“Older?” From my father.
“He couldn’t tell except that the man seemed to be stumbling, losing his balance as he ran.”
“And he’s sure it was Frana?”
“He claims, yes. He said he noticed her because she was so pretty-and he said she drew his attention because she was laughing loudly.” I pushed away the sauerkraut. “He insists others can back him up. Because, minutes later, headed back to town, he saw a man and a woman nearby, the man leaning against a tree, the woman pulling at his sleeve. Lovers, teasing each other, playing games. Then the woman laughed out loud, and the two scampered out of sight. He said they would have crossed paths with the girl and her friend.”
“Good Lord,” my mother said.
I took a deep breath. “Chief Stone is trying to locate this couple, but the witness simply described them as ‘fancy dressed.’ Whatever that means. If true, then Frana somehow got out of the building by her own free will and met some man, happily so, and she was running-that was his word-running in the woods. It means she did not hide in that storeroom for hours-she left at two. More importantly it means that Mr. Schmidt didn’t grab her, pull her into that room, strangle her, then carry out her body after dark, as Amos Moss suggests.”
“Now what?” my father asked.
“Chief Stone doesn’t know if he believes the man.”
“Why?”
“I gather he…well, rambled, got confused. And I guess the chief would rather believe Frana was in that storeroom. She was in there that afternoon. So how could she have been outside at two?”
“So maybe the farmer is wrong.” My father rested his fork beside his plate.
“But if he’s not, something is really strange here. She hid in that room and then, well, I don’t know…”
“I bet that dullard Amos Moss has some ideas.” My mother, I knew, had little respect for the deputy.
“He’s probably arresting the farmer now for lying to the police.”
My mother frowned at the sauerkraut. “Well, it does seem to suggest that August Schmidt is innocent. I can’t imagine that poor man romping in the woods with Frana.”
“Of course, he’s innocent,” I said.
Fannie eyed the chicken that had been scarcely touched. “Do we have to talk about murder at suppertime?”
“You prefer your unpleasantness served with dessert? Lemon pie?”
“Edna!” From my father.
So the Ferber family, walking to the theater, moved with frozen spaces between us, save for my father who leaned on my mother. At the Lyceum, I nodded to old friends and felt a little proprietary about Harry Houdini. The evening was sold out, and I felt responsible, though that made no sense. In the packed lobby under the blazing chandeliers, I spotted the brothers Timm standing by the ticket window. Homer Timm, dressed in his high-school face, smiled at me as I neared. He half-bowed to my mother. His brother Gustave was as frantic and harried as he always was on the nights of performance. Standing next to Homer, though not speaking to him, stood Mildred Dunne, her eyes on Gustave. Dressed in a purple velvet dress that must have cost a week’s wages, she wore an enigmatic yet oddly triumphant smile on her face, much as, I mused, Balboa had when he stood on that peak in Darien contemplating the vast Pacific. In that resplendent dress, Miss Dunne hardly looked the severe high-school librarian. Such elegant plumage and ostrich feathered hat would, I feared, alarm the quiet shelves of Dickens and Thackeray and Bulwer-Lytton.
Gustave moved through the lobby, nodded at Miss Dunne, disappeared behind his office door, circled back, bowed to folks. At one point he shook my father’s hand and spent a few minutes chatting about Houdini, who, he confided, was an old friend. I refused to believe him because Houdini was my friend. But I was happy to see him single out my father. So often Jacob Ferber, standing in a crowd, seemed lost and abandoned, a deserted island in a storm-tossed sea. Backslapper though he was, Gustave seemed genuinely interested in my father’s well being. Showmanship, I thought, but I appreciated the effect.
As we stood among friends, none of us in a hurry to find our seats, I confirmed that the brothers Timm did not like each other. Lately, given my plodding journalism up and down College Avenue, I prided myself on my powers of character observation, my delight in observing the foibles of the souls I encountered. The Timm brothers filled up pages of my reporter’s notebook. I didn’t care for Homer, put off by his rigid physiognomy; Gustave I tolerated because of his jovial demeanor. But they disliked each other, even though they were often seen together. Every time Gustave sauntered near Homer, I detected a slight frown on Homer’s face, a momentary flicker of disgust. Gustave either didn’t notice or he didn’t care. He’d smile foolishly at Mildred and move off, called away by a theater patron who wanted to shake his hand or to ask something. The minute Gustave’s back was turned, Homer’s eyes followed him, and, had I been a nineteenth-century writer of melodrama, I’d have described Homer’s glare as baleful. Hmm, the brothers Timm as Dickensian characters. Well, well.
Put that on your library shelf, Miss Dunne.
The observation thrilled me. In my reporter’s notebook I’d jotted down imaginary scenes with the two brothers, and now, to my satisfaction, they acted as I had drawn them.
Mr. McCaslin arrived, dressed in a theater cloak which he wore on nights when his high-school drama club performed for parents, and announced to someone behind me that the Lyceum stage should be reserved for classic drama. “Not vaudeville antics.”
A bell rang, and we all rushed to our seats.
Houdini strutted his stuff on the stage to the maddened delight of the audience. Expecting sensation and glorious exhibition, I found myself bored. Not that I didn’t marvel at the transformation of the short, unassuming man into a stage Goliath. Houdini appeared in a black frock coat, stiff collar and black tie. He cried, “Are youse ready to witness the marvelest escape of our time?” I cringed, though the rest of the audience waxed ecstatic. His voice managed to echo off the far balconies-thickly accented but peculiarly melodic and entrancing.
Accompanied by his brother Theo and his admittedly sheepish friend David Baum-who kept stumbling into the footlights and almost fell off the stage, to the delight of Houdini himself and the Appleton folks who knew Baum as the genial owner of Baum Hardware-Houdini moved slowly across the stage but created the illusion of rapid movement. Each calculated step was a masterpiece of planning. Every eye locked onto his every movement. He filled up the room, ruled the space. He was marvelous to watch because the stage show was a deliberate manipulation of the audience’s expectations.
For his first act, Houdini encouraged two strapping farm boys to tie him up with a cord and then handcuff his wrists behind him. He drew it out with much twisting and jumping and struggle, groaning, the footlights capturing the beads of sweat cascading off his brow. He cried to the crowd, “The path of a handcuff king is not all roses.” While the audience sat pensive and restless, he twisted, and suddenly he stood there, ropes collected about his feet, handcuffs snapped open and held out to view. The audience erupted. I knew he could have extracted himself within the first few minutes, but the man understood the psychology of anticipation. Ode, I thought, on a Grecian urn, as it were-vaudeville style. He understood the power of presentation, the need to interact with an audience, the swell and thrust of human drama. This was what Sam Ryan had also told me: You need to understand what your audience is hearing you say. Now, watching Houdini, I understood.