The Durham Deception (31 page)

Tom retraced his steps to the Assembly Rooms by a route which was now thoroughly familiar. Entering the ornate auditorium, he was relieved to hear from the stage the voice of Major Sebastian Marmont who was, indeed, presiding over arrangements for that evening's performance, his last in Durham. With him were his three sons and Dilip Gopal. But there was no sign of Helen. Tom felt a chill which turned to deep unease when Marmont said he had not seen her.

‘But you wrote her a note asking for help in some trick.'

‘I haven't written any note. Are you sure, Mr Ansell?'

Tom realized that Helen had not shown him the letter from the County Hotel. If he had seen it he might have recognized the writing, or at least recognized that it wasn't from the magician. He cursed himself for his carelessness. He cursed himself for leaving her and racing to the police station to share his discovery about the telegram. So where was Helen? What in God's name had happened to her?

When Tom set off at a brisk pace for the police-house, Helen Ansell had debated for a moment whether to follow him. But she was rather irritated that he had insisted on accompanying her in the first place and she was baffled by his talk of telegrams. He'd got some hold of some silly notion which he had not troubled to explain to her. She hardly listened to his promise to join her later.

Of course it was safe for her to call on Major Marmont. She did not have to be escorted everywhere by her husband, especially now they had Inspector Traynor's assurance that the danger from Anthony Smight was over. Helen had the magician's letter with her. She retrieved it from her purse and read it again, standing in the street. Marmont was requesting her assistance. In a letter on notepaper headed with the name of the County Hotel, he asked her to come not to the Assembly Rooms but to the Palace of Varieties behind the Court Inn. She knew this was where he stored his conjuring apparatus and where he prepared some of his acts.

The Palace of Varieties did not live up to its palatial name. It was a simple wooden building not far from the court house and the gaol, and a venue for acts such as trick cyclists or hypnotists, judging by the faded and torn bills displayed outside. Its audience would be drawn from the less prosperous areas of the city or the mining communities roundabout.

The outer doors were locked. Helen walked down the alley to one side of the building. There was another entrance here on which was painted ‘Performers Only'. This door was ajar. She pushed at it and then hesitated, suddenly not so sure of herself. It opened on to a narrow passage. Helen walked a few feet inside. There was a single gas-jet burning in the passage. She turned a corner and came to a short flight of wooden stairs. It was dim at the top but a draught of cooler air suggested she was somewhere backstage.

She listened hard but heard nothing except the hiss of the gas-jet. She trod softly up the steps. She would just make sure that Major Marmont was not here, and then she would go back. She came to a high-ceilinged but cramped area at the top of the stairs. She picked her way between wicker hampers and wooden crates and mounds of fabric, and pushed at some heavy drapes. At once Helen found herself standing on the stage of the Palace of Varieties. The light here was subdued but better than in the off-stage area. The footlights burned low, giving an effect of an autumn evening.

Near the front of the stage was a queer piece of apparatus. It was a quilted platform, with the dimensions of a very narrow single bed, and it seemed to be floating unsupported about four feet off the ground. As Helen moved towards it the light above the floating platform grew hazier and broke up, almost dissolving into splinters before her eyes. She reached out an experimental hand to touch the object. Her fingers struck against something as taut and metallic as a piano wire. She started back. Then she realized that there was a cluster of wires, very thin strands which held up the platform. The hazy effect was caused by the wires blocking and diffusing the light from the front of the stage.

She stretched out her hand again. The wires were coated in some substance which made them dull, almost invisible. Close to, though, she could see that they converged and ran through multiple points on the ‘floating' board. Underneath they were attached to blocks on the stage floor. Overhead the wires fanned out and ran upwards into the dark space within the proscenium arch. Helen saw in the dimness above a device like a great roller suspended out of sight of the audience together with some sort of crank or winch which gleamed faintly in the light. So this was how the floating man trick was achieved!

She passed to one side of the hanging board and, holding her arm below her eyes to reduce the glare from the footlights, she looked out into the auditorium. This was a plainer space than the Assembly Rooms and the seating had a makeshift appearance. But where was Major Marmont? The levitation trick was set up and the footlights were burning low but there was no magician to perform it.

Helen felt a draught on the back of her neck. Her skin prickled and she understood in an instant how foolish she had been to come to the Palace of Varieties, how foolish to come here alone. She was almost too terrified to turn round but, as she was nerving herself to do so, an arm snaked about her neck and a rough cloth was clamped to her nose and mouth. She struggled to remove the hand but the person behind her was taller and stronger, and after a moment she felt her flailing arms grow feeble. Fearing she was about to suffocate, Helen instinctively concentrated on drawing breath through the prickly, strange-smelling fabric fastened across her mouth and nostrils. The footlights wavered and grew dimmer in front of her vision while the man's fingers were hard and rigid, like the legs of an iron spider, and that was the last impression in her mind.

Levitation

There was a terrible burning sensation in her throat and Helen thought she was about to be sick. But the burning sensation subsided and the moment passed. Some time went by without any thoughts at all. Later on – it might have been two hours or two minutes later – she wondered whether she had her eyes shut. If she did it was odd because she was definitely awake. Yet all she was able to see was a black space interspersed with darting yellow streaks. So was she really awake or was she dreaming?

She was lying on her back, resting against a surface that was quite uncomfortable. Where was the iron spider that had leaped on to her face? She could still feel the impress of its horrible legs digging into her cheeks. And there was an unfamiliar, pungent scent in her nostrils and a sweetish taste in her mouth. Not an unpleasant taste or an unpleasant smell but not comforting ones either.

Now, were her eyes properly open or were they closed? It might be absurd but the only way to make sure was by the sense of touch. She went to raise her arm so as to feel her own face, but the arm did not respond even though it wanted to, she knew it wanted to. She was able to wiggle her fingers but not to move her hand. She made the same experiment with her other arm and that too she could not budge. Her arms seemed to be tethered.

With a rising sense of panic, Helen struggled back to what was almost full consciousness. She blinked rapidly but the scene before her eyes stayed the same, a deep well of darkness broken by some yellowish gleams. The gleams were easy to understand, they were caused by lights somewhere below her but reflecting off things
above
her. Machinery of some sort, metal handles and cogs. And at once Helen Ansell remembered where she was, in the Palace of Varieties, and why she had come here, to help Major Sebastian Marmont, and how foolish she had been to come alone.

She knew too that she was lying on the quilted platform used in Marmont's levitation act. Not only lying on the platform but secured to it, tied to it. There was an array of fine wires next to her head. She could see them out of the corner of her eye. She made to raise her head, trying to guess how far she was above the stage, but an abrupt sensation of tightness round her throat made her lie back again. She sensed rather than saw that the platform was in the position where she'd first seen it on the stage, hovering about four feet above the ground. There would be no great harm in falling four feet, no danger if she had to tumble off her perch once she was free to move. The platform was stable too. She could not feel it giving or swaying beneath her.

Helen hoped Major Sebastian Marmont would soon come along to release her. She was willing to take part in his magic rehearsals and willing to help him refine his new tricks, but she really had had enough of lying here, had enough of feeling nauseous and terrified.

Then she heard his footsteps echoing on the bare boards.

A head appeared in her line of vision. But it was not Sebastian Marmont's.

She recognized the man from a drawing that she'd seen somewhere recently. The lined, thin features, the malicious glint in the eyes. But what was his name? She couldn't remember it, not for the moment.

‘Mrs Ansell, you are finally awake. Good.'

Helen wanted to say something but her tongue was thick and cumbersome in her mouth and she thought again that she was about to be sick. She concentrated on swallowing, on repressing the feeling.

‘Chloroform doses are tricky things,' said the man, hanging over her. His voice was deep. He spoke like a gentleman. ‘Even a doctor or man of science may make a mistake with chloroform. It depends on the size and weight of the individual, and on the sex of course. Too little and no effect is produced, too much and death may result. Perhaps I administered more than I intended since you have been asleep a long time.'

Helen tried to raise her head once more and experienced the same tight sensation round her neck. A look of genuine concern passed across the face of the gentleman.

‘Please don't move your head, Mrs Ansell. There is a wire cord fastened around your throat and it is secured to this floating bed. The wire is part of the magical apparatus belonging to Major Marmont which I have put to my own use. If you tug against it, you will do yourself no good.'

Helen fought to control her terror. She was in the hands of a madman and although every nerve in her body was screaming at her to flee she could not move. Yet, even in the middle of her terror, she understood she was being kept alive for a reason. This man, this Doctor Anthony Smight, had not killed her – if it was his intention to kill. It must be. She was familiar with his other crimes. But he had not killed her yet even though he might easily have delivered a fatal dose of chloroform or suffocated her or done some other dreadful thing while she was unconscious. She had to remain alive for as long as possible. Every saved moment meant that someone might find her. How to distract him? How to prevent him putting some final, terrible intention into effect?

‘You do not know who am I am, do you?' said Smight, almost gently.

Helen was about to make the slightest nodding motion with her head, about to croak out that, yes, she did know his identity and that the police knew it too, when denial suddenly seemed the safer course.

So she whispered, ‘No. Who are you? Why are you holding me prisoner?'

‘Let me explain, Mrs Ansell. A few weeks ago you and your husband were present at a séance in London as a result of which a man died. He killed himself because he was afraid of persecution despite being an honest medium. Your evidence would have sentenced him to shame and disgrace so he took his own life. Do you know what I am talking about now?'

‘Ernest Smight,' said Helen, surprised at the steadiness of her voice. ‘I read that he had drowned himself. I was sorry to read it.'

‘Your sorrow comes too late to help. Ernest was my beloved brother. I am Doctor Anthony Smight. It was your actions and the trickery of a policeman in disguise that caused Ernest to do away with himself. The coroner's inquest pronounced that he had taken his life while the balance of his mind was disturbed, but I say, Mrs Ansell, that it is you and the others who are truly responsible for his death. As responsible as if you had personally seized him and bundled him beneath the waters of the Thames.'

Helen was gripped by a mixture of fury and indignation. She felt her face grow hot and tears sprang to her eyes. It is absurd, she wanted to scream at this lunatic. Nobody wanted your brother to die. He committed a small crime and he would have served a few weeks in prison, at the very worst. I even felt some pity for your brother. If it had been left to me, there would have been no case to answer. But she said not a word and Smight interpreted the furious workings of her face as more signs of fear. He reached out a hand and patted her shoulder. He was almost smiling. At least his thin mouth lengthened in a kind of grimace.

‘Do not worry, Mrs Ansell,' said Doctor Anthony Smight. ‘Your suffering will not be as great as my brother's. It will certainly be much shorter since you have not so much leisure to ponder your death. There, I can see that I have shaken you by referring to death. But there are two already dead, the policeman and his wife. Two more must die, you and your husband. Then justice will be done.'

Where was Tom? thought Helen. She'd last seen him sprinting off towards the police-house. But he did not know that she was coming here, to the Palace of Varieties. She hadn't mentioned it to him, annoyed that he insisted on accompanying her in the first place. Tom would assume she had gone to the Assembly Rooms. When he didn't find her there, what would he do? Did Anthony Smight know that the police were on his tail? He was behaving in a strangely relaxed and confident way, just as if he was a family doctor giving some consultation to an old friend. No, he must be surely unaware that the police had his picture and were searching for him. This gave her a little burst of hope. Then she remembered that Harcourt and Traynor had left for Newcastle.

‘Wait, wait,' she said. ‘How did you know that I would be willing to help Major Marmont with his magic tricks? How did you manage to write to me on paper from his hotel?'