“Murderer!” Cassandra snarled.
Lunging at the casket, she slammed shut the upper lid, locking it. Max cried out. Max’s father felt a surge of dread.
Cassandra seemed to be uncertain as to whether she felt shock or elation. She trembled visibly as she watched Plum attempt to open the casket.
“You bitch!” screamed Max. His voice was muffled.
“Where’s the key?” the Sheriff asked him loudly.
“In my pocket, you idiot!” shrieked Max, furious and terrified at the same time.
Oh, my God, she’s done him in, I thought.
Plum was staring blankly at the casket.
He looked at Cassandra, stunned, as she emitted a sound of half-mad pleasure.
“I’m going to smother in here!” Max shouted.
“Your breath is steaming up the faceplate, darling,” Cassandra said, smiling.
“Mrs. Delacorte,” said Plum, aghast.
“I hope his death is slow,” she said.
Which concluded my appraisal of Cassandra Delacorte.
Not a positive one.
The Sheriff was staring at her as though he couldn’t believe what he’d heard.
I stared at her with no difficulty at all in believing what I’d heard.
Max started pounding on the inside of the lid (unbreakable glass), screaming with enraged terror.
The Sheriff looked around, gaze settling on the trophy board above the mantelpiece.
Running there, he grabbed the African spear.
Seeing this, Cassandra quickly levered down the casket to a horizontal position.
“What are you doing?” Max shouted; he sounded deranged now.
When the Sheriff started to return with the spear, Cassandra pushed the rolling-casket base away from him.
“You mustn’t touch his casket, Sheriff,” she said breathlessly. “You heard him.”
It was a manic chase, my friends. A farce enacted in a madhouse.
Visualize: Cassandra Delacorte shoving the casket around the room (no Magic Room now; rather, an insane asylum), a look of unhinged amusement on her face.
Max inside, howling, pounding.
Plum—the Kikuyu spear clutched tightly in his right hand—gasping, “Mrs. Delacorte!”
And Potato Familias ensconced, unmoving, in his wheelchair, watching like the helpless tuber he was.
“Mrs. Delacorte!” Plum cried again.
“No, no, it’s his final resting place!” she protested. She was insane; I note this in retrospect.
A frenetic giggle pulled back her lips as she yawed thecasket around the guillotine, turning so fast that it “did a wheelie,” as they say.
“Damn it!” cried the Sheriff.
He put on a burst of speed and managed to catch up to her, forcing her to stop.
Immediately, she backed off, panting.
Plum attempted to pry the spearhead under the lid.
Max’s pounding was weaker now. He sobbed with dread.
“Get me out of here!” he begged. “For Christ’s sake, get me out of here!”
The glass plate, I could see now, was completely steamed up by his breath.
“Damn!” Plum was grimacing angrily. He couldn’t seem to force the spear in to open the lid.
I wanted to close my eyes. The sight was unnerving me; and my nerves were half dead, remember.
Plum struggled harder. Finally, he forced the point in and started pulling down on the shaft.
Which promptly broke.
“Oh,” Cassandra said, her tone nine steps below sincerity. “Drat.”
She smiled benignly at the casket. “Sorry, Max,” she said.
“You bitch!” he shrieked.
Cassandra clucked and shook her head. “How disparaging,” she said, leaning across the casket as Sheriff Plum ran back toward the fireplace.
“Now you’ll pay for killing Harry,” she said. “Whether we find him or not.”
“Damn you!” cried my son, his voice sounding faint.
The Sheriff snatched the Spanish pike from the trophy board and started running back, gasping for breath.
“He’s going to try the pike now, Max,” Cassandra told my son. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll send out for some dynamite.”
“Look out,” said Plum.
Cassandra jumped aside as the Sheriff reached the casket, brandishing the pike to drive it at the casket lock.
“Avaunt!” cried Max.
My heart jumped (it was nice to have something that could jump) as the casket side sprang open and my son stood up, arms raised to halt the Sheriff’s move.
“Don’t do it!” he ordered.
They stared at him in shock; while my body considered indulging in a second stroke.
Max gestured toward the casket.
“It is, of course, an apparatus,” he confessed. “An interior release making possible solid-through-solid penetration.”
He looked at Cassandra darkly.
“Although this person didn’t know that,” he said.
He looked over at me. “Had the apparatus built by Needlebaum,” he told me. “He’s still the best, at eighty-four.”
His expression softened as he saw (or sensed) my distress. He came over to me.
“I know, I’ve made you suffer again,” he said. “I regret that, Padre, but I wanted you to see these things and not be shut away from them. This is still your home.”
He laid his hand on my right shoulder and squeezed it. Dear, oh, dear, my muddled brain remarked. My emotions were dangling at the end of a yo-yo, moving up and down, out and in, in circles, winging, spinning, penduluming.
Turning, Max went back to Cassandra and Plum. (Good name for a vaudeville team, it occurred to me.) They stared at him, still—I took it—recovering from the shock of his unexpected appearance.
He chuckled at their expressions.
“Now I ask you,” he said. “Would I have a real casket in my father’s home? Do I strike you as the morbid type?”
He addressed the Sheriff.
“As you know,” he said, “—or maybe not—a magician always provides an alternative ending to an illusion in the event something goes wrong.”
Again, the icy look at Cassandra.
“Like some person slamming down the lid of one’s casket, locking one inside with the key.”
He smiled at her, the smile as icily malignant as the look had been.
“Well, it was worth it,” he declared. “Now I know exactly where your head is at.”
He made a sound of derisive amusement.
“Even if you don’t know where Harry’s is at,” he said.
The Sheriff finally found his voice; the casket effect seemed to have rendered him temporarily speechless.
“You let us think that you were suffocating just to play a trick on us?” he asked, appalled.
“Just to play a trick?” echoed Max. “Sang-de-boeuf, what greater achievement is there?”
His expression hardened suddenly.
“Speaking of that,” he went on, “you’ve been fooled completely, Sheriff. Utterly deceived.
“Harry Kendal isn’t here. He left at twelve-fifteen. I have been playing a game with you. Not a stupid game, as this person described it, but a game nonetheless.”
The Sheriff’s expression was as hard as Max’s now, his lips pressed together so tightly they were barely visible.
“If you’d like to call a lawyer, Mister Delacorte,” he said, “I advise you to do it now. I’m taking you in.”
Max looked taken aback. “But I just told you—” he began.
The Sheriff cut him off. “I know what you told me,” he said.
He moved to the chair in which Harry had been sitting and reaching into the narrow opening beneath it, slid out an attaché case.
“I also know that this is here,” he said.
He pointed to the monogram. “And that H.K. doesn’t stand for Maximilian Delacorte.”
My son looked blank. He’d o
verlooked that?
“How long have you known it was there?” he asked. Plum’s smile was arctic.
“I can play a game too, Mister Delacorte,” he said.
chapter 22
Max mumbled, “Nom de Dieu.”
He nodded, impressed, then said, “I don’t suppose I could convince you that Harry left the case behind, could I?”
“I don’t suppose you could,” said Plum coldly.
“Hmm.” Max looked uncertain. He seems to have lost focus, I thought. “I appear to be at a loss here,” he said. “Although I might remind you that you haven’t found a body yet.”
Weak, Max, weak. The thought oppressed me.
Throughout this brief exchange, Cassandra had been gazing fixedly at Max, a look of bewilderment on her face. Clearly she had little notion of what was going on at the moment. Neither did I.
Sheriff Plum reached into his back pocket and removed a pair of handcuffs.
My son protested. “Oh now, wait a moment—”
Plum did not reply. Walking over to Max, he tucked the attaché case under his left arm and deftly snapped the cuffs into place around Max’s wrists.
“I don’t usually put these on people,” he said. “It humiliates them too much.”
Max recognized the dig and nodded once in mute appreciation. Is it over now? I wondered. What, in fact, had actually been accomplished here?
As Cassandra (and I) watched in confusion, the Sheriff started to lead Max toward the entry hall, holding the attaché case with his left hand.
“I’ll be back with a warrant, Mrs. Delacorte,” he told her.
He glanced at Max in disgust. “At which time, we will tear this room apart until we find the body. And if the body isn’t here, we’ll tear the goddam house apart.”
“Grover, I told you it was in this room,” said Max. Is he already backing down? I thought.
The Sheriff didn’t respond.
“Wait a second,” said my son as though a bulb had just been switched on in his brain. “It’s the body you want?”
Plum’s face tightened—as did his grip on Max’s arm, making my son wince.
“Well,” said my son, “if that’s all you want—”
He made a sudden twisting movement, and before Plum knew what was happening, he was staring down the barrel of his own pistol, which Max had, with great celerity, jerked from the Sheriff’s holster. (Despite everything, I had to admire Max’s still-impressive dexterity.)
Plum held out his right hand.
“Hand it over, Delacorte,” he said.
Max edged back. “You said you wanted the body,” he responded.
“Delacorte.” The Sheriff advanced a step.
Froze in his tracks as Max thrust out the pistol threateningly.
“What have I got to lose, Grover?” Max asked. (Was it my imagination, or was there a crazed sound in his voice?) “Can they execute me twice for two murders?” Cassandra shrank away from him as he passed nearby—backing toward the Egyptian burial case.
“You made me nervous before, looking at it a second time,” he said to Plum. “I thought for sure you’d find out how the reversal gimmick works.”
He pressed the side of the burial case, his voice suddenly becoming that of The Great Delacorte addressing an audience.
“I sense a gathering of forces, my friends,” he said. “Can you feel it?”
Thunder crashed in the distance. (By God, he really does work the weather into his act! I thought.) The Magic Room was gloomy with shadows by now.
The Sheriff and Cassandra watched him, mute and motionless. (I was M&M too, of course.)
“Very close now,” said The Great Delacorte. “Can you feel it? Feel the presence? The still, cold presence … of the dead?”
He flung open the cover of the burial case.
Cassandra screamed. The Sheriff gasped. I almost filled my pants.
Harry looked exactly as he had in the globe, features gray in death, a dark, blood-clotted gash across his throat.
“Behold your lover!” cried The Great Delacorte.
Max scowled.
“And the crummiest agent I ever had,” he added pettishly.
Oh, Max, I thought. Oh, Son.
The scene was frozen; a tableau: Max immobile, the pistol in his hand; Cassandra and the Sheriff looking toward the burial case, their features and bodies as unmoving as stone; me immobile (same old thing), my heartbeat thudding, my heart breaking for my son’s atrocity.
Harry staring, throat cut, dead.
“Don’t you want to take a closer look, Cassandra?” asked her husband.
She averted her face with a choking sob.
“Take a closer look, Cassandra,” Max urged.
“Give me the pistol, Delacorte,” the Sheriff told him.
He twitched back as Max thrust out his arm, pointing the pistol at him.
“Take a closer look, Cassandra,” Max ordered.
The Sheriff swallowed with some effort. With an attempt at professional demeanor, he suggested, “Better do as he says, Mrs. Delacorte.”
“Good advice, Grover,” my son complimented him. “You’re a pip of a lawman, has anyone ever told you that before?”
The Sheriff did not reply. (I didn’t blame him.) He edged slowly toward the burial case as Cassandra approached it, gaze averted.
Max backed off several paces, eyeing them with guarded care. And all I could think was: Why did you want me here, Son? To see this?
The Sheriff stopped, peering closely at Harry’s face, grimacing at the sight—the bluish lips; the glassy, staring eyes; the deep, blood-rimmed incision across his throat.
Then he cocked his head, a look of curiosity on his face.
“Can I—” He gestured toward the body.
“Be my guest,” said Max.
The Sheriff took a few steps closer to the burial case and laid the palm of his right hand against Harry’s gray cheek. What’s he doing? I wondered.
Noting the Sheriff’s movement, Cassandra raised her eyes, emitting a sound of sickened pain at the sight of Harry’s face.
She tensed as the Sheriff reached up to the top of Harry’s head and took hold of his hair.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a faint voice. What are you doing? I thought.
He did not respond, but started to tug upward at Harry’s hair.
Cassandra looked aghast. “What are you doing?” she demanded again, this time in a breaking voice.
“We are about to surprise you, my friends,” said Max, once more The Great Delacorte addressing his audience. “Are you ready? Prepare yourselves. Here it comes!”
Plum pulled up hard at Harry’s hair.
With a sound of revolted anger, Cassandra moved to stop him.
Suddenly, a skintight rubber mask—fastened loosely at the back—tore free from Harry’s head, revealing him gagged but quite alive, making tiny sounds of protest—which the Sheriff had heard, I assumed.
Cassandra cried out with intense relief.
“Restoration, my friends!” cried The Great Delacorte.
He held out the pistol.
“Here’s your weapon, Grover,” he said.
Plum turned, regarding Max with a blank expression.
Max made a rapid, blurring movement with his hands and held out the handcuffs to Plum.
“And your little manacles, too,” he said, sounding like the Witch of the North.
He looked at me.
“Sorry again, Padre,” he said. “Hope it wasn’t too much of a shock.”
Just how much do you think this battered old heart of mine can take, Son? I thought. I was relieved that he wasn’t a murderer. Resentful that he’d forced me over the jump like that. Cassandra, crying, was removing Harry’s gag by then.
“You’re alive,” she said, incredulous. “Alive.”
“Yes, isn’t that a nice surprise?” said Max. “A lot more bedding to be savored now.”
She didn’t even look at him.
&nbs
p; The Sheriff took the pistol and the handcuffs from him.
“Never, in the fifty-four years of my life,” he said, “have I ever met anyone as sick as you.”
“Probably not,” my son agreed; and so, unhappily, did I. Max was not amused, though. It was simply a statement of fact as he (and I) saw it.
“I’d like to shoot you dead where you stand,” said Plum in a most unSheriffly way.
“Oh, now you’re talking,” said Max, nodding with somber approval. “That would be a lovely, charitable thing to do. Relieve me of my rapidly dwindling raison d’être. Please do. I encourage it.”
He pressed the tip of his right index finger to the heart area of his chest.
“Right here,” he said.
“Don’t tempt me,” said the Sheriff, surprising me again.
Harry’s gag was off now. Raging, he exploded. “If you won’t do it, I will! Just give me the fucking gun!
“Ah,” said Max, “our sweet-tongued Harry is among us once again.”
“You son of a bitch!” shrilled Harry. “You lousy, stinking, heartless son of—”
“Enough!” Max roared, shutting Harry up, causing him to twitch in startlement. “Be grateful that I didn’t fire a real pistol ball into your heart! That the Scotch was merely drugged! It would have been a simple matter to dispose of you, and I have every reason in the world to wish you dead! So, shut up. Just don’t push your luck! I’m not—”
He broke off with a groan of angry despair.
“Oh, what’s the use?” he said. “Why bother? What’s the point in going on?”
He looked around in restless torment, as though searching for some quick and simple exit from this life.
Abruptly then, with a sudden, crazed look on his face, he lurched toward the guillotine and, kneeling quickly, thrust his head through the lunette, under the glinting blade. No, I thought.
“All right, Harry. Pal,” he said, his tone both hating and anguished at once. “Here’s your opportunity. Your big chance. To get revenge, get even. Get Cassandra. Get everything.”
Harry’s bindings had been untied by Cassandra now. He started toward Max, trembling with fury.
“You think I couldn’t do it, you bastard?” he snarled ferociously. “You think, if the damn thing was real, I wouldn’t do it in a second?”
“But it is real, Harry,” said my son. A chill around my heart again.