The Durham Deception (15 page)

He could hardly recall the reasons for his rejection of her now. He was sorry for it almost at once. He had moved away from the city and spent years in obscure parishes in grimy suburbs or even bleaker countryside until that terrible day, the worst day of his life, when he had written to his bishop explaining that he could no longer remain in the church with a clear conscience.

Ever since going to live at Colt House he had grown fonder than ever of Miss Howlett. Sometimes he imagined what it would be like if they were sitting round the breakfast table not as householder and lodger but as man and wife. If he were able to call her not ‘Miss Howlett' but ‘Julia'. How would the intervening years have been different if they had married? Septimus Sheridan could not know, but different – and better – they would have been.

He was fiercely protective of Miss Howlett while realizing that she was well able to protect herself. She had resources and good sense. Except when it came to spiritualism and to Eustace Flask in particular. Septimus had not trusted Flask from the start, and the distrust had deepened to an instinctive rejection of everything that Flask said or did.

Septimus would have done almost anything to wrest Miss Howlett away from the medium. But what could he do? Perhaps it was because he was so helpless that these feelings of contempt and loathing surfaced so abruptly in the hushed surroundings of the cathedral library.

The Military Magician

A meeting had been arranged between Major Sebastian Marmont and Tom by letter for noon of that day. The Major was staying at the County Hotel just the other side of the river. Tom was told that the Major had a suite of rooms on the first floor of the hotel, reputedly the best in the city. As he climbed the stairs he reflected that there must be money to be made through magic. But then the Major and his Hindoos were a big attraction. Tom and Helen had already glimpsed several posters advertising the ‘Wonders of the Orient' show at the Assembly Rooms.
See the Miraculous Talking Head. Marvel at the Fabulous Perseus Cabinet
. All of this illustrated with a picture of a wise-looking cove wearing a suit and a solar topi together with a couple of youths clad in loincloths. In the background disembodied heads floated through the ether.

Tom knocked on the door of the room where he had been directed. A voice that he recognized told him to enter and he was not surprised to see, sitting cross-legged in a sunny window seat and smoking a cigarette, the troublesome guest from Colt House. An inkling that the man he'd appointed to meet and the man who'd stirred things up the previous evening at Aunt Julia's were one and the same had occurred to him while walking on the riverbank. Standing in the door he gave his name.

‘Ah, Mr Ansell,' said Major Sebastian Marmont, untangling himself and coming forward to give Tom a firm handshake. He was formally dressed although he had removed his suit jacket. ‘I saw you arrive at the front entrance downstairs and I wondered if you were my midday visitor from Scott, Lye & Mackenzie. But of course we have already met, in a manner of speaking, even if I didn't know who you were yesterday evening.'

‘It is strange that no one at Miss Howlett's house recognized you either, sir, since your face is on bills all over town.'

‘If you look carefully, Mr Ansell, you'll see it's not a very good likeness on the bills. No doubt some of the people there last night have seen me on stage at the Assembly Rooms but it's extraordinary how different one looks in front of the stage-lights and wearing a bit of slap.'

‘Slap, Major Marmont?'

‘Face-paint, my dear chap. I darken my phizog so that audiences imagine I've come straight from tropical climes. And Mr Eustace Flask knows who I am, or at least he does now. I have invited him to one of my shows. I thought it only fair to give him the chance to see a real magician. Please sit down, sir. Cigarette?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘They help me concentrate, I find, when I am mulling over my tricks. Only this brand, mind,' said the Major taking another one from the packet. ‘The Luxor, made by the Alexandria Company in Artilley Lane.'

Tom settled in an armchair while Major Marmont returned to the window seat, where he again perched cross-legged and wreathed himself in cigarette smoke, tapping the ash into a bowl of Benares brass next to him. He might have been the Buddha sitting amid clouds of incense; Buddha with an incongruous moustache. Tom glanced round the spacious sitting room which had a fine view of the cathedral beyond Sebastian Marmont's shoulders. It was well furnished with armchairs and an ottoman, a desk and tables including one laid for dining. An internal door led to what must be Marmont's bedroom.

The soldier-magician asked after David Mackenzie in fond terms and enquired how long Tom had been with the law firm. He had discovered somehow that Tom was married to the daughter of Mr Scott, whom he had known. Tom found himself taking a liking to the Major. It was partly on account of the way he had shown up Eustace Flask but there was also an appealing straightforwardness to the other's manner. Yet he was a professional magician. How straightforward could he be?

‘Why did you visit Miss Howlett's yesterday evening, Major Marmont? You must have known that the other guests would not be, ah, sympathetic to what you were doing.'

‘Perhaps I went too far. I did not plan it. But there is something very provoking about that Flask. He's an egregious character. I have been tracking his progress round the north-east like a hunter following a spoor. When I discovered that Miss Howlett was keeping open house for him, as it were, I could not resist the temptation to go and beard the fellow. Using a little of my own sleight of hand and the substituted chalk, I was able to show that he must have written the tablet answers himself.'

‘But my wife and her aunt were touching his hands all the time.'

‘Oh they are very clever, these people. I have known a foot covered with a dummy hand to be thrust up through a hole in a table. But that wasn't what happened in this case. Did you observe how Flask gave a start when he was taken over by his ‘control', the Indian maid?'

Tom nodded, fascinated but also surprised at the undercurrent of bitterness in Marmont's words. It was plain that he despised the spiritualists or at any rate despised Eustace Flask.

‘I would wager a whole evening's takings that both your wife and her aunt lost contact with Flask's hands for an instant when he pretended to go into his trance. When they felt him again he was actually offering both of them the
same
hand. So all that time the other hand was free to scribble his nonsense on the slate.'

‘It is easy to see when you explain, sir. And I suppose the arms of the Indian maid were actually that woman's, Kitty's.'

‘Undoubtedly they were. But I could tell from your own attitude last night that you already had your suspicions about the medium.'

‘My wife and I both. Her Aunt Julia has no suspicions, she believes in Flask absolutely.'

‘A pity. Flask is very adept in his dealings with older women. Individuals like him bring honest, decent magicianship into disrepute. You should ask yourself why mediums need the paraphernalia of conjurers, why they require dim lighting and locked cabinets and rattling tambourines when they are trying to reach the departed. Isn't it rather undignified of the dead to choose such ridiculous means to get in touch? We magicians own up to our tricks – or rather we own up that they
are
tricks. We might fear the discovery of our secrets but we don't fear the exposure of our very selves as the mediums do. But I am running on, Mr Ansell.'

‘Not at all. I can see the depth of your feelings.'

‘I have good reason for feeling as I do.'

Tom waited attentively. If the Major wanted to give the reason, he would. If not, not. Marmont lit another cigarette and began to speak.

‘Some years ago I lost my darling wife. For a time in my grief and despair I believed I might make contact with her again. I consulted mediums, I attended séances, I willed myself to believe that we might still be able to talk to each other, to glimpse each other. But the harder I tried, the more she seemed to recede into the distance. I came to a simple conclusion, Mr Ansell. You know what that was?'

‘I can guess.'

‘It is that those who profess to put one in touch with the dead are imposters. The best of them do not know that they are imposters and are merely self-deluded. But the majority are out-and-out frauds. They deserve ridicule and shame and exposure, if not the full rigour of the law. And, as I say, Eustace Flask is the worst of a very bad bunch. The world would be a better place without his presence.'

Sebastian Marmont had stubbed out his cigarette even though it wasn't finished. He was clenching his fists. He looked down at them as though they were the hands of another.

‘Where was I? Ah yes, my wife. I could not mourn her forever or waste my time and resources sitting in the stuffy parlours of the mediums because I had responsibilities. You see, she left me with three children, good lads all, to remember her by.'

Major Marmont gave a sudden, barking laugh. ‘Of course the desire to expose that charlatan Flask was not the only reason why I did what I did yesterday evening. When word gets round that I've invited Flask to attend one of my performances at the Assembly Rooms, you won't be able to get a ticket for love or money. People will come in the hope of seeing a spat.'

It was oddly reassuring that Marmont had a practical or commercial reason for causing a stir, that he wasn't just driven by fury. There were other questions that Tom would have liked to ask – where, for instance, did all the Major's Hindoos stay? Surely they were not lodging in the comfort of the County Hotel? – but the soldier-magician indicated that they ought to get down to business, the reason Tom was visiting him at the hotel. Sebastian Marmont wished to make a formal statement, an affidavit, of how he had come into possession of the Lucknow Dagger.

He asked Tom to explain how an affidavit was prepared. It was fairly simple. Marmont simply had to produce a document with Tom's help, topped and tailed in the appropriate legal fashion, and then the affidavit would have to be sworn to in the presence of a commissioner of oaths. Marmont went to a writing desk and produced an envelope from which he extracted a couple of sheets of paper filled with small, spidery handwriting.

‘I have written down the story here. You may read it.'

‘It may be necessary to recast it,' said Tom after few minutes. As far as he could decipher it, Major Marmont's account was somewhat disjointed and sensational. There were plenty of exclamation marks and expressions like ‘by the skin of our teeth' and ‘shake a stick at'. The history of the Dagger seemed to be strange and bloody.

‘To recast it? To make it more lawyerly?'

‘I'm afraid so. Then you must affirm it as a true account.'

‘Perhaps you would like to see the Lucknow Dagger itself, Mr Ansell,' said Marmont.

Major Marmont paused and with a showman's instinct unfastened his cravat. He removed a loop of braided cord which hung around his neck and drew out a leather sheath from within his shirt. From the sheath he produced the very weapon. He handed it to Tom, who wished Helen was here to see this. It would have appealed to her writerly imagination. Now he took the Lucknow Dagger from its owner. He experienced a strange feeling of giddiness and for an instant clutched the edge of the table.

It was a finely worked object. The blade was about four inches long and the handle slightly shorter. The steel of the blade had a heavy bluish sheen to it, as though it had absorbed the lifeblood of its victims. The handle was decorated with ivory carvings. He peered at the largest of them. A figure with many arms was set sideways-on, trampling several much smaller figures underfoot. There were miniature skulls and what appeared to be spears and lances and arrows flying through the air. Tom had expected something conventionally valuable, a knife whose handle was encrusted with precious stones or worked in gold. He looked up to see the Major scrutinizing him.

‘Interesting, eh? The figure is Kali, the goddess of death and destruction. She is rightly held in awe.'

This information, together with the dark blade and the pale ivory work of the handle, was somehow unsettling. Not wanting to hold it any longer, he handed it back to Sebastian Marmont.

‘You're wondering whether the right place for this is in a museum – or a bank vault?'

‘Yes, I was. Or rather I was wondering whether you always carried it about with you, Major Marmont.'

‘It was designed to be carried, Mr Ansell. It is for use and adornment. No Indian would dream of locking up such an item so why should I?'

‘Do you keep it for good fortune, for luck?'

‘Perhaps I keep it so that others should not get their hands on it,' said the Major cryptically. ‘For luck, you ask? I am not especially superstitious, although you cannot spend years in the East without suspecting that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, as Hamlet says. Nevertheless, there are scurrilous stories about how I came into possession of this object – that I took it from a dead man when his corpse was still warm, even that I killed him myself – and that is why I have asked to formally swear to the truth.'

‘Who's responsible for these stories about you?'

‘Rumours, rumours,' said Marmont with a wave of his hand. He got up from his cross-legged position in the window. ‘What I would like you to do, Mr Ansell, is to take the key facts in the account I have just given and write them up in the appropriate legal language. We can then proceed to the business of the affidavit.'

‘Of course, Major Marmont,' said Tom, wondering whether anyone in the firm of Scott, Lye & Mackenzie had ever overseen a stranger, more exotic affidavit.