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.”