Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

With the exception of the advice, it was exactly the kind of news Cabal had been hoping for. “Bones, I want this arcade evacuated, with the exception of that woman.”

“Sure thing,” said Bones, and moved quietly and surreptitiously around, handing out free ride tickets to all and sundry. Within five minutes, the arcade contained only Cabal and the woman, who was slowly feeding coins into a fruit machine called Fun Time. Or so it seemed to Johannes Cabal, unaware of a figure in the corner who had forced himself into near transparency. Horst Cabal watched and hoped.

In the row of penny tableaux was one covered with a tarpaulin and an Out of Order sign on the front. In truth, the Cabal brothers had run out of ideas by the time they’d got to that one, so it was actually empty. Now Johannes approached it, concentrated, mouthed, “I invoke thee,” and pulled the tarpaulin away. Inside the cabinet was a tableau of a room. Within it was a tiny automaton that looked strikingly like the young unhappy woman. The room was a tiny squalid bed-sit with laundry hanging from lines strung over a bath visible through an ajar door. The automaton stood by a cradle in which a tiny doll of a baby lay. Small it may have been, but, somehow, there was enough detail to make it clear that this was a child it would be hard for anybody to love. The tableau was entitled “The Mother’s Escape.” Folding the tarpaulin over his arm, Cabal walked to the far side of the arcade and pretended to be in conversation with the old man in the change booth. In reality, he watched the woman. Nor was he the only one.

The young woman was disappointed when Fun Time started to hand lemons out with harsh regularity. Soon she was short of coins, and the reversal of fortune had depressed her. She left the machine and walked the ranks of its comrades. She would have to be heading for home before long, she knew, and wanted some small piece of pleasure to bide her through the night. She saw the row of penny tableaux and inspected them one by one. They were all horrible: tales of murder and execution, hauntings, and harsh justice. Nothing that she wanted to know. She was about to leave them when her eye fell upon the last in the row. Whether it was the title, or the striking resemblance the automaton bore to her, or the tableau to her own bed-sit, neither Cabal could tell, but it drew her inexorably.

She stopped by the case and looked into it. It was strange, dreamlike. It was as if somebody had taken her life, re-created it in wood, wire, and paint, and put it here, on public display. On slips of paper — aged and yellow despite in truth being less than ten minutes old — were written “The Unhappy Mother” and “The Troublesome Baby,” pinned to the tableau’s floor in front of their respective subjects. Her eyes prickled. She wasn’t alone after all. Somebody else must have suffered as she suffered for the story to be retold here. As she fumbled for one of her few remaining coins, another pair of eyes nearby prickled, grew moist, and silently wept.

She had to know, she had to see how this other person had fared. The tableau was after all “The Mother’s Escape.” How? How had she escaped? She needed to know with a strange urgency. She put the coin to the slot and dropped it inside.

With a whirr, the tableau came to life. The baby’s arms rose and fell with mechanical rhythm as the head rolled from side to side. Crying. Demanding. Never shutting up. In time to the baby, the mother put her hands to her ears and shook her head. She was at the end of her tether. Not a day went by when she didn’t consider suicide. The woman rested her forehead against the cool glass and bit her lip.

There was a distinct click, and the floor rotated by one-third of a revolution anti- clockwise, changing scenes. Now the mother stood in the bathroom. Using the washstand as a table, she was mixing something. Powders and liquids from the cabinet. It was a strange thing, but, although the largest bottle she handled was the length of a thumbnail, the labels were clearly legible. A jigger of this, a pinch of that went into a mortar and were thoroughly mixed. When she had finished, the tiny mechanical mother poured the solution into a baby’s bottle. The implication was all too clear. As she read the label for the scene, “A Solution Presents Itself,” the amazing dexterity of the automaton never struck her as remarkable. She was living the little drama herself. She almost moaned aloud as, click, the scene rotated again to its final third. Here was retribution, be it earthly or divine; she had seen too many of these machines in her life to doubt a moral outcome. But … no. The final scene was of a graveyard. In her funereal weeds, the mother looked radiant as the mourners lowered a tiny coffin into the dark grave. And behind her handkerchief, was that a suspicion of a smile? The automaton looked out of the case, straight into her eyes, and she saw her own face there. Happy. The label affixed to a convenient tomb read, inevitably, “The Mother’s Escape.”

The machine made another click and returned to the hateful first scene. Barely had the whirring stopped before she was feeding it another coin. This time, when the second scene arrived, her lips moved as she memorised the ingredients of the baby’s bottle.

* * *

The police arrived an hour before dawn. Cabal was perfectly polite with them as they busied around and asked a lot of obvious questions. He was less happy to see that Barrow was in attendance. “I wasn’t aware that you were a member of the police force, Mr. Barrow,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“I’m not. Just a concerned party,” replied Barrow.

“Well, then,” Cabal said to the sergeant in charge, “I believe I’m within my rights to ask Mr. Barrow to leave?”

“No, you’re not,” said the sergeant. “Ex-Detective Inspector Barrow is here at my request and is acting as a consultant in this case.”

“‘Ex-Detective Inspector’?” said Cabal, impressed. “My, you are a man of many parts. ‘Case.’ What case is this?”

“There has been a murder. A particularly horrible one. The suspect claims that this carnival was involved.”

“A murder?” said Cabal, shocked and innocent.

“An infanticide, to be exact,” said Barrow. “A mother killed her own child. Claims that you have some machine in your arcade that tells you how to make poison.”

“Good heavens! Really?”

“You mean to say you didn’t realise that your arcade featured such a machine?”

“Oh, no, not for a second. We have no such machine. I was just surprised that anybody could concoct such a bizarre story. And that anybody would believe it.”

The sergeant bridled. “We have to follow up every lead, sir.”

“Of course you do. I understand entirely. Well, what else can I help you with? You have my word, there is emphatically no machine like the one you describe within this carnival. I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”

“The poison she made was a very cruel one, sir. The baby died in agonies.”

“Terrible.”

“She seems to have been under the impression that it would be un-detectable,” said Barrow. “She’s only a simple girl. I think she’s telling the truth in most respects.”

“Meaning what?”

“She came to this carnival last night. The very same night she concocts a poison and uses it. I don’t think she could have become Lucrezia Borgia at such short notice without professional help.”

“What are you insinuating?”

The sergeant coughed. “The arcade, sir, if you would. We would like to look at the machines.”

“Very well, but you’re wasting your time.” Cabal led the way for the little entourage of three police officers and Barrow to the arcade. He unlocked the big padlock that sealed the entrance and stepped aside. “Be my guests.” The party entered and stood in a huddle near the door while Cabal went around and opened the shutters.

Barrow’s eye lit upon the penny tableaux and he went to investigate, followed by the policemen. Cabal leaned against the wall and affected nonchalance. Barrow studied the row, reading the titles as he moved along it. “‘The House of Bluebeard,’ ‘The Pit and the Pendulum,’ ‘The Court of Ivan the Terrible,’ ‘The Haunted Bedroom,’ ‘Tyburn Tree.’ Very Grand Guignol, Mr. Cabal,” he said disapprovingly.

“It’s what people like,” replied Cabal, “Mr. Barrow.”

Barrow had arrived at the end of the row, a machine covered with a tarpaulin and with a sign fixed to it. “Out of order? What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know. Something mechanical. Quite beyond me.”

“We’d like to have a look at it if we may, sir,” said the sergeant.

“I don’t think that would be wise. You have my word there is no machine like the one that you have