require dim lighting and locked cabinets and rattling tambourines when they are trying to reach the departed. Isn’t it rather undignified of the dead to choose such ridiculous means to get in touch? We magicians own up to our tricks — or rather we own up that they are tricks. We might fear the discovery of our secrets but we don’t fear the exposure of our very selves as the mediums do. But I am running on, Mr Ansell.’
‘Not at all. I can see the depth of your feelings.’
‘I have good reason for feeling as I do.’
Tom waited attentively. If the Major wanted to give the reason, he would. If not, not. Marmont lit another cigarette and began to speak.
‘Some years ago I lost my darling wife. For a time in my grief and despair I believed I might make contact with her again. I consulted mediums, I attended seances, I willed myself to believe that we might still be able to talk to each other, to glimpse each other. But the harder I tried, the more she seemed to recede into the distance. I came to a simple conclusion, Mr Ansell. You know what that was?’
‘I can guess.’
‘It is that those who profess to put one in touch with the dead are imposters. The best of them do not know that they are imposters and are merely self-deluded. But the majority are out-and-out frauds. They deserve ridicule and shame and exposure, if not the full rigour of the law. And, as I say, Eustace Flask is the worst of a very bad bunch. The world would be a better place without his presence.’
Sebastian Marmont had stubbed out his cigarette even though it wasn’t finished. He was clenching his fists. He looked down at them as though they were the hands of another.
‘Where was I? Ah yes, my wife. I could not mourn her forever or waste my time and resources sitting in the stuffy parlours of the mediums because I had responsibilities. You see, she left me with three children, good lads all, to remember her by.’
Major Marmont gave a sudden, barking laugh. ‘Of course the desire to expose that charlatan Flask was not the only reason why I did what I did yesterday evening. When word gets round that I’ve invited Flask to attend one of my performances at the Assembly Rooms, you won’t be able to get a ticket for love or money. People will come in the hope of seeing a spat.’
It was oddly reassuring that Marmont had a practical or commercial reason for causing a stir, that he wasn’t just driven by fury. There were other questions that Tom would have liked to ask — where, for instance, did all the Major’s Hindoos stay? Surely they were not lodging in the comfort of the County Hotel? — but the soldier-magician indicated that they ought to get down to business, the reason Tom was visiting him at the hotel. Sebastian Marmont wished to make a formal statement, an affidavit, of how he had come into possession of the Lucknow Dagger.
He asked Tom to explain how an affidavit was prepared. It was fairly simple. Marmont simply had to produce a document with Tom’s help, topped and tailed in the appropriate legal fashion, and then the affidavit would have to be sworn to in the presence of a commissioner of oaths. Marmont went to a writing desk and produced an envelope from which he extracted a couple of sheets of paper filled with small, spidery handwriting.
‘I have written down the story here. You may read it.’
‘It may be necessary to recast it,’ said Tom after few minutes. As far as he could decipher it, Major Marmont’s account was somewhat disjointed and sensational. There were plenty of exclamation marks and expressions like ‘by the skin of our teeth’ and ‘shake a stick at’. The history of the Dagger seemed to be strange and bloody.
‘To recast it? To make it more lawyerly?’
‘I’m afraid so. Then you must affirm it as a true account.’
‘Perhaps you would like to see the Lucknow Dagger itself, Mr Ansell,’ said Marmont.
Major Marmont paused and with a showman’s instinct unfastened his cravat. He removed a loop of braided cord which hung around his neck and drew out a leather sheath from within his shirt. From the sheath he produced the very weapon. He handed it to Tom, who wished Helen was here to see this. It would have appealed to her writerly imagination. Now he took the Lucknow Dagger from its owner. He experienced a strange feeling of giddiness and for an instant clutched the edge of the table.
It was a finely worked object. The blade was about four inches long and the handle slightly shorter. The steel of the blade had a heavy bluish sheen to it, as though it had absorbed the lifeblood of its victims. The handle was decorated with ivory carvings. He peered at the largest of them. A figure with many arms was set sideways-on, trampling several much smaller figures underfoot. There were miniature skulls and what appeared to be spears and lances and arrows flying through the air. Tom had expected something conventionally valuable, a knife whose handle was encrusted with precious stones or worked in gold. He looked up to see the Major scrutinizing him.
‘Interesting, eh? The figure is Kali, the goddess of death and destruction. She is rightly held in awe.’
This information, together with the dark blade and the pale ivory work of the handle, was somehow unsettling. Not wanting to hold it any longer, he handed it back to Sebastian Marmont.
‘You’re wondering whether the right place for this is in a museum — or a bank vault?’
‘Yes, I was. Or rather I was wondering whether you always carried it about with you, Major Marmont.’
‘It was designed to be carried, Mr Ansell. It is for use and adornment. No Indian would dream of locking up such an item so why should I?’
‘Do you keep it for good fortune, for luck?’
‘Perhaps I keep it so that others should not get their hands on it,’ said the Major cryptically. ‘For luck, you ask? I am not especially superstitious, although you cannot spend years in the East without suspecting that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, as Hamlet says. Nevertheless, there are scurrilous stories about how I came into possession of this object — that I took it from a dead man when his corpse was still warm, even that I killed him myself — and that is why I have asked to formally swear to the truth.’
‘Who’s responsible for these stories about you?’
‘Rumours, rumours,’ said Marmont with a wave of his hand. He got up from his cross-legged position in the window. ‘What I would like you to do, Mr Ansell, is to take the key facts in the account I have just given and write them up in the appropriate legal language. We can then proceed to the business of the affidavit.’
‘Of course, Major Marmont,’ said Tom, wondering whether anyone in the firm of Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie had ever overseen a stranger, more exotic affidavit.
‘And I would be honoured if you and your wife were to be my guests at my next performance in the Assembly Rooms. It should be interesting because, as I said, I have written to invite that charlatan Eustace Flask. He will see a real magician at work. I may even invite him to assist me in one of my acts.’
The door opened and an Indian strolled into the room. Like the Major he was wearing a suit.
‘Ah Dilip,’ said Marmont. ‘May I present Mr Thomas Ansell. He comes to visit me from a London firm of lawyers — on that business you know about. Mr Ansell, Mr Dilip Gopal.’
They shook hands. The Indian was a handsome man with dark eyes and an incipient smile.
‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Ansell.’
‘Dilip assists me in some of my performances. He is staying with my Hindoo assistants, the boys, keeping an eye on them.’
‘We are in a boarding house close by,’ explained Mr Gopal.
So that little mystery was solved. Tom supposed the Indians were lodging elsewhere for reasons of cost, perhaps also because they would not be altogether welcome in the city’s best hotel.
‘The lads hardly need an eye kept on them,’ said Mr Gopal. ‘They are very well behaved.’
‘I should say,’ said the Major, ‘that Dilip is also my brother-in-law.’
Tom couldn’t hide his surprise and confusion. The Major seemed pleased at the effect he had produced.
‘Yes, my wife, my late wife, was Indian. Didn’t I say?’
The House in Old Elvet
It was unfortunate that Ambrose Barker came back to the house in Old Elvet when he did. He ought to have stayed in the alehouse growing even more sozzled than he already was. Unfortunate for all three of them, Ambrose
