how your husband was linked to the dead man.”
“You still don’t know who the man was?” I asked.
Daniel shook his head. “Maybe someone will come forward after his picture appears in today’s newspapers. He must have family and friends. He looked like such a normal, everyday sort of fellow, certainly not like any criminal I’ve come across.”
“And not like anybody in the entertainment business either,” Bess said. “They usually dress with more pizzazz than that.”
While we had been talking we had passed fashionable shopping districts and Macy’s spanking new department store that took up a whole block along Broadway. Then at last Midtown gave way to the crowded streets of the Lower East Side and we made slow progress, inching between delivery drays, trolleys, and pushcarts. Ragged children darted across the street with no apparent concern for their safety and the air rang with the cries of vendors, the clang of construction from a new building, the shrill squeals of children, and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. A veritable cacophony, but one that I had come to love. It was the sound of a city full of life.
We pulled up at last outside the theater, where a constable standing in attendance made a vendor of Italian ice cream move his cart so that we could place the automobile there. The Italian went, grudgingly. It was obviously a good pitch for him. Outside the theater new bills had been posted, advertising this week’s acts. ALL-NEW SPECTACULAR! was splashed across the bill along with vignettes of pretty girls posing in an acrobatic pyramid and another illusionist with a white dove in his hand.
“Anything I should know about, O’Malley?” Daniel asked as the constable held open the door for us. “Is Detective MacAffrey back yet?”
“No, sir. He’s over at the morgue for the autopsy.”
Daniel nodded. “Make sure we’re not disturbed. No newspaper reporters.”
“I’ve kept them out all morning, sir, and that doorkeeper has fended them off at the stage door.”
“Anyone else here?”
“No, sir. They canceled tonight’s performance, so we’ve got the place to ourselves,” he said bitterly.
“Lucky for us. Or we’d have them clamoring to be able to use the stage.”
“We did have a couple of new acts turn up, wanting to put their props in place, but I told them they wouldn’t be allowed in until the captain said so.”
“What acts were they?” Daniel asked.
“A troop of girl acrobats—the Flying Foxes, they called themselves, and another magician with his assistant.”
The interior of the theater felt dark and cold after the overpowering heat of the street and I shivered. It was like stepping into a crypt as we picked our way down the center aisle toward the stage. Another constable was standing by the stage steps and stood aside to let us mount them. Daniel took Mrs. Houdini’s hand and escorted her up, thus ignoring me. But I wasn’t annoyed this time. I saw what he was doing. She responded well to male attention. He was softening her up.
“So here we are, Mrs. Houdini,” he said. “Everything exactly as it was last night, except that the body has been removed. I want you to take a good look around and see if there is anything different from the usual way you perform your act—any little thing.”
She nodded. “Of course Molly was the assistant last night, not me, but I was watching from the box and it all looked just fine to me.”
She moved around as if on tiptoe, gently touching the frame of what they called the cabinet, then the table on which the hood and the playing cards still lay. Then she stopped, her head to one side, like a bird’s.
“That’s a bit off,” she said.
“What is?”
“The trunk. We usually perform that trick over to stage left. Why did you put the trunk so close to center stage, Molly?”
“I don’t know. Someone helped me carry it onstage and we just put it down. I didn’t think it mattered that much where it was.”
“It doesn’t, but . . .” she stopped, then knelt beside the trunk. “Can I touch it?” she asked.
“Go ahead. We’ve already extracted fingerprints from it.”
She examined it briefly. “I thought something was wrong,” she said. “This isn’t our trunk.”
Twenty-two
Daniel squatted beside her.
“Are you sure?”
She looked up and nodded. “Quite sure. I already explained to Molly how we manage to pull off the switch so quickly. The back of the trunk is only held together with two screws that come out real easy, and then it swings open. This one