Mrs. Houdini (35 page)

By that spring, Doyle had become almost as famous for his lectures on spiritualism as he was for his writing. He had crossed the Atlantic for his speaking circuit and traveled the Northeast, giving one lecture in Atlantic City and another in Carnegie Hall in New York. Afterward Harry and Bess invited Doyle and his wife to see a showing of Raymond Hitchcock's
Pinwheel Revue,
then back to their home for dinner. Bess had invited Gladys as well; she had recently moved out of the Houdinis' home and was attempting to live on her own, with the help of an aide, but Bess worried she was often lonely. She had noticed that Gladys still wore only black, and still seemed to grieve her mother's passing even more than Harry did. When they had returned from California, Gladys seemed different to Bess—quieter, more subdued. The energetic girlishness she had once possessed seemed gone.

Harry was eager to show Sir Arthur his collections. He felt he had a kindred spirit in the writer, who appreciated libraries as much as he did. At the same time, having had some time to reflect on the séance he had done with Lady Doyle, Harry had decided that there had been nothing significant in the message that had come through from his mother. He told Bess he would like to test the lady again, if the opportunity arose.

Bess sat beside Gladys and Lady Doyle sat on the large sofa with cups of tea, listening to the men prattle on about London. Bess leaned over to Lady Doyle, trying to entice conversation out of her. The woman was still an enigma to Bess. “Lady Jean, I heard you have a remarkable voice,” she said.

Lady Doyle stirred her tea, her large rings flashing. “I did have an admired career once.” She had a very British hauteur and seemed to compose her dialogue carefully. “Of course, as you know, being the wife of a recognized figure is work enough now. People say I'm quite a recognized figure as well.”

Bess was not impressed by her boasting. She was Doyle's second wife and had married him at the height of his wealth and fame. Bess had heard rumors that she had convinced him to change his will to leave the daughter of his first wife out of his inheritance.

“Tell me about your mother, Gladys,” Lady Doyle continued, as the men talked. “Am I correct that she lived here with you?”

Gladys's jaw tightened. “Yes. She was very happy here.”

“She was a lovely woman,” Bess added. “She always treated me like a daughter.”

“It is a shame about her passing.”

“Yes. It certainly was.” Bess knew what she was up to. She and Harry had done just such fishing for information in their medium days. She had an idea. “Harry loved her very much. When we were home in New York he used to wear only the clothes she had given him because he thought it would please her.”

“How lovely,” Lady Doyle said.

By the fireplace, Doyle was surprised to see how many books on spiritualism Harry had amassed. “Good man,” he said. “I took you for a skeptic.”

Harry laughed. “Oh, no, I still am. That's why I read so much.”

Doyle frowned. Bess thought she understood why the man clung to his beliefs with such tenacity, why no one could contradict him, and why he was so eager to convince Harry of his side of things. If he let go of his certainties about life after death, what then? What became of his soul? He was like a buoy tethered in a storm, dancing in black seas; if he were unmoored from his convictions and his beliefs, he would be lost. It was the same way she had felt when she first married Harry, when making her vows meant giving up the life, home, and family she had always thought she could go back to if she wanted. It had left her unmoored as well.

“If you'd only let yourself recognize the powers you possess,” Doyle said, “you could be the most powerful man in the world.” He turned to Bess. “Mrs. Houdini, you must convince him to open himself to the remarkable forces he is keeping at bay.”

Bess smiled but said nothing. George knocked on the door to inform them that dinner was ready.

Harry held up his hand. “Before we go.” He opened his briefcase and removed a small slate, four small cork balls, white ink, and a tablespoon.

Sir Arthur frowned. “What are you up to, Houdini?” Bess looked at Harry as well. She knew he had been preparing something, but he hadn't told her he was going to bring it out that evening.

Lady Jean leaned forward eagerly. “Yes, Mr. Houdini, what are you playing at? Are we to be the unwitting audience for one of your new tricks?”

Harry handed Doyle the cork balls with a small smile. “You are welcome to cut through one of these to see that they are solid cork.” Sir Arthur, still frowning, took his pocketknife and sliced one of the balls in half. He nodded. “Yes, yes, I see. What of it?”

Harry took the second ball and, using the spoon, dropped it into the inkwell to soak up the ink. He explained what he was doing out loud, for Gladys's sake. “While I am doing this,” he told Sir Arthur, “I would like you to leave the room and write a question or a sentence on a piece of paper. And don't show it to me.”

Doyle complied. When he came back in the room, the paper was securely in his pocket. He sat and watched as Harry placed the ink-covered ball on the slate, and Bess, along with the Doyles, watched as the ball began to roll around the surface, on its own, the white ink spelling out a phrase on the black surface. Lady Doyle let out a small cry.

Gradually the words became clear:
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,
the slate read, in white letters. “Why, that's what I wrote down,” Sir Arthur murmured, aghast. He was visibly shaken. Bess recognized the quotation from the Old Testament. They were the words written on Belshazzar's palace wall by a mysterious hand, which predicted imminent doom for his reign.

Doyle grasped Harry's hands. “Houdini, what powers are you working with?”

Harry shook his head. “I have devoted a lot of time and thought to this illusion. I have been working on it, on and off, for the course of a year. I won't tell you how it was done, but I can assure you it was pure trickery.”

Doyle's face was white. “I don't believe you.”

“I devised it to show you that such things are possible. I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily supernatural, or the work of spirits, just because you cannot explain them. You must be careful in the future of endorsing phenomena just because you cannot explain them.”

Doyle smiled. Bess could tell he still did not believe Harry. He thought Harry was obscuring his powers by trying to play them off as tricks. But Bess knew better. She had seen Harry levitate a table, and knew how he did it.

“Come,” Bess said, standing up and smoothing out her dress. “Enough of these games. Let's go in to dinner.” She did not want to see Doyle's beliefs shattered in front of her; older than Harry by fifteen years, he seemed very fragile under his flinty exterior. As it was, the American press was lambasting him. During an interview he had said he thought men were given whiskey and cigars when they got to heaven, and the papers were already mocking him. And back in England, he had endorsed a young girl's photograph of a fairy as authentic, only to learn that the picture had been doctored, and he had been the object of great ridicule as a result of his naïveté.

As they walked into the dining room, Bess grabbed Harry's arm discreetly. Using the system they had devised during their early stage years, she cautioned him that Lady Doyle had been asking about his mother. She warned him in whispered code—each word, or pairs of words, indicating a different letter—spelling out the word
DECEIVE
: “Now-tell-pray, answer-tell-look-answer-answer-tell.” Harry looked alarmed, and disturbed.

They dined on chicken and asparagus and kept up polite conversation about Doyle's lectures. As they finished their dessert of cream cake, Doyle cleared his throat. “Houdini, I must say I was somewhat angered by that article you wrote for
The New York Sun
. You said that after the hundreds of séances you attended, you have never seen anything that could convince you there is a possibility of communication with the beyond.”

Harry took a long drink of water. “I am perfectly willing to believe,” he said, “but I need significant proof to back any claims I put in print.”

Gladys came to her brother's defense. “Certainly you cannot expect Harry to support your claims simply because you are friends. He has a reputation of respectability that he has to uphold.” Gladys was more of a skeptic even than Harry and had tried for years to convince him that their mother was not going to come through to them, much to Harry's dismay.

Doyle was insulted. “And I do not have a reputation to uphold? I must tell you, I feel sore about it. You have all the right in the world to your own opinion, but I know the purity of my wife's mediumship, and I saw what the effect was upon you when we were in England. You
believed
.”

Lady Doyle sat quietly beside Bess, sipping her wine. She looked neither supportive of nor embarrassed by her husband's outburst.

Sir Arthur stood up. “If agreeable, Lady Doyle will give you a special séance, as she has a feeling that she might have a message coming through. At any rate, she is willing to try.” He continued, “I'd like for her to give you some kind of consolation, and change your mind.”

Harry glanced at Bess. “Yes, certainly,” he said. “But I assure you I did not mean my article as an affront to you or your wife.”

What Bess and Gladys had not told Lady Doyle was that it happened to be Mrs. Weiss's birthday. If this fact came through in the séance, then perhaps Lady Doyle's powers could be proven real. Bess felt a little thrill at being in league with Harry again, as they had been during their stage days. But she also felt sorry for Harry and for Gladys, dredging up all this business with their mother yet again. If Harry had been depressed since her passing, Gladys had been even more so. Mrs. Weiss had been her best friend and confidante, as well as her eyes. Losing Mrs. Weiss had been, surely, like losing a limb. One could never, ever, be the same. Bess only hoped that Gladys wasn't expecting anything to come of this séance, especially having heard Lady Doyle pressing for information earlier.

They proceeded back into the library, and Harry dimmed the lights. They sat in a small circle and placed their hands on the table between them. Once again, Doyle began with a prayer, and Lady Doyle, a pad and pencil in front of her, began by drawing the sign of the cross and asking the spirits, “Do you believe in God? You must say so if you wish us to continue.”

Then she began to convulse, and her hand flew across the page, writing furiously.

“It's your mother,” Doyle whispered. “It has to be.”

I am so happy, my beloved son and daughter,
Lady Doyle wrote.
I know that you think of me often, that you often wear the clothes and gifts I've given you because you think it will help you reach me. You must know that you have a guide who is often with you at night. He helps and instructs you over here. He is a very, very high soul, sent especially to work through you on the earth plane. He wants me to say, my dears, that there is much work before you.

“In this world?” Doyle pressed. His hand was flying, too; he was tearing sheet after sheet from the pad of paper as they filled up.

Yes. It is here in this gray earth that you are needed.

Bess could not bring herself to open her eyes and look at Harry. The whole thing seemed so ridiculous.

Then Lady Doyle's convulsions stilled abruptly. Bess opened her eyes. The woman appeared, suddenly, very composed. It was odd; her dark eyes were open, but there seemed to be a kind of emptiness behind them. Bess shuddered; the room felt very cold and drafty.

Doyle started to read his wife's recent scribbling and paused. He tore off the sheet and handed it to Harry. Bess saw Harry's face grow white. “She writes—” His voice broke.
“My son, you are in danger. My God, my God, save you.”

Bess stood up, knocking the table over. She motioned to Harry and Gladys. “Enough of this! Don't you see what you are doing to them?” She pointed at Lady Doyle, whose forehead was covered in sweat, as if she had exerted great energy. “You are nothing more than a fraud, who has managed to deceive even her own husband! You dare to tell my husband that his life is in danger? Did you know that Cecilia Weiss spoke five languages, but English wasn't one of them? And yet she is somehow writing through your hand in a language she didn't speak.”

Sir Arthur took Bess's arm to calm her down. “Of course it's probable that in heaven we can speak all languages, is it not?”

“But if she were trying to convince Harry and Gladys of her authenticity, wouldn't it be even more remarkable if your wife began writing in German, a language she herself doesn't speak?” Bess snatched her arm away. “And today is Mrs. Weiss's birthday—a fact that was never mentioned. You should know that before you try to defend your wife any further. Surely this is proof of her disingenuousness.”

Doyle's face reddened. “What are birthdays on the other side? It is the death day which is the real birthday.”

Bess shook her head. “How can you say such things?”

“Mrs. Houdini, you are treading on dangerous ground. You invite us into your house and then disrespect my wife's abilities. You are showing the greatest lack of hospitality,” Sir Arthur warned.

Harry finally spoke. “That's enough, Bess.”

Bess spun to face him. “How can you defend him, Harry? His wife's just tried to threaten you!”

“Because he doesn't know any better.”

Doyle grabbed his wife's hand. “Jean, we are leaving.” He turned to Harry. “You have ruined a great friendship, you know.” He stomped into the hallway and took their coats from the closet. At the doorway, he seemed to hesitate. Without looking back, he murmured, sadly, “Harry, you are to me a perpetual mystery.”