Murder by Magic (27 page)
“What in heaven’s name!” Nora gasped, but Nicky was holding the silver case, his face perfectly blank. She sighed, rather unsteadily, and went over to the table to pour herself a cup of coffee. By the time she had added cream and brought the cup to her lips, Nicky had blinked back to everyday awareness.
“It works,” he said in soft wonderment.
“What works, darling?”
“Benjy’s spell-storing system,” he said, staring down at the case as if he had never seen anything like it before in his life. “This will revolutionize the Arts Magical.”
“Well, good,” Nora said. “Benjy deserves some—”
A knock at the door of their suite interrupted her. Nicky slipped the expended cigarette case into his pocket as he crossed the room and opened the door, finding their butler bearing a tray with a single envelope on it.
“Special delivery, Your Lordship,” he said.
“Thank you, Jensen,” Nicky replied, and took the envelope, recognizing Benjamin Hillier’s hand.
The list of possibles, then. Splendid.
“That will be all.”
He closed the door, slipped his finger under the seal, and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
It was not a list, but a letter.
Dear Nicholas,
By the time you receive this, matters will be in hand. I apologize for leading you a little dance yesterday afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, I had not fully understood the problem—or the solution.
But, there, you wish to know who killed Wolheim.
I performed that well-earned deed. I and my accomplice.
Certainly, there was no one else who deserved to die as much as Wolheim—for Sarah alone he deserved a dozen excruciating deaths, and she was only one of many, though dear to me. Very dear to me.
The reason you could find no signature is that there was none to find. The phenomenon we call a signature is nothing more or less than the spin given any particular spell by the mind of the magician. Wolheim’s concoctions, for instance, were notable for the stink of unexpended power. Your own efforts have a silken essence, marking them out as the constructs of an unusually subtle mind.
The spells that transformed and killed Wolheim bore no signature because there was no interaction between the magician and the spell.
Allow me to explain.
My accomplice, Aletha, is an exceptionally strong and talented magician, but she is intensely literal. She cannot alter what she is taught by as much as a breath. Therefore, I used the process that I have perfected to prepare a perfectly ridiculous mechanical monkey. I then placed Tanister’s book on transformation magic, open to the page where the base spell is written, before Aletha. As she read those words, over and over and over, I guided her thought—aimed her, if you will, at the toy. Then I went to the opera, leaving her to it.
When I returned home, Aletha was asleep and the monkey was fairly shimmering with energy. I wrapped it up and put it with the other mail, which was in due time taken down to the post office.
I confess that I hadn’t expected the matter to go forth so quickly. Wolheim must have wound the toy up the moment he received it. The spells would have been released when the mechanism was engaged. With what exceptional results we have seen. I had not expected it to work nearly so well as it did. Eighty-five transformations! I hope each was an agony.
So the thing was done. Wolheim was dead. The monkey, its energy expended, would scarcely invite the scrutiny of the prince’s sorcerer. I thought that would be an end to it. Alas, I had reckoned without my accomplice.
Last night, after I saw you out, I went in search of her. It is our custom to dine together on those days when I’m not engaged, and to work through some of those exercises the doctors had prescribed. I found her in the kitchen, torturing one of the cats. She transformed the poor creature into a monstrosity as I watched—as she watched, smiling delightedly, then laughing aloud when it gave up its life in a shriek of anguish, horribly, horribly misshapen.
It was then that I realized what I had done—and what I must do.
On another subject, before I bid you adieu, the seek spell I employed to locate my prototype reveals that it has come to you. Nothing could be more satisfactory. You will by now have understood it—and what it will mean for our art. The papers are on file with my solicitor. I would be honored if you would take up the work and see it made available. The process is, if I may be forgiven a certain amount of pride in the child of my own intellect, revolutionary.
And now I do bid you adieu, old friend. Pray assure your lady of my everlasting regard, and make her see, won’t you, that this was the only way.
When you hear the engines go out of Station 9, you will know the thing is done.
With respect and affection, your humble servant,
Benjamin Hillier
He let the letter fall from nerveless fingers, seeing it—seeing it all too clearly.
“Nicky?” Nora touched his arm lightly. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Very nearly. I must—”
From the street below, a sudden shouting of sirens. Nicky jumped to the window and threw it wide, staring down as Engine Company No. 9’s scarlet pump truck streaked away. He raised his eyes, staring across the rooftops, to a plume of smoke, dark against the egg-blue sky, and flames, licking up from the fire. He turned away from the window and looked into Nora’s dark brown eyes.
She held up the letter he had dropped and wordlessly opened her arms.
James D. Macdonald
James D. Macdonald was born in White Plains, New York, in 1954, the son of a chemical engineer and an artist, and raised in nearby Bedford. His last significant formal education took place at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, though he passed through the University of Rochester, where he learned that a degree in medieval studies wouldn’t fit him for anything. He went off to sea “to forget,” though he’s forgotten exactly what.
As Yog Sysop, Macdonald ran the Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable on GEnie for two years (1991–93) and now is managing sysop for SSF-Net, an Internet presence provider and discussion site for genre fiction. He is also an EMT-intermediate with the local ambulance squad. Macdonald and Debra Doyle now live—still with various children, cats, and computers—in a big nineteenth-century house in Colebrook, New Hampshire, where they write science fiction and fantasy for children, teenagers, and adults.
M
rs. Roger Collins stood in the visiting room of her home. “Mansion” would have been a better word. The sun shone in through a bay window flanked by French doors. Filmy drapes kept the sun from bleaching the delicate cloth on the circular table in the center of the room. Spiced air from the gardens gently wafted in.
Mrs. Collins was expecting her friend Mrs. Frederick Baxter. She had something she wanted to talk to Shirley about. Last night the strangest thing happened. Mary Collins had known for years that the house was haunted, because there was a window on the second floor that would not stay closed if it wasn’t locked. But last night, in the misty dark of twilight, while entering the upstairs guest bedroom, she saw the translucent shape of a young lady, and the apparition looked at her and she felt—
“Mary, dear!”
It was Shirley, being shown in by Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins had retired at the end of the war, and he had been very helpful during his wife’s recent illness.
Mary had the tea things ready, and the tea itself, a nice oolong with a great deal of milk and sugar, occupied their time along with the small talk of doings in the town. Mr. Collins removed himself to his study. He had always played the stock market, and played it well. The war had left him wealthy, still quite young, for munitions had been greatly in demand. The prosperity that the whole nation now experienced made his investments more valuable by the day, while the contacts that he had across the nation gave him insights that perhaps other men didn’t have.
Now was the time for Mary to tell the story, for that delightful frisson, in the bright afternoon.
“I’m sure you’ll think I’m being silly,” Mary said, “but I felt such a feeling of sadness coming from that woman. It was like a palpable wave. I gasped and took a step backward. Then I switched on the light, and she was gone!”
“You’re so brave,” Shirley said. “I’m sure I would have screamed and run.”
“I was too surprised,” Mary said. “And it wasn’t until the light was on that I realized it wasn’t a real woman at all; she was gone. She would have had to come past me to leave the room, you know. I looked under the bed and in the closet, and in the bathroom, but she was gone completely. It was only then that I realized I’d been able to see through her.”
“You could? What are you going to do now?”
Mary’s eyes sparkled, and she sipped her tea. “I thought it would be such great fun to have a séance.”
“Are you quite certain? I mean, if you felt this sadness . . . that can’t be good.”
“She wants help, the poor thing,” Mary said. “This is an old house. And after all those years of opening the window, she’s finally gotten to trust me enough to appear and ask for my help.”
“What does Roger say about your plan?”
“Oh, I haven’t told him. You know what a stick-in-the-mud he is.”
On a gray afternoon, while a desultory breeze ruffled the remaining leaves on the trees around his home, Orville Nesbit sat in the overstuffed chair in his library, holding the letter that the morning post had brought. Mr. Nesbit styled himself a psychic researcher. He was entitled to call himself a master of science, master of arts, and doctor of philosophy, though he seldom did. His degrees were quite legitimate, in psychology and related fields. He had never had to use them. Family money supported the house and the grounds it stood on. His personal needs were simple and his wants were few; but he was a gourmand and had a weakness for old books, and these habits required that he occasionally turn his hand to trade.
His library contained books that required a particular turn of mind to comprehend, as well as fluency in the archaic forms of several languages. Many were the sole surviving copies. Royal and ecclesiastical censors over the centuries had exhibited little tolerance about certain things, and such volumes were expensive.
The letter, on unlined white notepaper with a blue border—high rag content and a watermark—told of a Ouija board that had spelled out the letters
M-U-R-D-E-R,
and of a feeling of oppressive hatred experienced before the candles (burning low and blue) had mysteriously blown out. The letter ended with the familiar plea “Please come at once” and the heartening words “I will pay any fee.”
The signature and the return address told Mr. Nesbit that the writer could, indeed, pay any fee. If he took the case, it would provide a welcome break from authenticating documents for the National Archives, in which dreary pursuit he had been engaged for the last several months.
Mr. Nesbit rose and exchanged his silk dressing gown for a tweed jacket and a chesterfield coat, and set off into town to make arrangements to travel to California for an unknown period. Leaving the raw autumn weather behind would be a plus.
The Collins car met Orville at the station and carried him some ways south, through the town and into rolling hills, where swooping drives led to estates well out of sight beyond gated walls. Nesbit had the top button of his shirt unbuttoned and his neck draped with a loose silk cravat. He hoped that it wasn’t too informal. His three heavy leather suitcases contained mostly clothing, with just a smattering of specialized equipment. His most important equipment, a notebook and fountain pen, nestled in the inside pocket of his linen jacket. The suit would need cleaning promptly after the transcontinental railway journey.
His quarters, he found on arrival, were in the guesthouse beyond the swimming pool, with a spectacular view of the Pacific below the cliffs. The driver had helped him with his bags, then left him with the words “Dinner is at seven.”
Orville walked through the guesthouse—bedroom, bathroom, parlor, kitchenette, and wraparound porch, single-storied under a Spanish tile roof. He hung up his clothing in the bedroom wardrobe, then sat at the table in the parlor, in a wide wicker chair. After spending a few minutes in restful silence, he pulled out his pocket watch, consulted it, then took out his journal and began to write. The gold-edged steel of his fountain pen glided over the unlined paper in a sharply slanted Italian hand.
Journal of Orville Nesbit—
I see before me a house in what is called the California Gothic style. Portions are clearly from the nineteenth century, though there have been renovations and additions since. The site is a secluded one, and the residents have not yet made themselves known to me. I hope to meet them tonight at dinner. Tomorrow I intend to go into town, in order to research the house and its various occupants from the moment of its construction.
There are three events to consider, based on what I know now. First, a window. Second, an apparition. Third, a spiritualistic message. The three merit their own approaches. A plumb bob and a spool of thread for the first, a historical review for the second, and an interview with the participants in the séance for the third. I am particularly interested in chatting with the other person who touched the planchette.
A knock on the open door and a shadow caused Nesbit to look up. A gentleman stood before him, neatly attired. The man took off his hat as he entered. “You’re younger than I expected,” he said.
Nesbit stood, placing aside his journal and capping his pen, and extended his hand. “Orville Nesbit, at your service.”
“Oh, sit down,” the man said, pulling a chair around with his foot and sitting in it himself. “I’m Roger Collins. Before things go too far, we have to have a chat.”
“Of course,” Nesbit said, resuming his seat. “How may I be of service?”
“I had my people check you out,” Collins said, “and they say you’re clean—that you really do have the degrees you say you have and that there are no scandals attached to your name. But the first thing you should know is that whatever arrangement you’ve made with my wife, you’re not going to be getting a penny more. I expect you to do whatever mumbo jumbo you do and then go back to where you came from, pronto.”
