Chapter Thirty-Eight
After Tobias had arranged for Iain to go fetch a contingent of officers to attend his parents’ residence, and meet them there, he and Jack had rushed from the theater and jumped into a Hackney heading for Mayfair.
The Saturday night traffic was horrendous, though, and what would normally be a ten-minute trip was taking double the time.
“I hope we’re not right about this,” she said, breaking the silence inside the carriage. “Surely, the killer would think twice about killing someone in front of a live audience, wouldn’t he?”
“Don’t magicians thrive on being in front of a live audience?” Tobias glanced across at her in the darkened cabin, the lights from the gas lamps lining the streets, sending an intermitted flash of light over his features, and Jack could see his jaw was clenched.
“Yes, they do,” she agreed.
“Damn it, I should have insisted my father double the security at the house. If anything happens to them, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Your parents will be fine, Tobias. He’s not targeting them.” At least she didn’t think he was. “And there’ll be plenty of people and plenty of servants around, so he’s unlikely to do anything with so many witnesses.”
“My parents have an army of servants around, especially as my mother would have hired at least another twenty to thirty more for tonight.” He sighed.
“I still can’t help but worry, though. And maybe you’re right and Thomas Clorren, or whoever he bloody well is, will stay in the shadows, and he actually has nothing to do with Caleb. ”
“I’m starting to think Caleb has to be involved in all of this somehow,” Jack pondered aloud. “Even if the killer doesn’t intend to use your mother’s event, there were still orchids, or at least what we think were orchid fragments left at the scene.”
“I hope we’re jumping to conclusions. I really do,” Tobias replied. “But we’ll be finding out soon, I suppose. Damn it, though, I should have told Adam about the situation. He would have done something, and my father at least listens to him.”
“‘Adam’?” she asked, certain she hadn’t heard him mention anyone by that name before.
“My older brother, the Viscount of Foxmoore.”
“Oh, yes, Sera mentioned him,” Jack replied. “She doesn’t like him much at all.”
“I can understand that,” he drolly replied. “Though I love my brother, he’s arrogant and very much like my father in thinking he knows best. However, at least when it comes to security concerns, he would heed my warnings.”
“Sera said he was very suspicious. Seems it runs in your family.”
“I suppose it does.”
A few minutes later, the carriage finally came to a halt in front of Tobias’s parents’ residence, and before the wheels had even stopped, he opened the carriage door and jumped down onto the footpath outside. Jack quickly followed him out as Tobias took the front entrance steps two at a time.
He didn’t even wait for the front door to be opened properly by Bainsworth, instead pushing it open and displacing the butler a few steps backwards in the process.
“Sir, what is the meaning of this?!” Bainsworth exclaimed with an extremely haughty expression on his wrinkled face as he quickly rushed over to stand in front of Tobias.
“Has the magic show started?” he rushed out asking.
“Yes, only just, though,” Bainsworth confirmed. “But you can’t attend wearing that day suit. Your mother asked you to wear a dress suit—”
“There’s no time for this, Bainsworth.” Tobias interrupted him, grabbing a hold of the butler’s narrow upper arms and literally lifting him off the floor to move him out of his path. “Lock the house down—now. The Conjurer is most likely here and intends to kill someone during Dodd’s performance.”
“Oh, my,” Bainsworth muttered while hastily nodding as Tobias deposited him on his feet before starting to run down the hall, with Jack racing to keep up behind him.
“Where are we going?” Jack asked, when instead of heading to the main ballroom doors as they’d done the other day, he detoured down another hallway running past several surprised staff in the process before he ran up a small set of winding stairs.
“These stairs take us up to the landing above the ballroom,” he replied. “Then further along, there’s another set of stairs that will lead us down to right behind where the stage was being set up. Stay close to me so we’re not seen.”
They reached the landing, and sure enough, below them was the ballroom, with Caleb up on the newly built stage pattering off his routine spiel to the audience, who seemed entranced.
Jack glanced down and blinked. “I thought your mother said she was hosting a small performance,” she whispered as she followed closely behind him, staying to the shadows of the landing, so as not to be noticed.
There had to have been at least two hundred guests sitting on chairs arranged throughout the ballroom in rows facing the stage, much like they would have in a theater.
“This is small for her,” Tobias whispered back, striding softly along the floor towards the far end, where there was a set of stairs leading down.
From the corner of her eye, Jack spotted something behind the black curtain of the stage below. “Tobias,” she hissed, reaching out for his arm and stopping him in his tracks.
“That’s not the frame for the Mystery of Maguire Illusion. That’s a frame for the Guillotine Illusion.”
“The missing illusion of the six?”
“Maybe…” Jack stared down, watching as Caleb spoke about sleeping princesses, and with a wave of his hand, the black curtain whisked open, revealing a young lady lying on a table in the center of the stage, her hands crossed over her chest, her brown hair cascading back behind her head, appearing to be happily asleep, with a blindfold nestled over her face.
“Oh, my God, Tobias, I think that’s Mary Brunham!” Though the blindfold was hiding the woman’s eyes, her face shape and hair looked the same as what she’d seen in the photograph of Miss Brunham.
Tobias’s eyes followed hers to the stage as Caleb began wheeling the guillotine frame over to where the girl was lying on the table. “We have to stop him!”
Tobias spun on his heel, racing down the stairs with Jack following behind him.
Her heart was pounding, and Caleb’s patter continued as he demonstrated the guillotine working to slice a wooden prop cleanly in half before he rolled the mechanism over towards Miss Brunham until it was positioned above her still form.
As his patter was coming to its conclusion, Jack knew they had only moments before he was about to release the guillotine blade from a rope tied to his wrist. An illusion that normally made it seem as if the assistant’s head had been decapitated, when it hadn’t been.
But in this case, she feared it was going to be no illusion.
“Stop the show!” Tobias yelled as his feet landed on the ballroom floor and he ran full throttle over to the stage, Jack hard on his heels.
The entire audience gasped as Tobias launched up the few steps to the stage, while Caleb glanced up at him, his eyes widening, a second before Tobias dove headfirst into him, tackling him to the ground.
Time slowed to a standstill as the rope around Caleb’s wrist started to slip, while Caleb plunged to the stage floor with Tobias falling on top of him.
Without hesitating, she launched herself at the frame of the guillotine, her body propelling the frame backwards on its cast-iron wheels, just as the blade slipped from above and came crashing down into the now-empty wooden stock, where Miss Brunham’s head had been positioned underneath a second ago.
Clearly, the mechanism to change the angle of the blade had not been activated.
If it had, then the blade would have slipped into false panel of the block, rather than on top of it.
Oh, thank goodness.
Absolute chaos then broke out in the ballroom. The audience jumped to stand, screaming and yelling, as Tobias wrestled with Caleb, while Jack rushed over to the young woman.
Quickly, she reached her hand down towards the woman’s neck, noticing her skin was warm to the touch, which was a very good sign, and then finally, she felt the thrum of the woman’s pulse. “Thank God.” She tried to rouse her, but the girl was sound asleep, almost like she were in a trance.
“Get off me, you lunatic!” Caleb yelled out as Tobias easily gained the upper hand, twisting Caleb onto his stomach before wrenching his hands behind his back and locking them together with his handcuffs.
“Caleb Dodd, you’re under arrest,” Tobias replied.
“Tobias! What is going on?” the countess yelled, storming up the steps to the stage, an intimidating older man beside her and another man, who looked very much like Tobias, following behind them both.
He must be Tobias’s brother, Lord Foxmoore.
The resemblance between the two of them was remarkable.
Then she saw Sera below, subtly motioning to her, seeing if Jack needed her help up on stage too. Jack quickly shook her head, given there was no point in Sera jeopardizing her cover now they had things in hand. Or at least, Jack hoped they did.
Sera nodded in understanding and quickly motioned with her head over her shoulder, signaling she was going to leave before further police arrived and had to question everyone. Then she quickly slipped through the pandemonium of the crowd and was gone.
Good. The less Sera had to be involved in all this, the better.
“Yes, what the Devil is the meaning of this circus?” the older man beside the countess demanded, a fierce frown on his face, the exact same frown that Tobias often wore. Clearly, the man had to be Tobias’s father, the earl, who looked absolutely furious.
“Is she alive?” Tobias asked, ignoring everything else as he dug a knee into Caleb’s back and glanced over at Jack.
“She is, but she’s not waking up. What did you give her?” she asked Caleb as he floundered around on the floor pulling at the cuffs.
“Nothing!” Caleb yelled, rather petulantly. “Sally, wake up! Damn it, Sally, stop pretending and wake up.”