COCK-SUCKER TALES: 'THE DISTURBING CASE OF THE HELLFIRE CLUB'
In which the great Victorian Detective is forced to confront
the dilemma of his own sexual identity...
This strange tale has a curious history. In their exhaustive study Drs Ben Doone and Phil McCavity, Professors of Literature with a special interest in works of a Deviant, Transgressive and Proscribed nature, deconstructed its syntax, examined its provenance, and declared it a cunning and well-contrived fake. In making it available here we make no comment or judgement, but leave that for those discerning readers who choose to enter its disturbing and unsettling world...
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The lamplighter is moving down Baker Street, igniting a series of trapped fireflies as he goes. I watch him pacing, as a purposeful distraction from more productive pursuits. Until he moves out of sight. I draw the curtain back and return to my desk. This is a tale unlike all other tales I have chronicled. A story for which the world is not yet prepared, yet place it on record I must, even though none may read it, even though it will never find a place on the pages of the
'Strand'
magazine. Yet it begins, as our other exploits begin, with the street door creaking on its hinges, and a visitor's heavy footfall shaking the seventeen stairs as he ascends the wooden staircase.
A new client, an unpleasantly fawning little man, to whom I take an instinctive dislike. But he has a proposition. A case. A youth has been abducted from his place of employment. A bond-servant held in trust by the client. Naturally my own role was merely to observe. But in that capacity I was nonetheless well-positioned to draw certain conclusions of my own. I resented this man's intrusion into our otherwise ordered lives. To 'like' or 'dislike' are irrational responses, I concede. Logic, analysis, the process of deductive reasoning must be the prerequisites of detection. Yet I persist in considering intuition as something of no small value. But I could tell that 'the great detective' was already intrigued, and that as from this moment a new game was afoot. And, as always, I take no keener pleasure than in following my friend in his professional investigations into this, another scandal of bohemians.
Our enquiries took us to the property at which the youth was last known to have been leased on a temporary assignment. A swift hansom cab conveyed us. A fine tree-darkened house standing in its own grounds. The long drive thick with fallen leaves. It at first appeared deserted, until a man-servant responded to our persistent knocking, and grudgingly admits us. He explained that he was the only member of the household staff remaining. Retained to maintain the property in good order until its occupant should return. But no, he had no certain knowledge of their present location. There seemed no reason to suspect he was telling anything other than the truth. He offered no objection to our further exploration, indeed, he seemed particularly anxious to return to whatever activity had been occupying him prior to our arrival. From which we had distracted him.
My companion stalked in a state of some preoccupation through darkened rooms where furniture was shrouded like menacing shapes of indeterminate dimensions, pausing here and there to examine whatever attracted his attention. As usual I follow, perplexed by the complicated deductive process his thought-patterns assume. This, then, is the gentleman I am pleased to address as my friend. Picture if you will this tall, thin man in excellent health. His long thin nose as sharp as a knife, yet no sharper than his keenest of intellects. I sometimes suspect he uses so noble a proboscis to detect the various odours of misdemeanour, but such speculation must be considered sheer calumny. He prefers to use it for cocaine, and that in no small measure!
The library. He uncovers a chair, carefully folding its shroud once, twice, three times, and placing it precisely on an adjacent writing desk. He sits down contemplatively, indicating me to silence. His eyes track rows of bound volumes in their ordered cases. An even layer of dust stipples the books, as there is dust everywhere. At length he stands, selects a number of specific books.
'You will observe, my dear Doctor, that amongst all of the works here, these are consistent in that the dust accumulated upon them is of a lesser density than their fellows. Hence these must be the final volumes consulted by our absent friend immediately prior to his abrupt and unexplained departure. Taking with him the abducted youth.' He returned to the chair, placing the books upon the bureau adjacent to the folded shroud. Examining the titles in turn by flattening them open upon his knee. He carries economy of movement to the point of avarice.
'Observe, all we seek to learn of the quarry is here' he sniffed sardonically. 'The history and antiquities of the Venetian Republic. The art and architecture of Paris. The geography of the Italian lakes. I feel certain that as he was reading these books, he was researching the journey he was planning to undertake. The journey we must now take...' When scientific deduction has spoken, it behoves us to be silent.
Suffice to say that following the leads he had deduced in this way, we charted our travels across Europe. We made enquiries at ticket offices. Departure points. Railway stations. We identified hotels where the fleeing party had stayed for a weekend, for a week, seldom longer. Three of them answering the descriptions we carried. A distinguished gentleman of middle-aged appearance. A dark-haired quiet youth who avoided attention. And a bustling maternal maid-servant. We traced their presence to a left-bank rooming house overlooking the Seine, strolled the same arrondisments as they had, and imitated their leaving from the 'Gare de l'Est'. To a white hotel on the shores of Lake Garda. And ultimately, to Venice. A haunted city of beautiful ghosts.
It was about four in the afternoon as we disembarked at the Piazza San Marco. Clouds passed slowly on a day neither too mellow nor too tart, too hot nor too cool. The air sweeter for our presence. Once booked into the faded grandeur of a hotel opening out onto a view of the Ponte de Rialto we resumed our investigations, but upon returning that same evening the desk-clerk made himself known to us and informed us that an envelope had been left for us to collect. Thanking him we hastened the bulky package to the privacy of our suite where the Great Detective sat, drew his calabash pipe and commenced to smoke, while instructing me to read the contents. He had his back to the windows leading out onto the balcony, in an agreeable gloom thrown into sharp contrast by being framed against the deep blood of the setting sun, as I extracted sheets of closely-written manuscript, coughed to clear my throat, and commenced to read...
