The Dark Farewell (3 page)
where there were clubs where a man could go for drinks and the company of men like himself. In Harlem, Greenwich and Times Square there were restaurants, cafeterias, cafés and speakeasies where the city’s intellectuals and artists and bon vivants gathered.
Little Egypt was a cultural wasteland in comparison. And Julian Devereux stood out like a tropical
flower.
So Flynn strode along the brick streets, waving the gnats away, watching the fireflies winking on and off. It was still uncomfortably warm, though the yellow stars were high in the pink and violet sky now.
A poster in a shop window caught his eye, and he stopped to examine it. Fancy swirling script
announced The Magnificent Belloc’s public exhibition on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday
night at the Opera House on West Franklin Street.
Flynn snorted at the flowery sketch of Julian in the garb of an Indian prince. He was surrounded by
highly stylized zephyrs—or maybe ordinary working draughts—with faces both mournful and gay. The
spirits he communicated with? Yet even in that strange drawing Julian’s mysterious dark eyes seemed to gaze out at Flynn, seemed to hypnotize him.
Amused at himself, but curious nonetheless, he caught the little streetcar and made the journey across town to the Opera House. It was a grand-looking building with a wide arch entrance, terra-cotta trim and sour-looking gargoyles.
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Josh Lanyon
“You’re just in time,” the freckle-faced girl in the ticket booth told him. “We got strict orders to lock the door after the show starts.”
“Is it much of a crowd?”
To his surprise, the girl said, “Oh, yes. The Magnificent Belloc impressed a lot of folks last night, and they told their friends and families.”
Flynn raised skeptical brows, but he went inside the lobby which was startlingly ornate with dark
wood and gilt fixtures and red carpets. An usher held the door for him and Flynn slipped inside the darkened theater. The door closed firmly after him.
Through the darkness, he found his way down a row of plush seats, located an empty seat near the
back and sat down. It was only then that he actually looked at the stage. There was a small table with a crystal ball in the center. Behind the table, The Magnificent Belloc was sitting in a large gold throne.
Presumably it belonged to the Opera House since it was hard to picture gramps and Julian lugging that piece of furniture all over the Midwest. It was a nice prop, though, and it suited the occasion and the man sitting in it.
Julian looked like one of those French aristocrats from the time right before the people got tired of eating cake and started lopping heads. He wore dark blue leggings and a silver and powder blue brocade frock coat over a soft shirt with bunches of lace at the throat and cuffs. He had caved to the fashion of phony mediums and donned a turban, but it was relatively simple, creamy pale silk fastened with a giant sapphire. There were jewels on his slender hands and pinned at the lace at his throat; they flashed in the footlights every time he moved. The crowd seemed spellbound, and Flynn was not surprised. Julian looked beautiful and exotic and mysterious. He looked unearthly.
Flynn had already missed the introductions and preliminaries, whatever they were. Julian’s eyes were shut and he was mumbling to himself, but the acoustics of the old building were excellent and Flynn
recognized the occasional French word. Not French as he knew it. It was probably supposed to be the
French of Paris at the time of the Revolution, but it was more likely French Creole. Then again, French Creole was supposed to be an older variety of French, wasn’t it?
Someone shouted out from the crowd, “What about these here murders we’re hearing about? What do
the spirits say about them?”
The Magnificent Belloc shook his head, gave an impatient flick of his jeweled fingers and kept
concentrating.
There were hisses and shushing from the crowd for the man who had interrupted the mystic’s train of
thought. He subsided, abashed.
Belloc—it was hard to think of him as Julian in this context—sat up straight and opened his eyes. He had a distinctly French inflection as he said, “Her name is Marie. No.
Mary
. A pretty child.
La pauvre
petite.
She was very young when she crossed, yes?”
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The Dark Farewell
Reaction rippled through the crowd but no one spoke up.
“She was…confused at first,” Belloc said gravely. “The young ones often are, but they…what is the
word? Habituate the most quickly.” He looked out over the sea of faces, although he probably couldn’t see anything beyond the front of the stage. “Mary. She is all right now. Everything is all right now. Who is here for Mary?”
There was a smothered sob as though torn unwilling out of some grieving breast, and an elderly
woman stood up, handkerchief pressed to her mouth.
“Ah.
Grand-mère
,” Belloc said kindly. “Mary wishes to tell you something. She wishes to tell you that she is all right. She is happy. She is playing with the little lambs and baby angels. She is strong and she is well again.”
The woman sobbed into her handkerchief.
“
Non, non, Grand-mère
,” Belloc said quickly. “Mary wishes you to be happy for her. She has joined us with one purpose tonight and that is to tell you that she thanks you for all your love and your care, and that she is in a better place now,
oui
?”
The woman buried her face in her handkerchief and sank back into her seat.
Belloc nodded, well-satisfied with his chicanery, and relaxed in his throne. He closed his eyes.
Already the murmurs were running through the crowd impressed with the evening’s entertainment so
far.
Belloc mumbled some more French words. He dipped his head as though agreeing to something the
spirits were saying. Listening a few seconds more, he held up a graceful hand, bidding the spirits to shut it for a sec.
“Joe…Joseph…he is very excited to speak tonight. Who is here for Joseph?”
Four different people rose throughout the audience, and a nervous titter went through the crowd.
Belloc laughed too. “
Eh bien
! We must narrow this down.” He turned to consult with Joe for another few seconds, but again it appeared Joe was overeager and a little incoherent.
“Joe was a miner? Is that correct?”
All four members of the audience remained stubbornly standing.
Flynn began to enjoy himself.
Belloc returned to listening to Joe. He cast the audience an apologetic look. “It is a little hard to understand. Joe, he is not…was not…much for conversation on this side. Except perhaps when he had a bit of the…how you say…
moonshine
?”
Laughter rippled through the audience and three of the four standing sat down. Pointedly.
Belloc smiled encouragingly at the fourth. “What is your name, Madame?”
“Mable Gabbay. I was Joe’s second wife.”
“Oh yes?” Belloc hesitated a fraction. “And the first Madame Gabbay, she is…?”
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Josh Lanyon
Mable said grimly, “Joe was nine years a widower when I met him.”
Belloc turned back to Joe, who appeared to be requesting a quick word. He listened attentively to Joe, then turned back to the widow. He said with charming simplicity, “He misses you, Madame. There is no doubt of this. He misses you greatly.”
“What I want to know,” Mable said, “is whether
she’s
over there with him?”
The audience burst into nervous laughter. Surprisingly, Belloc laughed too, although he quickly
sobered.
“Madame Gabbay,” he said seriously, “it is most important that you understand that it is different on the other side. Joe has returned to us tonight for two purposes. The first is that he wishes you to understand that on the other side the feelings and thoughts that trouble us on the earthly plane are gone. They are no more.”
Mable bridled at this but didn’t argue.
“The second purpose for Joe’s presence here tonight is that he wishes you to understand that he loves you. He wishes he had told you this more often. But though he did not say the words, he was not a man for words, he felt for you
la passion grande
.”
Mable did not seem to have an answer for that. She stared with a sort of hard, anxious longing at the empty space on the stage next to Belloc’s throne before taking her seat again.
Flynn felt faintly nauseated. This was nothing more than base manipulation of people’s deepest, most cherished feelings. Belloc was skilled enough, though the act was much simpler than others Flynn had seen.
No floating lights or musical instruments, no weird noises or showy stagecraft, no assistant moving through the crowd and feeding him code words and signals. Belloc was doing it all through, no doubt, painstaking research of the community: reading the obituaries and social pages of the local paper, checking the local cemetery, exploring the town and picking up useful bits of info—all that plus using what was no doubt a wily intuition. Given how very at ease he was, Flynn guessed he’d been involved in this mystical fraud one way or another since childhood. It was sickening and it was fascinating.
After the success of Joe and Mary, Belloc moved into high gear. He kept the names flying, kept the
audience eagerly supplying him with the cues and information he needed.
He kept up his reassuring prattle about the idyllic happiness on the other side and the beauty and joy of being dead. And the suckers ate it up, every word.
Had it been a different time and place, Flynn would have taken time and pleasure in writing a searing expose of His Magnificence. But he didn’t have time and this was not a town to be trusted when angered.
Flynn didn’t need more blood on his hands.
“Henrietta, Orrin says that you must look in the cellar. There is something valuable there. You will know it when you see it. Peter, Dolly says you must remarry.
Vraiment.
You do not honor her memory with loneliness and grief, but with joy and love. Maggie, your brother Glenn sends his greetings and wishes you 18
The Dark Farewell
to know that he is happy and well. David, Gus says you must not waste time on regret. He is happy that you are here. Your presence will make a difference in the days to come.”
Flynn caught this last in frozen disbelief. “You phony little sonofabitch,” he muttered. His words
carried with unexpected clarity in the pause that had followed Belloc’s last remark.
People glanced around looking for the heretic, and there were murmurs of displeasure. On stage,
Belloc had fallen silent, fist to his forehead, ostensibly concentrating hard.
“Angela,” he said slowly, “I have a message from Bill.” He raised his head and stared out beyond the glare of the footlights. “Is Angela in the house tonight?”
A tall woman stood midway up the sea of red velvet chairs. “I’m Angela. Bill was my father. William
Robert Tucker. He passed nine years ago.” She looked around smiling, and others were nodding
affirmation.
In that same tired voice, Belloc said, “Angela, Bill says that you must not feel guilty for going out tonight. He was teasing you, that is all.”
Angela seemed to recoil. She said falteringly, “What does he mean? What is he saying? Who was
teasing me?”
“Bill…was teasing you.” The fakir must have been tiring because he wasn’t bothering with the accent
anymore.
“
Bill?
My husband Bill? Is that what he means? What does he mean? What is he saying?” She looked around as though expecting answers from the audience, but the people around her were deathly still.
“Bill says he loves you…you must not grieve for the…you must not.”
“What are you
saying
?”
The voice dragged on. “When you see the music box he made you—”
“My father never did!”
“When you listen to the tune ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’…”
Angela screamed, her voice ringing shrilly off the rafters and walls. “It’s not true. It’s not Bill. It’s my father. It’s
not
Bill!”
There was stricken silence in the auditorium. Flynn could almost pick up the soft, tired breaths of
Belloc. The spiritualist was gripping the arms of the throne with white-knuckled hands, his eyes were closed, his face tense and pained. Alarmed whispers rustled through the spectators like a fox running through tall grass. The whispers picked up volume and velocity as they flowed through the aisles.
Angela made her way through the row of seats, still crying and protesting, “You’re lying. You’re
trying to frighten me. It’s not true. It’s not Bill. It’s not true…” She ran up the aisle followed by her companions, and they hurried out through the double doors, leaving them swinging.
In the wake of her panicked flight a hushed alarm hung over the spellbound audience, all gazes fixed on the man in the golden throne.
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Josh Lanyon
After very long seconds, Belloc’s eyes flew open and he seemed to recover himself. He offered a tired smile.
“You have questions, no? Let us see if the spirits have answers. Arthur, Madeline says that you must take the time to eat a proper supper…”
Relieved laughter from the crowd. Flynn rose and made his way down the narrow row of chairs and
out of the Opera House.
A fake and a phony. That summed up The Magnificent Belloc. But a smart one, a shrewd one. The
Bill incident had been eerie, no doubt about it. It had spooked Bill’s wife. That was probably no accident.
Whether the story was true or not, it would set tongues wagging, and tomorrow night more people would show up at the Opera House and pay their hard-earned pennies to hear that charlatan babble his clever concoction of spooky stories and platitudes.