The Fall of the House of Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  It was, she had to admit, a very competently wrought piece of engineering. Behind all the fanciful direction lurked a device of brilliant simplicity built to a very high standard. Everything about it demonstrated forethought, from the steep angles of the sand reservoir to prevent clumping to the precision bearings on the balance itself, all built into a steel frame that would not admit warping or any other cause for imprecision that might result in the sort of terrible accident that had occurred that evening.

  ‘This is the dead man’s design?’ asked Leonie, sprawling unladylike upon her back to inspect the device’s underside.

  ‘It was, miss.’

  There was silence for a moment, and the assembled company of men looked just about everywhere but at the pair of lady’s ankles so indecorously exposed as Miss Barrow lay beneath the device like a mechanic beneath a car. Finally, her voice wafted out. ‘And he built it?’

  ‘No. The son, Rufus, is the engineer. He built it.’

  Leonie climbed back to her feet and dusted herself off. ‘He knows his job. I can’t see anything obviously wrong. Or any way it might be influenced.’

  She turned her attention to the contents of the scale. It seemed at first her interest would be as brief as her other investigations had, perforce, to be, yet this time she hesitated.

  She took a pinch of sand and sprinkled it along one of the prop’s horizontal struts. Then she reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew—with, to Horst’s eye, evident delight—a magnifying glass. This she used to examine the grains for a few seconds.

  Lament came over, his indulgent air giving way to professional interest. ‘Have you found something, miss?’

  ‘Possibly.’ She squinted at the sand through the glass for a few moments more. ‘Horst!’

  ‘At your service!’

  ‘Would you fetch a fire bucket for me, please?’

  Nonplussed yet obliging, Horst trotted off into the wings. Presently he re-emerged carrying a battered bucket upon which was helpfully painted the word FIRE.

  ‘Thank you.’ Leonie took a pinch of sand from it and sprinkled it a little further along the same strut. She then spent the next minute examining first one sample and then the other without saying a word, causing her audience inexpressible frustration.

  Finally, she stepped away, offering her magnifying glass to the inspector. ‘Take a look, Lament. Tell me what you see.’

  Perplexed, the inspector spent a few moments looking at them. ‘Two samples of sand, miss. Quite different. One is very fine and pale, beige, I suppose you’d call it, and the other has larger grains and more of a red colour to it.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘Well, it would be easier if you’d kept the samples further apart, miss. They’ve become a bit mixed up with one another.’

  ‘Take another look.’

  Conscious of his subordinates’ eyes upon him, Inspector Lament’s patience was wearing thin. ‘There’s nothing else of note. Just that…’ He started to say something extraordinarily salty, remembered there was a lady present, and turned a fierce pejorative into a short collection of nonsense syllables. ‘I’m a fool! The samples aren’t mixed up at all. Well, not by you. The sample from the fire bucket has none of the finer grains, but the sample from the balance is riddled with coarse sand. How is that? Why is that?’

  For her answer, Leonie probed into the fallen sand on the balance and, pinched neatly between thumb and forefinger, produced a cigarette butt. Horst glanced into the fire bucket; the surface was specked with similar fag ends.

  ‘I would suggest that you find a clumsy stagehand, Inspector. Occam’s razor always suggests we should look for incompetence, accidents, and pure rotten luck before assuming conspiracy. I think Maleficarus the Magnificent may very well have been done in by the former.’

  * * *

  The body had finally been removed while further enquiries had been made. Finally, the unwitting culprit was discovered; a stagehand called Jacobey who was neither more nor less clumsy than any of his fellows, but neither was he immune to the confoundments of wretched luck. A young man and eager to make a fist of it in the theatre, he had been dismayed that, in stowing away the crossbow device after the previous evening’s performance, he had caught the well-built but ungainly frame on a corner and succeeded in spilling much of the sand from the scale pan.

  Being of a practical mind, he had gathered up as much as he could in a dustpan and put it into an empty bucket he had secured for the job. A good quantity of the sand, however, was lost between the boards, and he was momentarily baffled as to where he might make up the shortfall. Then he remembered the fire buckets that so many of the staff used as convenient ashtrays and sought one out. The sand hadn’t looked exactly the same, but after some stirring, the two types seemed to mix well enough, and he was sure that, thanks to his quick thinking, there would be no trouble.

  Then Maleficarus the Magnificent had ended up dead, and Jacobey had decided this was the ideal opportunity not to tell anyone about it, because ‘Manslaughter’ can look very bad on a curriculum vitæ.

  ‘I’m awfully dense, I’m sure,’ said Horst in the heavy tone of somebody who knows it is his role to be awfully dense and to make the protagonist look terribly clever, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it, ‘but why would mixing the sand change anything?’

  ‘You’re close to the money already,’ said Leonie. ‘It’s all about density. You saw that machine; it’s a precision piece of engineering. Any change in the way it’s operated could affect how long Maleficarus had to perform his escape. The rough sand added to the fine sand the apparatus had been calibrated for was enough to alter the density of the mixture. It made it trigger a little early; not very long, but quickly enough to catch Maleficarus by surprise.’

  ‘Oh.’ Horst seemed a little underwhelmed. ‘I’m a little underwhelmed,’ he said, confirming it. ‘What about all this backstage drama and jealousy and Rufus being such an utter arse that he couldn’t possibly have done it?’

  ‘He didn’t do it.’

  ‘I know, but it shouldn’t just have been down to one silly ass of a stagehand, should it?’

  Leonie shook her head. ‘Aren’t you even slightly impressed that I solved this?’

  ‘Of course I am. You’re terribly clever. I’ve never said you’re not. Just I was hoping for a little more Sturm und Drang, you know? At the very least, a bit of a “You may be wondering why I’ve called you all here today” moment. I’m not disappointed that you solved all this, just that what you solved turned out to be a silly accident. That boy won’t get in trouble, will he?’

  ‘Not from the police. There was no reasonable way he could have known what would happen. His career at the Alhambra might be over, though.’ She tightened her lips. ‘You’re right. It is a bit underwhelming. I wonder if that’s the lesson this place is supposed to teach us.’

  ‘Perhaps. I still don’t understand why we’re in such a peculiar place, anyway.’

  They had left the theatre and were walking along the great thoroughfare. In the east, the sky was growing light. At a newsstand, they bought an early edition of the local Sunday paper.

  ‘The Sepulchre Sentinel?’ said Leonie. ‘This city’s called Sepulchre?’

  Horst wasn’t very concerned by that, instead focussing on the headline, DEATH ON THE STAGE—POLICE CALLED AS FAMOUS MAGICIAN AND ESCAPOLOGIST DIES IN GROTESQUE INCIDENT.

  Inside, the story sailed around the edges of whether the death was accidental or deliberate, but it was clear the reporter was hoping against hope that it was murder by some thrillingly obscure method.

  ‘Bad luck, old son,’ muttered Horst. ‘You’re going to be as disappointed as the rest of us when Lament does his press announcement.’ He suddenly became more animated. ‘It could still be murder, you know! What if friend Jacobey knew full well what changing the sand would do?’

  Miss Barrow blew out a breath into the chill air. She was wondering at what point they would be allowed to m
ove on from the sinister city of Sepulchre. She had assumed it would be dependent on solving the case, but that did not seem to be so. Perhaps she would have to solve more than one?

  ‘It’s not impossible, but it seems very unlikely,’ she said. ‘Jacobey had a good character and apparently wouldn’t say “Boo!” to a goose. What would his motive be?’

  ‘He might be a hireling?’ said Horst, but his enthusiasm for the idea was foundering.

  ‘From what I saw of the backstage people, there are half a dozen more reliable and more corruptible hands I would have chosen before Jacobey for that job. No, it seems off. I’m sure he didn’t do it deliberately.’

  ‘If you say so, o Great Detective. I suppose you must be right. If it’s all just brought down to the laws of physics like that, it doesn’t allow for much uncertainty.’ No answer came. He turned to find Leonie deeply pensive, inured in a brown study. ‘Why the morbs, leader?’

  ‘I should go back. Insist Lament actually have those sand samples tested for density. What you just said about physics, you’re right. I’ve been insufficiently scientific.’

  ‘That rough sand’s obviously heavier, though.’

  ‘“Obviously” doesn’t butter science’s parsnips, Horst. “Obviously” means you’re taking things on faith. Everything should be tested and…’ She fell silent.

  As the silence extended uncomfortably, Horst watched her with growing consternation. Her eyes were half-shut and the fingertips of her right hand twitched as if she were enumerating things in her mind.

  ‘I know what that is,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve seen Johannes do something similar. You’re cogitating, aren’t you?’

  She made an irked noise at least as much hiss as shush at him, and he fell silent.

  Her eyes opened, and she looked angrily at Horst. Then he saw her anger was directed elsewhere. ‘You were right,’ she said.

  ‘I was? Hurrah!’

  ‘Then you were wrong.’

  ‘One out of two isn’t bad.’

  ‘Possibly right and wrong. I’ve been so muddle-headed. We need to get back to the theatre before Inspector Lament lets everyone go.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but I suspect not.’

  ‘You don’t know? Why? What do you think killed Maleficarus?’

  ‘If I’m right…’ She was already walking quickly back towards the theatre. ‘If I’m right, science killed the magician.’

  * * *

  Miss Leonie Barrow was all business and no chat when she secured re-admittance to the building. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told Lament, ‘but I may have been premature when I suggested the case was solved. If I could beg your indulgence for just a few minutes longer?’

  Inspector Lament’s patience, apparently a plentiful commodity where she was concerned in the usual run of things, was nevertheless beginning to run dry. ‘Miss Barrow. We have been here all night. The sun is very nearly up. We are all tired. Could this perhaps wait?’

  Perhaps it could, but Miss Barrow was subject to an ineffable sense that it should not. The sun was rising; it seemed relevant to the presence of Horst and herself that she should be done before the sun finished doing so, a simple rightness to the time. She did not doubt this feeling; for all her reliance upon the scientific method, she was wise enough to know when science—known science, at least—was insufficient to comprehend every possible circumstance. She had personal experience of that which chafed at the boundaries of the known, and did not presume to test it when she was so utterly beyond those boundaries herself.

  ‘No,’ she said with certainty. ‘We should resolve this matter immediately, if at all possible.’

  ‘I thought it was already,’ said Lament under his breath, but did not argue further and had everyone of note in the matter brought to the stage prior to finally being released.

  On reaching the stage she made her way directly to the crossbow device. The stage around it occupied her interest for the moment. ‘Mr Curry. These marks upon the stage. They seem semi-permanent. What might be their function?’

  Mr Curry seemed at least as dismayed as Lament that the investigation was conspiring to still keep him from his bed even after he had been assured that all was settled. ‘They’re for the scene shifters, the stagehands. So they know exactly where to put the properties.’

  ‘Close enough isn’t good enough, then?’

  ‘Heavens, no!’ He chortled at such naivety. ‘They are employed commonly enough even in the most undemanding of sitting room comedies, never mind a magician’s act. Things must be placed exactly so. Lines of sight and placement of props are of paramount importance.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Why exactly it was ‘Good, good’ she didn’t care to share at this juncture. Instead she said to Horst, ‘What keeps that flower in your lapel?’

  Horst wasn’t sure he had heard aright and raised his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Do you use a pin?’

  ‘Well, yes. They tend to…’

  ‘May I have it, please?’ She held out her hand, and when he didn’t immediately oblige her, she beckoned for it impatiently. Beginning to wonder if somehow Johannes had possessed the woman, he handed it over. She examined it briefly, muttered, ‘Good, good’ to herself once more, and then vanished beneath the machine again.

  There were quiet sounds of tinkering for a second, and then she emerged, started to hand the pin back, thought better of it, and put it in her own lapel while assuring Horst she would return it shortly, and then demanded a balance or scale of some sort. Mr Curry sent off his stage manager to recover the scales used in a production of The Merchant of Venice the previous year, and everyone stood around in a slightly baffled silence while they were fetched, with the exception of Miss Barrow, who spent the time striding around the stage and alternately examining things with her magnifying glass, and glaring at Curry, Rufus Maleficarus, and Athena la Morte.

  When the scales arrived, Miss Barrow wasted no time in measuring identical volumes of sand out from the fire bucket, and from the crossbow device. She snorted with something like disgust at the results, and turned to face her audience.

  ‘You may,’ she said without a hint of irony, ‘be wondering why I have called you here tonight.’

  Horst was suddenly filled with great admiration for Miss Barrow, and a desire for popcorn.

  ‘I am guilty of wasting a lot of time, and I must ask you to forgive me for that. I have been … distracted recently. My focus was poor, and it has taken me far too long to understand what has been going on here. Strictly, I ask forgiveness from all but one of you. That person has been furnished with a few extra hours of liberty due to my lack of diligence, and he … or she … should not forgive me, but thank me for that time. Now, to facts.

  ‘The sand. The sand that killed him. It didn’t, and if I had thought about it more carefully at the time, that should have been obvious to me without even having to weigh it. I made a silly assumption—that the coarse sand must have a greater density than the fine sand and so it tripped the crossbow that much earlier. That cannot be so. If we assume that the rock that is the source of the sands has a similar density, then the finer stuff will—if anything—have the higher density. Smaller particles and smoother grains means smaller air gaps between those grains. This is borne out by the simple weighing you just saw, but even then the difference is minuscule. Even extrapolating to the larger bulk of sand used in the device, we are only looking at an ounce or two.’

  ‘But in an escape timed to the second, even that small difference…’ Lament paused, thinking it through. ‘Of course, even if it made a small difference, it would have been in favour of the deceased. He would have had an extra second or two, not less.’

  ‘Exactly. And there is a further factor. The adulterated sand had already failed to kill him once. Why would it suddenly do so this evening?’

  ‘The matinee performance!’ Mr Curry was pleased to join the deductionary clique. ‘Of course! Why
didn’t the effect go wrong yesterday afternoon if the sand was of such concern?’

  ‘Yes.’ Miss Barrow’s gaze darted from face to face. ‘The sand had nothing to do with the tragedy. There was no accident.’

  ‘Then what is it, Leonie? That is … Miss Barrow?’ asked Horst. ‘Murder or suicide?’ He somehow prevented himself from commenting further that, obviously, murder would be far more thrilling, so that had his vote.

  She spat the word out. ‘Murder.’

  Horst strangled down the very nearly overwhelming impulse to clap his hands with glee while shouting, ‘Huzzah!’

  Inspector Lament looked at the candidates for the crime. ‘You’re suggesting the apparatus was tampered with, I take it?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Then that puts Rufus in the clear. He wasn’t anywhere near the apparatus, there’s no trapdoor or anything in a position to allow him to tamper with it, it’s subsequently been checked and found to be operating exactly as it should, and this is the closest he’s been permitted since his father’s death, so he has had no opportunity to remove any traces of sabotage.’

  ‘That is correct in all but two details, Inspector. He was able to get very close to it during the performance. About’—she held up a hand with thumb and index a couple of inches apart—‘yay close. Indeed, his proximity was vital for the illusion to work in all those other performances.’

  ‘It wasn’t an illusion.’ Miss la Morte was adamant. ‘You don’t understand. It was an escape, done by skill alone.’

  ‘That was the illusion. Max was undoubtedly very practised and highly competent. But he was also slowing down, and he knew it. You said it yourself, ma’am. You never knew exactly how long the escape would take. It was always more or less the same period, but with a few seconds’ variation. If the scale was so accurate, how was even that much possible? And how did Max always seem to know exactly when the pan was going to fall and trigger the crossbow?’

  ‘He…’ La Morte’s voice wavered, unsure as she replayed events in her head and found her rationalisation of events now fell short. ‘He could see the pan starting to fall.’