Heathen/Nemesis

Forty-One

‘I owe you an apology,’ Donna said, pushing her plate away and dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin.

Mahoney looked puzzled but continued sipping at his soup.

‘I never even asked if you had other plans for tonight,’ she said.

‘I can live with it,’ Mahoney told her, smiling.

‘I’m not in the habit of picking up men I’ve just met,’ she told him.

Especially when my own husband has only been dead for just over a week.

‘I’m not complaining.’

Donna smiled thinly and watched him as he finished his soup.

He was dressed in a black jacket and black shirt, immaculately pressed, as were his trousers. His shoes were shined to perfection. The long hair she’d admired was still drawn back in a pony-tail. They’d drawn the odd inquisitive glance as they’d entered the dining-room of the Shelbourne, but Mahoney had been convinced that was because of the way Donna looked. She would have turned heads anywhere in a navy blue backless dress which rose just above her knee. Moving elegantly on a pair of high heels, she looked stunning. Her long blonde hair, freshly washed, seemed to glow in the dull light from the chandeliers.

Donna looked at him again, wondering why she felt so guilty to be sitting at the table with this man. Perhaps it was because there had been such a short gap between this meeting and the burial of her husband.

Do you think Chris ever felt guilty when he was with Suzanne Regan?

She tried to push the thought from her mind but found that it persisted.

‘I used to work here, you know,’ Mahoney said, pushing his bowl away and glancing around him. ‘I was a trainee chef for six months.’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘What happened?’

‘I managed to tip half a pint of crème brûlée over the manager one evening when he came in to see how I was getting on. They sort of decided for me that it wasn’t my perfect vocation. I was sacked.’ He raised his wine glass in salute. ‘Cheers.’

She echoed the toast and drank.

‘From there to the National Gallery,’ she said.

‘Via half a dozen other jobs. I’ve been a barman three times. There’s always plenty of vacancies for bar work here. We like our drink, the Irish. More drinkers call for more barmen. It’s a simple equation.’

She found him looking at her a little too intently and lowered her gaze.

‘What made you come here?’ Mahoney wanted to know. ‘You said your husband was working on a book but that doesn’t explain why you came to Dublin.’

‘I wanted to find out what he was working on,’ she said as the waiter removed the plates and tidied the table for the main course. ‘The entries in his diary were all I had to go on. I think he was researching something, but I’m not sure what. That’s why I had to find out who James Worsdale was.’

‘And now you do?’

‘I’m none the wiser, unless his work was something to do with the Hell Fire Club. It seems the most likely explanation now. Tell me what you know about them, Mr Mahoney.’

‘Call me Gordon, please. I’ve never felt very comfortable with formality.’

She nodded and smiled.

‘Gordon,’ she said.

He raised his hands.

‘There’s so much to tell, Mrs Ward,’ he began.

‘Donna,’ she told him. ‘I thought we’d dispensed with formality.’

Mahoney grinned.

‘The subject is vast,’ he began. ‘It depends what you want to know. It also depends on whether or not I can tell you what you want to know. I don’t profess to be an expert.’

‘You said you’d read a lot about them.’

‘I’ve seen a lot of horse races but that doesn’t make me a jockey, does it?’

She smiled again and reached for her handbag, sliding the diary free, laying it beside her as if for reference. The photo was in there, too, but she left it for the time being.

‘I know more about the Dublin Hell Fire Club, obviously,’ he continued. ‘They were just one of the off-shoots. There were a number of branches affiliated to the main club in England. They had individual leaders at each club but one overall head. The affiliates were known as cells. As far as I can tell there were cells in London, Edinburgh and Oxford as well as here in Dublin.’

Donna swallowed hard, one hand involuntarily touching the diary. She remembered the entries.

Edinburgh.

London.

Oxford.

Her husband had been to all those places shortly before his death.

‘Where were the meetings?’ she wanted to know.

‘In Ireland, usually at a place called The Eagle Tavern on Cork Hill. That’s where Worsdale’s painting was done. They also met at Daly’s Club, College Green. That’s where Parsons picked up his charming habit of setting fire to cats. He’d pour scaltheen over them first.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It was a mixture of rancid butter and raw Irish whiskey, I believe. It’s no wonder members of the Hell Fire Club were crazy if they drank that.’

The main course arrived and Mahoney sat back in his seat, seeing how intently Donna was looking at him, hanging on his every word. She glanced irritably at the waiter, barely resisting the urge, it seemed, to hurry him up so that her companion could continue. He finally left and Mahoney continued.

‘Their favourite meeting place, though, was Mountpelier Hunting lodge near Rathfarnham. The ruins are still there today. Kids drive up there at nights and try to spot ghosts.’ He smiled.

Donna didn’t.

‘How was it destroyed? You said there were only ruins there now.’

‘One of the Hell Fire Club members, Richard Whaley, accidentally set fire to it one night. Well, he supposedly had drink spilled on him by a coachman so, by way of revenge, he poured brandy over the man and ignited him. Whaley got out but quite a few of the others didn’t.’

‘How difficult is it to reach?’ Donna enquired.

‘It’s easy. You can drive up there. It’s only twelve miles or so. They reckon on a clear day you can see the ruins from O’Connell Street.’ He smiled again.

‘Have you ever been up there yourself?’ she wanted to know.

‘When I was a student. Half a dozen of us went up there one night.’ He shrugged. ‘The only spirits I saw were Jamesons and Glenfiddich.’ He chewed a mouthful of food.

‘So what did they do at these meetings?’ Donna persisted.

‘Orgies, mainly. They drank a lot, they gambled, supposedly they practised the Black Mass. Their object was to undermine society, the Church in particular. But most of all it was just an excuse for an orgy.’

‘What about the other clubs?’

‘They were the same, but all the other cells were presided over by the man who founded the order at a place in England called Medmenham Abbey. They were called “The Monks of Medmenham”. One man was responsible for starting the Hell Fire Club. A man called Francis Dashwood.’

Dashwood.

D.

Beside every entry. D.

‘Dashwood was the President of the club. He used to travel around all the other cells to make sure they were carrying out their objectives.’ Mahoney chuckled. ‘They had a nickname for him. They called him The King of Hell.’