Deadlier Than the Pen Part 23

A short time later, she rapped on the door of the room Jerusha shared with Patsy. They'd scarcely had time to say h.e.l.lo before there was another knock.

"Toddy," Jerusha predicted. "He's worried about you."

"Because of that fall through the ice? I am completely recovered."

"Not because of that," Toddy said when they let him in.

Diana wondered if he was about to bring up the murders, though she could not conceive of his knowing anything about them unless he'd been involved.

"It's that man you're living with," Toddy said instead. "What do you really know about him?"

"He's a respected physician." Defensive, she gave him a narrow-eyed look. "You were willing to leave me at his mercy in New Haven when you thought he was a writer of horror stories. Why are you so concerned about him now?"

"Didn't leave you at his mercy." Toddy looked offended. "Had a little talk with him before I left. And Jerusha gave you money so you didn't have to be kept by him."

"So he told me." Diana rewarded Toddy with a quick peck on the cheek. "I'm able to look out for myself, you know."

"Are you, Diana? You made a bad choice when you married Evan. There's no denying that."

"Toddy," Jerusha warned.

"No, it's time she knew. He wasn't much of a husband to her, or much of a man, either." He sent a sheepish look in Jerusha's direction. "I know I'm not one who should throw stones, but Evan Spaulding was a bounder, Diana. He -- "

"I know most of what he did, Toddy. And I know how he died. I was there, remember?"

Clearing his throat, Toddy looked as ill-at-ease as Diana had ever seen him. "Should have done something sooner," he said. "Should have looked out for you, not let him go off on his own with you."

"You couldn't have stopped him, Toddy. Or me, either. I pledged myself to him, no matter that he took his wedding vows lightly. But that's over and done now. And Ben is nothing like Evan."

"I'm very much afraid he's something worse. I've heard stories since I've been in this town. Wild tales about what goes on in that house. Nice remote setting. A brother no one ever sees, kept in the carriage house. A secret laboratory in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Shades of Dr. Frankenstein! Or Dr. Jekyll. And that mother of his! Do you know, just before you came home, she was regaling me with a lurid account of a witches' sabbat she claims she attended."

"Toddy, she has an active imagination. That's all."

"How do you explain her eyes? Color of a new penny, they are," he said to Jerusha, who had not met Maggie."

"And Dr. Northcote's, as I recall, are a deep, soulful brown with amber flakes." Jerusha grinned at Diana, further infuriating Toddy.

"You've not met her."

"She will," Diana interrupted, and extended the invitation Maggie had sent.

"I'm not sure I want to get any closer to someone who indulges in that sort of thing," Toddy muttered. "More dangerous than directing the scene of the three witches in that cursed Scottish play."

"Yet you want to adapt her stories," Diana reminded him.

"That's just good business, but the woman herself ... well, she's strange, Diana. Confounded me two or three times just in the short while I was with her."

"She excels at that," Diana admitted, and was surprised to hear herself add, "There's no real harm in her."

"I for one am dying to meet the woman," Jerusha said. "And what actor ever turns down a free meal?"

Toddy ignored her to take Diana's hands in his. "Is it possible he's used animal magnetism to make you obey his will? That's what Lavinia thinks, and she was once a magician's a.s.sistant, you know."

Diana jerked her hands free. "Nonsense."

Toddy huffed. "Well one hears of such things, you know. And him a doctor, with such a mother, and madness in the family. Well!"

His concern touched her, even as it made her want to defend Ben and his family. "Come to supper tomorrow night. You'll see for yourself that all is well, and that any danger I may be in has nothing to do with Ben."

His gaze sharpened. "What's going on, Diana? It hasn't escaped my notice that since you met this man you've been uncommonly accident p.r.o.ne."

"That has nothing to do with Ben." She patted his cheek. "Read tomorrow's papers, and then come to supper. Will you do that for me, Toddy? And bring all the company with you?"

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Jerusha asked when Toddy finally left her hotel room.

Diana thought about it, then shook her head and changed her mind about questioning Jerusha. Her friend might let something slip to the others. And if, by chance, Diana was right about Charles Underly, then too much knowledge could put Jerusha in danger. "Come to supper tomorrow night. You can decide for yourself who is and isn't fit for bedlam."

"Be careful, Diana."

"You, too? I thought you liked Ben?"

"I wouldn't kick him out of my bed, but that doesn't mean I'd turn my back on him, either. Unless you're very sure of him, don't be too quick to trust again."

Unspoken, the words remember Evan hung between them.

Diana returned to the Northcote house in a thoughtful mood. She'd wondered about Ben's laboratory herself. When Annie informed her that he was down there again, she gathered her courage and rapped on the door.

"It's open!" He looked up from a microscope when she entered. "I thought it might be you." He glowered at her, but the look softened as she came closer. "Mother had to muster a powerful argument to keep me from rushing after you to the hotel. How could you take such a risk?"

"If Charles Underly is the sort of man who kills women in dark alleys, he's not likely to attack one in broad daylight."

"He could be the sort who arranges accidents."

She did not want to think about that. Not now. Instead she surveyed her surroundings. There was scientific equipment everywhere -- mortars and pestles, alembics, bottles full of medicine, and jars containing specimens she wasn't sure she wanted to identify. "No cadavers?" she asked.

"Not today."

"Maggie told me you're a city coroner."

"I also make some of my own medicines. Any good physician knows how to roll pills."

The width of a counter separated them, but she felt the sensual tug of his presence. He'd slept in her bed last night. She wanted him there again, this time when they were both awake.

"You must know a great deal about cures," she said with studied casualness. "And preventives."

Misunderstanding, he began to talk about herbal remedies for madness. "I've done a good deal of research on the subject just recently. Most of it is foolishness, of course. One old recipe instructs the physician to wrap a frog's liver in colewort leaves and burn it, then give the patient the ashes to drink in wine."

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 ident.i.ty of Damon Bathory. Then, in a feature story, readers found the bombsh.e.l.l -- 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sembled 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."