The Hellfire Club

'Holy shit, I think she did,' Davey said. 'Holy shit. She really did. Holy shit. It's no wonder they were so freaked when you accused her of writing the horror novels. This could absolutely finish us off.'

'I don't see why,' Nora said. 'Doesn't it put your mother in a good light? If she did write those books, that is.'

'God, you're naive. If this gets out, my father gets accused of fraud, and Night Journey immediately becomes suspect. There'll be lawyers all over the place.'

'If it gets out.'

'It better not. This has to stay secret, Nora.'

'I'm sure it does,' she said.

'At least we finally got to Miami. If the Cup Bearer knew my mother wrote those books, I guess I'm not surprised that they had to buy her off and get rid of her. Wow.'

'Hold on to your hat,' Nora said.80

As she told Jeffrey early the next morning in the restaurant off the terrace, the rest of their long conversation had lasted half an hour, and in the course of it Nora had felt Davey's universe spin and wobble. His past had been yanked inside out; Nora had questioned the central theme of his life. He ridiculed, protested, denied. He had hung up after ten minutes and picked up the telephone again only after it had rung a dozen times. Think about what she wrote/ Nora had said, and listening to her account while spreading damson preserves on a croissant, Jeffrey shook his head. He, too, at first had been suspicious of the night's discoveries. Think about what your grandfather was like and what your father did to us, but first of all, think about what Daisy put in that book. That's your story, Davey. It's a message to you.' No, no, no. Helen Day had lied. Nora had brought him back again and again to the child abandoned in and rescued from the forest, to My mother is my mother. 'If it's true, I'm Pippin,' Davey had said, sounding the first note of the awe which follows all great revelations. Nora had told him, 'You've always been Pippin,' and she had not added what she told herself: Me, too. 'I feel like Leonard Gimmel or Teddy Brunhoven,' he had said. There is a code, and I can read it.'

'Yes. There is a code, and it's about you.'

'She wanted me to know. Even though she couldn't tell me.'

'She wanted you to know.'

'Should I confront him? Should I go over there and tell him I know?'

For the first time in their marriage, Nora advised Davey not to confront his father. 'You'd have to tell him how you found out, and I don't want anybody to know where I am.'

'That's right. I'll wait until whenever. Until I can.'

This had left unspoken more than Nora liked. 'You believe me, anyhow, don't you?'

'It took me a while, but, yeah, I do. I guess I really ought to thank you. I know that sounds funny, but I am grateful, Nora.'

Fine, but gratitude isn't enough is what she had said to herself when the conversation had limped to an inconclusive end.

She tore a flaky section off a croissant and put it in her mouth. Less than a quarter of the pastry, her second, now remained on her plate, and she was still hungry. Three tables away, a pair of heavyset men in windbreakers stoked in enormous breakfasts of scrambled eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes. Nora felt as though she could have eaten both of their meals.

On the other side of the window wall to her right, a tall boy in a blue shirt was washing the terrace flagstones with a bucket, a long broom, and a hose. Rivulets sparkled and gleamed between the shining stones. Another boy was flapping pink tablecloths over the tables like sails and smoothing them out with his hands. It was as humble as the two men and their breakfasts, but to Nora this scene suddenly seemed to overflow with significance. Then she remembered a photograph Dick Dart had shown her in the Springfield library. The golden key.

'To change the subject, you think Dart called Ev Tidy,' Jeffrey said.

She nodded and reached for another section of croissant, but she had eaten it all.

'Let me get you some more of those.' In a few seconds, Jeffrey returned carrying a plate heaped with sweet rolls, croissants, and thick slices of honeydew. Nora attacked the melon with her knife and fork.

'Do you think Ev is safe?'

'He said he was going to a house he owns in Vermont.' Nora finished the melon and began on the Danish. She felt as energetic as if she'd had a full night's sleep, and she had an idea of how to fill the next few days.

'You can't be as casual as you seem about Dart being in town,' said Jeffrey.

'I'm not casual about it at all. I want to leave Northampton this morning.'

'I was thinking about a nice little inn not far from Alford. If you like, we could see my mother for a bit, and then I could run you over there. It's charming, and the people who own the place were friends of my parents. Besides, the food is great.'

For a secular monk, Jeffrey placed a sybaritic degree of importance on meals. 'I do want to see your mother, but I'd like to go somewhere else after that, if you don't mind.'

'You want to stay with Ev in Vermont?'

'That's not quite what I had in mind. Don't they rent out the old cottages at Shorelands?'

He gave a doubtful nod. 'You want to go to Shorelands?'

Nora groped for an explanation that would make sense to him. 'I've spent days listening to people talk about that place, and I'd like to see what it looks like.'

Jeffrey folded his arms over his chest and waited.

She glanced outside at the boys, one of them sluicing away the last of the soapy water, the other arranging chairs around the tables, and moved a step nearer the truth. 'I'm in a unique position. I've talked to Mark Foil and Ev Tidy, but they've never talked to each other. Foil knows what Creeley Monk wrote in his journal, and Tidy knows what his father wrote, but the only person who really knows what's in both journals is me, and I have the feeling that there's a missing piece. Nobody ever tried to put everything together. I'm not saying I can, but last night and this morning, when I was thinking about all these conversations I've been having, it seemed to me that I at least had to look at the place. Half of me has no idea what's going on or what to do, but the other half is saying, Go to Shorelands, or you'll miss everything.'

' 'Miss everything,'' Jeffrey said. ''A missing piece,' Is it just me, or are you talking about Katherine Mannheim?'

'She's at the center of it. I don't know why, but I almost feel responsible for her.' Jeffrey jerked up his head. 'All these people had conflicting views of her. She was rude, she was impatient, she was a saint, she was a tease, she was truthful, evasive, dedicated, frivolous, completely crazy, completely sane… She goes to Shorelands, she gets everybody worked up in a different way, and she never comes out. What comes out instead? What's the only thing that really comes out of that summer? Night Journey.'

Jeffrey regarded her with what looked like mingled interest and doubt. 'The way you put it, you make it sound like the book is a kind of substitute for her.' He thought for a second. 'Or like she's in it.'

'Not directly, nothing like that. But a phrase of hers is: the Cup Bearer.' Jeffrey opened his mouth, and Nora rushed to say, 'I know we've talked about this before, but it still seems like an enormous coincidence. Davey saw that photograph of the sisters in your mother's apartment at the Poplars, but Hugo Driver couldn't have seen it. It's part of the missing piece.'

'If you want to play detective, I'll cooperate. It is possible to stay there. Five or six years ago, a French publisher, a great Driver admirer who wanted to stay there for a night, had some trouble getting accommodations. Alden asked me to take care of it for him. Which I did. The Shorelands Trust runs the estate, and some of the old staff is put up in Main House, but Pepper Pot and Rapunzel have rooms for people who want to stay the night. I got the French guy a room in Rapunzel, and he was delighted. So was Alden.'

'Will you call them?'

'While you pack, but first I want to ask you a question,'

'Go ahead.' She braced herself, but Jeffrey's question was milder than any she had expected.

'Why did you want to tell me the family secrets? I came to the Poplars so late that I didn't even know Davey was supposed to have been adopted.'

'I didn't want to be the only other person who knew.' She stopped short of adding. In case