Nevermore (17 page)

“I should think not,” Lady Jean said, guiding him to a comfortable chair. “No true hero ever is …” .

Houdini pondered the nature of heroism as he studied her face, so utterly without guile. He noted her sincere smile as Sir Arthur sat beside her and lovingly covered her hands with his own. Across the way, Bess waited with her eyes shut. To assist, if possible, Houdini closed his own eyes, calming his mind with thoughts of religion.

A sharp rapping put an end to his meditation. Lady Jean gripped a pencil, her arm jerking with galvanic spasms, the tip pounding against the tabletop. “They have me now, Arthur,” she said. “It’s never been stronger.”

“Allow it to flow, my darling.” The knight gently kneaded the back of her regal neck and the corded tension relaxed somewhat.

Houdini watched the spasmodic jerking of Lady Jean’s hand. He had no doubt the seizure was genuine. A thrill of anticipation prickled through him, generated by his overwhelming desire to feel his mother’s presence once again. He wanted desperately to believe, at the same time recognizing this to be a sucker’s impulse. All deception begins with the deceived’s willing trust.

Jean regarded her trembling right arm as if it were a foreign creature; fingers bloodless from the strain of clenching the pencil in a death grip. “Spirit,” she cried. “Do you believe in God?”

As if in reply, her hand beat three times upon the table.

Jean looked straight into Arthur’s eyes when she said: “Then I will make the sign of the cross.”

The agony showed on her face as she directed her vibrating hand to scratch a cruciform on the top sheet of a pad. “Who is there?” Jean implored. “Is it Mrs. Weiss, mother of Houdini the magician?”

Again, her hand tapped three times, the pencil scrolling across the page, words shaped by a jerky scrawl. “Oh my darling,” she wrote, “thank God, at last I’m through—I’ve tried, oh so often—now I am happy—”

The large letters filled the first page quickly. Sir Arthur tore it from the pad and handed it to Houdini. The magician read all in an instant, his face grim and pale. Clearly possessed, Lady Doyle scribbled on, page after page. Sir Arthur ripped each free as she finished, tossing it over to Houdini. “Use me, use me…,” Lady Doyle moaned.

“There, my dear …” Sir Arthur rubbed her neck. “Be gentle with her. Gentle …”

The pages flew from her spastic hand. Sir Arthur ripped them off the block, passing each to the magician. Houdini read on and on, loving, eager thoughts, the promise of a better world to come: “I want him to know that—that—I have bridged the gulf—That is what I wanted, oh so much—Now I can rest in peace—How soon—”

Sir Arthur interrupted at this point to ask the magician to think of some sort of private question, a silent test to see if the spirit at their side was truly his mother. Houdini nodded in agreement, thinking, “Can my mother read my mind?” Lady Jean continued to scribble.

The next sheet began: “I always read my beloved son’s mind—his dear mind—there is so much I want to say to him—but—I am almost overwhelmed by this joy of talking to him once more—” Houdini nodded at Sir Arthur as he read it.

“She got it right?” Sir Arthur beamed. “You lucky man …” And he smiled with pure pleasure and pride as the scribbled pages continued to flow until a pile of fifteen or more lay before the magician.

After the séance, Lady Doyle lay back on the couch, exhausted and unable to speak. Sir Arthur saw to her comfort, placing a damp, folded washcloth on her forehead. Houdini stacked the sheets of notepaper, feeling both grateful and embarrassed. The silence made him uncomfortable and he spoke mainly to sidestep such feelings, just aimless banter about automatic writing. Houdini picked up a pencil. “Maybe I should try it myself at home,” he said. “How do you start? Just write the first thing that comes to mind?” He printed a name on the pad: POWELL.

Sir Arthur glanced over the magician’s shoulder. “Powell!” he exclaimed with considerable excitement. “Great God! Truly Saul is among the prophets! You are a medium.”

“Powell, the magician,” Houdini said. “He’s down on his luck in Texas. Used to be big. A headliner. Mrs. Houdini and I were talking about him just the other day.”

“No, no, that’s but your conscious mind searching out a logical explanation. Dr. Ellis Powell, a dear friend and fighting partner in the great cause, died recently in London. I am certain it is he, seeking contact with me.”

“Just a coincidence. I was thinking of Frederick Eugene Powell.”

Conan Doyle grew red in the face. “You deny the indisputable evidence before you out of your obsession with discrediting spiritism.”

“No. It is you who distorts the truth in support of your own beliefs.” Houdini gathered up the leaves of the “spirit” letter. “Thank you, Lady Doyle, for your earnest efforts on my behalf.” He held out his arm for Bess. “Come, Mrs. Houdini. Good afternoon, Sir Arthur.” With exaggerated dignity, the magician escorted his wife from the room.

*     *     *

On the train back to the city, Houdini tried to mollify his Bess, but she was in no mood for conciliation. “A seaside holiday is supposed to last more than one afternoon.” Bess stared out the window, refusing to look at him. “At least among sane people it does.”

“There was no way I could stay, Bess,” he pleaded. “Lady Doyle was so well-meaning. She believes the letter to be genuine. I know it’s bogus. Mama couldn’t write English. She would never mark a letter with a cross. Bess, for crying out loud, today is Mama’s birthday! Don’t you think she would have mentioned that?”

“Well, I suppose, knowing Mama …” Bess smiled and gripped his hand. “Do you think it’s all in her subconscious? Lady Doyle’s writing, I mean.”

“I believe an alienist would say so.” Houdini sat straight-backed beside her like a boyish suitor. “I’ve seen every kind of fake in the world, and wherever it comes from, I know Lady Doyle to be sincere. But, even so, sincerity doesn’t make the letter genuine.”

“Harry? You don’t suppose the Conan Doyles might take offense from the note we left, do you?” Bess looked like a little girl when she worried.

“Of course not. I explained we were called away unexpectedly.” Houdini cupped his wife’s small hands within his own. “Maybe it’d be safer for them to put some distance between us.”

“What do you mean, Harry?”

“Oh, just a premonition. I’ll explain it to you someday, kiddo.”

H
OUDINI WALKED UPTOWN ON
Madison. He’d already been around the block once, having asked the cabby to drop him at the corner by the DeLuxe French Dry Cleaners, where his reflection wavered a second time in the plate glass window. He had approached a lifetime of challenges with the same precise caution. Whether piano case or iron boiler, glass box. or wooden barrel, the challenger always left his container on display in the theater lobby for a week prior to the performance, giving the magician and his crew ample time to examine the problem and build an appropriate gag into the challenge, rigging it so the eventual onstage escape went off without a hitch.

He turned west on Eighty-fifth Street, walking back toward Fifth, on his own for tonight’s challenge. He saw the dark turrets crowning Opal Crosby Fletcher’s mock chateau and the darker silhouette of the trees in Central Park across the avenue. Considering the evening as a problem to be solved, as an undercover investigation, cloaked the adventure in propriety and masked the giddy erotic excitement gnawing at Houdini’s gut. The magician’s heart raced as he mounted the stone steps to the arched entranceway. He told himself it was stage fright.

Maybe I’m walking straight into the spider’s den, Houdini thought, handing his hat to the elderly housekeeper who opened the door in answer to his ring. He followed her tidy gray bun across a vast shadowed foyer, illuminated by a single wall sconce. Other broad dark rooms gaped on either side; the whole place silent as a foreign embassy closed for the night. A huge unlit chandelier hung like an outstretched midnight octopus in the gloom above the curving stairs. He stayed one step behind the prim old woman. She led the way without saying a word.

Bess had gone to the opera with Dash. The magician took comfort in the safety of crowds. Houdini told his wife nothing of his fears. He saw no point in having her worry. All the same, he hired the Burns Detective Agency to conduct a 24-hour surveillance of his home. His brother was the only person, other than Conan Doyle, with whom the magician discussed the Esp girl and the connecting web of murdered strangers in which he found himself inexplicably enmeshed.

The library door stood open at the end of a long hallway on the second floor. It was a spacious room, warm with woodwork, gold-tooled leather bindings, and thick Caucasian carpets. A gas fire flickered in a marble-faced hearth under a Georgian mantel, giving no warmth but casting an agreeable light. Several bright candles augmented the mood of comfort and intimacy.

Isis sat by the fire, looking altogether radiant in a clinging midnight-blue velvet gown with a considerable décolletage. Firelight cast a rosy glow on her bare neck and shoulders. She wore a single ornament between her breasts: a large Mayan moon-face of hammered sheet gold. Originally part of an ancient funeral necklace, it had been adapted by Walter Clarke Fletcher into a pin as a present for his teenage bride.

She extended her slender hand to Houdini. “Welcome at last,” she said. “Will you join me in something to drink? I’m having absinthe.” She gestured at a green bottle and a cut-crystal water pitcher on a tray beside her. “I remember you don’t drink spirits, but Martha can bring you anything you like; apple cider, coffee, tea, milk…?”

“Tea would be fine.” Houdini took a seat opposite her. “Two sugars. And in a glass, please.”

“Martha. Some tea for Mr. Houdini, served in a glass.”

The old woman made no reply, slipping away like the shadow of a crow when the sun goes behind a cloud. The magician never noticed her silent passage, so intent was he on the delicate young woman deftly preparing a drink on the low table between them. She poured a portion of the pale green liqueur into a tall stemmed glass and placed a silver absinthe spoon shaped like a miniature trowel across the rim. Centering a single sugar cube on the spoon, she slowly trickled a thin stream of water over it, a sly sweet rainfall dripping through the ornate perforations. Within the glass, the absinthe occluded, the emerald clarity misting into milky opalescence.

“The green fairy unfolds her cobweb wings,” Isis purred softly. She looked up, and was surprised to find Houdini’s gaze had strayed to a gleaming object on the mantel. At first, he assumed this to be a crystal ball but realized on prolonged inspection that it took the form of a human skull.

“Aztec,” Isis said, catching his eye. “Amazing work. Shaped from a single large quartz crystal. Done entirely with abrasives. They had no metal tools, you know.”

“Looks like blown glass.”

“Yes. It’s that perfect. Belongs in a museum.”

The cat-silent Martha arrived with the tea. She set down a tray and was gone before either of them noticed.

“Very quick,” Houdini said.

“Martha takes good care of me.”

Houdini dropped two sugar cubes in his glass, added a spoon, and poured the hot tea. Isis watched as he stirred and sipped.

“Interesting flavor,” he said.

“Herbal. My own blend. Mainly mint and sassafras. I pick and dry the plants myself every summer. When I visit my parents in New Hampshire.”

Houdini put down his glass. The strange taste remained in his mouth. “Your own recipe, huh?” Some secret agent. She might have slipped him a mickey. He thought of Lucrezia Borgia and put on an urgent face, an expression of discomfort calculated to make a request for the lavatory sound natural. Immediate regurgitation was the task at hand.

“Is it brewed too strong?” Isis reached across the table for his glass and took a long thoughtful sip. “No. Seems about right …” Her knowing eyes stared past his clumsy disguise. She took another sip. “Much too sweet, though …” Handing him back the glass. “Don’t you think?”

Houdini didn’t know what to think. He suddenly felt very thirsty and swallowed the rest of the tea. She looked so innocent, yet dressed with such confident sophistication. The intensity of her power terrified him. “I like it that way,” he said. “Sweet.”

Isis sipped her absinthe. “You’re in luck then…” She pushed a gleaming silver sugar bowl in his direction. Houdini fixed himself another glass of tea. “If you’re agreeable,” she continued, “I thought we might conduct the séance right here. Are you comfortable with that?”

“Right here is fine by me. What sort of séance did you have in mind?” Houdini immediately cursed himself for any unintended innuendo.

Isis stood, her sleek velvet gown sweeping down in a fluid rush to puddle about her feet on the floor. Her ironic smile announced a connoisseur’s appreciation of the double entendre. “It has nothing to do with the mind, my dear Osiris …” She picked the crystal skull off the mantel and sat back down with it cradled in her lap. “We are entering the realm of the spirit.”

“No cabinet…? No controls?” The magician did not attempt to hide his ironic smirk.

“No props, Osiris. This is not a sideshow.” She stroked the sacred Aztec skull and smiled. “All I ask is your concentration. Think of the one you wish to contact. Fill your mind with her presence.”

Houdini nodded and swallowed hard. Who said anything about “her”? A light film of sweat formed like dew on his forehead. How does she know so much? “And you?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice even. “What should I watch for?”

“Nothing.” She closed her eyes. “I am nothing. I wish to lose myself. To let go… . My only desire is to serve as your conduit, oh my lord, Osiris …”

Houdini squirmed. A tumult of conflicting emotions raged within. He felt in awe of this young woman. He feared her. God help him, he desired her. The shame engendered by his lust burned with intensified heat, fueled by a desperate yearning to communicate with his dead mother. At heart, he was a sucker. He longed to believe. At the same time, a cold, cynical eye watched to see what sort of “ectoplasm” she conjured. She had to be good, working in the firelight. Most mediums demanded complete darkness to manage their trickery.