“I found one in Peru, a great beauty indeed but not far evolved in the European sense; a lovely animal. I bought her, to be frank. You can still buy people, you know, if you understand how to go about it. You don’t go to a peasant father and say, ‘Sell me your daughter’; you say, ‘I can open up a splendid future for your daughter, that will make her a rich lady with many pairs of shoes, and as I realize you need her to work at home, I hope you won’t be offended if I offer you five hundred American dollars to recompense you for the loss.’ He isn’t offended; not in the least. And you make sure he puts his mark on an official-looking piece of paper that apprentices the girl to you, to learn a trade — in this case the trade of seamstress, because actress has a bad sound if there is any trouble. And there you are. You wash the girl, teach her to stand still on stage and do what she is told, and you clout her over the ear if she is troublesome. Quite soon she thinks she is a great deal more important than she really is, but that can be endured.
“Faustina was a thrill on the stage, because she really was stunningly beautiful, and for a while it seemed to be good business to let curious people think she was Magnus’s mistress; only a few rather perceptive people know that great magicians, as opposed to ham conjurors, don’t have mistresses. In reality, Faustina was my mistress, but we kept that quiet, in case some clamorous moralist should make a fuss about it. In Latin America, in particular, the clergy are pernickety about such things. You remember Faustina, Ramsay? I recall you had a wintry yearning toward her yourself.”
“Don’t be disagreeable, Liesl,” I said. “You know who destroyed that.”
“Destroyed it, certainly, and greatly enriched you in the process,” said Liesl, and touched me gently with one of her enormous hands.
“So there you have it, gentlemen,” she continued. “Now you know everything, it seems to me.”
“Not everything,” said Ingestree. “The name, Magnus Eisengrim — whose inspiration was that?”
“Mine,” said Liesl. “Did I tell you I took my degree at the University of Zurich? Yes, in the faculty of philosophy where I leaned toward what used to be called philology — quite a Teutonic speciality. So of course I was acquainted with the great beast-legends of Europe, and in Reynard the Fox, you know, there is the great wolf Eisengrim, whom everyone fears, but who is not such a bad fellow, really. Just the name for a magician, don’t you think?”
“And your name,” said Lind. “Liselotte Vitzliputzli? You were always named on the programmes as Theatre Autocrat — Liselotte Vitzliputzli.”
“Ah, yes. Somebody has to be an autocrat in an affair of that kind, and it sounds better and is more frank than simply Manager. Anyhow, I wasn’t quite a manager: I was the boss. It was my money, you see. But I knew my place. Manager I might be, but without Magnus Eisengrim I was nothing. Consequently — Vitzlipiitzli. You understand?”
“No, gnadiges Fraulein, I do not understand,” said Lind, “and you know I do not understand. What I am beginning to understand is that you are capable of giving your colleagues Eisengrim and Ramsay a thoroughly difficult time when it is your whim. So again — Vitzliputzli?”
“Dear, dear, how ignorant people are in this supposedly brilliant modern world,” said Liesl. “You surely know Faust? Not Goethe’s Faust, of course; every Teuton has that by heart — both parts of it — but the old German play on which he based his poem. Look among the characters there, and you will find that the least of the demons attending on the great magician is Vitzlipiitzli. So that was the name I chose. A delicate compliment to Magnus. It takes a little of the sting out of the word Autocrat.
“But an autocrat is what I must be now. Gentlemen, we have talked for a long time, and I hope we have given you your subtext. You have seen what a gulf lies between the reality of a magician with the Magian World View and such a pack of lies as Robert-Houdin’s bland, bourgeois memoirs. You have seen, too, what a distance there is between the pack of lies Ramsay wrote so artfully as a commercial life of our dear Eisengrim, and the sad little boy from Deptford. And now, we must travel tomorrow, and I must pack my two old gentlemen off to their beds, or they will not be happy for the plane. So it is time to say good night.”
Profuse thanks for hospitality, for the conversation, for the pleasure of working together on the film La Hommage a Robert-Houdin, from Lind. A rather curious exchange of friendly words and handshakes between Eisengrim and Roland Ingestree. The business of waking Kinghovn from a drunken stupor, of getting him to understand that he must not have another brandy before going home. And then, at last, we three went by ourselves.
“Strange to spend so many hours answering questions,” said Liesl.
“Strange, and disagreeable,” said Eisengrim.
“Strange what questions went unasked and unanswered,” said I.
“Such as. . .” said Liesl.
“Such as ‘Who Killed Boy Staunton?’ ” said I.
— III —
Le Lit de Justice
1
“You know the police in Toronto are still not satisfied that you told them all you know about Staunton’s death?”
“I told them all I thought proper.”
“Which wasn’t everything?”
“Certainly not. The police must work with facts, not fancies and suppositions. The facts were simple. I met him, for the first time in my life, when I visited you at your school in Toronto on the night of November 3, 1968; we went to your room and had a talk that lasted less than an hour. I accepted his offer to drive me back to my hotel. We chatted for a time, because we were both Deptford boys. I last saw him as he drove away from the hotel door.”
“Yes. And he was found less than three hours later in the harbour, into which he appeared to have driven in his powerful car, and when the police recovered the body they found a stone in his mouth.”
“So I understand.”
“If that had been all there was to it, would the police still be wondering about you?”
“No indeed.”
“It was my fault,” said Liesl. “If I had been more discreet, the police would have been satisfied with what Magnus told them. But one has one’s pride as an artist, you know, and when I was asked a question I thought I could answer effectively I did so, and then the fat was in the fire.”
Would anyone who saw us at this moment have thought we were talking about murder? I was convinced that Magnus had murdered Staunton, and with reason. Was not Staunton the initiator of most of what we had heard in the subtext of the life of Magnus Eisengrim? If, when both he and I were ten years old, Percy Boyd Staunton had not thrown a snowball at me, which had instead hit Mrs. Amasa Dempster, bringing about the premature birth of her son Paul and robbing her of her wits, would I at this moment be in bed with Magnus Eisengrim and Liselotte Vitzliputzli in the Savoy Hotel, discussing Staunton’s death?
We had come to this because we were inclined to share a bed when we had anything important to talk about. People who think of beds only in terms of sexual exercise or sleep simply do not understand that a bed is the best of all places for a philosophical discussion, an argument, and if necessary a showdown. It was not by chance that so many kings of old administered justice from their beds, and even today there is something splendidly parliamentary about an assembly of concerned persons in a bed.
Of course it must be a big bed. The Savoy had outfitted Magnus’s room with two splendid beds, each of which was easily capable of accommodating three adults without undue snuggling. (The Savoy is above the meanness of “single” beds.) So there we were, at the end of our long day of confession and revelation, lying back against the ample pillows, Liesl in the middle, Magnus on her left, and I on her right. He wore a handsome dressing-gown and a scarf he twisted around his head when he slept, because he had a European fear of draughts. I am a simple man; a man of blue pyjamas. Liesl liked filmy nightrobes, and she was a delightful person to be in bed with because she was so warm. As I grow older I fuss about the cold, and for some reason I feel the cold for an hour or so after I have removed my artificial leg, as of course I had done before climbing in with them. My chilly stump was next to Liesl.