The Last Illusion

“It’s the Majestic on the pier,” she said. “It’s a good house. Of course I expect my husband helped to get him hired at a good house like that. That family, they’re so close, they’d do anything for each other.” I saw her staring at a photograph in a silver frame of Mrs. Weiss, surrounded by her offspring—Houdini, a sister, the taller, sturdier Dash, and a distinguished-looking man with a beard I decided must be Leopold.

I kept my suspicions to myself and glanced around the room. It wasn’t exactly tidy, with half-unpacked trunks and piles of magazines on top of dressers. “Would you mind if I took a look to see if there is anything here that might give us a clue as to what kind of trouble your husband was in?”

“Anything,” she said. “Anything that can help find him, although I don’t know what that could be.”

I felt awkward as I started rummaging around, feeling her eyes on me. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone poking around in my bedroom. And I had no idea what I might be looking for anyway. “Where did he write his letters?” I asked, hesitating before I opened drawers. “Did he keep his correspondence and business papers in a desk downstairs or up here?”

“Anything important would have been up here with us,” she said. “Harry is very close about his business dealings.” I read into her look that his mother would well snoop if correspondence was left around in a desk downstairs. Then she added, “All the details for his illusions are in that suitcase under the bed. But he keeps it locked and I don’t know where the key is.”

“I’m not interested in his illusions,” I said, then I reconsidered this. “On second thought, maybe I am, and maybe you can help me. I need to know how he substituted that body during the act. I was onstage, only a few feet away.”

“He didn’t substitute the body,” she said angrily. “Harry would never kill anybody.”

“Somebody substituted that body,” I said. “I’m not saying that your husband did it. Let’s assume he was also a victim here. But somebody else knew his stuff well enough to pull off this switch. Tell me how you do the Metamorphosis.”

She frowned, then shook her head.

I put my hand on her frail white shoulder. “Bess, how can I help you if you can’t trust me?” I said. “The police are going to ask you anyway, so you might as well tell me. I was part of your act, after all.”

She turned away from me, staring out of the window, where a spin-dly tree was swaying in the wind. “It’s quite simple really,” she said. “The back of the trunk is only held on with two screws that pull right out. As soon as Harry goes into the bag he takes off the handcuffs and the leg irons so that by the time they have it tied up and have lifted him into the trunk he is free. The bag also has an overlapped opening down the back, so Harry can get out of it without undoing it. Then he pulls out the screws and the back panel swings outward and he’s out of the trunk. There’s a drumroll to mask any noise. Then there’s a flash and he appears. Big applause. He comes forward to bow, taking the audience’s eyes away from me. I slip into the trunk and the bag the same way and I’ve got little wrists. It’s easy to put on the handcuffs. By the time they unlock it, I’m all trussed up the way he was.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “And do you think he could have substituted a dead body in the same way?” I saw her frown and corrected myself. “Do you think that someone could have substituted a body that way?”

She frowned. “Where would the body have come from? The trunk’s in the middle of the stage, isn’t it? And you were there yourself.”

“True enough,” I said.

“It’s one thing for a person like me to crawl into the trunk. I’m small and I’m agile and I’ve practiced for it. But it would take a lot of effort and time to get a deadweight into that bag.”

I nodded. “And I heard or saw nothing.”

“Then I don’t know how it was done.”

All the time we were talking I was busily examining anything that could have hidden a threatening letter. There were the piles of magazines, all to do with magic, so it seemed. Then there were several scrapbooks. I leafed through them. There were playbills and newspaper cuttings, some of them in a foreign type that I didn’t understand—presumably German. But I noted some headings: “Houdini Exposes Rival as Fraud,” and “Battle of the Handcuff Kings Ends in Disgrace for Cunning.” So it would be worth taking a closer look at them later. These were the men publicly humiliated by Houdini. Men with the expertise to pull off such a stunt and bearing a grudge against him. And it was interesting to note that he had carefully mounted all his victories in a nice leather-bound scrapbook. I put the scrapbooks on a chair and continued my search. But I came across nothing incriminating. No threats or demands for money. Only a couple of letters from friends asking how long he’d be in New York, some admirers asking for autographs, some scribbled notes for an article he was apparently writing for a magazine, and then, in the drawer beside the bed, his passport.

“At least he hasn’t fled the country,” I said, holding it up. I glanced at it, then stared more intently. “I thought you said he was born in Hungary,” I said.

“He was.”