Escape Artist

Milwaukee. You can check that. I was negotiating a contract. I got back late at night. And the next day she’s missing. No one got near her, as you know. Her uncle was a watchdog.”

I started to feel faint again.

Gustave spoke to Sam Ryan. “This is your reporter, sir? This foolish young girl who spins funny tales to sully men’s names, first my brother, then me.”

Mildred swallowed a sob.

Sam cleared his throat. “Miss Ferber, you do seem a little hasty here. Perhaps you need to reflect…”

“Stop!”

We all jumped.

Homer Timm spoke in a softer voice, “Just stop.”

“Stop indeed!” Gustave echoed his brother.

“No, Gustave.” Homer’s voice was grave. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Homer.” Gustave warned him.

“Enough of this. A girl is dead, and I believed you when you said you had nothing to do with her murder. But now I don’t.” Homer looked at me. “A young student, Miss Ferber. I shut my eyes to something horrible, and now it’s too late.”

Homer adjusted the front of his frock coat, smoothed the edges of his moustache. “I can’t go on protecting Gustave.” Gustave lurched toward his brother, his face flushed with anger, but Mac grabbed the wiggling Gustave, one beefy palm on the squirming man’s shoulder. “I believed Gustave when he said he had nothing to do with the girl’s death. But I wondered. He swore to me. He said he had a new life. He was in love with…with Mildred. He was getting married.” Homer glanced at Mildred. “I never understood what that was all about. I never believed it.”

“Homer, I’m warning you…” Gustave’s voice broke.

Homer rushed his words. “You see, Gustave had to leave home back East because he’d had an incident with a fourteen-year-old girl, accusations, an arrest that was squelched, someone paid off, promises to leave town. Our mother wrote me, pleaded with me. I wanted nothing to do with it. There were other episodes along the way, covered up, ignored. Each time he said he’d reformed. He learned about the job at the Lyceum, applied, got it, I suppose, because of me. I had to. He’s my brother. Cyrus hired him.”

Mr. Powell broke in. “Homer, you lied to me.”

“No, no. I said he’d been in some trouble and…”

The man stomped his foot, furious. “An outright lie.”

Homer closed his eyes for a second. “I was so afraid. I watched him. I’d seen that girl at the Lyceum, I’d seen other young girls, and I’d seen Gustave flirting, flattering, and I worried. I warned him. When she was in my office, I tried to ask her questions, but she never said anything. At night I’d leave the rooming house, sneak up to his home, watch”-Mac made a clicking sound, nodded triumphantly at me-“but I saw nothing most of those nights. I just walked and walked. Every so often I spotted him walking. I was going crazy. I couldn’t sleep, so I followed him, afraid of what he might do. There were nights he wasn’t home, and I searched for him. I didn’t trust him. But I couldn’t be everywhere. When Frana died I asked him, and he said no. He may have had liaisons with young girls way back when, but he would never kill them, he said. And that made sense to me. It did.”

Gustave twisted his body and looked toward the stage door. Mac tightened the grip. “I wasn’t around. How would I…”

Homer held up his hand. “No more, Gustave. No more. You scare me. I watched you. You walked the streets and I didn’t know why. One night my brother followed you, Miss Ferber, as you walked home. I was there. Afraid.”

Mac spoke up. “I was there, too.”

Homer went on. “I didn’t want to believe murder but I started to suspect. All the yammer about actresses and Broadway-it sounded so Gustave. When I saw Miss Ferber coming out of the back door of the high school, I felt she’d get to the bottom of it. I was afraid something was going to happen to her. You were close,” Homer said to me now. “I didn’t want it to be my brother. Up until that moment I believed him. I’d even hoped this charade of getting married was real. But somehow, with you standing there, I thought-oh God, no! It might happen again.”

“Gustave.” Mildred Dunne’s voice broke.

Homer looked at his brother. “Now I’m sorry. A young girl got strangled…”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Yes, you did. That afternoon, after the hysteria at the high school when I told you a girl had disappeared and no one knew how, there was something about the way you looked. You knew something. I asked you about that afternoon. I said I’d seen you strolling by the fountain near the high school. I was lying. Of course, I didn’t see you, but you said you were meeting Mildred at the end of the school day. Still, I told myself-no, no. He can’t kill anyone.”

Silence.

Homer’s voice trembled. “It’s over, Gustave.”

Mildred spoke up in a small voice, breathless. “Gustave, tell them he’s mad. Tell them.”

Gustave faced her, but kept quiet. He looked like a little boy, terrified. At that moment I wondered how Gustave had found the courage to…I stopped, out of breath.

I needed more information.

“Wait,” I said. “Miss Dunne, did Frana stop at the library the day before she disappeared? Perhaps with her class?”

Mildred didn’t answer.

“I’m assuming she did.”

“So what?” A frigid glare.

“Gustave was in Milwaukee. I would hazard a guess that you communicated with Frana that afternoon, perhaps slipped her a note from Gustave. You knew of Frana’s…predicament. Gustave had no other way to reach her. You were ready with a letter.”

Mildred faltered, pale. “No.” She searched for an explanation. “It’s not what you think it is. Yes, I had Gustave write a note, but a note telling her to stop her foolishness. She was hounding poor Gustave, hanging around him, moonstruck, wild-eyed. She made lurid accusations about him. To me. I told him to write a letter telling her to stop the nonsense. A letter that would threaten to involve the police.”

“Why didn’t you tell the Chief of Police this?” I kept my face blank.

“Because we thought to say anything would be incriminating. It would look bad, such a note a day before the murder.”

Gustave spoke. “I would look guilty of something.”

I had enough. “Miss Dunne, just what…”

I stopped. Gustave stretched out his hand toward me, not belligerently but in surrender.

Silence in the room. No one moved. The image of Houdini’s eyes, hypnotic, pinned us all in place.

Then Gustave spoke, his voice resigned. “Leave Mildred out of this, please. For God’s sake, Miss Ferber.” He bit his lip. “It was her fault, really. Frana’s. She pursued me. Actress this, actress that. And she was so pretty, so delicate. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. They do that to me, you know. It’s not my fault. It was her fault. She threw herself at me. One night she came to my home, and one thing led to another. I thought-all right, a little liaison, a European affair. I thought Frana would marry that dumb lummox she talked about, the football player. She brought up marriage, which surprised me, so I said, yes, of course. It was just talk. She kept saying, look at me. Mildred is rich but I’m real pretty. I’m…”

He swallowed. “I thought she’d go away. And then she said let’s go to New York. The stage. My connections.” He laughed. “What connections? I don’t know a soul. I avoided her. I pleaded with her. But she understood me, and she flattered me. She had a way about her, so soft but so…so iron-like. Frana…so beautiful…so…so fragile…such a woman.” He closed his eyes.

“But why did it go so wrong?” Sam Ryan asked.