Death from a Top Hat (29 page)

“The murderer,” Gavigan said slowly and in a way that made me wonder why he should criticise Merlini for building up suspense, “is, I have reason to believe, in this room.”

If you have ever stood in a room filled with purring dynamos and inhaled the crackling pungency of ozone, you know what the atmosphere in that room was like. Alfred LaClaire took his cigarette slowly from his lips. Duvallo was sitting on the arm of Judy’s chair, and his right leg, which had been swinging, stopped. Jones stood in the shadowed background, leaning with Merlini against the bookcases. He was like the rest of us, tense, but I caught no other reaction. Merlini alone seemed at ease, his eyes half closed, apparently gazing in abstraction at the floor. But some sixth sense told me that he was watching someone, waiting for some histrionic flaw, some tell-tale false action.

Having allowed his preamble to sink in, Gavigan said suddenly, “Duvallo, do you use that hall light out there in the daytime?”

Duvallo raised an eyebrow. “No, there’s enough light from the glass transom above the door. Why?”

“When was the last time you used it?”

“Night before last when I came in, I suppose.” He looked curiously at the door to the hall and then back at Gavigan.

“You gave Jones a key to this apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“Can you think of anyone who might have gone to the trouble of making a duplicate key to your front door? There are traces of paraffin on the wards of the lock.”

“Oh? Perhaps that’s how Tarot got in. I’ve been wondering about that.”

“I doubt it. He would have planned on using those picklocks of yours that he had. And since Grimm was out front within a few minutes after Tarot’s arrival, it looks as if the murderer was already here. He could have let Tarot in.”

“Inspector,” Jones said hesitantly, “I can tell you about the paraffin.” Heads turned, looking at him. “I made the duplicate key. While I was staying here during Duvallo’s absence, I mislaid the one he gave me and locked myself out. I took a paraffin impression on a blank key and had a locksmith cut it out.”

“Where’d you lose it?” This, Gavigan’s tone said, began to look interesting.

“That’s what worried me. I’ve said nothing about it before, because, well, it was the day after the party that I missed it. But I found it this morning in a pocket of this suit. I thought I had looked there, but I guess—”

“Party?” Gavigan growled. “What party?”

“Tarot, Ching, the LaClaires, and Judy were here one Friday night. It was just an end of the week party.”

The Inspector’s face was stormy. “If you people would tell me things as they happen we’d get ahead a lot faster.” Everyone looked at him so damned innocently that he got mad. “You, for instance, Madame Rappourt.”

“I?” Her voice had that full deep-throated quality again.

“You heard me. I’m not talking to myself.”

She looked straight ahead at nothing and said, “I know nothing at all about your murders, nor do I care to.”

Watrous started up. “I warn you, Inspector, that—”

Grimm’s hand shot out and hooked into the Colonel’s collar. He pulled and Watrous flopped back on his fanny. “Sit down, you!” Grimm said.

“But you do know quite a lot about Cesare Sabbat, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, without moving her lips.

Gavigan followed through, quickly. “Tell me about it.”

The trance-like monotone she used gave her voice the flat, dead feel of a legal document. “I married him in Paris five years ago. He called himself Josef Vanek. I didn’t know until yesterday that that wasn’t his right name. I lived with him two years. Then we separated. I had not seen him since, until I walked into that room and saw him lying there on the floor.”

“Why did you separate?”

“I left him. The man wasn’t—wasn’t sane.”

“You knew that he had taken out an insurance policy with you as the beneficiary? For $75,000?”

“Yes…but…” She wasn’t so still now; she looked at the Inspector, as if startled. “But he would have changed that.”

“No, he didn’t. And it would be nice if you could prove you didn’t know that. Perhaps now you’ve something more to say about that prediction of yours last night. Have you?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, I’ll admit that was not psychic. I had been told that Sabbat was very precise about appointments. There was the milk bottle that hadn’t been taken in, and the room inside was so very still, I felt that something was wrong; and—I shouldn’t have but I did—I took a chance and said that there was death in that room. When we found that the keyholes were stuffed up, I was sure of it, but I didn’t—I never knew I’d find Josef there.”

The Inspector, I gathered, wasn’t quite sure whether he believed that one or not. “So, just a play for publicity. Nothing lost if you missed; everything gained if you were right, and the Colonel would see to it that the reporters were informed.”

“Yes. But when we went into that room and I saw Josef…”

“Yes, I know, you fainted. But what about that second faint? Wasn’t it to prevent Merlini questioning you? Wasn’t it?” Gavigan stood over her and thundered down. She twisted her hands and started to nod, when Watrous, who could contain himself no longer, blurted:

“Don’t pay any attention to his filthy accusations, Eva. You
couldn’t
have killed Tarot. You were at the séance.”

The Inspector, his eye warning Grimm to stay clear, pounced on Watrous. “So she was at the séance, was she? Maybe you can prove that? She was out of your sight for two hours. You’ve admitted that.”

“But I told you how we tied and fastened her. There can’t be any doubt as to where she was.”

“No? And suppose I explain to you with diagrams how she could have wriggled out of all those fancy Boy Scout knots and later returned, leaving no traces?”

Watrous blew up completely. He bounced to his feet and yelled, “It’s impossible, I tell you! Merlini, you’re responsible for this. You’ve primed him with one of your fake conjuring explanations. I’ll show you, all of you. She’ll repeat it and I defy any of you…you magicians to explain…”

Merlini said, “Or better yet, Colonel, suppose you tie me—or Duvallo, for that matter—the same way you tied her. And let us try getting out.”

This challenge seemed to set him back a bit. “Yes, of course, I’ll do that; but you can’t…you couldn’t…” There seemed to be a hint of uncertainty in his voice, of suspicion, as Gavigan broke in.

“Suppose,” he said, and his tone was a red flag, waving. “Suppose I should admit all you say. Suppose you tie Merlini and he
can’t
get out. Do you know what that leaves me, Watrous?”

The Colonel said nothing, but there was apprehension in his bloodshot eyes, and his pink tongue licked once across his lips.

“It leaves yourself!
You
could have left that séance even more easily than Rappourt, and don’t waste our time denying it. The room was in total darkness, and the sitters had their attention focused on the cabinet. You could have come over here when you were supposed to be walking circles around Union Square last night. You could have left the light on in your rooms to make the detective think you were still there. After killing Tarot, you could have gone back and let the elevator operator see you for an alibi.
You
could have killed them both!”

Gavigan laid it on rather thick, and he didn’t say anything about snow. The accusation, hammering at Watrous, seemed to act like cold water. His apoplectic symptoms vanished, and he gained control of himself. He was suddenly calm, icy.

With what, for him, was abnormal steadiness, he said, “You’re a bloody ass, Inspector. I never saw Tarot before in my life. And you’ll have to show more than opportunity—some sort of motive before you present that case to the State’s Attorney.”

“All right. How’s this? You knew that Rappourt would get $75,000 when Sabbat died, and, being a smart man, you could steer a course from there. As for Tarot…you had to kill him. He’d found you out.”

Watrous fixed his pince-nez more firmly on his nose and his hand shook, but his voice was hard. “You can’t prove any of that. I want to phone the British Consul, at once.”

“Is that all you have to say in your defense?”

“At the moment, yes. Where’s the phone, please?”

Gavigan glared at him with an angry frustrated scowl. “In there,” he said, indicating the study. Watrous went out, Grimm hooked on behind like a trailer.

Gavigan hesitated briefly, then addressed Judy. “Have you remembered where you lost that handkerchief of yours yet, Miss Barclay?”

Her vice was nonchalant, but the blue eyes wavered. “I’ve told you I lost it weeks ago. I haven’t the slightest idea where.”

Duvallo looked from Judy to Gavigan, suspicious and alert.

A new voice broke in—Zelma’s. “Is the handkerchief maroon with large polka dots?”

We all looked at her. Gavigan said, “Yes, what do you know about it?”

“I can guess where you found it. I left it there. Judy and I had lunch together uptown a couple of weeks ago. She dropped it, and I picked it up after she had gone, intending to return it; but I lost it myself, at Cesare’s, the last time I saw him.”

Something like relief sprang alive in Judy’s eyes. “Thanks, Zelma,” she said. “She’s right, Inspector. I do remember, that must have been the day.”

The Inspector’s batting average was low this afternoon. Every line of inquiry was beset with snags. He pulled at his mustache, eyeing Judy with indecision. And then Merlini stepped forward from the shadows and spoke quickly.

“Inspector, your case against Watrous sounds pretty complete.”

Oh, oh, I thought, the Great Merlini is up to something. That didn’t sound right at all, not after the arguments he’d given us before.

“But,” he continued, “I’m not thoroughly satisfied. I’d like to try something else, a little experiment that may show whether you’re right or not.”

The Inspector hesitated a moment, then stepped back and sat down. “Go ahead,” he said. “The floor’s yours.”

“Thanks, but there’s one thing more before you commit yourself. I must have your word that you will not, under any circumstances, interrupt me. I want ten minutes of absolute freedom minus any assistance from the police department. Without that I can do nothing.”

The latter said, uneasily, “I don’t like that. I small rats.” But then he gave in, nodding, “But go ahead; let’s hear it.”

Gavigan put his trust in Merlini’s smiling face, and forgot that the man was a conjurer, his livelihood consisting in a polite kind of con game whose main principle is the double-cross. In a few minutes he was busily regretting his assent.

Merlini gave a final reflective flip to his half dollar and returned it to his pocket.

“Though it may never have occurred to you,” he said, “I think all of you here can easily appreciate the similarity that exists between crime and conjuring, between the murderer and the magician. It should also be obvious that the underlying technique in both fields of endeavor is—must be—the same, that the basic principles of deception used are identical. And if the murderer of Sabbat and Tarot is, as the Inspector says, among those present, these murders especially can be expected to show very definite symptoms of conjuring.”

Madame Rappourt was glaring at him spitefully, apparently annoyed at being included with the tricksters. If Merlini noticed it, he gave no sign.

“You all know that in every trick, in every effort to present an illusion or false appearance, there is always some tell-tale clue that points straight at the secret. The purpose of misdirection, of course, is to gloss over that danger point, to hide or camouflage it from the observer’s notice. If murder is like conjuring, then it too has its weak spots, which the murderer must cover up.”

He paused a moment, put his hands in his pockets and, leaning back against the mantelpiece, went on: “A magician can usually penetrate the secret of a new trick if he sees it twice. Though it may fool him the first time, each succeeding time he views it the odds grow in his favor. He knows what to expect and, from past experience, knows where to look for the chink in the armor. The person who committed these murders is clever, and the weak spot has been concealed very nicely—too well, perhaps. But there’s one chance. An illusion without a watcher is like the tree that falls in the forest where there is no listener; its crash sends out sound waves, but no sound is heard. We are faced with certain impossibilities, some of which
must
be illusory. And some one of you who have witnessed the various phases of these illusions has witnessed, without knowing or realizing its implications, that weak spot. I want to dig into your minds and get at that evidence. The tell-tale observation may be—I rather think it is—so small, so natural, or so innocent, and apparently so unimportant that you don’t remember it. I want to discover what it is someone has forgotten.”

He waited, and held the rest of us waiting, wondering what the devil he was getting at.

“There exists a way to do that. Hypnosis.”

Gavigan looked startled, and began his regretting.

Merlini went on: “Hypnosis would enable us to dive—like Mr. Beebe in his bathosphere—deep into the subconscious mind and bring to the surface that one essential clue, that missing jigsaw piece which we need to dispel the illusion. The plan has but one drawback. Hypnosis, as you know, requires the consent of the subject. The unwilling subject who doesn’t want to be hypnotised and fights unavailingly is a popular myth. If you will all consent to such an experiment, I’m confident that we can solve these murders and clear away the suspicion that now rests on so many of you. Duvallo, here, is a capable operator, and would, I think, do it for us.” He turned to the latter questioningly.

Duvallo was thoughtful. “Yes. I could, and it’s worth a try. But suppose I’m the person who has forgotten this minor detail you want to get at? I’m not sure that a self-hypnotic trance would go deep enough.”

“If we have no luck with the others, I’ll let my friend, Dr. Brainard, the psychoanalyst, give
you
the works.”

There was an uneasy air on several faces, including Gavigan’s. Malloy and Grimm wore expressions of frank skepticism. Alfred LaClaire was the first to object. “You can count me out, please. The whole idea is screwy. Suppose Duvallo is the murderer. I know enough about hypnotism to know that in a trance—well, he couldn’t make me admit murder—hypnosis has its limits—but he could make my answers sound damned funny. No thanks.”