by Unknown
The crowd that had gathered on the beach didn’t seem to recognize the language either.
“He’s speaking in tongues!”
“It’s Arabic!”
“It’s Hebrew!”
“Black magic!”
“It’s a curse! He’s putting a curse on the magician! He wants him to drown!”
Emily looked out to sea but she couldn’t see Edmund.
“He’s gone under!” someone shouted.
“The preacher’s put a curse on him!”
“He’s drowning!”
“He’s disappeared!”
“Call the coastguard! Dial 999!”
All around her, Emily could hear people shouting into their mobile phones, the screens lighting up like candles at a vigil as they called the emergency services, or called their friends and reported that Edmund Zenon had vanished. And they’d been there to see it! They took pictures of the darkness so they could show their friends later. This is where he disappeared. This empty bit here is where he should have been.
There were lifebelts positioned every few feet along the railings. Someone unhooked one and threw it into the sea, where it bobbed unhelpfully a few feet from shore. Someone else followed suit. Soon the sea was littered with lifebelts, floating on the water like floral tributes.
As Emily looked in vain for a sign of Edmund, she could hear people all around her, discussing what they had seen.
“What happened?” she asked some of the young lads standing near her.
The explanations came tumbling out, not all of them helpful.
“So, he’s walking along the jetty, then the lights blink and then there he is, walking on water!”
“My mate Jimmy saw something was going on and he texted me and we all ran down here.”
“His cape billowing. Like a sail. Big and black, with a slash of red.”
“Like a pirate’s sail!”
“I reckon he was, like, on a skateboard. A Perspex skateboard.”
“Or he had something strapped on his feet, like snowshoes, but for the water.”
“Or a surfboard?”
“It doesn’t matter what he had. It didn’t work. He’s drowned!”
Emily left them and walked closer to the pier, trying to make sense of what had happened. If Edmund had drowned, then how could Peg and the other psychics possibly have predicted it? Things like that never happened. Unless somebody had been inspired by the predictions to sabotage the trick. Unless…Where was Chris?
A woman of about Emily’s age, in a short dress and a veil with a tiara, was staggering around by the pier like a shell-shocked Marine. She was drunk. She was accompanied by a plump young woman in a pale blue satin spaghetti-strap dress and a fake tiara, carrying a quilted, sequined clutch bag, no coat.
“Did you see what happened?” Emily asked them.
The woman in the veil answered. “I was in the VIP booth of the big wheel with my bridesmaid, Chantal. It’s my hen night.”
“It was a nightmare when me and Jackie realized what was happening,” Chantal said. She was also drunk. “We wanted to see and we couldn’t get down there! We had to sit tight in that booth, going up higher and higher.”
“Away from the action!” Jackie’s voice was hoarse from shouting. “We were being pulled away from the action!”
“We was desperate,” said Chantal. “We shouted for them to stop the ride.”
“And they did!” said Jackie proudly.
Emily had her notebook out. “So what did you see? You saw his cape? His top hat?”
“I seen him go under,” Jackie said. “I seen him drown.”
Emily suspected it wasn’t true—she had just said she was being pulled away from the action. But this was her big night, after all.
Chantal was also proud of their part in the story. “We knew what was gonna happen, anyway. Madame Nova seen it in Jackie’s palm.”
There was a young couple in the crowd who Emily recognized but couldn’t place. He was wearing a knitted hat. She was slim and ghostlike beside him. Ben and Alice! From the train.
Ben saw Emily’s notebook and came over, pulling Alice with him by the hand. He wanted to have his say. “Oh man! Did you see it? We were standing right there.” He pointed to a spot close to the pier. “The lights blinked and we lost sight of him, and then he was walking on the water, very slow, heading out to sea.”
Emily closed her notebook and put it back in her bag. “Was there anyone else down there? Another man? With blond hair.”
“Just the magician.”
“People are saying he’s drowned.”
Alice said, “It’s a trick, Emily. For Easter. He’s pretending to be dead and he’ll rise again. It was amazing. And he’s done it for free.”
Emily wasn’t sure. Where was he? And where was Chris?
Ben grabbed hold of Alice’s hand, ready to go back to the action. “But that wasn’t even the interesting part, really.”
“What was, then?”
“That man, like King Neptune, raging and shouting in the water.”
“I don’t think he’s part of it.”
“He should be.”
The Colonel. He was still chest-deep in the water, still shouting. If she couldn’t locate Edmund or Chris, at least she could try to bring him in, as she had promised Gerald she would. But how? She went and stood on the beach as close to where he was standing as she could get, and she yelled at him. “Colonel!” But her voice wasn’t as powerful as his. And anyway he was making such a commotion, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to hear her. “Colonel!” She would have to take off her shoes and socks and wade into the sea if she wanted to get close enough to talk any sense into him.
Fortunately she was saved from having to do this because Tim ran past her, dumped his rucksack by the end of the jetty and hurled himself into the sea to save the Colonel for the second time that day. Unattended baggage! Emily went and guarded Tim’s rucksack. She couldn’t help herself, honestly.
There was applause from several onlookers on the beach when they saw Tim run into the water. They were keen for any kind of entertainment until the coastguards turned up with boats and helicopters and started searching the water for Edmund Zenon. Where were they?
But the Colonel didn’t want to come back to shore. He was still turned in the direction of the spot where Edmund had disappeared. “Blasphemer!” At least he was speaking English now, so the people on the shore could follow along. He tried to pull away from Tim to go deeper into the water. It was cold, it was dark and he was exhausted. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to drown.
Tim started singing, a little reedily but perfectly in tune. “Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways! Reclothe us in our rightful mind— ”
The hymn seemed to calm the Colonel and bring him back to his “rightful mind.” He stopped struggling and responded in his deep, Welsh voice with the final words from the hymn. “Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, O still, small voice of calm.” He allowed Tim to begin leading him back through the water toward the shore.
But now, throwing himself into the water just as determinedly as Tim, but with more of a splash, here was Joseph Seppardi. He reached for Tim, who was still holding onto the Colonel. If he was attempting a rescue, he made a poor job of it. All three men went down and began thrashing around like sharks beaching themselves in shallow water.
Now Emily could just about make out yet another figure wading through the water, breathing heavily. He was going against the traffic, wading back to shore, barely visible until he was almost in front of her because of the dark diving suit he was wearing. He pulled down the hood and rubbed his hand through his hair. It was Chris. His teeth were chattering.
Emily picked up the rucksack and met him at the edge of the water. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”
“It’s all right, Emily. I’m all right.”
“Where’s Edmund? Should I go in? Sh
ould I try and look for him?”
Chris stood bent over, palms on his thighs, gasping.
“Chris, where’s the magician?”
“He’s gone.”
Somewhere nearby, a woman started shrieking.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOW TO DISAPPEAR
“There!” she shrieked. “Up there!”
Others joined in, pointing, shouting. Cameras and phones flashed ineffectually. People clapped their hands, whooped and wolf whistled. They wanted to show their appreciation—and they wanted the people around them to know they had seen what they were meant to see. It wasn’t too long until everyone faced in the same direction, looking up.
There, in the picture window of the Poisson d’Avril restaurant, framed against the warm yellow of the light in the room, like a Victorian silhouette portrait of a traditional stage magician: Edmund Zenon. His black top hat and his cape ensured he was easily recognizable to those too far away to make out his features. He turned to his right and bowed. He turned to his left and bowed. He turned full on to the crowd and bowed. That wasn’t enough for them. They were still shrieking and waving. So he waved his hand and bowed again. Then he stepped back from the window out of sight, show over.
So Edmund Zenon hadn’t drowned. Of course he hadn’t. How could she have believed he would? Emily turned to Chris, who was standing straight and breathing normally, but still shivering. He took the rucksack from her and put it by his feet. Then he stripped off the diving suit and stood in the long johns he was wearing underneath, pulled warm clothes out of the bag—his clothes—and put them on.
Chris looked over at the mantangle of the Colonel, Tim and Joseph Seppardi, now emerging dripping wet from the sea, like some monstrous three-headed mutation of Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy emerging from the pond at Pemberley. “I’m going back to the hotel. I’ll walk back with these guys.”
“Was the Colonel part of the trick?”
“No. He was trying to ruin it. The ultimate heckle! You try to plan for every possibility so you’ll know how to deal with it: bad weather, drunk people, lack of interest. But a renegade gate-crashing preacher wasn’t on my list. Never mind.”
“What about Tim?”
Chris grinned. “No, I asked him to bring my bag down, that’s all. People don’t mind helping, if you ask them. It went well, you think? Good crowd.”
“Yes. Very appreciative. Look, Chris, I better get back to the restaurant.”
“Got your report to write?” From the expression on his face, it was obvious he wanted Emily to say that she didn’t care about the report or Edmund, she cared about him.
She said, “My dinner’ll be getting cold.”
To get back to the restaurant, Emily had to fight her way past several excitable young women wearing fairy wings, waving light-up wands and half-empty bottles of Prosecco. The remainder of Jackie’s hen party, presumably. The women were shrieking and laughing, but most of the rest of the people on the beach were milling about in the dark, not sure what to do with themselves, like disappointed guests at a poorly organized barbecue.
The entrance to the stairs leading up to the Poisson d’Avril was now guarded by Derek, one of the security guards from the hotel. Derek recognized Emily and stood aside so she could run up the three flights to rejoin her friends. They were sitting at their table by the window with Edmund Zenon. The bottle of house wine had been upgraded to a celebratory Pouilly Fumé.
Edmund was still in his stage costume: dinner jacket, cape and top hat. One thing seemed strange to Emily. His clothes were dry. He raised his glass to his companions at the table, smiling. “You enjoyed the show?”
“It was a very good trick,” said Gerald. “Very good indeed. May I? This’ll reassure people.” He held up his phone and took a picture of Edmund. The magician reappears! #BeliefandBeyond
Edmund said, “I’m sorry if people were frightened—it wasn’t my intention. I’m an entertainer, not a ghoul. The walking on water, the vanishing, the reappearing…It was supposed to be a marvelous spectacle, not something to frighten people.”
“What about the coastguards?” Emily said. “The police? People started calling as soon as you disappeared.”
“Good question, Emily.” He spoke as if she were a bright pupil, not a grown woman. “I talked to the police commissioner before I came down here, to clear everything. They brought in extra staff at the call center, briefed them to ignore any calls about a drowning magician, and I paid the overtime. I’ll also make a donation to the coastguards. Brave men and women. Where would we be without them?”
“You’re a clever one,” said Peg.
Edmund accepted a top-up of wine. “Isn’t anyone going to try and guess how I did it?”
There was a polite silence.
Edmund laughed good-naturedly. “There’s a lot of complex planning for something that seems artless. I suppose I just want to show off about it. I’m proud of my team.”
Whatever Chris had done for his part in the trick, gasping for breath in his diving suit by the jetty, it had obviously been hard work. And he’d hinted that he’d also been involved in the planning. If taking a guess would be considered praise for the team, then Emily was prepared to play along. “I think you must have used a projector for the walking on water bit. Those lights shining down the jetty, they weren’t just illuminating your image. Once you stepped from the jetty onto the sea, they were creating it. I don’t know how it works exactly, but it’s a bit like going through a tunnel on a train, and you see another version of yourself outside the window.”
“Yes, you’re right, Emily. Don’t go putting it on Twitter, Gerald. It’s an old Victorian stage illusion, called a Pepper’s Ghost. We used projectors. But that wasn’t the half of it. That’s the technical part, which is concerned with what people see. We also had to do a bit of work beforehand, a bit of mental massaging to help the spectators with what they think they’ll see. Here’s a question for you: What’s the best way of discovering something interesting?”
Emily didn’t like being treated like the star pupil at a take-your-magician-to-work day, and she had no idea what answer he expected from her, but she gave her best answer anyway. “Go to a library?”
“Word of mouth. A buzz. Your friend tells you to come quickly, there’s something amazing just over there. Or a stranger in the street starts running, and then someone else joins in and you follow, to see what’s happened. We’re programmed to react to natural phenomena—a beautiful sunset, a rainbow, a shooting star—by discovering, reacting and sharing. We wanted people to feel they had stumbled on the trick themselves. Discovering it adds another layer of enjoyment. So rather than advertising a start time, we seeded bits of information around town by word of mouth. Teenagers, shop owners, old men in the pubs. We hinted that something was going to happen, but we didn’t say what.”
“You did it pretty well,” said Emily. “All the people talking about drowning. Was that part of it?”
“No! Nearly derailed my trick, actually. People were supposed to see a man who walks on water and then disappears and then…pfft! He reappears again, in a completely different place. That was the magic. How did he do that? How did he get up there? That was supposed to be the reaction. Instead, they saw a drowning man. Phones out. Coastguards called. Thankfully I was paying overtime.” He sighed. “Well, that’s just how it goes with a trick like this. Chris calls it immersive theater—everyone’s part of the performance, even the unscripted people. That’s what makes it exciting, I guess. OK, before the mob tries to storm its way up here to congratulate me, I had better disappear again.”
“How’re you going to do that?” said Peg. “There’s only one way down.”
“They’re looking for a man in a cape and a top hat. If I remove those…”
He removed his top hat. He removed his cape. Now he was just a handsome man in ordinary clothes, not “the magician.”
Peg nodded. “That’s clever. Simple but clever. I’ll give you that.”
>
“Would you mind?” said Edmund to Emily, of his discarded pile of props. “I need someone to bring them back to the hotel.”
She did mind, actually. But she accepted a bag with the neatly folded cape and the hat in it when he handed it to her.
“Shall we call it a night?” said Gerald, as they watched Edmund walk out of the restaurant. “At least we can rest easy in our beds knowing that—despite two near misses—no one has drowned today.”
“So that just leaves tomorrow,” said Dr. Muriel. “And Sunday.”
“It’s not gonna happen,” said Peg. “It’s over. I told you.”
“I don’t know,” said Emily. “Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble ‘seeding information’ about a drowning. Everyone’s been talking about it.”
“You’re not accusing me, dear?” asked Peg.
“No. But someone has been setting the stage here in Torquay as carefully as Edmund.”
“Who?” Gerald and Peg and Dr. Muriel asked, all together.
“Madame Nova.”
“Eh?”
“Pardon?”
“Who?”
“A local fortune-teller. She’s been popping up all over the place, talking about drowning. I bet if you check your emails, Peg, you’ll find she was one of the first to contact you after Edmund’s posters went up in Torquay. But I don’t know why. Edmund’s trick and the premonition about the drowning are two separate things. Whatever’s gonna happen, it’s still gonna happen. I’m not saying someone will drown, but this story hasn’t played out to the end yet.”
“We just need to keep this Madame Nova out of the hotel, that’s all,” said Gerald. “I’ll talk to security. It’ll be OK.”
But it wasn’t.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A GHOST? A WERECREATURE?
Gerald rang the bell for the night porter when they got back to the Hotel Majestic. As he left the reception desk and headed to the glass door to unlock it, they looked for their delegates’ passes for him to inspect on their way in.