Murder by Magic

by Paul Tomlinson

  “Me?” Grives asked.

  “This was your case, Inspector – my role was simply to share my experience regarding the presentation of stage illusions. I trust that I can rely on you not to mention my name in relation to this case?”

  Malloy watched the shifting emotions on Grives’ face and smiled. He looked like he had just been handed a surprise gift, but wasn’t quite sure whether it might explode in his face.

  “Well – er – of course, Mr. Vickery, if that is your wish,” Grives said.

  “I shall submit an account for my out-of-pocket expenses,” Vickery said, “it won’t be very much. And you will take care of the other matter we discussed.”

  “Bristow,” Grives said and nodded.

  Vickery reached into his jacket pocket and took out a folded piece of notepaper. He handed it to Grives. “For the headstone,” he said, “John Albert Bristow, and the dates. He has no surviving family that I could trace. Let us know the date of his funeral, and we will attend.”

  Grives took the piece of paper and looked at it silently.

  “I think we’re done here, gentleman,” Vickery said, getting to his feet. The other men followed his lead. “Georgie, always a pleasure,” Vickery said, shaking Drake’s hand. “Inspector, it has been an experience working with you.”

  Malloy opened the sitting room door, and the aroma of cooking wafted up from below stairs.

  “Is that roast beef I can smell?” Drake asked.

  “Supper,” Vickery said. “I would ask you gentlemen to stay, but I really have no desire to spend any more time in the presence of either of you. Good evening.”

  Malloy closed the door on them, grinning. “You’re not kicking me out as well, I hope?” he said.

  “Would you like to spend the evening with me, Mr. Malloy?”

  “Would I? That roast smells delicious!”

  Vickery affected a look of disappointment. “Ah, well, you know what they say about the way to a man’s heart,” he muttered.

  “The way to a man’s heart is between his ribs with an upward thrust?” Malloy said, making a violent stabbing motion.

  “Can we agree not to talk shop during dinner?” Vickery said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Dinner had been cleared and they were sitting in the armchairs nursing glasses of cognac.

  “Why are you looking at me that way?” Vickery asked.

  “Did you really expect to get away with it?” Malloy asked.

  “No one else seemed to notice,” Vickery said.

  “Because they all got what they wanted. Or what they deserved.”

  “But you did not?”

  “I was almost blown up – I think I deserve to know the rest,” Malloy said.

  “You’re right. And I would have told you.”

  “Eventually?”

  Vickery held up his hands. “I surrender. The delivery van was a red herring – it had nothing to do with Charlie’s murder.”

  “Then Bristow was bluffing? He pretended to have evidence of Skelhorn’s crimes to stop Skelhorn trying to bump him off?”

  “Not exactly,” Vickery said. “I don’t think Bristow made that up. There really was evidence of some kind – linking Skelhorn to another crime.”

  “Terry’s murder?” Malloy asked.

  Vickery sighed. “I did think that was what Bristow was trying to tell me – when he said he had been forced to do what he did.”

  “Bristow tampered with the illusion that killed Terry,” Malloy said, “and it was Skelhorn who forced him to do it.”

  “It is a plausible explanation,” Vickery said. “I wanted to believe it, because it answers many questions that I have had for such a long time.”

  “Where is it?” Malloy asked.

  “Bristow’s delivery van? Safely tucked away. I had Bryan retrieve it and take it to the warehouse.”

  “How did you find it?” Malloy asked. “That message Bristow delivered?”

  “The first part was the registration number of the delivery van,” Vickery said.

  “And the second part was a map reference,” Malloy said.

  Vickery nodded.

  “How did you manage to find an exact duplicate of it?” Malloy asked.

  Vickery regarded him silently.

  “You staged that explosion, didn’t you?” Malloy asked. “You wanted everyone to think it had been destroyed.”

  “Are you angry with me?” Vickery asked.

  “I could have been killed!”

  “I will never allow you to be harmed. I hope you know that.”

  “You know I trust you,” Malloy said. “I just wish you’d trust me too. You could have told me.”

  “You’re right, and I apologise. I needed Skelhorn and Inspector Grives to believe the delivery van had been destroyed. I didn’t want anyone to keep looking for it.”

  “What was in it?” Malloy asked.

  “I’ve searched it thoroughly – and found nothing. Perhaps I was mistaken and Bristow didn’t hide anything in it.”

  “Or perhaps you haven’t looked hard enough. He designed intricate magical illusions don’t forget.”

  “I know. At some point, I will have it taken to pieces completely. But that is an investigation for another time.”

  “And if the evidence isn’t there?” Malloy asked.

  “Then I will keep looking,” Vickery said. “I need something more before I can believe Skelhorn was responsible for Terry’s death. I can’t take what Bristow said at face value...”

  “Because he might have been trying to manipulate you. He said Skelhorn deserved to die, and he wanted you to be the avenging angel,” Malloy said.

  “I can’t blame him for that,” Vickery said, “given what he suffered.”

  “But in the end, it wasn’t Skelhorn who killed Bristow.”

  “Not directly,” Vickery said.

  “Without Bristow’s evidence, you cannot bring Skelhorn to justice,” Malloy said.

  “If I ever discover for certain that Skelhorn was responsible for Terry’s murder, I will deal with him – evidence or no.”

  “If that time ever comes – I will be at your side,” Malloy said.

  The two men raised their glasses in silent toast.

  The doorbell sounded downstairs and they heard Betty open the front door.

  “That can’t be Grives come to congratulate us all over again,” Vickery said.

  Betty climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. She entered holding a telegram and handed it to Vickery. She waited while he tore open the envelope. “The boy’s waiting at the door for a reply,” she said.

  Vickery looked at the message and frowned. “A coded telegram – that’s never a good thing.” He got up and disappeared across the landing into the study. He returned a few moments later with a telegram form with a short message written on it.

  “Give this to the boy and a half crown,” Vickery said.

  “The reply is prepaid,” Betty said.

  “The half crown is for the lad – he’s going to have to run.”

  “Very good, sir.” Betty took the message and the coin and disappeared.

  “Now, Jamie, I think it’s time we went to bed.”

  “You do?”

  “It’ll be an early start tomorrow. You don’t mind driving me, do you? I’d like to have you along. Take the car now, then you can be back here at first light. And wrap up warm – the barometer’s falling.”

  “Another adventure, so soon?” Malloy asked.

  “When His Majesty’s government calls, one cannot say no. On your way out, let Betty know I won’t be needing breakfast.” 

  Did You Enjoy This Book?

  If you did, will you do something for me?

  I’m an indie author and publish my books without the backing of a major publisher. That means no six-figure advances and no advertising budget. This makes it difficult to promote my novels so new readers can find them. But you can help me.

  Honest reviews and
genuine ‘word-of-mouth’ make all the difference. You don’t have to write one of those awful ‘book reports’ we did at school. All I’m asking is for you to leave a star rating and a couple of sentences on Amazon or Goodreads. Or a short review on your blog. Or tell your friends about it on Facebook or Twitter.

  Let people know what you liked about this book, and why they might like it too. And if there was something you didn’t like, you can say that too: constructive criticism helps me write a better book next time.

  But please, no spoilers!

  Thanks for reading,

  Acknowledgments

  The Sword in the Stone-Dead was my first attempt at writing a traditional murder mystery of the Agatha Christie type, and as such was a bit of an experiment. It was also the first novel I self-published, appearing on Amazon for the first time in May 2016. I liked my two main characters and I liked the genre, and I had a couple of vague ideas for new stories featuring Vickery and Malloy, but I didn’t know whether I would ever write another one. Their first adventure has sold more copies and gained more Kindle page-reads than any of my later books – being twice as popular as any of them. The reason Murder By Magic exists is because people bought the first one. Thank you if you were one of those who bought it.

  If you picked up The Sword in the Stone-Dead for free, and then bought this book – thank you too for supporting my work.

  The third book in the Great Vicari series will be The Missing Magician. I started writing that thinking it would be the second one, but a few chapters in I realised there needed to be a novel between them. I wanted to explore Ben Vickery’s past and his relationship with Malloy a bit more before the events of The Missing Magician take place. Hopefully that will make sense when you come to read that book.

  Having made my detective a retired magician, it was inevitable that I’d write a story set against the background of theatrical magic. And the ‘mid-1930s’ time period meant I could use the small theatre variety show as a backdrop. This was the last gasp of live Victorian music hall-style entertainment, before first radio and then television began to dominate people’s leisure time. I also drew, in part, on my own childhood memories of trips to the Christmas pantomime in Nottingham and visits to Mansfield Palace Theatre.

  Growing up in the 1970s there was magic on television in England. Not the grand-scale illusions of David Copperfield or the quirkiness of Penn and Teller, but instead a mix of table-top magic and traditional disappearing assistants and sawing-the-lady- in-half. David Nixon is the first one I remember – looking at clips of his show now on YouTube, the thing that strikes me first is that people used to smoke on TV back then! There was Ali Bongo, regularly seen in the children’s TV slot, whose whacky costume, cat eye glasses, and wordless performance to the tune of ‘In a Persian Market’ gave him an ageless, cartoon-like quality. And finally, there was Paul Daniels, who was probably the last of the ‘old school’ magicians on British television, whose show brought us acts from all over the world, until the ‘variety show’ format faded from our screens. These three, and others like them, gave me a love of magic – and a fascination with how illusions work – that continues to this day.

  The illusions referred to in this story are drawn, for the most part, from David H. Charney’s Magic: The Great Illusions Explained. I also spent far too much time on YouTube watching ‘how to’ videos that revealed the secrets of those ‘tricks’ that fascinated me on television all those years ago. The magic pitcher of milk trick remains one of my favourites, even though I now know how it works – it is a wonderful piece of engineering.

  I completed work on this novel in July 2017, just as the 50th anniversary of the (partial) de-criminalisation of male homosexuality in Britain was being commemorated on BBC television. And as reports of the arrest, torture and murder of gay men in Chechnya continued. Having gay men as main characters in my stories isn’t intended to make any sort of political statement, beyond simply recognising that men who love men exist today and have always existed.

  Trying to capture a feel for life in the 1930s is a challenge. Large-scale historical events and broad social trends are well-documented, but the everyday lives of ordinary working and middle-class people are less well covered. I was fortunate to stumble on Harry Daley’s memoir This Small Cloud, which tells what it was like to be a bobby on the beat and a gay man during this period. What’s Yours? : The Student’s Guide to Publand by T. E. B. Clarke provided an account of English pub life that has now almost vanished.

  Wherever possible, I have tried to avoid historical anachronisms. I researched fashions, motor vehicles, and prices – as you might expect – and tried to ensure that any phrases or idioms used in dialogue were consistent with the period. Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow on the Smarter Artist Facebook group, who found an 1878 reference to the phrase ‘brains of the group’ after I had failed to locate any reference to its earliest usage.

  Geographical accuracy is another thing entirely. Setting this story in London or Nottingham or Manchester (the only places I have any real knowledge of) didn’t work for me, so I ended up creating a fictional city. It’s a cross between Manchester and Nottingham, with a bit of York thrown in, on a river much like the Thames, but closer to the sea. Malowan Crescent is named in honour of Agatha Christie.

  PC Evan Colman is named after the actor Ronald Colman, whose appearance in the 1930 movie Raffles inspired the look of Benjamin Vickery both in the text and the cover image. Unusually for me, I didn’t ‘cast’ the characters in this story as I was writing it. If you have casting suggestions for any of the roles, send me an e-mail with your choices: paul@paultomlinson.org

  I will also raise a glass here to Clive Smedley and Martyn Bramley, who drank with me in ‘proper’ pubs of dubious character in Manchester and Nottingham. And to Paul Strange, Lorna Bakewell, and Ricky Wright who drank with me in pubs before any of us were old enough to do so. Cheers.

  About the Author

  Paul Tomlinson was born in Nottingham in 1966 and has lived in Nottinghamshire for most of his life. He is the author of a science fiction novel; a series of 1930s murder mystery novels featuring a retired magician; a series of fantasy novels set in the world of Thurlambria; and a contemporary crime novel. That’s probably too many genres for one author, but all the books do share things in common: they’re humorous, in a macabre sort of way, and they feature quirky and grotesque characters, some of whom are gay.

  You can find him online on Facebook @PaulTomlinson.org or at his website www.paultomlinson.org

  Also by Paul Tomlinson:

  The Sword in the Stone Dead (The Great Vicari Mysteries #1)

  The Missing Magician (The Great Vicari Mysteries #3)

  Robot Wrecker

  Slayer of Dragons (Thurlambria Book 1)

  Fortune’s Fool (Thurlambria Book 2)

  Dead of Night (Thurlambria Book 3)

  Who Killed Big Dick?