by John Gaspard
“I would expect nothing less,” Harry said as the couple approached. Hugs were had all around, while Megan stood off to the side, trying not to look as awkward as she probably felt. Recognizing the imbalance, Harry and I quickly made introductions, and before long all five of us were fast friends, slowly making our way up the charming lane toward the looming mansion.
I had known the Templetons since childhood (mine, not theirs). As I was growing up, our infrequent trips to their show in Las Vegas were always utterly memorable and instructive. As I furthered my studies of magic, I recognized how enlightening it was to see essentially the same show over the course of a number of years. The show didn’t change much, but I did, and I watched it through different eyes every time.
Their act was a cunning blend of comedy, magic, pantomime, and even elements of commedia dell’arte. Of course, I didn’t recognize any of that until I was an adult. As a kid, I just found it a hilarious story about a married couple on stage who really seemed to despise each other...until the end, when their onstage antics merged together to artfully demonstrate the enduring power of love. All this, plus pratfalls, fart jokes, and balloon animals—a perfect storm of elements— were designed to appeal equally to kids and adults.
Both Roy and Roxanne had always seemed ageless and timeless to me. Even at his now-advanced age, Roy had lost none of his rubber-faced wackiness, nor his dancer’s grace. Roxanne was also winning in the battle against aging, although I suspected her jet-black hair required some chemical assistance. Her unlined face may have come courtesy of the occasional expensive nipping or tucking. Or both.
While Roy was exactly the same on stage or off—loud, boisterous, and always moving at one hundred miles per hour—Roxanne’s off-stage persona was sharply contrasted to how she came across in their stage show.
She never spoke during their act, but instead offered slow-burn reactions to Roy’s antics. The faster he moved, the slower she responded. So advanced was her comedic timing, I had seen instances where she brought the house down with the merest shifting of her gaze from one point onstage to another. Nothing moved but her eyes, and it sent the crowd into hysterics.
Little of that subtlety was evident in her off-stage persona, which rivaled her husband’s in energy and volume, with the bawdy and welcome addition of a sharp, ribald take on life, which Roy lacked. As my late Aunt Alice used to say of her, “Roxanne has no inside voice. She’s all outside voice.”
They were, in short, a fun couple, undiminished by their advancing years, and their sudden appearance immediately increased the vitality of our late-night stroll.
“Holy crap, did Baxter give you a tour of the compound?” Roxanne asked immediately. “My first question after he showed us our bedroom was, ‘Thanks, Larry, but where’s the gift shop?’”
“If Roxanne doesn’t find a gift shop, she’ll make one,” Roy added, setting off a laughing jag between the two.
“I brought in two suitcases,” she continued, “and the gal helping me pointed out one of the bags was empty. ‘Don’t worry, honey,’ I said. ‘It won’t be when I leave!’”
“And have you met Baxter’s version of Brünnhilde?” Roy asked, lowering his volume dramatically and glancing nervously at the house. “She’s like Mrs. Danvers without the warmth.”
“Exactly, right?” I excitedly agreed.
“There’s a whole lotta scary packed in that little Teutonic frame,” Roy continued.
“We ran into her first at The Magic Circle,” Roxanne continued, “and she read us the riot act about where we had stashed our cases. Then to arrive out here and find out she’s Baxter’s Frau Blücher? Well, I nearly wet myself.”
“No ‘nearly’ for me. I did!” Roy responded, sending them both back into a laughing fit.
Roxanne rubbed her eyes and then suddenly threw a chummy arm around Megan while we walked. “You poor thing,” she cooed. “Trapped in Kane’s Xanadu with a cluster of carny folk.”
“Actually, I’m pretty used to it. I get it a lot at home, with Harry and the Minneapolis Mystics,” Megan said.
Before our trip, I had told her about the Templetons, and I think they were living up to my description. Megan moved closer to Roxanne. “When they start talking about the efficiency of one invisible dove harness over another,” she said in a stage whisper, “I tune them out immediately.”
“Wise girl,” Roxanne said and then turned to me. “Don’t let this one slip away, Eli.”
“I’m doing my best not to,” I agreed.
Roxanne then turned back to Megan. “I think my mother put it best when I told her I was marrying Roy. She said, ‘A magician? Really, dear? Is that the best you can do? I was so hoping you would hold out for a mime.’”
She followed this with a dramatic pause and then another paroxysm of laughter, which carried our small group up the long driveway toward the front door.
We lowered our voices as we entered the large house, afraid our rollicksome party would wake the household. We needn’t have bothered, as it appeared everyone was still wide awake and looked like they planned to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
“My excellent good friends,” Laurence Baxter said, coming out of his study when he heard the front door open, “you have returned intact, I see, from your sojourns into the slums of the West End and the shopping mecca known as Covent Garden.”
His tone and manner suggested that drinks all around had been offered and accepted several times in the last hour or so. Through the doorway into the large study I could see the other magicians—Angus, Borys, Hector, and De Vries—chatting while a butler offered cigars from an expensive-looking wooden box.
Baxter looked over at Roy, who bowed dramatically. “My lord.”
“What news?” Baxter said regally.
“None, my lord,” Roy responded, taking on a Shakespearean attitude, “but that the world’s grown honest.”
“Then is doomsday near?” Baxter answered in what sounded like a practiced routine, but Roy suddenly cut him off.
“What the hell? You’ve started drinking before me?” Roy cried with mock outrage as he glanced into the study.
“Yes, but not to worry, it took five of us to match your intake. Fear not, I have ordered reinforcements,” Baxter replied, gesturing toward a young maid who was heading toward us from the kitchen, carrying a tray with two more liqueur decanters and a tea service.
Pacing her was Miss Hess, who seemed to be directing the girl’s every move. If she was going to be so picky about how things were done, I thought, why didn’t she just do it herself? And then I realized the frail, old woman was probably unable to carry the heavy tray. Instead, she clicked her tongue at the girl as she set the tray in the study and stopped to rearrange the placement of the decanters before they both exited silently.
“Cigars and port, gentlemen?” Baxter said, looking first at Harry and then at me.
“What about the ladies?” Roxanne said.
“You’ll have to get your own, ladies,” Roy said. Roxanne provided a quick rimshot sound effect, and the two laughed like the old comedy team they were.
Roxanne turned to Megan “Come on, honey. If we spend any time in there, we’ll come out smelling like a wet dog on a humid day. Why don’t we go upstairs and braid each other’s hair?”
“Um,” Megan said, reflexively touching her hair. “I’m not sure—”
“That’s code for there’s a liquor cabinet in my room,” Roxanne added as she headed toward the stairs.
Megan nodded, finally understanding. “Got it,” she said as she followed Roxanne. She turned back to me as she started up the stairs. “Don’t wait up,” she said, deftly stealing my next line before I could utter it.
“But, but,” I stammered, as Harry patted me on the back and pushed me toward the study.
“She’s in good hands, Buster,” he said. “And I for one co
uld use a drink.”
As it turned out, Harry was not the only one in need of a drink, although it was his first of the evening. Some of the others might have lost count.
Ever the good host, Laurence Baxter filled glasses for the newest arrivals and refilled the glasses of those who were already warmly ensconced. The only detractor was Borys, who held up his hand at the offered glass and instead headed directly to the tea service.
“Tea, anyone?” he suggested, looking around the group as he pulled a small leather pouch from within his suit coat.
“Not if it’s the awful swill you lug about,” Angus shouted from his corner.
“We have other options, if it’s tea you’re after,” Baxter suggested, but Angus shook his head and sipped his drink.
Borys caught my eye as he opened the pouch and pulled out a teabag. “Eli, a bit of tea?” he said quietly. “It will, I think, aid sleep better than the other options here.”
Baxter had just pushed a full glass of port—whatever that was—into my hand. “No thanks,” I said, not sure either choice was the right one for me. “I’m good.”
“As you wish,” Borys said, as he placed the teabag in an empty cup and poured in hot water from the tea set’s china pot. The water turned instantly black.
“You still keeping that foul stuff under lock and key?” Angus asked as Borys slowly stirred the dark liquid. He added two lumps of sugar and continued stirring, then looked from Angus to me, probably seeing the confused look on my face.
“Angus mocks me because I take precautions with my tea, always keeping it upon my person,” Borys said. He turned to Angus as he continued. “As Angus is well aware, I often find myself sharing dressing rooms with unscrupulous sorts, otherwise known as magicians. They not only delight in stealing my tea, but in some cases go so far as to replace it with an odious substitute called...Lipton’s.”
He said the last word like he had a bad taste in his mouth, and given the look of the tea he was sipping, it may well have been the case. Angus burst out laughing.
“Oh, when I did that, it was classic,” he said. “Just classic.”
“Be that as it may, I learned a good lesson there, and now I’m wise enough to keep my valuables close to my heart,” Borys said, patting his coat at the approximate spot where the pouch was located in an inside pocket. “And I have Angus to thank for that,” he added, holding up his teacup in a mock toast. Angus mirrored the action across the room with his glass of port.
“Speaking of toasts,” Baxter said somberly, “I think it might be appropriate to raise a glass to our fallen friend, Oskar.”
The room turned quiet with soft murmurs of agreement from all quarters. There was a moment of hesitation, as no one was quite sure who was actually making the toast. Since he had come up with the suggestion, Laurence Baxter followed through and stepped to the center of the room.
“For Oskar. A fine man. A fine friend. And a world-class magician.” He held his glass up and looked around the small assembly. “To Oskar!”
We all held our glasses aloft and repeated, “To Oskar!”
“To Oskar,” Davis De Vries added a second too late.
We all drank our port, except Borys, who sipped his tea. I sipped gingerly at my port as well, not wanting to be the drinking lightweight who ruined an emotional toast with an explosive coughing fit.
As we drank in silence, I looked around the room, wondering—not for the first time—if any of the other Magi might qualify as suspects for Oskar’s murder.
Lawrence Baxter had been there the night of Oskar’s untimely death, as had De Vries, Borys, and Angus. They were all long-time members of The Magic Circle, and none of them would have been out of place wandering around backstage before a show. Hector and the Templetons might have been there as well—the crowd was large and I was jet-lagged, so I felt I shouldn’t rule them out, either.
But rule them out for...what? Murder? Really?
The group had known each other for years—since long before I was even born—and there seemed to be such love and affection among them. However, as rivals in the same industry, I’m sure it couldn’t have been all sweetness and roses all those years.
“Would it be too soon,” Roy Templeton said, snapping me out of my musings, “to perform a broken wand ceremony for Oskar at one of the performances this week?”
“Oh, I think that’s a lovely idea, Roy,” Baxter said, and there were sounds of agreement all around. “Yes, we must schedule that. We also need to reschedule Harry’s show,” he added, glancing over at my uncle. “Only, of course, if you are still inclined.”
Harry shrugged. “From what they tell me, Larry, I’m not going anywhere for a while. I might as well put on a show while I’m here.”
“Harry could be the lucky magician to inaugurate De Vries’ Catherine Wheel,” Roy Templeton suggested with a smirk, which produced laughter throughout the room.
“Sí, sí,” Hector agreed. “Harry can be the guinea pig.”
“I would pay top dollar to see that,” Baxter said.
“That’s because you can afford top dollar,” Angus said with a laugh. “But I’d dearly love to see old Harry on that spinning devil!”
“There’s no way he’s strapping me to that contraption,” Harry said over the laughter. “No damned way!”
I had to agree with him and hoped no one would realize that, as the youngest magician in the room by multiple decades, I was actually the logical choice. Although I hadn’t seen the illusion in action, Harry had told me all about it on the flight to London because Davis De Vries had tapped him for some advice on the design. From what I’d heard, it was not a trick I would enjoy performing.
As Harry had explained it, the Catherine Wheel was a large wheel, about ten feet in diameter, which stood upright on a support. During the performance, a magician was strapped to the wheel, looking a whole lot like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. In fact, Vitruvian Man was De Vries’ original name for the device until Harry convinced him no one would get the reference. His second choice, Ixion, was also rejected, as Harry felt the average person had never heard of the Greek mythological figure who was secured to a spinning, burning wheel by Zeus. So, the name the Catherine Wheel—the popular spinning firework, not the less-popular medieval torture instrument—won by default.
Once the magician was strapped in, a motor behind the device would start to spin the wheel, slowly at first, then gaining speed. As it turned, sparks and small flames would fly out of the end of the wheels’ “spokes,” like the traditional spinning Catherine Wheel used in fireworks displays. While the magician was being spun around and around, two assistants would stand in front of the wheel, grasping a large silk. At the same instant, they’d hold up the cloth to hide the magician from view, but only for a second. The assistants would then drop the silk, revealing that the wheel—still spinning and shooting out sparks and flames—was now empty.
According to Harry, after the magician vanished from the Catherine Wheel, there were then a couple of options to make him reappear. Depending on the layout of the theater, he could emerge standing in the back of the auditorium. Or one of the assistants could wrap the other assistant in the silk very quickly, and then just as quickly unwrap her, revealing she has transformed into the magician.
Given what I knew about the device, if I were to perform the trick, I’d most likely be revealed backstage, on my hands and knees, saying goodbye to my dinner.
As it turned out, I was saved from being volunteered for such debasement when De Vries began to vigorously shake his head and wave his hands from his corner of the room.
“No, not Harry, not Hector, and, god help me, not Laurence,” he said, still laughing from the suggestion. “I am very pleased to say I have stumbled onto a bit of a coup, as it were, in regards to the premiere of the Catherine Wheel. A big name has offered to help me with the unveiling.”
&nb
sp; This produced a barrage of guesses, as all the pros in the room tossed out their best guess as to who this mystery magician might be. De Vries smiled slyly while he shook his head at every idea. He waited until the last suggestion had been uttered.
“No to all and sundry,” he said in his clipped American accent. “Excellent guesses, but all one hundred percent wrong. And the irony of it is, the fellow is among us at this very moment.”
He gestured grandly at Roy Templeton, who was leaning on a chair across the room. Roy looked around, as surprised as any of us, and then began to take a deep bow.
“I’d like to thank the members of the Academy,” he began.
“Not you, you clown,” De Vries snapped, continuing to wave his hand in a gesture we now understood as the international sign for “idiot, get out of the way.”
Roy stepped aside, revealing a television, which was playing silently in the background. And there on the TV, performing some card magic, was none other than Jake North.
“Oh, heaven help us, not that silly prat,” Angus said, practically spitting out the words.
“I thought you said he was a big name,” Roy said. “More like a big ass.”
Hector mumbled something in Spanish. I didn’t understand the words, but the sentiment was unmistakable.
“Criticize to your heart’s content, my boys,” De Vries said smugly, “but right now he is the biggest thing in the West End, with a hit television series to boot. And people love him.” He noticed the TV remote on the table next to his chair and picked it up. He studied the controls for a moment before selecting one button. Suddenly, the room was filled with the sound of Jake doing a card trick for a smiling television host. Something funny must have just been uttered, because all we heard when the sound clicked on was the recognizable sound of an audience laughing heartily.
“Here’s another thing about cards that’s similar to dogs,” Jake was saying. “Sometimes they only know the one trick. And that’s okay, a one-trick dog is no shame and neither is a one-trick card. I mean, changing color is a pretty good trick all on its own.”
