He winced, then directed a forced smile at the Sheriff.
“Does this bother you?” he asked. “It’s just a habit.”
“I said, what time did Harry Kendal get here?” Plum repeated the query.
“Darling?” Max inquired sweetly. “You were here when he arrived. I was out walking, you recall.”
As he spoke, he fanned the four cards with his right hand, then let them drop into his palm.
Cassandra regarded him balefully.
“Just past noon,” she told the Sheriff.
“Thank you, precious,” said Max, bringing up his right hand to his left as though to transfer the cards, then palming them in his right and closing his left as though they contained the cards.
“You murdering bastard.” Cassandra glared at him. “If you think you’re going to get away with this …”
Max made a sound of disapproval at her language, quickly grasping the corners of the cards with his right thumb and bending them over so he could pass the hand, fingers open, across the back of his left hand.
All of this took place in rapid order as the conversation progressed; a skilled magician’s feat.
“Why did he come to see you?” asked Plum.
“Well—” Max dropped his left hand casually, displayed the empty left hand, then produced the card with a fan from behind his right knee “—he came to talk about business,” he said. “An engagement in Las Vegas. Wasn’t that it, babe?” He smiled falsely at Cassandra.
She didn’t answer, watching him with hooded eyes.
The Sheriff watched with displeasure as Max repeated the card manipulations.
I watched Max with a coldness in my stomach, wondering what he was up to, what he had in mind, what plan. I knew there had to be one.
“Second method,” Max was saying as he demonstrated. “Hold the cards between the right forefinger and thumb and pass the left hand across the front of the right as though taking hold of them. Under cover of the left hand, quickly back-palm them behind the right. Your audience—”
“I’d prefer you didn’t do that, Mister Delacorte,” the Sheriff told him.
“Really?” Max sounded surprised. “You don’t like it, Grover? You don’t think it’s jolly? Legerdemain? Sleight of hand?”
“Mr. Delacorte—”
Max fumbled, almost dropping the cards.
With a scowl, he made them vanish, slipping them into his trouser pocket. He looked at Plum with a goading expression.
“I’m all ears, Grover,” he said in a hardened voice. “Hit me.”
“Why did you have to kill him, Max?” Cassandra asked.
There was an aching in her voice now which made him look at her strangely.
“Did Mister Kendal leave the house?” the Sheriff asked.
“I’ve already told you!” Cassandra’s anger burst out. “Harry Kendal was murdered!”
The Sheriff tried to curb his irritation.
“I would like to hear what your husband has to say, Mrs.—”
“He’ll say anything to throw you off!” she interrupted, raging.
Again, she looked at Max, her tone despairing.
“You didn’t have to kill him, Max,” she said.
Max, admit it, I thought. Be done with this.
Cassandra turned and walked to the picture window, looking out at the gazebo by the lake, her features taut.
“To repeat the question, Mister Delacorte,” said Plum. “Did Harry Kendal—”
“Harry Kendal vacated these premises—under his own power, I might add—I will add—I did add—at approximately a quarter after one.”
“He’s lying,” Cassandra said without turning.
He was lying. But why?
The Sheriff was writing in his pad. “One … fifteen,” he said.
“Another way of putting it, but just as good,” Max said.
The Sheriff threw him a frowning glance. “I’m not amused, Mister Delacorte,” he said.
“Nor should you be,” concurred my son.
Cassandra turned abruptly and walked to the spot where Harry had been lying after drinking the Scotch.
Kneeling, she began to examine the floorboards.
“Looking for something, darling?” Max inquired.
“You’ll know when I find it,” she answered coldly.
“Looking forward to it, snookums,” Max responded.
He watched Plum writing on his pad.
“Did you know,” he said, “that when one is blindfolded, one can see past one’s nose?”
Plum glanced at him with disinterest. Now what? I thought.
“But,” continued Max as though the information must be absolutely fascinating to the Sheriff, “until one needs that sight, one keeps one’s eyes shut, don’t you see? In that way, one need not feign blindness during that period, because one is genuinely blind. N’est-ce pas?”
I felt a sense of melancholic pain, remembering the very day I’d told that to my thirteen-year-old son.
Plum had frowned at the remark. “What has that got to do with what we’re talking about?” he asked.
Max smiled benignly. “Nothing,” he said. (Does he have a plan? I wondered.)
The Sheriff drew in a tight breath.
“I’m getting tired of this, Mister Delacorte,” he said.
“Here’s an intriguing item, Grover,” said Max, raising his right index finger as though testing the wind. “The magiciar tressed in blue, rides a horse onto the stage, accompanying a number of attendants dressed in white.”
His next words faded from my hearing as, abruptly, I was on the stage again, on horseback, dressed in blue. A screen was raised for several seconds, then removed. Voila! I’d vanished into thin air, the attendants running the horse offstage. Applause; delighted laughter.
The answer was, of course, simplicity itself. While behind the screen, I jumped from the horse, ripped off my paper costume and stuffed it into a pocket. Underneath, I was dressed in white, like the attendants. No one ever noticed.
“Pourquoi?” Max’s final words grew audible to me. “In the ensuing rush of movement, no one takes the time to count the number of attendants.”
The Sheriff was glaring at him now; that made a pair of glares. (You know where the other one came from.)
“You understand?” asked Max. “Leading your audience into seeing what you want them to see.”
Cassandra looked up from her rapt perusal of the floorboards.
“How long are you going to let him do this, Sheriff?” she asked, standing.
“Listen, Mister Delacorte,” Plum started to say.
He broke off, tightening resentfully as Max began a rapid single-card production, speaking as he worked.
“Back-palm ten cards in the right hand. Bend the fingers in. Reach across with Right One, press against the top card.”
“Mister Delacorte—”
“Disengage the card from the pack by pressing down and in with thumb pad as you straighten out the fingers.”
“Damn it,” said the Sheriff.
“Wait,” Max said. “Let the card slip down between Right One and Right Two, through Five, until all the cards have been produced.”
He started to do the same thing with his left hand. “Backpalm ten cards in the left hand,” he began.
“Delacorte.” The Sheriff’s cheeks were getting pink.
“All tricks must be done in threes, you know,” my son nonsequitured, the expression on his face not entirely sane now, I saw with dismay.
“Card tricks. Coin tricks. Ball tricks. All tricks.” The cards kept appearing one by one in the fingers of his left hand. “Tear paper three times. Tap tables and containers three times. Announce illusions three times. This creates a deep response, you see. Beginning, middle, end.” His eyes were positively glittering. “Father, Mother, Holy Ghost. Eternal—damn it!”
I started inwardly as his voice flared when he lost hold of the cards, which scattered to the floor like falling birds. He kicked them
aside in a burst of fury.
Cassandra looked delighted by his failure.
“You have just enjoyed the privilege of seeing The Great Delacorte in performance,” she said. “Thrilling, wasn’t it?”
Max gave her a quick, acerbic look, then turned back to Plum as the Sheriff spoke, his voice antagonistic.
“Would you rather we continued this at my office?” Plum asked.
“No,” said Max immediately. “I prefer to be here.”
“Let’s do it then,” snapped Plum.
Max gestured loosely. (Was he back again, or farther adrift? I couldn’t tell.)
“What can I tell you?” he inquired. “That my wife is loony? It’s a fact. There’s been no murder here.”
“Liar!” Cassandra shouted. “You killed Harry right in front of me!”
Max looked bemused. “I did?” he said. “Maybe I should reevaluate. Maybe I’ve got amnesia.”
He was still playing the game, then. Dementedly perhaps, but in control of his faculties.
“For God’s sake, take him in!” Cassandra told the Sheriff. “I’ll testify against him.”
“Wives can’t testify against their husbands, darling,” Max reminded her. “I must say, you’re behaving most erratically.”
“I think we’d better take a drive into town,” the Sheriff said. “If you want to get a coat or something …”
Max looked at him without expression.
Abruptly, a red ball appeared in his right hand, and he tossed it into the air. Plum lowered his eyes involuntarily as it fell to the floor and bounced. So did Cassandra.
“See how his gaze followed the ball, my friends,” said Max, addressing an unseen audience. “Unexpected movement, you see.”
“Never mind the—” started Plum.
He stopped, eyes shifting suddenly as Max produced a burning match in his left hand. (I remembered teaching him that.)
“Again,” said Max, “his gaze caught by the movement, by the flame.”
The Sheriff grimaced and was about to speak when Max turned quickly to his right, gasping as he looked upward. Plum glanced at the same spot.
“Again.” Max smiled. “His line of sight directed.”
His arm shot out as he pointed across the room. “There!” he cried.
The Sheriff began to turn, then looked back willfully, his face a mask of anger. “Damn it, Delacorte!”
“You see,” said Max, striding toward Cassandra, “I can decide, at any moment, what he will or will not look at.”
Cassandra drew back in alarm as Max walked up to her.
Reaching down, he jerked apart the front of her blouse, revealing her large, brassiere-cupped breasts. Max! I thought in shock.
Cassandra gasped and snatched at the blouse to cover herself, her face hardened with fury.
A startled Plum was gaping at the sight.
“How’s that for misdirection, Grover?” asked my son. “At the moment you got an eyeful of my wife’s knockers, I could have walked a purple elephant past you without you seeing it.”
He glanced at me. “Forgive me, Padre,” he said. “I was only making a point.”
Cassandra was fastening her blouse now, an odd expression on her face, no longer furious, but grimly thoughtful.
“You didn’t have time, did you?” she asked.
Max elevated his eyebrows. “Pardon?”
“You didn’t have time to put the body anywhere outside,” she said. “It has to be in the house.”
Plum stared at her in confusion.
And Harry’s voice was heard.
“Well, it took you long enough to guess that, babe,” he said.
chapter 17
The Sheriff looked around in startlement.
“Who said that?” he asked.
Cassandra moved abruptly to the globe and snatched off the red silk scarf.
She jolted with shock (as, somewhere in my dead bod, I did too), grimacing exaggeratedly.
Plum stared at the globe in revulsion.
Inside was Harry Kendal’s head, now hacked off at the neck, veins and arteries dangling, features gray and bloodless, eyes staring.
“What the hell is that?” asked Plum.
He twitched as the head responded.
“Hi there, Sheriff,” it said. “Harry Kendal here. Well, not exactly here. Part of me is elsewhere. My body’s cabbing back to Boston with a different head on it. Plastic. Stuffed with shredded contracts—Delacorte’s, of course; all canceled. Head looks pretty good. First class. Hat fits perfectly. I doubt if anyone will notice.”
The head turned. Harry’s dead eyes seemed to look directly at Cassandra.
“Hi, babe,” he said. “Remember the Essex House? Room Five-twenty-five? Hanh? Hanh? Did I give good head or didn’t I?”
The head emitted a hideous, gargling laugh, the gray lips drawn back sharply. Oh, Max, I thought.
Then the eyes fell shut, the face of the head went still.
“You filthy, sadistic son of a bitch,” Cassandra said.
I almost agreed with her.
Max smiled at Plum and gestured toward the globe.
“Holography,” he said. “A wonderful invention. Enabling us to bring new life to old illusions.”
He looked at me. “If only you could have had it, Padre!” he said.
As Cassandra and the Sheriff stared at him in silence, he removed the remote control from the pocket of his smoking jacket (odd name for the apparel of a man who didn’t smoke, it occurred to me) and pressed a button.
The globe cover slid back into place, and he lay the remote control on top of the desk.
Plum turned and walked toward the entry hall.
“Don’t leave the premises,” he ordered. “I’ll be back in less than an hour with a warrant.”
“Warrant?” Max looked taken aback.
“To tear your goddam house apart,” the Sheriff said.
“No need,” Max told him instantly. “I confess. I did kill Harry Kendal.”
My reaction was mixed. Surprise at his sudden, unexpected confession. Relief that it was over with.
After he spoke, a peal of thunder sounded, not too far away.
“How’s that for timing?” Max inquired, pleased. “I even work the weather into my act.”
The Sheriff looked repelled.
“Your act?” he said.
“Don’t misunderstand,” responded Max, his pleased expression gone. “I really did kill Harry Kendal.”
Plum gestured toward the entry hall.
“In that case, we’ll be on our way to town,” he said.
Cassandra smiled, but Max looked disconcerted.
“No, no, please,” he said. “That’s not the plan.” There was a plan, then! “The plan is to announce a murder to our good, staunch representative of law and order—that’s you, Grover—then announce that he—you—will never ever—what’s the phrase?—’pin the rap’ on me, because he’ll—you’ll—never find the body.”
Plum stared at him impassively.
“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “You’re admitting to me—of your own free will—that you murdered Harry Kendal?”
“Of my own free will,” said Max.
“And is your wife correct?” The Sheriff gestured toward Cassandra. “Is the body still in the house?”
Max’s eyes lit up.
“Grover, in this room,” he said.
Why did you want me here, Max? Why? I wondered desolately.
Cassandra and Plum were looking at him in amazement.
“However,” Max continued, “if you take me in, I will—naturally—deny the murder. And without a signed confession, and without the corpus delecti, well …”
He gestured vaguely with his right hand.
“You just confessed in front of two witnesses,” the Sheriff said.
“One of them my wife?” asked Max. “With me denying my confession? Sans corpse? The evidence not terribly incriminating?”
He waggled a chi
ding finger.
“Grover,” he scolded, parent to child.
The Sheriff was silent. Thinking. (I presume; can’t prove it.)
“Take him in,” Cassandra said. “You heard his confession. That’s enough.”
Max ignored her, addressing the Sheriff.
“I claim,” he said, “that the worthless remains of Harry Kendal are in this room and that no one—no one—will ever be able to find them. Even though he may be no more distant from us than a few scant yards.”
His smile was wicked. “Possibly inches,” he said.
Despite the dreadful aspects of it all, I must confess that Max’s challenge intrigued me. After all, wasn’t he the product of my somewhat askew rearing?
I blinked (I think) as he made a sudden, broadly flourishing gesture with his right hand.
“I take it back!” he cried. “I didn’t murder Harry Kendal! I vanished him!”
He smiled again. “In the parlance of the trade, that means I made him disappear, Grover.” (I wished that he wouldn’t keep calling Plum by his first name, and with such barely disguised disrespect.)
Max looked toward the fireplace.
“Perhaps I stuffed him up the chimney,” he confided.
The Sheriff’s head turned slightly—and involuntarily—toward the fireplace.
“Sheriff—” warned Cassandra.
“Or perhaps I dissected him into several hundred pieces, which are now distributed about the room in boxes, vases, urns, what have you.”
“Delacorte—” said Plum.
“Or I may have disguised him as one or both of the easy chairs,” Max interrupted. “Or had him pancaked under a steamroller so that he lies beneath that large rug over there.”
“Give it up,” Cassandra told him.
“Or—” Max cut her off grandiosely—“I disassembled his integral atoms so that—even as I speak—he hovers in the air before our very eyes, an effluvium of cosmic dust.”
He scowled theatrically.
“Or should I say cosmic garbage?” he amended.
“You’re wasting my time, Delacorte,” the Sheriff snarled.
Max made a face of boyish abashment. (He can still do that? I thought, amazed.) “Sorry,” he murmured.
Plum turned to Cassandra.
“You think he’s telling the truth?” he asked.
“Gro-ver.” Max sounded wounded. You’re getting in deeper and deeper, Son, I thought.