The Vesuvius Club

12. A London Derrière

I SAID nothing and turned my attention to the beetroot soup.

The nosh was dusty but passable. The soup was followed by a kind of salmon pastry and, after my new acquaintance, Mr Jackpot, had cleared this away, by an absolutely magnificent goose. Quibble clearly remained insulated against Italian notions of cuisine.

Eschewing the grimy napkin, I sucked the grease from my fingers as the servant cradled the dishes in his arms. He didn’t speak, merely fixing me with the same impudent gaze. In the glow of the fire he had the face of a Renaissance saint. It was most unnerving.

Clearing my throat, I wiped the dust from Quibble’s best crystal and poured myself a generous glass of plonk. I watched Charlie Jackpot as he loped back, with what I can only call a swagger, towards the kitchens.

Quibble turned a page in the book. «Now, sir. May we get to business? I cannot rest easy until I know this volume to be mine. Time and tide, you know. They wait for no man.»

He craned his neck and peered back into the other room, as though it pained him to be separated from his library for more than a few moments.

«If you should like to know precisely how long they do wait, I have a volume on the subject. I believe it is over there between On the Dangers of Bicycling and Coprolites of the Permian.» Quibble licked his lips till his spittle glistened on their flaking surface.

I felt inside my coat and produced the photograph I had taken from Professor Sash’s study. I slid it down the table towards the invalid and watched Quibble carefully as he lifted the photograph and held it about an inch from his spectacles. He coughed throatily. It was a sound like brown paper crackling in an oven.

«Where… where did you get this?»

«It was among the… er… personal effects of Professor Frederick Sash.»

Quibble’s head snapped up. «Effects? He’s not dead, is he? Sash isn’t dead?»

I nodded. «And his body stolen. Along with another of the gentlemen in that photograph. Eli Verdigris.»

«Verdigris too? How?»

«That remains a mystery. I am investigating the matter, sir, and believe you can be of material assistance.»

Quibble heaved a heavy sigh. «I hear nothing out here you see. Sometimes I think it was folly to leave the old country but I could get nothing done. The constant distractions! My great burden is work — so much that I am called upon to do!» His tongue flashed around the wet hole of his puckered mouth in great agitation.

«What of the other man in the photograph, Maxwell Morraine?»

«Morraine?»

«Yes. I’m sure you know he died out here some years ago.»

The old man suddenly fixed me with a malevolent stare. «Who are you? What do you mean by bringing this volume here as though I were some horse-trader? What is the real reason for your visit, hm?»

He waved the photograph at me, his shrivelled mouth turning down into a snarl. «You want to bring all that up again!» he yelled. «Well, it won’t wash, d’you hear me? Let the dead rest in peace!»

«All what, sir?»

«Get out, sir! Out! Stint!»

He grabbed at the glass bell and rang it until I feared it would shatter.

I shot to my feet. «Forgive me, Sir Emmanuel, but I am convinced you are in grave danger»

«Stint!»

The doors sprang open and the pale servant was framed there. «Sir?»

Quibble writhed in his chair, shaking his bulbous head till cowlicks of sparse hair tumbled from behind his ears and his book-tentacles rattled. «Show this person out! You are never to admit him into my house again.»

«Sir Emmanuel, please» I began.

Stint was at my elbow. «If you wouldn’t mind, sir?»

«I believe that a long-buried secret is threatening your life, sir, and that of a very noble friend of mine. Please, help me to find»

«Out!»

I was escorted through the gloomy corridors and shown out into the muggy night.

Well, that hadn’t gone very well at all, had it?

Old Stint shook his head mournfully. «I do beg your pardon, sir. I’ve never seen the master so upset.»

«Stint,» I said earnestly. «I have serious reason to believe Sir Emmanuel to be in danger of losing his life. Watch him carefully and contact me should you notice anything suspicious. Do you understand?»

He nodded.

«I am staying at the Hotel Santa Lucia. Anything suspicious, mind. And tell your master that the book is a gift. A gesture of my good faith.»

I pushed open the protesting gate and made my way back on to the drive. Grateful for the comparative cool, I stretched and took a deep breath before setting off for the carriage.

As I moved off, however, there came the sound of a match being struck and then a tiny point of amber light glowed in the shadows as someone inhaled greedily on a cigarette.

Sidling up to the gates once more I was somehow unsurprised to find the servant Jackpot loitering there. He smiled and the cigarette in his lips poked upwards, the curling smoke causing him to narrow his very blue eyes.

«Hullo,» he muttered.

I touched my fingers to the brim of my hat and began to move off back towards the road.

Suddenly the boy pushed his face to the railings and, after briefly looking about, spoke in an urgent whisper.

«If you wanna see something of importance, Mr Box, meet me in town. Tomorrow. Midnight.»

«Meet you? Why ever should I do that?»

«Via Santa Maria di Costantinopoli. The house with the crimson light. You won’t regret it.»

Now it was my turn to smile. «Won’t I? And what could you possibly have that would interest me?»

His answer shocked me for a moment or two. For, stepping back a little from the railings, he suddenly thrust two fingers up at me.

Before I had time to react, he curled two fingers of his other hand into a semicircle and banged them against his palm. The penny dropped. Here was a «V» and now a «C».

I nodded.

The servant flicked his cigarette into the shadows. «Midnight tomorrow.»

And with that he was gone.

Next day, as arranged, I called on Miss Bella Pok at her hotel. The sunshine had completely deserted us and there was a squally feel to the weather, combined with a high, keening wind echoing banshee-like over the land. After breakfast, at Bella’s insistence, we took a two-wheeler along the coastal road until we reached the outlying plains of the great volcano, its peak scarcely visible in the yellowy fog. She had a yen, you see, to travel on the famous funicular railway that had been constructed with great ingenuity (and no little bravery) right up the slopes of the grumbling peak, terminating just short of the cone itself.

«I’m sure there are more interesting ways of passing the time,» I said, smiling my wide smile.

Bella touched a gloved hand to my arm. «But aren’t you fascinated by it, Lucifer? The boiling energy beneath our very feet? The fiery lava just waiting to erupt?»

Well, I was, of course. But just then it wasn’t Vesuvius’s fiery lava that was on my mind.

There was a station on the lower slopes that resembled nothing so much as a small desert fort, its flat roof thick with grey volcanic dust. I bought the tickets and we watched as the wind whipped balls of dust and old newspaper to worry at the feet of us travellers. A big clock struck two and we got aboard the cramped train carriage, watching the bleary sunlight glinting off the cable wires that stretched ahead up the slopes of the volcano.

The carriage — a curious thing built in a stepped arrangement like a mobile block of steps — was half-empty. Bella sat down on one of the steps, staring with animated curiosity out of the filthy windows. Next to us was an old woman with a bag of knitting and a couple of American boys in offensively loud checked suits and wide-awake hats, already loudly proclaiming the mountain’s incredible majesty, though all we could see so far was greasy ash. As we crawled up the sheer slope, great filthy clouds of sulphur billowed over the roof of the train, condensing on the windows like poisonous teardrops.

I suddenly noticed a young man sitting on the step above me. I received a quick impression of neat black suit and long auburn hair. His eyes were huge and brown, his nose slightly snubbed as though he had gently pressed it to a window-pane. He lifted his hat and smiled dazzlingly.

«You are impressed?» he asked.

I didn’t know if he meant by the volcano or himself.

«Very,» I said.

Bella glanced up and the stranger smiled.

«Please forgive me, you are Signor Box, yes?»

I nodded.

«My name is Victor,» he said, holding out his gloved hand. I gripped it firmly and introduced Bella.

He took Bella’s hand and kissed it gently. «Our mutual friend, Signor Unmann,» Victor continued, «expresses his regrets and begs that you accepted me as your guide in his stead.»

«Ah,» I said, losing all hope of useful information from my supposed man in the field.

«You know the mountain well?» asked Bella.

The young man took a deep breath of the frankly noxious air. «For me, Vesuvius is like a drug. I cannot help but travel up these slopes whenever I have the chance — even though I live here in Napoli.»

«Yes,» I coughed. «Intoxicating. Known Mr Unmann long have you?»

«Oh we are old… how do you say? Chums. Yes. Old chums. Now tell me, after we have been up and down the great Vesuvius — like the Grand Old Duke, yes? — what would you like to see? Naples is such a thrilling city.»

Bella began at once to itemise every last church in the place and I was slightly relieved when the guard called out «Destinazione!» and our carriage creaked and wheezed its way into the upper station.

Victor got nimbly to his feet and ushered us out of the train into a cloud of ash-filled steam. I wasn’t sure I wanted this little Eye-tie crowding my afternoon with Bella and made plans to get shot of him just as soon as we returned to the Funicular station.

We set foot on black volcanic soil. Bella looked down at her feet and lifted her boots.

«Are you all right, my dear?» I asked.

She grinned. «Just checking that they hadn’t begun to spontaneously combust.»

Only three hundred yards from where we stood, the immense caldera of the volcano glowed an intense orange, plumes of white smoke belching from the sizzling rock. The heat was so intense I could feel the tiny hairs on my hands shrinking. I wished I’d worn gloves. Exposure to the Neopolitan sunshine was already threatening to tan me like a navvy.

I turned my face away from the oven-like heat. Victor stood his ground and shook his head in wonderment. «What a magnificent thing she is!»

«Been quiet for a while has it?» I asked.

He grinned. «A sleeping giant.»

«But not likely to turn over in her sleep any time soon?»

«You never can tell,» chirped Victor gaily. «Come, let us go closer.»

He led the way forward. It was easy to spot the fairly fresh lava flows that lay in petrified streams all about us and I shielded my eyes against the glare from the boiling ground.

Victor closed his eyes. Smoke curled over and about his slim frame like ghostly vipers and we stood for a few silent moments amongst the blackened landscape. Bella clambered onto a great square boulder of volcanic rock and pointed down at the verdant plain. «What is that?»

Far below us lay a collection of whitish buildings, scattered like child’s blocks in the greenery.

«That is Pompeii,» said the youth. «Look there if you wish to see what fearful power the Earth truly has within her.»

We lingered on top of the volcano for some little time with our new acquaintance chatting amiably throughout. Bella seemed quite taken with him but I felt curiously out of sorts. Perhaps it was the impending appointment with the mysterious servant Jackpot. At any rate, I was grateful to get back into the funicular and begin the descent.

Bella noticed how preoccupied I’d become.

«You seem troubled, Lucifer,» she said, crossing to where I stood by the misted window.

I patted her hand. «Forgive me, my dear. Not quite comfortable in my own skin today, if you see what I mean.»

She nodded, smiled. «It seems a shame. It’s such a bonny skin.»

Our eyes locked for a moment, blue to green. We had the whole evening yet. Was this an invitation…?

All thoughts of a jolly tumble with the divine Miss Pok were temporarily banished, however. As the funicular pulled into the station, I happened to glance through the milling crowds at the exit. At once a huge, barrel-chested figure caught my gaze, dressed in a heavy black coat and hat, his indigo-coloured spectacles lending his face a skull-like air.

«My God!» I breathed. «Tiepolo!»

I raced to the exit door of the carriage and banged the heel of my hand against the woodwork as the vehicle clanked with painful tardiness into the station.

«What is it?» cried Bella concernedly.

I craned my neck to see the Duce Tiepolo’s bear-like figure receding into the crowd.

«Forgive me, Bella,» I yelled, wrenching open the door. I turned and addressed the young man, Victor. «Sir, would you be kind enough to escort this lady back to the Vesuvio Hotel? Can’t explain now!»

I was just aware of Bella’s vaguely baffled expression and young Victor raising his hat as I tore from the funicular and out into the station. Barging through the crowd of tourists, I clattered down towards the plain, just in time to see Tiepolo slip into the back of an expensive-looking motorcar which chugged away in a cloud of yellow dust.

I returned to my hotel and changed into evening dress for my appointment with Jackpot, dashing off a note of apology to Bella. I found a pleasant café by the quayside where I downed a few kirs. The Duce Tiepolo was here in Naples! And to risk recapture he must have a very good reason. But what connection did he have to Mrs Knight, her first husband, Morraine, and, by extension, to the professors? That old Quibble was in danger I was now certain but why, if Naples were the locus of this mystery, had he not already been done away with? Perhaps he was the source of the danger! Yet his reaction to the deaths of his old colleagues had been genuine enough. Quibble was no dissembler. «You want to bring all that up again,» he had raged. All what? There had been no word from Unmann regarding the import/export business of the curious undertakers but here, at last, was a lead of sorts. This young man Charlie Jackpot appeared to know something. I clapped my topper to my head and set off for the ancient heart of the city.

The steady chirrup of insects kept me company as I walked the gas-lit avenues of Decumano Maggiore, its cobbles worn into ruts by the traffic of the centuries.

The premises on Via Santa Maria di Costantinopoli were distinguishable from their low and unhealthy-looking neighbours only by the ruby-red light above the lintel. The gas-flame behind the cheaply stained shade shuddered like a rheumy, winking eye.

I made my way softly down the steps to the door. It bore no knocker, nor number of any kind. I had raised my hand when it groaned open, seemingly of its own accord. Shudder not, reader, this is not a spook story! Whatever agency lay behind the door was most assuredly human.

Actually, I must immediately qualify that remark as what lay behind the door appeared to be a monkey. In the light of the sallow gas-jets I could make out poorly papered walls weeping with damp and the stooped figure of whom I spoke: a curious man with very long arms, dressed in green velvet plush. His hair, scraped from a centre parting en brosse, stank of oil.

He cocked his pallid face to one side by way of an interrogative. What should I say? Was his master at home?

I took off my top hat with as much nonchalance as I could muster and decided to be bold. «I understand that a young man of my acquaintance is expecting me. We’re old pals and I haven’t spoken to him for some time. I wonder»

The little creature seemed uninterested in my story, however. He moved to the back of the dismal hallway, nodding absently, and drew aside a disreputable-looking curtain.

The monkey-man smiled grimly, his mouth like a wound. «Si, si. Uno ragazzo.»

I was spared any more of his charming conversation, however, by the sudden appearance of Mr Jackpot himself from behind the drawn curtain. He was wearing a slovenly jacket and trousers, both too big for him, the pantaloons held to his hips by a thick brown belt and a good two inches shy of his stripe-socked shins. In stark contrast, his collarless shirt seemed clean and there was a white rosebud in his lapel.

«Hullo,» he said.

I gave a little bow.

Jackpot smiled lop-sidedly, his large lips sending dimpled echoes over his cheek. «Won’t you come in, sir?»

He gestured into the darkness. I followed without a word. The tiny doorman melted away into the gloom — for all I knew, he had gone back into the wallpaper from which he had sprung.

I was ushered into a small, square chamber, underlit and overheated. Perhaps Jackpot had become accustomed to his master’s tastes. The décor seemed all of a piece with the grisly entranceway; there was a brass-framed bed containing a stained mattress, and a jug and wash-bowl on a spindly table. On a Turkey rug sat a drab chaise-longue of surpassing vileness. A miserable fire sputtered in the grate, damp sea-coal popping and spitting against faded Dutch tiles.

«How nice,» I said at last.

The boy closed the door behind me and took my hat, coat and gloves like the good and faithful servant he was.

I lit a cigarette to disguise the smell and tossed one to Jackpot who ignited his from the fire. Moving to the sofa, I flapped aside the tails of my coat, prior to sitting. I stopped with my rear end halfway to the upholstery. «May I?»

«Of course, sir,» said Charlie. He hovered by the door a moment, wiping his hands over the greasy fabric of his jacket. Then: «Might I join you, sir?»

I was already lounging back as if I owned the place. I waved a hand and bid him do so.

As he sat down next to me, I pushed him sideways with my leg and, grabbing at his cropped hair, pulled back his head until he yelled in pain. His fag dropped to the dirty floor.

I smiled. «I believe you have something to tell me.»

Charlie scowled and fixed me with a penetrating and vaguely unnerving stare. I tugged his head back still further but he had stopped yelling. «That won’t get you anywhere,» he murmured in a low voice.

«Then perhaps this will,» I cried, grabbing my pearl-handled revolver from beneath my shirt. I pressed the cold barrel to the youth’s temple and glared at him. «Now. What precisely do the initials VC mean to you?»

But still he seemed unmoved. I watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed slowly up and down.

Charlie Jackpot just smiled.

Irritated by my failure to intimidate him, I moved the revolver slowly down his smooth face and pushed the barrel between his lips. Charlie’s very blue eyes regarded me levelly over the glinting gun-metal.

I withdrew the pistol from his mouth with ill-grace.

«There now,» said Charlie with a smirk. «Isn’t this nicer?»

Mr Jackpot turned his huge eyes on me in a kind of mute enquiry. A moment later he put his hand on my thigh.

Well, what was I to do? For the well-bred gentleman there was surely only one recourse. I fucked him.