Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

Yes, yes, yes, I realise that Rivorsky is a Russian name, but this is the fault of that Harry Houdini. To use my own name would suggest I am nothing but a cheap mimic, cashing in on the world-famous escape artist and magician, when this is far from the case. Rivorsky is Great in his own right, and one day I shall be as famous as my countryman, mark my words, but to return to the railway station—

“Hungarian?” sneers the captain. “We have no Hungarians here.”

“I am referring to the fellow at the end of the line,” I explain patiently, because, dammit, I know my own language when I hear it. “The one with the scar bisecting his left eye.”

The captain of the guard smiles at me with a mix of compassion (owed to a man who has been in a life-threatening situation) and condescension (because the bumbling fool is obviously flustered). “You mean the Italian, monsieur. The one with the jagged scar on his right cheek.”

Contessa, The Great Rivorsky is NEVER flustered.

“No,” I tell him firmly. “I mean the Hungarian with the smooth scar through his left eye.”

And to prove my point, I make him accompany me to the prisoner in question, and since this is no short walk, the men having been removed from the terrified public to be contained in a small waiting room some distance from the platforms, the captain starts chatting. Telling me how incredible that such a criminal should have attracted the attention of no less than two illustrious figures in the course of a very short time.

“Why, the Countess of Perugia paid him a visit only yesterday,” he prattles happily.

But I am not interested in the Countess of Perugia.

At least not then!

At that stage, I am concerned only with the man who saved my life and that of any members of the public who might have got in the way of those evil men, and how unsurprising that the prisoner is neither Italian nor has a jagged scar down his right cheek as his files record! It turns out that he is indeed of Hungarian extraction and has, as I observed, the smoothest of scars bisecting his left eye. Furthermore, his name is not that of the man listed for transportation, either. Well, well, well.

But with the ship due to sail on the next tide, there is little time (and even less inclination) for the authorities to conduct an investigation. All they are concerned about is avoiding awkward questions, and to have The Great Rivorsky hailed as the hero neatly deflects attention from their ineptitude.

Ah, but I am not The Great Rivorsky for nothing. When I see Harry Houdini handcuffed and bound, then locked in a trunk secured with steel wire and thrown in the lake, I ask myself... how? How does he bounce to the surface in fifty-nine seconds?

Thus, it is the illusionist in me that wants to know how one prisoner turns into another — although it is the man in me who wants to know why. Why one prisoner willingly takes the place of another, accepting his fate with calmness and resignation.

And the more I ponder these issues, the more my thoughts return to the mysterious Countess of Perugia. Why, I ask myself, would the Italian aristocracy travel all the way to Marseille to visit a thug in jail?

I think you had better take another swig of the vodka, madame.

You see, it was pure bad luck, at least from your point of view, that the exchange was a countryman of mine, although the odds are not as long as you might think. There are a good many migrant workers in Europe these days, and be they Italian, Croatian, Polish, or Hungarian, they all share one common trait. They are poor. To feed their families, these men must leave their homelands for years at a time, to toil on the new railroads that are being built all over this continent. I am sure that, for a Hungarian peasant, the money you offered must have seemed like a fortune; indeed, in return for serving someone else’s four-year sentence, he was probably grateful to you.

One wonders when the poor wretch would have discovered that the sentence of the man whose place he was taking was three times that length. When it would dawn on him that he was to be transported, not incarcerated. And whether he had ever heard of the notorious penal settlement in French Guiana known as the Place of No Return.

To continue my tale, though, the Hungarian flees the instant he is freed, no doubt halfway to Budapest before the authorities have finished the paperwork, because he could not trust you not to come after him. But it did not take The Great Rivorsky long to work out how the beautiful and charming Countess of Perugia persuaded a gullible prison guard to unshackle the Italian with the jagged scar in a simple humanitarian gesture, that he might make what was possibly his final confession in his own language. While the guard’s back was turned, the “priest” and the convict swapped places, knowing that, in the frantic scramble of transit, a scarred prisoner is a scarred prisoner and, likewise, who looks beyond holy vestments to the priest as he leaves? Especially when it is so much easier to rest one’s eyes on the stunning Italian contessa!

You almost got away with it, until some interfering showman makes headline news with his keen eye, and what do you do? Retreat silently? Go about your normal business, in the hope that the furor will quickly die down? Those would have been the sensible options, surely. Instead, you determine to kill me.

Oh, I fully understand your anxiety.

Here you are, a rich and beautiful aristocrat with the world at your feet, finding your personal life probed by some sordid little back-street magician — at least, I assume these were your sentiments? — where you suddenly risked having your secret exposed to the world, and don’t tell me you couldn’t have ridden out the danger. Even if it was proved that you substituted the prisoners, after already dropping one horrendous clanger, the authorities would be reluctant to start clapping foreign nobility in irons without a motive.

Ah, the motive...

Of all the tragedies in this sorry tale, yours is truly the most heartrending.

I confess I cried when I began making enquiries and learned how your daughter — your only child — was abducted and killed by a monster with a jagged scar down his right cheek. Just eight years old, blond and beautiful like her mama, butchered by a fiend, her corpse left to rot! See, I cry now when I think about that poor child, but you, Contessa... you do not. Your servants say you have not cried one tear since the day her body was carried home and you vowed to avenge her.

Vengeance, madam, is a dangerous force. It drives, but it also blinds, and, four years on, having finally tracked down the brute responsible for your daughter’s death, how galling to find that he was due to be shipped to the other side of the world for the comparatively minor crime of bludgeoning and robbing a jeweller. A crime, moreover, which carries a sentence of a mere twelve years. For you, Devil’s Island was not punishment enough for this monster. You wished him to pay fifty — a hundred! — times over for what he did to your child, and truly, I feel for you, Contessa. No woman should go through what you went through, but you became so obsessed with the notion of justice that you lost sight of its meaning.

Alas, I can only guess at the story you spun your daughter’s killer when you helped him escape, although many a decent woman has fallen in love with a monster — a phenomenon that is common, if not comprehensible — and I dare say you flattered him into believing you were one of those types, convinced they are able to reform a man who is, of course, beyond redemption.

Sadly for us all, you lost your sense of perspective the day you went gunning for him and, sadder still, you lost your sense of compassion. Did you not stop to think what would happen to the prison guard who aided the escape by unshackling the prisoner? I see from your eyes that you did not expect the switch to be discovered, but you should know that he’s been fired and, with his record, who will hire him now? What will happen to his family, without their breadwinner to support them?