The Golden Butterfly

by Sharon Gosling

  “And this is what brought you to me?”

  “Not exactly,” Charley said. “It took us to the Peacock Theatre, and something we found there brought us here.”

  Danvers frown grew deeper. “Well then, what was that? Come on, my dears, I believe I have a right to know.”

  Luciana put her hand back into her bag and drew out the puzzle box they had found hidden behind the wardrobe. “This,” she said.

  Philpot Danvers blinked. “Aha,” he said. “Well, now we’re getting somewhere. I’ve got one of those too. Your grandfather gave it to me. It was one of the last times I saw him.”

  The puzzle box that Philpot Danvers brought to Luciana was different from the one she and Charley had found. Luciana looked at it in disappointment as Danvers handed it to her. When he’d said he was in possession of a box like hers, she’d envisioned another difficult time of trying to work out which wings were hidden amid the jumble, but she at least thought she’d know what she was doing. Danvers’ box didn’t seem to have anything similar at all. The pattern was just that – a pattern, made of circles set in long carved waves that covered all sides of the box. It was square, rather than oblong, and its surface was entirely flat. At first glance Luciana wasn’t even sure it was a puzzle box at all.

  “Oh, but it is,” Danvers said, once she’d voiced this doubt. “Press one of the round inlays – the white circles. I think they’re made of polished bone, or ivory, perhaps.”

  Luciana did as she was told and found that the circles depressed, like buttons. But beyond that, nothing at all seemed to happen.

  “Well,” said their host, as Turner came in with a tray laden with cold cuts of meat and slices of cake. “I could never get anywhere with it either. You can take it with you. Which reminds me – where are you both staying tonight? With some relative in town? Is that where Mrs Cattaneo is? I must say I’m rather surprised she hasn’t accompanied you to my door. I would never have been allowed such freedom to roam when I was your age.”

  Charley and Luciana looked at each other. The guilt in their expressions must have given them away, because Danvers looked between them with a growing look of apprehension on his face.

  “Good God. Please tell me that poor woman knows where you are?”

  Luciana swallowed uncomfortably. “We thought we’d be able to get back home this evening and explain everything. But then we found the puzzle box – and then your name. We’ve missed the last train now.”

  “Do you mean she didn’t even accompany you into the city? But—” Danvers stopped, his face aghast. “Does that mean you don’t have anywhere to stay tonight either?”

  “We hadn’t got that far yet,” Charley admitted.

  Danvers stood up abruptly and rang for Turner again. “I’m sorry for the late notice, Turner, but it seems we’re going to need two extra beds turned down for the night.”

  The butler’s stern gaze slid past his employer to the two children. “I believe I can facilitate that, sir.”

  “Thank you, my man. Oh, and I also need to send an urgent telegram out to the wilds of Sussex. Again, I know it’s late, but…”

  “I’ll see to it, sir.”

  “Excellent. What would I do without you, Turner?”

  The butler’s expression suggested that such an eventuality would be a disaster of the sort that Danvers would not survive, but he said nothing, merely bowing once more before he departed.

  “Come now,” said Danvers. “Eat something, do. There’s no standing on ceremony here, we’re an informal household. The question is,” he added, as Charley and Luciana both approached the table. “How am I going to entertain you both for the evening? I don’t have much experience with children.”

  “You’ve already been very generous, Mr Danvers,” Luciana said. “There’s really no need to go to any more trouble.”

  “Nonsense,” said the man, the animation that had been present when they had first seen him returning. “I bet you don’t often get into town. Be a damned shame if you don’t do something exciting while you’re here. Thing is, I’ve been away for so long I don’t know what the latest big thing is. Turner will though. He keeps his ear to the ground for me when I am away.”

  He rang the bell again and the butler appeared once more, looking a fraction more harried than he had the last time he had entered the room.

  “Turner, my good, good man,” Danvers said, his joviality now back in full force. “I am resolved to take these two young people to a show this evening. Might as well make the most of them being here, what? So – what have you been keeping note of for me?”

  Turner’s gaze flickered briefly to Luciana. “I am not sure what entertainments would be appropriate for a young lady to attend at this time of night, sir.”

  “Oh, tosh,” Danvers said dismissively. “It’s 1898, man. We’re heading for a new millennium. Let’s not have any of that stuffiness in this house. Come on – there must be something vital I’ve missed in my absence. What about magic? A magician would be perfect fare for the granddaughter of the Magnificent Marko, what?”

  “There are very few magicians of note now, sir,” said the butler. “The profession is rather fading away. In fact, I can think of only one in town at the moment. Adolphus Merritt. He has been playing at Weston’s for the past two months.”

  Danvers brought his hands together with a resounding clap that made both Charley and Luciana jump. “Perfect! We should have time to make the evening performance!”

  *

  A little more than an hour later, Luciana and Charley found themselves following Philpot Danvers along a narrow row of seats in the already busy auditorium of Weston’s Theatre.

  “Don’t you think this is all a bit odd?” Charley whispered to Luciana. “He’s only just met us, he doesn’t know us at all, and now he’s putting us up and throwing money around to entertain us.”

  “He was a friend of my grandfather’s, wasn’t he?” Luciana pointed out, although she had to agree it was a little strange. “Let’s not think about it now, all right? He’s just being a gentleman.”

  “All right,” Charley muttered. “If you say so.”

  Ahead of them, Danvers had drawn to a stop and was turning towards them. “Here we are,” he called cheerfully, over the throng. “We’re in this row. Not bad seats, eh?”

  They said no more about it, but Charley’s words niggled at Luciana. Still, they were here now, and as they settled themselves, Luciana looked around. It had been so long since she’d been in a theatre, and she felt an echo of the familiar excitement she’d always experienced as a child ringing in her heart. Weston’s stage was shrouded from their view with a heavy curtain of midnight-blue velvet. Flickering stage lights lit the fabric in waves that rippled amid its folds. Then the orchestra struck up a merry tune and Luciana sat back to enjoy the show.

  Adolphus Merritt was younger than Luciana had expected, dressed in a black coat and tails, and a long cloak lined with scarlet silk. He was not tall and walked with a cane, but he carried his back as straight as a ramrod. When he swept his top hat from his head, his thick dark hair was slicked back, except for an artful curl that had been shaped against his forehead. As the hat moved through the air, it produced a swarm of paper butterflies, their colours flickering in the dimmed stage light. The magician strode through the cloud of colour without even pausing to flourish at its appearance, or speak.

  It soon became apparent that speaking was not a part of Adolphus Merritt’s act. He uttered not a single word all the time he was on stage. At first Luciana found this strange, but soon she was so caught up in what was happening before her that she no longer noticed. It wasn’t that Merritt was performing particularly spectacular tricks. Many of them were variations on illusions she had heard described by her grandfather over the years, or even seen him perform in his own show. Yet there was something mesmerizing about the figure on the stage – sometimes accompanied by an assistant, but more often performing before the crowd alone.

  E
ither side of her, Luciana heard her own laughter and astonishment echoed by her companions. They were as entranced as the rest of the audience, entirely captivated by the movements of the magician on stage.

  Still, despite her amazement, something else stole over Luciana as she watched. It was the sense that everything she saw before her was an elaborate artifice. At first she dismissed this simply because, after all, the audience was in the presence of a master illusionist. They had come to watch a man challenge reality in a way that made them shiver with amazement. The question she most heard murmured around her was ‘How did he do that?’. They knew it wasn’t ‘real’ magic. It just looked that way. But Luciana felt as if the magician himself was the illusion, as if she was watching someone wearing a mask. That was what Luciana found herself trying to peer behind.

  For the finale, Merritt himself vanished in an explosion of sparks. The curtain came down and the audience got to their feet in a storm of furious clapping. Yet Merritt did not take a curtain call. Instead, as the thunder of applause rolled on and on, his assistant danced on from the wings, leaving in her wake a flurry of glitter. The audience were still on their feet when she stood on the thin lip in front of the fire curtain. She took a bow, then looked sharply up at the highest balcony to the left of the stage, just for a second. Luciana couldn’t help but follow her glance, along with the rest of the audience. Out of the corner of her eye, Luciana saw the assistant raise one elegant arm and then – BANG! Another shower of sparks erupted in the place where she no longer stood.

  The audience went into another paroxysm of clapping. Luciana, though, stood staring at the space that had just been occupied by Merritt’s assistant. She stayed silent even as she followed Danvers and Charley through the jostling chaos of the departing audience and out into the cold February night.

  “Well, what a show,” Danvers declared as they stood waiting for their cab at the kerb outside the theatre. “Truly wonderful.”

  “I thought so too,” Charley said, his face flushed pink and his eyes shining. “I think your grandfather would have loved it, don’t you, Luciana?”

  “Very much so.” She smiled, though she could not remove the crease of a frown from her forehead.

  “What’s wrong?” Charley asked. “Didn’t you think Merritt was brilliant? The way he never even said a word! And everything seemed so effortless, as if he were just floating through the world and things happened in his wake. Like that tree blooming and then producing oranges for his assistant to pick, right there on stage. Wasn’t that extraordinary?”

  “My grandfather used to do that too,” Luciana said, and then admitted, “Although he didn’t pick the oranges.”

  Their cab arrived and Danvers helped her in, peering at her face as they sat down. “Charley’s right,” he said. “Something about Merritt didn’t sit well with you. What was it?”

  “It’s just … there was something so strange about him, wasn’t there? Didn’t you feel it? As if we were watching someone putting on a face that wasn’t really theirs.”

  “That’s just part of the act, isn’t it?” Charley asked. “Like the silence.”

  “Yes, yes,” Danvers agreed. “It’s all part of the show. And anyway, it may be that you are right, in a very literal sense. Many magicians take on a persona not their own. Perhaps, when Merritt is out and about during the day, he looks entirely different.”

  Luciana nodded absently. “And then there was his assistant,” she said.

  “She was very good,” Danvers agreed. “I’ve seen a lot in my time and she’s the only one who’s come close to being as skilful as your grandfather’s girl, Adeline Morrell.”

  “Did you know Adeline?” Charley asked. “We wanted to find her. Do you know where she went?”

  “Ah, Adeline, poor girl. She couldn’t get work here after the Marko debacle. She went abroad, I think. They do things differently there, you know.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about,” Luciana said. “I don’t understand how they got away with it, if women aren’t supposed to do magic.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Charley.

  “At the end, when she came back on to do the curtain call,” Luciana said. “She did the same vanishing trick that Merritt himself had done just moments before.”

  “Oh, she didn’t do that.” Danvers laughed. “Merritt was up there on the balcony, directing the trick from above.”

  “Was he?” Luciana asked. “Did you see him?”

  “I – well, no, I didn’t,” Danvers admitted. “Not exactly. But he was there – the whole audience looked up and saw him.”

  “Did they?” Luciana asked doubtfully.

  “Why yes, of course.” Danvers laughed again. “It was the one time she slipped up in the whole performance, actually. I thought it even at the time. She’ll have hell to pay after the show, I thought. I bet she’s getting a ticking-off at this moment, in fact. She glanced right up at him just a second or two before he performed the trick. Didn’t you see?”

  “I saw her look up,” said Luciana. “The whole audience saw her look up. But I didn’t see Merritt on the balcony. Did you, Charley?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Charley admitted.

  “That’s because he wasn’t there,” said Luciana. “She just made everyone think that he was before she did the trick herself and disappeared. The look up at the balcony was just misdirection, to make everyone think she was checking for Merritt. Then she did the trick herself.”

  Danvers laughed heartily. “Oh, poppycock,” he said. “It was Merritt all right. Of course it was. Ask a hundred people in the audience tonight and they’ll all say they saw him up there – because he must have been there. There’s no other explanation.”

  Luciana said nothing more as they rattled over the cobbled streets, back towards Philpot Danvers’ house. She knew what she’d seen and what she hadn’t seen because it hadn’t been there. They hadn’t needed magic to pull the biggest trick that had been performed that evening. They’d just needed misdirection.

  It’s the greatest trick a magician has.

  Luciana looked out at the gaslit streets. Adolphus Merritt was the big new thing on the London stage. Anyone who was anyone must have been to see his performance, and that surely included Carl Thursby. Why hadn’t Merritt suffered the same fate as her grandfather? Because as far as she could see, he’d been teaching his assistant in just the same way, and to Luciana that just wasn’t fair. The injustice of it seemed insurmountable. Her anger grew so that by the time they had reached Philpot Danvers’ house, it was a towering inferno that consumed her.

  Refusing their new friend’s offer of a late supper, Luciana said a quick goodnight and went up to the bedroom that had been prepared for her. It was at the side of the house, in a funny little turret attached to the eaves. Luciana, too agitated to sleep, was drawn instead to the window. It was set in an alcove, low enough that she could kneel on the floor and lean on the sill. One side of it looked out over the Thames, glinting now in the light of a moon that had forced its way through a thick layer of cloud. Luciana watched the tumble and trip of the water, her thoughts as agitated as the river below. She thought of Danvers’ puzzle box. I’m too angry to sleep, she thought. I might as well do something useful.

  Luciana got up, went to her bag and took out the box, returning to the window again to sit down and study it properly.

  Breakfast the next morning was taken in a room looking out over a garden full of unmarked snow. Luciana and Charley sat at the table, waiting for Philpot to join them. The puzzle box was between them, still firmly closed.

  “Don’t feel bad that you couldn’t open it,” Charley told her. “Maybe Philpot will let you take it with you when we go home so that you can carry on trying. He did say he would, didn’t he?”

  Luciana said nothing, just helped herself to some toast and strawberry jam. Turner was pouring her a cup of tea when the door opened.

  “Well, well, well!” Danvers exclaimed, entering the room
like a hurricane. “What a wonderful day it is, to come downstairs from a good night’s sleep to find two such marvellous guests at breakfast!”

  Luciana and Charley both mumbled good mornings as he filled a plate from the buffet table. Turner picked up a small silver tray bearing a white envelope and proffered it to his employer.

  “Aha,” Danvers said. “A telegram. An answer to mine of yesterday from your poor families, no doubt.”

  He read the telegram briefly and sighed, then passed it over for Luciana to see.

  Sincere thanks for your kindly intervention stop Please return children by earliest available train stop Will reimburse stop Best wishes stop I Cattaneo stop

  “Short and to the point,” Danvers said cheerfully. “But that means that’s the end of that, I’m afraid. Your London adventure must end here. I am duty bound to do as your grandmother says.”

  He sat down at the head of the table and noticed the puzzle box for the first time. “No luck, eh, Luciana dear?” he asked. “Ah well, never mind. Some mysteries are meant to stay unsolved, eh? You must take it with you, as a gift.”

  “Oh no,” said Luciana. “The box was a present to you, not me. You must keep it and open it yourself.”

  She felt Charley’s eyes on her, but avoided his gaze. Sometimes he knew her just a little too well.

  “True, very true,” Danvers said. “Well, if you are sure, then here it shall stay, my dear. I shall certainly keep at it. Yes, I certainly will. Come now, eat up. We must away to the station. I do believe there is a train departing for Rotherton in less than an hour.”

  After breakfast Luciana retrieved her bag and said goodbye to the little bedroom. From one of the windows she could see Turner at the kerb, standing beside a cab. One of the horses stamped and whickered impatiently.

  “Thank you, Mr Danvers,” Luciana said, as she came back down and met him and Charley in the hallway. “We are so grateful for your hospitality.”

  “Oh, pish,” said Philpot. “It has been my absolute pleasure. I am sorry it has been such a short visit, and that you did not find what you were looking for. But we do not need to say our goodbyes yet. I shall accompany you to the station.”