“How fascinating,” said Mrs. Corneille. She turned to me and said, “And what of you, Mr. Beaumont? Are you a skeptic?”
“I never gave it much thought,” I told her.
She smiled. Her black, almond-shaped eyes looked into mine. “You mean to say you’ve never wondered what happens to us when we die?”
“Seems to me there’s only one way to find out. I’m not in any hurry.”
She smiled again, more widely. Her teeth were very white. “Personally,” said Sir David, “the Spiritualist notion of the Great Beyond sounds terribly tedious to me. Not a single caneton a Vorange in sight. Nor a single grisette. I much prefer Paris.”
Mrs. Corneille smiled at him. “But David, they wouldn’t let you in. You’ve spent so much time there already. You’ll probably be sent somewhere quiet and unpretentious. Like Brighton.”
“I will go to Paris,” he said. “I shall travel incognito.”
“Yes,” said the Great Man. “It is a wonderful city, Paris. The good people of Paris have always been very kind to me, very appreciative. It was in Paris, several years ago, that I introduced my famous Milk Can escape.”
Cecily raised her champagne glass and drawled, “Mr. Houdini escapes from things.” She sipped at the champagne.
Sir David was bemused again. “Whatever were you doing in a milk can?”
“Escaping from it,” said the Great Man. “No one had ever attempted this before.”
“I can well imagine,” said Sir David.
Sir David, Dr. Auerbach, and the Great Man. It was like watching a three-way taffy pull. If you scooped up all the ego gathered around that table and dumped it on an ocean liner, the ship would keel over and sink like a stone.
“It is a most extraordinary illusion,” said the doctor. He was back in charge. “Into a milk can somewhat larger than normal, and filled with water, Mr. Houdini is locked. With four padlocks.”
“Six,” corrected the Great Man.
“Six, yes, better still. You must imagine-he has no air to breathe, no key, no means of escape. Before the milk can a screen is drawn, to conceal it from the audience. The audience awaits. Time passes. One minute, two minutes, three. The people grow concerned, yes? They grow apprehensive. Surely no one can, under the water, survive for so long? But then at last, suddenly, Mr. Houdini steps out from behind the screen and he waves. Great, great applause. The screen is withdrawn, and there is the milk can, still locked. When unlocked, it is shown to be filled, still, with water.”
The Great Man spoke. “A very accurate description. Except, if you will excuse me, for the word illusion. The milk can is real. The water is real. Houdini is real.”
Dr. Auerbach nodded quickly. “Yes, yes, of course, it is a word only.”
The Great Man smiled and waved a hand, grandly forgiving.
Dr. Auerbach didn’t notice that he had been forgiven. His eyes narrowed and he said, “It is almost mythic, yes? In a way, it is a recreation of the trauma of birth, the escape from the womb. The darkness of the womb you have there, inside the milk can. And the amniotic fluid, which is the water, yes? You yourself are quite curled up, like the fetus. And then, like the fetus, you burst all at once into the light of day.” He shook his head in admiration. “Extraordinary.”
Houdini had shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Dr. Auerbach, if you will excuse me, perhaps such language is not entirely appropriate at the moment.” He made a courtly nod toward Mrs. Corneille, and then toward Cecily.
Dr. Auerbach frowned.
Sir David blandly said, “Pity you weren’t here when the good doctor was explaining Dr. Freud’s Oedipus complex. Really a wonderful notion. Seems we’re all of us men a bit fonder of our mothers than we ever imagined. Secretly we’d like to topple the old dear onto the breadboard and have a go at her. Did I get that right, Doctor?”
“You oversimplify, Sir David, I am afraid.” Dr. Auerbach turned to the Great Man. “What Herr Doktor Freud has established, you see, is that the young male child craves exclusive sexual possession of the mother. After the witnessing of the Primal Scene-that is, of sexual intercourse between the parents-the child develops a hostility toward the figure of the father.”
“Dr. Freud has obviously never met my mother,” said Sir David. “One look at Evelyn and he’d chuck that theory straight away. Along with dinner, I expect. Any child in his right mind”-he smiled at Mrs. Corneille-“and I include my younger self, of course-any child would be perfectly happy to let an entire rugby team take their chances with the old cow.”
“David,” said Mrs. Corneille, “you really are a dreadful man.” “If you think me dreadful, Vanessa, then you really must meet Evelyn.”
Dr. Auerbach was shaking his head. “It is not at all important what the mother looks like, Sir David. It is only important that-”
“Excuse me.” This came from the Great Man, who was rising from his chair. His face was white. His voice was weak and his body seemed unsteady. “I feel not well. Excuse me.”
Holding his hand against his stomach, he nodded once, to no one in particular, and then he turned and stiffly walked away.
Mrs. Corneille looked at me. “Is it something he’s eaten?”
Sir David raised his eyebrows blandly. “His mum, perchance?”
Mrs. Corneille turned to him, frowned, turned back to me. “He looked quite ill. Will he be all right, do you think?”
“Probably,” I said. “But it’s been a long trip.”
“You motored down from London?” asked Sir David.
I nodded. “And took the boat from Amsterdam, day before yesterday.”
“That explains it then,” he said. “English food on top of Dutch. A marvel he can still walk.”
I said to Mrs. Corneille, “I’d better go check on him.”
She raised an eyebrow, as though mildly surprised. “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps you’d better.”
The Morning Post
Maplewhite, Devon
August 17 (Early Morning)
Dear Evangeline,
Night time, cuddled up against the bolster in my four-poster, toasty warm beneath the sheets and blankets, scribbling away, so ridiculously happy that from time to time (no one else being present) I hug myself. And from time to time I quite forget that the Allardyce is snoring away in the next room.
Maplewhite actually is haunted, Evy; there is at least one ghost in residence. Isn’t that wonderful?
It was at dinner that I first learned of the ghost. We were all of us sitting round the table, Lady Purleigh at one end and Lord Robert at the other. It was the Allardyce who brought up the subject, between the turbot and the brandied chicken. ‘Now, Alice,’ she said, and even a blind man could have perceived how very much she relished this familiarity with the lady of the manor: the pleasure in her voice was so thick it had clotted, like Devon cream. ‘You really must tell us all about this ghost of yours. Rebecca de Winter mentioned a few things, but she was very vague about the details.’
Lady Purleigh smiled. She has a lovely smile. She is, as I said, a lovely woman. (She was wearing a dress of black silk crepe de chine, cut on the bias; there are desperate women, I expect, who would kill to obtain this dress.) ‘But I’ve never really seen it,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard it, of course.’
‘What does he say?’ asked the Allardyce.
‘He doesn’t say anything, actually. He only moans and groans. And only sometimes, late at night.’ She seemed very nearly apologetic. That she is in any way related to the Allardyce will forever remain one of life’s great mysteries. ‘He’s not an awfully interesting ghost, I’m afraid.’
‘But that’s only one of them, Mother.’
This came from the Honourable Cecily, the daughter. The paragon. (Who was wearing a lovely sleeveless little thing in grey silk, scooped at the neck to flaunt her aristocratic throat.)