Control the breath and you control the rest.
He found the inhale-exhale rhythm and struck the gong again. This time he followed the tone down into the self-induced trance.
In this state his senses still functioned. He could smell the faint scent of the candle and hear the clatter of carriage wheels in the street, but it was as if he was in another dimension. An invisible wall kept the outside distractions from affecting his concentration. In this realm he could contemplate things in a different light; see patterns and connections that were not readily visible when he was in a normal state of awareness.
He meditated on Beatrice Lockwood. He knew that she was critical to the success of his plan. But what he did not understand was how she was connected to all the other factors in the case. She injected a discordant note of chaos into the otherwise clockwork precision of his scheme. As a rule he did all he could to control elements of uncertainty. But sometimes the currents of chaos were precisely what were required to unlock doors that would otherwise remain closed.
Chaos, however, was, by definition, unpredictable. Chaos was energy that, by its very nature, could not be channeled or controlled. It was raw power, and power was always potentially dangerous.
He picked up the mallet and struck the gong a third time. The sound hung in the atmosphere for several seconds before gradually fading.
He went deeper.
Beatrice Lockwood was important and not just because he needed her assistance to find the blackmailer and the killer.
She was important to him in ways that he did not yet fully comprehend.
He was trying to see the patterns in the chaos when he heard the discreet knock on the door. Chadwick would not have interrupted him during his exercises unless there was a compelling reason.
He came swiftly out of the trance and extinguished the flame. Wrapping his hand around the hilt of the cane, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way across the small, spare space.
He opened the door. Chadwick stood in the hall, immaculately turned out as usual. A thin, wiry man of indeterminate years, he wore his formal butler attire with the aplomb of a military officer in uniform. Under fire, he was far more unflappable than many officers Joshua had met. It was Chadwick who had taken on the task of nursing his employer back to health following the disaster that had nearly cost Joshua his leg and an eye. Chadwick had dealt with blood, fever, delirium and the periodic outbursts of his patient’s bad temper in a calm, dignified and efficient manner.
“My apologies for interrupting you during your morning meditation, sir,” Chadwick said. “But young Mr. Trafford is here. He says it’s urgent.”
“With Nelson everything is urgent.”
“Might I remind you that your nephew is eighteen years old, sir. Young men see no great virtue in patience.”
“They may have a point,” Joshua said. “Life is short, after all. Tell him I will be down in a few minutes. Perhaps you could find him something to eat? He always seems to be famished when he arrives on our doorstep.”
“He is devouring a muffin as we speak, sir.”
Footsteps pounded up the staircase. Nelson crested the stairs and bounded down the hall, moving with a lithe, athletic grace that made Joshua sigh. There had been a time when he had moved with such ease. Like Nelson, he had taken his excellent physical coordination and fast reflexes for granted. The poet was right, he reflected, youth was wasted on the young.
“Did Miss Lockwood agree to the plan, Uncle Josh?” Nelson demanded, shoveling the last bite of muffin into his mouth.
Nelson possessed the dark hair, sharp features and lean build that characterized the men of the Gage family. He was also brimming with a thirst for adventure that Joshua remembered all too well. When he had turned eighteen, he, too, had lusted after excitement, danger and a noble cause. That was before he had discovered that such thrills were too often accompanied by blood, death and betrayal.
But there was no use trying to warn young men like Nelson of the reality of what lay ahead. They would not heed the warnings. Nature made it impossible for them to do so.
I have become far too jaded, Joshua thought. He knew there was no stopping Nelson. The best he could do was to try to keep his nephew from making the mistakes he had made. But just how did one go about instructing a young man on the dangers of trusting others? Some things had to be learned the hard way.
“Yes, Miss Lockwood did agree to assist us,” he said. “This morning I sent word to your mother to let her know that she will be attending Lord Alverstoke’s country-house party with a paid companion from the Flint and Marsh Agency.”
“Brilliant,” Nelson said. Then his face tightened with frustration. “I just wish I could go, too.”
“That is not possible. Neither of us can attend the affair as guests as we did not receive invitations.”
“Where will you stay?” Nelson asked.
“I have made arrangements to rent a cottage near the estate for the weekend. I’ll pose as a painter who has come to the country to do some landscapes.”
Nelson frowned. “You don’t paint.”
“There’s no great trick to smearing paint on a canvas as long as one doesn’t intend to complete the picture.”
“You must be close at hand in case the ladies need you. You cannot expect Miss Lockwood to deal with an extortionist by herself. She is just a professional companion.”
“Miss Lockwood has hidden depths,” Joshua said. Not to mention a hidden gun, he added silently. “But you’re right. I certainly do not intend for her to take on the blackmailer alone. If my plan is carried out properly, neither Miss Lockwood nor your mother will come into contact with him. Don’t worry, Nelson, I will keep an eye on the women.”
“Mother is very worried about your scheme. She keeps talking about how you were nearly killed on your last case. She says your temperament is similar to that of the other men of the Gage bloodline. She worries that you will come to a bad end.”
“You know Hannah tends to fret.”
“True.” Nelson glanced at the cane and grimaced. “But she says she can’t forget that she had a terrible premonition shortly after you left London to investigate your last case.”
“This is a very different situation.”
There was nothing else he could say that was reassuring, Joshua thought. Hannah had good reason for her concerns. She was the one who, at seventeen, had been left to pick up the pieces and care for her younger brother when their recently widowed father, a thrill-seeker all of his life, had died while on a hunting trip in the American West. Edward Gage had been accidentally shot and fatally wounded by one of his companions.
On the heels of the telegram that had delivered the news of Edward Gage’s death, she had been forced to confront another disaster, one of a financial kind. After learning of his client’s death, Edward’s man of affairs had absconded with the Gage fortune.
With the very real threat of the workhouse looming before them, Hannah had taken the only respectable avenue available to her. She had accepted an offer of marriage from William Trafford, a wealthy man who had generously agreed to take his bride’s younger brother into his household.
Trafford had proved to be a decent, scholarly man who had treated Hannah and Joshua with kindness. He had been in his early sixties—old enough to be Hannah’s grandfather. A widower with no children of his own from his first marriage, he had been thrilled when Hannah had given him a son.
Trafford had succumbed to a heart attack a few years later but not before he had instructed Joshua on the proper management of the fortune that he had left to Hannah, Nelson and Joshua. Overseeing the family investments had proved to be a relatively simple, boring matter for Joshua. The men of the Gage line had a knack for making money.
By that time Joshua had “fallen into the clutches of that dreadful man,” as Hannah put it. The dreadful man was Victo
r Hazelton, known in the shadows of the espionage world as Mr. Smith.
Hannah had devoted herself to Nelson, intent on making certain that he followed in William Trafford’s staid, scholarly footsteps and not those of his grandfather or his uncle on her side of the family tree. For a while all had been well. Until recently Nelson had been a dutiful son who had tried to please his mother.
But in the past year he had begun exhibiting what Hannah called the wild blood that tainted the Gage line. She feared that he would descend into the gaming hells and dark clubs of London’s underworld, just as his grandfather and great-grandfather had done. Just as Joshua had done for a time.
She was right to worry, Joshua thought. Two months ago when he had come to London on a rare visit to take care of some business affairs, he had been obliged to drag Nelson out of one of the worst hells in town. He had arrived just as the manager of the club was sending his enforcers to toss Nelson out into the street. Accusations of cheating were being leveled. Impending violence had simmered in the atmosphere.
A few nights ago he had found it necessary to take time out of his investigation of the blackmailer in order to repeat the exercise.
“Look at it this way, Uncle Josh,” Nelson had said, his voice slurred by a great deal of cheap claret, “I always win.”
“There is no great mystery in that,” Joshua had said. “You’ve got the Gage luck when it comes to cards. Unfortunately it doesn’t apply to much else.”
“Huh. Probably best not to mention this episode to my mother.”
“Agreed. I didn’t mention the last occasion, either.”
Hannah would be horrified if she discovered that Nelson was spending more and more of his nights seeking out the dark excitement and the darker pleasures of London’s most dangerous streets.
Joshua was well aware of what Nelson was going through because he had gone through the same restless, reckless stage at that age. It was as if a fire had been burning inside him. In search of a way to channel the fierce energy that threatened to consume him, he had been drawn out into the streets of London’s violent underworld.
Victor Hazelton had found him on those streets and forever changed his life. Victor had understood him. The man known as Mr. Smith had shown him how to control the tempestuous energy that seethed in his gut, taught him how to focus and control the wild forces of his nature. Victor had become his mentor, his father in every way save by blood.
Joshua now faced a lifetime of knowing he had failed Victor, the man who had saved him from himself.
“If all goes according to my strategy, this matter will be concluded within a day or two at Alverstoke Hall,” he said.
“Nevertheless, it might be useful to have me conveniently at hand,” Nelson pointed out, still hopeful.
What the hell, Joshua thought. He had tried to keep Nelson out of the investigation as a favor to Hannah. She did not want him exposed to the world in which Joshua had once moved. But it was Nelson who had first realized that Hannah was being blackmailed. He had a right to assist.
“As it happens,” Joshua said, “I have another, very critical task that I would like you to undertake.”
Nelson’s excitement was palpable. He almost glowed with enthusiasm. “What is that?”
“I want you to look into Fleming’s murder. Several months ago it was a sensation in the press because of Fleming’s association with the paranormal. I want you to interview everyone you can find who was living or working near the building where the Academy of the Occult had rooms. Shopkeepers, servants, tenants, deliverymen, the local constable, the baked-potato man. Ask them if they noticed any strangers hanging about in the neighborhood in the days before the murder.”
Nelson frowned. “I don’t understand. I thought you said that the blackmailer was very likely the killer. You are off to Alverstoke’s country house to find him.”
“I examined the autopsy report this morning. There was information in it that leads me to believe that we may be dealing with a hired killer. It’s possible that he is also the blackmailer, but I am now inclined to think that it is more likely the blackmailer employed a professional. And blackmail may not have been the original goal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whoever sent the killer to the Academy intended to have Miss Lockwood abducted.”
“Why?” Nelson asked.
“There are those who become obsessed with the paranormal and those who claim to practice that sort of nonsense. It appears that some deranged individual fixed his attention on Miss Lockwood and sent the killer to grab her. Obviously the assassin missed but he evidently found the blackmail material instead and turned that over to his employer, who is now attempting to profit from the affair.”
“Why wait nearly a year to blackmail Mother?”
Joshua smiled approvingly. “Excellent question. For all we know the blackmailer has been extorting money from other victims for the past several months and has just now gotten around to threatening Hannah. But there are other possibilities.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know,” Joshua said. “That is why we refer to our efforts as an investigation. We are looking for answers.”
“Right.” Nelson was animated and enthusiastic once again. “I was not aware that one could hire a killer the way one does a housekeeper or a gardener.”
“It is a good deal more complicated than it sounds, especially if one wishes to employ an expert,” Joshua said. “I believe that Fleming’s killer was, indeed, an expert. Such men work methodically and cautiously because they do not want to take the risk of being caught. They study the daily habits and routines of their intended victims for some time before they make a plan.”
“I understand. You believe that Fleming’s killer very likely spent considerable time watching Miranda from various vantage points near the premises of the Academy.”
“That’s certainly how I would have approached the affair had I been in the assassin’s shoes,” Joshua said without thinking.
He realized that Nelson was watching him with far too much speculation and curiosity.
“Never mind,” Joshua said quickly. “It would be extremely helpful if you were able to obtain a full description of the killer, but after all these months that won’t be possible. Even if a few people remember a stranger who spent time in the neighborhood prior to the murder, they won’t recall the color of his eyes or hair. The one fact we do have is that the assassin spoke with a heavy Russian accent. That should narrow things down considerably.”
“I will get started immediately,” Nelson said.
He turned and bounded down the stairs.
“Take good notes,” Joshua called after him. “You will find they are useful when it comes to comparing the various descriptions that people will supply. And they will vary greatly, I warn you. No two people remember anything in exactly the same way. Look for the one or two elements all the reports might have in common.”
Nelson paused at the foot of the stairs and looked up. “I understand.”
“One more thing,” Joshua said. “Do not use your real name. Tell the people you interview that you are a writer who is gathering background material to write a penny dreadful about the Fleming murder.”
“Right,” Nelson said.
He opened the front door and went swiftly out onto the steps. He slammed the door behind him.
Silence fell.
Chadwick chuckled. “I remember the days when you left on your assignments with similar enthusiasm, sir.”
Joshua gazed thoughtfully at the front door. “So do I.”
For the past several months he had been feeling quite ancient, he reflected; unable to summon up any great interest in the future. But the blackmail investigation had altered his mood. True, his days of loping down staircases were long past. But he was definitely looking forward to seeing Beatrice Lockwood aga
in.
Thirteen
This is the most bizarre house I have ever entered in my entire life.” Beatrice looked at the bronze statuette of Bastet that stood on a bedside table. The Egyptian goddess was depicted in her cat-headed woman form. “And I assure you that in the course of my career with the Flint and Marsh Agency, I have been obliged to enter some very unusual households.”
The sprawling Alverstoke mansion was crammed with ancient Egyptian antiquities. Some of the items were replicas or outright fakes, but Beatrice was certain that there were a vast number of genuine relics in the house, most of which had come from tombs and temples. She could sense the energy infused into the artifacts.
Many people—not just those who possessed a degree of psychical talent—were sensitive to the chill of the grave and the passion of those who believed in religious mysteries of any sort. That sort of energy was absorbed by the objects the ancients put into their temples and tombs. Walking through the front door of Alverstoke Hall a short time ago had stirred the hair on the back of Beatrice’s neck and caused a prickling sensation in her palms.
“It’s all these antiquities,” Hannah Trafford said. She glanced uneasily at the statue of Bastet. “They are fascinating but I will admit that it is a bit odd to decorate an entire house with objects that should more properly be displayed in a museum.”
“Precisely what I was thinking,” Beatrice said. “That Bastet gives me chills.”
Hannah gave her a knowing look. “It’s the paranormal energy in the object that we are sensing, isn’t it?”
“I think so, yes.”
She and Hannah were standing in her bedroom. The door that connected it to Hannah’s room was open. Beatrice could hear Sally, Hannah’s lady’s maid, moving about inside as she unpacked her employer’s trunk. The process involved a great deal of work because, like many wealthy ladies, Hannah brought her own bed linens and towels with her when she traveled.
“Your Bastet is nothing compared to the canopic jar in my bedroom.” Hannah shuddered delicately. “I dare not look inside. I should very likely discover the remains of someone’s liver.”