Murder At Plums (29 page)

She was performing an Irish jig, skirts flying, hands flailing.

They watched her bemusedly for a few seconds. Then
again a scream. This time a male one from the telephone box. Once again they swivelled, only to find that Rose and Auguste had vanished from the telephone box into thin air.

‘He’s gone, Auguste,’ shouted Emma into the empty telephone box. Turning once more to glance at her, they looked back again and doubted the evidence of their own eyes when they saw Rose and Auguste rushing out of the telephone box that had been empty a second before.

‘Where?’ Auguste shouted, showing no signs of the ill-health that had apparently overtaken him in the telephone cabinet.

‘Through the smoking room – I couldn’t stop him,’ she yelled. ‘He’s taken one of the pistols – and his wife,’ she added for good measure.

Rose pushed his way through the crowd standing open-mouthed, incapable of movement. But minutes had been lost. Gaylord Erskine and his wife would have escaped, had it not been for Philip Paxton, who barred the gate, his life’s dream shattered.

Erskine saw him, looked at the gun, glanced back at Rose coming through the Folly. ‘Go back, Amelia,’ he cried. Then he threw his arms to heaven. ‘This rough magic, I abjure,’ he laughed, put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.

A woman’s sobbing was the only sound heard.

The gun, as befitted the wall of a gentleman’s club, was unloaded. Only an actor could have forgotten this. As Plum’s had always suspected, he was no gentleman.

‘No, Inspector, quite definitely, no.’ Oliver Nollins was unusually firm. ‘Every time we let women into Plum’s someone shoots either himself or someone else. Not a lady crosses this threshold while I’m secretary.’ And that wouldn’t be long at this rate, he thought to himself. One more little upset . . .

Emma arranged delightful refreshments, chosen with taste and decorum, for the gathering in her private room, the alternative venue for Plum’s. The only flaws were the presence of Disraeli – and the choice of
gâteau fourrée
and
éclairs. A trifle too frivolous for the occasion, in Auguste’s opinion.

Inspector Rose cleared his throat. Very tasty, Mrs Pryde’s confections.

‘You’ll all be wanting to know, ladies and gentlemen, the meaning of our little show last night. I’d no idea it would end the way it did, but we had to do it that way. We knew all right who was responsible, but we had no means of proving it. In theory it might have been any of you.’ His eye roamed over General and Lady Fredericks, all three Prestons, a tearful Gertie Briton and a furious Charlie Briton, a relieved Peregrine Salt, who when he saw the role of the magic lantern had feared the worst, Juanita who wondered what all the fuss had been about, Atkins who had no idea he’d ever been a suspect, and the Bulstrodes.

‘We gambled on telling Erskine about the magic lantern so that he would think himself free of suspicion, in the hope he’d betray himself later. So it proved.

‘There was only one thing that meant it couldn’t have been any of you – apart from motive. The woman’s voice. You see, there was nothing to attract Worthington’s attention to the Folly in the first place – except the woman’s voice. But there was no one there in fact, it needed, as Mrs Pryde pointed out earlier, only we didn’t take too much notice, a ventriloquist. Now Dr Pepper’s Ghost is a well enough known illusion, but to throw your voice you need training.

‘So we went to see our friend here—’ He looked at Mr Paxton who still looked shaken. Disraeli had chosen his shoulder, which added to his discomfort.

‘Mr Paxton told us he had known Erskine
all through
his career. But, as Mr Didier pointed out to me, Paxton was a
music-hall
performer, not an actor. And Mr Paxton confirmed that years ago Gaylord Erskine was a music-hall performer at the Wigan Variety Theatre. He was, it is now obvious, a magician, hence his interest in Prospero. And his partner on stage, as well as off it, was Mrs Amelia Erskine. Or, as we know now, Mrs Amelia Worthington. No record exists of a marriage between Mr Erskine and a lady called Amelia. Of course, they might have been married abroad, but from what Mr Paxton’s been able to tell us of their
earlier lives, that don’t seem likely. And Colonel Worthington’s sister-in-law managed to find an early photograph of Amelia Worthington which settles the matter. The same lady.’

Bulstrode looked blank. What was the fellow on about?

‘That was the whole reason for the crime. The Erskines weren’t married. It didn’t matter, so long as Worthington never saw her. Most of his army career was spent out of the country; indeed she has told us she thought he had died at Isandhlwana. Most officers did. Then Erskine was elected to Plum’s – only to find out that Worthington was a member. Worthington had never met the man Amelia ran away with so Erskine was safe for the moment, but sooner or later Worthington was going to see pictures of the assumed Mrs Erskine. And so Erskine began to lay plans for the future centring on himself as the victim of a vicious enemy. Drawing attention to himself in the time-honoured way of all magicians.

‘The proposal to bring women into the club was both his Nemesis and his opportunity. He could hardly not present his wife, so he had to make sure not only that Worthington did not see her that evening – but that he never did. So Worthington had to die, for Erskine was hoping to be knighted at the end of the year.

‘First, he stepped up the attacks on himself. Then, with his wife, he planned the murder, carefully orchestrated so that it should either look like suicide or that it should appear that Worthington was killed in mistake for Erskine. The gun he secreted earlier in the evening from the smoking-room wall, having provided himself with ammunition, and at the same time, prepared the magic lantern in the junk room with the limelight; then while he chatted in the dining room Amelia slipped out, opened the junk-room door so that the magic lantern shone on to the wall of the corridor (as we know now from the good Sergeant Stitch), flung open the door to the smoking room, at the same time throwing her voice into the conservatory so that Worthington’s attention immediately was drawn there, and not behind him to the doorway.

‘Can you imagine the shock?’ His wife’s voice, his wife’s
apparition dressed much as she had during their brief marriage – the ladies noticed how unfashionably Amelia Erskine was dressed that evening – calling to him, ‘Darling, please come back to me . . .’ No wonder he rushed out there, only to find the ghost vanished.

‘While everyone rushed to see what was wrong with Worthington Amelia retired to the junk room, re-emerging to join the gathering in the dining room. Later she slipped out again, easy enough when so many ladies were retiring to the room set aside for their use, but went once more through the door to the smoking-room corridor, and played her apparition trick again sending Worthington back into the Folly from the smoking room. Lord and Lady Bulstrode noticed the light coming and going under the drawing-room door, assuming it to be coming from the smoking room; it was not, of course, it was the limelight. Then Amelia Erskine turned off the limelight, shut the door, and returned to the dining room, talking ostensibly to her husband. He was already in the Folly, having come round by the garden door, talking to Worthington to give Amelia time to get back to the dining room; then Erskine doubled back through the garden door and grasped Amelia’s arm in the crowd surging forward to see what had happened.

‘He was a very lucky man,’ Rose concluded, disapprovingly, ‘that he didn’t meet Paxton, didn’t meet anyone else . . .’ He didn’t approve of luck.

‘Ah not luck, Inspector,’ Auguste said, ‘artistry – that is what the master magician would say. Split-second timing and bravado are his trade.’

‘But the risk,’ frowned Emma. ‘Why not push him under a train? Suppose it had all gone wrong? Sounds very complicated to me.’

‘But then you are not an illusionist, Mrs Pryde. What is complicated to us, is not to them. It is their technique to draw attention to themselves so that the audience’s eyes are on them and not on what is actually happening. Thus all the tricks played by Erskine against himself as victim. The attempts on his life that were never successful, never very dangerous, all organised by himself with the help of his wife. That knifing attempt for instance. His wife and a
trained pigeon provided a distraction for the good constable. And was the risk in any case that much greater for a man so well known to the public than in pushing Worthington under a train? Why not hide the crime in a
julienne
of evidence, make himself appear the victim? That is the reason for the two apparitions: we were meant to know that a mysterious stranger had appeared. If the death had been taken as suicide then investigations would have gone no further; if as murder then it would be assumed that Erskine was intended to be the victim.

‘For here was Erskine’s one piece of bad luck. Who, he had reasoned, would want to kill old Worthington, the club bore, save himself? It would automatically be assumed Erskine was to be the victim. How unlucky for him that so many people had reason to wish Worthington out of the way.

‘Yet luck was with him again. When it seemed as if the police were too interested in the reasons for Worthington’s death, Jones stepped into the breach for Erskine. Mrs Erskine has told us that he was blackmailing her husband. It was a case of the biter bit. First Erskine sends anonymous letters to himself, then he receives a real threat from Jones, who had realised that Erskine was not present in the dining room when the shot came. Mr Preston told us, correctly, that Mrs Erskine was behind him talking to her husband, but in fact Erskine was not present, a factor Jones subconsciously realised when he, too, heard her chattering, apparently to herself. He was obviously hoping to trade the knowledge off against Erskine’s knowledge of Rosie which he’d already held over his head once before in order to get elected to Plum’s.’

‘I still think it’s a case of
ne compliquez pas les choses
,’ said Emma mockingly. ‘Poor old Gaylord.’

‘If Dr Pepper had failed them,’ said Auguste, irritated at her concern for this murderer – and by her lack of appreciation of his detection powers ‘– they had lost nothing. No one had yet been murdered. They could still push him under a train, as you so helpfully suggested.’

Emma glared at him. ‘All right, my old china,’ she said challengingly. ‘One thing you’ve forgotten. Doesn’t the
glass have to be at a special angle for Pepper’s Ghost to work? The Parade had been in and out. Worthington had been in and out, someone would have moved those doors.’

Auguste looked smug. ‘Ah,
ma petite
, there we have the importance of the ventriloquist. Firstly, if the doors had been closed, as they hoped, the image would be thrown straight forward, as if in a darkened room through glass into the night when a lamp is shone on the object. If opened, then all was not lost, for with Worthington’s attention on the Folly, where his wife’s voice was coming from, Amelia could move to adjust herself to the right angle for the open door for the image still to be thrown. And even if it weren’t – if it failed – then there was still a chance that the voice alone would work the trick, that he would recognise it as his wife’s. And if all failed – and he found Amelia herself, the real woman, pride would not let him tell this to the club. There would be time still to murder him.’

‘Why not just rely on the voice then?’ Emma challenged him belligerently. She did not take kindly to being called ‘
ma petite’.

‘Why?’ Auguste paused. ‘Two reasons. The element of shock would not be so great for he might not recognise his wife’s voice alone, and could easily be puzzled rather than shocked. And the second reason: they
enjoyed
the fuss. They were of the theatre, both of them. These preparations, this magic paraphernalia – it took them back to their younger days. They were the tools of their trade. Even Erskine’s ladies were part of the game. No doubt he has a roving eye, but he needed to sustain the belief that many people wished to kill him. In fact, he was devoted to Amelia – and she knew it.’

He did not dare look at Emma. Afterwards, he would console her . . .

‘But how did Sir Rafael die?’ asked Nollins impatiently, interested to the point he forgot his preoccupations with Plum’s reputation.

‘Dr Pepper once more,’ said Auguste proudly. ‘Not his ghost illusion this time, but the most famous one of all, the Cabinet of Proteus. You saw it at Plum’s, disguised as a telephone box brought in overnight by courtesy of Messrs
Maskelyne and Cooke, to replace the proper cabinet, to the annoyance of our friend, Mr Peeps. From his earlier days as a magician Erskine had kept some of the paraphernalia. We saw some of it in the house; the biggest of all we overlooked – the Cabinet of Proteus, now used as his own telephone cabinet just outside his study door. We saw it, we assumed it was empty. It was not. Erskine was in it.

‘If you examine it, the cabinet appears empty apart from one central column supporting the roof. You can walk round it; there are no back entrances, no holes in the floor, no hidden doors in the sides. But, in the flash of an eye, while the audience’s attention is on something else, the person in the cabinet can pull two flaps towards him from the sides, meeting in the middle so that the column disguises the join, and lo and behold, he is hidden at the back of the box; the box appears as before, but empty. The sides of the flaps are mirrors which reflect the walls. Optical illusion makes it appear to the audience the cabinet is empty, and that they can see as before to the back of the cabinet. It was the same principle as Dr Stodare’s Sphinx illusion and the whole basis of Messrs Maskelyne and Cooke’s—’ He broke off, reflecting belatedly that Messrs Maskelyne and Cooke would not be pleased at the revelation of their most popular sketch-Will, the Witch and the Watch. Even if Professor Hoffmann’s admirable book had already spelled it out for the curious. It had taken some time to persuade them to loan the cabinet to him the previous afternoon; only the might of Scotland Yard had forced them to do so in the end.

‘So, after Erskine had shot Jones, he slipped into the telephone box and closed the mirrors, while we all came upstairs. Then, once again, Amelia provided a diversion and, while all eyes were on her, he was out of the box and by her side.’