The Oxford Book of American Det (75 page)

“I wish I were as confident of that as you are,” Merlini said. “Under the circumstances you’ll be able to get a conviction without showing motive, but if you don’t find one, it will always bother you.”

“Maybe,” Gavigan admitted, “but that won’t be as bad as trying to believe what she says happened in this room.”

That was news to me. “You’ve talked to Rosa?” I asked.

“One of the boys did,” Gavigan said sourly. “At the hospital. She’s already preparing an insanity defence.”

“But why,” Merlini asked, “is she still hysterical with fright? Could it be that she’s scared because she really believes her story—because something like that really did happen in here?”

“Look,” I said impatiently, “is it top secret or will somebody tell me what she says happened?”

Gavigan glowered at Merlini. “Are you going to stand there and tell me that you think Rosa Rhys actually believes—“

It was my question that Merlini answered. He walked to the table in the centre of the room. “She says that after Drake sealed the window and door, the lights were turned off and she and Drake sat opposite each other at this table. His back was toward the desk, hers toward that screen in the corner. Drake held her hands. They waited. Finally she felt the psychic forces gathering around her—and then, out of nowhere, the two shells dropped onto the table one after the other. Drake got up, turned on the desk light, and came back to the table. A moment later it happened.” The magician paused for a moment, regarding the bare, empty room with a frown.

“Drake,” he continued, “was examining the shells, quite excited and pleased about their appearance when suddenly, Rosa says, she heard a movement behind her. She saw Drake look up and then stare incredulously over her shoulder.” Merlini spread his hands. “And that’s all she remembers. Something hit her. When she came to, she found herself staring at the blood on the floor and at Drake’s body.” Gavigan was apparently remembering Merlini’s demonstration with the gun in his office. “If you,” he warned acidly, “so much as try to hint that one of the people outside this room projected some mental force that knocked Rosa out and then caused the knife to stab Drake—“

“You know,” Merlini said, “I half expected Miss Potter would suggest that. But her theory is even more disturbing.” He looked at me. “She says that the benign spirits which Rosa usually evoked were overcome by some malign and evil entity whose astral substance materialised momentarily, killed Drake, then returned to the other world from which it came.”

“She’s a mental case, too,” Gavigan said disgustedly. “They have to be crazy if they expect anyone to believe any such—“

“That,” Merlini said quietly, “may be another reason Rosa is scared to death. Perhaps she believes it but knows you won’t. In her shoes, I’d be scared, too.” He frowned.

“The difficulty is the knife.”

Gavigan blinked. “The knife? What’s difficult about that?”

“If I killed Drake,” Merlini replied, “and wanted appearances to suggest that psychic forces were responsible, you wouldn’t have found a weapon in this room that made it look as if I were guilty. I would have done a little de-apporting and made it disappear.

As it is now, even if the knife was propelled supernaturally, Rosa takes the rap.”

“And how,” Gavigan demanded, “would you make the knife disappear if you were dressed, as she was, in practically nothing?” Then, with sudden suspicion, he added,

“Are you suggesting that there’s a way she could have done that—and that you think she’s not guilty because she didn’t?”

Merlini lifted one of the shells from the table and placed it in the centre of his left palm.

His right hand covered it for a brief moment, then moved away. The shell was no longer there; it had vanished as silently and as easily as a ghost. Merlini turned both hands palms outward; both were unmistakably empty.

“Yes,” he said, “she could have made the knife disappear, if she had wanted to. The same way she produced the two shells.” He made a reaching gesture with his right hand and the missing shell reappeared suddenly at his fingertips.

Gavigan looked annoyed and relieved at the same time. “So,” he said, “you do know how she got those shells in here. I want to hear it. Right now.” But Gavigan had to wait.

At that moment a torpedo hit the water-tight circumstantial case against Rosa Rhys and detonated with a roar.

Doran, who had answered the phone a moment before, was swearing profusely. He was staring at the receiver he held as though it were a live cobra he had picked up by mistake.

“It—it’s Doc Hess,” he said in a dazed tone. “He just started the autopsy and thought we’d like to know that the point of the murder knife struck a rib and broke off. He just dug out a triangular pointed piece of—steel.”

For several seconds after that there wasn’t a sound. Then Merlini spoke.

“Gentlemen of the jury. Exhibit A, the paper knife with which my esteemed opponent, the district attorney, claims Rosa Rhys stabbed Andrew Drake, is a copper alloy—and its point, as you can see, is quite intact. The defence rests.” Doran swore again. “Drake’s inventory lists that letter opener but that’s all. There is no other knife in this room. I’m positive of that.” Gavigan jabbed a thick forefinger at me. “Ross, Dr. Garrett was in here before the police arrived. And Miss Drake and Kendrick.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. There was no knife near the door and neither Elinor nor Paul came more than a foot into the room. Dr. Garrett examined Drake and Rosa, but I was watching him, and I’ll testify that unless he’s as expert at sleight of hand as Merlini, he didn’t pick up a thing.”

Doran was not convinced. “Look, buddy. Unless Doc Hess has gone crazy too, there was a knife and it’s not here now. So somebody took it out.” He turned to the detective who stood at the door. “Tom,” he said, “have the boys frisk all those people.

Get a policewoman for Miss Drake and Potter and search the bedroom where they’ve been waiting. The living room, too.”

Then I had a brainstorm. “You know,” I said, “if Elinor is covering up for someone—if three people came in here for the séance instead of two as she says—the third could have killed Drake and then gone out, with the knife. And the paper tape could have been—“ I stopped.

“—pasted on the door after the murderer left?” Merlini finished. “By Rosa? That would mean she framed herself.”

“Besides,” Gavigan growled, “the boys fumed all those paper strips. There are fingerprints all over them. All Drake’s.”

Merlini said, “Doran, I suggest that you phone the hospital and have Rosa searched, too.”

The lieutenant blinked. “But she was practically naked. How in blazes could she carry a knife out of here unnoticed?”

Gavigan faced Merlini, scowling. “What did you mean when you said a moment ago that she could have got rid of the knife the same way she produced those shells?”

“If it was a clasp knife,” Merlini explained, “she could have used the same method other apport mediums have employed to conceal small objects under test conditions.”

“But dammit!” Doran exploded. “The only place Garrett didn’t look was in her stomach!”

Merlini grinned. “I know. That was his error. Rosa is a regurgitating medium, like Helen Duncan, in whose stomach the English investigator, Harry Price, found a hidden ghost—a balled-up length of cheesecloth fastened with a safety pin which showed up when he X-rayed her. X-rays of Rosa seem indicated, too. And search her hospital room and the ambulance that took her over.”

“Okay, Doran,” Gavigan ordered. “Do it.”

I saw an objection. “Now you’ve got Rosa framing herself, too,” I said. “If she swallowed the murder knife, why should she put blood on the letter opener? That makes no sense at all.”

“None of this does,” Gavigan complained.

“I know,” Merlini answered. “One knife was bad. Two are much worse. And although X-rays of Rosa before the séance would have shown shells, I predict they won’t show a knife. If they do, then Rosa needs a psychiatric examination as well.”

“Don’t worry,” Gavigan said gloomily. “She’ll get one. Her attorney will see to that.

And they’ll prove she’s crazier than a bedbug without half trying. But if that knife isn’t in her—“ His voice died.

“Then you’ll never convict her,” Merlini finished.

“If that happens,” the inspector said ominously, “you’re going to have to explain where that knife came from, how it really disappeared, and where it is now.” Merlini’s view was even gloomier. “It’ll be much worse than that. We’ll also have an appearing and vanishing murderer to explain: someone who entered a sealed room, killed Drake, put blood on the paper knife to incriminate Rosa, then vanished just as neatly as any of Miss Potter’s ghosts—into thin air.” And Merlini’s prediction came true.

The X-ray plates didn’t show the slightest trace of a knife. And it wasn’t in Rosa’s hospital room or in the ambulance. Nor on Garrett, Paul, Elinor Drake, Isabelle Potter, nor, as Doran discovered, on myself. The Drake house was a mess by the time the boys got through taking it apart—but no knife with a broken point was found anywhere. And it was shown beyond doubt that there were no trapdoors or sliding panels in the study; the door and window were the only exits.

Inspector Gavigan glowered every time the phone rang. The commissioner had already phoned twice and without mincing words expressed his dissatisfaction with the way things were going.

And Merlini, stretched out in Drake’s chair, his heels up on the desk top, his eyes closed, seemed to have gone into a trance.

“Blast it!” Gavigan said. “Rosa Rhys got that knife out of here somehow. She had to!

Merlini, are you going to admit that she knows a trick or two you don’t?” The magician didn’t answer for a moment. Then he opened one eye. “No,” he said slowly, “not just yet.” He took his feet off the desk and sat up straight. “You know,” he said, “if we don’t accept the theory of the murderer from beyond, then Ross must be right after all. Elinor Drake’s statement to the contrary, there must have been a third person in this room when that séance began.”

“Okay,” Gavigan said, “we’ll forget Miss Drake’s testimony for the moment. At least that gets him into the room. Then what?”

“I don’t know,” Merlini said. He took the roll of gummed paper tape from the desk, tore off a two-foot length, crossed the room and pasted it across the door and jamb, sealing us in. “Suppose I’m the killer,” he said. “I knock Rosa out first, then stab Drake—“

He paused.

Gavigan was not enthusiastic. “You put the murder knife in your pocket, not noticing that the point is broken. You put blood on the paper knife to incriminate Rosa. And then—“ He waited. “Well, go on.”

“Then,” Merlini said, “I get out of here.” He scowled at the sealed door and at the window. “I’ve escaped from handcuffs, strait jackets, milk cans filled with water, packing cases that have been nailed shut. I know the methods Houdini used to break out of safes and jail cells. But I feel like he did when a shrewd old turnkey shut him in a cell in Scotland one time and the lock—a type he’d overcome many times before—

failed to budge. No matter how he tried or what he did, the bolt wouldn’t move. He was sweating blood because he knew that if he failed, his laboriously built-up reputation as the escape king would be blown to bits. And then—“ Merlini blinked.

“And then—“ This time he came to a full stop, staring at the door.

Suddenly he blinked. “Shades of Hermann, Kellar, Thurston and Houdini! So that’s it!”

Grinning broadly, he turned to Gavigan. “We will now pass a miracle and chase all the ghosts back into their tombs. If you’ll get those people in here—“

“You know how the vanishing man vanished?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s someone who has been just as canny as that Scotch jailer, and I know who.” Gavigan said, “It’s about time.” Then he walked across the room and pulled the door open, tearing the paper strip in half as he did so.

Merlini, watching him, grinned again. “The method by which magicians let their audiences fool themselves—the simplest and yet most effective principle of deception in the whole book—and it nearly took me in!”

Elinor Drake’s eyes still avoided the stains on the floor. Paul, beside her, puffed nervously on a cigarette, and Dr. Garrett looked drawn and tired. But not the irrepressible Potter. She seemed fresh as a daisy.

“This room,” she said to no one in particular, “will become more famous in psychic annals than the home of the Fox sisters at Lilydale.” Quickly, before she could elaborate on that, Merlini cut in. “Miss Potter doesn’t believe that Rosa Rhys killed Drake. Neither do I. But the psychic force she says is responsible didn’t emanate from another world. It was conjured up out of nothing by someone who was—who had to be—here in this room when Drake died. Someone whom Drake himself asked to be here.”

He moved into the centre of the room as he spoke and faced them.

“Drake would never have convinced anyone that Rosa could do what she claimed without a witness. So he gave someone a key—someone who came into this room before Drake and Rosa and Elinor came downstairs.”

The four people watched him without moving - almost, I thought, without breathing.

“That person hid behind that screen and then, after Rosa produced the apports, knocked her out, killed Drake, and left Rosa to face the music.”

“All we have to do,” Merlini went on, “is show who it was that Drake selected as a witness.” He pointed a lean forefinger at Isabelle Potter. “If Drake discovered how Rosa produced the shells and realised she was a fraud, you might have killed him to prevent an exposure and save face for yourself and the society; and you might have then framed Rosa in revenge for having deceived you. But Drake would never have chosen you. Your testimony wouldn’t have convinced any of the others. No. Drake would have picked one of the sceptics—someone he was certain could never be accused of assisting the medium.”

He faced Elinor. “You said that you accompanied Rosa and your father to the study door and saw them go in alone. We haven’t asked Miss Rhys yet, but I think she’ll confirm it. You couldn’t expect to lie about that and make it stick as long as Rosa could and would contradict you.”