The Magician's Lie (4 page)

“Don't do that!”

“Why not? We can't go just the two of us. Even if it were proper.”

I couldn't explain, so I stayed silent.

She mistook my look for another kind of nervousness, and she reached out and touched my arm. She usually only did that to correct my positions. It was a magical day indeed.

“Go practice,” she said. “You needn't worry about the details. Just make sure you're ready. Not too much, just your usual exercises. Make sure you're graceful. She'll want to see you graceful.”

Nearly tripping over my own feet in my excitement, I dashed up the stairs. I was already wearing my practice garments, a loose dress over my camisole, enough to cover me down to my calves but give my legs freedom to extend fully. In my room, I donned my pointe shoes and practiced in front of the mirror until the sun went down. As I danced, my confidence grew. This would be the moment. I was strong. I was talented. I would show Madama all my skill in a handful of bravura moves, a sequence of
pas
de
chat
and
pliés
,
pirouettes
en
dehors
and
fouettés en tournant
.

In the evening darkness, I dressed in traveling clothes and squared my shoulders, telling myself I was capable of changing my future. When Mother called me outdoors, I strode downstairs and outside with my head held high.

When I saw Ray standing next to the coach, I faltered a bit on the inside but left the smile on my face. I told myself I couldn't let him rule me, not through fear, not in any way. I told myself that someday soon, I would need to stand up to him. But this wasn't the time for it. If this excursion went well, if I impressed Madama Bonfanti with my grace and talent, I would be gone from this place and never have to worry about him again.

“Your mother told me of your good news!” he said. “Such an opportunity.”

The forced, jolly note in his voice jangled my nerves. There was something foreboding about it, something dangerously false. I remembered how he'd touched the razor to my cheek and smiled, murmuring his threats.

Mother waved, only her white glove visible from the interior of the coach. “Isn't it lovely?” she said. “We're so lucky to travel in such style!” She looked happier than I'd seen her in months. This trip was as important to her as it was to me, if not more so.

Ray extended his hand to help me up into the coach. I didn't see how I could refuse, with Mother watching. I paused for a moment to straighten my skirts first, collecting myself as I did so.

“I suppose I'm just your lowly cousin,” he said merrily, loud enough for my mother to hear. “No doubt you'll forget all about me when you're famous.”

Finally I took his hand and put my foot up on the step. He smelled of sweat and old hay. As he boosted me up into the carriage, he bent close to my ear, whispering softly enough that only I could hear him.

“I hope you know I'll never let you leave,” he said.

I twisted to face him and nearly fell. He put his other hand up to catch me at the waist and kept me in place, staring up at me, with a cold and steady smile. He twined his fingers into mine, clinging in a way that was not at all brotherly, and I strained as hard as I could to free myself from that grasp. Once, twice, three times. At the end, with a look that reminded me it was his choice and not mine to make, he let go.

Released, I sat down hard in the back of the coach. Mother chattered away, speaking about me but not to me, praying everything would be all right when we arrived, since everything in the world depended on everything being all right.

I heard Ray climb up to the driver's seat and call out to the horses, snapping the reins against their backs. The coach lurched forward.

We rolled on, heading toward a hopeful future, through the dark.

Janesville, 1905

One o'clock in the morning

She pauses, taking in a deep breath and sighing it out. He finds himself waiting, with a quickened pulse, for her to start speaking again, to tell him what happened next. But he shouldn't get drawn in, he tells himself. He shouldn't care. It's just a story. Most likely not true in any case. Most likely calculated to tease out the exact feelings he's having right now: equal parts sympathy and dread.

He tells himself that he has a good reason to let her talk, though. She's exhausted. She's anxious. If she is lying, the longer she talks, the more likely it is she'll slip up. Give her enough rope, as the saying goes, and she'll hang herself. An apt phrase. They hanged that woman two years ago in the Oklahoma territory for what she'd done to a child in her care. Iris had cried for a full week about it, the story was so appalling. He wonders what she'd think of this story. Will it be a tragedy? Or something else, by the end?

“So let's say,” he says, “that this whole story is true, and I can trust everything you say, and you're innocent. You didn't kill your husband. Who did?”

“If someone killed the husband of a famous magician,” she says, tilting her head as if the problem were theoretical, “there are some obvious suspects.”

“Like the magician.”

“Besides the magician. Maybe someone who hated the magician and wanted to punish her. One of her enemies.”

“You have enemies?”

With a grim smile, she says, “Some days I think I have nothing but.”

“You think it was someone out for revenge?”

“Or the victim could have enemies of his own. It could have nothing to do with her—with me—at all.”

“True. What kind of man was he?”

“I can't even begin to tell you,” she says, her voice oddly unsteady for a moment. “Honestly.”

“Stop using that word. The more you say it, the less I believe it.”

She doesn't respond.

He circles behind her, his footsteps heavy and echoing against the bare wood floor. He begins to undo a set of cuffs, examining her as he does so. One wrist has been recently cut deeply. There's a perfectly straight three-inch-long slash, dark with old blood, against the pale skin. Unfortunately it's already healing and too old to be evidence of a struggle tonight, when the murder was committed. Still, it interests him.

“How did you injure yourself? This cut on your wrist?” he asks casually.

“Things happen on the road,” she says. “Heavy equipment shifts at the wrong moment. The illusions have so many moving parts. I don't know half the time what happens.”

“And the bruise on your throat?”

She makes a noncommittal noise, a verbal shrug, but he sees her shoulders tighten. There is enormous tension in the back of her neck. Of course she can't relax in the situation he's placed her in, but he saw the change come over her when he asked about the bruise, not before. He'll ask again later. For now, he has another plan. He has two pairs of the new adjustable Lovell cuffs, which should be just enough.

He hangs the first pair of Lovell cuffs from his belt and begins work on the second. Once the second pair of cuffs is likewise free, he circles around in front of her. He toys with the dangling cuff, opening and closing it. The metal clicks each time he pushes the teeth down against the pivot bar and then thumbs the release button to pop it open again. Like his footfalls, the clicks are loud and sharp in the enclosed space. There are still three pairs of cuffs on her wrists. They both know where things stand.

“Now,” he tells her, “I'm going to finish taking your boots off. I'm asking you to let me. Will you?”

“What if I say no?” she asks.

“I'm asking as a courtesy, ma'am.”

She sits up straight with a bright false smile and thrusts her right foot out at him, the mostly unlaced boot hanging.

“Here you are then,” she says.

He lowers himself slowly to his knees in front of her, then takes the foot in both hands. Then he adjusts his knee to pin the free foot back against the chair. If he's kneeling on her foot, she can't kick him with it. A mere moment of cooperation on her part doesn't mean he'll let his guard down completely. He's tired, not stupid.

The lamplight flickers, and he works on the unlacing in silence. It's so quiet in the room that he can hear the leather and string rasp against each other. When the boot is unlaced, he pulls it off and tosses it away. He does the same with the other boot. She's quiet but not still. When he's done, he can feel the warmth of her foot. It squirms in his hand like an animal. The dead silence of the night outside hangs heavy. He can hear his own breath but not hers.

In the quiet, he remembers how tired he is, and that isn't good. Cuffs or no, she needs to be watched and guarded. Sound will help keep his eyes open and his mind clear. He should get her talking again. Her story will be something to hold onto when the exhaustion threatens to drag him into unconsciousness.

“You aren't telling me what I want to hear,” he says. “I asked about the murder. You're telling me this other story instead.”

“They're all the same story.”

“Which couldn't start a little closer to the end?” He takes one free pair of handcuffs and latches it first around the leg of the chair. He opens the other half of the cuff and draws it forward, circling it around her ankle, pushing the clasp until it clicks shut.

She says, “Where does yours start, officer? Did you play cops and robbers as a boy and find yourself always on the angels' side? Or is this just a job to you, a way to line your pockets? Is it the first thing you ever wanted to do or the last?”

He was right; the Lovell fits, on the largest setting. In a pinch, it seems, a woman's slim ankles can stand in for a man's thick wrists. He repeats the motion with the other pair of cuffs, linking her other ankle to the leg of the chair, so both ankles are trapped. “What difference does that make?”

“It makes your story different,” she says. “How you came to be who you are. And if I wanted to know your story, I'd want to know it from the beginning.”

“You don't want to know my story.”

“I do, actually. Very much. But I'm not the one in charge here, am I?”

“No.” He's glad to hear her acknowledge it. “Well, it isn't a long story. I was born here, grew up here, plan to live here my whole life.”

“I bet you were one of those charmed boys. You have the air. Always the best at everything.”

“Second best,” he says before he can stop himself.

“Who was the best then?”

“No point in telling you, is there? If you don't know him?” Despite her visit to Waterloo, Mose Huber's name wouldn't mean anything to her, even if he were inclined to share it.

“I'm interested,” she says.

Her eyes are shadowed from this angle, and he can't even tell the half-brown eye from the blue one. He wishes he had a real jail to put her in. She is too close this way. He thinks again of what she did onstage, how rapt he was, and he realizes he has to ask.

“What I'm interested in,” he says, “is the Halved Man. How does it work?”

“It's fake,” she says flatly. “Fake blade, fake blood, trap door. That's all.”

“No, explain it to me. What's the secret of the trick?”

“What kind of magician gives away her secrets?”

“One who'll be hanged if she doesn't.”

Quietly, leaning in, she says, “Is that what you think they'll do? You think they'll hang me?”

“Without a moment's hesitation,” he says.

She stares at him with her lips shut tight.

They sit together in silence, two figures in two chairs, on the fringes of the circle of lamplight.

After a time, the magician says quietly, “Here in this room, while I tell you what there is to tell, it's just us two. And these are all just words. Once I step outside that door, there's a whole real world again, and that frightens me more than I can say.”

“I understand that,” he replies, offering his own honest response. “There are things in the real world that scare me too.”

“Such as? I'd like to hear.”

He opens his mouth to answer her, but another noise drowns him out.

The telephone is ringing.

It is a long, rattle-clanging, uneven sound, and it takes them both by surprise.

Holt freezes.

The telephone rings again. It makes a brittle echo against the close wooden walls, sounding louder and louder in the tight, small space. He feels like he's sitting inside a drum. It wakes the pain in his head, which he had almost managed to forget. No forgetting it now.

He tries to be logical, fighting for clarity against the noise and the drink and the lack of sleep. No one from Waterloo knows he's found her. It can't be Mose. Or could it? There are only a handful of telephones in this part of the state, and no reason for anyone to call from farther away at this time of night.

Iris, then, it must be Iris. The telephone in his house, installed so he can be reached at any hour, is one of the handful. He's not ready to answer the question he knows she has. She wants to know what the doctor said, whether anything can be done. He can't tell her, not yet. Especially not with this one watching. But he wants to answer just to make the ringing stop. The sound makes it almost impossible to think.

Maybe now is the time to strike. He raises his voice to be heard over the telephone's ring. “Did it surprise you? How much blood there was? When it was for real?”

She shakes her head. “I wasn't there. I told you, I wasn't there. I was already running.”

“If not the murder, what were you running from?”

The long, shrilling metal clang sounds, falls silent, and then starts up again. His head is beyond buzzing now. Aching. Howling.

She says, “I didn't even know anyone was dead. You have to believe me.”

A ring and a silence, a ring and a silence, while their gazes lock.

Putting his face close to hers, he says, “Why did you kill him? Your own husband? How could you try to cut him apart?”

She blanches, visibly, and says, “Did you say cut?”

He turns his back on her then, turning as if to answer the telephone, but only to hide his face.

“Tell me!” she shouts. “How did he die?”

The telephone rings and rings. It takes all he has not to fling the door open and run outside, away from the sound and from her, gulping in fresh air. Instead he breathes his own breath again, growing unpleasantly warmer, struggling to stay put.

His mind soars and races. What does she mean? Is it possible that she's telling the truth, that she had nothing to do with the murder? She is waiting on his answer. All the more reason to stay silent. If he waits for her to speak, there might be some clue in what she says next.

The ringing sound stops, blessedly, and the magician speaks into a longer silence. “What happened to you, anyway? The way you hold yourself. Stiff. Like you're afraid of breaking something.”

He tries to hide his shock. “Don't know what you mean.”

“Look, I want to tell you everything,” she says, sounding sincere. “I do. I will. But it won't make sense to you yet.”

He doubts murder could ever make sense to him, but maybe it's time to humor her a little. For now. She seems to relax when she tells her story. If vinegar doesn't work, he's capable of honey.

“Then what would you like to tell me?”

“What happened next. When we arrived at Biltmore, where I was to dance for Madama Bonfanti.”

“Go on, then,” he says.

The phone blurts a strange, smothered half ring, and they both hesitate, waiting for the rest of the ring to come.

When it doesn't, she starts her story again.