Deadlier Than the Pen Part 15

"No." Nodding his head towards his mother he said, "Allow me to present the real Damon Bathory."

Chapter Twelve.

A woman had written those tales? Caught off guard by Ben's announcement, Diana murmured "Oh, my" in a faint voice while her thoughts whirled. It had never crossed her mind that the imagination of one of her own s.e.x could wax so vivid, so violent.

At the same time, she felt a rush of relief. Ben Northcote was not Damon Bathory. He was a physician. A care giver. He was ... normal.

Benjamin Northcote. A doctor. A blessedly ordinary man. Well, not ordinary, exactly. In some ways he was quite extraordinary, but he was not some Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde as she'd once feared. Nor was he a self-centered, vanity-driven performer.

He was not another Evan.

The comparison struck her forcibly. Was that what she'd thought? What she'd feared as much as anything when she'd believed Ben was the author of those stories? Had she been afraid she was about to repeat the greatest mistake of her past by falling in love with another creative, tormented soul?

Mrs. Northcote cleared her throat. "Of course, now that you know the truth about Damon Bathory, we'll have to kill you."

Diana gasped, unsure what to make of such a preposterous statement.

"Behave yourself, Mother." Ben's voice contained only mild reproof. "She's harmless," he added, directing the remark to Diana.

"You never let me have any fun," Mrs. Northcote complained, and Diana was not entirely sure she was joking. There was something ... odd about her.

"She's teasing you, Diana," Ben rea.s.sured her.

When he crossed to the loveseat and sat beside her, she slowly began to relax. With him there to look after her, surely she had nothing to fear.

"Mother had already agreed to reveal Damon Bathory's true ident.i.ty to the world. Now that you're here, you may as well be the one to break the story."

This was what she'd been after, Diana told herself. Horatio Foxe would have his expose. She would keep her job without being obliged to invent a thing. Best of all, the fact that Mrs. Northcote had written the stories shattered Foxe's theory that "he" had murdered reviewers who'd panned them.

"Why delay?" she asked. "The sooner this is made public, the better."

"I need to inform my publisher of the decision," Mrs. Northcote said, "and break the news to a few close friends. Most of my acquaintances already consider me an eccentric, but they have no notion just how unconventional my behavior has been."

"How long?" Diana felt uneasy again, in spite of Ben's comforting touch.

"Time enough to discuss that later," he said before his mother could reply. Taking Diana's elbow, he propelled her to her feet. "I'm sure you want to rest a bit and settle in before supper."

A few minutes later, Ben showed Diana into a large, richly furnished bedroom. A glance was enough to show her that her belongings were already there and had been unpacked by a servant.

"I know we need to talk," Ben said, already leaving, "but right now I should get back to Mother."

"Ben! Wait. I do understand. I think. Why you didn't tell me sooner."

He turned back to her, his shoulders filling the doorway. "Please believe that I didn't care for all the secrecy, not even in the beginning." He sent a rueful look in her direction. "With the wisdom of hindsight, I know I should never have agreed to go on tour. But four months ago I had my own agenda. I decided to indulge myself. The decision bore bitter fruit. Even before I met you, I longed to return to my own life, but I'd made a promise. I was committed to fulfill Damon Bathory's obligations."

He took his promises seriously. She did know that much about him.

"I wanted to tell you the truth in New Haven, Diana." He dragged his fingers through his hair as he looked away from her to stare out the window at the lowering sky. "I wanted to tell you even before that night. But I'd sworn to Mother and to Damon Bathory's publisher that I'd keep her ident.i.ty secret. I must have been mad to agree to that."

"Eventually someone would have found out."

"So I reasoned for myself. Far better to volunteer the information. But in New York, and in New Haven, I was still bound to honor my pledge. I was not the one who'd have to face dire consequences if the truth came out too soon."

"You had your own reasons for going on tour," Diana reminded him.

"Yes. I told you about my visits to the hospitals. I have a ... patient who concerns me. Someone who displays many of the symptoms of a hysteric."

The idea of madmen loose in society made Diana uneasy, but she remembered how pa.s.sionate he had been on the subject when they'd supped together in New York. She was not sure what question would have come out next, but before she could open her mouth to ask Ben anything, he bent towards her.

"I need a few minutes with Mother before we dine," he said, and kissed her lightly on the end of the nose. With that, he went out, closing the door behind him.

Diana did not move until Ben's footsteps had faded away down the hall. Then she went straight to the wash basin to slosh cold water onto her face in a desperate bid to bring order to the jumbled thoughts whirling in her brain.

Dripping, she gripped the sides of the oak commode and stared at her reflection in the mirror affixed to the high back. Her eyes looked haunted. What had she done? She fumbled at the built-in towel rack, then buried her face in the soft cloth.

She'd trusted Damon Bath -- No. She'd decided to trust Ben Northcote. She loved Ben Northcote.

But she did not know anything about him, except that, whatever his name, he'd cast a spell over her.

She knew still less about his family and his life here. She fingered the fabric clutched in her hands. A life of luxury. She folded the towel and returned it to the rack, then slowly turned to a.s.sess her surroundings.

All the furniture was oak, all of it heavy and most ornately carved. But instead of roses or some other flower, the usual decoration on such pieces, these furnis.h.i.+ngs sported scarab beetles, intricately detailed. And spiders and scorpions and serpents. Diana moved from piece to piece, pausing to run her fingertips over the glossy surface of a bureau. It had been polished with lemon-scented wax.

Perfectly normal, she thought. Unfortunately, she didn't believe it.

Last of all, she studied the bed, a ma.s.sive affair with four posters and a canopy. Diana stepped closer, braced for more carved insects, then stopped abruptly and bit back a cry of alarm.

Curled up, dead center on the counterpane, was a huge, long-haired black cat. It regarded her with unblinking eyes -- copper-colored eyes that bore an eerie resemblance to Mrs. Northcote's.

"I suppose you're her pet," Diana said to the feline. Appropriate, she thought, that Damon Bathory should have a black cat as a familiar. "I wish you could talk," she added after a moment. "You probably have all the answers I need."

The enormous beast blinked at her but made no other response.

Sinking onto the end of the bed, Diana cautiously extended a hand. The cat sniffed, then licked her fingers. Encouraged, Diana stroked the soft fur. When it didn't protest that either, she lifted it -- him -- onto her lap. What was one more risk?

She sat there, petting the Northcotes' cat, until she felt calm enough to face a disquieting truth: there were still secrets in this house. Something more than Mrs. Northcote's nom de plume had her exchanging guarded glances with her son. Diana's feeling of wrongness was strong, almost strong enough to make her flee back to the safety of the hotel.

She realized she had taken an extraordinary risk, made an impulsive, perhaps foolish decision, because of how she felt about Ben Northcote. When first they'd met, she'd tried to protect herself by remembering the emotional turmoil that was inevitable when one came to care for a creative, artistic person, but it had done no good. Even before she'd found out that Ben was not Damon Bathory, she'd known she could not control her feelings where he was concerned. It was as if, at last, she'd found the other half of herself.

A gentle rapping sound broke in on Diana's thoughts. The door opened a moment later to reveal a slender young woman in a black dress and white ap.r.o.n. She carried Diana's green silk gown, freshly pressed.

The cat hissed and kicked Diana with his back feet until she released him. The maid stepped prudently to one side as the animal streaked past her, then bobbed a curtsey.

"Beggin' your pardon, mum, but Mrs. Northcote wonders will you be needin' any help with your dressin'?"

Diana started to refuse, then realized that Ben and his mother weren't the only ones in this house who could satisfy her curiosity. It would be wasteful to overlook a source of information when it was dropped into her lap. She told the young woman to come in.

"What is your name?" Diana asked.

"Annie, mum."

"Well, Annie, I am Mrs. Spaulding and I am delighted to make your acquaintance. Tell me, does the cat have a name?"

"Cedric, mum. At least that's what Mrs. Northcote calls him."

Diana smiled at her. "And is there some other name that you use for Cedric?"

"Not me, mum, but the cook, she calls him the devil's sp.a.w.n."

When she'd hung the gown in the armoire, Annie spoke again. "I'm very good at fixing hair, mum."

"Excellent."

Diana had wondered how she was going to keep the girl with her long enough for an interrogation. Diana did not really need help to change her clothing. Even if she'd brought her entire wardrobe with her, she'd have been hard put to offer Annie much employment. Unaccustomed to having a servant, Diana always took care to select garments she could get into and out of on her own.

Diana encouraged Annie to chat about herself as she worked and soon learned the girl was one of eight children. "The first to get a job when we all come to America from Ireland," she told Diana proudly.

"Do any of the others work here?" Diana asked.

"Oh, no, mum. There was just the one post open."

"I've not met the rest of the staff, except for the gatekeeper. A taciturn fellow." Her mind's eye provided a picture of an elderly man with a big key.

"That's Old Ernest. He calls himself the groundskeeper. And sometimes he drives Mrs. Northcote in her carriage. Then there's Cora Belle, the cook. And Eudora, the housekeeper, and I'm the maid of all work."

"That's four. Are there others?"

Diana watched with interest as color blossomed in Annie's cheeks. "There's Joseph, mum."

Although Annie was vague about his precise duties, Diana gathered that Joseph was young and strong and spent most of his time in the carriage house.

"Why the carriage house?" she asked. A stable would have made more sense if his job was to care for the horses. The only things most people kept in carriage houses were their buggies and wagons.

"He has his room there. And Mr. Aaron's studio is on the upper floor."

"He works for Mr. Aaron Northcote, then?" Diana studied the girl's reflection in the mirror.

Momentary confusion made Annie's brow wrinkle as she tucked a wayward curl into the stylish coiffure she was constructing for Diana. "He works for Mr. Ben," Annie said after a moment. "We all do, except Ernest. Mrs. Northcote pays him."

When she didn't volunteer anything further, Diana tried a new ploy. "I saw one of Aaron Northcote's paintings in New York. He is a very talented artist."

"I wouldn't know, mum. He doesn't let me clean in his studio." There was a new primness in her voice and her lips pursed in disapproval.

"Surely Joseph has taken a peek," Diana teased her. "Didn't he tell you what he saw?"

Annie hesitated, then lowered her voice and leaned close to Diana's ear. "He saw scandalous things," she confided. "And heard them, too. Mr. Aaron, he has women up there at all hours of the day and night, and more than one of them has come away sobbing after he's done with her."

At the appointed hour for supper, Diana descended the elaborate cherrywood staircase. She paused at the foot, disconcerted by the way the oval mirror above a Louis Quinze bombe bureau reflected the ornately carved griffin on the newel post.

Such things were fas.h.i.+onable, she told herself. But she wished now that she had not devoured so many of the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe and her imitators when she was a girl at school. Squaring her shoulders, Diana marched down a long, dimly-lit main hallway, its highly polished cherrywood floor partially covered by thick Oriental carpets. The dining room was at the far end, its entrance guarded by two huge gargoyles positioned on either side of a cherrywood arch.

Ben came to meet her and showed her to one of the three places set at an enormous oval dining table. "My brother will not be joining us," he said before she could ask. "He's something of a recluse. Shy. Especially when women are around."

"He was willing to meet me at the restaurant when I thought he was you."

Ben shrugged. "He was curious."

Diana might have pursued the subject of Aaron, but to prevent it Ben turned to his mother, who was seated on his other side. "I believe Mrs. Palermo is going to have twins," he told her.

Annie served the soup.

Mrs. Northcote and her son discussed the Palermo family in excruciating detail, then went on to speak of other local matters. Diana ate in silence, feeling more ill at ease by the moment. A vivid imagination, she decided, could be a distinct disadvantage. Her sense of a wrongness about this place, a wrongness about Mrs. Northcote and, perhaps, about her other son, the one who was shy ... and appeared to talk to people who weren't there ... grew stronger.

"You're looking much too somber, Diana," Ben said abruptly.

She stammered an apology. "My thoughts wandered."

"There's a penalty for that," he said in a teasing tone of voice. "I insist you tell Mother that story you related to me in New York -- the one about the camel."

She had shared the tale with him, Diana remembered, because she'd been trying to avoid talking about anything more personal. Was that his motivation now?

"Yes, do tell." Mrs. Northcote's insistence left her houseguest no choice but to oblige.

"It happened in January," Diana began. "A camel, an elephant, and a donkey were all featured in the Kirafly Brothers' spectacular at the Academy of Music. Bolossy and Imre Kirafly," she added for Mrs. Northcote's benefit, "are Hungarian-born performers turned theatrical producers. They have been Manhattan's princ.i.p.al purveyors of spectacle for the last dozen years. Nightly after the show, the animals are taken in charge by keepers and driven to a stable on Prince Street."

She paused for breath, taking a sip from her water goblet. Ben smiled encouragingly. Mrs. Northcote's face wore a bland expression.

"On this particular evening, the camel led the procession, which went by way of 14th Street to Broadway, then turned south. Just as they reached 12th Street, the camel broke free."

She leaned forward, determined to engage her hostess's interest.

"A camel running wild is a frightful novelty, Mrs. Northcote, even to jaded New Yorkers. Horses and humans alike dove for cover to give the marauding beast room. Portly gentlemen and stout ladies strolling along the sidewalk suddenly displayed the agility of acrobats in order to escape danger. The rabble soon scented fun and joined in the chase with an ear-splitting chorus of yells. The noise further maddened the poor camel."

"Where was the animal's keeper?" she asked.

"In pursuit, but the beast ran in a zigzag pattern. The poor fellow was hard put to keep up. And distracted by the elephant. For quite some time, friend camel ran down Broadway unmolested."

"You mustn't leave loose ends. The keeper's role is important."

"Er, yes. Well, to continue, the noise and lights confused the runaway beast and he vented his fury in roars and kicks, and that in turn caused horses pulling carriages to rear and plunge. The driver of an express wagon had just left his conveyance in front of the St. Denis Hotel, in order to deliver a trunk, when he heard the racket up the street. He dropped the trunk to dive for the reins and was barely in time to keep his team from making a rapid-transit trip through the hotel cafe."