Ghost Writer Kill, second session
Mr Tobias Gold has returned from his weekend, as have two other associates of the shop, Mr Arthur Machen ("rhymes with Bracken"), a journalist and cataloguer of books, occult tomes a speciality, and Seraphina, a university chum and fellow archaeologist of Charlotte's. Together with Dalton Hodge, Owen Williams and Charlotte Winstonthorpe, they discuss what actions to take.
Owen feels intense alarm that their humble bookshop keeps being dragged into, as the newsboys put it, 'orrible murders. Charlotte feels intense alarm that Egyptian-code-using, murdering cultists are stalking the streets. Have the leopard-cultists of Blackheath some existence outside Elliot O'Donnell's imagination? Dalton Hodge feels intense curiosity at what former cinema starlet Olga Baclanova, subject of the publicity picture dropped by journalist Isadora Turner (NPC) could possibly have to do with a grisly death on the edge of Blackheath. Mr Gold feels intense interest that his staff have managed to sell the same book (Von Juntz' Unspeakable Cults, 1908 Golden Goblin edition) twice, and if the late lamented wossisname has left his copy lying around, it might be possible to retrieve it for further sales! And of course, he hurriedly adds, it might hold some vital clue to the fate of poor, poor murdered whosit. Mr Machen is muttering something biblical.
A division of labour is arrived at. Charlotte and Seraphina, being upper-class women with social contacts in the police, will pester Charlotte's police contact Inspector Carlton of the Yard. Mr Gold, Owen and Dalton will investigate the late Mr Collins' flat, and Mr Machen will use his journalistic abilities to trace the thread between Collins and Ms Baclanova.
At Scotland Yard, Inspector Carlton offers tea. Behind his poorly maintained social facade, he is not entirely happy at having two semi-aristocratic women badger him for details of a murder case. Agatha Christie has, in the Inspector's opinion, a lot to answer for. He does, however, unbend a little when Charlotte offers an actual lead, in the form of the incantation recorded by Miss Turner. Charlotte explains its similarity to the incantations featuring in the previously grisly murder of the late Professor Henry Masters. Carlton stares at the sheet curiously. "What's this? Ai henegriffkathan ankhnak hatthanguy yoghurtfothgun -" there is a cracking, splintering noise from the bottom left corner of the Inspector's window and a sensation of sudden darkness stealing across the room, Charlotte and Seraphina bound expostulating to their feet and prevent the Inspector reading any further. Seraphina stares at the crack in the window-glass. Is that a blue light shining through it? Charlotte endeavours to explain that these cultists appear to regard certain words as taboo and grounds for homicide. With an arched eyebrow, the Inspector lays the sheet of paper aside.
The inspector also takes an interest in what the group have uncovered of Mr Collins' profession of stage magician and "effects consultant" to the cinematograph industry. He asks if this involves pyrotechnics or other scientific pursuits. The two ladies believe this may be a possibility, and ask questions in turn.
The inspector reveals that Mr Collins' car, and Mr Collins, were rather more damaged than the newspapers had been permitted to reveal. In fact, they look rather more like wreckage from the trenches of the Great War than anything inflicted by even a dedicated homicidal maniac - except the car might appear to have exploded from the inside, rather than from without [Picture handout]. Seraphina explains that she drove an ambulance in the War and is no stranger to battlefield injuries and the like. The inspector agrees to take the two to the morgue to inspect the body.
Under the morgue's cold light, the two ladies see that if anything, the inspector has understated the case. As well as the flesh being viciously shredded to the bones, the body appears to have been partially dissolved by some acidic blue substance. It is even attacking the metal tray on which the remnants of poor Collins' corpse reclines. "It looks", the inspector says, "like either the murderer tried to destroy the body with acid - not unheard of, but this certainly isn't one of our regular acids - or that he, and the car, were hit by some sort of chemical weapon, perhaps propelled in a shell. There were cases in the War I believe. But who would be launching chemical artillery on Blackheath, without leaving any other traces? Some Jerry agent? We certainly didn't find any howitzers!"
Seraphina's horror is tempered by scientific curiosity; she remembers a nice chemistry student from Oxford and receives permission to bring him a sample. She glances in the mirror above the washstand, and freezes momentarily. Was that crack in the bottom left corner of the morgue door's frosted glass window there when she came in? She doesn't think it was. She and Charlotte hurriedly leave, stopping briefly at her chemist friend's place of work to ask him to analyse the sample ASAP.
Meanwhile, Toby, Owen and Dalton are visiting Mr Collins' flat. A 'confirmed bachelor', Mr Collins lived alone and so there are no grieving widows to beard. However, Mr Collins' landlady Mrs Thorpe is grief-stricken at the loss of three weeks back rent owed by Collins, not to mention the cost of cleaning the carpet from the footprints of all those filthy rozzers who had trampled through to inspect the place. A monetary emolument from Toby assuages her heartbreak and she permits them to inspect the flat.
Toby continues to engage the delightful Mrs Thorpe in conversation about her tragic losses while Dalton and Owen discreetly sweep the place. Some papers from the desk, the Von Juntz, and a few other interesting books on the topics of Egyptian archaeology and stage magic are quickly raked into Owen's satchel. Owen insists on saving Collins' depressed-looking stage rabbit ("15 shillings, and the hutch is 10 shillings extra!") from its probable fate in Mrs Thorpe's stewpot. The papers suggest Collins has been working on a film production of Ziska for Ashtree Studios, a British film company. There is also mention of a publicity campaign to plug the film, including a short story written by Collins, 'The Curse of the Jackal', placed with Thrilling Crime! Magazine. A letter dated a few days before his death suggests that Collins was trying to get the story back from the magazine, or at least get them not to print it.
Mr Machen has been working Fleet Street on the Olga Baclanova connection. Olga, he learns, has been treading the boards of London theatres since the advent of the talkie sent her Hollywood career into eclipse. If she were planning a return to the cinema, he's told, one woman has better gossip on the film scene than any other: the brazen young columnist of Film Weekly, Nerina Shute, whose address he acquires. As an aging gentleman of high church Anglo-Catholic beliefs, Mr Machen is not sure that he is the best person to approach young Nerina. Returning to Gold's, he turns this task over to Dalton, who pulls a beautifully photographed book on cinema from the stacks (Squiz spend) as an entree. Dalton rushes around to Miss Shute's fashionable Bloomsbury residence, where a party of some sort is starting, or restarting, or possibly has been going for some time. Fortunately she takes a liking to him (flattery spend), tells him a grisly story about a burning chorus-girl, says that she has heard that Olga is going to be the star of the new production of Ziska (as an Egyptian princess, it's hoped her heavy accent will be taken as exotic rather than off-putting) and gives him the personal address of Olga Baclanova.
The associates regroup at Gold's bookstore. The gathered information raises alarming possibilities: the mysterious incantation, which apparently summons some fatal force, may appear in both a popular magazine and a film!
The Von Juntz is consulted, to see where Collins got this dangerous incantation in the first place. The whole book, in Toby's opinion, is a collection of lurid fantasies, quite graphically illustrated in the Golden Goblin edition, but surely only believable by the most incredulous. Nevertheless, the incantation or something resembling it is located in a section concerning an English fertility cult which worshipped the Hunter or Horned Man. The frenzied worshippers would apparently use the incantation to summon the Hounds of the Wild Hunt from Faerie, which would then hunt a victim (sometimes a member, sometimes an enemy of the cult) across the fields, which their spilled blood would fertilise. Von Juntz notes that the incantation is not english, notes parallels with his other cults ("easy enough if he made them up" thinks Toby) and draws Frazerian conclusions of a pan-European or worldwide ur-language, spoken perhaps by the Indo-Aryans or even by prehuman ancestors and preserved only in ancient rituals.
Machen expands on the symbolism of "Black heath"; it is said by some to have been the "waste land" where the dolorous blow was struck, rendering King Pellehan and Logres infertile. It is a place where 'the walls are thin' - perhaps Collins was drawn to it in some way, or the forces of this Wild Hunt waited for him to draw near it before they struck?
Seraphina phones her friend the chemist. He is quietly appalled at what she has brought, saying it is extremely acidic but also appears to be the product, perhaps the blood or bile, of some sort of living being, although he can't think what could possibly live with such stuff coursing through its veins. He nervously jokes about universal solvents and states his intention to drop the stuff in a disused coal mine.
The group agree that publication, let alone screening, of the incantation must be stopped. Before they can retire for the night, there is a sudden crack from the window - a spiderweb of cracks in the bottom left corner, as if someone had thrown a stone. Mr Gold runs out to spot the rascal, but the streets have a superfluity of grimy ragamuffins. He looks in the gutter, and finds something odd - what looks like a stone arrowhead. He shows it to the two archaeological ladies, who identify it as a flint arrowhead of the type commonly called 'elfshot' in England - but the knap-marks are as fresh as if it was made yesterday! Mr Machen grips his hat and mutters about Wales and little people. Disturbed by this portent, the group retire to their respective residences.