Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

They were chuckling — even chortling!

I replaced the telephone and said, “Gentlemen, please, your laughter is insupportable.” The potential effect of this remark was undone by its being lost within a surge of coarse laughter. I believe that something else was at that moment lost. some dimension of my soul… an element akin to pride. akin to dignity. but whether the loss was for good or ill, then I could not say. For some time, in fact an impossibly lengthy time, they found cause for laughter in the wretched photographs. My occasional attempts to silence them went unheard as they passed the dread photographs back and forth, discarding some instantly and to others returning for a second, even a third, even a fourth and fifth, perusal.

And then at last the barnies reared back, uttered a few nostalgic chirrups of laughter, and returned the photographs to the folder. They were still twitching with remembered laughter, still flicking happy tears from their eyes, as they sauntered grinning back across the office and tossed the file onto my desk. “Ah me, sir, a delightful experience,” said Mr Clubb. “Nature in all her lusty romantic splendor, one might say. Remarkably stimulating, I could add. Correct, sir?”

“I hadn’t expected you fellows to be stimulated to mirth,” I grumbled, ramming the foul thing into the drawer and out of view.

“Laughter is merely a portion of the stimulation to which I refer,” he said. “Unless my sense of smell has led me astray, a thing I fancy it has yet to do, you could not but feel another sort of arousal altogether before these pictures, am I right?”

I refused to respond to this sally but feared that I felt the blood rising to my cheeks. Here they were again, the slugs and maggots.

“We are all brothers under the skin,” said Mr Clubb. “Remember my words. Shame unshared poisons the soul. And besides, it only hurts for a little while.”

Now I could not respond. What was the “it” which hurts only for a little while — the pain of cuckoldry, the mystery of my shameful response to the photographs, or the horror of the barnies knowing what I had done?

“You will find it helpful, sir, to repeat after me: It only hurts for a little while.”

“It only hurts for a little while,” I said, and the naive phrase reminded me that they were only barnies after all.

“Spoken like a child,” Mr Clubb most annoyingly said, “in as it were the tones and accents of purest innocence,” and then righted matters by asking where Marguerite might be found. Had I not mentioned a country place named Green.?

“Green Chimneys,” I said, shaking off the unpleasant impression which the preceding few seconds had made upon me. “You will find it at the end of— Lane, turning right off— Street just north of the town of —. The four green chimneys easily visible above the hedge along — Lane are your landmark, though as it is the only building in sight you can hardly mistake it for another. My wife left our place in the city just after ten this morning, so she should be getting there…” I looked at my watch.”. in thirty to forty-five minutes. She will unlock the front gate, but she will not relock it once she has passed through, for she never does. The woman does not have the self-preservation of a sparrow. Once she has entered the estate, she will travel up the drive and open the door of the garage with an electronic device. This door, I assure you, will remain open, and the door she will take into the house will not be locked.”

“But there are maids and cooks and laundresses and bootboys and suchlike to consider,” said Mr Cuff. “Plus a major-domo to conduct the entire orchestra and go around rattling the doors to make sure they’re locked. Unless all of these parties are to be absent on account of the annual holiday.”

“The servants have the month off,” I said.

“A most suggestive consideration,” said Mr Clubb. “You possess a devilish clever mind, sir.”

“Perhaps,” I said, grateful for the restoration of the proper balance. “Marguerite will have stopped along the way for groceries and other essentials, so she will first carry the bags into the kitchen, which is the first room to the right off the corridor from the garage. Then I suppose she will take the staircase up to her bedroom and air it out.” I took pen and paper from my topmost drawer and sketched the layout of the house as I spoke. “She may go around to the library, the morning room, and the drawing room, opening the shutters and a few windows. Somewhere during this process, she is likely to use the telephone. After that, she will leave the house by the rear entrance and take the path along the top of the bluff to a long, low building which looks like this.”

I drew in the well-known outlines of the studio in its nest of trees on the bluff above the Hudson. “It is a recording studio I had built for her convenience. She may well plan to spend the entire afternoon inside it, and you will know if she is there by the lights.” Then I could see Marguerite smiling to herself as she fit her key into the lock on the studio door, see her let herself in and reach automatically for the light switch, and a wave of emotion rendered me speechless.

Mr Clubb rescued me by asking, “It is your feeling, sir, that when the lady stops to use the telephone she will be placing a call to that energetic gentleman?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, only barely refraining from adding you dolt. “She will seize the earliest opportunity to inform him of their good fortune.”

He nodded with the extravagant caution I was startled to recognize from my own dealings with backward clients. “Let us pause to see all ‘round the matter, sir. Will the lady wish to leave a suspicious entry in your telephone records? Isn’t it more likely that the person she telephones will be you, sir? The call to the athletic gentleman will already have been placed, according to my way of seeing things, either from the roadside or the telephone in the grocery where you have her stop to pick up her essentials.”

Though disliking these references to Leeson’s physical condition, I admitted that he might have a point.

“So, in that case, sir, and I know that a mind as quick as yours has already overtaken mine, you would want to express yourself with the utmost cordiality when the missus calls again, so as not to tip your hand in even the slightest way. But that I’m sure goes without saying, after all you have been through, sir.”

Without bothering to acknowledge this, I said, “Shouldn’t you fellows really be leaving? No sense in wasting time, after all.”

“Precisely why we shall wait here until the end of the day,” said Mr Clubb. “In cases of this unhappy sort, we find it more effective to deal with both parties at once, acting in concert when they are in prime condition to be taken by surprise. The gentleman is liable to leave his place of work at the end of the day, which implies to me that he is unlikely to appear at your lovely country place at any time before seven this evening, or, which is more likely, eight. At this time of the year, there is still enough light at nine o’clock to enable us to conceal our vehicle on the grounds, enter the house, and begin our business. At eleven o’clock, sir, we shall call with our initial report and request additional instructions.”

I asked the fellow if he meant to idle away the entire afternoon in my office while I conducted my business.

“Mr Cuff and I are never idle, sir. While you conduct your business, we will be doing the same, laying out our plans, refining our strategies, choosing our methods and the order of their use.”

“Oh, all right,” I said, “but I trust you’ll be quiet about it.”

At that moment, Mrs Rampage buzzed to say that Gilligan was before her, requesting to see me immediately, proof that bush telegraph is a more efficient means of spreading information than any newspaper. I told her to send him in, and a second later the morning Gilligan, pale of face, dark hair tousled but not as yet completely wild, came treading softly toward my desk. He pretended to be surprised that I had visitors and pantomimed an apology which incorporated the suggestion that he depart and return later. “No, no,” I said, “I am delighted to see you, for this gives me the opportunity to introduce you to our new consultants, who will be working closely with me for a time.”