More Oddments

by Bill Pronzini

  Old Mrs. Lorde herself sat opposite me, straight as a mannequin despite her eighty-plus years. She wore a severe black dress accented only by a massive gold choker. An ebony cane with a solid-gold handle cast in the shape of an elephant was her only other adornment. On my left were Victor Schneider, manager of Lorde's Department Store—a tall, stately man with a small moustache—and Lillian Royce, buyer in the women's clothing department and a very attractive brunette in her mid-twenties. On my right was a thin nervous man with a voice that just managed not to squeak: Lewis Thorp, the store's assistant manager.

  "That was quite a performance," Schneider said, sampling his drink, a Magic Cellar specialty called a Levitation. "Quite a performance indeed."

  Mrs. Lorde concurred. "I must say, I am very impressed with Mr. Steele. His act will be good for Lorde's image as well as for business. Very dignified and impressive. At first, you know, when I heard about this after returning from Europe last week, I thought it was cheap and vulgar publicity."

  She was talking about Steele's next engagement, which was to spend two weeks in a hermetically sealed, glass-topped coffin in Lorde's front window—beginning tonight. The idea had been Steele's originally, but after many weeks of subtle talks I had managed to convince Schneider that he had thought of it. A good theatrical manager is a good con man.

  "My late husband, you know," Mrs. Lorde continued, "was very fond of magicians. He'd seen the Great Carter as a youth and it impressed him greatly. Of course, watching magicians was only a minor passion compared to his love of stamps."

  Schneider looked at his watch. "Speaking of Mr. Lorde's stamps," he said, "I'd better call McCarthy. I want to make sure of the time he and his men are coming to move the collection."

  Ian McCarthy was curator of the Lorde's Collection, one of the finest of United States issues in the world, featuring the only mint copy of the Hayes Two-and-a-Half-Cent Vermilion, probably the most valuable presidential portrait in existence. The entire issue was believed to have been destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake until, in 1929, this single stamp was found in the drawer of a desk being auctioned off by the post office. Mr. Lorde bought the stamp at auction for $22,000—an incredible price for the time—in honor of his wife who was distantly related to Lucy Webb Hayes, the President's wife.

  The collection was periodically moved from one to another of the sixteen state-wide branches of Lorde's—tonight it was going to Sacramento, as usual late at night with top security precautions—and, as you'd expect, it brought in many an admiring philatelist. The main branch here in San Francisco maintained a stamp room which dispensed both rare and common stamps to eager buyers—the practical approach. Old man Lorde had been a hard-nosed businessman as well as a collector.

  "Perhaps you had better go over to the store immediately," Mrs. Lorde said to Schneider. Her voice had a hard edge to it, as it had all night when she'd addressed him. I had the feeling she was not exactly pleased with her manager, for some reason.

  "Yes, perhaps I should," Schneider said. He stood and offered me his hand. He was one of those people who think politeness is what separates Man from the Lower Orders. Lillian Royce seemed to think this was an admirable quality.

  When Schneider had given Miss Royce a radiant smile and departed, Lewis Thorp leaned toward me and said in his high voice, "Tell me, Booth, how does Steele do that aging trick?"

  Trying not to wince at the word "trick," I cupped my hand to my mouth confidentially. "Magic," I whispered.

  Lillian Royce giggled.

  Steele was sitting in front of the triple mirror removing his makeup when I entered his dressing room minutes later. "Beautiful show," I said. "You left them breathless."

  "Thank you, Matthew." He began to don the outfit he would wear in the coffin for the next two weeks: black pants, black turtleneck sweater, black jacket, very somber and correct for a coffin with a glass top. "Have the Lorde's people left for the store?" he asked.

  I said they had. "There's a limousine waiting for us out front."

  "Was the coffin delivered?"

  "Yes. Thorp told me it arrived around six." I had been at Steele's house across the bay in Berkeley at three, when the movers had picked up the apparatus from his basement workshop.

  "I don't know what I'd do without you, Matthew," he said. With his thick black hair, dark complexion, and deep-set eyes, the all-black costume made him look somewhat sinister.

  Ardis joined us, wearing a simple white dress as provocative as any of her stage costumes; her long, auburn hair was now arranged in a precise manner. She linked her arm familiarly through Steele's and we walked out to the waiting limousine. Ardis lived in a private wing of Steele's enormous house, and was his closest friend and confidante. If there were any other quality to their relationship, only they knew of it.

  The limousine took us swiftly and silently through a foggy San Francisco night to Post Street. Lorde's main entrance was floodlit, and there was a large crowd on hand. The publicity I had planted in articles, columns, and local TV shows had paid off.

  Steele and Ardis waved to the crowd and hurried inside the store; it was 9:50 and the entombment was set for ten o'clock. I would have gone in with them, but the security guard at the door wouldn't let me pass. The store was isolated except for a few top employees because of the collection. I went over to the window to see how the coffin looked in place. On a two-foot marble pedestal, set about five feet back from the floor-to-ceiling window and parallel to it, the coffin was of dark, polished wood. Inside, through the thick glass top, you could see the white satin lining Steele would be lying on for the next two weeks. The angle, and a couple of lights inside the coffin, gave a clear view of the inside and of Steele, once he entered. When the glass top was set in place, the crack would be sealed with hot wax, presently bubbling on a brazier to the left of the coffin.

  The only other items in the window were a large calendar to record the passage of the days of Steele's entombment, a large clock to tick off the seconds, minutes, and hours, and two posters in the Houdini style of flamboyance—gaudy electric-blue and yellowish-red announcements of the greatness of Christopher Steele, which were behind the coffin.

  Mrs. Lorde and Victor Schneider entered the window, followed by Steele, Ardis, and a committee of four reputable citizens who would examine the coffin and pour the wax to seal the lid and deprive Steele of his air supply. In the eleven years I've been with Steele I've seen maybe a hundred of these committees, and there hasn't been one yet which could spot a gaff unless it reached up and popped them on the nose. Their chances of spotting this gaff—the gimmick that enabled Steele to work the effect—were exactly zero. As a matter of fact, so were mine; Steele had refused to allow me to examine the coffin while he was working on it.

  Steele gave an introductory speech to the crowd via microphone and loudspeaker while the committee probed and prodded at the coffin. He explained how fakirs of the East had developed techniques for shallow breathing that enabled them to live for extended periods of time with little oxygen. He told of the years he had spent mastering this technique and that of slowing his heartbeat. Then he climbed into the coffin and the glass lid was lowered into place. Schneider and one of the committee members poured the molten wax into the groove around the lid. Steele now had maybe five hours of air left. Two weeks is three hundred and thirty-six hours . . .

  "How does he do it?" a voice asked behind me; it was Lillian Royce. "These tricks of his, I mean, like that scary thing in the Magic Cellar where the girl turns into a skeleton?"

  I had the feeling that she wanted to talk to someone about anything at all, and I was there and the effects were a convenient topic. I'm always willing to talk with a beautiful woman, and the effects are not really secret, just sort of confidential.

  "First of all," I said, drawing her to one side, "don't ever call them tricks. They're effects, or slights, or illusions, but never tricks." I could see Steele's face at the extreme angle I was standing, but no more of him. It seemed to
shimmer slightly by some illusion of the lighting as I turned away.

  "Tell me," Lillian insisted, "how does he do it?"

  "I warn you," I said, "magic is funny in one way: when it's explained it seems silly and obvious, no matter how powerful the effect was when you saw it. That's why magicians never explain their effects. You're being fooled, and people resent being fooled."

  "I can't figure it out," Lillian said. "I admit he's fooled me."

  "It's called the Blue Room Illusion," I told her. "Maybe fifty years old. It involves a peculiar optical property of glass." "What's that?"

  "If a plate of perfectly clear glass is dark on one side and well lit on the other, it turns into a mirror on the lighted side. You've probably noticed this on windows at night."

  "Where was the glass?" Lillian asked.

  "Picture the stage," I told her. "Ardis comes in wearing that sexy white dress and goes to the chair at the back. The lights dim except for a couple of spots on her. Steele goes into his spiel. That's when it happens. A sheet of clear plate glass—a giant, damned expensive sheet of clear plate glass—is slid into place on concealed tracks diagonally across the stage. It's invisible to the audience because it's meticulously cleaned and evenly lighted on both sides.

  "Then, slowly, the lights on the far side of the glass are lowered and the lights on this side"—I wiggled my fingers to indicate which side—"are raised. The glass turns into a mirror, reflecting the image of an identical chair at right angles to the stage, concealed in the wings. An assistant in a copy of Ardis' costume, made up to look incredibly ancient, is sitting in the chair. The gradual change of lights makes it look as though Ardis herself is aging."

  Lillian looked incredulous. "What about the skeleton?"

  "While Ardis is in darkness she gets out of the chair and is replaced by the skeleton. Then the lights change again and the glass is silently slid back."

  "Gosh," Ardis said, appearing behind me with an armful of posters, "I thought it was magic."

  "Ardis," I said, "meet Lillian Royce. She buys."

  "Indeed?" Ardis said. "Excuse me." She pushed through the crowd and began tacking up display posters on one of the wooden boards framing the exterior of the window. They were identical to the yellow-red ones inside, behind the coffin.

  I turned back to Lillian. "I've just had a brilliant idea," I said. "Why don't we—"

  A sudden loud flapping sound cut off the rest of what I was going to say, and Lillian and I and the rest of the crowd shifted our gaze to Ardis and her poster. She had slipped: tacked up the top of the poster, stretched out the bottom, and then let go. The poster had, of course, rolled back up.

  "The unflappable Ardis," I said to Lillian. "Well, there's always a first time. As I was about to ask you, why don't we go over to Franscatti's and get something to eat?"

  "I'd love to," Lillian said.

  "Sounds good," a new high-pitched voice cut in, and Lewis Thorp appeared at my elbow. "You won't mind if I join you?"

  I was trying to figure out how to answer that politely when Mrs. Lorde emerged from the front door and saved me the trouble. "Mr. Thorp," she called, waving her cane at us, "I wish to see you. You too, Miss Royce." She looked disturbed, angry. "Will you both come up to my office, please. I won't keep you long, Miss Royce."

  "The Queen Mother calls," Thorp said.

  "Do you mind going on ahead?" Lillian asked me. "I'll join you as soon as I can."

  "As soon as she could" turned out to be about twenty minutes after I had arrived at Franscatti's, which caters to the late-night crowd. "I'm sorry. There were some things . . ." She sat down in the booth across from me, looking distracted and unhappy. "I couldn't find Victor," she said. "Schneider? Why were you looking for him?"

  "We're . . . friends," she said vaguely. "Something peculiar is going on, and I don't know what it is. Mrs. Lorde is angry, and Victor is . . . Oh, I don't know where Victor is."

  "He's probably gone home to sleep, like any sensible man."

  "No, I don't think so. He wouldn't leave the store until Mr. McCarthy came to move the stamps, and Mr. McCarthy hadn't arrived yet when I left. He's due any time."

  "Well," I said, "I'm sure Schneider is around somewhere. There's no need to worry."

  I ordered spaghetti with white clam sauce, and when it came it seemed to cheer Lillian up a bit. We started to talk of, among other things, my life as a magician's manager. "While Steele's lying in that coffin practicing shallow breathing or whatever," I said, "I'm going to be getting TV crews down to film it; keeping crowds in front of the window day and night; seeing that it's played up on local and national news. He lies there while I do all the work, which is why he's a genius and I work for him."

  "Does he do this sort of thing often?" she asked.

  "He doesn't like to repeat himself," I answered. "There're people who make a living just getting buried, but Steele is doing it because he's never done it before. It's a challenge, and he can't turn down a challenge of any kind. That's the way he is."

  "Are these effects original?"

  "Some are. In Steele's case there's something original in every effect—and his presentation is always original, created to fit his stage personality. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a challenge."

  It was past 11:30 when we walked the three blocks back to the store. The crowd was still there but its focus had shifted from the coffin in the window to the main door. Drawn up in front were three police cars, a couple of unmarked vehicles with red lights suction-cupped to their tops, and an ambulance.

  Steele was snug in his coffin in the great window to the left of the entrance, serenely staring at the ceiling. After checking on him we pushed our way through the crowd. Judging by their conversation, none of them had any idea of what was going on.

  A uniformed cop stood at the door, repelling traffic. When we gave him our names he let us in and told us to go up to the executive offices on the second floor. He wouldn't tell us anything else.

  Mrs. Lorde was sitting in rigid solitude in the middle of a large Regency-for-the-masses couch, with both hands firmly twined around the butt of her gold-handled cane. Lewis Thorp sat in a hard-backed chair opposite, wearing an expression that indicated a submerged and unpleasant emotion. Also present were two stoic patrolmen.

  "What happened here?" I demanded of the group at large. Thorp looked over at me sourly, then switched his gaze to Lillian. "It's Schneider," he said. "He's been killed."

  "Oh!" Lillian's hand went to her mouth, and all the blood drained out of her face. She managed to stumble over to the couch nearest us and drop onto it. She began to weep softly.

  "Mr. McCarthy found him," Mrs. Lorde said. "In the Stamp Room." She proceeded to explain that when McCarthy and his men had arrived at the store, they hadn't been able to get into the Stamp Room because they couldn't locate Schneider, who had the only key. Mrs. Lorde had sent Schneider to the Stamp Room to do some last-minute inventorying, and insisted that was where he had to be. So, with her permission, McCarthy and his men had broken the door in. "He was lying on the floor in front of the sales counter," she finished. "Nothing they could do for him. Terrible thing. Terrible."

  At that moment a man entered through the wide door to the executive-office area, and we all turned our attention to him. He was short and stocky and wearing a gray suit, the vest of which was buttoned over a blue shirt and old-school-stripe tie. "Sorry to keep you waiting so long," he said, "but there was some routine that had to be gone through first." He glanced at Lillian still sobbing on the couch, and then looked over at me. "You'd be Matthew Booth, is that right?"

  "Yes," I said. "And you?"

  "Lieutenant Garrett. Homicide."

  "Was Victor Schneider's death accidental?" I asked him.

  "Not likely. Medical examiner says he was struck in the throat by a blunt object about the size of a thumb, which pierced the skin and the thyroid cartilage, crushing said cartilage and closing the trachea. In plain English, he choked to death because he could no lo
nger breathe. Nasty way to die."

  Lillian had raised her head to listen, but now she made a keening sound—one of horror and grief—and lowered her face into her hands again. I thought of saying something to Garrett about his insensitivity, but then I realized he knew exactly what he was doing. He'd been watching Lillian and the rest of us closely as he talked.

  "Perhaps it wasn't murder at all," a voice suggested, and I looked over to see Ardis had entered the room; I'd been wondering where she was. "Perhaps the poor man tripped and fell against that thumb-sized something you mentioned."

  "I'm afraid not, Miss," Garrett said. "Any such object would have traces of blood, and there are none."

  "Then you didn't find the weapon either?" I asked.

  "Not yet. But it'll turn up eventually."

  "If Schneider was murdered, who could have done it?"

  "We don't make guesses," Garrett said, which meant he didn't have any idea who had done it. "Everyone in this room, it seems, has no concrete alibi for the time of death—except perhaps you, Mr. Booth. Anyone here could be guilty. Or none of you, for that matter. Although, as far as we can tell right now, no one else could have gotten into the store. And you few could play hide-and-seek for hours in this huge empty place."

  "What about motive?" Ardis asked.

  "After we talk to everyone here, maybe we'll know more along that line." Another noncommittal answer. "Our first thought, of course, was robbery, since the murder took place in the Stamp Room with the Lorde's Collection. But the collection appears to be intact; Mr. McCarthy is checking it now." He frowned. "We don't even know—yet—how the killer got into or out of the Stamp Room. The only key is still on Schneider's key ring; and the windows are barred with half-inch steel that hasn't been touched in thirty years."

  So there it was: what appeared to be a locked-room murder. I thought of Steele downstairs in his glass-topped coffin (the murder would spell the end of his two-week planned illusion; Lorde's now had all the publicity it could handle, whether negative or positive). But Steele wouldn't be too upset, I knew. Puzzles fascinated him; the more bizarre a puzzle was, the better he liked it. The man thrived on challenges, as I'd told Lillian earlier. Consequently life was never dull around Christopher Steele—but this was the first time I knew of a murder being part of the amalgam.