The wheelchair…Did that explain the symbol? A triangle for the percussionist, the fish tank for Clark, and for Mrs Eagleton, the circle-the wheel of her wheelchair perhaps. Or the O of the word ‘omerta’, Seldom had said.
Yes, the circle could still be almost anything. But, interestingly, there was a letter O on one of the letter racks. Or perhaps it wasn’t interesting at all, but just a silly coincidence? Perhaps Seldom had seen the O on the letter rack, and that was why he’d thought of the word ‘omerta’. Seldom had said something else, the day we went to the Covered Market, that he was confident I would see something because I wasn’t English. But what was a non-English way of seeing?
I was startled by the sound of someone trying to push an envelope under my door. I opened it and found Beth straightening up quickly, red-faced. She was holding several more envelopes.
“I thought you were out,” she said. “Or I would have knocked.”
I invited her in and picked up the envelope. Inside, there was a card with an illustration from Alice through the Looking Glass and the words ‘Non-wedding Invitation’ in embossed letters.
I smiled at her, intrigued.
“The thing is, we can’t get married yet,” said Beth. “Michael’s divorce could take ages. But we still want to have a celebration.” She caught sight of the photos lying all over the bed. “Photos of your family?”
“No, I don’t have any family in the usual sense. They’re the photos the police took the day of Mrs Eagleton’s murder.”
Beth, I reflected, was definitely English and her gaze was as representative as any-other. And she was the last person to have seen Mrs Eagleton alive, so she might notice if anything looked different. I motioned for her to approach but she hesitated, a look of horror on her face. At last she took a couple of steps forwards and glanced at the photographs quickly, as if afraid to look more closely.
“Why have they given you these after all this time? What do they think they can still find out from them?”
“They want to find the link between Mrs Eagleton and the first symbol. Perhaps if you look at them now, you’ll see something else-something missing or moved.”
“But I’ve already told Inspector Petersen: I can’t remember exactly where every single thing was when I left the house. When I came downstairs I saw that she was asleep, so I left as quietly as I could, without even glancing at her again. I’ve already been over this once. That afternoon, when Uncle Arthur came to the theatre to tell me what had happened, they were waiting for me in the sitting room, with the body still there.”
As if determined to overcome her terror, she picked up the photograph of Mrs Eagleton stretched out on the chaise longue. “All I could tell them,” she said, touching the photo with her finger, “was that ‘the blanket for her legs was missing. She never lay down without a blanket over her legs, not even on the warmest days. She didn’t want anyone to see her scars. We searched for the blanket all over the house that day but it never turned up.”
“It’s true,” I said, amazed that we hadn’t noticed. “I never saw her without that blanket. Why would the murderer have wanted to expose her scars? Or perhaps he took the blanket as a souvenir? Maybe he’s kept mementoes of the other two murders as well.”
“I don’t know, I don’t want to have to think about any of this again,” Beth said, heading towards the door. “It’s been a nightmare. I wish it was all over. When we saw Benito die in the middle of the concert and Inspector Petersen appeared on the stage, I thought I would die myself there and then. All I could think was that he was somehow going to lay the blame on me again.”
“No, he immediately ruled out anyone from the orchestra. It had to be someone who climbed up and attacked him from behind.”
“Well, whatever he thinks,” said Beth, shaking her head, “I just hope they catch him soon and it’ll all be over.” Her hand on the door handle, she turned to say: “Your girlfriend’s welcome to come to the party too, of course. She’s the one you play tennis with, isn’t she?”
Once Beth had gone, I slowly put the photographs back in the envelope. The invitation lay on the bed. The picture was actually of the un-birthday party or, more precisely, just one of the three hundred and sixty-four un-birthday parties that Lewis Carroll teases us with. The logician in him knew that what remains outside each statement is always overwhelmingly larger.
The blanket was a small, exasperating alarm signal. How much more was there in each murder that we hadn’t been able to see? Perhaps that was what Seldom was hoping for from me: that I should picture what wasn’t there but that we should have seen.
Still thinking about Beth, I searched a drawer for a change of clothes before taking a shower. The telephone rang: it was Lorna. She was free that evening after all. I asked if she’d like to come to the magic show.
“Of course I would,” she said. “I don’t intend to miss any more of your outings. But now that I’m going with you, I’m sure we’ll see nothing but silly rabbits pulled out of hats.”
Twenty-One
When we arrived at the theatre there were no more seats available in the front rows, so Seldom kindly offered Lorna his while he sat further back. The stage was in darkness, but you could make out a table on which stood a large glass of water, and a high-backed armchair facing the audience. Just behind, there were a dozen empty chairs set out in a semicircle around the table. We entered the auditorium a few minutes after the start of the show and the lights were going down as we took our seats. The theatre was in darkness for what seemed like only a fraction of a second before a spotlight was directed at the stage and the magician appeared, sitting in the armchair, as if he’d been there all along. He peered into the audience, holding his hand above his eyes like a visor.
“Light! More light!” he demanded. He stood up and walked round the table to the edge of the stage, hand still shielding his eyes, scanning the audience.
A cruel surgical light illuminated his bent figure. Only then did I notice with surprise that he had only one arm. His right arm was missing, amputated cleanly at the shoulder, as if he had never had one. He raised his left arm again imperiously.
“More light!” he demanded again. “I want you to see everything, so that no one can say, ‘It was an effect of smoke and shadow.’ Even if it means you can see my wrinkles. My seven folds of wrinkles. Yes, I’m very old, aren’t I? Almost unbelievably old. And yet, I was once a child of eight, I once had two hands, like all of you, and I wanted to learn magic. “No, don’t teach me tricks,” I’d say to my teacher. Because I wanted to be a magician, I didn’t want to learn tricks. But my teacher, who was almost as old as I am now, said: ‘The first step is knowing the tricks’.”
The magician spread his fingers and held them like a fan in front of his face. “I can tell you, because it no longer matters, that my fingers were extremely quick and agile. I had a natural gift and very soon I was travelling all over my country-the little conjuror, almost a circus freak. But at the age of ten I had an accident. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident. When I woke up I was in a hospital bed and I only had my left arm. I, who wanted to be a magician. I, who was right-handed. But my old teacher was there and, while my parents wept, all he said was: “This is the second step. Perhaps you’ll be a magician some day.” My teacher died, and nobody ever told me what the third step was. Since then, every time I go on stage I wonder if that day has come. Perhaps this is something that only you, the audience, can say. That’s why I always call for more light, and I ask you to come up on stage, to come and see. This way.” One by one he made half of the people in the front row come up on stage and sit in the chairs all around him. “Closer, closer. I want you to watch my hand, not to be taken by surprise, because remember, I don’t want to perform tricks here today.”