The Fall of the House of Cabal (19 page)

‘Perhaps. I still don't understand why we're in such a peculiar place, anyway.'

They had left the theatre and were walking along the great thoroughfare. In the east, the sky was growing light. At a newsstand, they bought an early edition of the local Sunday paper.

‘The
Sepulchre Sentinel
?' said Leonie. ‘This city's called Sepulchre?'

Horst wasn't very concerned by that, instead focussing on the headline,
DEATH ON THE STAGE
—
POLICE CALLED AS FAMOUS MAGICIAN AND ESCAPOLOGIST DIES IN GROTESQUE INCIDENT
.

Inside, the story sailed around the edges of whether the death was accidental or deliberate, but it was clear the reporter was hoping against hope that it was murder by some thrillingly obscure method.

‘Bad luck, old son,' muttered Horst. ‘You're going to be as disappointed as the rest of us when Lament does his press announcement.' He suddenly became more animated. ‘It could still be murder, you know! What if friend Jacobey knew full well what changing the sand would do?'

Miss Barrow blew out a breath into the chill air. She was wondering at what point they would be allowed to move on from the sinister city of Sepulchre. She had assumed it would be dependent on solving the case, but that did not seem to be so. Perhaps she would have to solve more than one?

‘It's not impossible, but it seems very unlikely,' she said. ‘Jacobey had a good character and apparently wouldn't say “Boo!” to a goose. What would his motive be?'

‘He might be a hireling?' said Horst, but his enthusiasm for the idea was foundering.

‘From what I saw of the backstage people, there are half a dozen more reliable and more corruptible hands I would have chosen before Jacobey for that job. No, it seems off. I'm sure he didn't do it deliberately.'

‘If you say so, o Great Detective. I suppose you must be right. If it's all just brought down to the laws of physics like that, it doesn't allow for much uncertainty.' No answer came. He turned to find Leonie deeply pensive, inured in a brown study. ‘Why the morbs, leader?'

‘I should go back. Insist Lament actually have those sand samples tested for density. What you just said about physics, you're right. I've been insufficiently scientific.'

‘That rough sand's obviously heavier, though.'

‘“Obviously” doesn't butter science's parsnips, Horst. “Obviously” means you're taking things on faith. Everything should be tested and…' She fell silent.

As the silence extended uncomfortably, Horst watched her with growing consternation. Her eyes were half-shut and the fingertips of her right hand twitched as if she were enumerating things in her mind.

‘I know what that is,' he said slowly. ‘I've seen Johannes do something similar. You're cogitating, aren't you?'

She made an irked noise at least as much hiss as shush at him, and he fell silent.

Her eyes opened, and she looked angrily at Horst. Then he saw her anger was directed elsewhere. ‘You were right,' she said.

‘I was? Hurrah!'

‘Then you were wrong.'

‘One out of two isn't bad.'

‘Possibly right and wrong. I've been so muddle-headed. We need to get back to the theatre before Inspector Lament lets everyone go.'

‘It wasn't an accident?'

‘I don't know yet, but I suspect not.'

‘You don't know? Why? What do you think killed Maleficarus?'

‘If I'm right…' She was already walking quickly back towards the theatre. ‘If I'm right, science killed the magician.'

*   *   *

Miss Leonie Barrow was all business and no chat when she secured re-admittance to the building. ‘I'm sorry,' she told Lament, ‘but I may have been premature when I suggested the case was solved. If I could beg your indulgence for just a few minutes longer?'

Inspector Lament's patience, apparently a plentiful commodity where she was concerned in the usual run of things, was nevertheless beginning to run dry. ‘Miss Barrow. We have been here all night. The sun is very nearly up. We are all tired. Could this perhaps wait?'

Perhaps it could, but Miss Barrow was subject to an ineffable sense that it should not. The sun was rising; it seemed relevant to the presence of Horst and herself that she should be done before the sun finished doing so, a simple rightness to the time. She did not doubt this feeling; for all her reliance upon the scientific method, she was wise enough to know when science—known science, at least—was insufficient to comprehend every possible circumstance. She had personal experience of that which chafed at the boundaries of the known, and did not presume to test it when she was so utterly beyond those boundaries herself.

‘No,' she said with certainty. ‘We should resolve this matter immediately, if at all possible.'

‘I thought it was already,' said Lament under his breath, but did not argue further and had everyone of note in the matter brought to the stage prior to finally being released.

On reaching the stage she made her way directly to the crossbow device. The stage around it occupied her interest for the moment. ‘Mr Curry. These marks upon the stage. They seem semi-permanent. What might be their function?'

Mr Curry seemed at least as dismayed as Lament that the investigation was conspiring to still keep him from his bed even after he had been assured that all was settled. ‘They're for the scene shifters, the stagehands. So they know exactly where to put the properties.'

‘Close enough isn't good enough, then?'

‘Heavens, no!' He chortled at such naivety. ‘They are employed commonly enough even in the most undemanding of sitting room comedies, never mind a magician's act. Things must be placed exactly so. Lines of sight and placement of props are of paramount importance.'

‘Good, good.' Why exactly it was ‘Good, good' she didn't care to share at this juncture. Instead she said to Horst, ‘What keeps that flower in your lapel?'

Horst wasn't sure he had heard aright and raised his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Do you use a pin?'

‘Well, yes. They tend to…'

‘May I have it, please?' She held out her hand, and when he didn't immediately oblige her, she beckoned for it impatiently. Beginning to wonder if somehow Johannes had possessed the woman, he handed it over. She examined it briefly, muttered, ‘Good, good' to herself once more, and then vanished beneath the machine again.

There were quiet sounds of tinkering for a second, and then she emerged, started to hand the pin back, thought better of it, and put it in her own lapel while assuring Horst she would return it shortly, and then demanded a balance or scale of some sort. Mr Curry sent off his stage manager to recover the scales used in a production of
The Merchant of Venice
the previous year, and everyone stood around in a slightly baffled silence while they were fetched, with the exception of Miss Barrow, who spent the time striding around the stage and alternately examining things with her magnifying glass, and glaring at Curry, Rufus Maleficarus, and Athena la Morte.

When the scales arrived, Miss Barrow wasted no time in measuring identical volumes of sand out from the fire bucket, and from the crossbow device. She snorted with something like disgust at the results, and turned to face her audience.

‘You may,' she said without a hint of irony, ‘be wondering why I have called you here tonight.'

Horst was suddenly filled with great admiration for Miss Barrow, and a desire for popcorn.

‘I am guilty of wasting a lot of time, and I must ask you to forgive me for that. I have been … distracted recently. My focus was poor, and it has taken me far too long to understand what has been going on here. Strictly, I ask forgiveness from all but one of you. That person has been furnished with a few extra hours of liberty due to my lack of diligence, and he … or she … should not forgive me, but thank me for that time. Now, to facts.

‘The sand. The sand that killed him. It didn't, and if I had thought about it more carefully at the time, that should have been obvious to me without even having to weigh it. I made a silly assumption—that the coarse sand must have a greater density than the fine sand and so it tripped the crossbow that much earlier. That cannot be so. If we assume that the rock that is the source of the sands has a similar density, then the finer stuff will—if anything—have the higher density. Smaller particles and smoother grains means smaller air gaps between those grains. This is borne out by the simple weighing you just saw, but even then the difference is minuscule. Even extrapolating to the larger bulk of sand used in the device, we are only looking at an ounce or two.'

‘But in an escape timed to the second, even that small difference…' Lament paused, thinking it through. ‘Of course, even if it made a small difference, it would have been in favour of the deceased. He would have had an extra second or two, not less.'

‘Exactly. And there is a further factor. The adulterated sand had already failed to kill him once. Why would it suddenly do so this evening?'

‘The matinee performance!' Mr Curry was pleased to join the deductionary clique. ‘Of course! Why didn't the effect go wrong yesterday afternoon if the sand was of such concern?'

‘Yes.' Miss Barrow's gaze darted from face to face. ‘The sand had nothing to do with the tragedy. There was no accident.'

‘Then what is it, Leonie? That is … Miss Barrow?' asked Horst. ‘Murder or suicide?' He somehow prevented himself from commenting further that, obviously, murder would be far more thrilling, so that had his vote.

She spat the word out. ‘Murder.'

Horst strangled down the very nearly overwhelming impulse to clap his hands with glee while shouting, ‘Huzzah!'

Inspector Lament looked at the candidates for the crime. ‘You're suggesting the apparatus was tampered with, I take it?'

‘It was.'

‘Then that puts Rufus in the clear. He wasn't anywhere near the apparatus, there's no trapdoor or anything in a position to allow him to tamper with it, it's subsequently been checked and found to be operating exactly as it should, and this is the closest he's been permitted since his father's death, so he has had no opportunity to remove any traces of sabotage.'

‘That is correct in all but two details, Inspector. He was able to get very close to it during the performance. About'—she held up a hand with thumb and index a couple of inches apart—‘yay close. Indeed, his proximity was vital for the illusion to work in all those other performances.'

‘It wasn't an illusion.' Miss la Morte was adamant. ‘You don't understand. It was an escape, done by skill alone.'

‘That was the illusion. Max was undoubtedly very practised and highly competent. But he was also slowing down, and he knew it. You said it yourself, ma'am. You never knew exactly how long the escape would take. It was always more or less the same period, but with a few seconds' variation. If the scale was so accurate, how was even that much possible? And how did Max always seem to know exactly when the pan was going to fall and trigger the crossbow?'

‘He…' La Morte's voice wavered, unsure as she replayed events in her head and found her rationalisation of events now fell short. ‘He could see the pan starting to fall.'

‘I think the only time he saw the pan fall unexpectedly was tonight. Previously, he always knew exactly when it would drop.'

Lament went to stand by the Throne of Death and regarded it curiously. ‘How? He couldn't trigger it himself. There is absolutely no connection between the throne and the mechanism.'

‘There is. And tonight that connection killed him.' She looked at Rufus Maleficarus. ‘Didn't you, Rufus?'

‘You're fishing,' he said evenly. ‘You're throwing dirt and seeing if anyone reacts.'

‘Not at all. I said the inspector was wrong on two details. The first was that you were very close. You were directly beneath the stage, after all. The second was that you left no trace of your involvement.' Miss Leonie Barrow took the pin from her lapel. ‘But you did.'

Before the gathering, she walked a few steps to the crossbow mechanism. She held the pin up for them all to see, and then she brought it close to the metal pan of the balance mechanism. With a sharp
click
whose significance far outweighed its volume, the pin snapped from her hand and stuck to the metal.

‘It's a magnet!' said Horst.

‘It's magnetised,' she corrected him. ‘The result of its many, many exposures to an electromagnet. One built by his son and used at every performance to trigger the balance at the exact moment his father signalled him to use it.'

‘The struggle.' La Morte spoke as in a reverie. ‘He'd struggle, slam his feet down just as he freed himself. It was a
signal
?'

All eyes were on Rufus Maleficarus. He shrugged. ‘Nice theory. How do you intend proving it?'

‘These gentleman,' Leonie said, nodding at the police officers, ‘and I shall be going through your understage workshop in close detail, looking for a suitable bar and the length of wire you undoubtedly spent the time waiting to be interviewed putting back onto a spool. But you know what wire's like; it never quite smooths out perfectly. I should think it will be painfully obvious. Of course, we were never supposed to know what it was we were looking for, were we?'

‘You can't prove a thing.' Rufus seemed bored now.

In contrast, Miss la Morte was growing more passionately upset by the second. ‘Why didn't I know about this? I was in the act! Why was I never told?'

Leonie shrugged. ‘Only Rufus can tell you that now. I would guess it was because Max was trying to impress you. A middle-aged man pulling off an escape eight times a week that would terrify younger men. He probably meant to tell you at some point early on, but it became more difficult with every week that went by. After a while he began to fear that if he told you the one great death-defying moment of the show was as illusionary as all the rest, he would lose your respect. That there was still risk wasn't enough. He would rather face a crossbow quarrel than disappoint you.'