The funeral
take the train out to Evergreen chapel.
Jonah Kensington
Miriam Atwright
Tommy
PC’s
3 men, available PC’s
Roman
Simon
Henry
Reverend eulogizes
1. How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2. How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3. Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, 4. and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 5. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.
Conrad plays trumpet to a song, fails roll, regains 1 san
Jonah says something
Whistler says a few words, Fast talks into regaining 3 san
Schmidt says a few words, fails his persuade check, but manages 1 san
Val Simeo goes back to Erica Carlyle’s
Kensington’s office
Group goes back to Kensington’s office
Roman joins group
After lunch, Miriam Atwright describes her recent research discoveries:
No police record; no military service. His lawyers evaded a paternity suit against him when he was 17. Roger underwent short treatments for alcoholism when he was 18, and again when he was 20. Miraculously, he graduated from Groton, but was allowed gentleman’s resignations from a succession of excellent universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Miskatonic, Cornell, and USC) in the next three years. When his parents died in an automobile crash, Carlyle seemed to take stock of himself and for the next year gained the general approval of his peers, retainers, and relatives. But he slipped back into his old ways when his sprightly sister showed a better grasp of family affairs.
His lack of character seemed confirmed when Carlyle fell under the influence of a mysterious East African woman. Rumors of debaucheries and worse circulated. Carlyle began to drain great sums of money from family interests, which prompted vicious arguments. In the months before he left for Egypt, Carlyle seemed to withdraw and become more serious.
The first Carlyle, Abner Vane Carel, was transported to Virginia in 1714, having been convicted of “unwholesome and desperative activities” not otherwise characterized by Derbyshire authorities. Abner was the illegitimate and discredited son of an undistinguished Midlands nobleman. Abner’s son Ephraim moved to New England, adopted “Carlyle” as a more gallant surname, and made sound investments in lumber and textiles, the basis of the family fortune to come. The Carlyle interests amassed huge profits during the American Civil War, and far-sighted management further expanded the financial empire in the half-century thereafter.
No police record; no military service. The youngest of three sons, his father was a Chicago M.D. who as a young man was reputed to have been caught up in the utopianism of the early plains, and to have belonged to several deviant sects. Robert Huston graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins. After three years he threw over his circulatory-ailments practice (and his wife), and went to Vienna to study first under Freud and then under Jung. Huston was among the first Americans to undertake this esoteric and controversial study of the mind, which dealt so much with sexual behavior that no respectable person could talk about it. Huston’s seemingly salacious and dangerous past, along with his elegant manners and sardonic wit, made him much in demand when he returned to New York City. There he established a practice in psychoanalysis catering to the very wealthy.
Huston enjoyed fame and notoriety. His fees were whispered to be $50-$60 dollars per visit. Women found him suave, handsome, sensitive, perceptive, and sexy. Among his patients was Roger Carlyle. Though Huston supposedly went on the expedition with Roger Carlyle in order to continue treatment, there were rumors Huston had just broken off an affair with a patient, who had then committed suicide. Roger Carlyle helped hush up the scandal, perhaps in return for Huston’s company on the expedition, the rumors continued. There were also rumors that Carlyle did not want Huston at large while Carlyle was far away in Egypt. Carlyle may have believed that Huston’s ethics were not strong enough to resist revealing explosive material about his young patient.
After Huston was declared dead, his records were turned over to the Medical Affairs Board of the State of New York. Controversy about this reached the newspapers.
Limited service as a Lieutenant with the Yorkshire Guards, 1901-1902, breveted as a Colonel in British Army Intelligence, 1915-1916, and then retired because of injury. Police records list only that young Sir Aubrey was caught pinching a policeman’s helmet in 1898, while at Oxford. Penhew’s public life is easily followed in Who’s Who, Burke’s Peerage, etc. With the inevitable nimbus of black sheep and blackguards down through the centuries, the Penhews trace their nobility from the time of William the Conqueror, when Sir Boris Penhew acquired great holdings in the west of England. With the exception of one Sir Blaize, who was beheaded for treason and black magic (his crimes nearly cost the line its titles and properties), the Penhew prosperity and prestige has been undiminished for eight centuries.
Sir Aubrey graduated with honors in classics from Oxford, but spent the next several years in Egypt, surveying and performing exploratory excavations amid the then little known wonders up-river, to the First Cataract and beyond. As his official biography notes, Sir Aubrey is credited with founding several important branches of Egyptology, and for several important archaeological discoveries, particularly at Dhashur. Nearly as important, the Penhew Foundation, set up by Sir Aubrey, has underwritten many important researches at home and abroad, and is responsible for the education of many brilliant but penniless scholars.
Sir Aubrey has title to several famous stately homes, as well as mansions in London, the Cotswalds, Monaco, and Alexandria (Egypt), and townhouses in Paris, Rome, and Athens. He is incontestably wealthy, and reputedly made new fortunes from his American holding companies during the Great War.
Though a public figure, Sir Aubrey’s private life is little known. He is a bachelor, without family or heirs other than the Penhew Foundation. His Egyptologist peers hold him in the highest respect.
She has no police record or record of public service. She is heiress to the Masters armaments fortune, the dark antecedents of which have been chronicled in the muckraking Masters of Corruption by Nikolai Steinburg. Miss Masters’ grandfather, Aldington Masters, held onto and increased the holdings by leaving most decisions to a series of chief executives who uniformly made intelligent, far-ranging, and profitable moves. George, her father, also adopted this relaxing way of life, spending his time doting on his daughter. Hypatia attended Swiss and French academies, showing facility for languages. Her great interest proved to be photography. Several of her shows earned good reviews and enthusiastic attendance. A daring streak in her led to an incautious affair with a Catholic Marxist, one Raoul Luis Maria Pinera, at City College of New York.
The Oilfield murder piqued the curiosity of Roger Carlyle, who just then was being expelled from USC. After an hour-long interview, the two forged an intimate alliance, amazing everyone who knew Roger Carlyle, for the youth had never made any strong friendships. Carlyle summoned the best legal minds in the country for the defense, who proceeded to blow to pieces the seemingly open-and-shut case offered by the county prosecutor and eclipsing the testimony of seven eye-witnesses. Brady was acquitted on a variety of technical grounds. From that time, Jack Brady and Roger Carlyle rarely were separated — at times Brady was Carlyle’s bodyguard, and at other times was his spokesman. For the expedition, Brady acted as general foreman and manager, and by all accounts performed well.
Brady’s nickname comes from a brass plate about four inches square which he carries over his heart. Bullets twice have dented it. Brady has said that his mother, a recluse in Upper Michigan, had The Eye, and that she made this plate to guard her impetuous son.
On cults
Different cults worship degenerate and otherworldly gods
Most prominent:
Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh (Egyptian cult, Most prominent)
Cult of the Bloody Tongue (African cult)
Cult of the Sand Bat (Australian cult)
Chinese cult
Show books to Miriam
Kensington recommends we look up Mickey Mahoney, who publishes tabloid The Scoop
