‘Yes, a note, Tom, on County Hotel paper. There are some pieces of apparatus which he needs to refine, and he says I can help. I enjoyed being made to disappear in the Perseus Cabinet.’
‘All right,’ said Tom. He knew that Major Marmont had taken a shine to Helen so the request was not so surprising. ‘But I’ll accompany you to the theatre.’
They set off through the older part of town, without a police escort. All the time there was something nagging at Tom, something about the telegram which Harcourt had shown him, briefly. Tom struggled to recall the wording. What was it now? Something along the lines of ‘Newcastle force in port arrest Smight. Have your man verify and collect.’
It sounded odd. He mentioned it to Helen, repeating the words as far as he remembered them. She said, ‘Telegrams have a special, contorted language all their own.’
‘There has been a mistake, I think,’ said Tom suddenly, stopping in the street. Helen looked at him. He was gazing fixedly at a shop window, a ladies’ dress shop.
‘Are you all right, Tom?’
‘I must see Traynor or Harcourt.’
‘They will surely have left for Newcastle by now.’
‘I might be able to catch them at the police-house.’
But Tom was undecided. He didn’t want to leave Helen. She saw this and said, ‘I’ll be safe, Tom. No harm can come to me with Major Marmont.’
‘No, it can’t, can it? I will join you at the theatre. I will only be a moment.’
He almost ran down the street towards the marketplace. It would take him only a few minutes to reach the police station in New Elvet. He would find Traynor or Harcourt and tell them that they were, almost certainly, on the wrong scent. He was excited by his discovery and wanted to pass it on.
For what Tom had suddenly understood was that the telegraphic message had been wrongly transcribed at the police station. He’d realized it when staring at the window sign. WOMENSWEAR, the dress-shop said in close- packed gilt letters. The apostrophe had been lost and so the two words read as one. ‘Women’s Wear’, of course. But also, and more mischievously, it might be read as ‘Women Swear’.
So it was with the telegram from the Newcastle police. It did not read ‘Newcastle force in port arrest Smight. Have your man verify and collect.’ but ‘Newcastle force in port arrests. Might have your man. Verify and collect.’
From his work, Tom was familiar with the way in which telegraphic messages could get mangled, not so much in transmission but in transcription when the clerk at the receiving end wrote down the wrong letter or misplaced a full stop. If the message had come direct to the police-house, where everybody knew they were searching for an individual called Smight, then it was very natural that ‘might’ could be transformed into ‘Smight’. Natural but careless. And enough to send Traynor and Harcourt off to Newcastle on a potential wild-goose chase.
Did it matter? thought Tom, as he walked rapidly across the river and towards the police-house in New Elvet. The policemen would discover soon enough that they were on a false errand and come back, tails between their legs. He slowed down. He considered going back to rejoin Helen. It was more the fear of looking a fool in her eyes than anything else that made him go on.
So he arrived at the police-house, identified himself and told the sergeant on duty he wanted to speak to Frank Harcourt or the detective from Scotland Yard. Too late. As Helen had predicted, they were already on their way to Newcastle. The sergeant said there were other superintendents in the building. Did he wish to speak with one of them? Tom said no. He was starting to regret his eagerness to share his discovery about the telegram. Was he doing anything except proving his own cleverness? Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps the Newcastle police had detained Smight after all. He hoped so.
Tom retraced his steps to the Assembly Rooms by a route which was now thoroughly familiar. Entering the ornate auditorium, he was relieved to hear from the stage the voice of Major Sebastian Marmont who was, indeed, presiding over arrangements for that evening’s performance, his last in Durham. With him were his three sons and Dilip Gopal. But there was no sign of Helen. Tom felt a chill which turned to deep unease when Marmont said he had not seen her.
‘But you wrote her a note asking for help in some trick.’
‘I haven’t written any note. Are you sure, Mr Ansell?’
Tom realized that Helen had not shown him the letter from the County Hotel. If he had seen it he might have recognized the writing, or at least recognized that it wasn’t from the magician. He cursed himself for his carelessness. He cursed himself for leaving her and racing to the police station to share his discovery about the telegram. So where was Helen? What in God’s name had happened to her?
When Tom set off at a brisk pace for the police-house, Helen Ansell had debated for a moment whether to follow him. But she was rather irritated that he had insisted on accompanying her in the first place and she was baffled by his talk of telegrams. He’d got some hold of some silly notion which he had not troubled to explain to her. She hardly listened to his promise to join her later.
Of course it was safe for her to call on Major Marmont. She did not have to be escorted everywhere by her husband, especially now they had Inspector Traynor’s assurance that the danger from Anthony Smight was over. Helen had the magician’s letter with her. She retrieved it from her purse and read it again, standing in the street. Marmont was requesting her assistance. In a letter on notepaper headed with the name of the County Hotel, he asked her to come not to the Assembly Rooms but to the Palace of Varieties behind the Court Inn. She knew this was where he stored his conjuring apparatus and where he prepared some of his acts.
The Palace of Varieties did not live up to its palatial name. It was a simple wooden building not far from the court house and the gaol, and a venue for acts such as trick cyclists or hypnotists, judging by the faded and torn bills displayed outside. Its audience would be drawn from the less prosperous areas of the city or the mining communities roundabout.
The outer doors were locked. Helen walked down the alley to one side of the building. There was another entrance here on which was painted ‘Performers Only’. This door was ajar. She pushed at it and then hesitated, suddenly not so sure of herself. It opened on to a narrow passage. Helen walked a few feet inside. There was a single gas-jet burning in the passage. She turned a corner and came to a short flight of wooden stairs. It was dim at the top but a draught of cooler air suggested she was somewhere backstage.
She listened hard but heard nothing except the hiss of the gas-jet. She trod softly up the steps. She would just make sure that Major Marmont was not here, and then she would go back. She came to a high-ceilinged but cramped area at the top of the stairs. She picked her way between wicker hampers and wooden crates and mounds of fabric, and pushed at some heavy drapes. At once Helen found herself standing on the stage of the Palace of Varieties. The light here was subdued but better than in the off-stage area. The footlights burned low, giving an effect of an autumn evening.
Near the front of the stage was a queer piece of apparatus. It was a quilted platform, with the dimensions of a very narrow single bed, and it seemed to be floating unsupported about four feet off the ground. As Helen moved towards it the light above the floating platform grew hazier and broke up, almost dissolving into splinters before her eyes. She reached out an experimental hand to touch the object. Her fingers struck against something as taut and metallic as a piano wire. She started back. Then she realized that there was a cluster of wires, very thin strands which held up the platform. The hazy effect was caused by the wires blocking and diffusing the light from the front of the stage.
She stretched out her hand again. The wires were coated in some substance which made them dull, almost invisible. Close to, though, she could see that they converged and ran through multiple points on the ‘floating’ board. Underneath they were attached to blocks on the stage floor. Overhead the wires fanned out and ran upwards into the dark space within the proscenium arch. Helen saw in the dimness above a device like a great roller suspended out of sight of the audience together with some sort of crank or winch which gleamed faintly in the light. So this was how the floating man trick was achieved!
She passed to one side of the hanging board and, holding her arm below her eyes to reduce the glare from the footlights, she looked out into the auditorium. This was a plainer space than the Assembly Rooms and the seating had a makeshift appearance. But where was Major Marmont? The levitation trick was set up and the footlights were burning low but there was no magician to perform it.
Helen felt a draught on the back of her neck. Her skin prickled and she understood in an instant how foolish
