Live and Let Drood

fine wines. This was just a big room with bookshelves on all four walls. I leaned over for a quick look; not even leather bound. Just standard hardback editions, the kind you can order by the yard.
    There were no other members in the club library, presumably because Crow Lee was there. He sat in a large comfortable armchair, entirely at his ease, smiling in a smug and satisfied way. As though he’d been sitting there for ages, just waiting for us to come in. And maybe he had. Crow Lee was a large, broad-faced, powerful-looking man, wearing a long Egyptian gown so spotlessly white it seemed to shine and shimmer in the restricted light of the library. He had a great shaven head and piercing dark eyes under bushy black eyebrows. So large a man, he seemed to fill his chair to overflowing. His hands, emerging from the narrow pure white sleeves, were particularly big and powerful. He had an almost hypnotic gaze, with eyes that seemed to look deep into me. So I deliberately looked away. At meetings like this it’s always important to establish the ground rules early on.
    Crow Lee reclined in his chair and made no move to rise to greet Molly and me. He didn’t even offer to shake hands. Instead he smiled easily at me, ignoring Molly, like an important personage indulgingsome pushy interloper. So completely confident in manner that he passed right through arrogance and out the other side into confident again. We didn’t worry him, because nothing worried him. Because he’d killed everyone who might have worried him. He fixed me with his cold, dark gaze, giving me his full attention. So I refused to look at him, giving all my attention to the bodyguard standing silently at his side.
    I took my time looking him over. I knew him. Molly and I both knew Mr. Stab, and he knew us. The notorious uncaught serial killer of Old London Town. He’d operated under many names down the years, and I don’t think even he knew just how many women he’d butchered and killed in his time. Since he made himself deathless through the ritual slaughter of six unfortunate women in Whitechapel during that unseasonably warm autumn of 1888. When everyone knew the name the papers had given him. Mr. Stab was tall and solemn, dressed in the formal clothes of his own time, right down to the opera cape and top hat. He could blend into a crowd when he had to, could look just like everyone else when he was out on the streets after dark, pursuing his prey. But when acting in his professional capacity, he preferred the look of his legendary past.
    His ominous presence dominated the whole room, but he was still the second-most-dangerous person there, and everyone knew it. Because Crow Lee really was the Most Evil Man in the World. You had only to look at him to know it.
    He should have been stroking a white cat in his lap. Or pulling its legs off.
    I stepped forward, still deliberately not looking at Crow Lee, giving all my attention to the man in black, Mr. Stab. He nodded thoughtfully to me and to Molly.
    “It’s been a while,” I said, “since I invited you into my home, and you repaid my kindness by murdering my cousin Penny.”
    “I told her not to love me,” said Mr. Stab, in his cold, calm voice. “I told her it could only end badly.”
    “She was my friend!” said Molly. “And you killed her!”
    “Yes,” said Mr. Stab. “It’s what I do. It’s all I can do with a woman now. Not quite the immortality I thought I was buying, with my celebration of slaughter. But then, Hell has always had its own sly sense of humour. You know who and what I am, Molly. I’ve never made any secret of what kind of monster I am.”
    “And I’m a Drood,” I said. “That’s who and what I am. I protect the innocent, and when I can’t, I avenge their murders.”
    I looked at him steadily, and he stirred uncomfortably for a moment. Crow Lee laughed out loud and clapped his huge hands together.
    “Bravo, young Drood! I’m impressed! Really. There aren’t many in this world who can make the notorious Mr. Stab shiver in his shoes.”
    He spoke directly to me, still ignoring Molly. I could feel her containing herself at my side. She knew he was trying to get to her. Crow Lee’s voice was rich and cultured, soft and self-indulgent and oh, so self-satisfied. The voice of a man with nothing to fear.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone disturb dear Mr. Stab before.…So welcome to the Establishment Club, Edwin Drood. You belong here, with your own