An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(100)

Dennis stood up and began to pace. “Frankly, I thought about killing him myself. I am not sure if I could have done it, but I was sorely tempted. I suppose he had some inkling what I was considering, because he informed me that he had left a letter behind for his assistant at the museum. In it he detailed the location of the village and its treasure trove of Inca gold. If he did not return by a certain date, the assistant had instructions to read it and publicize it. I could not risk it. So, much as I hated it, I agreed with the others to let him take things. The best I could do was try to keep him from wholesale looting of the caves.”

“So that is how he has turned the Cavendish into such a fine museum.”

“Oh, yes, he is quite proud of the job he has done with it. He has apparently gained some degree of acclaim and respect among the academic world. But that is only part of what drives him. The fact is, he has used what he brought back here to gain wealth and power. Not just his increasingly important position as the museum’s director, but also power over people.”

“What do you mean?” Megan’s mind went back to the evening before, and the number of well-dressed men and women who had slipped secretively out of the museum.

“He didn’t keep all of what he stole for the Cavendish. He sold some pieces to collectors. Got a good amount of money for it. Enough to set him up in the lifestyle he prefers. But there is more. He attracted a following. He began to exercise control over them.”

“How?”

“Pieces of the treasure are not the only things he took from the village. He realized, of course, that the villagers must have an unusual ability to heal. He was stunned when he saw that I had recovered. Visiting the village as often as he did, seeing the people and beginning to pick up on their language—well, eventually he realized what I had, that these people have an enormous ability to resist injuries and diseases, that they live an amazingly long time. First he took some of the herbs. Apparently he was able to improve the health of his benefactor, Lord Cavendish. Others came to him. He helped them and charged them a great deal of money. He also started practicing a sort of religion. He was fascinated with the Incas and everything about them, including their spiritual beliefs. He began to combine what he knew about their religion with his own special touches. He burned the herbs and brewed them into tea, which he and his followers drank.”

“So they saw visions?” Theo mused.

“Yes. And, according to Coffey, this ‘religion’ helped to bring them more power and wealth. I am not sure how much of that is real and how much is simply his followers’ perception. I am fairly certain that he gained enormous power over Lady Cavendish, her wealth and the museum by ultimately speeding up her husband’s demise. Used improperly, some of those plants he uses can be very dangerous.”

“So he made the old man well, thus gaining trust and power, then he killed him and gained even more,” Megan commented.

Her brother nodded. “He is a wicked man, but he is clever. He does not miss many chances.”

“How do you know all this about him?” Megan asked curiously.

Dennis grimaced. “He told me. Bizarrely enough, I was the only person to whom he could speak freely. He couldn’t boast to his followers about what he was doing to them, and he feared putting himself under the power of any underling. But there I was. Unlike the villagers, I spoke his language, and I had some idea of the world in which he lived. And I was too far away from England to do him any harm with the police or his followers. He wanted to brag about what he had done, the things he had achieved. So he told me about them.”

“But why did he take your daughter?” Theo asked. “I don’t understand. Does he plan to hold her over your head, so you cannot do anything to oppose him?”

Dennis’s face grew dark with anger and fear. “He plans to kill her.”

Megan let out a wordless cry and went to her brother. “Oh, Dennis. No!” She slipped her arms around him. “How can even he be such a monster?”

“There is nothing that is beyond him,” Dennis said roughly, giving Megan a hug before he turned away and sat down, burying his face in his hands. “Power and wealth are no longer enough for him. Now he wants immortality. He wants to live forever.”

“Like the villagers,” Theo commented.

“Exactly. He wants to live an enormously long life himself. Also, he sees it as an opportunity to gain even more control over his followers. But he could see that even though he drank the tea and applied the salves, it was not keeping him young. Every year when he returned, it was obvious that he had aged and I had not. So he kept trying to discover the specific formula that keeps us young. He already had the herbs, so next he took some of the water from the sacred cenote back with him. When that didn’t do the trick, he decided that it must be because he had not put the tea in the goblet that the villagers use. So he took that a year ago. Obviously that did not work, either.

“I didn’t tell him that his efforts were probably useless. The villagers believe that if they leave their secret valley, if they go out beyond the caves into the world, they will become their true age very quickly. They will wither and die. That is why only Manco and I could pursue Coffey after he kidnapped Caya. My true age is still young, and Manco has not started the sacred rituals yet.”

“But what does any of that have to do with taking your daughter?” Megan asked.