincidence?'

'I guess not,' Nora said, 'but that would mean-'

'That Monk got the same kind of call as my father. Doesn't it seem likely that Merrick Favor and Austryn Fain were approached in the same way? And doesn't it seem even likelier that the person who arranged a private meeting and then canceled it was Lincoln Chancel?'

'Good God,' Jeffrey said. 'You think it was a setup.'

'It would have taken more than rejection from Lincoln Chancel to make my father throw in the towel.'

Nora stared at him. Then she gave a wild look across the table at Jeffrey, who had evidently seen where all this was going sometime before. 'You think Lincoln Chancel murdered your father and Creeley Monk. And Merrick Favor and Austryn Fain, too.'

'I think Chancel pushed him out of the window and tore his manuscript to bits, just like Favor's.'

'Maybe this is obvious, but why would he do it?'

'I suppose he had something to hide,' said Tidy.

'The real authorship of Night Journey.'

'Of course,' said Jeffrey. 'Monk knew that Driver was a thief. He told Merrick Favor, and both your father and Fain overheard, but nobody believed him. Later Favor told them both that Monk was right. He was convinced he'd seen Driver steal something from Katherine Mannheim. Everybody knew that Driver was having trouble with whatever he was writing, but six months later he produces this stupendous book, and gives the copyright to Chancel House.'

'There you are,' Tidy said. 'Chancel was as ruthless with Driver as with everyone else. All he had to take care of was the possibility that Katherine Mannheim had spoken about her work to one of the other guests.'

'He made these confidential appointments,' Nora said, 'and canceled them. Then he showed up on their doorsteps and waited for them to turn their backs.'

For a second, the three people in the room at the top of the library said nothing.

'Now what?' Nora asked.

'It seems the rest is up to you,' said Tidy.72

'What am I supposed to do?' Nora asked. 'I can't prove that Davey's grandfather murdered four people fifty- five years ago. It makes sense to Everett Tidy and you and me, but who else is going to believe all this?'

'I think Ev meant that you should continue what you're already doing.' The sky was still bright, and vibrant green fields lay on either side of the long, straight road to Northampton. Warm wind streamed into Nora's face and ruffled her short hair while seeming to slip past Jeffrey without touching him.

'What am I doing?'

'Taking one step after another.'

'Brilliant. After all that, do you think that Katherine Mannheim wrote Night Journey?'

'I think it's more likely than I did this morning.'

'Why is it so important for me to meet your mother?'

'I always forget how pretty this part of Massachusetts is.' He would not be drawn.

'All right. Let's try another subject. What did your father do?'

'He was a cook, or maybe I should say chef. My whole family, on that side anyhow, were all great cooks. My great grandfather was the head chef at the Grand Palazo della Fonte in Rome. His brother was the head chef at the Excelsior. Despite the handicap of not being Italian, my mother was as good as all the rest of them. Before my father died, they were going to open a restaurant, She still loves it, in fact.'

'And now she keeps herself busy cooking for the Trustees' Banquet and the President's Reception.'

Jeffrey gave her a sidelong look.

'Your aunt Sabina said something about it.'

'You have a good memory.'

'Is Sabina your mother's sister?'

Jeffrey tugged the Eton cap an eighth of an inch lower on his forehead. For the first time, the breeze buffeting