3rd November 1903
I am recovering from an attack of pneumonia. It nearly got me! I have been in Sheffield Royal Infirmary since the end of September, and I survived only by a miracle. Today is the first day at home where I have been able to sit up long enough to write. The moors look splendid through my window.
30th November 1903
Recovering.
I am almost back to the condition I was in when I returned here from London. That is to say, officially well, unofficially not too good.
15th December 1903
Adam Wilson came to my reading room at half past ten this morning, and informed me a visitor was waiting downstairs to see me. It was Arthur Koenig! I stared at his calling card in surprise, wondering what he wanted. ‘Tell him I’m not available for the moment,’ I said to Adam, and I went to my study to think.
Could his visit be something to do with my funeral? The faking of my own death had a deceptive side to it that I suspect could be construed as illegal, even though I can’t imagine what harm might befall anyone else as a consequence. But the fact that Koenig was here at all meant he knew the funeral had been a sham. Was he going to try to blackmail me in some way? I still do not fully trust Mr Koenig, nor do I understand his motives.
I let him wait downstairs for fifteen minutes, then asked Adam to bring him up.
Koenig appeared to be in a serious mood. After we had greeted each other, I sat him down in one of the easy chairs facing my desk. The first thing he said was to assure me that his visit was unconnected with his job on the newspaper.
‘I’m here as an emissary, my Lord,’ he said. ‘I’m acting in my private capacity for a third party who knows of my interest in the world of magic, and who has asked me to approach your wife.’
‘Approach Julia?’ I said, in genuine surprise. ‘Why should you have anything to say to her?’
Koenig was looking distinctly uncomfortable.
‘Your wife, my Lord, is the widow of Rupert Angier. It is in that guise that I have been commissioned to approach her. But I thought, bearing in mind what has happened in the past, it would be wisest to come to you first.’
‘What’s going on, Koenig?’
He had brought with him a small leather case, and he now picked this up and laid it on his lap.
‘The … third party for whom I’m acting has come across a notebook, a private memoir, in which it is felt your wife would have an interest. In particular, it is hoped that Lady Colderdale, that is, Mrs Angier, might wish to purchase it. This, er, third party is not aware that you, my Lord, are still alive, and so I find myself not only betraying the person who is sending me on this task, but also the person to whom I should be speaking. But I really felt, under the circumstances—’
‘Whose notebook is it?’
‘It is Alfred Borden’s own.’
‘Do you have it with you?’
‘Of course I do.’
Koenig reached down into the case, and produced a cloth-bound notebook of the sort that comes equipped with a lockable clasp. He handed it to me so that I might examine it, but because it was locked I could not see what was inside. When I looked back at Koenig he was holding the key.
‘My … client requires five hundred pounds, sir.’
‘Is it genuine?’
‘Most assuredly. You would have to read only a few lines to be convinced of that.’
‘But is it worth five hundred pounds?’
‘I suspect you will think it worth rather more. It is written in Borden’s own hand, and deals directly with the secrets of his magic. He elaborates his theory of magic, and explains how many of his tricks are done. The concealment of life as twins is alluded to. I found it a most interesting read, and I can guarantee you will too.’
I turned the book in my hand, wondering about it.
‘Who is your client, Koenig? Who wants the money?’ He looked uneasy, clearly not practised in this sort of thing. ‘You say you have already betrayed your client. Do you suddenly have scruples?’
‘There’s a lot to this, my Lord. From your manner I suspect you have not already heard the main news I am bringing. Are you aware that Borden himself has recently died?’ No doubt my startled expression gave him the answer he required. ‘To be precise, I believe one of the two brothers is dead.’
‘You sound unsure,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Because there’s no conclusive proof. You and I both know how obsessively the Bordens concealed their lives, so it’s no surprise that the survivor would do the same when his brother dies. The trail has been hard to follow.’
‘Then how do you know about it at all? Oh, I see … this third party who has commissioned you.’
‘And there is circumstantial evidence.’
‘Such as?’ I prompted.
‘The famous illusion is no longer included in Le Professeur’s act. I have been to his shows several times in the last six weeks, and not once has he performed it.’
‘There could be many reasons for that,’ I observed. ‘I’ve been to his show several times, and he does not always include that trick.’
‘Indeed not. But it would most likely be because both brothers are required to perform it.’
‘I think you should tell me the name of your client, Koenig.’
‘My Lord, I believe you once knew an American woman by the name of Olive Wenscombe?’
I have written the name here as I now realise he said it, but in the surprise of the moment I thought he said ‘Olivia Svenson’. Because of this a misunderstanding arose between us. At first I thought we were both speaking of the same person, then when he clarified the name I thought that he was talking about someone else. Finally I remembered that Olivia had taken her mother’s maiden name when she approached Borden.
‘For reasons you must surely appreciate,’ I said when all this had been cleared up, ‘I never speak of Miss Svenson.’
‘Yes, yes. And I apologise for mentioning her. However, she is deeply bound up in the matter of the notebook. I understand that Miss Wenscombe, or Svenson as you knew her, was in your employ some years ago, but she defected to the Borden camp. For a while she worked as Borden’s stage assistant, but not for long. You lost contact with her, I think, around this time.’
I confirmed that that was so.
‘It turns out,’ Koenig continued, ‘that the Borden twins own a secret hideout in North London. To be precise it is a suite of rooms in a well-to-do part of Hornsey, and it was here that one of the brothers lived incognito while the other enjoyed the comforts of home in St Johns Wood. They alternated regularly. After her … defection, Miss Wenscombe was installed in the Hornsey flat, and has been living there ever since. And will go on doing so if the court proceedings against her fail.’
‘Proceedings?’
I was having trouble taking in all this information at once.
Koenig went on, ‘She has been served with notice to quit for non-payment of rent, and is due to be evicted next week. As a foreign national with no permanent abode she would then be faced with deportation. It was for these reasons that she came to me, knowing my interest in Mr Borden. She thought I might be able to help her.’
‘By approaching me on her behalf for money.’
Koenig grimaced unhappily. ‘Not exactly, but—’
‘Continue.’
‘You’ll be interested to learn that Miss Wenscombe was not aware that there were two brothers, and to this day refuses to believe that she was deceived.’
‘I asked her myself once,’ I said, remembering the grim interview with her in the theatre in Richmond. ‘She said then that Borden was just one man. She knew my suspicions. But I can hardly believe that now.’
‘The Borden brother who died was taken ill while in the Hornsey flat. It sounds as if he had a heart attack. Miss Wenscombe summoned Borden’s doctor, and after the body had been taken away the police came round. When she told them who the dead man was they left to make further enquiries, but never returned. She later c
ontacted the doctor, to discover that he was not available. His assistant told her that Mr Borden had been taken ill, but had recovered quickly and had just been discharged from hospital. As Miss Wenscombe had been with him when he died, she could not believe it. She went to the police again, but to her amazement they too confirmed it.
‘I heard all this from Miss Wenscombe herself. Now, from what she told me, she has no idea that Borden was maintaining a second household. He completely pulled the wool over her eyes. As far as she was concerned, Borden was with her most days and nights, and she always knew where he was at other times.’ Koenig was leaning forward intently in his chair as he regaled me with his story. ‘So then Borden died suddenly, and she was shocked and upset as anyone in her position would be, but she had no reason to believe there was going to be anything unusual about it. And he did most certainly die, according to her. She says she was with the body for more than an hour before the doctor arrived, and it had gone cold by then. The doctor examined the body enough to confirm death, and said that he would sign a death certificate on his return to his surgery. Yet now she is faced not only with denials from everyone involved, but also with the incontrovertible fact that Alfred Borden appears on the public stage, performing his magic, and is visibly, emphatically not dead.’
‘If she thinks that Borden was only one man, how on earth does she account for that?’ I interjected.
‘I asked her, of course. As you know, she is no stranger to the world of illusions. She told me that after much thought she came to the sorrowful conclusion that Borden had used magical techniques to fake his death, for instance swallowing some kind of medication, and that it was all an elaborate charade to enable him to walk out on her.’
‘Did you tell her that the Bordens were twins?’
‘Yes. She scoffed at the idea, and assured me that if a woman lives with a man for five years she knows everything there is to know about him. She absolutely rejected the notion that there might have been two of them.’
(I had earlier raised my own questions about the Borden twins’ relationship with his/their wife and children. These now take on an added level of enquiry. It seems the mistress was also deceived, but is unwilling to admit that she was, or simply never knew.)
‘So this notebook has suddenly appeared, to solve all her problems,’ I said.
Koenig stared at me thoughtfully, then said, ‘Not all of them, but her most immediate ones. My Lord, I think that as a gesture of my good faith, I should let you examine the notebook without promise of payment.’
He passed the key across to me, and sat back in his chair while I opened the lock.
The notebook was written in a tiny hand, neatly inscribed in regular and even lines, but not at first glance legible. After I had looked at the opening pages I began to riffle through the rest as if running my fingers across the edges of a deck of cards. My magician’s instinct was telling me to be on my guard against Borden’s trickery. All those years of feuding had revealed the extent of his willingness to hurt or harm me. I had turned through about half the thickness of the notebook, when I halted. I stared at it, deep in thought.
This could be Borden’s most elaborate attack on me yet. Koenig’s story about Olivia, the death of Borden in her flat, the conveniently revealed existence of a notebook containing Borden’s most valuable professional secrets, all these could be fabricated.
I had only Koenig’s word to go on. What would the notebook actually contain, if it were another trick? An intricate maze of deceits which would manipulate me into some misguided response? Could there be something here that would, through the person of Olivia Svenson, threaten my one remaining area of stability, namely my miraculously restored marriage to Julia?
It seemed to me that I was putting myself in hazard, even to hold the notebook.
Koenig’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
‘Dare I presume, my Lord, that I can guess what is going through your mind?’
‘No, you may not so presume,’ I said.
‘You are doubting me,’ Koenig persisted. ‘You think that Borden has paid me, or coerced me in some way, to bring this to you. Is that so?’ I made no answer, still holding the notebook half open, my eyes staring down at it.
‘There are ways you could investigate what I am telling you,’ Koenig went on. ‘A court action against Miss Wenscombe by the landlord of the apartment in Hornsey was heard at Hampstead Assizes a month ago. You could examine the court records for yourself. There are almoner’s records at the Whittington Hospital, where an unidentified victim of a heart attack, with age and physical appearance matching that of Borden, was brought in on the day Miss Wenscombe says he died. There is also a record that that corpse was removed by a local doctor on the same day.’
‘Koenig, you sent me on a trail of false evidence ten years ago,’ I said.
‘I did indeed. I have never ceased to regret it, and have already told you that my dedication to your cause is the result of that error. I give you my word that the notebook is genuine, that the circumstances of it coming into my possession are as I have described, and that furthermore the surviving Borden brother is desperate to regain it.’
‘How has it escaped him?’ I said.
‘Miss Wenscombe realised its potential value, perhaps as something that might be published as a book. When her need for money became urgent, she thought it might be more valuable to you or, as she understood recent events, to your widow. Naturally, she kept the notebook hidden. Borden himself can not of course approach her for it, but it surely is not a coincidence that ten days ago her flat was forcibly entered and the place ransacked? Nothing was taken. This notebook, which she had secreted elsewhere, remained in her possession.’
I opened the notebook where my finger had come to rest, reflecting that the act of running my fingertips along the gilt-edged pages had been identical to the forcing of a playing-card by a conjuror on a subject. This thought was reinforced when I looked at a line halfway down the right-hand page, and saw my own name written there. It was as if Borden had forced the page on me.
I peered closely at the handwriting, and soon deciphered what the rest of the sentence said: ‘This is the real reason Angier will never solve the whole mystery, unless I myself give him the answer.’
‘She wants five hundred pounds, you say?’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
‘She shall have it.’
19th December 1903
Koenig’s visit exhausted me, and soon after he left (with six hundred pounds, the surplus being partly for his trouble to date, and partly for his silence and absence henceforth) I took to my bed where I remained until the evening. I wrote up my account of it then, but the next day and the day after I was too debilitated to attempt more than a little eating and a lot of sleeping.
Yesterday I was able at last to read some of Borden’s notebook. As Koenig had predicted, I found it an engrossing read.
I have been showing extracts to Julia, who finds it equally interesting. She reacts more against his self-satisfied tone than I do, and urges me not to burn up any of my precious energy by getting angry with him again.
Anger, in fact, is not being kindled in me, although the way he distorts some of the events of which I have a knowledge is both pitiable and irritating. What is most fascinating to me is that at last I have proof that ‘Alfred Borden’ was the product of a conspiracy between twins. Nowhere do they admit it, but the notebook is clearly the work of two hands.
They address each other in the first person singular. I found this confusing at first, as perhaps was intended, but when I pointed it out to Julia she observed that they apparently did not expect anyone else to read it.
It suggests that they call each other ‘me’ by habit, and this in turn implies they have done it for most of their lives. Reading between the lines of the notebook, as I must, I realise that every event or happening in their lives has been subsumed into one collective experience. It is as if they spent their lives from childhood preparing
for the illusion where one would secretly take the place of the other. It fooled me, and fooled most of the audiences who saw them in performance, but surely in the end it is Borden who is the fool?
Two lives made into one means a halving of those lives. While one lives in the world, the other hides in a nether world, literally non-existent, a lurking spirit, a doppelgänger, a prestige.
More tomorrow, if I have the energy.
25th December 1903
The house and grounds are cut off by the heavy falls of snow that have swept through the Pennines for the last two days. We are however warm and provisioned, and not in need of going anywhere. We have taken our Christmas dinner, and now the children are playing with their new possessions, and Julia and I have been relaxing together.
I have not told her yet of a worrying ailment, newly arrived on my poor body. Several purplish sores have broken out on my chest, upper arms and thighs, and although I have spread them with antiseptic ointment they are as yet showing no sign of recession. As soon as the thaw sets in I shall have to summon the physician again.
31st December 1903
The doctor has advised me to continue with the antiseptic medication, which at last shows some indication of being effective. He observed to Julia before he left that these unpleasant and painful eruptions on the skin might be a symptom of a more serious organic or blood-related problem. Julia gently bathes the sores every night before we go to bed. I have been continuing to lose weight, although in recent days that has been slowing.
A Happy New Year!
1st January 1904
I mark the turning of the new year with the grim reflection that I doubt if I shall last to the end of it.
I have been distracting myself from my own troubles by reading the Borden notebook. I have read it through to the end, and I confess I have been absorbed by it. I find it impossible not to make notes about his methods, views, omissions, errors, self-deceptions, etc.
The Prestige Page 32
