We see them hesitate at the foot of the stairs. The evening’s performance is being packed away, the stage cleaned. An old man in shirtsleeves carries a ghost light to the empty stage. We see three of the four women glance at the stage exit.
“He’ll be waiting for you, I presume,” one says.
“I don’t know,” Julia says. “After all, I didn’t offer to walk home with him…”
“We’ll go out the front,” says another. “Come along.”
WE SEE A man in a checkered suit flag the attention of the night clerk at his hotel.
We see him ask the clerk to prepare his bill, as he will be leaving in the morning.
We see the clerk nod.
We see the man in the checkered suit ask that the bill be brought to him no earlier than eight in the morning.
We see the clerk nod again and ask the man if he enjoyed his stay.
We see the man in the checkered suit saunter to the lift.
“I’ll let you know in the morning,” he says over his shoulder. “After I’m gone.”
We see the night clerk think nothing of the curious answer.
WE SEE A woman and a man linger at the back door of a smart, three-story house. The house is in the center of a row of smart, three-story houses that look exactly alike.
“The garden door leads to the alley, and from there it’s your choice,” the woman says.
“Choice of what?” the man asks.
“Which way you wish to go,” she says.
“Oh,” says the man. “You keep the gate unlocked?”
“I’ll lock it behind you,” she says.
We see them cross the dark yard where nothing grows. She opens the wooden door in the rear wall of the garden. We see him pause.
“A good-night kiss?” he asks. “Or is that extra?”
She kisses him.
“That’s extra,” she says.
“You could’ve told me that before you kissed me,” he says.
“You can settle up with me next time,” she says.
We hear a dog barking in one of the unseen yards; from the sound of it, it is a small dog, and highly excitable.
“If there is a next time,” the man says, and we imagine he is smiling, although it is too dark to tell.
“There’s always a next time,” the woman says.
We see the man leave.
The woman shuts the door, locks it.
She crosses the yard.
“SHADDUP!” she yells.
We hear nothing more from the excitable small dog.
We see the woman go into the house. She locks the door behind her.
She goes through the dark kitchen, into the hallway, up the stairs, and into her boudoir.
We see her reach for the one light still burning: the one nearest her mirror.
She regards herself in this close, harsh light.
She thinks she has a haggard, starving look.
She aches.
She turns off the light.
Her head turns sharply to her left, as if she has heard something.
“Sneaking up on me?” she asks. “Anything more is extra, you know.”
She reaches for the light.
“How did you get in?” she asks.
The light does not come on.
WE SEE A tall, thin man, his hands in his pockets, walk away from the theater.
He looks this way and that.
We hear him singing softly to himself: “Honey, won’t you show me how…”
We see his silhouette as he turns down an alley.
He is accompanied by the silhouette of a remarkably large insect.
Who is also singing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TWO ROOMS AT MIDNIGHT
“IN OTHER WORDS, you were of no use to me at all,” Franz said as he undressed.
“I was of great use. You’re just not looking at it properly.” The voice came from underneath the bed.
“Gregor,” Franz said, picking at a severely knotted shoelace, “not seeing anything out of the ordinary… is no help.”
“But isn’t the fact that I saw nothing out of the ordinary… extraordinary?”
“What are you eating?”
“Nothing you’d like.”
Franz gave up on the shoe. His body was tired, his mind was overloaded; he felt as if he were far too many guests crammed onto a rickety yacht that had recently run aground.
“I wish Yitzchak were here,” he said, falling back on the bed. The bed didn’t appreciate this, and one or two springs gave in protest.
“Ouch,” Gregor said from below. “Who’s Yitzchak?”
“Yitzchak Lowy. A good friend of mine. And one of the finest actors in Prague.”
“Never heard of him.”
“How often do you attend Yiddish theatre?”
“Never.”
“Then it’s no wonder you’ve never heard of him.”
“Tonight was my first visit to any theatre at all. Plenty of rubbish—actual rubbish, I mean. I was in heaven. Why do you wish he was here?”
“He could tell me how Henker pulls off his illusion.”
“He’s a hanging artist, too?”
“No. But he’s a man of the theatre. I’m not.”
“I’m still wondering why you’re fixated on this Henker fellow anyway. Isn’t there some sort of general consensus that there is no way he could be performing the actual murders? Is that the correct verb: performing? Or is it enacting? Perpetrating? Doing?”
Franz sat up and removed the other, cooperative shoe.
“Regardless of the verb, it’s vexing,” Franz said. “And if these murders aren’t connected to Henker, then they’re certainly connected to the act itself, or the act’s emotional impact on the audience.”
“Do you feel like strangling someone?”
A moment’s silence. “No,” Franz said.
“What a liar,” Gregor said. “I’ve fixed your shoelace.”
Franz looked at his foot; the shoelace was unknotted.
“Thank you,” he said. “And don’t call me a liar.”
“Then don’t lie.”
“Come out from under there!”
“There isn’t enough room in this closet for both of us to be knocking about.”
Franz wriggled out of his pants, bed springs creaking all the while.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t feel like strangling someone,” he said. “Don’t put words into my mouth.”
“Your father,” Gregor said, and the munching sounds continued.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gregor crawled from beneath the bed, snorting dust.
“It’s possible I don’t,” Gregor said, “but then again, I’m not the one who wrote the letter.”
The letter. Franz closed his eyes and hung his head. The creature had mentioned the letter. He wouldn’t ask how it had known; it knew things it shouldn’t know, and claimed ignorance of things it should. As for the letter—where was it now?
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Gregor said. “Did you destroy it?”
“It’s somewhere.”
“Are you ever going to give it to him?”
“I tried, once.”
“I hate to correct you, but you didn’t try to give it to him. You gave it to your mother to give to him.”
“And she didn’t.”
“She gave it back to you. Where’s it been the last five years?”
Franz removed his shirt, eager to be asleep, eager for anything that wasn’t talking about the letter or his father.
“It hasn’t been five years,” Franz said. “It’s been four years, seven months, and two days.” He smiled. “But who’s counting?” He stretched out on the bed as best as he could and covered his eyes with his arm. It was too hot for pajamas. He had tried to open the pathetic aperture that passed for a window, but he had not been able. He concluded it was not a window at all, just a smeared portrait of an exter
ior covered by a window frame. “It was a stupid thing to do, anyway,” he said. “As if I could make him understand… oh, let’s forget about my father and try to figure out what we’re to do next,” he said.
Gregor slid under the bed. “‘We’?” he asked.
“You’re the only one who comes around. I’ve not seen the inspector since the train, and who knows when—or if—he or she will come again? As far as I know, I’ve been cut adrift. All I’ve got is a list of dead people and the weirdest magician I’ve ever seen.”
“Magician?”
“The Hanging Artist. Wouldn’t you call him a magician?”
“I don’t know if ‘magician’ does him justice.”
Franz rubbed his eyes. “Just because you told me you saw nothing?” he asked.
“You dismissed my eyewitness report.”
“Which, at your behest, I am now considering in a new light. You saw the act from high above the stage.”
“Correct.”
“What were you doing up there?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Fine, fine,” Franz said, shifting on the mattress in an effort to find comfort. “You told me none of the crew or other performers watched his act.”
“Not a soul. The curtain went up and the backstage area emptied in the blink of an eye.”
“And no one returned during the act.”
“Correct.”
“And there was no one up in the—what did you call it?”
“Flies.”
“Which is a nickname for the space above the stage where the big set pieces are flown and stored, and where the various ropes and cables…”
“Yes, although I went up there because I actually thought I’d find flies.”
Franz opened his eyes and began checking off points on his fingers.
“So,” he said, “first, no one watches his performance from backstage; two, no one is manipulating the rope, which would have explained its completely disconcerting ascent to the gallows and fixation on said object; three, Henker remains hanging from the hope until the very second the final curtain hits the floor, at which time the backstage area is plunged into darkness; four, said darkness lasts a mere five seconds, and when the work lights come on, Henker and the rope are gone, and the stagehands have returned. Have I got that right?”
Snoring from below.
Franz bounced on the mattress.
“Wake up!”
He felt Gregor move around beneath him.
“What is your conclusion?” Gregor asked.
“That I really, really wish Yitzchak was here,” Franz said. “He could put my mind at rest.”
“How?”
“By assuring me that The Hanging Artist’s performance is exactly that—a performance. And nothing else.”
“What else could it be?”
“I don’t know. But I will tell you one thing I do know: it’s a highly evocative and disturbing performance. It could appeal to anyone seeking to… well, anyone who might be a trifle unhinged. Or completely unhinged.”
“You think that someone is copying Henker’s performance? In a homicidal way?”
“It would explain how the killer gets around, particularly as Beide assured me that Henker’s been shadowed for several weeks, and his movements are always accounted for.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean Henker couldn’t go about unnoticed,” Gregor said. “After all, if he’s engineered this inexplicable illusion on the stage, why couldn’t he engineer an equally inexplicable illusion to fool the police?
“And if it is some maniac copying the basic effects of Henker’s act, how do you propose to identify them? To date, there’s only been one victim who was known to have been in Henker’s audience—the young man from last night. How do you account for the others?” Franz wanted to scream. What had he gotten himself into?
“I can’t account for anything,” he said. “I’m going to go mad if I think of it any longer—as if I haven’t gone mad already! If it is someone other than Henker, then there must indeed be some link between all of the victims, some relationship we’re not seeing, or—good God.”
“What?”
“…Or there isn’t any connection to anything or anyone, and it will be impossible to find the killer.”
“Good luck sleeping tonight,” Gregor said.
“Where’s my book?”
“What book?”
“The book on how not to be a great detective.”
Gregor sent one of his arms up from beneath the bed, holding the book in question, slightly nibbled.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been eating this,” Franz said.
“I was getting around to it. I thought you didn’t want it anymore.”
“I’m desperate.”
He opened and read. “Here we are—‘Chapter Two. Questions. You will not be a great detective if you cannot ask questions, particularly questions that will give you the answers you need to solve the crime.’ Oh, for the love of—”
He closed the book and tossed it under the bed.
“Bon appétit,” he said.
“YOU’RE LATER THAN usual tonight,” Mathilde said, closing her book. “Everything all right?”
“I’m sorry I kept you up waiting for me,” Henker said, closing the door.
“When have I ever been asleep when you’ve returned?”
“Ah.”
He stood in the parlor, staring vacantly at an empty armchair.
“I’ll get you some coffee,” Mathilde said.
“You know that I don’t like you to wait on me,” he said.
She held out her hands to him.
“Up,” she said.
He reached for her.
“No,” she said.
She looked at his hands.
He looked at his hands.
“Oh,” he said.
He slowly removed the calfskin gloves, then placed them on the side table and held out his hands to her. She grasped his hands, and he pulled her to her feet. She freed a hand and grasped a cane, and then another. She made her way into the dining room on her two canes, inch by inch, breathing heavily with the effort.
“Who brought you home tonight?” she asked.
“No one,” Henker said.
“You came home alone?”
“I had no choice,” Henker said as he sat. “None of my so-called fellow artists were left when I was ready to go.”
“Were you late in leaving?”
“No.”
“Then how did you come home?”
He heard her in the kitchenette lighting the tiny stove, the clinking of china cups.
“I had to follow groups of people,” Henker said. “I stayed close to as many as I could find who were headed this way.”
“That can’t have looked good.”
“What else could I do?”
“You could defy them, Hans—the police, whoever’s following you. You could just walk anywhere you like, whenever you like. You’ve nothing to be afraid of. They must certainly know that by now. As for that, they might not be following you anymore.”
“Oh, they are. Just last night one of their henchmen knocked me down in the street, pretended it was an accident. It was no accident. I was being searched. Oh, they won’t let me alone.”
“Except for your fellow artists.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call them that.”
“They’re jealous, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m quite sure none of them has received a visit from Herr Max Spindler, Hansel. When will you quit the Traumhalle?”
Henker rose and removed his coat. It was cooler at the top of the house, and Mathilde kept all of the windows open; the light breeze eased his discomfort.
“Tomorrow night will be my final performance,” he said.
“And then on to bigger things,” came the voice from the kitchen.
“Yes,” Henker said. He absently gazed at the detritus they’d collec
ted over the years and placed around their rooms: ancient volumes, gramophone records, elephants carved from jade, his war medals.
“Your coffee will be ready soon,” Mathilde said, returning from the kitchenette. “Get some rest.”
“Yes.”
“It went well tonight, otherwise?”
“Full house.”
“Splendid.”
“Except…” he said, and stopped.
“Yes?”
He shook his head. “The fellow who volunteered,” he said.
“What about him?”
“I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? What did he do?”
“Nothing,” Henker said. “That is, he… well, he seemed to trust me, Tillie.”
“Trust you?”
“Perhaps trust isn’t the word. He… Tillie, he seemed to know.”
Mathilde gazed at him for a moment. It was a hard look.
“Impossible,” she said. She turned and made her slow, painful way to her room. “Good night, Hansel.”
“I’ve been thinking of taking rooms at the Hotel Das Gottesanbeterin,” Henker said. “A suite. I can afford it now. Would that make you happy?”
“Happiness,” Mathilde said as she struggled into the void of her room, “happiness…”
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE GIRL WHO SMELLED OF LICORICE
FRANZ WAS AWAKENED by an eerie hum that seemed to change pitch in a syrupy way. At first, he assumed he had been dreaming of the legendary Sirens, who sang to sailors passing their rocks and lured them to their watery deaths. Franz was not a sailor, but a ship, and as he dreamed he sailed on with determination, all the while trying to warn those aboard him that they needed to stop their ears, to resist; yet one by one they jumped into the sea, succumbing to the waves as the Sirens sang on, while he, without anyone at his helm, faced his eventual destruction and sinking.
When he opened his eyes, however, he beheld Inspector Beide—in full female mode—standing behind a tray of wine glasses, each filled with various quantities of colored liquid, circling this rim, then that with her hands.
Franz recognized the tune: “Vienna, City of My Dreams.”
Beide stopped when she saw Franz was awake.
“Get dressed. You have five minutes,” she said, wiping her wet hands on the miserable strip of curtain. “Things are happening, faster than I had anticipated.”
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