‘I remember,’ said George. ‘There’s no need to rub it in.’
‘Anyway, Mrs Lassiter, you said exactly the right thing to jolt me into seeing things properly. You said you wanted a miracle and George talked about a magic wand and it made me think about illusions.’ He poured himself another drink and held the glass, seeing the bubbles swirl up through the champagne. ‘I nearly got it once before, when I saw a street magician in Leicester Square. He made a dove appear from an empty box. I knew I’d seen an illusion, something I knew had to be a trick. But that sort of illusion – that kind of magic – depends on reality. The dove is real and the box is real; it’s how they’re put together that makes the illusion. Now George saw a murder. A girl died in front of his eyes. He must have imagined it, surely, only he couldn’t have imagined what was said. He’s having a bath and she’s listening to the wireless. You confirmed that was so, Mrs Lassiter. Your grandfather really was in the bath and you were listening to A.J. Alan. So that meant George must be telling the truth, peculiar though it sounded.’
He lit a cigarette. ‘I slept very badly that night. When I awoke my mind was buzzing with what I’d seen and heard. George’s nightmare had been real but, just like my dove, it was an illusion. I suddenly realized how that illusion could be brought about and everything fell into place. George and I went to see Dr Kincraig and . . .’ He smiled at the doctor. ‘Why don’t you explain this next bit? You know far more about it than I do.’
Dr Kincraig cleared his throat and sat forward in his chair. ‘Very well, Major.’ He addressed the room as if he was standing in a lecture theatre. ‘What Major Haldean had worked out was that George Lassiter had seen a demonstration of hypnotism.’
‘Hypnotism!’ said Peggy Culverton, startled. ‘You mean look-into-my-eyes and all that sort of thing? They didn’t hypnotize George, did they?’
Dr Kincraig was not used to having his lectures interrupted. ‘Indeed no, Mrs Culverton. Hypnotism is a very useful tool in dealing with bad cases of nerves and I have often employed it.’
‘You’ve used it on me before now,’ said Jack. ‘I imagine that’s why I twigged it.’
‘Just as you say, Major. Now Maguire was a psycho-analyst and was in a position to know about both the theory and practice of hypnotism. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about hypnotism because, in this country, it’s usually a music-hall turn. However in France, where I studied for a while, it’s a recognized medical technique. I usually use it to help a patient relax, as it’s fairly easy to induce a trance. There is a popular belief that it is impossible to hypnotize someone against their will. That is not entirely correct. If a subject has a good idea of what the practitioner has in mind, he can fight against it. However, if the subject has no idea of what is to come, it is perfectly possible to put them into a trance without their consent. Such a proceeding is, I need hardly say, completely unethical. Under hypnosis a patient will act in a way which, however peculiar it may seem to an outside observer, makes perfect sense to the person concerned. If, under hypnosis, you give a man a lemon and tell him it is a crisp, juicy apple that he has a great desire to eat, he will crunch through it and be extremely angry if you tell him that he has just eaten a bitter lemon, skin and all. What it can’t do is make someone perform an action which they have strong ethical or emotional objections to, such as committing suicide.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ muttered George and was instantly quelled by a pair of sandy Scottish eyebrows.
‘A great many experiments have been performed,’ continued the doctor, ‘to determine the limits of hypnotism. Braid and Charcot, the leading authorities in this area, identified three separate states which they could produce at will. There is a state of artificial somnambulism, a state of lethargy or trance, and a state of catalepsy. These states can be engendered, after suitable preparation, by an outside stimulus. It is usually a spoken phrase, although sometimes it can be an action or a piece of music. I refer to this stimulus as the trigger.’
‘Catalepsy?’ repeated David Lassiter. ‘Hang on a minute. That means when you think someone’s dead and they’re not, doesn’t it?’
The doctor nodded. ‘Indeed it does, Mr Lassiter. To the unpractised eye – and sometimes, I regret to say, to the practised eye as well – there is no difference between a cataleptic trance and death. Which has led, I fear, to some very unfortunate occurrences. Very unfortunate. Dear me. Yes.’
‘But that means . . .’ David stopped helplessly. ‘What the dickens does it mean?’
‘It means,’ said Jack, ‘that what George saw in the kitchen that night was a rehearsal for murder. Walsh’s murder.’
He lit a cigarette. ‘Michael Walsh, poor devil, with his ropy heart and injured lungs, was still a man and had fallen for Stella Aldryn. That was part one. Part two occurred when Maguire, Nigel and Stella came into the kitchen where they knew they’d be undisturbed and Stella, who had been primed to go off into a cataleptic trance, was held by Nigel who said, “I love you.” That was the key word or trigger, if you like. She keeled over and at that point came a knock on the front door. Nigel and Maguire scooted off, leaving Stella who was, to all intents and purposes, dead, and poor George, who had been watching this with his hair standing on end, came out of the kitchen like a bat out of hell, straight into the arms of the policeman who had been knocking at the door. By the time the Law arrived down below, Stella had either woken up or been spirited away, and George was left gargling about dead blondes.’
‘But how does that kill Michael Walsh?’ demanded David Lassiter.
‘I think I understand,’ said Anne Lassiter. ‘The night George broke into the kitchen was the night before we should have gone away but Grandfather’s bad chest prevented us from going. Michael Walsh must have been going to search Nigel’s office when we were away and Nigel and Roger surely guessed that’s what he’d do. Mr Walsh had to put off his search until Nigel was safely out of the way once more, and that was during the dinner in the Savoy.’
‘But –’ began David.
Anne turned to him. ‘Don’t you see? Nigel and the others knew Walsh would try and search his office again so Stella Aldryn must have been waiting for him at the factory. She knew how he felt. He followed her around like a lost sheep. She’d never paid him any attention but if she staged a love scene . . .’ She stopped and shuddered.
‘If she could get Walsh to say, “I love you,” she’d keel over, apparently dead,’ said Jack. He looked at George. ‘You know how frightening it was, and you were merely an observer. Imagine how Walsh must have felt. He’d be jumpy with nerves and way up high because, at long last, Stella Aldryn had revealed what he must fondly have believed were her true feelings. He had a dodgy heart. Can you imagine the shock when he said he loved her?’
David Lassiter sat back in his chair. ‘My God, I can. He always had to be careful. A shock like that would see him off without a doubt.’ He looked at Jack in bewilderment. ‘You wanted to call the police in the night we found him. Did you guess any of this at the time?’
‘No, nothing of the sort,’ said Jack regretfully. ‘And, I have to say, in the light of his knowledge, the doctor acted perfectly properly in refusing to call the cops. No, what bothered me were the two cigarette ends in the ashtray. It suggested that someone else had been in the office with him and, as we know, they had.’
‘What if it didn’t work?’ asked Peggy Culverton. ‘Shock seems so – well, chancy in a way. I’ve followed all you’ve said but I think there was a real risk it wouldn’t work. What if Mr Walsh hadn’t keeled over or what if he’d merely fainted?’
‘If Walsh hadn’t keeled over, then all that would have happened was that poor Miss Aldryn would apparently have had a fainting fit. That’s not a criminal offence. If Walsh had been the one to faint . . .’ He broke off and raised his eyebrows expressively. ‘Well, I wouldn’t like to be helpless and at Stella Aldryn’s mercy. Especially when, in the office next door, there were those big yellow and black cushions
. It’s easy to smother a helpless man. That’s the direct method I mentioned.’
‘It still seems very elaborate,’ said David.
‘Does it?’ asked Jack. ‘Did you think it was murder?’ David Lassiter shook his head. ‘That’s the best sort of murder of all, when no one knows a crime has been committed. Then, just as they were patting themselves on the back for a perfect murder, George fainted at Stella Aldryn’s feet. They knew, of course, that George had been welcomed back into the Lassiter fold and I can’t imagine they relished having the long-lost grandson and the missing legatee pop up. Stella Aldryn had probably made a point of being in the office to have a look at you, George, the day you went to visit the factory. Do you remember how Maguire and Stella hustled Nigel out of the office, looking for brandy? I’m sure Nigel didn’t twig it, but I think Maguire and Stella suspected the worst right away. You were the legatee. I’m certain your days were numbered, but when it turned out you were the unintended witness of the night in the kitchen and you’d recognized Stella Aldryn as the dead girl . . . Well, they had to get you out of the way as quickly as possible.’
Anne Lassiter stared at him. ‘You mean they tried to kill George?’ Jack nodded. She drew her breath in. ‘How?’
‘I was hypnotized,’ said George. ‘D’you know, even now I can’t get the idea of how Stella appeared to be out of my head.’ He broke off with a shudder. ‘It’s stupid, but I was starting to care about her. Care about her very much.’
‘She was a good actress,’ said Jack. ‘And you must remember that she was very experienced where men were concerned.’
‘I know,’ said George, ‘but it’s still hard to believe.’
‘Stella Aldryn and Roger Maguire called on George while I was out,’ said Jack, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘It was the day we went to the Continental for lunch, Mrs Lassiter. I knew Stella Aldryn had called, because she left a coffee cup with a trace of lipstick on the rim. What I didn’t know was that Maguire had been there as well. He didn’t leave a coffee cup behind because he never drank coffee. I was ridiculously pleased with myself when I remembered that. I asked Stella Aldryn about it that day at the Continental. It must have been a nasty shock for her, but she covered it up very well. And, of course, George denied that she or anyone else had ever been here. I couldn’t understand it at the time but once I’d caught on to the idea of hypnotism, it was easy enough to explain. Maguire simply told George to forget they’d ever been and he did.’
‘Stella met me in the newsagent’s that morning,’ said George. ‘She asked if you were at home, Jack, and when I said you weren’t, told me she had something important to discuss and suggested we come back here. Maguire must have been waiting for the okay from Stella, because he joined us, as if by chance, on the street outside.’
Jack looked across to Dr Kincraig. ‘When we came to see you, doctor, I was sure George had been hypnotized and you confirmed that. Even though I was as sure as I could be about what had happened, it was a chilling moment when you put George into a trance and he spelt out what Maguire’s instructions were.’
‘What were they?’ asked Anne.
‘I was going to die,’ said George. ‘He wanted to kill me.’
Anne drew her breath in. ‘How?’
Jack, after a glance at George, took up the story once more. ‘George was going to have an accident, a spectacular accident. It happened the day the Pegasus was shown to the press.’
‘Hold on,’ said David. ‘Do you mean George’s fall from the board-walk?’
Jack nodded. ‘That’s it.’ He walked across the room to the sofa where Boots, the kitchen cat, was sitting curled up beside George, purring gently. He crouched down and scratched the top of the cat’s head. The purring increased. ‘This old lady had her part to play.’ He stood up again. ‘Boots has taken a real shine to George. Whenever George comes in, Boots makes a point of coming to greet him. That happened when Maguire and Stella called. I know that, because my landlady told me Boots wanted to get out into the hallway when she heard his voice. I think the presence of Boots suggested the trigger or key word to Maguire.’
‘Was it the word cat?’ asked Anne Lassiter.
‘It was the phrase cat on the roof. I know you, Maguire and Stella were talking about cats when George and I joined you. When Maguire said cat on the roof, George, as he’d been primed to do, climbed up to the board-walk to rescue a totally imaginary cat. Incidentally, George, it was that phrase that led to your trying to shin up a balcony on St James’s Street.’
George grinned. ‘D’you know, that does have its funny side. But look, Jack, I didn’t ask you this before. How come if they wanted to do me in, they didn’t try again?’
‘They probably were going to try again. After all, Stella only had to say the magic words and you’d climb anything and nose-dive off. It must have seemed such a perfect method, but you’d hurt your arm. You couldn’t climb anything and so, for a time, you were safe.’
‘You’re all right now, aren’t you, George?’ asked Anne anxiously. She hesitated slightly. ‘I mean with cats and so on.’
‘I’m not going to start climbing things,’ said George with an embarrassed smile. ‘Dr Kincraig sorted me out when Jack took me to see him. I couldn’t remember a thing about it, though. Apparently he hypnotized me again so I wouldn’t give the game away.’
‘Major Haldean convinced me it was for the best, Mr Lassiter,’ said Dr Kincraig. ‘You agreed. As he pointed out, one hint to Stella Aldryn or, indeed anyone else, and the game would have been up.’
‘I thought Dr Kincraig said you couldn’t prompt someone to commit suicide by hypnotism,’ said David. ‘How come their plan to make you fall off the board-walk so nearly worked?’
‘You misunderstand me,’ replied Dr Kincraig. ‘A man cannot be asked to commit suicide but he can be asked to think the solid ground is empty air. That’s why Mr Lassiter fell.’
‘Nigel didn’t know about it,’ put in Jack. ‘He realized what had happened, all right, and was furious with Stella.’
‘That’s because it interfered with his publicity,’ said David, drily.
Jack looked at him. ‘Yes. I’m afraid you’re right. Anyway, something else happened at the factory that day. Maguire found out that you had a motive to kill Culverton. He didn’t act right away but what happened next changed everything, didn’t it, Bill?’
‘There was another murder,’ said Rackham. ‘At the time it seemed like another Ripper killing and in a way it was. You, Mrs Culverton, had cut off Nigel’s funding for the Pegasus and Nigel, desperate for more funds, leaned on Ridgeway. Ridgeway, a nasty piece of work who had been embezzling money from his firm, agreed to stump up, if he was allowed the ultimate thrill.’
‘And the thrill was provided,’ said David quietly. ‘Dear God.’
Dr Kincraig cleared his throat. ‘From what you’ve told me, Ridgeway was a similar type to Culverton, if something of a poor copy. He borrowed the notoriety of the X man. From his point of view it would have glamorized his crime.’
‘He didn’t enjoy the glamour for very long,’ said Rackham grimly. ‘Young Croft, a very sharp sort, had taken over the firm. He knew that Ridgeway had misappropriated funds and arranged a surprise audit. Ridgeway, unable to face the music, went home and shot himself.’
‘Nigel was beside himself when he found out,’ said David. ‘He used some of the foulest language I’ve ever heard and, what’s more, he used it to Peggy. We had a terrific quarrel. I ended up thumping him.’
‘He didn’t forget that,’ said Rackham. ‘I think that’s what sparked off what happened next.’
‘I’m certain of it,’ said David. ‘Maguire was there. He’d come to discuss the effect Ridgeway’s death would have on the Pegasus and the pair of them asked me to come into the drawing room with them. Maguire hypnotized me.’ He shuddered and looked at Dr Kincraig. ‘I can remember being absolutely convinced I’d killed Culverton. I suppose hearing what Peggy had been through and believing
he was the Ripper made that possible. I know I truly did believe it. After you spoke to me, doctor, I remembered what really happened and why. Nigel hated me. There were no two ways about it. I remember their discussion. Maguire put me into a trance and they spoke freely. There were other reasons why I should carry the can for Culverton’s death. I had some money from the Urbis that Nigel hadn’t been able to get his hands on and my confession would mean the police would stop looking for Culverton’s supposed killer. Nigel would eventually have control of the firm and so on, but the reason, the real reason, was that he hated me.’
‘Nigel never could care for anyone,’ said Anne Lassiter softly. ‘He was always alone.’
It was, thought Jack, a very perceptive epitaph.
‘It’s South Africa for me, Jack,’ George declared. ‘I want to go home.’ He pushed his half-eaten eggs and bacon away and walked moodily to the window. A December drizzle was falling. A taxi splashed its way through the dreary murk that was London. Pedestrians, wrapped in mackintoshes and shielded by umbrellas, trudged along the pavement, each concerned with their own affairs. No one spoke, no one seemed to know they were sharing the world with other human beings. A few more leaves fell off the plane tree outside the window and were trampled underfoot. And yet, no more than sixteen days away, was a land of blinding sun and brilliant blue skies. ‘It’s South Africa for me,’ he repeated.
‘You’ll have to stay until Nigel’s funeral,’ said Jack. ‘You can’t leave your family to face it alone. The inquest was bad enough and the funeral will be really tough for them. And what about the company? I thought you were going to join the firm. I think David might appreciate your help.’
‘Come on, Jack,’ said George. ‘You must see how impossible it is.’
‘What? Now you’re rich, you mean?’
‘Money’s got nothing to do with it,’ said George in irritation. ‘If you must know, it’s Anne. I was taken in hook, line and sinker by Stella. How d’you think that makes me feel? If I’d known what was good for me I wouldn’t have looked twice at her. That matters to Anne, you know. She didn’t say as much but you saw how distant she was at the inquest. I’ve had my chance and I’ve blown it.’
As if by Magic Page 30