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  “Very good,” said the butler. “You’ll be staying in the east wing. Briggs will take you there.”

  Briggs had hung up the coats and hats. Now he lifted both our bags and said, “Please follow me, gentlemen.”

  We had been standing before a hall big enough to land an airplane. An electric chandelier hung from the center of the beamed ceiling, but the ceiling was so high and the walls so far apart that the room’s upper corners were cobwebbed with darkness. Below the chandelier a long wooden table ran for twenty-five or thirty feet. The walls of the room were made of pale brown stone and they were draped with murky oil paintings of dead people wearing old costumes. Embroidered curtains hung at the sides of the narrow mullioned windows. The pale gray marble floor was covered with broad dark Oriental carpets, seven or eight of them.

  Ahead of us, Briggs glided across the marble floor toward another wide, open doorway. I noticed that the far wall of the hall, off to my left, held no paintings. It held weapons: lances, pikes, broadswords, cutlasses, rapiers, wheel-lock muskets, flintlock rifles, an enormous blunderbuss, some shotguns, a Sharps buffalo gun, a scoped Winchester Model 1873, a selection of handguns. Most of the handguns, like most of the long arms, were black powder antiques. But there was a Peacemaker Colt, a long-barreled artillery officer’s Luger Parabellum, a Colt Army 1911 automatic, and what looked like a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver. If the Apaches attacked tonight, we would be ready.

  I don’t know what the Great Man noticed. Maybe everything. He was glancing around, calmly appraising, like someone who was mulling over the idea of adding all this to his private collection.

  We followed Briggs up some stone stairs and through a wide doorway, then down a wide hallway with parquet wooden floors. More dead people hung from the walls. We climbed up a wide, worn, wooden stairway and we went down some more hallways. The place was a maze.

  Carpets flowed along the wooden floors. Cabinets and chests and tables clung to the stone walls. Perched on these were vases and bowls and lacquer boxes, statuettes of porcelain and ivory and alabaster. I’ve been in museums that owned less bric-a-brac. Maybe most museums did.

  We came to another corridor. On our way down it, we passed ornate wooden doors, left and right. Each door had a small card thumbtacked to it. On the cards, names had been written in a flowing cursive script. Mrs Vanessa Corneille, said one. Sir David Merridale, said another. Mrs Marjorie Allardyce and Miss Jane Turner, said the card on the door opposite. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, said the card on the last door to the left. On the door opposite, the card said, Mr Harry Houdini and Mr Phil Beaumont.

  The corridor ended up ahead, about thirty feet. In the stone wall was another door, unmarked. Probably it led to a stairway.

  Briggs set down the Great Man’s bag, opened the door, and gestured for us to enter. As usual, I followed the Great Man. Briggs picked up the Great Man’s bag and followed me.

  Chapter Two

  It WAS A BIG ROOM, tall stone walls and a beamed ceiling. The wooden floors were spread with carpets. To the left was another door, opened, and beside this, a small writing desk and a chair. Directly ahead, against the wall, was an antique cupboard and an antique dresser that held a ceramic basin and a ceramic pitcher. To the right was a huge four-poster bed covered with white satin. White satin curtains were drawn back to each of the posts. Large night tables stood on either side of the bed.

  Briggs set the Great Man’s bag down on the nearest of these. “The bathroom is through here, gentlemen.” Carrying my battered bag, he moved through the open door. Inside, he opened a door on the left, to show us the bathroom. A sink, a towel rack hung with heavy white towels, a huge tub squatting on big brass lion’s paws. Paws from the same lion, probably, whose head was trapped in the front door.

  Briggs opened a door on the right to show us the toilet. It was a fine toilet.

  The second room was beyond, and smaller than the first. But it was as comfortable as the other, with a second writing desk and chair, a second cupboard and a second four-poster bed. The bedspread here was also white satin.

  “Your room, Mr. Beaumont,” said Briggs. He placed my bag on the nightstand. “Will there be anything else, gentlemen?” “No,” said the Great Man. “Thank you, Briggs.”

  Briggs nodded, his face still expressionless. “When you’re ready, please ring the bellpull beside the bed. Someone will come for you.”

  The Great Man nodded. “Yes, certainly, thank you.”

  Briggs glided off.

  The Great Man looked around, smiling. “Not bad, eh, Phil? This is a very pleasant room, don’t you think?”

  “Well, Harry,” I said, “I’m glad you like it. Because this is the room you’ll be taking.”

  He frowned.

  “I’ll take the outer room,” I said.

  He looked at me for a moment and then he said, “But Phil! Surely you don’t believe that anything will happen here? With people present, with all those servants?”

  “Something happened at the Ardmore. With all those house dicks and all those cops.”

  “But that was a hotel! And the newspapers had announced that I was there. No one knows that I am staying at Maplewhite.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” I said. “Maybe it’s not.”

  “But Phil—”

  “Harry. You remember when you made me take that oath? About not giving away your secrets? You promised me something too, remember? And you promised Bess.”

  He stared at me. Finally he nodded. He drew himself fully upright. This usually meant that an announcement was coming. “Houdini always keeps his promises,” he announced.

  “I know that,” I said. “So we’ll switch rooms.”

  He nodded and he compressed his lips. He had made a promise and he would keep it, but no one had said he couldn’t sulk.

  He looked around the room with a sour expression on his face. I took my suitcase into the main room, exchanged it for the Great Man’s bag, carried his bag back into the other room. The Great Man was sitting on the bed with his shoulders slumped, staring at the floor. He didn’t say anything when I put the suitcase down.

  “Harry,” I said.

  He looked up.

  “It’s for your own good,” I told him.

  He nodded glumly.

  “Let me know when you’re finished washing up,” I said. “We shouldn’t waste too much time. They’re all waiting for you.”

  He frowned for a moment, considering this. Then he smiled. “Yes. Yes, of course. You are right, Phil.”

  IT WAS Briggs who came to get us. The Great Man was feeling better by then. The idea of hobnobbing with lords and ladies always cheered him up.

  Briggs led us down the corridor again, and up and down some more stairways until we came to another doorway. We followed him through it.

  This room was smaller than the hall. Not enough space to land an airplane, but enough to park it. More Oriental carpets were spread along the floor and the walls were swathed with tapestries. Running across the tapestries were some plump naked people chasing other plump naked people through a forest. The plump people were naked in a refined way—their vital parts were all hidden by rushing arms or pumping legs or by a leafy bush that happened to spring up in exactly the right place. The forest looked damp to me, but everybody up there seemed to be having a pretty good time.

  Against the far wall stood a long trestle table. Atop the table were liquor bottles and champagne buckets and stacks and pyramids of glasses, silver teapots and china cups and saucers, silver platters and china plates. There was also a gramophone. It was playing Dixieland jazz, the horns and the piano sounding thin and tinny this far from home. Behind the table was another servant who wore a black uniform and a blank expressionless face.

  Throughout the room, in cozy glowing pockets created by the electric lamps, there were small clusters of people sitting.

  Briggs led us off to the right, to a cluster of two women and one man. The man sat in a stout padded leather chair, the w
omen in a small upholstered sofa behind a coffee table of dark polished wood. The three of them looked up.

  Briggs said to the man, “Excuse me, milord. Mr. Harry Houdini and Mr. Phil Beaumont.”

  “Ah, thank you, Briggs,” said the man, and stood up.

  Briggs disappeared. His employer offered a hand to the Great Man. He was short and burly in his gray tweeds, and his hair and his mustache were thick and white. So were his eyebrows, which were big and bristly and looked like a pair of albino beetles. He had blue eyes, a large beaked nose, pink cheeks, and a wide fleshy mouth. “Houdini,” he said, grinning. “Great treat for us, your coming. Glad you could make it.”

  Smiling happily, the Great Man shook hands. “It is a great pleasure to be here, Lord Purleigh.”

  “Now, now. None of that nonsense here. It’s Bob. Always has been, always will be. And this is Beaumont, is it?”

  “Phil Beaumont,” said Houdini. “My secretary.”

  Bob—Lord Bob?—glanced at the Great Man as his beetle eyebrows rose. “Secretary, eh? Getting up in the world, are we? Exploiting the poor workers now, eh? Well, pleasure to meet you, Beaumont.” He shook my hand. “First time in England?”

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “Dreadful place, isn’t it? Rain and fog and mist. Attractive women, though, eh? A couple of ’em right here. Mrs. Allardyce. Cousin of my wife’s. And Miss Turner, her companion. Marjorie, Miss Turner, let me introduce Mr. Harry Houdini. And his secretary, Mr. Phil Beaumont.”

  Calling them attractive had been gallant, or optimistic, or maybe nearsighted. In her sixties, Mrs. Allardyce was built like a blacksmith, but without the daintiness. Her shoulders and her arms were thick and meaty. Her round breasts and round stomach were taut against the pink floral pattern of her black dress. Her gray hair had been carefully chiseled from granite. Someone had stenciled circular patches of rouge on her round cheeks. Her gray eyes were small and shiny and avid, glistening birdshot trapped in a pale puffy muffin.

  Miss Turner was an improvement. She was young, maybe twenty-three, and she was tall for an Englishwoman. Although she wasn’t beautiful, she had that horsy English handsomeness that sometimes seems elegant and sometimes seems stiff. Right now, with her back rigid and her knees locked together beneath her plain gray dress, it seemed stiff. Her hair was pale brown and it was tightly clenched back along her skull. Behind wire-rim glasses, her large eyes were a deep, clear, and startling blue. They were her best feature, and they would look good on anyone. They looked good on her, but extravagant, like sapphires on a nun. She wore no make-up along her cheeks or anywhere else that I could see. Her wide pink mouth was turned down slightly at the corners, as though she disapproved of something but couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

  Smiling, Houdini made a small, quick formal bow to each woman. “Madame, ” he said. “And mademoiselle.”

  I nodded and I smiled, politely. I had been working on my politeness.

  Mrs. Allardyce and Miss Turner both sat with cups and saucers on their laps. Mrs. Allardyce lumbered her bosom out over her cup and said to the Great Man, “What a thrill this is, Mr. Houdini! Jane and I have read all about your exploits. Will you be doing some of your wonderful magic for us?” She batted her eyelids at him.

  “Now, Marjorie,” said Lord Bob. “Houdini’s a guest. No one here need sing for his supper.”

  “Oh no, of course not, Robert,” she said and now she batted her eyelids at him. She turned back to the Great Man. “But surely Mr. Houdini could perform just one teensy weensy little trick for us?”

  Houdini shrugged theatrically. “Alas, madam,” he said. “Unless I am much mistaken, I fear I am too late. For observe ...”

  He bent forward at the waist, used his left hand to pluck the lid from the silver teapot on the coffee table. He poked the first two fingers of his right hand inside the pot. When they emerged, nipped between them was a crisp five-pound banknote, folded into quarters. With a graceful twirl of the wrist he held it out toward Mrs. Allardyce.

  Lord Bob laughed. “Marvelous,” he exclaimed.

  Mrs. Allardyce produced a delighted little chortle, clapped her hands, and then leaned forward and grasped for the banknote. The Great Man surrendered it. If he hadn’t, probably she would have ripped his arm off.

  She unfolded the thing and examined it. A five-pound note was almost as big as a road map. “It’s authentic, too,” she said, looking up at him. “Absolutely genuine. And to whom does it belong?”

  “Well, madame,” he said, “since it was in your teapot, then clearly it must belong to you.”

  Five pounds was enough money for a long week in Paris.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and chortled again as she folded up the note. “It must, yes, of course.” She picked up a small black leather purse that lay beside her on the sofa. She opened it and carefully slid the note inside, then closed the purse and clutched it to her bosom. “All mine, ” she said, and she shivered with a kind of pretended avarice. Hidden behind the pretense, it seemed to me, was the real thing.

  I looked at Miss Turner. She was watching Mrs. Allardyce and her mouth was still turned down in disapproval. She must have felt my glance, because suddenly she turned and her blue eyes dazzled up at me from behind the glasses. Then, blinking, she looked toward the floor. The corners of her mouth veered down another notch.

  “Marvelous,” said Lord Bob again. He slapped his hand against the Great Man’s shoulder. The Great Man beamed. Applause always made his face open up like a flower in the sunshine.

  Mrs. Allardyce most likely believed that she had established her position by commanding a performance, and getting it. What she didn’t understand was that in the Great Man’s eyes, she was merely a member of the audience. Like all the rest of us.

  She smiled up at the Great Man. “Are you interested in ghosts, Mr. Houdini? Robert was just telling us, before you arrived, the most fascinating story about Lord Reginald, the ghost of Maplewhite.”

  The Great Man smiled. “Ghosts are not one of my main fields of interest,” he said. “I feel—”

  “You don’t believe in them?” She had her eyebrows raised. “Whether they exist or not is irrelevant to my own—”

  “But surely one wants to keep an open mind?”

  “My own feeling is that—”

  “I must confess that I do love a good ghost story,” she said.

  “Wicked spirits and bloodcurdling screams in the night. Stories of that sort—so long as they’re done well—in the best of taste, I mean—they give one of the most delicious chill, don’t they?”

  “Yes,” said the Great Man. “of course. But you see—”

  “And Lord Reginald—Robert’s ghost—is really quite chilling. He wanders into one’s bedroom in the very dark of night, it seems. In a long white nightgown, isn’t that right, Robert?”

  Lord Bob nodded patiently. “So the stories have it.”

  “Absolutely spectral, ” she said, and she put her hand to her chest and produced another small shiver. “I’m sure I should die with fright.” She turned to Lord Bob. “But what exactly does he do after he arrives?”

  “Nothing, Marjorie. How could he, eh? Dead, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, Robert,” she chided him. “Must you be such a cynic?” Lord Bob smiled. “A realist, Marjorie,” he said. “Dialectical materialist.” He turned to the Great Man and me. “But come along, you two. We’ll find you a drink and introduce you to the others.”

  We said our goodbyes to the two women. Mrs. Allardyce was smiling happily, Miss Turner was still faintly frowning.

  The Evening Post

  Maplewhite, Devon

  August 16

  Dear Evangeline,

  A few words hastily scribbled on the Exeter train.

  As usual, at breakfast the Allardyce gorged herself on muffins and buns and on crumpets dripping with butter; a moment or two after the train left the station she slipped into a providential (if occasionally stentorious) coma. She sits
opposite me, mouth agape, holds folded in her lap, her broad body sprawled back against the seat like a drugged Buddha. The compartment is crowded with the smell of the mint bonbons she consumes, on the hour, whenever she is away from home. But in effect I am alone.

  It’s been drizzling since we left Paddington, but a soft, thoughtful, introspective drizzle: seen through trailing wisps of mist, the landscape looks impossibly romantic, like a painting by my famous namesake. I sit and watch the panorama unfold outside the window—towns, villages, fields, meadows, everything dim and hushed and tranquil beneath that grey silky sky.

  Sometimes I dream a bit. Have you ever, while on a train, picked out some piece of scenery, a solitary tree standing sentinel on a swell of ridge, a small faraway thatched cottage tucked amidst a huddle of elm and oak, and (so to speak) mentally thrown your consciousness there? So that, in your imagination, you are standing beneath that tree or beside that cottage, watching the tiny distant train roll toward its mysterious destination?

  No, of course you haven’t. You’re much too sensible a person.

  I’ve read a bit more of your Mrs Stopes. I confess that, despite what are no doubt the best intentions in the world, she has made me feel thoroughly depraved and dissolute. According to her, ‘the average healthy type of woman’ experiences sexual desire only once every fortnight, when it promptly arrives and just as promptly departs—like the electric meter reader, apparently, but with a slightly more demanding schedule. What would Mrs Stopes make of me, I wonder. My own meter reader rides upon my shoulders, pickaback, from the time I arise in the morning until the time I totter back to my empty bed at night.

  I had believed that the absurdity of sexual longing would disappear with adolescence, like lisle stockings. But as I grow older, it has only grown stronger and more preposterous. Sometimes, suddenly, without warning, my face flushes, my flesh wilts. My knees become plum jam. I wander utterly lost into a warm humid haze, sluggish and stupid; I collide with walls. All too often, in order to function, I am forced to resort to that beastly trick you taught me so many years ago, when you were such a wicked little girl. Because of you, no doubt, I shall roast in hell, like a suckling pig, forever.