by Marvin Kaye
“The police suspect me.”
“I do not think so.”
“But they will, Mister Holmes, they will! It’s on account that I wish to sell the Sun Ching Foo show to Miles Cavendish, a rival magician. For years, Mister Cavendish has tried to buy Cecil’s tricks or to pay for a stake. Now, I want to offer him everything—the props, the staff, the future bookings.”
“And they will see this as profiting from Cecil’s death? A profit that led you to kill him in the first place?” Holmes said. “How much money do you stand to make?”
Tears broke her face. As she wiped away face powder, I saw wrinkles worried into her face with age. Her lashes matted together in anguish. She wanted to speak, but her breath caught in short gasps.
“The show is worth nothing to me. Cecil was heavily indebted. Sale of everything will be enough to pay off his debts, but little more. The Sun Ching Foo act has been a success, but Cecil financially ruined us. He piled together bills and spent on credit in the company of women that I do not care to speak of. I am ruined! Just look at the newspapers!”
She slapped down The Morning Mirror. Its broadside read “CONJURER’S WIFE KILLS HIM DURING FINAL PERFORMANCE.”
“They’ll use someone else’s name tomorrow,” I assured her. “Better yet, this paper will forget the story and The Evening Mirror will accuse someone else.”
“Do you think he planned this? Did he take his own life?” Holmes asked.
“I wish I knew, although I don’t think so. He is not the kind of person to contemplate such a death. He does not give into bursts of emotion. Not even when angry or upset.”
“Perhaps he was the opposite, and was quiet or withdrawn as of late?”
“He is in fine spirits lately. He is as talkative and even-keeled as ever. Oh, Mary help me, I can’t bring myself to say ‘he was’ anything. ‘He is’ to me—he can’t be gone. I cannot allow it.” She began to cry again. “But we are in such debt! If I do not accept that he is gone, the collectors will take the last crumb from my pantry.”
Holmes sighed. “Send Miles Cavendish inside.”
Her crying sputtered to a stop. “How do you know?”
“You looked outside, I assume a man is waiting. If it isn’t Miles Cavendish, then surely you are followed.”
She went to the window and opened it, then she gestured. Minutes later we were joined by a stranger. He had a tiny beard growing at the tip of his chin in the fashion of Disraeli, but it started directly under his lip and sprouted downward. His eyes were black and deep-set.
“Ah, the Amazing Cavendish!” Holmes remarked. “With the signature ‘Vanishing Lady’ act. A fellow conjurer, perhaps it was you who killed Sun Ching Foo?”
His face frowned. “I assure you, nothing can be further from the truth. Sun Ching Foo was no friend, but he was no enemy, either. Suggesting I killed Sun Ching Foo for his business is like me suggesting that you should kill Lestrade to snatch more cases to solve.”
Holmes chuckled. “Very well, who do you think killed him?”
“A spurned lover, angry creditors, or even himself? If he committed suicide, shouldn’t we search for a note?”
“If he committed suicide, then what is the mechanism? Thomasina, you say you don’t know how the trick worked, but how did he set it up?” Holmes asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. We all had tasks to do—I was preparing other things while he was working on the gun.”
Holmes asked, “Did he do anything to the guns after a performance?”
She nodded. “Why yes! See, the gun was not meant to fire. So every night, Cecil took apart the rifle to extract the bullet. He would shake the powder out and put that back in the container, too.”
“Usually, the gun did not fire? If it wasn’t supposed to, then how did Cecil simulate the sound of shooting?”
She shrugged. “It was all part of the magic of Sun Ching Foo.”
“Where was he before the show? What was he doing?”
Thomasina was quiet; instead, Cavendish spoke up. “Sun Ching Foo was in the company of a woman besides his wife.”
“How is it that you know this?” Holmes asked.
“His colourful social habits were known to all at the Bixby Club, of which we were both members.”
“It is imperative that I question this woman, Mister Cavendish. Give her name to the Yard, and they will bring her in for questioning.”
Holmes turned to Thomasina. “You ask for help, madam, and I shall offer it. But even without your plea, I would see this through to the end. A man has died in front of my eyes. The honor of my trade is at stake.”
Jealousy, anger, vengeance – I saw none of that on the wife’s face. She showed only silent despair. “Thank you, Mister Holmes.”
* * * *
We returned to the Metropolitan Police. Parliament’s clock tower looked at us over St. Stephen’s House. Lanners explained to Holmes that the woman was found, and they discussed what questions had been posed already and her answers. Once Holmes had his fill of the information, Lanners walked us to the same room where Alastair Reynolds had been questioned.
Inside the office, she waited. I will spare this woman her decency by concealing a name, but I shall describe her as a young Scotchwoman wearing a Norfolk jacket with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a skirt. Her hair curled loosely over greenish-blue eyes.
“Questions from one constable were not enough, now he brings two more?” she muttered.
“I am Sherlock Holmes, an independent consulting detective, and this is Doctor John Watson, who attended Cecil Windham in the final moments of his life.”
“Well? What do you want with me?”
“How long did you know Sun Ching Foo?”
“Since the start of the summer,” she said. “When he first began performing his show, he found me working in a laundry and invited me to see a matinee for free. When I went, I didn’t know he was Sun Ching Foo. But calling on me afterward, he told me—and amused me with his sleight-of-hand.”
“Think carefully now, miss. Did he promise you anything?” His stare grew intense.
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “All men promise, Mister Holmes. Cecil was no different.”
“But what did he promise you?”
“That he loved me, that we could be together. He wanted to set up a touring company and travel with me. First, to Scotland, and then to the Continent or to South America. He promised that we could be happy together.”
“And what about his wife?”
She looked away. “I knew he was married, but he never mentioned her. And I never asked. I said that all men promise, but I don’t think that they keep their promises.”
“Did you know that his wife lived with him, here in London?”
She shrugged noncommittally.
“A Chinese woman who could not speak the language, who knew nothing of our land or culture?”
She grimaced and her gaze fell. “Please stop, you make me ill. I am ashamed.”
He muttered quietly, “The poor woman has no family here nor a penny in her own name. She will most likely die in the gutter. She is a prisoner without walls.” Then Holmes’s voice grew hard as steel. “Your womanly scheme killed her husband, the one man she trusted with her wretched life!”
A whimpering cry erupted from the woman’s lips. “No, Mister Holmes! I will confess all of my sins to you, but I didn’t hold plans against Cecil! I had nothing to do with it! I beg you to believe me!” She threw her hands over her face and cried.
Holmes looked at Lanners. “Take her away. She is of no use to us.”
As he escorted her out of the office, I remarked, “Holmes, you are a cold-blooded liar.”
“Nevertheless, I produced the truth in her. We should re-examine the gun next.”
Lanners returned and led us back to the jezail. Holmes held it up and inspected it, turning it around in his hands.
“These screws seem strangely placed,” he said. He reached into his satchel
for tools, then slowly removed the screws. Without them, the barrel and ramrod tube fell away from the breech.
He picked up a screw and carefully eyed the threads, then he focused his magnifying glass upon the holes in the pieces of rifle.
“Eureka, gentlemen!” Holmes chuckled and reassembled the jezail.
A mixture of puzzlement and relief washed over Lanners’s face. “What is it Holmes?”
“The soldier, Alastair Dayton, loaded gunpowder and the bullet,” Holmes said, sliding a finger from the hole down the length of the barrel.
“Yes, go on,” Lanners said.
“The rifle’s firing mechanism, however, is blocked off from the barrel. Instead, it looks connected to this tube which, as I remarked yesterday, is bigger than a ramrod holder.” He touched the extra compartment.
I nodded. “And Lai Way – Thomasina – took the ramrod back. The soldier didn’t rest it there after the bullet was loaded. The gun itself was part of the trick?”
“Right. This was an extra firing chamber. There must have been gunpowder inserted here by Sun Ching Foo before the show. When the trick works correctly, a soldier pulls the trigger and the powder in this chamber ignites. But the powder in the barrel remains untouched.”
“So what happened in this case?” Lanners asked.
“It starts with the use of an old gun. The false chamber and real barrel must have been assembled years ago. To hold them together against the breech of the stock, holes were drilled in. The screws go from the stock, through the extra chamber, and into the barrel. Slowly, rust accumulated between the screw and the holes holding the pieces together.”
Lanners’s gaze became unfocused. “All very interesting, Holmes but—”
“Patience, inspector! As I was saying, when that connection deteriorated, a slight opening formed. Gunpowder from the barrel leaked into the hole where the screws fastened the gun together. Sun Ching Foo never cleaned it properly, but he just shook out the powder. Over time with successive performances, excess particles accumulated to form a charge through the hole. So now, when the flash from the percussion cap travelled down to the secret chamber, it also went up into the barrel. Thus, the whole gun shot off and the bullet was fired.”
To prove his point, Holmes took a pitcher of water off the desk and slowly poured water down the barrel. After a moment, drops dripped from the attached tube. “Poor Cecil Windham had no idea what happened when he died.”
By day’s end, Lanners released Alastair Dayton. Cecil Windham’s body returned to the United States with his widow later that month.
By the next morning, newspapers barely mentioned Sun Ching Foo. There was no mention of his wife, nor any mention of Holmes, either.
He laughed. “An error I’m sure you will correct!” Closing his eyes with a smile, he said, “I’ve helped countless people, Watson, but I don’t expect to be remembered. No, the only memories made on Baker Street will be from Madame Tussaud’s waxen people or in a childhood visit to the zoo in Regent’s Park.”
I chuckled with him, promising to myself to write this adventure some day to ensure the memory of Sherlock Holmes as well as the tragic death of the man London knew as Sun Ching Foo.
* * * *
DO YOU LOVE ME? by Marc Bilgrey
“Do you love me?” asked Jan.
“Of course, I love you,” replied Bob, pulling the sheet over their naked bodies and fluffing up his pillow.
“Then why won’t you leave your wife?” she asked.
Bob sighed and looked over at the painting of a Paris street that hung near the bed. It was one of those garish pictures you only see in cheap motel rooms. Which made perfect sense, since that’s exactly where he was.
“Do we have to have this discussion every time we meet?” asked Bob.
“Well, when else can we have it? It’s not like I can call you at your apartment or meet you at work.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. If I leave her, I’m left with no money.”
“I’ve finally figured out a solution.”
“A solution?” Bob reached over to the night table and picked up a container of bottled water that he’d bought from the soda machine down the hall, and took a sip.
“Yes, you kill her.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” said Bob, rolling his eyes.
“I’m serious.”
“Are we going to spend the next couple of hours making love or waste our time talking over ridiculous ideas?”
“There’s nothing ridiculous about it. Will you hear me out?”
“I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
“How about you lose the attitude for five minutes.”
Bob sighed. He hated when she got like this. Why couldn’t she just accept things the way they were? Why did she constantly pester him on the subject? Things were fine. He saw Jan a couple of times a week, usually after work. Why push it? But, he decided, if Jan wanted to talk, there was nothing he could do about it.
“You kill your wife and blame it on a burglary gone bad,” said Jan.
“Oh?” replied Bob, stifling a yawn.
“You walk in and find her dead.”
“And how does she die?”
“It’s very simple.” Jan reached into her purse and pulled out a gun.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Never mind, just take it.”
“What am I going to do with it?”
“What do you think you’re going to do with it?”
Bob held the weapon in his hands. It felt cold and heavy. He decided that Jan had gone off the deep end. There was no way that he was going to shoot Linda. Oh sure, Linda was annoying and they’d been fighting for months; plus he now despised her habits that he used to find cute when they first met ten years earlier, like her constant cleaning, her frumpy pajamas, her ugly face creams and foul smelling lotions, but that was a far cry from murder.
“You expect me to just walk into our apartment and shoot her?” he asked as he placed the gun on the night table.
“Of course not,” she said, taking a sip from his water bottle, “you wait for her to fall asleep, and then you shoot her.”
“Won’t that make a lot of noise?”
“You put a pillow around the gun; it’ll act as a silencer.”
“Where’d you see that, on some TV show?”
“It doesn’t matter where I saw it. I know it’ll work.”
Bob sat up and leaned against the bed board. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say it does, then what?”
“Then you open the window in your bedroom, the one you said faces the fire escape.”
“I have a gate on it.”
“You unlock the gate,” she said, slitting her eyes, “and then you call the police.”
“Aren’t you leaving something out?”
“What?”
“I have to get rid of my clothes and gloves. They’ll have gun powder residue on them.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“You’re not the only one who watches TV.”
She sniffed. “Okay, fine. Then you call the cops and tell them that you found her dead.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. Then you and I live happily ever after.”
“I don’t want to go to jail.”
“Who said anything about jail? You tell the cops that you came home and found her dead. Who’s going to know the difference?”
“I have to think about it.”
“Take the gun with you and don’t think about it too much; just do it.”
* * * *
The next day at work, Bob did nothing but think about it. He sat in his cubicle, and stared off into space. His supervisor stopped by and told Bob to get back to work, that the company’s new line of software products wouldn’t sell itself. After the boss walked away Bob gazed at his computer screen, but it all seemed like a surreal jumble of names and numbers. Bob had never killed anyone before. The idea of killing his wife seeme
d terrifying. It was one thing to not like her, even, at times, to hate her, but to shoot her?
That night back at his apartment, he watched Linda sitting across the dinner table eating some spaghetti. She made a really irritating noise every time she sucked another strand into her mouth. Afterwards, Bob watched her clean off the table, rinse the dishes, and put them in the dishwasher.
“What is it?” asked Linda, after she sat down on the couch in the living room. “You’re staring at me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not used to it. Lately, you’ve been ignoring me.”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind,” said Bob, as he sat down on a chair opposite her.
She picked up a magazine and opened it. “I hardly see you lately, with all that overtime you’ve been putting in at the office.”
“Um, yeah.” That “overtime” was named Jan, he thought.
Later in bed, Bob watched Linda as she slept, and tried to picture how the whole thing would go down. After a few minutes, he went to the window, unlocked the gate, slid it to the side and opened the window. Linda yawned and rubbed her eyes.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, “it’s freezing in here.”
“I just wanted to get some air.”
“Close the window and go to bed.”
Bob closed the window and climbed back into bed, but it took a long time for him to fall asleep.
A couple of days later, Bob was back at the motel with Jan. Though they were in a different room than they had been before, it looked exactly alike, down to the badly painted Paris street scene on the wall. After they’d made love, Jan pulled away and said:
“So, what’s going on with you and the wife?”
“Can you define, ‘Going on?’”
“When are you going to do it? And don’t ask me what I mean by ‘it.’”
“I’m working my way up to it.”
“And when do you think you’ll be able to do it?”
“I—I’m not sure.”
“You’re really giving me a lot of confidence here.”
“Be patient.”
“Like hell I will. I need you to do this ASAP. I’m not getting any younger. Maybe this will help,” said Jan, “if you don’t do it within the next two weeks, I’m walking.”
