“Such as?”
“Gray lied to us about one thing. Madeline Bainbridge wasn’t upstairs She was outside with another woman–Clara Adams, I suppose. Gray may tell lots of lies. There are matchbooks from restaurants out in the kitchen. He may get around more than he pretends.”
“But why would he lie?” asked Beefy.
“To protect Madeline Bainbridge,” said Jupe. “She isn’t any ordinary recluse. She’s a very odd lady. She and Clara Adams were wearing old-fashioned black gowns–they looked like Pilgrim ladies. And there’s a jar in the kitchen that’s filled with deadly nightshade.”
“You’re kidding!” exclaimed Beefy. “Deadly nightshade is a poison!”
“I know,” Jupe said. “Madeline Bainbridge may be one of the most fascinating characters I’ve come across. A lady who has changed very little in thirty years. I recognized her immediately. A lady who keeps poison in her kitchen, who goes around dressed like a Pilgrim, and who owns an oak grove that was once a cemetery. According to Gray, it’s supposed to be haunted. At least, that’s what some people say. And from the looks of it, it wouldn’t surprise me if that were true!”
6
The Magic Circle
“YOU DON’T FIND nightshade in the ordinary kitchen!” said Jupiter Jones. He was sitting behind the desk in The Three Investigators’ headquarters, an ancient mobile home trailer that was hidden away behind heaps of artfully arranged junk in a far corner of The Jones Salvage Yard. Pete and Bob had returned from the library, where Jupe had sent them to do some research while he was out with Beefy. Jupe had just finished telling them of his visit to the Bainbridge ranch.
“Nightshade is a name for a whole family of plants,” Jupe went on. “Many of them are narcotic poisons, and some of them were once used in magic rituals.”
“Madeline Bainbridge must be a real weirdo,” said Pete. “Poison in her kitchen and a private cemetery out in the back!”
“It isn’t a cemetery now,” Jupe pointed out. “It used to be one. But there was something eerie and unreal about the place. It gave me the creeps.”
“A cemetery and strange herbs,” said Bob thoughtfully. He took his notebook out of his pocket. “It fits. It fits beautifully!”
Bob began to flip through his notes. “I looked up magic and witchcraft because Bainbridge had that story about the director, Alexander de Champley, being a wizard. It must have been important to her, or she wouldn’t have taken time to draw the pentacle of Simon Magus in the manuscript.
“Now there are several different kinds of witches. There’s the Hallowe’en kind, who is sort of a comic-strip hag with warts on her chin. Then there are the evil ones, the sorcerers and witches who can do dreadful things because they worship the devil. He helps them out, according to the superstitious, and I guess there’s no limit to what you can do if Satan is backing you.”
Pete scowled. “I don’t believe a word of it,” he said, “but would you hurry up? I don’t like hearing about stuff like that.”
“Okay, then you’ll like the rest better,” said Bob. “There’s a form of witchcraft called the Old Religion. People who practise it say that it goes back to very ancient times. It’s a sort of fertility cult–it has a lot to do with growing things and harvests. It’s kind of nice, really. The witches believe that they have the power to make things happen because they’re in tune with the power of the universe. They’re organized into groups called covens, and each coven has thirteen people in it. They meet at special places, like a crossroads. An even better place is–guess where?”
“A . . . a cemetery?” said Jupe after a second.
“Right!” said Bob. “When they meet they have regular rites. They eat freshly gathered food and they worship Selena, or Diana, the moon goddess. They perform their rites at night, not because they’re wicked, but just so the neighbours won’t see them and gossip. The rituals can be performed at any time, but there are four main feasts, called Sabbats, every year. An Old Religion witch always attends the Sabbats. These happen on April thirtieth, August first, October thirty-first–which is our Hallowe’en, of course–and the second eve of February.”
Bob closed his notebook. “That’s all I got today. There’s more, and we can take some of the books out of the library if we need to. I just wonder, if someone wanted the Bainbridge manuscript suppressed, could it be because that person was a witch? It could be someone in the film colony who either was a member of the Old Religion and didn’t want it known, or perhaps someone who was a Satanist.”
Pete shivered. “If we do have a witch mixed up in this, I hope it’s one of the Old Religion witches,” he said. “I don’t think I want to mess with anybody who worships the devil.”
Jupiter nodded. “A Satanist could be a person who is completely without a conscience,” he said. “Or he could be a person who is somewhat simple-minded. In either case, he could be dangerous. But what did you do, Pete, while Bob was reading about witches?”
“I was reading about Madeline Bainbridge,” said Pete. “I went back into the microfilm files.”
The Second Investigator took an untidy sheaf of papers out of his pocket and began to read his pencilled notes.
“She came here from Fort Wayne, Indiana, when she was eighteen. She’d won a beauty contest and the prize was a trip to Hollywood. Alexander de Champley spotted her while she was touring the Film Art Studio. Three weeks later she had a contract with Film Art and was set to play Mary Queen of Scots in Champley’s version of the picture. That’s some kind of an all-time record for getting discovered and cast in a motion picture.”
Pete looked up at his friends. “All the stories said she was very, very beautiful.”
“She’s still beautiful,” said Jupe. “I saw her today. Anything more, Pete?”
“Just general stuff,” said Pete. “She seems to have been a pretty quiet person. She didn’t get into scandals. She made a lot of very good pictures. Most of her roles were historical, like Cleopatra and Catherine the Great. She had the best leading men, but she never bothered with them much once a picture was finished. She didn’t make lots and lots of friends. She was sort of a loner, and there was never any gossip to link her romantically with any actor until the last of her leading men–Ramon Desparto.”
“What about him?” asked Bob.
“He died shortly after he finished making the picture The Salem Story. That was a very strange picture about the witch trials in Salem and–”
“And there we have witchcraft again,” interrupted Jupe.
“Right. But this movie was very hokey. The plot was weird. Bainbridge played a Puritan maiden who is accused of witchcraft, and who saves herself by running away with an Indian brave so that she doesn’t get hanged. Ramon Desparto played the Indian brave, and he also got engaged to Madeline Bainbridge just before shooting started on the picture. There was some nasty talk that the engagement was just to help his career. He got engaged a lot to his leading ladies. Not long after The Salem Story was finished, he was killed in a car accident. It happened after a party at Bainbridge’s ranch, and Bainbridge had some kind of nervous collapse. She never worked again. She bought up all of her pictures and spent the next thirty years keeping out of sight.”
“And avoiding her old friends?” said Jupiter.
“There may not have been that many old friends,” said Pete. He unfolded a photocopy of a picture that he had tucked in with his notes and handed it across the desk to Jupe. “This picture was taken at the Academy Awards dinner the year The Salem Story was made,” he said. “That group of people is called ‘Madeline Bainbridge’s magic circle’ because they’re the ones she spent her time with. There aren’t so many. Marvin Gray isn’t in the picture, though.”
“He wasn’t a friend then,” Jupiter reminded Pete. “He was still just the chauffeur.”
Jupe studied the picture and read the caption. Madeline Bainbridge and the darkly handsome Ramon Desparto sat at the head of the table. On the star’s other side was Jefferson Long, looking very young and handsome. The caption identified a man named Elliott Farber as Bainbridge’s favourite cameraman. An actor named Charles Goodfellow sat next to an actress named Estelle DuBarry. Nicholas Fowler, a scriptwriter, was there, and so was Clara Adams, who sat next to a character actor, Ted Finley. Janet Pierce was identified as costume designer for the Salem picture, and Lurine Hazel and Marie Alexander were actresses. A very plain girl named Gloria Gibbs stared straight ahead, and was referred to as Desparto’s secretary.
“How interesting!” said Jupiter Jones. “A magic circle indeed! There are thirteen people here, and thirteen at a table is considered unlucky–unless you are a witch. For a coven, thirteen is the right number!”