The Durham deception

The Military Magician

A meeting had been arranged between Major Sebastian Marmont and Tom by letter for noon of that day. The Major was staying at the County Hotel just the other side of the river. Tom was told that the Major had a suite of rooms on the first floor of the hotel, reputedly the best in the city. As he climbed the stairs he reflected that there must be money to be made through magic. But then the Major and his Hindoos were a big attraction. Tom and Helen had already glimpsed several posters advertising the ‘Wonders of the Orient’ show at the Assembly Rooms. See the Miraculous Talking Head. Marvel at the Fabulous Perseus Cabinet. All of this illustrated with a picture of a wise-looking cove wearing a suit and a solar topi together with a couple of youths clad in loincloths. In the background disembodied heads floated through the ether.

Tom knocked on the door of the room where he had been directed. A voice that he recognized told him to enter and he was not surprised to see, sitting cross-legged in a sunny window seat and smoking a cigarette, the troublesome guest from Colt House. An inkling that the man he’d appointed to meet and the man who’d stirred things up the previous evening at Aunt Julia’s were one and the same had occurred to him while walking on the riverbank. Standing in the door he gave his name.

‘Ah, Mr Ansell,’ said Major Sebastian Marmont, untangling himself and coming forward to give Tom a firm handshake. He was formally dressed although he had removed his suit jacket. ‘I saw you arrive at the front entrance downstairs and I wondered if you were my midday visitor from Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie. But of course we have already met, in a manner of speaking, even if I didn’t know who you were yesterday evening.’

‘It is strange that no one at Miss Howlett’s house recognized you either, sir, since your face is on bills all over town.’

‘If you look carefully, Mr Ansell, you’ll see it’s not a very good likeness on the bills. No doubt some of the people there last night have seen me on stage at the Assembly Rooms but it’s extraordinary how different one looks in front of the stage-lights and wearing a bit of slap.’

‘Slap, Major Marmont?’

‘Face-paint, my dear chap. I darken my phizog so that audiences imagine I’ve come straight from tropical climes. And Mr Eustace Flask knows who I am, or at least he does now. I have invited him to one of my shows. I thought it only fair to give him the chance to see a real magician. Please sit down, sir. Cigarette?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘They help me concentrate, I find, when I am mulling over my tricks. Only this brand, mind,’ said the Major taking another one from the packet. ‘The Luxor, made by the Alexandria Company in Artilley Lane.’

Tom settled in an armchair while Major Marmont returned to the window seat, where he again perched cross-legged and wreathed himself in cigarette smoke, tapping the ash into a bowl of Benares brass next to him. He might have been the Buddha sitting amid clouds of incense; Buddha with an incongruous moustache. Tom glanced round the spacious sitting room which had a fine view of the cathedral beyond Sebastian Marmont’s shoulders. It was well furnished with armchairs and an ottoman, a desk and tables including one laid for dining. An internal door led to what must be Marmont’s bedroom.

The soldier-magician asked after David Mackenzie in fond terms and enquired how long Tom had been with the law firm. He had discovered somehow that Tom was married to the daughter of Mr Scott, whom he had known. Tom found himself taking a liking to the Major. It was partly on account of the way he had shown up Eustace Flask but there was also an appealing straightforwardness to the other’s manner. Yet he was a professional magician. How straightforward could he be?

‘Why did you visit Miss Howlett’s yesterday evening, Major Marmont? You must have known that the other guests would not be, ah, sympathetic to what you were doing.’

‘Perhaps I went too far. I did not plan it. But there is something very provoking about that Flask. He’s an egregious character. I have been tracking his progress round the north-east like a hunter following a spoor. When I discovered that Miss Howlett was keeping open house for him, as it were, I could not resist the temptation to go and beard the fellow. Using a little of my own sleight of hand and the substituted chalk, I was able to show that he must have written the tablet answers himself.’

‘But my wife and her aunt were touching his hands all the time.’

‘Oh they are very clever, these people. I have known a foot covered with a dummy hand to be thrust up through a hole in a table. But that wasn’t what happened in this case. Did you observe how Flask gave a start when he was taken over by his ‘control’, the Indian maid?’

Tom nodded, fascinated but also surprised at the undercurrent of bitterness in Marmont’s words. It was plain that he despised the spiritualists or at any rate despised Eustace Flask.

‘I would wager a whole evening’s takings that both your wife and her aunt lost contact with Flask’s hands for an instant when he pretended to go into his trance. When they felt him again he was actually offering both of them the same hand. So all that time the other hand was free to scribble his nonsense on the slate.’

‘It is easy to see when you explain, sir. And I suppose the arms of the Indian maid were actually that woman’s, Kitty’s.’

‘Undoubtedly they were. But I could tell from your own attitude last night that you already had your suspicions about the medium.’

‘My wife and I both. Her Aunt Julia has no suspicions, she believes in Flask absolutely.’

‘A pity. Flask is very adept in his dealings with older women. Individuals like him bring honest, decent magicianship into disrepute. You should ask yourself why mediums need the paraphernalia of conjurers, why they require dim lighting and locked cabinets and rattling tambourines when they are trying to reach the departed. Isn’t it rather undignified of the dead to choose such ridiculous means to get in touch? We magicians own up to our tricks – or rather we own up that they are tricks. We might fear the discovery of our secrets but we don’t fear the exposure of our very selves as the mediums do. But I am running on, Mr Ansell.’

‘Not at all. I can see the depth of your feelings.’

‘I have good reason for feeling as I do.’

Tom waited attentively. If the Major wanted to give the reason, he would. If not, not. Marmont lit another cigarette and began to speak.

‘Some years ago I lost my darling wife. For a time in my grief and despair I believed I might make contact with her again. I consulted mediums, I attended seances, I willed myself to believe that we might still be able to talk to each other, to glimpse each other. But the harder I tried, the more she seemed to recede into the distance. I came to a simple conclusion, Mr Ansell. You know what that was?’

‘I can guess.’

‘It is that those who profess to put one in touch with the dead are imposters. The best of them do not know that they are imposters and are merely self-deluded. But the majority are out-and-out frauds. They deserve ridicule and shame and exposure, if not the full rigour of the law. And, as I say, Eustace Flask is the worst of a very bad bunch. The world would be a better place without his presence.’

Sebastian Marmont had stubbed out his cigarette even though it wasn’t finished. He was clenching his fists. He looked down at them as though they were the hands of another.

‘Where was I? Ah yes, my wife. I could not mourn her forever or waste my time and resources sitting in the stuffy parlours of the mediums because I had responsibilities. You see, she left me with three children, good lads all, to remember her by.’

Major Marmont gave a sudden, barking laugh. ‘Of course the desire to expose that charlatan Flask was not the only reason why I did what I did yesterday evening. When word gets round that I’ve invited Flask to attend one of my performances at the Assembly Rooms, you won’t be able to get a ticket for love or money. People will come in the hope of seeing a spat.’

It was oddly reassuring that Marmont had a practical or commercial reason for causing a stir, that he wasn’t just driven by fury. There were other questions that Tom would have liked to ask – where, for instance, did all the Major’s Hindoos stay? Surely they were not lodging in the comfort of the County Hotel? – but the soldier-magician indicated that they ought to get down to business, the reason Tom was visiting him at the hotel. Sebastian Marmont wished to make a formal statement, an affidavit, of how he had come into possession of the Lucknow Dagger.

He asked Tom to explain how an affidavit was prepared. It was fairly simple. Marmont simply had to produce a document with Tom’s help, topped and tailed in the appropriate legal fashion, and then the affidavit would have to be sworn to in the presence of a commissioner of oaths. Marmont went to a writing desk and produced an envelope from which he extracted a couple of sheets of paper filled with small, spidery handwriting.

‘I have written down the story here. You may read it.’

‘It may be necessary to recast it,’ said Tom after few minutes. As far as he could decipher it, Major Marmont’s account was somewhat disjointed and sensational. There were plenty of exclamation marks and expressions like ‘by the skin of our teeth’ and ‘shake a stick at’. The history of the Dagger seemed to be strange and bloody.

‘To recast it? To make it more lawyerly?’

‘I’m afraid so. Then you must affirm it as a true account.’

‘Perhaps you would like to see the Lucknow Dagger itself, Mr Ansell,’ said Marmont.

Major Marmont paused and with a showman’s instinct unfastened his cravat. He removed a loop of braided cord which hung around his neck and drew out a leather sheath from within his shirt. From the sheath he produced the very weapon. He handed it to Tom, who wished Helen was here to see this. It would have appealed to her writerly imagination. Now he took the Lucknow Dagger from its owner. He experienced a strange feeling of giddiness and for an instant clutched the edge of the table.

It was a finely worked object. The blade was about four inches long and the handle slightly shorter. The steel of the blade had a heavy bluish sheen to it, as though it had absorbed the lifeblood of its victims. The handle was decorated with ivory carvings. He peered at the largest of them. A figure with many arms was set sideways-on, trampling several much smaller figures underfoot. There were miniature skulls and what appeared to be spears and lances and arrows flying through the air. Tom had expected something conventionally valuable, a knife whose handle was encrusted with precious stones or worked in gold. He looked up to see the Major scrutinizing him.

‘Interesting, eh? The figure is Kali, the goddess of death and destruction. She is rightly held in awe.’

This information, together with the dark blade and the pale ivory work of the handle, was somehow unsettling. Not wanting to hold it any longer, he handed it back to Sebastian Marmont.

‘You’re wondering whether the right place for this is in a museum – or a bank vault?’

‘Yes, I was. Or rather I was wondering whether you always carried it about with you, Major Marmont.’

‘It was designed to be carried, Mr Ansell. It is for use and adornment. No Indian would dream of locking up such an item so why should I?’

‘Do you keep it for good fortune, for luck?’

‘Perhaps I keep it so that others should not get their hands on it,’ said the Major cryptically. ‘For luck, you ask? I am not especially superstitious, although you cannot spend years in the East without suspecting that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, as Hamlet says. Nevertheless, there are scurrilous stories about how I came into possession of this object – that I took it from a dead man when his corpse was still warm, even that I killed him myself – and that is why I have asked to formally swear to the truth.’

‘Who’s responsible for these stories about you?’

‘Rumours, rumours,’ said Marmont with a wave of his hand. He got up from his cross-legged position in the window. ‘What I would like you to do, Mr Ansell, is to take the key facts in the account I have just given and write them up in the appropriate legal language. We can then proceed to the business of the affidavit.’

‘Of course, Major Marmont,’ said Tom, wondering whether anyone in the firm of Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie had ever overseen a stranger, more exotic affidavit.

‘And I would be honoured if you and your wife were to be my guests at my next performance in the Assembly Rooms. It should be interesting because, as I said, I have written to invite that charlatan Eustace Flask. He will see a real magician at work. I may even invite him to assist me in one of my acts.’

The door opened and an Indian strolled into the room. Like the Major he was wearing a suit.

‘Ah Dilip,’ said Marmont. ‘May I present Mr Thomas Ansell. He comes to visit me from a London firm of lawyers – on that business you know about. Mr Ansell, Mr Dilip Gopal.’

They shook hands. The Indian was a handsome man with dark eyes and an incipient smile.

‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Ansell.’

‘Dilip assists me in some of my performances. He is staying with my Hindoo assistants, the boys, keeping an eye on them.’

‘We are in a boarding house close by,’ explained Mr Gopal.

So that little mystery was solved. Tom supposed the Indians were lodging elsewhere for reasons of cost, perhaps also because they would not be altogether welcome in the city’s best hotel.

‘The lads hardly need an eye kept on them,’ said Mr Gopal. ‘They are very well behaved.’

‘I should say,’ said the Major, ‘that Dilip is also my brother-in-law.’

Tom couldn’t hide his surprise and confusion. The Major seemed pleased at the effect he had produced.

‘Yes, my wife, my late wife, was Indian. Didn’t I say?’

The House in Old Elvet

It was unfortunate that Ambrose Barker came back to the house in Old Elvet when he did. He ought to have stayed in the alehouse growing even more sozzled than he already was. Unfortunate for all three of them, Ambrose and Kitty and Eustace Flask. Ambrose had been drinking in one of the local alehouses and found it hard to align the key with the front-door keyhole. He succeeded at the sixth or seventh attempt and stumbled into the tiny hallway then through the kitchen and, after more fumbling with the back door, out to the privy in the yard. Here he enjoyed a prolonged piss, swaying slightly and clinging on to the rough whitewash of the wall with one hand. Back in the yard he glanced up at the sky. The day had been fine and there were still a few streaks of light in the west.

Having groped his way back into the hallway, he stood at the bottom of the stairs, grasping the banister. It was quite dark indoors. After a time his attention was roused by noises from the floor above. After a bit more time he recognized them. Little groans and squeals and sighs. Kitty, the bitch! His hand tightened round the banister knob. But instead of thundering up the stairs, Ambrose became all calmness and deliberation. He slipped off his shoes. He went back to the kitchen, found a kerosene lamp and lit it, adjusting the wick to reduce the amount of smoke.

He returned to the foot of the stairs and, holding the lamp in one hand, climbed up one tread at a time. He need not have bothered about keeping quiet. The noises from above were growing louder and more oblivious. Mingled with them were the fluting tones of Eustace Flask, uttering meaningless sounds that reminded Ambrose of a bleating goat. Ambrose paused on the cramped landing. There were three doors leading off it, one to the bedroom which he shared with Kitty, one to a space so small that it was more cupboard than boxroom, and one to the chamber which Flask occupied all by his long, lonely, weedy self. That was where the noises were coming from.

Standing outside the door, Ambrose took a deep breath. He had been drunk and now he was sober. Well, fancy that, he mouthed to himself. He gripped the knob, twisted it and kicked the door so hard it almost came off its hinges. Then he held the lamp aloft. It threw an incongruously soft glow across the occupants of the room. Ambrose might have laughed at the absurd spectacle before him. He might have laughed but he did not.

Kitty Partout was lying beneath Eustace Flask. They were slantwise on the medium’s spacious bed. Her chemise was bunched up and her legs splayed out either side of the spiritualist’s hindquarters. Those hindquarters had been pumping away like billy-oh but the crash of the door caused them to freeze like small animals caught out in lantern-light. Flask was still wearing a shirt but had gone so far as to remove his trousers. Ambrose saw legs as pale and thin as pipe cleaners.

Ambrose did not laugh. Neither was he angry, not yet. Instead he was conscious of an instant of high glee. So this was what the refined medium got up to when he thought no one was looking, the dirty bugger. He was no better than all the rest of them. In the few months since he and Kitty had met Flask he had suffered from a sense of inferiority. Ambrose was the brawny assistant, Flask was the one with brains while Kitty provided the ornamental trimmings. Now Ambrose Barker had the upper hand over both of them.

All this flashed through Ambrose’s head in the few moments it took for Flask and Kitty to jerk their heads round and realize there was a person standing in the doorway. Instinctively, they flinched away and blinked, unable to see properly. Then Flask leapt off Kitty, pulling down his shirt to conceal his member – which was thin and raw-looking like a dog’s – but leaving Miss Partout exposed. Her hands flew down to cover the black bush between her legs. Don’t bother, I’ve seen it all before, Ambrose was about to say, but he stopped himself. The remark did not rise the occasion. He felt as clear-headed and powerful as he had ever felt in his life, standing there in the upstairs doorway of the rented house in Durham’s Old Elvet and confronting this pair of… this pair of…

Something special was required, a remark that would put Eustace and Kitty in their places for a long time. Something to show that he too could be clever with words.

‘Oh my,’ he said, imitating (not very well) the fluting tones of Eustace Flask. ‘Oh my, Uncle Eustace. I am so sorry to disturb you when you are so busy with your niece.’

‘I’m not his niece, Ambrose,’ said Kitty. ‘You know that. Don’t be silly.’

She spoke quite composedly. Flask, for once, had nothing to say for himself but continued to kneel on the bed, looking absurd as he tugged his shirt down to hide his shrinking pizzle even though the movement served to reveal more of his flat buttocks.

Ambrose Barker revelled in his moment of power. He carefully formed the next sentence in his mind. He ignored the fact that Kitty Partout wasn’t Flask’s niece – of course she wasn’t his niece, Ambrose was making a witty gibe – and said, ‘You ought to have the law on you, uncle Eustace, the law, I say. You know why? An uncle doing it with his niece. ’S a clear case of incest.’

But Ambrose was not as clear-headed as he imagined. His voice was slurry with all the pints he’d swallowed that evening and he was stumbling over his words. He had difficulty with ‘niece’ which sounded more like ‘nice’ and he mangled ‘incest’ altogether so that what he wanted to say emerged as ‘a clear case of insects’.

And then Kitty made the mistake of laughing. It was more of a titter than an outright laugh. She took one hand from between her legs and clapped it over her mouth.

‘Oh Ambrose,’ she said. ‘A case of insects!’

All at once Ambrose’s sense of cool superiority drained away. How dare the bitch laugh at him! It was as if he had shifted back from being sober to being drunk again, drunk and raging, although he had really been drunk the whole time. He strode a couple of paces into the bedroom and swung the kerosene lamp at her head. Eustace scrabbled from the bed and cowered on the far side against the wall with his hands covering his head while Kitty screamed and rolled to the edge of the bed.

The glass case of the lamp shattered and within seconds the burning wick had set a pillowcase and top sheet on fire. Flask reacted by huddling further down against the wall while Ambrose glared, stupefied, at what he had done. It was only Kitty’s quick response which saved them. There was a china jug and bowl on a side table, used by Flask for his morning ablutions and (luckily) unemptied. Kitty jumped from the bed, seized the jug and bowl from the table, and threw the contents over the flickering flames. Then she smothered the burning linen with a blanket, which she beat down with her hands.

The bedroom was filled with a horrible stench – of kerosene and singed bedclothes and burnt feathers – and the air was already thick with smoke. But Kitty’s quickness had doused the fire. At a cost, though. She held up her hands which were bleeding in several places from the glass shards of the shattered lantern.

Ambrose Barker was finally roused from his stupor. He saw Kitty Partout’s bloody hands, he saw Eustace Flask rising shakily up from his huddled stance. He was still angry, very angry indeed, but he realized that now was not the right moment to exact his revenge. Instead he shook his fist at the pair – although it’s not certain that either of them noticed the gesture – and stalked from the room and down the stairs. Only when he’d slammed the front door to the house and was standing in the street did it occur to him that he had not the faintest idea where to go or what to do next. But that wasn’t quite true. He did have an idea. It came to him from nowhere. He’d show her, he’d show them.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the lovers’ chamber, Eustace Flask had recovered a little of his composure. He did his best to remove the glass splinters from Kitty’s palms and fingers. He created makeshift bandages for her out of torn-up bits of bed-sheet. He tutted and cooed and tried to still his trembling hands. Despite the shock and her injuries, Kitty was the calmer of the two. She was simultaneously tearful and calm. Blinking her eyes, she watched as Eustace fumbled to wrap the linen strips about her hands.

Men were very foolish, she concluded.

Before the Performance

It was an outing to the theatre. Not only the Ansells but Julia Howlett and Septimus Sheridan were going to see the redoubtable magician and his Hindoo troupe. Tom and Helen had been invited to visit Major Marmont in his dressing room at the theatre before the performance. He was curious to meet Helen, since he had known her father.

The Ansells walked to the Assembly Rooms which were not far from Aunt Julia’s house in the South Bailey. A dozen yards behind them came Miss Howlett and Mr Sheridan, her arm twined companionably through his. From a distance they had the appearance of an elderly married couple and Helen, looking back, wondered whether she’d been too hasty in dismissing the idea of marriage, even this late.

But Helen had other and more pressing things on her mind. She asked Tom if he remembered the name of the policeman who had attended the seance at Tullis Street.

‘It was Seldon. Why do you ask?’

‘And his wife’s name was Elizabeth?’

‘Perhaps. Yes, I think he called her Lizzie. But you said ‘ was called’, Helen. What’s happened? What do you know?’

‘I thought so all the time but I was hoping my memory was playing tricks. A Mr and Mrs Seldon, Arthur and Elizabeth, were killed by gas poisoning in Norwood several days ago. He was a policeman. I would not have known of it except that there was an article about the safety of gas supplies in The Durham Advertiser -’

‘Which you just happened to be reading.’

‘You know me, Tom, I am a gannet for any printed matter my eye happens to fall on. What leaped out was the reference to the death of the Seldons, even if the writer mentioned it only to show the risks of piped gas and because it was a recent accident, I suppose.’

‘An accident, there you are.’

‘But it is a strange coincidence, isn’t it, that it should happen so soon after that man Smight threw himself off Waterloo Bridge.’

‘A coincidence but no more. What could be the connection?’

‘I don’t know, Tom. If I were more imaginative I’d say that Mr Smight had laid a curse on the Seldons from beyond the grave.’

‘Then it’s surprising he has more power now he’s dead than he ever did when he was alive. He cut a pretty feeble figure while he was threatened with being taken to court.’

‘Oh, I am well aware it is a ridiculous idea but, still, it has made me uneasy.’

Tom did his best to reassure Helen in the few minutes it took them to reach the theatre although what she said made him a little uncomfortable. When they arrived, they were directed to a poky room somewhere in the innards of the building. Sebastian Marmont was scrutinizing himself in a mirror, then applying dabs of extra ‘slap’ to darken his already ruddy complexion. He was wearing the trousers and waistcoat of his white tropical three-piece. A solar topi sat on the table beside him. He smiled to see Tom and Helen reflected in the glass. He stood up and raised Helen’s gloved hand to his lips.

‘ Enchante, madame.’

‘I am pleased to meet you, Major Marmont,’ said Helen, sounding genuinely pleased, then looking round, she added, ‘This is a veritable Aladdin’s cave.’

It was the right thing to say. The room was jumbled with costumes and incongruous bits of equipment from a wicker basket to what looked like the trunk of a palm tree. Tom reached out an experimental finger. It felt like papier-mache.

The door to the dressing room suddenly burst open and three lads tumbled into the room. They had not realized that Marmont had visitors. One of them started to say, ‘Dad-’ and got no further. They were wearing turbans and their faces were neither pale nor dark but in between.

‘Boys!’ said the Major. ‘Manners! Let me introduce you to Mr and Mrs Ansell. Alfred, Arthur and Albert.’

The boys lined up as Sebastian Marmont pointed them out in rapid succession.

‘These are my sons, my Hindoos. They assist me in the performance in a variety of guises. The smallest one there, Albert, even dresses up as an ape – as if he wasn’t enough of a monkey already! You only have twenty minutes, you three. Go and get ready now.’

And the three tumbled out of the room again, without a word.

‘Well, Mr and Mrs Ansell,’ said Marmont, ‘you have found out one of my secrets. I employ my sons and pass them off as natives. Their mother is, alas, no more and I value their company. Having them with me, I can keep an eye on them.’

As he mentioned the loss of his wife, he looked keenly at Tom. Then he looked back at his reflection in the mirror and tugged his waistcoat down. He settled the topi on his head and gave his moustaches an extra twirl.

‘There,’ he said. ‘I am point-device the very man, even if I do say so myself.’

‘Bravo, Major Marmont,’ said Helen, giving a little clap.