The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01] Read online

  Someone cheered. Others joined.

  “What is he driving?” asked Vanessa “It looks like a relic from the past.”

  “For these people, it’s deliverance,” said Richard. “It’s a fish-’n’-chips van.”

  <>

  * * * *

  EGYPTIAN AVENUE

  “This tomb’s leaking sand,” said Fred Regent. “And beetles.”

  Fine white stuff, hourglass quality not bucket and spade material, seeped from a vertical crack, fanning out around and between clumps of lush, long green grass. Black bugs glittered in morning sunlight, hornlike protrusions rooting through the overgrowth, sand-specks stuck to their carapaces. Fred looked up at the face of the tomb, which was framed by faux-Egyptian columns. The name bunning was cut deep into the stone, hemmed around by weather-beaten hieroglyphs.

  It was the summer of 197—. Fred Regent, late of the Metropolitan Constabulary, was again adventuring with the supernatural. As before, his guide off life’s beaten track was Richard Jeperson, the most resourceful agent of the Diogenes Club, which remained the least-known branch of Britain’s intelligence and police services. All the anomalies came down to Jeperson. Last month, it had been glam rock ghouls gutting groupies at the Glastonbury Festival and an obeah curse on Prime Minister Edward Heath hatched somewhere inside his own cabinet; this morning, it was ghosts in Kingstead Cemetery.

  Jeperson, something of an anomaly himself, scooped up a handful of sand and looked down his hawk nose at a couple of fat bugs.

  “Were we on the banks of the great river Nile rather than on a pleasant hill overlooking the greater city of London,” said Jeperson, “I shouldn’t be surprised to come across these little fellows. As it is, I’m flummoxed. These, Fred, are scarabus beetles.”

  “I saw Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb at the Rialto, Richard. I know what a scarab is.”

  Jeperson laughed, deepening creases in his tanned forehead and cheeks. His smile lifted black moustaches and showed sharp teeth-points. The Man from the Diogenes Club sounded as English as James Mason, but when suntanned he looked more like an Arab, or a Romany disguised as Charles II. His mass of black ringlets was not a wig, though. And no gypsy would dress as gaudily as Richard Jeperson.

  “Of course you do, Fred. I elucidate for the benefit of exposition. Thinking out loud. That is Sahara sand, and these are North African beasties.”

  “Absolutely, guv’nor. And that bloody big dead one there is a scorpion.”

  Jeperson looked down with amused distaste. The scorpion twitched, scuttled and was squashed under Jeperson’s foot.

  “Not so dead, Fred.”

  “Is now.”

  “Let us hope so.”

  Jeperson considered his sole, then scraped the evil crushed thing off on a chunk of old headstone.

  For this expedition to darkest N6, he wore a generously bloused, leopard-pattern safari jacket and tight white, high-waisted britches tucked into sturdy fell-walker’s boots. His ensemble included a turquoise Sam Browne belt (with pouches full of useful implements and substances), a tiger’s-fang amulet that was supposed to protect against evil, and an Australian bush hat with three corks dangling from the rim. Champagne corks, each marked with a date in felt-tip pen.

  “The term for a thing so out of place is, as we all know, an ‘apport,’“ said Jeperson. “Unless some peculiar person has for reasons unknown placed sand, scarabs and scorps in our path for the purpose of puzzlement, we must conclude that they have materialised for some supernatural reason. Mr. Lillywhite, this is your belief, is it not? This is yet another manifestation of the spookery you have reported?”

  Lillywhite nodded. He was a milk-skinned, fair-haired middle-aged man with burning red cheeks and a peacocktail-pattern smock. His complaint had been passed from the police to the Diogenes Club, and then fielded to Jeperson.

  “What is all this doing here?” asked Vanessa, Jeperson’s other assistant—the one everyone noticed before realising Fred was in the room. The tall, model-beautiful redhead wore huge sunglasses with swirly mint-and-yellow patterns on the lenses and frames, a sari-like arrangement of silk scarves that exposed a ruby winking in her navel, and stack-heeled cream leather go-go boots. Beside the other two, Fred felt a bit underdressed in his Fred Perry and Doc Martens.

  “Appearing supernaturally, I should say, Vanessa,” said Jeperson. “That’s generally what apports do.”

  “Not just the apports,” she went on. “All the obelisks and sphinxes. Oughtn’t this to be in the Valley of the Kings, not buried under greenery in London North Six?”

  Jeperson dropped the sand and let the scarabs scuttle where they might. He brushed his palms together.

  Vanessa was right. Everything in this section of Kingstead Cemetery was tricked out with Ancient Egyptian statuary and design features. The Burning tomb was guarded by two human-headed stone lions in pharaonic headdresses. Their faces had weathered as badly in a century as the original sphinx in millennia. All around were miniature sandstone pyramids and temples, animal-headed deities, faded blue and gold hieroglyphs and ankh-shaped gravestones.

  “I can explain that, Miss ... ah?” said Lillywhite.

  “Vanessa. Just Vanessa.”

  “Vanessa, fine,” said the scholarly caretaker, segueing into a tour guide speech. “The motif dates back to the establishment of the cemetery in 1839. Stephen Geary, the original architect, had a passion for Egyptiana which was shared by the general public of his day. From the first, the cemetery was planned not just as a place for burying the dead but as a species of morbid tourist attraction. Victorians were rather more given to visiting dead relatives than we are. It was expected that whole families would come to picnic by grandmama’s grave.”

  “If my gran were dead, we’d certainly have a picnic,” said Fred. Lillywhite looked a little shocked. “Well, you don’t know my gran,” Fred explained.

  “They held black-crepe birthday parties for the many children who died in infancy,” the caretaker continued, “with solemn games and floral presents. Siblings annually gathered around marble babies well into their own old age. It’s not easy to start a graveyard from scratch, especially at what you might call the top end of the market. Cemeteries are supposed to be old. For a Victorian to be laid to rest in a new one would be like you or me being bundled into a plastic bag and ploughed under a motorway extension.”

  “That’s more or less what Fred has planned,” said Jeperson.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. To circumvent the prejudice, Geary decided to trade on associations with ancient civilisations. If his cemetery couldn’t be instantly old, then at least it would look old. This area is Egyptian Avenue. Geary himself is buried here. Originally, there were three such sections, with a Roman Avenue and a Grecian Avenue completing the set. But the fashionable had a craze for Egypt. The Roman and Grecian Avenues were abandoned and overtaken. It was no real scholarly interest in Egyptology, by the way, just an enthusiasm for the styles. Some of the gods you see represented aren’t even real, just made up to fit in with the pantheon. A historian might draw a parallel between Ancient Egyptian obsession with funerary rites and the Victorian fascination with the aesthetics of death.”

  Fred thought anyone who chose to spend his life looking after a disused cemetery must nurture some of that obsession himself. Lillywhite was an unsalaried amateur, a local resident who was a booster for this forgotten corner of the capital.

  “It’s certainly ancient now,” said Fred. “Falling to pieces.”

  “Regrettably so. Victorian craftsmen were good on surface, but skimped everything else. Artisans knew the customers would all be too dead to complain and cut a lot of corners. Impressive stone fronts, but crumbling at the back. Statues that dissolve to lumps after fifty years in the rain. Tombs with strong corners but weak roofs. By the 1920s, when the original site was full and children and grandchildren of the first tenants were in their own grave-plots, everything had fallen into disrepair. When the United Cemetery Com
pany went bust in the early 1960s, Kingstead was more or less abandoned. Our historical society has been trying to raise money for restoration and repair work. With not much luck, as yet.”

  “Put me down for fifty quid,” said Jeperson.

  Fred wasn’t sure if restoration and repair would improve the place. The tombs had been laid out to a classical plan like miniature pyramids or cathedrals, and serpentine pathways wound between them. Uncontrolled shrubbery and ivy swarmed everywhere, clogging the paths, practically burying the stonework. A broken-winged angel soared from a nearby rhododendron, face scraped eyeless. It was the dead city of a lost civilisation, like something from Rider Haggard. Nature had crept back, green tendrils undermining thrones and palaces, and was slowly taking the impertinent erections of a passing humanity back into her leafy bosom.

  “This is the source of your haunting?” asked Jeperson, nodding at the Bunning tomb.

  Fred had forgotten for a moment why they were here.

  “It seems to be.”

  There had been a great deal of ghostly activity. Yesterday, Fred had gone to the newspaper library in Colindale and looked over a hundred and twenty years of wails in the night and alarmed courting couples. As burial grounds went, Kingstead Cemetery was rather sporadically haunted. Until the last three months, when spooks had been running riot with bells and whistles on. A newsagent’s across the road had been pelted with a rain of lightning-charged pebbles. A physical culture enthusiast had been knocked off his bicycle by ectoplasmic tentacles. And there had been a lot of sightings.

  Jeperson considered the Bunning tomb. Fred saw he was letting down his guard, trying to sense what was disturbed in the vicinity. Jeperson was a sensitive.

  “According to your report, Lillywhite, our spectral visitors have run the whole gamut. Disembodied sounds ...”

  “Like jackals,” said Lillywhite. “I was in Suez in ‘56. I know what a jackal sounds like.”

  “... phantom figures ...”

  “Mummies, with bandages. Hawk-headed humans. Ghostly barges. Crawling severed hands.”

  “... and now, physical presences. To whit: the scarabs and other nasties. Even the sand. It’s still warm, by the way. Does anyone else detect a theme here?”

  “Spirits of Ancient Egypt,” suggested Vanessa.

  Jeperson shot her a finger-gun. “You have it.”

  Fred would have shivered, only ...

  “Richard, isn’t there something funny here?” he said. “A themed haunting? It’s a bit Hammer Horror, isn’t it? I mean, this place may be done up with Egyptian tat but it’s still North London. You can see the Post Office Tower from here. Whoever is buried in this tomb ...”

  “Members of the Bunning Family,” put in Lillywhite. “The publishing house. Bunning and Company, Pyramid Press. You can see their offices from here. That black building, the one that looks like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s called the Horus Tower.”

  Fred knew the skyscraper, but had never realised who owned it.

  “Yes, them. The Bunnings. They were just Victorians who liked the idea of a few hierogylphs and cat-headed birds in the way they might have liked striped wallpaper or a particular cut of waistcoat. You said it was a fashion, a craze. So why have we got authentic Egyptian ghosts, just as if there were some evil high priest or mad pharaoh in there?”

  “George Oldrid Bunning was supposedly buried in a proper Egyptian sarcophagus,” said Lillywhite. “It was even said that he went through the mummification process.”

  “Brains through the nose, liver and lights in canoptic jars?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jeperson. Indeed.”

  “That would have been irregular?”

  “In 1897? Yes.”

  “I withdraw my objection,” said Fred. “Old Bunning was clearly a loon. You might expect loon ghosts.”

  Jeperson was on his knees, looking at the sand. The scarabs were gone now, scuttling across London in advance of a nasty surprise come the first frost.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with the descendants for a while,” said Lillywhite. “Even before all this fuss. I was hoping they might sponsor restoration of the Bunning tomb. The current head of the family is George Rameses Bunning. He must maintain the family interest in Egypt, or at least his parents did. It appears George Rameses has his own troubles.”

  “So I’d heard,” said Jeperson. “All dynasties must fail, I suppose.”

  Fred had vaguely heard of the Bunnings but couldn’t remember where.

  “Pyramid Press are magazine publishers,” said Jeperson, answering the unspoken query. “You’ve heard ofStunna.”

  Vanessa made a face.

  Stunna was supposedly a blokes‘ answer to Cosmopolitan, with features about fast cars and sport and (especially) sex. It ran glossy pictures of girls not naked enough to get into Playboy but nevertheless unclad enough for you not to want your mum knowing you looked at them. The magazine had launched last year with a lot of publicity, then been attacked with a couple of libel suits from a rival publisher they had made nasty jokes about, Derek

  Leech of the Daily Comet. Stunna had just ceased publication, probably taking the company down with it. Fred realised he had heard of George Rameses Bunning after all. He was doomed to be dragged into bankruptcy and ruin, throwing a lot of people out of work. The scraps of his company would probably be gobbled up by the litigious Leech, which may well have been the point.

  “Bunning and Company once put outBritish Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel,” said Jeperson. “Boy’s papers. At their height of popularity between the wars. And dozens of other titles over the years. Mostly sensation stuff. Generations of lads were raised on the adventures of Jack Dauntless, RN, and the scientific vigilante, Dr. Shade. I think the masthead of Stunna bears the sad legend ‘incorporatingBritish Pluck.”‘

  “You think there’s a tie-in,” said Fred. “With all the pluck business. It’s a penny dreadful curse.”

  Jeperson’s brow furrowed. He was having one of his “feelings,” which usually meant bad news for anyone within hailing distance.

  “More than that, Fred. I sense something very nasty here. An old cruelty that lingers. Also, this is one of those ‘hey, look at me’ hauntings. It’s as if our phantoms are trying to tell us something, to issue a warning.”

  “Then why start making a fuss in the last month? Any ghosts around here must have been planted ...”

  “Discorporated, Fred.”

  “Yes, that... they must have been dead for eighty years. Why sit quietly all that time but kick up a row this summer?”

  “Maybe they object to something topical,” suggested Vanessa. “Like what’s Top of the Pops?”

  “It’s not dreadful enough to be after the Bay City Rollers, luv,” said Fred.

  “Good point.”

  Jeperson considered the Bunning tomb, and stroked his ‘tache.

  Fred looked around. The cemetery afforded a pleasant green dappling of shadow, and swathes of sun-struck grass. But Jeperson was right. Something very nasty was here.

  “Vanessa,” said Jeperson. “Pass the crowbar. I think we should unseal this tomb.”

  “But...,” put in the startled Lillywhite.

  Jeperson tapped his tiger fang. “Have no fear of curses, man. This will shield us all.”

  “It’s not that... this is private property.”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t. Besides, you’ve already established that George Rameses Bunning has less than no interest in the last resting place of his ancestors. Who else could possibly object?”

  “I’m supposed to be a guardian of this place.”

  “Come on. Haven’t you ever wanted to open one of these tombs up and poke around inside?”

  “The original Mr. Bunning is supposed to have had an authentic Egyptian funeral. He might be surrounded by his treasures.”

  “A bicycle to pedal into the afterlife? Golden cigar cuspidors? Ornamental funerary gaslamps?”

  “Very likely.”
/>   “Then we shall be Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.”

  Fred thought that wasn’t a happy parallel. Hadn’t there been an effective curse on the tomb of King Tutankhamen?

  Vanessa produced a crowbar from her BOAC hold-all. She was always prepared for any eventualities.

  Fred thought he should volunteer, but Jeperson took the tool and slipped it into a crack. He strained and the stone didn’t shift.

  “Superior workmanship, Lillywhite. No skimping here.”

  Jeperson heaved again. The stone advanced an inch, and more sand cascaded. Something chittered inside.