“That will come. I must determine how best to handle it.”
Best for whom? I wondered.
“If it's any consolation, Earl Bliss acted on my orders. He never believed anything against you.”
“Most who know me did not.”
He released my arm but his eyes held firm. Overnight he'd come to look like a tired old man.
“Tempe, I was trained as a military man. I believe in respecting the chain of command and carrying out the lawful orders of my superiors. That predisposition led me not to question things I should have questioned. The abuse of power is a terrible thing. Failure to resist corrupting pressure is equally contemptible. It's time for this old dog to rouse and get off the porch.”
I felt a deep sadness as I watched him leave. Larke and I had been friends for many years. I wondered if we could ever be friends again.
As I made coffee, my thoughts shifted to Simon Midkiff. Of course. It all made sense. His intense interest in the crash site. The lies about excavating in Swain County. The photo with Parker Davenport at Charlie Wayne Tramper's funeral. He was one of them.
A sudden flashback. The black Volvo that had almost run me down. The man at the wheel had looked vaguely familiar. Could it have been Simon Midkiff?
I was completing my report on Edna Farrell when my cell phone rang a second time.
“Sir Francis Dashwood was a prolific guy.”
The statement came from a different galaxy than the one in which my mind was orbiting.
“I'm sorry?”
“It's Anne. I was organizing stuff from our London trip and came across a pamphlet Ted bought at the West Wycombe caves.”
“Anne, this is not—”
“There are gobs of Dashwoods still around.”
“Gobs?”
“Descendants of Sir Francis, later known as Lord Le Despencer, of course. Just for fun I popped the name Prentice Dashwood into a genealogical site where I'm registered. I couldn't believe how many hits I got. One was particularly interesting.”
I waited.
Nothing.
I cracked.
“Do we do this with twenty questions?”
“Prentice Elmore Dashwood, one of Sir Frank's many descendants, left England in 1921. He opened a haberdashery in Albany, New York, made bundles of money, and eventually retired.”
“That's it?”
“During his years in America, Dashwood wrote and self-published dozens of pamphlets, one of which recounted tales of his great-great-great-something, Sir Francis Dashwood the Second.”
“And the other pamphlets?” If I didn't ask, this would take forever.
“You name it. The song lines of the Australian Aboriginals. The oral traditions of the Cherokee. Camping. Fly-fishing. Greek mythology. A brief ethnography of the Carib Indians. Prentice was quite the Renaissance man. He penned three booklets and several articles that focused exclusively on the Appalachian Trail. Apparently Big P was a real mover in getting the trail started back in the twenties.”
Oh? A mecca for hikers and trekkers, the AT starts at Mount Katahdin in Maine and runs along the Appalachian ridgeline to Springer Mountain in Georgia. Much of the trail lies in the Great Smoky Mountains. Including Swain County.
“Are you still there?”
“I'm here. Did Dashwood spend time here in North Carolina?”
“He wrote five pamphlets on the Great Smokies.” I heard paper rustle. “Trees. Flowers. Fauna. Folklore. Geology.”
I remembered Anne's tale of her visit to West Wycombe, pictured the caves under the H&F house. Could this guy Anne was talking about be the Prentice Dashwood of Swain County, North Carolina? It was a striking name. Could there be a connection to the British Dashwoods?
“What else did you find out about Prentice Dashwood?”
“Not a thing. But I can tell you that old Uncle Francis hung with a wild crowd back in the eighteenth century. Called themselves the Monks of Medmenham. Listen to the list. Lord Sandwich, who at one point commanded the Royal Navy, John Wilkes—”
“The politician?”
“Yep. William Hogarth, the painter, and poets Paul Whitehead, Charles Churchill, and Robert Lloyd.”
“Impressive roster.”
“Very. Everyone was a member of Parliament or the House of Lords. Or a poet or whatever. Our own Ben Franklin dropped in now and then, though he was never an official member.”
“What did these guys do?”
“Some accounts claim they engaged in satanic rites. According to the current Sir Francis, author of the booklet we picked up on our trip, the monks were just jolly fellows who got together to celebrate Venus and Bacchus. I take that to mean women and wine.”
“They held wild parties in the caves?”
“And at Medmenham Abbey. The current Sir Francis admits to his ancestor's sexual frolics but denies the devil worship. He suggests the satanism rumor came from the boys' somewhat irreverent attitude toward Christianity. They also referred to themselves as the Knights of Saint Francis, for example.”
I could hear her biting an apple, then chewing.
“Everyone else called them the Hell Fire Club.”
The name hit me like a sledgehammer.
“What did you say?”
“The Hell Fire Club. Big in Ireland in the 1730s and 1740s. Same deal. Overprivileged devos mocking religion and getting drunk and laid.”
Anne had a way of cutting to the quick.
“There were attempts to suppress the clubs, but they weren't effective. When Dashwood gathered his little group of philanderers, the label Hell Fire naturally transferred.”
Hell Fire. H&F.
I swallowed.
“How long is this booklet?”
“Thirty-four pages.”
“Can you fax me a copy?”
“Sure. I can get two pages on one sheet.”
I gave her the number and went back to my report, forcing myself to concentrate. Within minutes the fax rang, screeched, and bonged, then began to spit out pages. I stayed with my description of Edna Farrell's facial trauma. Some time later the machine reengaged. Again, I resisted the impulse to rush to it and gather Anne's pages.
When I'd completed the Farrell report, I began another, a million thoughts screaming for ascendancy. Though I tried to focus, images broke through again and again.
Primrose Hobbs. Parker Davenport. Prentice Dashwood. Sir Francis. The Hell Fire Club. H&F. Was anything connected? The evidence was growing. There must be a connection.
Had Prentice Dashwood rekindled his ancestor's idea of an elitistboys' club here in the Carolina mountains? Had the members been more than hedonistic dilettantes? How much more? I pictured the cut marks, suppressed a shudder.
At four the guard came in to say that a deputy had fallen sick, another was stranded with a malfunctioning cruiser. Crowe sent her apologies but needed him to control a domestic situation. I assured him I'd be fine.
I worked on, the silence of the empty morgue wrapping around me like a living thing except for the hum of a refrigerator. My breath, my heartbeat, my fingers clicking the keyboard. Outside, branches scraped windowpanes high overhead. A train whistle. A dog. Crickets. Frogs.
No car horns. No traffic noises. No living person for miles.
My sympathetic nervous system kept the adrenaline in front row, center. I made frequent errors, jumped at every squeak and tap. More than once I wished for Boyd's company.
By seven I'd finished with Farrell, Odell, Tramper, and Adams. My eyes burned, my back ached, and a dull headache told me that my blood sugar was in the cellar.
I copied my files to floppy, closed down my laptop, and went to collect Anne's fax.
Though I was anxious to read about the eighteenth-century Sir Francis, I was too tired, too hungry, and too edgy to be objective. I decided to return to High Ridge House, walk Boyd, talk with Crowe, then read the pamphlet in the comfort and safety of my bed.
I was gathering pages when I heard what sounded like gravel crunching.