Now You See It (15 page)

And Harry’s voice was heard.

“Well, it took you long enough to guess that, babe,”
he said.

The Sheriff looked around in startlement.

“Who said that?” he asked.

Cassandra moved abruptly to the globe and snatched off the red silk scarf.

She jolted with shock (as, somewhere in my dead bod, I did too), grimacing exaggeratedly.

Plum stared at the globe in revulsion.

Inside was Harry Kendal’s head, now hacked off at the neck, veins and arteries dangling, features gray and bloodless, eyes staring.

“What the hell is that?”
asked Plum.

He twitched as the head responded.

“Hi there, Sheriff,” it said. “Harry Kendal here. Well, not exactly here. Part of me is elsewhere. My body’s cabbing back to Boston with a different head on it. Plastic. Stuffed with shredded contracts—Delacorte’s, of course; all canceled. Head looks pretty good. First class. Hat fits perfectly. I doubt if anyone will notice.”

The head turned. Harry’s dead eyes seemed to look directly at Cassandra.

“Hi, babe,” he said. “Remember the Essex House? Room Five-twenty-five? Hanh? Hanh? Did I give good head or didn’t I?”

The head emitted a hideous, gargling laugh, the gray lips drawn back sharply.
Oh, Max
, I thought.

Then the eyes fell shut, the face of the head went still.

“You filthy, sadistic son of a bitch,”
Cassandra said.

I almost agreed with her.

Max smiled at Plum and gestured toward the globe.

“Holography,” he said. “A wonderful invention. Enabling us to bring new life to old illusions.”

He looked at me. “If only you could have had it,
Padre!”
he said.

As Cassandra and the Sheriff stared at him in silence, he removed the remote control from the pocket of his smoking jacket (odd name for the apparel of a man who didn’t smoke, it occurred to me) and pressed a button.

The globe cover slid back into place, and he lay the remote control on top of the desk.

Plum turned and walked toward the entry hall.

“Don’t leave the premises,” he ordered. “I’ll be back in less than an hour with a warrant.”

“Warrant?” Max looked taken aback.

“To tear your goddam house apart,” the Sheriff said.

“No need,” Max told him instantly. “I confess. I
did
kill Harry Kendal.”

My reaction was mixed. Surprise at his sudden, unexpected confession. Relief that it was over with.

After he spoke, a peal of thunder sounded, not too far away.

“How’s that for timing?” Max inquired, pleased. “I even work the weather into my act.”

The Sheriff looked repelled.

“Your
act?”
he said.

“Don’t misunderstand,” responded Max, his pleased expression gone. “I really did kill Harry Kendal.”

Plum gestured toward the entry hall.

“In that case, we’ll be on our way to town,” he said.

Cassandra smiled, but Max looked disconcerted.

“No, no, please,” he said. “That’s not the plan.” There
was
a plan, then! “The plan is to announce a murder to our good, staunch representative of law and order—that’s you, Grover—then announce that he—you—will never ever—what’s the phrase?—’pin the rap’ on me, because he’ll—you’ll—never find the body.”

Plum stared at him impassively.

“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “You’re admitting to me—of your own free will—that you murdered Harry Kendal?”

“Of my own free will,” said Max.

“And is your wife correct?” The Sheriff gestured toward Cassandra. “Is the body still in the house?”

Max’s eyes lit up.

“Grover,
in this room,”
he said.

Why did you want me here, Max? Why?
I wondered desolately.

Cassandra and Plum were looking at him in amazement.

“However,”
Max continued, “if you take me in, I will—naturally—deny the murder. And without a signed confession,
and
without the
corpus delecti
, well …”

He gestured vaguely with his right hand.

“You just confessed in front of two witnesses,” the Sheriff said.

“One of them my wife?” asked Max. “With me denying my confession?
Sans
corpse? The evidence not terribly incriminating?”

He waggled a chiding finger.

“Grover,”
he scolded, parent to child.

The Sheriff was silent. Thinking. (I presume; can’t prove it.)

“Take him in,” Cassandra said.
“You
heard his confession. That’s enough.”

Max ignored her, addressing the Sheriff.

“I claim,” he said, “that the worthless remains of Harry Kendal are in this room and that no one—
no one
—will ever be able to find them. Even though he may be no more distant from us than a few scant yards.”

His smile was wicked. “Possibly
inches,”
he said.

Despite the dreadful aspects of it all, I must confess that Max’s challenge intrigued me. After all, wasn’t he the product of my somewhat askew rearing?

I blinked (I think) as he made a sudden, broadly flourishing gesture with his right hand.

“I take it back!” he cried. “I didn’t murder Harry Kendal! I
vanished
him!”

He smiled again. “In the parlance of the trade, that means I made him disappear, Grover.” (I wished that he wouldn’t keep calling Plum by his first name, and with such barely disguised disrespect.)

Max looked toward the fireplace.

“Perhaps I stuffed him up the chimney,” he confided.

The Sheriff’s head turned slightly—and involuntarily—toward the fireplace.

“Sheriff—” warned Cassandra.

“Or perhaps I dissected him into several hundred pieces, which are now distributed about the room in boxes, vases, urns, what have you.”

“Delacorte—” said Plum.

“Or I may have disguised him as one or both of the easy chairs,” Max interrupted. “Or had him pancaked under a steamroller so that he lies beneath that large rug over there.”

“Give it up,”
Cassandra told him.

“Or—” Max cut her off grandiosely—“I disassembled his integral atoms so that—even as I speak—he hovers in the air before our very eyes, an effluvium of cosmic dust.”

He scowled theatrically.

“Or should I say cosmic
garbage?”
he amended.

“You’re wasting my time, Delacorte,” the Sheriff snarled.

Max made a face of boyish abashment.
(He can still do that?
I thought, amazed.) “Sorry,” he murmured.

Plum turned to Cassandra.

“You think he’s telling the truth?” he asked.

“Gro-ver.”
Max sounded wounded.
You’re getting in deeper and deeper, Son
, I thought.

Cassandra began to answer Plum, then hesitated, looking at Max as though she sought a confirmation in his face. Then she looked around the room as if searching for potential evidence.

“What think?” Max asked her.

She paid no attention to him, looking at the Sheriff.

“Yes, I do think he’s telling the truth,” she said. “I think he’s gone so crazy that he’s hidden Harry’s body in this room … to torment me and to make a fool of you.

“To prove he’s still
The Great Delacorte
, even though the world at large knows he isn’t anymore.”

She glared at Max, still speaking to the Sheriff. “Get your warrant,” she said. “Tear the room apart.”

“Oh
. Come
on
now, Grover,” Max said in a pouting voice.
(He still has
that
at his command as well!
I thought, incredulous.) “Don’t do it that way. What fun is it to tear a room apart? That’s no challenge.”

He pointed at Plum, a look of provocation on his face.

“But to find it
yourself,”
he said,
“with your own wits.”

He threw down the gauntlet.

“Come
on, Grover,” he said, “be a sport. How hard can it be to find one measly agent in a room this size?”

The Sheriff stared at Max. Remarkably, he seemed to be considering the offer.

“I have always dared my audience to find me out,” Max said. (True; for both of us.) “I dare you now.” He actually looked excited. “He’s
here
, Grover,” he promised. “I guarantee you.”

The Sheriff remained quiet, regarding Max without expression.

“You wouldn’t want to deprive my father of watching you meet the challenge, would you?” asked Max. “If you take me in, he has nothing.”

My mind was split.
Max, I’d rather have nothing
, half of it said.

Go for it, Sonny!
the other half was shouting. Shamefaced, but shouting.

“Sheriff,
get the warrant,”
Cassandra said. She stared at him in disbelief.

“You aren’t actually considering—”

She could not complete the statement.

“All right,” said Plum. “As long as you realize that because of your confession to me, you’re already in deep shit.”

Max beamed.

“A predicament not unknown to me,” he said.

“Sheriff—”
Cassandra looked astounded.

Plum held up his right hand to stop her from speaking.

“I like a puzzle as well as the next man,” he told her. “And it’s a slow day at the office, nothing going on in town. They’ll telephone if anything important comes up.” He looked at Max.

“I accept your challenge,” he said.

Max looked euphoric.

“Capital!” he cried.

His ebullience was not transferable. True, I did feel a sense of anticipation regarding what was about to happen. At the same time, however, the deep-set apprehension remained fixed in place. After all, he wasn’t speaking about giving a show, he was speaking about murder.

“I’m going to find that body,” Plum was telling him while I was ruminating. “And when I do—” his voice hardened “—I’ll see to it personally that your ass is nailed to a cross.”

Max looked at him with mocking admiration—but he must have felt at least a twinge of uneasiness.

Obviously, Cassandra still didn’t believe that this was really taking place.

“I can take him in anytime, Mrs. Delacorte,” Plum told her, “and I must say, I don’t understand your objection.
You’re
the one who said we should find the body first.”

Touché, Grover
, I thought.

Cassandra’s teeth were bared. “All right,” she said. “Play his stupid little game, then.”

“I’ll need your help,” said Plum.

“Oh, now wait a mo,” objected Max. “That’s not fair. She knows this room better than you do.”

“That’s right,” said Plum. His smile was thin and smug.

Cassandra looked at Max with sudden, vengeful pleasure.

“You think you’re going to get away with this, don’t you?” she said. “You know very well that this room is almost as strange to me as it is to him.”

She pointed at Max, smiling now. Or was it
leering?

“I’m not without means, however,”
she told him.

“Not without means at all!” cried Max.

He clapped his hands three times quickly as though announcing the commencement of a tourney.

“C’est merveilleux!”
he cried. “What
fun
we’re going to have!”

Thus the nightmare continued.

Visualize the scene, dear reader. (Assuming that anyone ever reads this.)

A wager had been made.

For money? Not so simple. Far more deadly and bizarre.

The location of a corpse.

Sheriff Plum and Cassandra Delacorte engaging in a challenge—he concedingly, she with resentful anger.

Puzzle?

Where was Harry Kendal’s body in The Magic Room?

Remember the description now.

The room was twenty by thirty, high-ceilinged, many-windowed, including the picture window affording a view of the lake. Luxurious appointments, built-in bookshelves, a fieldstone fireplace and wall, the French desk, seven feet
by four feet. The brass-and-teakwood bar, two easy chairs with end tables, the large antique globe, the display poster, the Egyptian burial case, the suit of armor, the casket, the guillotine; you remember all that, don’t you?