The Linking Rings

by John Gaspard

  Gwendolyn, at the door to the kitchen, scanned the room to see if anyone needed anything. Hector raised his coffee cup, and Gwendolyn returned and took it from him with a big smile, heading to the coffee urn on the sideboard to refill it. He watched her do it and then glanced to me with a playful wink. Despite his advanced years—or perhaps because of them—his eye for the ladies, which was legendary within the group, had apparently not diminished.

  “We essentially lost Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights,” Baxter continued. “So I think the simplest solution would be to move those missing acts to our remaining four evenings and simply shorten everyone’s stage time. Does anyone have any objection to this idea?”

  “I do three tricks and three tricks only in my show,” Angus said as he reached out a stubby hand and nabbed one of Baxter’s toast slices. “The whole mess can either take forty minutes or twenty minutes. In a pinch, I can do it in ten minutes, but I once did stretch the whole thing out to ninety. Pretty proud of that. So, I’ve no problem cutting back my time.”

  Although it sounded like an odd boast, it was actually not uncommon for comedy magicians to be able to expand or contract their acts at will, still doing all the same tricks but simply adding more or less comedy and audience interaction. While I had some tried-and-true comic lines I could add to my act on the fly, I felt a little jealous about their ability to change the length of their shows on a whim. To make my standard show longer would require either adding a moderated Q&A segment or a handful of knock-knock jokes.

  “The less the merrier as far as we’re concerned, right hon?” Roy said, turning to Roxanne for confirmation. “Cut us to twenty, ten, whatever works for you.”

  “My husband is one of the few performers I know,” Roxanne said to Megan, “who actually prefers less time on stage.”

  “Always leave ‘em wanting more,” Roy said, smiling broadly.

  “If he had his way, his act would consist of an introduction and a bow.”

  “One never wants to overstay one’s welcome,” Roy added. “Although encores are always appreciated.”

  “All I ask is that the complete act takes at least as much time as I took to put on my makeup and pour myself into my Spanx,” Roxanne said with a laugh.

  “In that case, we would probably need to add an intermission,” Roy said. “Cause your prep is taking longer and longer every year.”

  “If only other things got longer every year,” she said in a loud stage whisper.

  After an awkward moment of silence, Roxanne and Roy burst out laughing. I really couldn’t tell if this was a practiced routine, a new ad lib, or simply a veiled argument taking the form of playful banter.

  While they all continued to discuss their willingness to shorten their shows, I noticed Megan was trying to get my eye. I gave her a quizzical look, and she glanced down at her hand, indicating one of her rings. She then pointedly looked at each of the older gentlemen at the table, her scrutiny falling on each of their hands. She then looked back to me for a silent explanation.

  Just as I had done when I first met Laurence Baxter, she had recognized that the ring we always saw on Uncle Harry’s finger was not nearly as unique as we had perhaps thought. Each of the magicians at the table sported the same ring.

  Upon hearing the name “Jake North,” I mouthed the words “I’ll explain later” to her and turned my attention back to the conversation.

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “We need to sort out this business with Jake North,” Baxter said. “I can’t say I want him on our stage if he’s pilfering from other magicians. That sends a bad message, if you ask me.”

  “I’m just saying, I think we should hear his side first,” De Vries said quietly.

  It looked like Baxter was about to reply, but something caught his eye across the room. He got up quickly, carelessly tossing his perfectly folded napkin on the table. I turned to see where he was headed and was surprised to realize Miss Hess had entered soundlessly and was standing, statue-like, behind me. She and Baxter exchanged a few words so quietly that, even at my close range, I couldn’t discern a sound. They were breathing louder than they were talking. Seconds later, Baxter left the room. Miss Hess surveyed the group around the table for a moment and then followed him, leaving as noiselessly as she had entered.

  “He oughta put a bell on that one,” Angus said, taking Baxter’s sudden exit as an opportunity to snatch two more pieces of toast from his holder.

  “Ella me asusta,” Hector said, shuddering visibly. While my Spanish failed me, his body language did a good job of translating.

  “As I was saying,” De Vries said, “before we land on anything definitive, I would love the opportunity to talk to Jake North and see what he has to say for himself and his actions. It could have been a simple mistake.”

  “A simple mistake?” Angus said, just about to chomp into the toast and stopping in mid-bite. “Like, what? He accidentally did Eli’s routine like a monkey accidentally typing out Hamlet? Not bloody likely.”

  “Where I come from, you are innocent until proven guilty,” De Vries said, pointedly turning his attention back to his breakfast.

  “Yeah, where I come from, that sort of behavior will get you twenty stitches and a nice long stay in hospital,” Angus replied, crunching his toast defiantly.

  “I’ll talk to Jake, and we’ll sort it out. He may end up with only a couple stitches,” I joked quickly, hoping to diffuse the tension in the room, if only a little.

  “One time, in Vegas, a magician stole one of Roy’s routines verbatim, word for frickin’ word,” Roxanne said, again addressing Megan directly. “You know what Roy did? He got on a plane, flew to where the guy was working, knocked on his hotel room door, and Roy punched him square in the mouth. Broke the jerk’s nose and took out two teeth.”

  “I also bruised a knuckle, which later got infected and still bothers me to this day,” Roy added, flexing his right hand to demonstrate an unseen issue with flexibility, “but she leaves that part out, because it tends to suck the wind out of the story.”

  “Case in point,” Roxanne agreed, jerking a thumb in Roy’s direction.

  “You flew to where he was working?” Megan said, clearly not sure if they were putting her on or not.

  Roy shrugged. “I had frequent flyer miles that were about to expire. I figured we could take a trip to Hawaii, or I could settle a score and screw up my hand.”

  “Ever the romantic,” Roxanne said. “But the word got out—don’t get on Roy Templeton’s bad side.”

  “So, did that stop the magician from stealing material?” Megan pressed.

  Roy shook his head. “Sadly, no. He never stole from me again,” he said. “But that type never stops, really. They just change their methods. Of course, no one has ever been as blatant as Archie Banks when it came to out-and-out ripping people off.”

  “His rule of thumb,” Harry said as he set his knife and fork down, “was if he could figure out how you did a trick, then it was fair game. Which is why I always told him all my secrets whenever I got the sense he was eyeing one of my bits.”

  “That stopped him stealing from you?” I asked.

  Harry shook his head as he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “No, but it did act as a bit of a speed bump.”

  This phrase produced a questioning grunt from Hector, who was also just about finished with his breakfast.

  “Qué?” he asked.

  “He still stole from me. It only slowed him down,” Harry explained. “I don’t think anything could have stopped him.”

  “Oh yeah? I think the gas stove did a pretty neat job of it,” Angus said with a grim chuckle.

  “Yes, well, there was that,” Harry agreed.

  “Back to Jake North,” De Vries said, clearly wanting to get the debut of his new illusion settled as quickly as possible. He looked at me directly. “H
ow soon do you think you can talk to him?”

  I wasn’t entirely certain, as I had no real idea how to get in touch with Jake. I had his email address, if he was still using that account. And somewhere I had his cell phone number, but I wasn’t sure if it had made the migration from my old phone to my new one. To check, I pulled out the phone and opened the contacts app. But before it had even launched, everyone at the table turned to the archway that separated the dining room from the massive front hallway.

  Laurence Baxter was standing there, his hands fluttering at his side, as if he had no idea what to do with them. He was as pale as he had been when Oskar’s body had been discovered on stage at The Magic Circle, and it quickly became apparent why.

  “The staff has informed me,” he said, a slight hitch in his voice, “and I have verified they are correct. Sadly we’ve had a death in the house overnight.”

  Everyone looked around the table, quickly mentally sorting who was there and, more importantly, who was missing. Baxter answered our question before anyone could raise it.

  “Borys,” he said. “Borys is dead.”

  Chapter 9

  I thought it would be tough to make Laurence Baxter’s large house feel crowded, but the police accomplished the feat in record time.

  What started with a call to the British equivalent of 911 and the arrival of their version of EMTs, blossomed quickly into a full-blown police investigation. I recognized a couple faces from the team that had been on hand at The Magic Circle, including Detective Inspector Matthews, with whom I’d had a frustrating conversation about Harry’s connection to the death of Oskar. That seemed like a very long time ago, although it occurred to me it had only been three days and not even three full days at that.

  After Baxter’s announcement of Borys’ death, a quiet dread fell over the usually voluble group. So, by the time the full contingent of police had arrived, most of us were still seated. Angus Bishop had disappeared into the hallway a few times to press Baxter for more details, each time returning with a morsel or two. The first piece of information was that Borys had been discovered when one of the maids—young Gwendolyn, who had helped at breakfast—entered his room to make up the bed and discovered a corpse in it. The second was the EMTs’ suggestion that, based on their review of the body and the level of rigor, the cause of death may have been poison. The third was that the police were concurring with this initial assessment.

  Although they continually refilled our coffee cups, our plates had been silently carried away by the household staff, who I could hear whispering away in the kitchen. They were silenced immediately upon the appearance of Miss Hess, who moved slowly and ominously through the dining room and into the kitchen, the swinging door making more noise than she had.

  A verbal exchange of some kind took place on the other side of the door, but all I could hear were muffled female voices and then the hiss of Miss Hess as she said loudly, “Second girl, you come now.”

  A few moments later, she returned from the now-silent kitchen, ushering Gwendolyn in front of her. The young girl looked pale and shaken.

  Hess and her charge passed Angus on their way out of the dining room. He turned and waited until they were out of earshot before turning back to the group.

  “They are questioning the staff to see if anyone brought Borys any food or drink last night,” he said, “but the consensus seems to be it’s likely something he had before he retired to his room.”

  “Which means it could have been something we all had as well,” Roy Templeton offered.

  “Except none of us is dead,” Roxanne said.

  “Declining, yes. Dead, no,” Roy agreed.

  “The tea,” Davis De Vries said suddenly. “Wasn’t he the only one to drink tea last night?” He looked around the table, and we all agreed, but Angus shook his head.

  “He brought his own tea, always did,” he said. “No way to get poison into his tea.”

  “But he didn’t bring his own hot water,” De Vries countered. “And no one else used it, right?”

  “He offered me some tea,” I said, “but I didn’t have any. I’m not a big tea drinker,” I added, in case my refusal of the tea would somehow indicate some hidden involvement in the crime.

  “Hence, they’re talking to the staff,” De Vries concluded, as if the matter had been settled.

  Turns out, it wasn’t as settled as he thought it was. A few moments later they started pulling each of us out of the dining room for individual interviews.

  Detective Inspector Matthews began her questioning of me by assuring me this was “all routine.”

  “Really?” I said. “Two magicians dead in seventy-two hours, both probably murdered? That’s routine?”

  “The situation is abnormal,” she said, her mixed English and Indian accent having lost none of its charm. “It is the act of questioning which is routine.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, and so I answered her questions as fully as I could, recapping the previous day’s events. Particular emphasis was placed on the late-night drinking session in Laurence Baxter’s den, where I was asked to recount—to the best of my ability—everything that had been said or done while I was in the room.

  My strongest memory of the evening’s session had been the inadvertent discovery of Jake North performing my card routine on a late-night chat show; the rest of the details were fuzzy. I related my version of who was drinking what, the arrival of the hot water for Borys’ tea, his offer to share said tea, and my polite refusal. As for the particulars of the conversations that didn’t concern Jake North’s thievery, I had to admit I was a bit fuzzy.

  “There was a long discussion about which magician was the fastest at calculating the numbers for the Magic Square,” I offered. I could tell from her expression that more explanation was required. “It’s a popular magic trick that requires some quick arithmetic,” I added for clarification.

  “And was a consensus reached,” she asked, “about the maths and who was the best?”

  I shook my head. “Hardly. A consensus is a difficult thing to come by with magicians,” I explained. “A few of the guys lobbied hard for a magician named Richard Leigh. Everyone else was split, often along national lines. Then, as is often the case, the conversation drifted into other topics.

  “You see, late night conversations with magicians are always similar and tend to revolve around the same subjects,” I continued. “It’s always about a new technique that is either much better or much worse than an old technique, with heated arguments on either side. Or it’s about a particularly heinous gig or booker or green room or stage set-up. Or an audience member who confounded every out we have for a particular routine. Or what we would have said in a certain situation, but we didn’t want to lose the gig.” I stopped and took a breath, realizing that despite the length of my list, I had neglected a number of recurring subtopics. “Some of the specifics change, but that’s the general outline of every conversation with a group of magicians.”

  “Yes, well, it is the specifics that interest us this morning,” Detective Inspector Matthews said quietly. “Tell me, what are the dynamics of the group?”

  “The dynamics?”

  “Who’s in charge? Who likes who? Who bears a grudge?”

  “Well, they all bear grudges,” I said with a wry laugh. “They’re performers.”

  Her expression suggested I dig deeper, so I thought about the people assembled in the room the previous evening.

  “Well, obviously, Laurence Baxter is the most successful,” I began, gesturing around the room, which appeared to be one of an abundance of small sitting rooms. If I had the number of closets in my apartment that Baxter had sitting rooms, I’d be a happy renter.

  “I mean,” I said, “of the original group, he’s the one who really hit it big.”

  “The original group?” she asked, consulting her notes.

 
; “The Magnificent Magi,” I explained. “They all started around the same time, helped each other get started, competed for gigs. They all wear the same ring,” I added, helpfully gesturing at my hand for some reason, even though I don’t wear a ring.

  “And they were all assembled here last night?”

  “I think so,” I said, trying to remember the photo Laurence Baxter had pointed out at The Magic Circle. “I mean, obviously Oskar Korhonen wasn’t here.”

  “Obviously,” she agreed.

  “And there was at least one other member,” I continued, trying to remember the name. “But he died, I guess. Years ago.”

  “Do you know the circumstances?”

  “Archie Banks,” I said a little too loudly, pleased my memory had finally kicked in. “His name was Archie Banks, and they said he died of suicide. No, that’s not the right way to put it, he was a suicide. He killed himself,” I finally said, glad to have gotten that all sorted out.

  “Archie Banks, suicide,” she repeated as she added to the page of notes I had helped her generate.

  “Yeah, he stole a lot of magic routines from all of them and then killed himself,” I said, watching as she scribbled down my words. She looked up at me.

  “He stole from them. And then he killed himself,” she repeated.

  “Yes,” I said, thinking back on Harry’s explanation of the event. “But I believe, at the time, it was felt he was only making an attempt at suicide and had really not wanted to kill himself. Apparently, he attempted suicide a lot. It was sort of a thing with him.”

  She looked up from her notes, waiting to see if I had anything useful to add to the story.

  “At least, that’s what they told me,” I finally said.

  “All right then,” she said as she closed her notebook. “Let’s see what they have to tell me.”

  When I returned from my interview with Detective Inspector Matthews, I found that most of the dining room’s earlier occupants had been moved to different areas in the house for their own bouts of questioning. I was surprised Uncle Harry had finished his interview before I had and even more surprised to see he was sharing a cup of coffee with his old friend, Henry McHugh.