On that day, though, I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. I had been preparing myself for some time. Once through the door I locked it from the inside (one of the changes I had ordered), switched on the electric lights and walked down to the cellar.
I looked immediately for the apparatus that had killed Nicky Borden but, not too surprisingly, it was no longer there. However, the circular pit was still in the centre of the cellar floor, and I went over and inspected that. It appeared to have been constructed more recently than the rest of the screed floor. It had clearly been excavated with a plan in mind, because several steel ties were drilled into the concrete sides at regular intervals, presumably to act as stays for the wooden bars of the apparatus. In the ceiling overhead, directly above the centre of the pit, there was a large electrical junction box. A thick cable led away to a voltage converter at the side of the cellar, but the box itself had become dirty and rusty.
I noticed that there were numerous scorch marks on the ceiling radiating out from the box, and although someone had put a coat of white emulsion paint over them they still showed through.
Apart from all this there was no sign that the apparatus had ever been in place.
I found the thing itself a few moments later, when I went to investigate the collection of crates, cases and large mysterious objects stored neatly along most of the length of one wall. I soon realised that this was where my great-grandfather’s magic paraphernalia had been stored, presumably after his death. Near the front, but otherwise stacked unobtrusively, were two stoutly made wooden crates, each of them so heavy I was unable to budge them, let alone get them out of the cellar on my own. Stencilled in black on one of them, but greatly faded with age, were routing names: ‘Denver, Chicago, Boston, Liverpool (England)’. A Customs manifest was stapled to the side, although it was so frayed that it came off in my hand when I touched it. Holding it under the nearest light I saw that someone had written in copperplate, ‘Contents – Scientific Instruments’. Metal hoops had been attached on all four sides of both crates, to facilitate hoisting, and there were obvious handholds all over the crates.
I tried to open the nearer of the two, fumbling along the edge of the lid to find some way to force it open, when to my surprise the top swivelled upwards lightly, balanced within in some way. I knew at once I had found the workings of the electrical apparatus I had seen that night, but because it had been dismantled all menace was gone.
Attached to the inside of the lid were several large sheets of cartridge paper, still uncurled and unyellowed, even in great age, and instructions had been written in a clear but tiny and fastidious hand. I glanced over the first few:
Locate, check, and test local ground connection. If insufficient, do not proceed. See (27) below for details of how to install, check, and test a ground connection. Always check wiring colors; see chart attached.
[If not used in USA or Great Britain.] Locate, check, and test local electricity supply. Use instrument located in Wallet 4.5.1 to determine nature, voltage, and cycle of current. Refer to (15) below for settings to main transforming unit.
Test reliability of local electricity supply while assembling the apparatus. If there is divergence of ±25V do not attempt to operate the apparatus.
When handling components, always wear the protective gloves located in Wallet 3.19.1 (spares in 3.19.2).
And so on, an exhaustive checklist of assembly instructions, many of them using technical or scientific words and phrases. (I have since arranged for a copy to be made, which I keep in the house.) The list was signed with the initials ‘F.K.A.’.
Inside the lid of the second crate was a similar list of instructions, these dealing with safely disconnecting the apparatus, dismantling it and stowing the components inside the crates in their correct places.
It was at this moment that it began to dawn on me who my great-grandfather had actually been. What I mean by this is the sense of what he had done, what he had been capable of, what he had achieved in his life. Until then he was just an ancestor, Grandpa who had his stuff about the house. It was my first glimpse of the person he might have been. These crates, with their meticulous instructions, had been his and the instructions had been written by or more likely for him. I stood there for a long time, imagining him unpacking the apparatus with his assistants, racing against the clock to get the thing set up in time for the first performance. I still knew almost nothing about him, but at last I had an insight into what he did, and a little of how he did it.
Later in the year I sorted through the rest of his stuff and this too helped me sense what he was like. The room that had been his study was full of neatly filed papers: bills, magazines, correspondence, booking forms, travel documents, playbills, theatre programmes. A large part of his life was filed away there, and there was more in the cellar, costumes and paraphernalia from his shows. Most of the costumes had fallen to bits with old age, and I threw them out, but the cabinet illusions were in working or repairable condition, and because I needed the money I sold the best examples to magic collectors. I also disposed of Rupert Angier’s collection of magic books. From the people who came to buy, I learnt that much of his material was valuable, but only in cash terms. Little of it had more than curiosity value to modern magicians. Most of the illusions The Great Danton performed were of an everyday variety, and to the expert or collector they contained no surprises. I did not sell the electrical apparatus, and it is still down in the cellar in its crates.
By some means I had not expected, the act of going down into the cellar put my childish fears behind me. Perhaps it was as simple as that in the intervening years I had become an adult, or in the absence of the rest of the family was now in effect the head of the household. Whatever the reason, when I emerged from the old brown door, locking it behind me, I believed I had thrown off something unwelcome that had dogged my life until then.
11
It was not enough, though. Nothing could excuse the fact that I had seen a small boy cruelly murdered that night, and by my own father.
This secret has wormed itself into my life, indirectly influencing everything I do, inhibiting me emotionally and immobilising me socially. I am isolated here. I rarely make friends, I want no lovers, a career does not interest me. Since Rosalie moved out to get married I have lived here alone, as much a victim as my parents were.
I want to distance myself from the madness that the feud has brought to my family over the years, but as I grow older I believe more strongly that the only way out is to face up to it. I cannot get on with my life until I understand how and why Nicky Borden died.
His death nags at me. The obsession would end if I knew more about the boy, and what really happened to him that night. But as I have learned about my family’s past, I have learned inevitably about the Bordens.
I traced you, Andrew, because you and I are the key to the whole thing – you are the sole surviving Borden, while I am to all intents the last living Angier.
Against all logic, I know Nicky Borden was you, Andrew, and that somehow you survived that ordeal.
12
The rain had turned to snow during the evening, and it was still falling as Andrew Westley and Kate Angier sat together over the remains of the dinner. Her story appeared at first to produce no response from him, because he merely looked quietly at his empty coffee cup, fingering the spoon in the saucer. Then he said he needed to walk around for a bit. He crossed the room to the window to stare out at the garden and cradled his hands behind his neck, waggling his head from side to side. It was pitch black out there in the grounds. She knew there was nothing for him to see. The main road was behind the house and at a lower level. On this side of the house there was just the lawn, the wood, the rising hill, and beyond all that the rocky crag of Curbar Edge. He did not change position for some time. Without being able to see his face Kate felt that either his eyes must be closed or he was staring blankly into the dark.
In the end he said, ‘I’ll tell you all I know. I
lost contact with my twin brother when I was about the same age as you’re describing. Maybe what you’ve told me would explain that. But his birth wasn’t registered, so I can’t prove he exists. I know he’s real. You’ve heard how twins have a kind of rapport? That’s how I’m sure. The other thing I know is that he is connected in some way with this house. Ever since I arrived today I’ve been sensing him here. I don’t know how, and I can’t explain.’
‘I’ve looked at the records too,’ she said. ‘You were a sole child. There was never any hint of a twin, brother or sister.’
‘Could someone have tampered with the records? Is that possible?’
‘Of course I’ve wondered that. If the boy was killed, wouldn’t that give someone enough motive to find a way of falsifying the records?’
‘Maybe so. All I can say for sure is that I don’t remember anything about it. It’s all blank. I don’t even remember my father. All I know is his name, Clive Borden. That child who died obviously couldn’t have been me, and it’s absurd even to think it was. It must have been someone else.’
‘But it was your father . . . and Nicky was his only child.’
He turned from the window, and went back to his chair.
‘There are only two or three possibilities,’ he said. ‘The boy was me and I was killed and now I’m alive again. That’s just illogical. Or the boy who died was my twin brother, and the person who killed him, presumably that’s your father, later managed to get official records changed. I don’t believe that either, frankly. Or you were mistaken, the child survived, and it might or might not have been me. Or . . . I suppose you could have imagined the whole thing.’
‘No. I didn’t imagine it. I know what I saw. Anyway my mother as good as admitted it.’ She picked up her copy of the Borden book, and opened it at a page she had previously marked with a slip of paper. ‘There’s another explanation, but it’s as irrational as the others. If you weren’t actually killed that night, then it might have been some kind of trick. The thing I saw being used that night was magical apparatus, built for a stage illusion.’
She turned the book around, and held it out to him, but he waved it away.
‘The whole thing is ridiculous,’ he said.
‘I saw it happen.’
‘I think you were either mistaken in what you saw, or it happened to someone else.’ He glanced again towards the windows with their undrawn curtains, then looked at his watch in a distracted way. ‘Do you mind if I use my mobile? I must tell my parents I’m going to be late. And I’d like to ring my flat in London.’
‘I think you should stay the night.’ He grinned briefly then, and Kate knew she had said it the wrong way. She found him fairly attractive, in a harmlessly coarse sort of way, but he was apparently the kind of man who never gave up about sex. ‘I meant that Mrs Makin will prepare the spare room for you.’
‘If she has to.’
There had been that moment before they came in here for dinner. She must have given him too much rye whiskey, or had said too often that there were irreconcilable differences between her family and his. Or perhaps it was a combination of the two. Until then she had been rather liking the way he had leered in an open and unembarrassed way at her, off and on all afternoon, but an hour and a half ago, just before they came in here for dinner, he’d made it plain that he would like to try another rapprochement between the families. Just the two of them, the last generation. A part of her remained flattered, but what he had in mind was not what she had had in mind. She’d brushed him off, as gently as she knew how.
‘Are you fit to drive in snow, with drink inside you?’ she said now.
‘Yes.’
But he did not move from the chair. She laid the Borden book on the table between them, face-down at the open pages.
‘What do you want from me, Kate?’ he said.
‘I don’t know any more. Perhaps I never did. I think this is what happened when Clive Borden came to see my father. They both felt they should try to sort something out, went through the motions of trying, but the ancient differences still mattered.’
‘There’s only one thing that interests me. My twin brother is somewhere here. In this house. Ever since you showed me your grandfather’s stuff this afternoon I’ve been aware of him. He tells me not to leave, to come, to find him. I’ve never known his presence as strong in me. Whatever you say, whatever the birth register shows, I think it was my brother who came here to the house in 1970, and I think he’s somehow still here.’
‘In spite of the fact that no twin exists. We both know that.’
‘Yes, in spite of that.’
She felt herself at an impasse. It was the same one she had always known. The certain death of a little boy, whom she later discovered had somehow survived. Meeting the man who had been the boy had changed nothing. It was him, it had not been him.
She poured herself another drop of brandy, and Andrew said, ‘Is there somewhere I can make those calls?’
‘Stay in here. This is the warmest place in the house in winter. I’ve got something I want to check.’
As she left the room she heard him clicking the keys of his mobile. She went down to the main hall and looked through the front door. There was already a solid covering of snow, three or four inches. It always settled smoothly here, on the pathway in the lee of the house, but she knew that further down the valley, where the main road was, the snow would already be drifting against the hedges and roadside banks. There were no sounds of traffic, which could usually be heard from here. She went around to the back of the house and saw that a drift was building up against the woodshed. The wind was sending streamers of flakes into the dark, moulding the drifts into mounds. Mrs Makin was in the kitchen, so she spoke to her and asked her to get the spare room ready.
She and Andrew remained in the dining room after Mrs Makin had cleared away the meal, sitting on opposite sides of the open fireplace, talking about various everyday things. She told him about the local council, who wanted some of her land for building purposes. Later he told her he was having trouble over the girl he lived with, who had walked out on him leaving him unsure if he wanted her back or not.
But Kate was tired and had no real appetite for this.
At eleven she took him upstairs and showed him the spare room, and the bathroom he could use. Rather to her surprise a second proposition was not made. He thanked her politely for her hospitality, said goodnight, and that was that.
Kate returned to the dining room, where she had left some of her great-grandfather’s papers. They were already stacked neatly; some hereditary trait, perhaps, that prevented her from scattering paper everywhere. There had always been a part of her that wanted to be untidy, casual, free, but it was in her nature not to be.
She sat down in the chair closest to the fire, and felt the glow against her legs. She threw on another log.
Now Andrew had gone to bed she felt less sleepy. It hadn’t been him that had worn her out, but talking to him, dredging up all those memories from childhood. To talk them out was a kind of purging, a release of pent-up poisons, and she felt better.
She sat by the fire, thinking about that old incident, trying as she had done for a quarter of a century to confront what it meant. It still struck fright to the core of her. And the boy that Andrew called his brother was at the heart of it all, a hostage to the past.
Mrs Makin came in just then, and Kate asked if she would make her a cup of decaffeinated coffee before she went to bed. She listened to the midnight news on Radio 4 as she sipped the coffee, and later the BBC World Service came on. She continued to be wide awake. The spare room Andrew was in was immediately overhead, and she could hear him turning frequently in the ancient bed. She knew how cold that room could be. It had been her bedroom as a child.
PART FOUR
Rupert Angier
THE STORY OF MY LIFE 21st September 1866
My History, my name is ROBBIE (Rupert) DAVID ANGIER and I am 9 nine years old today. I am to w
rite in this book every day until I am old.
My Ancestors, I have many but Papa and Mama are the first. I have one brother: HENRY RICHARD ANGUS ST JOHN ANGIER, and he is 15 he goes to school and is a border.
I live in Caldlow House Caldlow Derbyshire. I have had something wrong with my throte this week.
The Staff, I have a Nan and there is Grierson and a maid who changes with the other maid in the afternoons, but I don’t know her name.
I have to show this to Papa when I have written it.
The end. Signed Rupert David Angier.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE 22nd September 1866
Today the doctor came to see me again and I am all right. Got a letter today from Henry my brother who says I must call him Sir from now on because he is a prefect.
Papa has gone to London to sit in the House. He said that I am the head of the house until he gets back. This means Henry would call me sir but he is not here.
Told this to Henry when I wrote to him.
Went for walk, talked to Nan, was read to by Grierson who fell asleep as usual.
I do not have to show this to Papa any more, provided I keep it up.
23rd September 1866
Throte much better. Went for drive today with Grierson, who did not say much but he told me that Henry says that when he takes over the house he will be going. Grierson will be going when Henry takes over the house, I mean. Grierson said he thought it had all been decided but it would not happen for many years god willing.
I am waiting for Mama to come and see me she is late tonight.
22nd December 1867
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