The Floating Lady Murder

by Daniel Stashower

  The body lay at a downward angle on the short flight of steps leading to the lobby. Harry crouched beside it and pulled away the tangled cloak. Francesca Moore’s lifeless face stared back at us in a rictus of shock, blood trailing from her nose and mouth.

  Harry looked away, brushing at his eyes with one hand, steadying himself against a wall with the other. When he spoke, his words were so hushed and labored that I could not be certain I was meant to hear.

  “I made this happen,” he said, his voice coming in a bitter rasp. “It is all due to Houdini.”

  8

  THE CURSE OF KALLIFFA

  “HOUDINI,” SAID LIEUTENANT MURRAY, RUBBING AT HIS RED-rimmed eyes. “I might have known you’d be mixed up in this. Dead lady at a magic show. Who else would I expect to find?”

  “I assure you I would rather have it otherwise,” Harry said quietly.

  “Yeah,” the lieutenant said with a nod. “I suppose you would at that.”

  Less than two hours had passed since Miss Moore’s tragic fall from the dome of the theater. Somehow Mr. Kellar had summoned the composure to address the audience from the stage, calming them with the crisp authority of his voice as he directed them to depart through the side exits of the theater. It took perhaps twenty minutes for the last of the patrons to file out, by which time the first representatives of the New York City Police Department were on the scene.

  Heading the delegation of officers was Lieutenant Patrick Murray, whom Harry and I had come to know the previous year when he investigated the macabre murder of the millionaire Branford Wintour. Tall, red-faced and burly, Lieutenant Murray was sporting his familiar rumpled brown suit and green, egg-stained tie. I noted with relief that he appeared to have changed his shirt in the intervening months. “Hardeen,” he said, after he had surveyed the scene, “why don’t you fill me in on the particulars?”

  I sketched out the details of the tragedy, such as I could, while a pair of leatherheads moved among the company, writing down names and taking statements. My colleagues were scattered throughout the empty theater, leaning against the walls and slumped into seats in postures of shock and disbelief. Collins and Silent Felsden, still in their costumes, were sitting on the edge of the stage with their legs dangling into the pit, passing a flask between them. Valletin and Miss Wynn were side by side in the front row, clutching one another’s hands in transparent grief. Harry stood at the top of the center aisle, watching with a stony expression as the police physician examined the body. Bess, carefully averting her eyes from the unpleasant scene, tried in vain to pull him away.

  Of all the members of the company, the one who appeared to have been most severely affected was Mr. Kellar himself. He sat with his shoulders sagging in one of the ludicrously jewelled sedan chairs from the ‘Circus of Wonders’ pageant, looking for all the world like a once-mighty monarch whose kingdom had fallen. Mrs. Kellar stood beside him, curling a protective arm around his shoulders.

  Lieutenant Murray listened carefully while I reviewed the details of the evening’s performance, and I was struck by his immediate grasp of the salient details. “How long did this Miss Moore have to get from the stage up to the dome?” he asked.

  “About nine minutes,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “It took her nine minutes to go up a few flights of stairs?”

  “No. She could easily have made it in two. But Mr. Kellar didn’t want the trick to be over too quickly. He wanted it to last twenty minutes from end to end, so there was a lot of business with the evil Pasha’s men and so on.”

  The lieutenant made a note. “I talked to witnesses who said she was in plain sight the whole time. And they say it only took a minute or so for her to float up to the dome.”

  “That’s how it looks from out front,”

  “I take it that’s not quite how it works?”

  “Not quite.” I pointed to the levitation banquette. “Once she lies down on that thing and Kellar covers her with the cloth, all bets are off.”

  “You mean the audience thinks she’s there, but maybe she’s not really there?”

  “You didn’t hear it from me.”

  He nodded, figuring the angles. “So while Kellar was out here doing battle with the forces of evil, she was already on her way up to the dome.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She go by herself, or was someone with her?”

  “Mr. Collins led her up to the catwalk and helped her into the safety harness.”

  “Collins? Which one’s he?”

  I pointed to the stage.

  “We’ll need to speak with him.” Murray looked back toward the body, then jerked his thumb at the spot where Harry was keeping his vigil. “Your brother’s taking this hard, wouldn’t you say?”

  “He and I helped to create the illusion—or this particular method of achieving it. If her death was the result of some negligence on our part, I don’t know how either one of us will be able to live with it.”

  By way of an answer, Murray coughed twice into his fist. “He was telling me some cock-and-bull story about an escaped lion. You know anything about that?”

  “For once he wasn’t exaggerating. He risked his life to help capture it.”

  “He seems to think it wasn’t an accident, the lion getting out like that.”

  “It appeared as if someone had tampered with the lock on its cage.”

  “So he said. He seems to think maybe somebody tampered with this Floating Lady rig, too. What do you think about that?”

  In spite of myself, I found my eyes drifting back up to the dome. “I don’t know, Lieutenant,” I said. “It seems—”

  “Far-fetched? That’s what I said. It seems to me that every time some magician stubs his toe in New York, your brother is out looking for some big sinister conspiracy. This trick you dreamed up, it looks dangerous. I think maybe she just slipped. An accident.”

  “My brother will have a hard time accepting that. It would be easier on him to have someone to blame. Someone besides himself, I mean. I can’t say he’s entirely alone.”

  “Accidents happen. You’re not to blame.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?”

  “I’m not. I said it to make you feel better. I don’t want you drowning in grief until I’m done with you.” He turned again to the back of the theater. “Doc Peterson?” he called.

  A round-faced man with an impressive mane of white hair emerged from behind the brass railing. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “Finding anything interesting?”

  “Well, sir, I can’t say anything conclusively, but it looks to be about what you’d expect of a fall from such a great height. Contusions, broken limbs, shattered collar bone, concussive—”

  Murray held up a hand to stop the litany. “You almost done?”

  “Nearly. I’ll finish back at the laboratory.”

  “See me first before you leave. Hardeen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Let’s take Collins and have a look at the dome. We’d better get your brother, too.”

  I led the lieutenant to the spot where Collins and Silent Felsden were seated and explained what was wanted in a low voice. Collins nodded grimly and stood up, leaving Silent staring gloomily into his glass flask. We headed up the center aisle to where Harry was standing.

  “Come on, Houdini,” said the lieutenant. “Let’s take a look at the catwalk.”

  Harry looked up from Dr. Peterson’s examination of the body. His face was chalky. “I would prefer to remain here.”

  Lieutenant Murray rested a hand on the brass railing behind the seats. “I just can’t figure you, Houdini. Last year I couldn’t get you out from underfoot. Now I’m giving you a chance to stick your nose into a police matter, and you’d rather keep watch down here. I just don’t get it.”

  Harry had returned his attention to Dr. Peterson. “I should stay with Miss Moore,” he said.

  I looked at him in surprise. It was our father’s custom, when one of his
congregants passed on, to sit with the body until the proper arrangements could be made. Apparently Harry was heeding the same impulse. I stepped forward and knelt beside him. “Harry,” I said quietly, “Dr. Peterson will be taking her away in a few moments. We can be more useful if we try to help Lieutenant Murray. You’re just in the way here.”

  His eyes lingered a moment longer on the broken form of Miss Moore, then he sighed heavily and got to his feet. “Very well,” he said. “I shall try to be useful.”

  With Harry trailing behind, Collins led us out through the lobby and up a flight of steps.

  “What’s on this level?” Lieutenant Murray asked.

  “Business offices and the manager’s suite,” Collins answered. “Toward the back is the ladies dressing room.”

  The lieutenant stopped walking. “The ladies dressing room? They have to go through the lobby to get to the stage?”

  “No,” Collins answered. “There’s a back stair. The manager prefers to keep the men and women on separate floors. Says it encourages ‘overly familiar congress’ otherwise.”

  “ ‘Overly familiar congress,’ ” Murray repeated. “We have a different word for it down at the precinct house.”

  Fetching a lantern from one of the offices, Collins pushed through an unmarked door and continued the climb along a bare wooden staircase with open slatting. The chamber was oddly-shaped and heavy with cobwebs. Only the light of the lantern kept us safely on the stairway.

  “Where the hell are we?” asked Lieutenant Murray.”

  “This puts us onto the catwalk running along the inside of the dome,” Collins said. “Only the riggers ever use it.” He flicked the latches on a low hatchway and ducked through onto the catwalk.

  The catwalk was actually a circular balcony running along the inside rim of the massive theater dome. Both shallow and narrow, it allowed only about a shoulder’s width of space between its low railing and the rising wall of the dome. Seen from below, it blended smoothly with the gilt striping of the interior decor, so that the average patron would not have realized that it existed. From our vantage, the drop was dizzying.

  “Lord,” said the lieutenant, gripping the low railing.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said gruffly. “I just—Miss Moore wasn’t subject to fear of heights, was she?”

  “Hardly,” said Collins. “She was a trapeze artist. Seventy feet wouldn’t have troubled her much.”

  “Seventy-two and a half,” Harry said.

  “Besides,” said Collins, “all she had to do was climb out there and wave.” He pointed to a makeshift scaffolding that we had rigged the previous afternoon. It was nothing more than a narrow length of planking stretched over the open drop of the dome, supported at each corner by a braided wire. Each wire ran to an eyehook secured by a stout bracket. A black rope ladder stretched from where we stood to the edge of the planking. “You see?” Collins asked. “Simplicity itself. There shouldn’t have been anything to it.”

  “It looks awfully precarious to me,” Lieutenant Murray said. “I sure couldn’t have made it out there.”

  “Nor I,” said Collins. “But Miss Moore is—Miss Moore was a professional wire walker. When I showed her the rigging, she chided me for making it too easy for her. Still, something was bothering her this evening. Maybe it was just opening night nerves, but she definitely seemed out of sorts.”

  “How so?” the lieutenant asked.

  “She was awfully pale. Barely said a word. Almost as if she had a premonition of some kind.”

  I reached out and fingered the nearest eyehook and bracket, feeling a jolt of self-recrimination.

  “Everything where it should be?” Murray asked, reading my mind.

  “I think so.”

  “The wires look pretty strong,” he said.

  “They were. Each one of them was strong enough to support her weight. Together they could hold seven hundred pounds. Even if one of them had broken or come loose from its moorings, the other three should have been more than adequate.”

  The lieutenant reached out and plucked at the nearest support wire. “No slack,” he said.

  “There isn’t supposed to be any,” said Collins.

  “I take it you helped her onto the platform?” the lieutenant asked.

  Collins nodded. “Not that she needed it. She moved like a cat.”

  “And were you still here when she fell?”

  “Don’t you think I’d have tried to save her if I had been? I had to get back down to the stage for the finale. I was backstage when she fell.”

  Murray tightened his grip on the catwalk railing and peered over the edge as far as he dared. “This has to be the strangest accident I’ve ever worked,” he said, shaking his head. “Falling from the top of a theater. During a show, for God’s sake.” He leaned back and pressed his shoulders against the wall of the dome. “Houdini, you’ve been unusually quiet. What do you make of it?”

  Harry did not appear to be listening. “You say she was wearing the safety harness?” he asked Collins.

  “Of course.”

  “And it was properly attached?”

  “I helped her with it myself. Of course she might have unfastened it after I left, but I can’t imagine why she would have done so.”

  “How does this harness work?” Lieutenant Murray asked.

  “It’s just a safety wire attached to a pair of crossed leather straps,” Harry explained. “Many trapeze artists use them. It’s supposed to catch the performer in case of slips. Here, I’ll show you—”

  “Harry!” I cried. “Don’t—”

  “Houdini! What are you—?”

  My brother was making out over the open drop toward the narrow platform, travelling across the black rope ladder as easily as if he were climbing a set of stairs. “I’m merely demonstrating how the harness should have worked, Lieutenant,” said my brother carelessly. “It’s easier this way.”

  “Harry,” I insisted, “you saw what happened this evening! The platform may not be safe!”

  “That may be true,” he returned, “and what better way to find out? Now, Lieutenant, what you must understand is that Miss Moore was wearing a harness beneath her costume, and there was a safety wire attached to one of the supports, like so.” Harry peeled off his suit coat and unbuttoned his leather braces, threading them in a loop around one of the four support wires. “Now, Dash, if you’d be so good as to toss me your braces, I’ll show the Lieutenant how the harness would have been fastened.”

  “Harry, this is a ridiculous—”

  “Do it, Hardeen,” the lieutenant said. “This is getting interesting.”

  I shrugged and stripped off my coat, removing my braces with one hand while I gathered the waistband of my baggy trousers with the other. “Here you go, Harry.”

  “Thanks, Dash. Now I’ll—good God!”

  “Harry! No!” I reached forward as he lost his footing on the narrow planking, tumbling forward into the empty space high above the audience seats. For a ghastly moment he flailed helplessly in mid-air with one arm, but an instant later he caught himself with the makeshift safety wire he had fashioned from his leather braces. “You see?” he called up as his feet dangled in the empty space below the dome. “I’m perfectly safe!”

  “That was a damned reckless thing to do, Houdini!” cried Collins, whose face had turned a sickly green. “Especially after what’s happened!”

  “Not at all,” said Harry, hauling himself back up onto the platform. “I was never in danger so long as I held onto the strap. That’s what doesn’t make sense about this evening’s tragedy. If the harness was fastened, she couldn’t have fallen. The safety wire would have saved her. She didn’t even need to hold on.”

  I turned to the lieutenant. “My brother’s methods may be a bit dramatic, but he’s absolutely correct. The wire should have caught her when she slipped off the platform.”

  Lieutenant Murray turned to Collins. “You saw her atta
ch the wire?”

  He nodded. “I did. It fastens with a spring-loaded clip.”

  “The clip is still attached to the harness,” Harry said, anticipating the lieutenant’s next question. “It seems to be in perfect working order. Somehow the precautions failed.”

  “But how?” Collins asked. “We went over it dozens of times!”

  Harry’s face clouded. “I wish I knew.”

  “Maybe she unfastened the harness for some reason,” the lieutenant said. “Maybe she was having some sort of trouble.”

  “It’s possible,” said Harry, crawling back across the rope ladder to join us on the catwalk, “but—”

  A voice from below interrupted him. “For God’s sake, Houdini! Get down off of there!”

  “Who’s that?” asked Lieutenant Murray, pointing over the edge of the catwalk at the figure glaring up at us from the center aisle.

  “That’s Mr. McAdow,” I said. “Mr. Kellar’s business manager.”

  Lieutenant Murray watched as McAdow climbed onto the stage and began speaking to Kellar, his hands cutting sharply through the air as he spoke.

  “I guess I’d better have a word with him,” the lieutenant said. “I’ve seen just about all I’m going to see from here.”

  “But why do you want to speak to Mr. McAdow?” my brother asked. “What about Miss—?”

  Lieutenant Murray held up his palm to cut Harry off. “Please, Houdini. You’ve been very helpful, but this is a police matter.”

  “But—”

  “It’s a matter of routine, Houdini. I need to speak with everyone present.”

  “Come on, Harry,” I said. “We’d better check and see how Bess is doing.”

  Lieutenant Murray waited while Collins and Harry ducked through the low hatchway. As I made to follow, he reached out and grabbed my elbow. “Hardeen,” he whispered with a sudden urgency, “what do you know about that guy Collins?”

  “Collins? Not much, I—”

  “Anything queer about him?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say so. He seems very trustworthy.”