The Linking Rings

by John Gaspard

  I was going to continue the conversational topic, but I began to fear we’d run out of oxygen in the small space, so I just nodded and waited for the ride to be over.

  Sleep came quickly and my only dreams consisted of continually awaking, thinking I was trapped inside a coffin. You might think I was flashing back to our ride up in the lift, but when it came to small spaces, our room gave the elevator a run for its money. I had already assembled a growing mental list I was sure would match up, point by point, with the complaints generated by the “dumb Americans” on Yelp.

  For her part, Megan loved the place, so I wisely kept my mouth shut. The fact was, the inconveniences were minor, and we had come to London to see the sights, not to become roving hotel critics. Seeing her happy and having fun erased any other issues I might be having with our accommodations.

  Once we were showered and dressed, we made our way to the communal breakfast room and showed our room key, which entitled each of us to what was advertised as a traditional English breakfast. Moments after we had settled in, before they had even offered coffee or tea, a waitperson delivered two overflowing plates to our table and then disappeared as quickly as she had come.

  I looked down at the plate that had been put in front of me, then looked to see if a similar disaster had befallen Megan.

  “What is this?” I asked, my voice a little hoarse, either from lack of use or flat out fear.

  “It’s a traditional English breakfast,” Megan said brightly.

  “No, seriously, what is this?”

  She picked up her fork and pointed tentatively at each of the alleged food items on the plate as she introduced them.

  “I think this is back bacon, those are fried eggs, this looks like a grilled tomato, that’s gotta be a mushroom of some kind, those are sausages, and this pile here is baked beans.” She sat back, clearly proud of her achievement. She had tried to sound authoritative, but I could tell she was flat out guessing at a couple of items.

  I looked at the plate again, then at the wait staff as they bustled around the room. “Did we do something wrong? Are they mad at us?”

  A buzz alerted me to a text from Laurence Baxter, informing me that he’d secured a lawyer (a “solicitor” in his terminology) who would be meeting with Harry as soon as they would allow him this morning. Baxter suggested meeting at the police station at ten thirty. I texted back we would see him there.

  “You can always spot the Americans,” Megan whispered, nodding at a couple as they entered and were seated by the hostess. “Even before they say a word.”

  I was about to question the validity of this statement, when the female half of the duo said in a too-loud and grating American accent, “Oh, do we have to sit by a radiator?” She spat out the word like someone who had been relocated against their will to a site less desirable than Chernobyl or Love Canal.

  Megan was ahead, one -love, and I made the mental note that, if asked, I would say we hailed from Canada.

  The game then became guessing the nationality of the people who weren’t obviously Americans. Megan had a better facility with languages than I did, so she was able to offer linguistic predictions with far greater speed and accuracy than I could. For example, her prediction the little boy with the Harry Potter glasses was French proved dead on when he continually ignored his mother’s request to stop swinging his legs while he sat, repeating the word “non” over and over again.

  Two- love.

  We did agree the family across from us—grandmother, mother, and a younger boy—were likely Russian, or perhaps Ukrainian. They ate silently, but I heard the grandmother whisper “Etta dyedooshkye” to her tablemates. My wish to be able to translate it was granted a few moments later when the woman I was assuming was her daughter whispered to the younger boy, “For PopPop.”

  With these instructions in place, the two each handed the grandmother an item from their plate—a roll from one and an apple from the other—which she stealthily slipped into her purse.

  My study of this interesting family dynamic was interrupted by the appearance of two very large and very loud Americans, who squeezed into the table directly next to ours and began a long series of complaints concerning just about everything in sight. Before they could add us to their list, we finished our coffee and quickly exited.

  The police station was no less cheery in the light of day.

  Laurence Baxter met us at the front door and filled us in as we made our way down to the gray airless visitor waiting area. There was a surprising amount of activity for a Sunday morning, probably all stemming from Saturday night incidents, hopefully all less deadly than the one at The Magic Circle.

  “My solicitor is in with Harry now,” he said quietly. “He said, given this is a capital crime, they are well within their rights to hold Harry for seventy-two hours before charging him.”

  “So he thinks they’re going to charge him?” I said, speaking much louder than intended.

  Baxter shook his head. “He’s not sure. My understanding is the prosecutor will bring the facts of the case before a magistrate tomorrow morning. The magistrate will determine if there is enough evidence to warrant pressing charges.” He gestured toward three empty chairs in the crowded waiting room. “So, at the very least, Harry isn’t getting out today.”

  I exchanged a look with Megan as we sat. It was clear we were both thinking the same question, but I said it out loud first. “Which one of us is going to call Franny?”

  Megan shrugged, and I shrugged in return.

  We had agreed to hold off calling Harry’s soon-to-be new bride until we had more information. Currently, I wasn’t quite sure if what Laurence Baxter had related counted as enough intelligence to bring Franny up to speed without simultaneously throwing her into a panic.

  “She told him not to take this trip,” Megan reminded me softly.

  “I know, but it seems unlikely Franny would take this down the ‘I told you so’ road. At least, not right away. Plus, she was planning on picking him up at the airport.” I looked at my watch, which I had yet to re-set. “It’s not even six a.m. in Minneapolis. We might as well wait until she’s up. No need to get her out of bed at this point.”

  Megan nodded in agreement, and I turned to Laurence, but he held up a hand.

  “Here’s Wexler-Smith,” he said, looking toward the heavy steel door that stood between visitors and the poor souls they had come to visit. Just coming through the entry was a middle-aged man in a perfectly tailored pinstripe suit, making him the odds-on favorite as the best-dressed person in the room. His bushy white mustache and eyebrows gave him a sad hangdog appearance, which was reinforced by his slumped posture and slow, ponderous step.

  “Nothing too positive to report, Baxter, sorry to say,” he said in a low, Nigel Bruce like growl. “Too much red tape, high visibility of the crime, flight risk, foreigner, it all adds up. Bad business, if you ask me. Strictly by the book on this one, that’s my guess.”

  Laurence Baxter nodded at the recitation, then introduced us to Simon Wexler-Smith, his long-time solicitor. The sad-faced man mumbled some words of condolence as he shook hands with me, then Megan.

  “What are our next steps?” Baxter asked once the social niceties had been acknowledged.

  “Wait for the magistrate’s decision,” Wexler-Smith replied confidently. “Not much we can do until then, I’m afraid. Hands tied and all that.”

  “Any chance I can see Harry?” I cut in, looking from the lawyer to Baxter. “Like, this morning? Now?”

  Figuring Wexler-Smith was the one with the power, I concentrated my attention on him, but he turned impotently to Baxter. The solicitor may have been an expert on the law, but Laurence Baxter was a bona fide star in this country, and that would likely count for more.

  “Let me see what I can do,” Baxter said quietly, unnecessarily straightening his suit jacket as he headed toward t
he main desk.

  Five minutes later, I was being ushered through the imposing metal door, which closed with a sickening thud behind me.

  Getting through that entry was just the first step in a journey, which included emptying all my pockets, going through two different scanners, and then a full body pat down by a clammy-handed middle-aged constable who, I sensed, had already reached his maximum level of tedium by this early hour. Regardless of how my day was going to go, I thought as they led me down the third blank hallway, his was likely to consist of performing this same series of actions on a never-ending stream of strangers. It made me feel a little better, but not much.

  My Uncle Harry was not a large man—he resisted the word ‘elfin,’ but it wasn’t far off the mark. However, when I first spotted him on the other side of the glass in the cramped booth where they’d placed him, he seemed even smaller than usual. I sat down on the hard plastic chair on my side of the glass. We reached for our respective phone receivers at the same time and then paused before saying anything into them. My receiver was warm and a bit sticky.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he finally said, his voice sounding tired, distant, and tiny through the receiver. “And I agree. Orange is not my color.”

  He glanced down at the jail-issued jumpsuit and gave an exaggerated shudder. “And I don’t even dare consider how they may have hung up my tux,” he added. “If they’ve hung it up at all.”

  For Harry, and many magicians of his era, the proper care and storage of one’s tux was an issue of paramount importance, right up there with cleaning your coins and ironing your silks. In fact, once he was dressed in his tux before a show, Harry absolutely refused to sit down, as he felt bending his knees would negatively impact the line of his trousers. It was possible that attitude may have helped to save his life the night before, as it was Oskar who—apparently harboring no such qualms about the line of his tux—had opted to take a seat in the deadly chair.

  “Are you doing okay?” I asked, figuring we must be on a set time limit and wanting to make the most of what might be a short conversation.

  He shrugged. “Not bad. The people have been nice. The cell, however, is tiny. Miniscule.”

  I thought of mentioning the size of our hotel room but quickly decided this was not the right time for a quick game of travel adversity one-upmanship.

  “Have you talked to Franny?” he continued, his brow furrowing in worry.

  I shook my head. “Megan and I decided to wait until I’d seen you,” I said. “So we could give her a more complete report.”

  He nodded at the decision, but I could tell he was concerned about her reaction to the news.

  “She told me not to come,” he said. “She said there were bad vibrations.”

  “You met her more than halfway,” I countered. “Only staying one night, getting in and getting out quickly. It was a good compromise.”

  “Yes, with apparently sparkling results.”

  I didn’t have a helpful response, so I changed the subject.

  “What have they told you about what happened to Oskar?”

  “Nothing directly, but I’ve heard enough to piece most of it together,” he said, leaning forward as he shifted into magic instructor mode, a persona I had experienced my whole life. “Apparently, there was a device in the chair. As soon as one sat on the cushion, the pressure triggered the release of an arm on a powerful spring under the seat. It shot up out of the back of the chair, on a semicircle, and plunged the knife into the poor fellow’s back. Then the arm retracted. Very clever, actually,” he added, acknowledging his grudging admiration at the design of the deadly device.

  “That’s basically what Davis De Vries thought happened,” I said, quickly recounting my short conversation with the small group of old magicians backstage.

  “Yes, of course De Vries would figure it out quickly,” Harry said. “Those sorts of mechanics are right up his alley.”

  I didn’t think he recognized the implications of this statement, but he was already onto another topic before I could press him on it. I made a mental note to come back to that thought at some point.

  “The thing is, Buster, it was only a couple moments before the curtain even opened that the two of us decided who would be sitting and who would be standing,” Harry said, turning as the door to his cubicle opened behind him. A guard stood there, silently indicating the time was up. “We’d gone back and forth on that decision for nearly thirty minutes, and we finally just decided it with a coin flip.”

  He turned to the guard and acknowledged his presence, indicating we were wrapping things up.

  “Harry, I want to do something to move this thing along, but I have no idea what I should be doing.”

  He turned back to me, standing, but still holding onto the receiver. “I thought of it the moment I woke up and then kicked myself for not thinking of it last night. We’ve got to get in touch with McHugh.”

  As soon as he mentioned the name, I wanted to kick myself as well. McHugh was the one person who should have been my first phone call the previous night.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, also standing, although I wasn’t entirely certain why. “How do I find him?”

  “What day is it?” Harry asked, moving as slowly as he could to hang the receiver back up on its hook.

  “Sunday,” I said quickly.

  “Perfect,” Harry said as he backed away from the chair, still holding the phone. “Tower Hill tube stop. Seven thirty tonight! Sharp.”

  The guard took the receiver from Harry’s hand and hung it up. I nodded furiously that I understood. As he was being ushered out of the cubicle, he turned and added one final thought. I could hear his voice, distantly, through the not-so-soundproof glass.

  “And Eli,” he said.

  “Yes?” I shouted.

  He was able to get his last words in before the door slammed shut.

  “Wear comfortable shoes!”

  Chapter 3

  Although Henry McHugh was not visible when we stepped out of the Tower Hill tube station, the size of the crowd milling about assured me immediately that my limited understanding of the London underground system had brought us to the correct location.

  “Are all these people here for a Jack the Ripper walk?” Megan said, scanning the swarm of tourists of all shapes and sizes.

  “No, they’re here for the best Jack the Ripper walk,” I corrected. “Henry McHugh is considered to be one of the top living experts on the killings. Ripper walks are available every night of the week from lots of companies, but McHugh only does his on Sunday nights. When he’s in town. And feels like doing it.”

  “What makes him the expert?” Megan asked as we snaked our way through the throng to pay. “I mean, was he on the case during the murders?”

  I stopped and gave her a long look, checking to see if she was just pulling my leg.

  “Megan, the Jack the Ripper murders took place in 1888,” I said. “Do you know how old that would make him?”

  “I get fuzzy on dates,” she said with a shrug. We continued toward the front of the crowd as I pulled my wallet out of the relative safety of my front pocket and sorted through the unfamiliar bills.

  Twenty pounds and ten minutes later we were on the move with the mob, straining to hear McHugh’s voice above the general din produced by a large multilingual crowd moving through the cobblestoned streets of London’s East End. Twice I had nearly gotten close enough to wave and get his attention, but with no success either time. The people treated him like a superstar, with fans quickly moving in for one-on-one questions each time he finished his short Ripper recitation and began the brief stroll to the next location. The crowd’s reaction to him was, I realized, the same way magicians would approach my Uncle Harry. Perhaps this bizarre form of celebrity was what had bound the two men together as close friends.

  I had met He
nry McHugh a handful of times during my life. The most recent encounter had been at my Aunt Alice’s funeral, which he had traveled from London to attend. I knew long trips like that were becoming fewer and fewer for him, but I also got the sense this singular event was one he simply felt he could not miss. I still remembered my uncle’s look of surprise and relief when McHugh walked into the memorial service. Harry had not cried until that point, but seeing his old friend seemed to offer the permission he had been waiting for. To be honest, I still teared up when I thought about it.

  While I pondered his relationship with Harry during the walking segments, McHugh had my complete attention each time he stopped and addressed the crowd on the topic of Jack the Ripper. Virtually all the original murder sites have changed radically over the years, so it required his oratory skills to bring each location to life once again. He was certainly up for the challenge, weaving a story about life in London’s East End, which covered more than just the lurid details of the murders—although there was no shortage of gore in the retelling. But he also tied in the socioeconomic issues of the time, along with the racial and ethnic stereotypes that permeated the investigation of the crimes.

  From time to time he would mention this suspect or that, outlining quick details on what actions of theirs had added them to the list of potential suspects as one of the world’s most infamous serial killers. And then, just as quickly, he would demolish the argument with some well-researched facts. After having done this with several of the best-known subjects, a frustrated listener finally yelled from the crowd: “Well, if it wasn’t him, who do you think did it, for Pete’s sake?”

  McHugh smiled at the question, which I was sure he’d been asked about as many times as I’d asked someone to take a card. He waited until the crowd had stopped laughing and then gave his well-practiced response. He didn’t say it loudly, but he knew at that moment everyone could hear him.

  “I believe he was a local man,” McHugh said, with just the trace of a smile. “And he didn’t like prostitutes.”