Philip Gooden: The Durham Deception

There is a momentary pause in the action. A silence. Then the rope stretching up from the stage and into the shadows slackens and falls down in a coiled clatter. How is the boy (and the monkey) to get back down to the ground again? Without the rope it is a dangerous even fatal drop, at least twenty feet. But there are greater dangers. The monkey has the Major’s sword while the punkah-wallah is unarmed. Grunting sounds and gasps come from the area out of sight above the arch. Swishing noises, as of a blade slicing through the air. Gibbering and howling too.

The audience fear the worst. They hope for the worst. They are not to be disappointed. A pale object falls from the skies and lands with a terrible soft thump on the stage. The Major and the remaining boy, who have been gazing up with fixed expressions, start back. It is — it looks like — yes, a limb. A leg severed above the knee, all gouty with blood. Not a monkey’s leg but a delicate brown one. The punkah-wallah’s. This is followed by a positive shower of limbs and parts. A foot, a pair of hands, an arm, something dreadful which might have been a torso. That monkey is as keen as a surgeon. The audience shriek as one. If they’d had time to think, they would have been worried for their own safety. What would happen if this dreadful monkey escaped from the stage and ran amok through the house? They have never seen anything so shocking. They are thoroughly enjoying themselves. It is ghastly. It is delightful.

Tom and Helen Ansell were sitting with Major Marmont in his dressing room at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. He had sent them free tickets for the show, the wicker basket trick and the Indian rope trick. He insisted they join him afterwards, claiming that he wanted to speak to them. When the Ansells arrived after the show in the dressing room backstage, they saw an object they had not yet seen. It was, explained Marmont, the new disappearing cabinet he had been working on, a device even better than the Perseus. He called it the Goldoni.

‘Named after the famous Venetian magician of the eighteenth century. You’ve heard of him? No? Well, some say that he never existed.’

Tom and Helen were alone with the military magician. He had told Dilip Gopal to take himself and the boys to the nearest chop-house and to treat themselves to a slap-up supper to celebrate the end of the run. The Major lit a cigarette and poured a generous brandy for himself. He offered some to Tom and Helen but they refused, wanting to keep clear heads.

Like the rest of the audience, the Ansells were relieved to see the safe return of the punkah-wallah who’d ascended the rope. He appeared from the side of the stage, complete with all four limbs and quite unharmed. Tom recognized Alfred as the punkah-wallah (or perhaps Arthur) just as he thought it was probably Albert concealed inside the monkey costume. The monkey appeared from the opposite wing and he too took a bow.

The Ansells had been back in London for some weeks. Helen had horrified her mother all over again with a heavily edited account of what had happened up north, while Mrs Scott repeatedly blamed herself for despatching her daughter to persuade Aunt Julia against Eustace Flask. Tom gave a rather more detailed story to David Mackenzie and was pleased to see that even the sedate senior partner allowed his pipe to go out as he listened to the twists and turns of their adventures in Durham.

Events had brought about a kind of resolution to the double mission that Tom and Helen had been carrying out in the north. Sebastian Marmont never did complete the affidavit business since there was no chance of his recovering the Lucknow Dagger, the murder weapon used on Eustace Flask. The Dagger had been given by the Durham police for safe-keeping to Inspector Traynor (who brought it back to the Yard with the intention of donating it to the museum, whose delights he had promised to show to Rhoda Harcourt). And Aunt Julia’s infatuation with the medium was over — although no one apart from Septimus Sheridan was aware of her new interest in Madame Blavatsky.

Now, in company with Sebastian Marmont, they surveyed the whole business of the Durham Deception. The Major, however, seemed uneasy. After they had complimented him on the Indian rope trick, Helen said, ‘But it seems a rather ruthless departure for you, Major, that pretended killing in the basket, the limbs falling from the sky. My flesh crept.’

‘It was meant to, my dear,’ said the magician. But he spoke without his usual relish. ‘You would prefer me to do disappearances and read minds? You don’t like to think of me killing people?’

‘But that is what you did, isn’t it, Major?’ said Tom, sensing the time had come for a final explanation. Helen and he had talked about this moment before they arrived at the theatre, wondering how to get round to the subject. Now Marmont was giving them an opening, perhaps deliberately, by his talk of killing people.

‘It was you and not Anthony Smight who killed Eustace Flask.’

Marmont nodded.

‘I was present when he was killed. It was an accident, if you can believe me. On that morning after I’d called at his house I did indeed go in pursuit of him, though I didn’t intend to. By chance I glimpsed his bright green coat as I was crossing the Elvet Bridge. He was walking down below on the river path. He saw me coming and turned aside. I confronted him in a kind of clearing in the woods and demanded he return to me the cursed Dagger. I was not frightened of Flask but I believe he was frightened of me. He drew out the Dagger and brandished it before my face. I moved to defend myself. It is many years since I was in the army, many years since my life has been in danger, but there are things which you learn and never forget. We tussled. Somehow in the struggle he was slashed across the throat. I have mentioned the dark history of the Lucknow Dagger. Lal had killed his own brother with it. It was why he fled his home. I have described before how the implement seemed to have a malign life of its own. And so it seemed in my struggle with Eustace Flask. I did not mean to kill him but he died nonetheless. I leaped back, horrified, as he tumbled to the ground with his fatal wound. I am afraid to confess that, in the heat and confusion of the moment, I did not do the honourable thing…’

‘Which was…?’

‘I should have stood my ground and waited for the arrival of the law. Instead I seized the Dagger and wiped at it with a handkerchief which Flask had dropped. Then I ran, taking both Dagger and handkerchief. I made some feeble amends to Flask later by paying for the mourners at his funeral. But I had no idea you were anywhere near the scene of his death, Helen.’

‘Smight was also nearby,’ said Helen. ‘He knew or suspected you had done it. He was going to meet Eustace Flask. He told me so when he was keeping me prisoner in the Palace of Varieties.’

‘Anthony Smight was a rival of mine from the Lucknow days. He maintained I had stolen his girl from him. That girl, Padma, became my beloved wife and mother to my boys. Smight had always nursed a grudge against me. If he was having a rendezvous with Flask it was no doubt to help the medium in his strategy of revenge. But he arrived too late. Although he did steal Flask’s cravat-pin, perhaps thinking to use it in an attempt to blackmail me.’

‘I understand now why you sent the box with the Dagger to the police station,’ said Tom.

‘I was appalled when I heard that you, Helen, had been apprehended,’ said the Major.

‘Though you pretended not to know about it.’

‘There was a good deal I pretended not to know. I sent the Dagger and the bloodstained handkerchief to Harcourt together with the note proclaiming your innocence. I thought it would be sufficient to exonerate you without incriminating myself. I resorted to the childish trick of penning a nearly illiterate note-’