Death From a Top Hat

Chapter 8 The Grimorium of Pope Honorius

Merlini’s face was solemn and his voice low and serious as he read: “Pliny states that the dried muzzle of a wolf is efficacious against enchantments and that perfume made of peewits’ feathers drives away phantoms.” He looked up at us, grinning.

The Inspector said, “Sure, and a stew made of nitwits’ brains is what causes ’em. Is that the sort of stuff those books are full of?”

“There’s a good bit of that sort of thing here, yes. And there are some that are more serious. That book, for instance,” he drew out a large musty looking one, “is Sprenger and Kramer’s Malleus Mallificarum, one of the most important of the source books on witchcraft. It’s a guide for the use of judges in witchcraft trials, the inquisitor’s handy manual. And it’ll give any imaginative person who reads it the holy horrors, because it smells to high heaven of blood and torture and sadism. This is the early 1489 edition, bound in human hide. The rarity of the item is due almost entirely to its date of issue; a great many of the source books on this subject have that type of binding.”

He replaced it on the shelf and indicated another volume nearby, a small one bound in faded red leather. “King James the First’s Daemonologia, the vade mecum of the professional witchfinders, who, in the seventeenth century, set themselves up in the business of legalized murder and travelled from town to town consigning harmless old women to the flames at so much per head — reductions on gross lots.” He ran his finger along the shelf. “Gaule’s The Mag-astro-mancer, or the Magi-call-astrologicall-diviner posed and puzzled, Hedelin’s Des Satyres, Brutes, Monstres et Demons, Jacquerius’ Flagellum Daemonum Fascinariorium, Saint-Hebin’s Culte du Satan, Jules Delassus’ Les Incubes et les Succubes, Glanville’s Saducismus Triumphatus, Cotton Mather’s The Invisible World Displayed—he’s got them all, from Apollonius of Tyana right on up to Eliphas Levi, Arthur Edward Waite, Manly P. Hall, Montague Summers.”

The Inspector frowned, not at all sure what, if anything, Merlini was leading up to. He waited silently, somewhat interested, I think, in spite of himself.

“This section,” Merlini said, moving over, “is devoted to the alchemists, Nicholas Flamel, Saint-Germain, Althotas, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Alain de l’Isle, who is reputed to have actually discovered the elixir vitae—he lived to be 110. Here’s a biography of Raymond Lully, who had an alchemical laboratory in the precincts of Westminster Abbey about 1312, where, years later, a quantity of gold dust was found. The fly-leaf bears the signature of Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, and alongside is the Doctor’s own quaintly titled work, A true and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some spirits. Also present are the more sober anthropological authorities — Frazer, Breasted, Budge, Murray, Thorndyke, et al.

“Oh, oh!” He grabbed at another book. “This is a bit out of place. Les Secrets des Sorciers. It’s about witchcraft, all right, but it’s an original manuscript, and the shelf numbers plainly indicate that it is the property of the British Museum. Perhaps you’d better take charge of it, Inspector.”

“I wish you’d get on with it,” Gavigan said, his impatience beginning to overflow. “I’m after a murderer, not a book thief. I don’t see that this literary chat is getting us anywhere.”

Merlini didn’t seem to hear. He had crossed to the shelves in the corner behind the desk and, pointing to a row of yellowed paper-bound pamphlets, explained, “Here’s a particularly choice collection of the English pamphlet literature. I don’t know how they ever sold any of the things. Their authors had an odd journalistic habit of telling almost the whole story on the title page. Listen to this:

Merlini showed signs of continuing indefinitely, but Gavigan put his foot down. “Harte,” he said, “does Merlini have these spells of talking like a book collector’s catalogue very often? He’s worse than Philo Vance!”

I shook my head. “I think he’s better,” I said. “At least he hasn’t annoyed us with any quotations from the Bhagavad-Gita in the original Sanskrit.”

Merlini smiled a bit sheepishly. “I’ll be good, Inspector,” he promised. “But when you turn a bookworm of my inclinations loose in a pasture like this—” He gestured at the shelves and shrugged helplessly. “However, we are getting a more revealing picture of Sabbat than any description his friends might be able to provide.”

“And a very pretty picture it is,” Gavigan commented acidly.

“Here’s a shelf full of assorted occultism, presentation copies of those remarkable works on Theosophy by Helena Blavatsky, and most of Churchward’s and Spence’s books on Mu and Atlantis. On the shelves by the window you’ll find all the important works on the modern witchcraft, spiritism. Richet, Podmore, Lodge, Doyle, Flammarion, Zoellner, Crookes, Price, Carrington — the whole lot — and a nice set, in good condition, of bound volumes of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Watrous would have a picnic over in that corner.”

He made an inclusive gesture at the shelves. “It’s all quite complete. If you want to know anything about the sorcery of the Esquimaux, Maori Tohungaism, Negro Voodooism, the Berserkir of Iceland, or Indian Shamanism, it’s here. He must have spent a young fortune collecting this library. He didn’t swipe all the books, and some of them are pretty rare items.”

Inspector Gavigan was fidgeting again. Merlini, noticing it, spoke faster.

“For our purpose, the more important books of the lot are these.” He indicated that section just to the left of and handiest to the desk. “They are the Black Books, the Rituals of Magic, fourteenth century treatises that describe and illustrate the instruments necessary for conjury and divination, with all the necessary pentacles, prayers, invocations, and suffumigations.”

He ran his finger over the titles. “The Claviculae Salmonis, The Legmegton or Lesser Key, The Books of Cornelius Agrippa, the Magical Elements ascribed to Peter of Albana, and the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. Those five are the Rituals of white and black magic. And these, the famous Grimorium Verum, The Grand Grimoire, and the—The Grimorium of Pope Honorius the Great are the Rituals devoted solely to black magic. Here you can find, if you are interested, recipes for the flying ointment with which the witches greased themselves before their wild ride through the sky to the Sabbath.[6] And the formula for pact-ink, should you want to draw up any agreements with Lucifer.[7] What’s more important, just now, you’ll find here a comprehensive demon directory which lists the names and offices, and pictures the personal seals of the members of the infernal hierarchy, the Almanac de Gotha, the DeBrett of Hell. Surgat should be on the list, and I don’t think we’ll have to spend much time hunting him. The Pope’s Grimorium is not in its place.” He indicated an empty space in the otherwise closely packed shelf. “It lies on that table.” We followed his glance toward the low coffee table that was partly hidden by the armchair near the door. We moved over and stood looking down at it. It was a large folio in only fair condition. The binding was scuffed and the pages wrinkled with damp, but the richly intricate gold leaf tooling and the warm patina of age that covered the binding gave it a mysterious dignity.

“I wonder,” Merlini continued, “if someone kindly left that out — so we’d be sure not to miss it?”

He bent to pick it up, and Gavigan cautioned, “Careful. There may be prints.”

Merlini nodded, “I suppose so. Though if we have a demon to contend with, I doubt if his prints will do us much good — unless, of course, he’s been previously arrested for some misdemeanor. And if the murderer is mortal, I’ll bet that any fingerprints he may have left belong to someone else.”

He lifted the book gently and turned it over so that the open leaves faced us.

We all bent over, staring at the open pages, and then Merlini said, “Someone has been very considerate. Look.”

He pointed at the left hand page and ran his finger down a list of names that appeared there.

At the next name his finger stopped. The line read:

Following each of the sub-spirit’s names was an invocation guaranteed to summon that demon from the infernal depths. Surgat’s began near the bottom of the page, and Merlini read it aloud.

Gavigan’s attitude was irreverent. “Foxes,” he said, “are red. What does a gray-haired sorcerer do?”

Merlini ignored this arrant skepticism and read on, tasting each syllable with obvious enjoyment, but delivering them with all the solemn dignity of an earnest Archbishop.

Merlini stopped.

“Well,” prompted the Inspector, “let’s have it. We’re all of age.”

Merlini pointed to the center of the folio where a ragged fringe of paper was all that remained of a leaf that had been roughly torn away. The pages were aged with yellow, but the serrated edges of the tear were white and fresh.

Inspector Gavigan made a noise like a string of firecrackers. The whole damned business, in his opinion, was blithering, four-starred, purple-hued nonsense.

His expert flow of pungent Anglo-Saxon was interrupted by Malloy, who put his head in at the door and announced:

“Mr. Duvallo just walked in downstairs, Inspector. Do you want him brought up?”