Darren Craske - The equivoque principle

His palms sweating, a permanent fixed grin on his face, the Warden did as he was instructed, and grunted, which Quaint understood to be his way of saying 'I'm finished.'

'Are you happy the cards are well and truly mixed, or do you wish to shuffle further?' asked Quaint, his nose pressed into the corner of the room. He knew Melbury would say no.

'No,' said Melbury.

For the psychological aspect of the illusion to be successful, Quaint knew that the more control an audience member thinks he has, the less he has in reality. A good conjuror only gives what he can afford to lose, and Cornelius Quaint was a very good conjuror indeed. Quaint could almost hear the little cogs churning inside Melbury's head.

'Are you absolutely sure? I don't want you to make this too easy for me,' chimed Quaint.

With that, Melbury looked shocked, and tried as silently as he could to shuffle the cards again without Quaint hearing him. 'No, it's fine. I'm ready!' he proclaimed.

Quaint spun around and removed his blindfold. 'Wonderful. Thank you, Warden. Now if you wouldn't mind…' Quaint rejoined the table, and held out his hand to Melbury. The Warden handed him back the deck of cards.

With a glint in his eye, and a gleaming smile upon his face, Quaint took great pleasure in splaying out all the playing cards face down onto the table in a long line. This was the fun part, the part when he shocked and amazed his audience. To the conjuror of course, he was merely replaying a script, as he had done hundreds of times. In Quaint's particular case, The Equivoque Principle was the very first trick that he had learned and, truth to tell, it had always been one of his favourites. In the world of the illusionist it was fairly straightforward, and such a staple, tried and tested trick that it was rarely performed. The more colourful magicians and conjurors of Victoria's age tended to prefer a grand spectacle over skill. Tanks filled with water, women sawn in half, levitation-there was far too much escapology to be found in halls and theatres throughout Europe, and Quaint was reticent to be caught up in that trend. Relying upon trapdoors, rigged machinery and visual fakery was less about skill and more about craftsmanship. The art of sleight of hand prestidigitation would not die out if Quaint had anything to say about it.

'Now, Warden Melbury…the trick is for me to name your card,' said Quaint. 'I was blindfolded, with my back to you, six feet away-so do you agree that there is no way I could have influenced the cards in any way?' he asked, licking his lips.

'No way at all, far as I know.'

'Jolly good. Well…let me see now,' Quaint said, holding his finger in the air. He made a big effort, for the Warden's benefit, of pretending to commune with mystical forces, acting as if he were navigating his consciousness through a spiritual mire. After milking Melbury's lust for magic for a good minute…Quaint suddenly flicked open his eyes, and stabbed his finger down firmly onto a playing card on the table.

'This is your card, Warden Melbury!' he announced, grinning broadly.

Melbury glanced down at the card. Surely the conjuror was incorrect?

Quaint slid the card towards Melbury, tidied the remainder of his pack up into his hands, and stacked it to one side on the table. 'Would you like to confirm?' Quaint asked. Of course he had known the card from the moment Melbury's podgy fingers had touched the deck. 'The King of Diamonds, I believe.'

Melbury's heart sank as he flipped over the playing card, and saw the image of the King of Diamonds. He slapped his hands to his face in amazement. 'But how did you-? You were blindfolded!' squawked the flustered Warden, clapping his hands gaily. 'Out of all them cards! How did you do it?'

Quaint smiled, and tapped the side of his nose. 'I'll show you.'

An hour later, and after another tot of rum to steady his nerves, Warden Melbury directed Cornelius Quaint to a large, circular door. He rattled around with a large iron key in its lock; the Warden swung open the door, and led Quaint down a spiralling staircase, deep into the bowels of the prison, to a dusty room, piled high with filing cabinets.

Melbury picked up a large stack of card files, and a mountain of loose papers. 'You should find what you're looking for in 'ere, Mr Quaint. Sorry about the state of this place,' he said, thumping the pile onto a rickety old table.

'Thank you, Warden,' said Quaint, and after a good twenty minutes of trying to decipher what indexing system the prison used to store its files-only to discover that it seemed to be totally random-he found a file marked 'Releases: Oct/Nov '53' and traced his finger along the paper, searching for a name. 'Aha!' he exclaimed suddenly. 'Warden, it says here that Hawkspear's release was authorised on Sunday evening by the office of Bishop Courtney of Westminster Abbey, countersigned by Constable Percy Jennings of Crawditch District Police Force.' Quaint tapped his cheek with his finger, deep in thought. 'If I were a believer in coincidences, Warden, I would be most intrigued.'

Melbury scratched his head. 'Crawditch he came from? Just the other side o' the river that place, innit?' he said, drumming his teeth with his fingernails. 'Well, I s'pose then that means that Hawkspear's release would've have to have been authorised by-'

The Warden was interrupted by Quaint's chair scraping across the floor as he stood swiftly. 'Oh, you needn't bother telling me, Warden Melbury,' he said through clenched teeth. 'I know exactly who authorised it.'

BACK IN HIS office in Crawditch, Commissioner Oliver Dray poured himself a generous amount of whisky and slumped into his chair. The stilted afternoon light stuttered through his window, suffusing its light with a misty sheen. Fog was already beginning to rise, streaming about the streets. The station house was close to the docks, and highly susceptible to the chilled mists carried in from the Thames.

A knock on his office door suddenly alerted the Commissioner, and he quickly stashed his glass inside a drawer. He beckoned the caller to enter, and hastily picked up a handful of forms and papers, trying to look busy. He relaxed considerably as Constable Jennings poked his head around the door.

'How do, guv'nor,' Jennings said with a nod. He stepped inside the room, and pulled up one of the Commissioner's chairs. 'Just thought I'd pop in for a bit. You know, to see what's what, an' all that.'

'What's what, Jennings, is that I'm looking incompetent!' Dray snapped, a ruby flash flourishing in his cheeks. 'Not only have we got this Irish lunatic leaving more bodies in his wake than the pox, but I've been informed that your mate Mr Reynolds's band of so-called "professionals" couldn't even do away with Quaint and his bloody Eskimo.'

Jennings nodded in agreement. 'I'm findin' it all a bit hard to fathom meself. I mean…all these murders-we know exactly who's doin' it, but we're powerless to stop 'em! I know I'm prob'ly out of line here…but how come you're lettin' Mr Reynolds get away wiv it, sir?'

'I wouldn't go so far as say I'm "letting" him,' seethed Dray, 'but what I will say is this; that man is party to some information that I'd rather wasn't made public, know what I mean?'

'Yes, sir…but p'raps it's all gettin' a bit out of hand.'

'Out of bloody hand is right, laddie! Reynolds promised me Quaint would be dead by the week's end, and so far the bastard is still walking!'

Jennings picked at his fingertips. 'I'm sorry, Commissioner, but what's Quaint done to you that makes you hate him so much? The Sarge said you an' him knew each other from ages back.'

Commissioner Dray rested back into his chair. 'Back when I was no policeman, and he was certainly no bloody circus magician. Yeah, our paths crossed for a short time,' Dray began, removing his whisky glass from his drawer again. 'I used to travel all over the world with my father, y'see, with his shipping business. We went to all sorts of places. The Orient, South America, Bolivia, Ecuador-all over. Quaint had spent most of his life-and a large part of his inherited fortune, I gather-traipsing from one country to the next, searching for what, I don't know. We met in Peru, back in the late twenties, early thirties I think, when he hooked up with our band. We were both a lot younger men, back in those days…I was in my middle twenties, but God knows about Quaint. He's probably always looked like a grizzly old bastard his whole life.'