Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex (36 page)

“I have no idea what that means,” Estelle admitted with a fixed grin as she gave Simon a subtle kick to get her away from this freakish bore.

“It means I shall have to get a television set,” Augusta said. “I’m sure they will broadcast some lovely music. Perhaps Mr Bowlly will return to perform? I do hope so.”

“The few people I know with television sets only bought them to humour their cooks and stop them straying,” Estelle told her snootily. “Frankly I think they’re the most vulgar gimmick. Television won’t last.
In two years’ time it’ll be forgotten, like every other fad – along with that horrid new board game that goes on forever, Monopoly.”

“Miss Fellows is a bit of a boffin,” Simon interjected before Estelle became any more insulting. “Wizard clever with the old science, from what I hear.”

“I assist my brother with his work, when I can,” Augusta answered. “Some of his work, at least – on the technical side. And I do think thermionic valves and glass insulators are quite beautiful.”

Estelle was amused to see those sallow cheeks turning a deeper shade of dull. But she’d had more than enough of this monotonous reject and sought refuge in her champagne. Encouraged by the bubbles, she asked, “Where is your brother? I’d so like to meet him.”

She had to wait until Augusta had changed a record over before receiving a reply.

“He’s attending to business I suppose, if he isn’t here.”

“And what is his business? Even Pater doesn’t know that.”

Augusta’s long face clouded a moment as she groped for a suitable answer. Then it broke into a gawky smile as she remembered something from Dickens.

“Mankind is his business,” she said with a short burst of laughter that sounded more like a bronchial attack in a cat.

While Estelle puzzled on that, Augusta scanned the room.

“There’s Irene,” she said. “He won’t be far from her.”

Estelle and Simon turned to see a strikingly handsome woman in a chartreuse gown, weaving through the guests.

Irene Purbright was a statuesque beauty, with large hazel eyes and lustrous, auburn hair. Her proud features had once graced every picture paper. It was as if a Roman goddess had been made flesh. Many suitors from grand families had courted her, but she was too fine and slippery a fish for their clumsy nets and had grown tired of the London seasons. Now she was believed to be one of Austerly Fellows’ Five Infernal Muses. Their affair had been yet another shocking episode. The doors of genteel
society had been firmly closed against her and her face no longer appeared in
Vogue
. But here she had discovered a grander life, one with ancient fire in its blood and undreamed-of pleasures.

Estelle had heard much about Irene. She had rebelled against conformity and what the world expected of her. Estelle admired that and envied her headstrong independence. As the woman sailed by, Estelle noticed red marks and livid bruises on the alabaster skin of her bare arms and neck. Other women would have covered them up in shame, but not she. Irene displayed them as brazenly as medals.

Leaving Augusta to her recordings, Estelle towed Simon through the room and they followed Irene to the hall. But the woman was nowhere to be seen. Where was she? She couldn’t have vanished up the stairs so quickly and she would have had to sprint to the front entrance with a speed equal to Jesse Owens for them not to have seen her leave that way.

They gazed around in bafflement and Simon accepted another cocktail from the two solemn Indian boys. The answer was directly opposite them. Irene had simply crossed the hall and disappeared beyond a door beneath the stairs.

With a bare light bulb illuminating her way, Irene descended the stone steps leading to the cellar. At the bottom she moved through deserted, vaulted chambers until she came to one in which three wide concentric circles had been inscribed in the floor. Five tall black candles were positioned at specific points around the outside. In the centre, standing in front of six large wooden crates, was Austerly Fellows.

The man’s back was to her. He did not turn around or acknowledge her straight away; his hands were placed palm down on the top of the nearest crate and his head was bowed as if in prayer. Irene knew him better than that.

“What are you doing skulking down here?” she asked.

“I was discussing certain matters with Hankinson,” the man’s silken voice said. “I thought it prudent to take out a little insurance against any
misadventure tonight. I named him Jangler for the first time. He is so right for that role as Lockpick.”

“Hankinson is upstairs being hectored by that Brunhilde of a wife of his, and has been for the past half-hour. You’re neglecting your guests, brooding down here. Joachim has stormed out in a Teutonic rage – you might have spared him fifteen minutes.”

The Abbot of the Angles straightened and the candlelight glistened around the oiled smoothness of his shaven head. He was tall and dressed in a long, monk-like robe of fine black linen, trimmed and lined with gold silk.

“I don’t have time for Ribbentrop’s stagnant speeches tonight,” he told her as he turned. “You know that.”

Irene caught her breath as she always did when his dark eyes pierced her. “I thought…”

“Don’t think,” he commanded, drawing near and stroking her lily-white throat, closing his fingers round it until they aligned with the freshest bruises. “Your pigeon-brained opinions hold no interest for me. That’s not why I keep you.”

She lowered her gaze. No one could withstand his penetrating stare for long. He leaned in to lick her face with his thick tongue, dabbling it in the socket of her eye. Then he pulled away.

“Ribbentrop can go hang,” he remarked. “His blind allegiance to that ranting Austrian bores me.”

“It’s not a competition,” she said, patting her wet cheek and eyelid dry. “Why do you resent Hitler so much? You’ve sulked ever since he marched his tin soldiers into the Rhineland last month. Is it really worth supertaxing your spleen over?”

“You comprehend nothing,” he said sourly. “We are rivals. We both serve the same master. Did you not know? This
is
a contest, in which we vie for His attention and favour. At the moment, Nazism has the lead. Oh, yes, it’s attractive, glamorous and exhilarating, and the early gains and successes will be showily impressive, but it can only ever achieve war –
and wars don’t work. My studies guided me down a different path, one that assures a far more lasting and satisfying conclusion. Come, look on this most wonderful sight.”

He led her into the circles, to the crates.

“In here,” he breathed with barely contained excitement. “Within these wooden boxes lies the true answer, the
only
final solution to the contamination of Peace.”

“Your book?” she asked. “After so long,
Dancing Jacks
is completed?”

The thin lips in that strong, fleshy face parted in a repellent smile.

“Nine years I have laboured on this great task. Into those pages I poured all my knowledge, all the ancient wisdoms and teachings I risked everything to learn. Now, finally, it is ready. Ready to do its work. These books are the most powerful artefacts ever to go out into the world. Tonight, after the ceremony, each of our guests will receive twenty copies. The distribution shall begin at once. Within a year, this insipid country will be under my control – and then…”

“May I see it? Can I hold one in my hands?”

Austerly Fellows took a crowbar from the floor, to prise off one of the lids. Then he changed his mind and set it down.

“After the ceremony,” he said.

“But am I in it? You said I might be.”

“Still searching for immortality?” he observed coldly. “The portraits and Beaton photographs, scandals and newspaper cuttings – they’re not enough for you, are they? What an insatiable appetite for commemoration and longevity you do have.”

“Am I in it?” she repeated.

He gave a dismissive chuckle. “
Everyone
will be in it. And those few aberrations who slip through will also have their uses. Nothing has been left to chance. Every possibility has been anticipated and accommodated. As for you, my honey-lipped, bunny-hipped paramour, yes – you’re in there.”

“As your consort, the High Priestess, Labella? Like you told me?”

“No, that role didn’t really suit you. I decided upon a much more apposite character, into whom I emptied those parts of you that are now departed. The kind and gentle elements of your nature which were irresistible to a fiend such as I, the essential goodness that I’ve squeezed out of your bankrupt soul, that’s what I put in there.”

“If not Labella then… who? A queen?”

His dark eyes glittered at her.

“I made you into a fairy godmother, albeit tragically impaired.”

Irene was never sure when he was mocking her.

“Fairy godmother?”

“A very old and tarnished one,” he taunted. “Face like a withered apple, with no juice left – a spent anachronism, of no use to anybody. She is retired from Court – living alone and uncared for in the wild wood.”

His heartless words stung. Irene had known for some time he was tiring of her. But the thought of life without him was unbearable. She was so totally under his spell and domination.

He gave the crate a last loving caress then strode away. “The ceremony must begin immediately,” he instructed. “Has everyone arrived?”

“Yes,
they’re
here.”

“Then inform the Inner Circle. The time is upon us.”

The woman cast a lingering glance at the crates.

“Tonight will go well, won’t it?” she asked. “The observance is safe?”

“Nothing I have ever done,” he answered gravely, “has ever been more perilous.”

Estelle was just about to return to the party with Simon when she was overwhelmed by a breathlessness and creeping dread. She felt the approach of Austerly Fellows like the onset of a fever. Moments before he and Irene emerged from the cellar, his malignant presence flowed out and filled the hall. When he appeared, Estelle drew close to Simon and the shaven-headed man in the monk’s robes turned to look on her.

The engines of time and the universe halted as she gazed into the abyss of those pitiless eyes. No brilliant gleam from the Moroccan lamp could ever glint in that darkness. When she was a young girl, Estelle’s favourite story had been
The Jungle Book
and now she knew exactly what it was like to be transfixed by Kaa the snake’s hypnotic stare.

The predator glided towards her.

“Delicious,” he purred. “What wide-eyed innocence in so fragile and pleasing a shell. A startled nymph – crept fresh from a Grecian grove – whom a harsh word might shrivel.”

“I’m not that innocent, Mr Fellows,” she said, finding her voice and basking in his attention. “Or may I call you AF? I do anyway so I might as well call you that to your face.”

The corners of that cruel mouth lifted. “You have the advantage of me, Nymph,” he said with amusement. “A most rare occurrence. From whose loins did you spring?”

“This is Miss Estelle Winyard, Sir,” Simon spoke up.

Austerly Fellows ignored him and let his eyes drink in every curve of Estelle’s figure. Behind him Irene bridled.

“The ceremony,” she reminded curtly.

“I told you what to do,” he dismissed her, without taking his eyes off Estelle. “Bring the members upstairs.”

The woman’s handsome face flushed angrily and she threw Estelle a despising glance before swirling past the large Chinese servant and into the party.

“What’s upstairs?” Estelle asked, elevating her gaze, knowing how it exposed her young throat. It pleased her to believe she was versed in sin and knew what tricks beguiled men. But she was playing a hazardous, fatal game. She was a minnow, flaunting its silvery tail before the pike.

Her host moved to the staircase and stroked the head of the python that reared to greet him.

“Will you not join us?” he invited her. “The Inner Circle is meeting up there tonight. You might find it… absorbing.”

Estelle ran her fingers lightly over the snake’s scales. “Nothing would delight me more,” she accepted.

Austerly Fellows ascended and she followed, abandoning Simon down in the hall, leaving him holding her champagne.

“Is it true you keep a leopard in the house too?” she asked eagerly.

“I did, but I had to let the animal go. The poor creature’s nerves weren’t up to a life here. Your tastes would appear to run to the extreme, however. I find that stimulating.”

“I was always a wild child,” she boasted. “Ran off with the footman when I was seventeen, then ditched him after three days and stowed away on a ship bound for Singapore. Such a lark! Pater doesn’t know what to do with me. He despairs, he really does.”

“I’m gratified to hear it.”

“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” she continued airily. “It’s my life and I refuse to let it go flat and stale. I want to be challenged, to be thrilled and embrace every new scintillating experience and idea. If I want to have a string of lovers, I shall. If I want to take opium and cocaine, so what? I think taboos are there to be broken, don’t you? I always sea-bathe naked, no matter where I am – and positively nothing shocks me. A free, bohemian spirit, that’s Estelle Winyard.”

“And all on your father’s wealth,” he commented dryly. “How fortunate he can afford your libertinism.”

“I don’t see what money has to do with anything. I could be freezing in a garret and still feel the same gypsy passion in my veins, probably more fiercely than ever. Pater’s cash does blunt reality’s raw edge too much sometimes. I’ve pretended to be poor on oodles of occasions and had such thrillerific japes in soup kitchens and the slums.”

They stepped on to a wide landing covered in a long strip of India rubber matting that stole the sound of their footsteps. The half-panelled walls were hung with portraits. Estelle assumed they were of his family: dingy, glazed Victorian faces, staring out of crackled brown varnish. But as they proceeded, the pictures became more up to date. There were arresting
images of him in various extravagant costumes, every inch the Eastern mystic or medieval alchemist. She was so taken with one full-length depiction of him as Mephistopheles, dressed from horns to arrowed tail in vermilion, that she didn’t realise her host had stopped outside a doorway and was waiting for her.