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...
'My name is ----, and I am guilty of perpetrating the most vile abominations against the good ordinances of society, and against nature itself. I seek neither absolution, nor your pity, and herewith surrender myself to your custody to do with as you feel is right and proper. The location of my current abode is here affixed, where I await with both trepidation, and a sense of acceptance. I knew you would be coming to seek me out, I anticipated your arrival. Now, the wait is over. It is done.
Previous to my present situation I have lived a quiet and solitary life, always aware that to do otherwise would expose and leave me vulnerable to the baser instincts of my kind. I have devils in me, I'm wary of granting them license. I have a terror of infection, disease, lack of hygiene... loss of control. Contenting myself with botanical studies and certain scientific pursuits which are of no great relevance here, but which preoccupied me for many years. It was only with the steady procession of years and with it, the sense that something was being irretrievably lost, that I responded to the importunities of my cousin to engage, grudgingly, in interactions of a more social nature.
He has always been more outgoing than I, and mercilessly lampooned me for my fusty hermit-like existence, until I began to suspect that there was perhaps a grain of truth in his bantering accusations. Life in all its splendid variety was eluding me. I spent several uneasy evenings in his company, under his tutelage, accompanying him to the raucous music halls where the throng seemed to me both uncivil and malodorous, smoking clubs where the conversation was banal and distasteful to me, and finally he promised me a visit to what he termed 'The Hellfire Club' devoted to the extreme pleasures of the flesh, physical gratification and gluttony, where the abiding rule is 'do what thou wilt shall be the law.'
I was more than a little apprehensive as the hour approached. But as I was picked up by the 'Dark Master' himself, and we travelled together across the Heath in his carriage, driven by his manservant, I had no opportunity to indulge in last-minute loss of nerves. I am naturally not at liberty to divulge the true identity of The Dark Master, except to say that we arrived early, together, at the House of Ill-Repute where a room had been reserved, and I was privy to his making preparations for the evening's event. He strode impatiently across the room, unclipped his cape, and threw it aside.
'Four strapping specimens. And I need them now.'
'Certainly sir' fawned the brothel-keeper, washing his hands together, 'black or white, cut or uncut?'
He waved dismissively, 'no matter, a mix of either, just have them delivered here.'
'It shall be as you say.' He vanished. The Dark Master walked up and down. It was not, in truth, a large room, although attempts had been made to create an appearance of more space than there actually was, with drapes of green baize curtains. A roaring log fire at one end of the room which cast agreeable shadows and warm illumination across inauthentic décor intended to suggest a medieval banqueting hall, although closer scrutiny would have revealed a certain musty artificiality, a poor theatrical artifice assembled with little attention to accuracy of detail or context, and a gaudy taste for gothic excess.
