future brother-in-law and sister-in-law disliked each other. A trio of unhappy players.
I knew Homer had moved into Mrs. Zeller’s rooming house years back after his wife took sick and the children went back East to the grandparents. Gustave, the newcomer, rented the small cheap bungalow on South Street, just up from the boat dock near the mill district. The brothers didn’t share lodging. Well, I thought, grimly, I understood that perfectly because I anticipated the day when Fannie and I would be miles apart, independent of each other’s lives, my older sister married and probably stopping by on the High Holy Days or, more likely, Christmas. It would be nice if she lived in California, where I had no intention of ever going.
“Houdini wants to say hello to you,” Homer said. “He sent me to ask you because he can’t escape the sycophants.” A strange run of words, mechanical and flat, said while looking over my shoulder and seemingly addressed to the wall behind me. I caught Houdini’s eye. He was being monopolized by the overbearing Helena Poindexter, Appleton’s quintessential clubwoman, all bosom and bamboozle. He couldn’t escape. Her dress had a sweetheart decollete neckline, and under the overhead lights her wrinkled neck sported an ostentatious rope of pearls, a look that didn’t serve her well. Homer Timm slipped back to his necessary wall next to the frowning Mildred, while I made my way to Houdini, who looked relieved.
“You like my show?”
“Of course.”
“I knew you would. I’m the Handcuff King. The world flocks to my shows.” He actually puffed his chest out, a bantam on home ground.
And I’m the Queen of Sheba. Immediately I feared he could also read minds. “Very impressive.”
“I read your interview in the
“You did?” I was pleased.
“Wonderful. I love what you said about my devotion to my mother. And the money I make. I am a success story for Appleton.”
“You are, indeed.”
“I cut it out, two copies, pasted one in my scrapbook I carry.”
I thanked him, pleased. “I’m just…”
He cut me off. “You are going to say you’re just a small-town reporter.” I shuddered. My God, he did read minds. “You remember my advice to you?”
He waited for me to answer. “Concentration and imagination.”
He chuckled. “A good student.”
I caught my mother’s eye. Let’s go home, her glance indicated. But when I looked back at Houdini, suddenly I didn’t want to abandon the conversation because I had an idea. I leaned into him. “Mr. Houdini, perhaps you’ve read of the murder of Frana Lempke?”
He seemed startled by the quick shift in subject. “Yes, David Baum and I discussed it. It’s a sad story, no?”
“It’s baffling.” I tried not to raise my voice.
“Baffling?”
“The way it happened. We…I mean the police can’t make any sense out of the way it happened. It’s a mystery.”
“What are you telling me?” His head was bobbing, his face close to mine.
“Well, watching you tonight on stage…”
“You liked it?”
“Of course, but watching your show, I thought…” I stopped. What did I want from him?
Houdini watched me closely, his face now soft and his eyes unblinking. “And you think all mysteries can be answered? Like in my show?”
I was surprised. “I hope so. I’ve always believed there’s an answer to everything.”
“That may not be true.”
“But there is a murderer…”
“You know, my dear Miss Ferber, murders are like escape from handcuffs-there’s always gotta be an answer, even though it looks impossible. Concentration and imagination. Logic and romance, the two together, you know. Any crime has to have an answer. It’s just a question of how to locate the answer.”
“But that’s what’s baffling.”
He whispered. “Before I let anyone tie me up or handcuff me, I already know beforehand-always-how I will be free. Otherwise I’d panic. It would be chaos, disaster.” He paused. “Even death. You gotta know how to escape.” While he was talking, a young man was dragging at his sleeve, thrusting a paper and pen for an autograph. Houdini tried to ignore him but hurriedly scratched his name on the sheet. He turned to me, “A minute of conversation in my dressing room, perhaps. Is all right?”
I agreed. Hurriedly, I told my family to leave without me, though my mother didn’t look happy. I wove my way through the still-milling crowd to a side door where Houdini waited. Gustave Timm was standing outside his office, his hands holding a stack of papers, and he looked surprised.
Houdini winked at Gustave. “I have a reporter guest for a second.”
Gustave nodded.
As we walked by the open door to Gustave’s office, I spotted the imperious Cyrus P. Powell seated at Gustave’s desk. Oddly, Homer Timm was standing behind him, unmoving, his eyes focused on the money. Powell was counting the money with undue concentration, but he glanced up at Houdini and me, and his look was sour, disapproving. He looked ready to say something, but the stack of dollar bills he gripped seemed more appealing.
Gustave was stranded outside his own office, one he dared not enter.
I followed Houdini into a narrow hallway and trailed him up a small flight of stairs into a shabby square dressing room. I had expected something more glamorous than the threadbare chairs, the dirty chintz draperies, and the faded Currier and Ives prints hanging lopsidedly on the wall. It looked like a room nobody came to…or at least stayed in very long. A musty smell, years of unwashed bodies, too much stage makeup, forgotten clothes left piled in corners. Houdini sat opposite me, poured himself a glass of tonic water, and sipped it. He offered me some, but I refused.
“I don’t drink spirits. It harms my body, saps my energy. I don’t smoke either. Cigars, never.” He made a face. “The body must be kept pure. Remember that.” He smiled as he sat up straight, his eyes fixed on me. “Now tell me the facts. The story of the murder.”
For the next few minutes, a little in awe of the man who drew close to me, blue-gray eyes shiny in the flickering gas light, I narrated the saga of Frana sneaking out of the high school, the phony note, the rumors of assignation with an older man-he frowned at that-the finding of the body in Lovers Lane.
“But why do you think of me?”
I breathed in. “When I saw you get out of that box…” I told him of the locked storeroom, the dusty space with the smudged footprints…and Frana’s bit of ribbon.
“So?”
“So she got into that storeroom and we thought she hid there-or was held there against her wishes, perhaps strangled there-but a witness now claims he saw her running in Lovers Lane a few minutes later. It’s impossible.”
“It doesn’t sound too complicated.”
“Well, it’s baffled us all.” I waited a second. “It doesn’t seem possible.”
“She could have walked out. People miss what’s in front of their eyes, you know. Illusion.”
“You haven’t met Miss Hepplewhyte.”
He tilted his head to the side. “So it’s a box of illusion, that room.”
“Perhaps you can help.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. “I’m bothered, Mr. Houdini, I must tell you, because the school janitor is considered the murderer, so far at least. He’s a gentle man, harmless, a German immigrant who doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. A witness claims he saw Frana and her friend frolicking”-I paused, hesitant with the word-“in Lovers Lane. Well, sir, Mr. Schmidt is not one to frolic. Believe me.” I was going on and on, becoming impassioned, and I realized that Houdini was smiling at me. No, he was grinning widely.
