Escapade

by Walter Satterthwait

  It had been his idea to talk to me alone. Out on the patio, Lord Bob had introduced himself to the Inspector, and then introduced everyone else. Lady Purleigh, Cecily, Sir Arthur, the Great Man. And Sir David, who was up off the ground now but still a little blurry. Lord Bob had introduced me last, as “Houdini’s Pinkerton bodyguard.”

  Marsh had smiled at me and said, “Lovely! A Pinkerton. In the flesh. Wonderful!” He had turned to Lord Bob and his thin, mobile face had suddenly gone grave. “Lord Purleigh, permit me to offer you my condolences. Irreparable is the loss, and patience says it is past her cure. The Tempest.”

  Lord Bob blinked. “Yes. Well. Thank you very much.”

  Marsh leaned toward him. “Now, you’ll think me terribly rude,

  I know, and I do beg your forgiveness, but is there some secluded little corner into which I can tiptoe with Mr. Beaumont? We’ve things to discuss.” He lowered his voice and his eyebrows. “Rather important matters, you understand. Hush hush.”

  Lord Bob had seemed a bit surprised. By the request, or maybe by Inspector Marsh himself. Inspector Marsh would surprise almost anyone. But Lord Bob was a gentleman, and he said, “Well, yes. Yes, of course. There’s the library.”

  “The library!” said Marsh, eyes wide with pleasure. “Perfect!” He cocked his head. “Come and take choice of all my library, and so beguile thy sorrow. Titus Andronicus.”

  Lord Bob stared at him. Marsh turned to me. “Do you know the library’s location?”

  I nodded.

  “Lovely. Lady Purleigh. Lord Purleigh. Ladies and gentlemen. I hope you’ll all forgive this intrusion. Police, officialdom, nasty business you’ll be thinking, and I couldn’t agree with you more. But I do hope you’ll all bear with me whilst I briefly huddle with Mr. Beaumont. I do so much look forward to chatting with each and every one of you.”

  Lord Bob wasn’t the only person staring.

  And Marsh had turned to me, smiling. “Lead on, MacDuff. Now, as I sat there in the library, still in my shirtsleeves, I asked him, “Shall I start at the beginning?”

  He smiled as if that was an idea he wouldn’t have thought of himself, and one he kind of liked. “Yes, at the beginning. The very commencement of things. Mr. Houdini hired you in the United States, did he?”

  “Yeah.” I told him the whole story, the Great Man and Chin Soo in Buffalo, the failed attack at the Hotel Ardmore in Philadelphia, our trip to Paris and then to London, the wire from the agency telling me that Chin Soo had probably sailed from New York to Rotterdam.

  After a while, March listened with his head resting against the back of the sofa, his eyes watching the ceiling. His right elbow was perched on the sofa’s arm, his forearm was raised and his index finger extended, its tip resting against the delicate hollow of his right cheek.

  “Hmmm,” he said, still staring at the ceiling. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “So, really, you’ve no evidence that this other magician ever arrived in England at all.”

  “No,” I said. “But Houdini’s itinerary was published in the American newspapers before we left. And there was the wire from my agency. I had to assume that Chin Soo knew where to find him.”

  He lowered his head and smiled at me. “But my dear fellow, of course you did. I’m in no way criticizing, I assure you. I’ve the utmost respect for your organization, and I’m confident you’ve acted with complete propriety. Absolutely certain of it. I'm merely organizing my thoughts.” He smiled and waved his hand. “Unbridled children, grown too headstrong for their mother. Troilus and Cressida.”

  I nodded.

  “So,” he said. “You arrived here on Friday night, yes?” “Right.”

  “At what time would that’ve been?”

  I told him. I told him about meeting the other guests, and about leaving the drawing room to return to the suite I shared with the Great Man. Told him I’d discovered that someone had gone through my bag, told him the Great Man had discovered that someone had tried to go through his.

  “Aha,” he said. “The plot thickens. Was anything taken?” he asked me.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you find that just a trifle curious?”

  “No. There wasn’t anything worth taking.”

  He smiled at Sergeant Meadows. "They are but beggars who can count their worth.” To me he said, “Romeo and Juliet.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you did—what exactly? Reported the attempted theft to anyone? To Lord Purleigh, perhaps?”

  “No. Everything was still there. I went to bed. During the night I heard someone screaming.”

  Marsh looked at Sergeant Meadows. “Thicker and thicker, eh, Sergeant?” He looked at me. “And did you make any attempt to discover the cause of this screaming?” He smiled his sly smile and waved his finger again. “If I know my Pinkertons, I’ll wager you did.”

  “Yeah. It was Miss Turner, next door.” I didn’t mention that I was awake at the time, and talking to Cecily Fitzwilliam. I told him about the scene with Miss Turner and Mrs. Allardyce, Mrs. Corneille and Sir David.

  “Wonderful!” he said, smiling brightly and raising his hands. “A ghost! I adore ghosts. Lord Reginald, you say.”

  “She said. I didn’t.”

  “No,” he agreed. “So you didn’t.” He leaned back. “And what sort of ghost was he, exactly? He wasn’t, by any chance, the sort who hobbled about with his head tucked beneath his arm?”

  “No.”

  “Rattling his chains?”

  “No,” I said. “You want me to skip ahead? To what I found out about the ghost?”

  He waved his hand quickly. “No, no, no. Please. I much prefer a straightforward narrative. An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.” Even when he didn’t tell you what play the quotation came from, you could still tell it was a quotation. His voice got more precise and even more delicate. “Tell me,” he said. “Was Miss Turner in any way harmed by this . . . visitation?”

  “No. Shaken up. Frightened. Not harmed.”

  He nodded. “And what then?”

  “I went back to my room and back to sleep.”

  “No more ghosts?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Pity. And the next day? Saturday?”

  Someone knocked at the library door. “Come in,” Marsh called out.

  The door opened and Briggs stepped in. He had no expression on his face this morning, but now he was carrying my coat and tie draped over his left arm. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Mr. Beaumont, sir, Lady Purleigh desired me to convey your clothing to you.”

  I stood up. “Thanks, Mr. Briggs.” He crossed the room and handed me the tie—formally, as if it were a national flag. Then just as formally, he handed me the coat. I said, “Thank you. And tell Lady Purleigh thanks for me.” I swung the coat and tie over the arm of the chair and I sat back down.

  “I shall, sir. She also desired to know, sir, whether you might wish to have your breakfast delivered here.”

  “Yeah. That’d be fine, Mr. Briggs. Tell her that’s kind of her.”

  “Yes, sir.” Briggs turned to Marsh. “And she requested that I ask you, sir, whether you and the other gentleman would care for something as well.”

  Marsh smiled. “What a lovely idea.” He turned to me and confided “We’re both ravenous. Not a bite since London. Though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals.” He turned to Briggs. “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

  Briggs nodded. Maybe he already knew that. “Yes, sir, he said. “I’ll tell Higgens, sir, and someone will be here shortly.”

  “Lovely. Oh and—Briggs, is it?”

  “Sir?”

  “Briggs, would you please ask Lord and Lady Purleigh whether it might be convenient for them to join us here in, oh, say an hour?”

  “Yes, sir. I shall, sir.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  Briggs turned and left. He closed the door behind him.

  I hooked my tie over my head, slippe
d it beneath my collar. “You want me to take off when Lord and Lady Purleigh get here?”

  For the first time Inspector Marsh seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “Take what off?”

  I smiled. “You want me to leave? Go away?”

  “No, no. Of course not, my dear chap. We’re colleagues, aren't we. Allies to the end. And here being thus together, we are an endless mine to one another. The Two Noble Kinsmen.”

  “Right.” I finished tying my tie.

  He pursed his lips. “Of course, scholars disagree as to precisely how much of that particular work was actually written by the Bard.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Now,” he said. “We were about to review the events of Saturday.”

  “Yeah.” I told him about breakfast with Lord Bob and about strolling with the Great Man along the gravel walkway. About the meeting with Miss Turner and her horse. I told him about sitting under the bronze-red tree with Mrs. Allardyce and Mrs. Corneille, and about Lord Bob arriving on his motorcycle. Told him that Miss Turner and the horse had suddenly come bolting from the forest, and that she had reined it in before she reached us.

  Marsh had been staring at the ceiling but now his glance swung down to me once more. “What caused her to bolt from the forest? Do you know?”

  “A snake, she said. It frightened her horse.”

  “I see. And then what?”

  Someone knocked at the door. “Come in,” called out Marsh.

  It was a servant, pushing a wheeled cart. He arranged a low table in front of my chair, then slid a plate, covered with a silver lid, from one of the shelves of the cart and he placed it on the table. He arranged silverware and a linen napkin and a cup and saucer and a small pot each of tea and coffee. Then he did the same thing for Marsh and Sergeant Meadows, on the coffee table. Then he pushed the cart off into a corner, turned, and asked us, “Will there be anything else, gentlemen?”

  Marsh smiled up at him. “No. Thank you very much.”

  The servant said, “Very good, sir,” nodded, and marched from the room.

  “They set a lovely table, Lord and Lady Purleigh.” Marsh nodded to my food. “Please. Eat. Enjoy your meal. Unquiet meals make ill digestion.”

  I lifted the lid from my plate. Fried eggs, bacon, sausage, fried tomatoes, buttered toast, a dead fish. I picked up the fork.

  With his knife and fork, as precisely as a surgeon, Marsh cut a geometrically perfect square of egg white. He dipped the tip of his knife lightly into the bright yellow yolk, carefully spread yolk along the surface of the white, and then placed the result neatly in his mouth. He kept the fork in his left hand, the way English people do. He chewed with small even bites. Thoughtfully. Delicately. He swallowed and looked up at me, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin.

  “Miss Turner had just arrived,” he said. “What happened at that point?”

  I swallowed some sausage. “Someone fired a rifle.”

  Marsh raised his eyebrows. “Fired a rifle. From where?” He cut off another perfect square of egg white.

  Sergeant Meadows had set aside his notebook and he was eating as though he hadn’t eaten since the War. He was bent over his eggs and his heavy elbows were flapping like wings.

  “From the forest,” I said. “About a hundred and fifty yards off. At the time, I thought he was aiming at Harry.” I cut off a piece of bacon, ate it.

  Marsh carefully spread some yolk along the square. “You believed it was—what was the name? The magician?”

  I swallowed. “Chin Soo.”

  “You believed it was Chin Soo who fired the rifle.” He put the morsel of egg into his mouth.

  “At the time, yeah.”

  He chewed. Neatly. Regularly. He swallowed. He dabbed at his mouth. “You’re implying, of course, that you’ve since changed your mind.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Refresh my memory, would you? Which of the guests, exactly, were out gamboling on the lawn?”

  Someone knocked at the door again.

  “Rather like Victoria Station, isn’t it?” Marsh smiled. He called out, "Come in.”

  The door burst open, banged against its stop, bounced back.

  The Great Man caught it with his left hand as he stepped into the room, and he held it. “Phil,” he said. “We must leave.”

  Chapter Thirty

  I SWALLOWED SOME egg. “Why’s that, Harry?”

  His brow was furrowed. “Bess.” He let the door swing shut and he walked into the room. “I spoke with her on the telephone just now. She rang from Paris. She intends to leave tonight. She will be in London tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, Phil. I must be there when she arrives.”

  I looked at Inspector Marsh. He was smiling pleasantly up at the Great Man. “Forgive me,” he said. “Mr. Houdini?”

  The Great Man turned to him, frowning impatiently.

  Marsh said, “Who might Bess be, exactly?”

  I kept eating. I had a feeling that breakfast would be over pretty soon.

  “My dear wife,” said the Great Man. “She has been deathly ill in Paris. Her stomach. That awful food, all those sickening French sauces. She is better now, thank goodness, well enough to travel now. It has been a huge pleasure to meet you, Inspector, and I am sorry we shall have no opportunity to talk. But Mr. Beaumont and I must leave Maplewhite.”

  I finished off my egg.

  “Yes,” said Marsh. “So you said. You do understand, don’t you, Mr. Houdini, that this is a police investigation?”

  Sergeant Meadows was pouring himself a cup of coffee. It looked like a good idea, so I did the same thing.

  The Great Man was frowning. Impatiently. “Of course I understand. But I am merely a guest here. The investigation has nothing to do with me. Phil, will it take you long to pack?”

  I sipped at my coffee. “Well, Harry,” I said.

  “I imagine,” said Marsh, “that it shouldn’t be difficult for you to arrange for someone in London to meet your wife. I—”

  “Impossible,” said the Great Man. “Bess expects me to be there.” He raised himself fully upright. “In all our married years together, I have never disappointed my wife, Inspector.”

  Marsh smiled. “That does you great credit, Mr. Houdini,” he said. “But I regret to tell you that no one will be permitted to leave Maplewhite until such time as the preliminary investigation has been concluded.”

  Impatience had become disbelief. “Permitted?”

  “Harry,” I said.

  Marsh said, “Sergeant Meadows and I—”

  “Inspector,” said the Great Man. “You fail to understand the situation. My wife is arriving. In London. In the morning. I will be there.”

  “Mr. Houdini,” said Marsh.

  The Great Man spoke slowly, to make sure that Marsh understood. “Inspector, do you know who I am?”

  “Oh yes,” said Marsh, smiling brightly. “I could hardly fail to understand that, could I? Not a day goes by that I don’t admire those colorful advertisements of yours. They’re posted all over London, aren’t they? Ubiquitously, one might say.”

  “Then perhaps it has occurred to you,” the Great Man pronounced, “that I am not without influence, even here in England.

  I feel I must warn you—”

  “Harry.” I stood up. “Come on, Harry. Outside. Let’s talk.

  We’ll be back in a minute, Inspector.”

  He turned to me. “But Phil—”

  “Come on.” I took him by the arm. He resisted, his muscle bunching under my hand. He held his head up, his gray eyes glaring at Marsh. Marsh was smiling up at him, pleasantly.

  I tugged at the arm. “Harry, come on. We’ll get this straightened out.”

  Reluctantly, his head high, he came along.

  “THE MAN IS insane, Phil!”

  “He’s a cop, Harry.”

  “He is an imbecile!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But you heard me explain. He refuses to listen!”

 
“Harry, he’s just doing his job.”

  “But permitted! How dare he? Bess will be in London tomorrow!” We were in the hallway outside the library. The Great Man was pacing up and down the parquet floor, waving his arms. I was leaning against the wall. My own arms were crossed.

  “Why not call her back?” I said. “Ask her if she can take a later train. Tomorrow, maybe.”

  He stopped pacing and turned to me and put his hands on his hips. “I refuse. Absolutely. I have given my word.” He stood upright again. “And Houdini never goes back on his word.”

  “Harry, you’re just being stubborn. You’re angry at Marsh.”

  “I have every reason to be angry.”

  “Marsh needs to talk to everyone. He needs to figure out what’s going on.”

  “What?” He leaned toward me. “What, Phil? What is this oh-so-important thing he needs to ‘figure out’?”

  “Harry, I told you.” You had to be patient with him. “Someone tried to stab Miss Turner last night. Maybe it was the same person who fired that shot yesterday. And maybe he’ll try again—Miss Turner is in danger, Harry, until someone finds out what’s happening. And maybe all that—the rifle shot, the knife maybe it’s all connected to the Earl somehow. To the Earl’s death. I still don’t like the idea of suicide.”

  He shook his head. “We have discussed this, Phil. It must have been suicide. No one could possibly have opened that door. I examined it with the utmost care.”

  “And what was going on with the Earl? Why was he wandering around, playing ghost in the middle of the night?”

  He shook his head. “The Earl was paralyzed, Phil.”

  “He said he was paralyzed. He acted like he was paralyzed. But I told you, Harry, Miss Turner found those things in his room.”

  “Someone placed them there, of course.”