Deadlier Than the Pen Part 24

"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 s...o...b..nk." 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 ident.i.ty.

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 cla.s.sic 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 gla.s.ses, 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!"

"d.a.m.nation! 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 wh.o.r.e, 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 inst.i.tution 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 a.s.suage 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 sc.r.a.pping 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 inst.i.tutionalized."

"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."