Deadlier Than the Pen (16 page)

She made a face.
"Another goes into great detail and takes into account the phases of the moon." His forehead wrinkled as he struggled to call up the precise names for the ingredients. Diana had the feeling they were as strange to him as they sounded to her. "Six ounces of diasabestian mixed with twelve grains of diagrydian dissolved in a draught of clear posset ale in the morning after fasting. Then fast four hours. Then drink a draught of thin broth. And the next day the patient is bled -- three ounces from the head vein."
"Charming. Perhaps you should share that one with Maggie. She can use it in one of her stories."
"That's not all of it." Ben's smile had a wry twist. "After the bleeding, morning and night until four days before the full moon, the patient must take a walnut-sized portion of a digestial cordial to settle vapors."
Her uneasiness returned. "The moon is full tonight."
"Diana, it's all nonsense." He came around the table and, at last, gathered her into his arms. "It would be as much use to wrap the red stone found in the belly of a sparrow -- what the ancients called chelidonius -- in a cloth, and tie it to someone's right arm. That is also supposed to cure lunatics and make them amiable and merry."
"Amiable and merry," she repeated against his chest. "A desirable state." She sighed. "You seem to have lost interest in making merry, Ben Northcote. You seem to have lost interest in me."
He bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Does this feel like a lack of interest?"
But when evening came, he was called away by another medical emergency. Or so he said.

*Chapter Seventeen*
On Wednesday, according to plan, copies of Monday's _Independent Intelligencer_ arrived in Bangor. It was all there. Diana's regular column revealed the true identity of Damon Bathory. Then, in a feature story, readers found the bombshell -- she promised to unmask a killer in time for the Sunday edition. Foxe hadn't changed a word she'd sent. The piece included just enough information to make the guilty party think he'd been discovered. The hints and innuendo the article contained were designed to convince the murderer that if he acted quickly enough he could still prevent Diana from revealing his name.
Diana's suspects had a performance that night, after which they came to a late supper at the Northcote mansion. In anticipation of an attempt to kill her, Joseph and Ernest were stationed right outside the dining room door.
The first appearance of a threat came from Nathan Todd. A murderous look in his eyes, he launched a verbal attack the moment he was relieved of his mackintosh and galoshes.
"You lied to me, Diana," he bellowed. "You _are_ still writing 'Today's Tidbits' for the _Intelligencer_."
Stepping around Ben, who had placed himself in front of her at the first sign of potential danger, Diana glided up to her old friend and patted his arm. "It's a long story, Toddy," she said in a soothing voice. "Come have supper with us and I'll try to explain, but to tell too much, I fear, would give the game away."
"Now, don't you be criticizing this young woman, Mr. Todd," Maggie admonished him, taking his free arm and steering him towards the parlor.
"Oh, la! Such a fuss." Jerusha swept in, shedding umbrella and gossamer.
Lavinia Ross arrived on Charles Underly's arm. Diana wondered if she was trying to make Toddy jealous. If so, she was going about it the wrong way. A quick glance at Jerusha told Diana that her old friend was in fine fettle. Now that Diana thought about it, her interaction with Toddy seemed to have an added zest to it.
"I assure you that she cannot be cowed," Maggie was telling Nathan Todd when Diana followed them into the parlor. With fine actor's instincts herself, Ben's mother waited until everyone was within hearing distance before she added, "I've tested her mettle for myself."
"And how, madam, did you do that?"
"Why, I locked her in the family crypt, just to see how she'd react."
An appalled silence fell only to be broken when Lavinia Ross burst into delighted laughter. "I'd like to have seen your face when you realized you were trapped," she said to Diana. "That must have been a sight."
"You have a low kind of humor, Lavinia," Billy Sims informed her. He stepped closer to Diana, oozing charm and consolation. "It must have been terrifying."
"Yes. The whole incident made me wonder if _Maggie_ had followed Ben on tour in order to deal with critics."
Maggie attempted to look innocent and missed by a mile. It did not take much encouragement to get her to provide details of her "experiment" with Diana in the family vault. "Of course, I never tried to kill Diana. There appears to be someone else trying to do that."
"_You_ were attacked?" Jerusha turned to stare at Diana. "That article -- your article -- only mentioned critics in Philadelphia and ... where was it?"
"Los Angeles and San Francisco. All places popular with theatrical and lecture tours. Yes, there was an attempt to harm me. I took it as a sign I was on the right track."
She let that suggestion hang in the air for a long moment. On cue, Ernest announced that it was time to go in to supper. Amid the clamor of voices demanding more details, Diana alone remained quiet, refusing to say any more.
"But your column's been implying that Damon Bathory had deep dark secrets," Patsy blurted. Then, realizing whose guest she was, she turned bright pink and fell silent.
"You know she hasn't been writing the column since the storm," Toddy reminded them.
"So she says." Lavinia sent a suspicious look in Diana's direction. "Her byline was there, just as it was in the paper we saw today."
"But what about the murders?" Jerusha took the chair next to Toddy. Maggie was at his other hand. Lavinia pretended not to notice.
"You will have to wait to read all about it with everyone else," Diana told them.
"Why?" Todd demanded. "If you know who -- "
"I do." Diana let her gaze rove over the entire assembled company, resting briefly on each of the troupe's members but a little longer on Underly and Sims. "But, you see, Toddy, as long as no one else has the same information, that news is valuable. Congratulate me, my dear friends. I am about to make a 'killing' of my own. When my editor meets my price, I will tell him who murdered those women and tried to stop me from investigating. The revelation should be worth a tidy sum."
"Oh, la!" Jerusha declared. "How mercenary! But how clever of you, too."
The meal served, they all began to eat, but their attention remained fixed on Diana. Sims's cuff dipped in the gravy because he could not seem to take his eyes off her.
Patsy kept fanning herself and at last burst out with an admonition. "While you delay, someone else could be murdered!"
Todd made a strangled sound, then chuckled. "What a great gag!"
"Gag?" Caught off guard by the comment, Diana gaped at him.
"Going to name the killer on Sunday, right?"
She nodded.
"What day is Sunday?" Toddy asked the company at large.
"Easter," said Ben in a repressive tone.
Toddy chuckled. "Sunday is also the first day of April. April Fool's Day. Good one, Diana."
"But it isn't ... I don't -- "
"I should have known," Jerusha said, laughing with the rest. "Why, otherwise, I'd think you might meant to accuse one of us."
"Why would she do that?" Underly demanded.
"Because some of us were in all those places where the women were murdered, and at just the right times."
"You really had us going." Toddy slapped the table with glee. "Why, I even started to wonder if your fall on the train might have been some nefarious attempt to bury you permanently in that snowbank." Still chucking, he had to use his napkin to wipe the tears from his eyes.
"If that's the case, then the culprit must be Mrs. Wainflete." Billy Sims chortled in delight at the idea. "An obvious suspect now that I think about it."
Diana blinked, darting a quick look at Ben. All their guests now seemed to think the entire story nothing but an elaborate April Fool's Day hoax.
Worse, no one looked the least bit guilty.
* * * *
Following the meal, the men adjourned to the library for cigars and brandy. Ben considered the company, careful to keep his face expressionless. Either these people were more accomplished actors than he thought, or he and Diana were wrong. Could it be that the killer was _not_ a member of Todd's Touring Thespians?
No one seemed to be other than he was. It was hard to conceive that any of them, even while talking of the last stand, the current one, and the journey ahead, might be plotting to silence Diana before she revealed his identity.
Underly was sour by nature but no more irritable than usual.
Todd was jovial and entertaining.
Sims was making serious inroads into Ben's brandy.
The others were of no importance. According to what Jerusha had told Diana, none of them had been in Philadelphia when the first victim died.
"Shall we return to the ladies?" Todd made the suggestion at the earliest possible moment. "I'd like to continue my discussion with Mrs. Northcote. I've great plans for making plays out of her stories."
Ben didn't care to know the details. After all, he'd seen this company perform.
The usual entertainments filled out the rest of the evening. Billy Sims played the piano and sang a few songs, apparently oblivious to the fact that the instrument was out of tune. He had a good voice, making Ben wonder if he might do better as a singer than an actor. Lavinia rendered a tune, as well, with considerably less talent.
By the time she sat down at the keyboard, it was well past midnight. The moment she paused for breath after the first song, Todd decreed that they must be on their way back to the hotel. "Even actors need a bit of sleep," he said with a genial laugh.
Ben waved goodbye with Diana standing on one side of him and his mother on the other, to all appearances a normal family who'd just entertained a few friends.
The image gave him pause.
"A triumph," his mother declared, as Ernest closed the door and went behind the departing guests to lock the gate. "And that young woman may do quite well in the roles of Hannah Sussep and the Blood Countess. At least in some scenes. I talked to her a bit earlier. She has an instinctive understanding of the classic principles of revenge tragedy."
Ben thought Lavinia Ross would be a disaster in either role but he did not say so. Let Mother keep her illusions, at least until she'd seen the actress on stage. "So, you deem the evening a success?"
"A social triumph." She stopped at the foot of the stairs and ran one hand over the griffin on the newel post, a pleased smile on her face. "What other Bangor hostess can boast of having had the entire cast of a play to sup? But even more glorious are the ideas I've gotten for new characters after listening to that lot." Chuckling to herself, she toddled off to bed.
Ben and Diana retired to the parlor, where he poured them each a brandy.
"Could it be that my conclusions were all wrong?" Diana asked. "There are still three dead women in cities the members of Todd's Touring Thespians visited."
Taking back the glasses, Ben set them on a table and gathered Diana into his arms. "There's nothing we can do about them tonight."
"No."
"Have you been sleeping as badly as I have?"
"Worse."
Ben's lips had barely touched Diana's when the shouting began. A moment later, Joseph burst in on them. One hand was pressed against his bleeding head. In the other he clutched a copy of the _Independent Intelligencer_.
"He's gone, Dr. Northcote!" Joseph cried. "Your brother's run off again!"
"Damnation! I thought he was locked in!"
"He was, but when I went back to check on him, he was gone."
Ben examined Joseph's injury. "Nothing serious. Aaron didn't strike you, then?"
"No, sir. I fell on my way to tell you he'd escaped."
"Go," Diana said when Ben hesitated and looked at her. "I'm safe in the house."
"Stay with her," Ben told Joseph.
He went first to the carriage house. There was no sign of Aaron, but the portraits he'd just completed were now on display. Ben cursed under his breath. They were all half-naked mermaids. And they all had Diana's face.
With Ernest's help, Ben searched the grounds, aided by a moon just past the full, but there was no getting around the hard truth -- Aaron was long gone. He could have slipped out at any time after he read that newspaper.
Ben didn't care for the implications. Had Aaron taken Diana's promise to reveal the name of a murderer as a threat to him? He'd always claimed he couldn't recall some of the things that had happened to him on his visits to Philadelphia and New York, but had he remembered now? Or had he jumped to the conclusion, reinforced by the kinds of questions Ben had asked him, that he might be a killer and not realize it?
There was no way to know until Aaron was found. Haunted by the possibilities, worried about what his brother might do if he believed his voices had led him to commit a crime for which he could be locked up, Ben returned to the house to tell Diana he was going off the grounds to search for his brother.
"If I can't find him, I may have to call in the marshals. I can't take any more risks."
"He cannot believe I was about to accuse him. He could not have killed those women. Remember what Clarissa said."
"She's a whore, Diana. She'll say anything for money. And if she did lie, Aaron _could_ be guilty." The idea sickened him. "Have you a better explanation? No one confessed at your little supper party."
"And Aaron has not confessed, either."
"He ran away. That's proof he -- "
"That's proof he's scared. Confused. Not that he killed anyone. He told you he couldn't remember."
"I can't take any chances. Do you know what I found in his studio? New paintings. At least a half dozen of them. All of you. He's obsessed with you."
"That has nothing to do with anything."
"It has everything to do with it!" He seized her by the shoulders. He'd break his vow never to send Aaron to an institution rather than risk this woman's life again. "You're ... important to me, Diana."
"You're important to me, too, Ben. You're the finest man I've ever known."
Their lips met, hard. Only by holding her close could Ben momentarily assuage his pain. She clung to him with a fervor that nearly undid him, but after a moment, he found the strength to release her.
"I must go. I must find him."
* * * *
It was only after Ben left that Diana thought of Maggie, who had somehow managed to sleep through the ruckus.
Maggie was Aaron's mother. She had to be told what was happening. And she might just know something that would help.
The older woman wasn't pleased to be roused from sleep, but when she heard what Diana had to say, she bundled herself into her red monk's robe, ordered coffee, and then demanded to know everything. For once there was no artifice in her manner. Maggie was genuinely worried about her son.
"There's always been something a little odd about the boy," she admitted when Diana had summarized the bare facts -- her own encounters with Aaron, including what she'd seen at Miss Jenny's, and the search for him after Joseph ran in. "The Bathory blood, I suppose." At the expression on Diana's face, she shrugged. "I don't make _everything_ up. The Blood Countess was real. So was my great-uncle Anton who died raving."

"That may be, and Aaron may be ... ill ... but that does not make him a killer. Have you ever seen him lift his hand to anyone? Do anything more violent than shout?"
"Joseph?"
"Only when he thought Joseph was attacking him."
Maggie nodded. "Aaron doesn't hurt people unless they threaten him."
"Why did your son go to Philadelphia?" Diana asked.
Maggie started to answer, then frowned. "I suppose there was more than one reason. He said he needed to get away from me. We quarreled and he left. He'd never gone on such a long trip alone before, but there was no real reason why he shouldn't. He'd often been to Boston on his own."
"Why did you quarrel?"
"He was upset because I asked Ben to impersonate Damon Bathory. I don't think he really wanted to do it himself. He just wanted to be asked."
"He was jealous of his brother?"
"So I thought. And, of course, he had a reason of his own to go to Philadelphia. He had some paintings in a gallery there." She grimaced. "After what happened in Philadelphia, Ben took over handling his business affairs. Aaron is much too emotional to deal with selling his work."
"What happened in Philadelphia?" Diana asked, feeling as if she had to pull teeth to get any information out of Maggie.
"Aaron became convinced that the price on one of his paintings wasn't high enough and insisted it be doubled. The gallery manager refused. The next thing he knew, Aaron had given the piece away." She threw up her hands in despair. "When he got back home, I insisted he authorize Ben to deal with the galleries. There aren't that many. Just Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Only New York on what was left of the tour."
"So he had no reason to go to San Francisco or Los Angeles. And in fact, he did not."
"Ben doubts the word of that ... woman."
"I think I can prove she knew what she was talking about." Belatedly, she'd grasped the significance of _where_ Clarissa had seen Aaron.
* * * *
It was mid-day on Thursday before Ben returned. He didn't give Diana a chance to say anything before he started to speak.
"I can't put this off any longer, Diana," he said in a rush. "There is something I haven't told you about Aaron. What's wrong with him is my fault. It's because of me that he's the way he is."
"How can that be?"
"It's something that happened between Aaron and me a long time ago." Ben stared straight ahead, at the cabbage roses on the parlor wallpaper. "It was just after I returned to Bangor with my medical degree. I'd bought out another doctor's practice and taken over his patients, including the girls at Jenny's place. I was called out to treat one of them after a customer beat her up. Aaron was there when I arrived. He was, I soon learned, a regular client."
When he hesitated, Diana edged closer, placing her hand on his arm. Her closeness, the sense of unspoken support, seemed to give him the courage to go on with this difficult confession.
"Aaron and I were always scrapping as boys. We were different enough in temperament that we were frequently impatient with each other. Father taught us to box at an early age, and sometimes I think he actually encouraged our aggression towards each other. That night, Aaron had been drinking and he started going on about how the girl who'd been beaten up had deserved what she got. I told him to shut up, but he just became more insulting. He had a few choice names for me, too. I tried to ignore him, and for a while I succeeded, but after I'd checked on my patient, he accosted me in the hallway. He was still spewing abuse and I lost my temper. I struck him and he hit back. We fought there on the landing. He stumbled, his balance impaired by the drink, and I hit him again, harder than I'd intended. He fell the entire length of the stairs and cracked his skull on the newel post."
Ben's hand went to his stomach, as if the memory made him sick.
"I didn't kill Aaron, but what I did to him was worse."
"Go on, Ben." Diana kept her voice soft and made sure it held no recrimination.
"Aaron fell and struck his head," he repeated. "He was unconscious for several hours before he finally came around. At first I thought there had been no lasting damage. The next day he seemed completely normal, but it wasn't long before I became aware of ... oddities. He'd stand with his head to one side, carrying on conversations when there was no one else around. His painting became undisciplined, more disturbing in its effect. He lost his temper more often. I wasn't the only one to notice the changes. People began to hint that he should be institutionalized."
"Are you telling me you've blamed yourself all this time for Aaron's condition?"
"I've sought other reasons. There are many theories. Some say insanity is inherited, but other experts think that a man's mind can be affected by a blow to the head. It I hadn't struck him -- "
"Ben, you're wrong!"
"I'm a doctor, Diana, and I know what I did."
She moved directly in front of him, taking both his hands in hers. "Look at me," she commanded. "Do you remember what you yourself once said? That even doctors, even in this modern age, still know very little about the mind?"
He tried to pull away, but she wasn't having any of that.
"Look at me! Maggie says she had an uncle who went mad. You know insanity can be inherited. Aaron talked to imaginary muses before that night, Ben. Ask Clarissa."
"Clarissa!" He tensed.
"She told me that even before she first knew him, even before you set up your practice, well before your fight, people talked about how Aaron heard voices. That wasn't because of anything you did. He was _already_ ill."
Hope blossomed in Ben's dark eyes. Diana caught his face between her hands, forcing him to meet her steady gaze.
"You never noticed Aaron's problems before you went away to school because you were accustomed to his behavior. Only after you returned did the symptoms stand out. And because noticing followed hard upon those fisticuffs between you, you blamed yourself."
"Could it really be so simple?"
"What I'm telling you makes sense." The diagnosis of inherited madness was not one she wanted to accept, but better that than to let Ben go on suffering from unmerited guilt.
"Whatever caused his condition, he still may be a danger to others. To you."
Diana watched him carefully. As a physician, if not as a brother, he believed he'd failed Aaron.
"I must find him."
"I know where he is, Ben," Diana said quietly. "He's gone to the same place he hid back in January. He's in the rooms above your office."