Don’t Look Back

Chapter Twenty-three

The mesmerist opened the door himself. He did not look pleased to see Tobias on the step.

“March. This is a surprise. What are you doing here?” Hudson searched his face warily. “Have you some news about the killer?”

“I want to talk to you.” Tobias moved forward, giving Hudson no choice but to fall back into the hall. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Hudson scowled. “You’re already inside, are you not? Come with me.”

He closed the door and turned to lead the way down a short corridor.

Tobias followed him toward a room at the end of the hall. He surveyed the interior of the house as he moved through it. The door of the parlor stood open. He noticed that it was dark inside. All of the drapes were pulled closed. There appeared to be very little furniture. He glimpsed only a chair and a single table. The Hudsons had not bothered to completely furnish their rented house. Either Celeste had been killed before she could choose fabrics and purchase furnishings or else the Hudsons had never intended to stay here for long.

Hudson ushered Tobias into a spare study. “Sit, if it pleases you. I’d offer you tea, but my housekeeper has left for the day.”

Tobias ignored the invitation. He went to stand at the window instead, his back to the cloudy skies. He did a quick inventory of the room. There were only a handful of books on the shelves, one of which appeared to be very old. The leather binding was cracked and worn. No pictures or drawings adorned the walls. There were no personal effects on the desk.

“Can I assume that you planned a rather short stay in Town?” he asked.

If Hudson was startled by the question, he gave no indication. He went to stand behind his desk. By chance or by choice, he had chosen the one place in the room that the light from the window did not reach. He looked at Tobias from a pool of shadows, eyes deep wells of night.

“You refer to the lack of furniture in the house.” With a casual movement of his hand he removed his watch from his pocket. The gold fobs danced lightly. “The house is rented. Celeste and I never got a chance to unpack properly, let alone select sofas and tables and fabrics. And then she was murdered and naturally I lost all interest in such things.”

“Naturally.”

“May I ask what this is about, March?” Hudson’s voice took on a rich, sonorous quality. The gold watch seals swayed gently. “Surely you have not come here to discuss interior decoration.”

“You are quite correct. I came here to talk about Gunning and Northampton.”

The fobs jangled a little, but Hudson’s shadowed features gave no hint of any reaction other than polite confusion. His eyes never wavered.

“What about them?” he asked.

The watch fobs went back to their steady, rhythmic arcs.

“They were clients of yours in Bath, I believe.”

“Yes. Gunning visited me for a time because he experienced difficulty sleeping. Northampton’s problem centered on his inability to sustain an erection.” Howard’s voice grew more resonant. The watch fobs continued to swing. “Both are common complaints among men of their years. I fail to see how either of those two cases affects this situation.”

The motion of the watch fobs was becoming annoying, Tobias thought.

“Both men were victims of a jewel thief sometime after they came to you for treatments,” he said.

“I don’t understand. Surely you are not implying that my Celeste had anything to do with their losses? How dare you, sir?” Howard’s voice did not tighten with outrage as he came to the defense of his wife’s reputation. If anything, it only reverberated more strongly and deeply. “I told you, she was a beautiful, impulsive woman, but she was no thief, sir.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“A beautiful, impulsive woman,” Howard repeated gently. The gleaming fobs swung like pendulums. “Not a thief. Eyes as bright as gold. As golden in the light as these little balls dangling from my watch. Look at the balls, March. Golden and bright and lovely in the light. It is very easy to look at them. Very hard to look away.”

“Save your energy, Hudson.” He smiled thinly. “I am in no mood to be put into a trance.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Celeste’s criminal talents do not interest me. What does interest me, Hudson, is the fact that it is quite probable that you are also a thief.”

“Me.” Howard’s voice abruptly hardened. The watch fobs ceased swinging. “How dare you accuse me of having committed theft?”

“I cannot prove it, of course.”

“You certainly cannot.”

“But here is what I think happened.” Tobias clasped his hands behind his back and started to prowl the room. “You worked alone for years. However, I suspect you had one or two close brushes with the law at some point and decided it might be wise to disappear for a while. So you sailed to America. You did rather well for yourself there and remained for some time. But eventually you chose to come back to England. You returned and settled in Bath.”

“This is utter conjecture on your part.”

“Indeed. Utter conjecture is something that I do very well. As I was saying, you set up in business in Bath. And there you met Celeste, a lady whose principles mirrored your own.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Merely that neither of you had any difficulty with the notion of pursuing a life of crime.”

“I could call you out for that, sir.”

“You could, but you won’t,” Tobias said. He halted at the far end of the room and looked at Howard. “You know very well that I am likely the better shot, and in any event, the gossip would be bad for your business.”

“How dare you.”

“As I was saying, you and Celeste formed a team. You selected the victims, no doubt favoring wealthy, aging gentlemen well into their dotage, who would be especially vulnerable to Celeste’s charms. She used her wiles to convince them to consult you for therapy. Once you had them in your treatment room, you employed your mesmeric skills to manipulate them into giving you some valuable from their personal collections. Afterward they remembered nothing of the experience, of course, thanks to the instructions you gave them while they were entranced.”

Howard composed himself. He stood, unmoving, behind his desk and watched Tobias with a stare that would have done credit to Medusa.

“You can prove none of this,” he said.

“What went wrong this time?”

“You must be mad, sir. Perhaps you should seek professional help.”

“This business with the artifact was different from the start,” Tobias said. “The decision to steal Banks’s relic was a change of pace for you. At first glance, it makes no sense. Your specialty is valuable jewelry, not antiquities. Artifacts such as the Medusa bracelet have a limited market. It certainly wouldn’t be as easy to get rid of as a pair of diamond earrings or a pearl-and-emerald necklace.”

Howard said nothing. He just stood there in the shadows, an angry snake watching for an opening.

Tobias casually picked up the aged, leather-bound book he had noticed earlier.

“I can think of only two possible reasons why you would have elected to steal the Medusa bracelet,” he continued. “The first is that you knew for certain that you could sell it to a particular collector; someone whom you had good reason to believe would pay well for it.”

“You are lost in your own fantasies, March.”

Tobias opened the cracked leather binding of the book he had taken down from the shelf and read the title page.

Discourse on Certain Secret Rituals and

Practices of the Ancients in British-Roman

Times

“There is a second possibility.” He closed the book and put it back on the shelf. “And, while I admit it lacks the merit of sound logic, in some ways it strikes me as even more likely than the notion of a commissioned theft.”

Hudson’s mouth twisted in disdain. “What is the second possibility?”

“That you are the one who has gone mad,” Tobias said softly. “The second possibility is that you actually put some credence in the legend of the Medusa bracelet. Is that why you set out to steal the damned thing? Because you convinced yourself that the Medusa head cameo could augment your own mesmeric powers?”

Hudson did not move so much as an eyelash.

“I have no notion of what you are talking about.”

Tobias motioned in the direction of the ancient book. “You stumbled across some mention of the Blue Medusa and its supposed powers, perhaps in that very volume. In any event, you became obsessed with the damned thing. You told Celeste that it would be your next acquisition, and the two of you removed to London and concocted a plan to obtain it.”

“You are a fool, March.”

“But Celeste was a woman of the world who long ago learned to look after her own interests. She no doubt sensed that this theft you now planned held only risk and no profit. Perhaps she feared that you were slipping into madness.”

“Leave Celeste out of this.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot do that. What really happened between the two of you the night she died, Hudson? At first I assumed that you killed her because she betrayed you with another man. Then I began to wonder if the murder was simply the result of a falling-out among thieves. But now I’m starting to think that you murdered her because she believed you were no longer quite sane and wanted to end the partnership.”

Howard gripped the back of his desk chair so fiercely that his knuckles whitened. “Damn your eyes, March, I did not murder Celeste.”

Tobias shrugged. “I will admit that there are still a number of unanswered questions. I haven’t yet deduced what happened to the bracelet, for instance. Obviously you don’t know where it is either. That is the real reason you hired Lavinia, isn’t it? Not to find the killer. You wanted her to find the damned bracelet.”

“You amaze me, sir.” Howard’s laugh was harsh, completely lacking in its former mellifluous tones. “I thought you had all the answers.”

“Only some of them at the moment.” Tobias started toward the door. “But rest assured, I will soon have the rest.”

“Wait, damn you. Is Lavinia aware of your wild speculations?”

“Not all of them.” Tobias opened the door. “Not yet.”

“You would do well not to tell her your crazed notions. She will never believe you. She has known me far longer than she has known you, March. I am an old friend of the family. If you force her to choose between us, she will side with me. You may depend upon it.”

“Speaking of Lavinia,” Tobias said, “this is probably as convenient an opportunity as any to give you some advice.”

“I don’t want any of your damned advice.”

“Then consider this a warning, instead. Do not think for one moment that I will allow you to use Lavinia to replace Celeste.”

“Do you believe that she is so enamored of you that she would never cast you aside in favor of me?”

“No,” Tobias said. “But I do know this much: If you were to succeed in taking Lavinia away, you may be certain that you would not live long enough to savor your victory.”

He walked out the door and closed it very gently and deliberately.