Escapade (37 page)

“It wasn’t a ghostly visitation, Inspector. As I’ve explained, it was a man. It was the Earl.”

“And yet Mr. Beaumont tells me that when he and Mr.

Houdini met with you on the following midday, while you were riding, you denied having seen any ghost whatever.”

She glanced at me. Her face flushed slightly. It could have been anger, it could have been embarrassment. “Yes,” she said. “I did.” 

“You told him, in fact, that you’d dreamed the ghost, did you not?”

“Yes.”

Marsh raised his eyebrows. “Could you explain to me, then, exactly why you said that?”

“I was confused. I hadn’t slept. I knew that I’d caused a disturbance, and I felt that the best thing I could do was ignore it and move forward.”

“Deny that it had ever happened, in fact. Claim that your ghost had been a dream.”

“Yes.”

“And yet now you claim that he was not.”

“No. No more a dream than the false beard and the wig.” 

“Excuse me,” I said.

Marsh turned to me. “Yes?”

“Could I ask a couple of questions?”

“But my dear chap, of course. We’re confreres, are we not? Lead on.”

“Miss Turner, did you know any of these people before you came here? Any of the guests?”

“No.”

“The Earl? Lady Purleigh? Lord Purleigh? Anyone except Mrs. Allardyce?”

“No. None of them.”

“Did you ever hear anything about this ghost? Before you came here?”

“No.”

“Then you really don’t have any reason to make all this up, do you? No reason to bring along a phony beard and a wig from London, and then plant them in the Earl’s room?”

“No,” she said to me. For the first time this morning, something like a smile moved quickly across her lips. It disappeared in an instant. “No reason at all,” she said to Marsh.

Marsh was smiling at me, and his smile was more permanent. “Thank you, Beaumont, for eliciting that valuable piece of information. And I thank you, Miss Turner. I do very much appreciate your candor. You’ve been both forthright and most lucid.” He stood up.

Miss Turner glanced at me and then stood. And then it was my turn to stand.

Miss Turner said to Marsh. “Did you wish to speak with any of the others?”

“Not as yet, thank you. Please inform all of them that I look forward to meeting with them shortly.”

She nodded to him, nodded to me, and then turned and walked away. When she left the room, Marsh said, “Time to take a peek at the Earl’s room, I think.”

I LED THE way, through the halls and up the stairways. Marsh walked along beside me. His hands behind his back, he held his head upright and he peered curiously, left and right, at the furniture and the bric-a-brac as we passed. Sergeant Meadows followed behind, his notebook and pen at the ready.

Marsh didn’t say anything until he started climbing the last set of stairs. Then he turned to me and he said, “You’re fond of the girl. Miss Turner.”

“I think she’s telling the truth,” I said.

“Obviously you do.” He smiled. “But which is cause and which is effect? Are you fond of her because she tells the truth, or do you believe she’s telling the truth because you’re fond of her?”

“I think she’s telling the truth,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. “Well, she’ll make a lovely witness, to be sure. Although I must confess to the tiniest sliver of unease concerning her reason for going to the Earl’s room last night.”

“She explained that.”

“She excused it,” he said. “I’m not altogether convinced that she explained it.”

“She’s read about mediums. She knows they pick up information, and she knows that sometimes they pick it up from servants.

“Assume she’s right,” said Marsh, and that it was the Earl prancing through her room last night. We haven't established, as yet, that the servants knew of this.”

“But Briggs knew about Darleen’s visits to the Earl’s room. The kitchen maid. Maybe he told Madame Sosostris. And maybe that was what she was talking about at the seance. Maybe Miss Turner came to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons.”

We were in the final corridor now. The Earl’s rooms were up ahead. “Thicker and thicker,” said Marsh. “Peas and parsnips, a sprig of parsley, a dash of sage.”

“This is Carson’s room,” I told him, and I nodded toward the closed door.

“The valet. Yes.”

“And this is the Earl’s suite.”

I turned the knob and pushed open the door, then I stood back to let Marsh go in first.

He looked around the sitting room, at the bare stone walls and the heavy oak furniture and the Oriental carpet.

“Somewhat spartan,” he said. “But, good Lord, that is a magnificent rug.” He glanced at me. “Kurdish. A Senneh.” He admired the rug some more. “And seventeenth century, unless I miss my guess. Priceless. Sheer blasphemy to leave it lying about like that.”

He stepped delicately around the thing and walked along the wooden floor. I followed him and Sergeant Meadows followed me. Marsh took a last glance at the carpet and then opened the door to the Earl’s room.

He stood in the doorway, closely peering at the wooden jamb. He reached out and ran his fingers along the wood.

“According to Houdini,” I said, “no one gimmicked the door.” 

“Hmmm,” he said, without looking at me. “So you said.” He stepped into the room and examined the broken support for the door’s bar. He took a careful look at the edge of the door itself, running his slender fingers along that. He nodded to himself and then he stepped into the room. Sergeant Meadows and I followed.

The fire in the fireplace had gone out and the air in the room was cooler. I could still smell gunsmoke but it was very faint now, wavering weakly behind the smells of dust and age.

“Where was the pistol?” Marsh asked me.

I showed him. “About there. And you can still see the ash. Along the floor.”

Sergeant Meadows had gone to the window and he stood there craning his neck to look down at the ground beneath.

“Hmmm,” said Marsh. “Yes.” He bent at the waist and studied the floor. “Footprints. A herd of wildebeest were apparently frolicking in here.”

“We were all here. Doyle, Lord Purleigh, Houdini. And then Superintendent Honniwell and his men.”

Marsh was still bent at the waist. “Did you examine the ash when you first arrived?”

“Yeah. No prints. There wouldn’t have been. The ash flew out when we broke open the door.”

“Hmmm.” Bent forward, shuffling his feet, Marsh inched along the floor, toward the far wall. “This is rather intriguing,” he said.

“What?”

“Here’s a set of footprints that proceed directly to the wall. And then muddle about for a bit.” He stood up, looked at me. But don’t return.”

At that moment, the stone wall silently swung open, a doorshaped section of it, and the Great Man stepped out of the darkness beyond. He held a glowing railroad lantern in his hand and he was smiling that wide charming smile of his. “The footprints, he announced, “are mine, naturally.”

THE GREAT MAN knew how to make an entrance.

Inspector Marsh knew how to stand there and smile delicately. “Mr. Houdini,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

The Great Man ignored him and he aimed his grin at me. “You see, Phil? Already I have discovered something absolutely crucial.” 

“I see that, Harry. Where does it go?”

“There is a stairway here.” He held the lamp up to the opening in the wall. Inside, a narrow stone stairway led down into the blackness. He turned back to me. “It goes down to a kind of tunnel which seems to encircle all of Maplewhite. From this tunnel, additional stairways lead upward to various rooms of the house.”

“How’d you find it?” I asked him.

“Simple logic,” he said. He turned to Marsh. “May I explain?”

“But of course,” said Marsh. “I swoon to hear it.” He turned, dusted off the bedspread with a delicate hand, and sat down on the bed as if it were a theater seat. He put his hands on his lap and looked up at the Great Man with his eyebrows raised in attention, or maybe an impersonation of it. Sergeant Meadows was still looming with his notebook over by the window. He crossed his arms over his thick chest and leaned back against the sill.

The Great Man set the lantern on the floor. He rubbed his hands together. “Well,” he said. “We have been presented here at Maplewhite with a series of totally baffling events. Even Houdini was, for a while, baffled by these. But then it occurred to me that all of them were very similar, in form, to simple magic tricks, of the sort performed by mediocre magicians.” He looked at me. “And what do magic tricks require, Phil?”

I smiled. “You tell me, Harry.”

Inspector Marsh had lowered his eyebrows and his head, and he was carefully studying the manicured fingernails of his left hand.

“Timing,” said the Great Man. “Misdirection. And, of course, gimmicked props.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and he began to pace up and down as he talked. He spoke seriously and slowly, like a professor at a college for dimwits. “Now. In order to understand the mechanics of a successful trick, we must begin with no preconceptions. None whatever. But in the case of the Earl s death, even Houdini had in fact entertained some of these. I had believed that the Earl was paralyzed and bedridden. So had all of us believed. But Miss Turner’s story—of the Earl coming to her room, disguised as a ghost—clearly cast some doubt on this.”

I said, “I thought you didn’t believe her story.”

“Aha,” he said. “That was
before
I pondered my preconceptions. But suppose, I told myself, suppose Miss Turner’s story were true. Suppose that the Earl were, in fact, mobile. If he had actually invaded the privacy of her room on Friday night, how had he done so without being seen?”

Marsh looked up from his fingernails and he frowned. “It was the middle of the night. There was no one about to see him.” 

“But could he be certain of that? A single witness would have given away his game.
And
, assuming that the Earl did, in fact, commit suicide on the following day, how did he obtain the pistol from the hall without being seen?”

Marsh held up his hand. “Yes, yes, all right. There are other means by which he could have accomplished that. But quite clearly there’s also this stairway you’ve stumbled upon.”

The Great Man drew back his head. “Stumbled upon? Hardly, Inspector Marsh. I worked it out, with complete logic. As to the Earl, you see, and his death, I considered the other possibility that he had
not
committed suicide. That he had been murdered. In such a case, how had the murderer escaped? I have examined that door very carefully, and I knew—”

“Yes,” said Marsh. “Mr. Beaumont has informed me. So you deduced there was another entrance to the room.”

“I
deduced
, yes, exactly! And I obtained this from the housekeeper, Mrs. Blandings!” He reached into his coat pocket and plucked out a cloth tape measure. He waved his arm through the air in a theatrical circle, so the length of yellow tape streamed into a single hoop. “And I came up here.”

He stalked to the door to show us, the tape rippling in the air behind him. On the bed, Marsh turned to follow him. The Great Man spun around. “I examined the room visually. Then I walked to the window.”

He strode to the window. Sergeant Meadows stood there watching him, his arms crossed, his face blank. “Excuse me,” the Great Man said, and reached out and took hold of Meadow’s hips, as though he were going to pick him up and drop him somewhere. Maybe he would have. But Sergeant Meadows looked at Inspector Marsh, who nodded once, and Meadows stepped aside.

“I examined the window very carefully,” said the Great Man. “Measuring, measuring.” Bending over, he showed us. He stood up. “Then I went all around the room, measuring its dimensions. All of its dimensions.” He waved the tape measure through the air. “Then I went to the room next door.”

For a second I thought he was going to stalk over there, expecting us to follow him. He didn’t.

“I examined
its
dimensions,” he said. “I—”

“Yes,” said Marsh. “I do believe I follow. You determined where the passage must have been.”

“Exactly! And then, when I rushed back here, I set about finding it. And, of course, I did.”

He went over to the opening in the wall. “It is an ingenious mechanism. You see.” He pushed shut the rectangle of stone. It moved back into place, silently and smoothly. The wall seemed completely solid now. “Counterweighted. Simple but effective. The key is here.”

He pressed one of the stones to his left. Silently and smoothly, the rectangle swung open.

Smiling widely, the Great Man turned back to us. “You see? Houdini succeeds before others even attempt.”

“How very enterprising of you,” said Inspector Marsh.

“Yes,” said the Great Man. “Thank you.”

“And have you by any chance examined this tunnel?”

“Only a small portion of it.” He folded up the tape measure. “I climbed up one of the stairways. It leads into another room. Not a bedroom. A small parlor.” He stuffed the tape back into his pocket. “But there are many of these stairways. I feel certain that one of them leads into Miss Turner’s room.”

“But you haven’t actually established that,” said Marsh.

“There is no question in my mind,” said the Great Man. “And no doubt one of the stairways also leads to the Great Hall.” He turned to me. “And so, Phil. The Earl
could
have removed the gun from the collection with no one being the wiser.”

“Or somebody else could’ve taken it,” I said. “And used that stairway to come up here and kill him.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Both are possible, of course.”

“Oh?” said Marsh. He was smiling. “You don’t mean to say that you still remain baffled by something?”

The Great Man raised his head. “I shall determine the truth. And very shortly, I believe.”

Marsh nodded. “Yes. Mr. Beaumont has apprised me of your plan. By afternoon tea, isn’t that right?”

“Yes. That is correct.”

“
He that is proud eats up himself
. Troilus and Cressida.”

“Pride is irrelevant,” said the Great Man. “What Houdini sets out to do, he does.”