From the time she was arrested, Lady Purleigh calmly denied everything. During the trial, Lord Bob told the newspapers that she’d never do such things, had never known about the secret passageways. He was convincing, but I think he realized that she had known, and that she had done all the rest.
They were both convicted. Moseley was hanged. Lady Purleigh is still in prison, serving a life sentence. Lord Bob has given up the idea of a golfing club, and he doesn’t give weekend parties anymore.
As for Chin Soo, his real name was Archibald Crubbs and he was English. He’d been an acrobat, a contortionist, and, for a while, a Shakespearean actor before he sailed to America and made his name as a magician. “Sergeant Meadows” was actually a man named Peter Collinson, an old friend of Crubbs’s and a former cop who still had connections to Scotland Yard. As Doyle had suggested, Chin Soo had learned on Wednesday, from the newspaper article, that Doyle would be going to Maplewhite for the weekend. Chin Soo assumed, and correctly, that Houdini would also be there. He and Collinson had been staying in Cumbermoorleigh, a village not far from Purleigh, since Thursday.
When the two of them learned that Inspector Marsh would be arriving at Maplewhite on Sunday morning, they brought down a couple of thugs from London, and they all waylaid him. Marsh and his real sergeant, Maynard Vine, spent most of Sunday trussed up in a barn about ten miles south of Maplewhite, guarded by the thugs. They were only discovered because Miss Turner, doing a pretty good imitation of Lady Purleigh’s voice, telephoned the Amberly police and demanded that they start looking for them.
The police wanted to move in on the phony Marsh right away, but Lady Purleigh’s voice carried a lot of weight with Superintendent Honniwell, even when it wasn’t really hers. Miss Turner persuaded them to listen to the Great Man.
Crubbs and Collinson were tried and convicted for kidnapping and for impersonating a police officer, which in England is almost as serious. Both of them were sent to Dartmoor, but while their train was on its way to the prison, they disappeared in what the English newspapers called “the most audacious escape of the century.” Neither one of them was ever seen again.
It’s a good word, audacious. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used it that Sunday afternoon, after all the excitement had died down, to describe Chin Soo. “It was audacious of him, really, wasn’t it? Pretending to be a policeman while an actual police investigation was going on. Wasn’t he the least bit bothered by the notion that Scotland Yard would be expecting reports from the real Inspector Marsh? Didn’t he realize that Honniwell might return here at any moment from Amberly? The Amberly police are still examining the rifle and the pistol. The autopsy on the Earl has yet to be performed. How could he possibly put himself in such a position?”
I shrugged. “Like you said. He was audacious.”
We were in the library, where Doyle had towed me.
He puffed at his pipe. “Yes, but why put himself in such jeopardy?”
“He wanted to show Harry up. Like I said before, I don’t think he ever really wanted to kill him. He was counting coup, in a way, like a Sioux Indian. Getting close enough to kill him, and taking pride in that. Later, probably, if he’d pulled it off, he would’ve told Harry what he’d done, somehow. And I don’t think he planned to hang around long enough to get caught. He wouldn’t have stayed as long as he did, probably, if he hadn’t gotten involved in that bet with Harry. The idea of beating Harry to a solution was too good for him to pass up.”
Chin Soo admitted as much at his trial.
“Yes,” said Doyle, “but it was extraordinarily dangerous.” “This is a guy who catches bullets in his teeth.”
“But that’s merely a trick, you said.”
“Harry tells me that two magicians died trying to perform it.”
Doyle frowned around the stem of his pipe. “Hmmm. And Lady Purleigh. She was audacious, as well.”
“Yeah.”
“I should never have suspected her. I’ve always believed she was a charming woman, and devoted to her husband. I very much admired her.”
“I liked her, too,” I said. “But if murderers always looked like murderers, and always acted like murderers, we wouldn’t need cops.” I smiled. “Or mystery writers.”
“Hmmm. Yes. Quite so.” He looked at me. “Do you suppose that Lord Reginald somehow influenced Lady Purleigh? Somehow warped her perceptions, twisted her nature?”
“You’d have to ask Running Bear,” I said. “But he’s already been wrong once.”
He frowned. “Not as to Mrs. Corneille’s daughter. Nor to the Earl’s imposing himself upon Miss Turner.”
I still thought that Madame Sosostris had gotten her information from Briggs, and that the innocent woman she’d been talking about had been Darleen. But I knew that Madame Sosostris would never admit it.
“You’d think he’d be right about everything,” I said.
“Passing over into the next life doesn’t make one infallible, you know. One is improved, but one is still subject to human error.”
“Then what’s the point of dying?”
He smiled. “Still pretending to be a skeptic, eh, Beaumont? Ah well.” He stood up. “Nonetheless, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. Most instructive. I hope we see each other again at some time. I do mean that. Perhaps we can get together in London.’
I stood up. “You’re taking off?” I asked him.
“Taking off? Oh yes, yes, I’m returning to London with Madame Sosostris and Mr. Dempsey. We’ve work to do. Much work.”
“Have you talked to Harry yet? About the seance?”
He puffed at the pipe. “Briefly, yes. He isn’t as impressed as I d hoped. He claims that all the miracles she performed at the seance could have been performed, just as well, by a fraud.”
“He’s right.”
“Well, of course he is. I don’t dispute that for a moment. But as Madame Sosostris is not a fraud, the point is irrelevant. The woman is a marvel, Beaumont. She’s brought comfort and peace to literally hundreds of people. How many of us can say that?”
“Not many.” Not me, for one.
“I began as a doctor, you know. Medicine. I was helping people. And then I became a writer, and for years all I did was amuse them, really. Entertain them. Now, once again, I can be a part of something that helps them.”.
I nodded. It seemed to me that being amusing and entertaining was maybe more helpful than confusing them with ghosts, but I didn’t think there was much point in bringing it up.
“Well,” he said. “I wish you the best of luck.”
“I wish you the same, Sir Arthur.” We shook hands and he doubled the number of creases in my palm.
He smiled at me again and then he walked off, trailing the smell of burning burlap.
I said goodbye to Mrs. Corneille, too, late that Sunday afternoon. She was on her way out, ready to drive back to the city with Sir David. I caught her in the Great Hall, asked her if I could talk to her for a minute.
“I don’t see,” she said, “that we have anything to say to each other.”
“One minute. That’s all I ask.”
She hesitated a moment, narrowing her dark eyes, then she turned to Sir David. “Wait in the car, would you, David? I’ll be there in a moment.”
Sir David glanced at me and frowned but he said nothing. The bruise on his jaw had become the color of stewed prunes.
“What is it?” she said when Sir David left.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about Lady Purleigh. I know she was your friend.”
“She is innocent.”
“She’ll get a chance to prove that.”
“And she will do so. But you’ve ruined her name. You helped that awful little man. Houdini. You helped him build a case against her.”
I nodded.
“And you pretended to help that Chin Soo person. That false Inspector Marsh. You deliberately misled him.”
