Don’t Look Back

Chapter Twenty-nine

“I WATCHED YOUR HOUSE FOR HOURS, MRS.

Lake, waiting to see if you would make any move that would indicate that you might have been successful in your quest to find the bracelet. You were my last, best hope, and I thank you for confirming my faith in your deceitful and cunning ways.”

“I do not know what you are talking about,” Lavinia whispered.

“Really, you are so very typical of your sex, madam. Lying, cheating, potentially deadly Medusas, every last one of you. But knowing the nature of women as I do was what persuaded me to follow you rather than Mr. March today. It is clear he is your lover and no doubt completely under your control. Get in.”

Lavinia climbed slowly into the closed cab of the hackney and sat down on the seat across from Pelling and Maggie. Pelling gave her an approving smile. She caught a glimpse of the monster lurking just beneath the surface of his eyes and shivered.

“What made you conclude that I know the location of the Blue Medusa?” she asked warily.

“There is no other reason why you would pay another visit to the Banks mansion today, is there?” He smiled with satisfaction. “Obviously you came here to conduct business with Mrs. Rushton, and the only business that involves the two of you is the Blue Medusa. I trust that you have not yet concluded your bargain and turned over the bracelet. Because if that is the case, I no longer need you, do I?”

“You must let Maggie go,” she said quietly.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll do that.” Pelling prodded Maggie’s throat with the tip of the knife. A drop of blood appeared. “She is a cheap whore who must be punished for betraying me. Is that not right, my sweet?”

Maggie closed her eyes and whimpered behind the gag. Lavinia touched the silver pendant, in what she hoped looked like a nervous gesture. “You must let her go. You no longer need her, and killing her would be too risky.”

Pelling looked at her with blood-freezing eyes. “Do not presume to tell me what to do. I knew that you were trouble on the first occasion when we met. Probably should have got rid of you then.”

“That would have been foolish. After all, you had just lost your wife under tragic and mysterious circumstances. The murder of the mesmerist who had been treating her would have been a bit much for the local authorities, don’t you think? They might have started asking embarrassing and exceedingly awkward questions.”

“Bah. The authorities did not worry me in the least. The reason I did not punish you then was because you were not worth the time and trouble. You had, in point of fact, done me a favor. You contrived to rid me of an increasingly troublesome wife, and I was left with her inheritance. Under the circumstances, it would have been churlish to kill you.”

“Churlish.” Lavinia swallowed. “Yes. Quite. But now there is the problem of Maggie.”

“Maggie is no problem, as you can see.” Pelling tapped the knife against the woman’s shoulder. “I shall slit her throat when it suits me. Until then, she will remain quiet and obedient. Isn’t that right, Maggie?”

Tears leaked from Maggie’s eyes.

“I’m afraid it will not be as simple as that,” Lavinia said. “You see, as long as Maggie is sitting there with a knife at her throat, I will not tell you the location of the Medusa bracelet. And the bracelet is what you are after, is it not?”

“You will tell me,” Pelling said. “Or you will first watch Maggie die very slowly. If you manage to resist the urge to tell me where the bracelet is during that process, I’m sure you will talk when it is your turn.”

“The risk of killing both of us is too great.” Lavinia toyed with the silver pendant, twisting it so that it caught the light that seeped in around the edges of the window curtain. “Much too great. Better to let Maggie go. She cannot hurt you. You are too strong and too powerful to worry about a prostitute who drinks too much gin. No one pays any attention to women like Maggie.”

“Stop it.” Pelling took the point of the knife away from Maggie’s throat and jabbed it at Lavinia. “Stop it right now.”

She flinched and flattened her back against the cushions. But there was little room to maneuver in the close confines of the carriage. Pelling could easily gut her like a fish before she could reach the door if he took a notion to do so.

Maggie opened her eyes and looked at her with an expression of resignation and dread.

“I know what you are trying to do,” Pelling said to Lavinia. “You are trying to put me in a mesmeric trance. But it will not work. My mind is too strong.”

“Yes, you are strong,” she whispered. “Much too strong.”

Pelling was amused. “It’s true. Celeste and Hudson both tried their skills on me. Both failed. If they could not entrance me, you have no chance of doing so, do you?”

“No.” Lavinia watched him steadily and fiddled with the silver at her throat. “My skills are poor, indeed, compared to theirs. And you are too strong. So very, very strong. But the night is coming on. Soon it will be dark. It will be difficult to keep track of two prisoners in the dark. Better to let Maggie go. She can do you no harm.”

Pelling said nothing.

“You are too strong. You do not need her. She is a nuisance. Better to toss her out onto the street. She can do you no harm. You are too strong.”

He was not in a deep trance, Lavinia realized. But there was an odd calm about him now, as if he had come to some conclusion and had formed a plan. She could only pray that he had not decided to slit Maggie’s throat immediately and be done with the matter. The expression in Maggie’s eyes told her that she feared that was precisely what was about to happen.

Without any warning, Pelling reached up and rapped on the roof of the vehicle with the hilt of the knife.

The hackney clattered to a halt.

Pelling opened the door.

Lavinia looked out and saw a portion of a fogbound street. For an instant she feared the worst, that Pelling had chosen an isolated location where he could dump a dead body without fear of being seen.

But the rumble of cart wheels nearby reassured her. A moment later, a farmer’s wagon rattled past and came to a halt in front of a door.

“I don’t need you any longer,” Pelling said to Maggie. He raised the knife.

Maggie cringed and whimpered behind the gag.

Lavinia’s breath stopped in her throat. Her hands felt as though they had been plunged into ice. But she managed to keep her voice low and steady.

“Too strong,” she said in soft, low, soothing tones. “You are too strong. There is no need to kill her. Too strong. No need to take the risk. Better not to risk killing her. You are too strong. No need to take the risk.”

Pelling moved the knife again and sliced through the gag. With the practiced ease of a man who has cleaned his own fish and game, he slashed the knife downward a second time, cutting through the ropes that bound Maggie’s hands.

“Get out, whore. You cannot cause me any trouble. I am too strong.” He pushed Maggie out the door as though she were a bundle of laundry.

Maggie stumbled and crumpled to the paving stones.

Pelling slammed the door and signaled the coachman. The hackney rumbled forward.

“Tell me about Celeste,” Lavinia said quickly. “Tell me what went wrong.”

Pelling held the knife in his hand, the tip of the blade pointed at her midsection. “She tried to manipulate me. Tried to cheat me.”

“You hired her to steal the Medusa bracelet?”

“I had no choice.” Fury leaped in Pelling’s eyes. “I wanted to hire Hudson for the task, not a woman. Word had reached me that, for a price, he would arrange to procure certain valuable items for discreet clients. Gems and jewels and the like.”

He was wrong about Howard, she thought. Surely Celeste had been the thief. But this was not the time to correct his false impression.

“You needed someone to steal the Medusa bracelet?” she asked carefully.

“Yes. I was willing to pay Hudson well for his work. He listened to my proposal and seemed quite interested at first. He told me that he would research the project and give me his decision. But when I returned to conclude the bargain, he informed me that he lacked the nerve to carry out the theft. It was too difficult and dangerous, he said.”

“But Celeste had a different opinion, did she not?”

Pelling snorted softly. “She came to see me a few days later. Alone. She told me that Hudson had turned me down because, after researching the bracelet in an old book he had found, he was suddenly consumed with a desire to gain possession of it himself.”

She caught her breath. Perhaps Tobias had been right when he claimed that Howard had convinced himself that the legend was true. Howard was, after all, very intent on his research. It was just barely possible that in his zeal to pursue his investigations into mesmerism, he might have been tempted to help himself to the Blue Medusa.

“The fool thought that the cameo had powers that he could control.” Pelling moved the knife in a gesture of disgust. “Powers of animal magnetism that would augment his own mesmeric talents.”

“Celeste offered to take on the commission, didn’t she? She made a bargain to steal the bracelet for you.”

“For a price. She was preparing to leave Hudson. She wanted to secure her finances first.”

“I see.”

“I agreed to her terms because I had no choice. She and Hudson removed to London. I followed because I thought it prudent to keep an eye on my investment. One cannot trust a woman.”

Maggie scrambled up off the rough stones, heedless of her bruised knees and the cuts on her palms. She picked up her skirts and ran blindly, her only goal to put as much distance as possible between herself and the rapidly departing hackney.

She would tell Mr. March, she decided. She would find a way to send word to him. It would likely do no good, because it was clear that Pelling intended to slit Mrs. Lake’s throat. Any fool could see that he was a cold-blooded murderer.

But March could kill, too, if necessary, she thought. She knew that in her bones. She had seen it in his eyes that night after the fight in the downstairs hall. He was no monster like Pelling, but he would be ruthless when it came to protecting Mrs. Lake. She was certain of that.

The problem was that by the time she managed to find him and tell him what had happened, Mrs. Lake would probably be dead.

It was hopeless. But she had to try. It was all she could do for the lady who had just saved her life.

Intent on her mission, she never saw the man who had alighted from the farmer’s cart until she collided with him. He caught her by the shoulders and held her still in front of him. Dazed by the impact, she blinked and then found herself gazing into ice-cold, implacable eyes.

“What is happening inside that hackney?” Tobias demanded. “Tell me everything you can. Be quick about it.”

“Celeste stole the bracelet and met you at the empty warehouse.” Lavinia touched the silver pendant. She knew now that Pelling was not entirely impervious to mesmeric suggestion, as he claimed. But he was certainly not an easy subject, especially under these extremely difficult circumstances. The best she could hope to do was distract him and, with luck, perhaps influence his logic to some degree. She was buying time. “Did you murder her because you thought you no longer needed her?”

Pelling’s eyes darted briefly toward the twisting silver. He appeared confused by it. He looked away and back again.

He had not heard her, she realized.

“Why did you murder Celeste?” she whispered.

He stared at her. “I killed her because she informed me that she wished to alter our bargain.” A mad rage flared once again in his eyes. “The stupid bitch sent word that she wanted twice as much money for the damned bracelet. I agreed to meet her at the warehouse and hand over her fee in exchange for the Medusa.”

“That’s when you strangled her.”

“She deserved it. She struggled, of course. Waved that damned fan at me. Tried to put me in a trance. But I killed her before she could utter another word.”

“And then you realized that she had not brought the bracelet with her to the warehouse that night. You had miscalculated. Murdered her too soon. What a problem you faced. You had no notion where she had hidden the relic.”

“I tried making a few discreet inquiries the morning after the murder.”

“But you only succeeded in starting rumors about the missing Medusa,” she said, thinking of Nightingale’s late-night visit to Howard and Lord Vale’s sudden interest in the search. “That was how the rumors concerning the theft of the Medusa got started so speedily.”

“Yes. And then Hudson hired March to look into the matter. I must admit, it was a rather ingenious move.”

“Actually, Dr. Hudson employed me to look into it.”

He ignored the small correction, lost in his tale now. “I searched several of the antiquities shops, thinking that Celeste might have made a more profitable bargain with one of the dealers.”

Clearly he did not know about Mrs. Rushton’s inadvertent theft of her own relic, Lavinia thought. All he knew was that Celeste had obtained the Medusa, but she evidently had not told him how she got hold of it. Perhaps she had considered such details to be professional secrets.

Lavinia paused in the act of turning the pendant. “It was you I surprised that day in Mr. Tredlow’s shop.”

“Yes. I thought at the time that it was fortunate that you did not see me. I did not want to kill you at that point. I wanted you to continue your search. Indeed, I thought it quite possible that with March’s connections the two of you might well find the thing.” Pelling smiled again and raised the point of the knife. “And that is just what happened, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“Where is the Medusa bracelet, Mrs. Lake?”

She drew a breath. “You don’t really expect me to tell you, do you? I know that you will kill me the moment the bracelet is in your possession.”

“You will tell me,” Pelling promised. Something snakelike slithered just beneath the surface of his eyes. “In the end, you will be only too happy to tell me the location of the bracelet.”

The hackney rattled to a halt a short time later. Lavinia could smell the river. When Pelling opened the door, she saw sagging docks and shabby outbuildings swathed in fog. She heard the creak of dock timbers, but the water itself was invisible in the gray mist. There was no indication that anyone else was about.

She tried to think of what to do next.

Pelling used the tip of the knife to motion her out of the cab. She jumped down cautiously and looked up at the coachman. One glimpse of his rough features destroyed her small hope of help from that quarter: The man on the box was one of the two men who had attacked Tobias in Maggie’s front hall.

He did not meet her eyes, his entire attention on Pelling. “This is the end of the matter as far as I’m concerned. Where’s the rest of my money?”

“Here.” Pelling tossed a small sack at him. “You’ll find that it is all there. Take it and be off.”

The villain loosened the string that secured the sack, glanced inside, and then nodded, satisfied. He picked up the whip and gave the horses the signal.

The hackney clattered off and was soon lost in the fog.

The thickening mist might provide some concealment, Lavinia thought. If she could run fast enough, she might be able to escape Pelling’s knife and lose herself in the gathering darkness. She collected her skirts.

“Do not think that you can escape me, Mrs. Lake.” Pelling reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and produced a pistol. He smiled again. “You may be able to outrun a knife, but you cannot outrun a bullet. I am an excellent shot.”

“I do not doubt that for a moment. But if you kill me now, you will never learn where Celeste hid the bracelet.”

“Rest assured that the bullet I lodge in you will not kill you. Not immediately. There will be ample time for you to tell me everything you know. Now, then, we are going through that door over there.” He pointed with the knife. “Move quickly, Mrs. Lake. I am growing extremely impatient.”

She touched the pendant again. “You told me that you were a strong man. I believe you, sir. I have great respect for a man of your power.”

He glanced at the pendant. “Stop fiddling with that damned necklace.”

“Your power makes me anxious.”

“As well it should.”

“It makes me feel small. As if I were far away from you at the end of a very long, very dark hall.”

“Stop talking.” He jerked his gaze away from the pendant with obvious effort. “Go through that door, Mrs. Lake. Be quick about it.”

“I know where the bracelet is,” she said gently. “Shall I tell you now?”

He shifted restlessly and looked away from the pendant. “Where is it?”

“Celeste hid it well.” She took a step back toward the quay that edged the river. “It is at the end of a very long hall. Can you see the hall in your mind? It is the same hall in which I am standing. I look so small there at the very end of the hall. You will have to come closer to see me.” She fell back another step. “I have the Medusa here with me at the end of the hall. You must come down this long hall to find me and the bracelet-”

“Bloody hell, cease prattling on about hallways.” But he took a hesitant step, following her as she edged back through the mists toward the river. “I do not want to hear about the long hall.”

“But you must go down this long, long hall if you wish to find the Medusa.” She continued gliding slowly toward the gray wall of fog that cloaked the river. From the corner of her eye, she watched for an alley or passageway between buildings that might provide cover for a few seconds. “Come with me down this hall. You know it well.”

“No. No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But he followed, as if drawn by a string. Unfortunately, the pistol in his hand never wavered.

“It is the hall you go down whenever you find it necessary to beat a woman. It is the place where you are in control. The place where you are powerful. When you are in this hallway no one is stronger than you.”

“Yes.” He continued walking toward her, moving more quickly now. “I am the strong one.”

“Women cannot control you when you are in this place.”

“No. Here I am in command.” His voice altered slightly, rising in pitch. “She cannot hurt me here.”

“Who cannot hurt you?”

“Aunt Medusa.”

Lavinia nearly missed her footing. “Aunt Medusa?”

Pelling smirked, the giggle of a young boy, not a full-grown man. “That’s what I call Aunt Miranda behind her back. She thinks she can make me stop doing the bad things if she beats me often enough and hard enough. But I won’t stop. Because she’s right, you see. There is a demon in me and he makes me strong. One of these days I’m going to hurt Aunt Medusa so bad she’ll never be able to beat me again. I’m going to kill her.”

She could not retreat any farther. The river was directly behind her. She could hear it lapping softly, hungrily. The only choice was to walk backward along the stone quay. She edged in that direction. The row of empty warehouses formed a seemingly solid wall facing the river.

“You are halfway along the long, long hall…”

She moved slowly and carefully, terrified of stumbling over a stone and breaking the fragile trance. She glanced quickly at the closed doors and blank windows to her right, searching for an escape route.

“I followed her into the kitchen that night after we were alone in the house. None of the servants would live in it anymore, you see. They were all frightened of me…”

The narrow passage between two buildings loomed suddenly. It was the only opening she had seen. She stopped, preparing to run.

“… I stabbed Medusa with the carving knife. There was a great deal of blood…”

The action of taking flight would shatter the crystalline trance that bound Pelling. She would get no second chances.

“I took everything I could carry and later sold all of it, including the damned stone. She had always told me that the stone possessed certain forces, but I didn’t believe her. I did not realize until many years later when my spells started to get worse that she had told the truth. She came to see me in my dreams. She laughed at me. That was when she told me that I had got rid of the one thing that had the power to banish her ghost.”

“The Blue Medusa. You set out to find it.”

“I must find it. She is trying to drive me mad, you see. The bracelet is the only thing that can stop her. You will tell me where it is, damn you.”

She was preparing herself for the effort when there was a sudden, wild fluttering of wings to her left. A water bird squawked its displeasure and took off, soaring low across the water.

Pelling came to his senses instantly. He blinked once and then seemed to comprehend immediately that something had gone badly wrong.

“Where am I? What do you think you’re doing?” He raised the pistol. “Did you think you could trick me?”

“Pelling.” Tobias’s voice rang ominously in the fog, echoing eerily among the empty buildings. “Stop or I will shoot you where you stand.”

The threat cast a mesmeric spell over the entire scene. The world around Lavinia went still and hushed.

And then Pelling whirled around, seeking the voice in the fog. “March. Where are you, damn your eyes? Show yourself. I’ll kill her if you don’t.”

Lavinia ran for her life, making for the limited shelter of the lane and the protective cloak of the heavy fog. A few feet could make all the difference in determining whether she lived or died. Pistols were notoriously unreliable beyond a short distance.

“No.” Pelling started to turn back toward her. “You cannot escape me, Medusa.”

“Pelling,” Tobias called again. The voice of doom.

Pelling’s pistol roared. For a terrifying eternity Lavinia expected to feel the impact of the bullet in her back. Then she comprehended that Pelling had fired at Tobias, not her.

“Dear God.”

But the shot had gone wild, she realized. Pelling could not possibly see Tobias in the heavy mist.

“Forget her, Pelling,” Tobias commanded in that eerie voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. “You must kill me first if you are to have any chance of escape.”

Lavinia flattened herself against the nearest wall and peeked around the corner. Pelling had dropped the empty pistol and was fumbling frantically to pull a second one from the pocket of his greatcoat.

“Show yourself, March,” Pelling shouted. Pistol in hand, he turned on his heel, seeking Tobias in the mists. “Where are you, you bloody bastard?”

“Behind you, Pelling.”

Tobias emerged at last from the fog, striding deliberately along the quay toward his target. He held a pistol in one hand. The wings of his black greatcoat snapped above the tops of his boots. An invisible aura of power seemed to coil around him, deepening and growing more intense as he neared his victim.

To Lavinia it appeared as though he gathered energy from the dark mists of the oncoming night and wielded it the way a man wielded a sword.

She felt the breath squeeze out of her lungs. She had seen him in dangerous moods before, but never one such as this.

For the first time she sensed the raw, untrained talent in him and shivered. It was just as well that he had never pursued a career as a mesmerist, she thought.

In that short, dazzling moment of intuitive vision, she knew the shattering truth: Tobias’s wild talents called to whatever it was within her that gave her the ability to practice mesmerism with such power. It was as though the forces of animal magnetism that flowed through him resonated with those that flowed through her.

Tobias was, indeed, dangerous, and some part of him must have sensed it years ago, she thought, even if he had never consciously acknowledged it. That was why he had taught himself such a degree of self-mastery. She wondered if he would ever come to the realization that his ability to control and suppress the forces at work within him only made him all the more of a sorcerer.

“Stay back,” Pelling shouted, voice rising. He sounded completely unhinged now. “Stay back, damn you.”

He raised the pistol and fired.

“No,” Lavinia screamed.

Almost simultaneously, a second shot thundered out of the mists.

Pelling jerked and toppled over the edge of the quay. Lavinia heard a muffled splash.

“Tobias.” She ran forward. “Are you all right?”

Tobias looked at her from the heart of the invisible storm that appeared to seethe around him. He held the pistol at his side. For an instant she was sure she glimpsed dangerous currents of energy in his eyes.

Just your imagination. Get hold of yourself.

“Yes,” Tobias said softly. “I am all right. His aim was off. I think you shook his nerve.”

She looked down and saw Pelling floating facedown in the river. She knew why his aim had been off. It had not been her doing. He had been terrified by the sight of Tobias sweeping toward him out of the fog.

Without another word she went straight into Tobias’s arms. He caught her close and held her against him for a very long time.

It was later, after Tobias had pulled Pelling’s body from the water and lashed it to the back of the cart, that Lavinia thought about the warehouse.

“I want to have a quick look inside,” she said.

Tobias walked toward the front of the cart to untie the horse. “Why?”

“He tried to make me go in there.” She looked at the closed door. “I need to know what is behind that door.”

He hesitated and then retied the reins.

Without further argument, he went to the door of the warehouse and opened it. She walked in slowly, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the dim light.

The interior was crowded with a number of coiled ropes, empty crates, and shipping casks.

Howard Hudson lay, bound and gagged, in the corner.

Lavinia hurried forward and removed the strip of cloth that sealed his lips. He groaned and sat up so that Tobias could cut the ropes around his wrists.

“Thought you two would never get here,” he said.