to the suitcase under the bed, where Houdini kept the details of his illusions. I dropped to my knees and was pulling it out when Bess stirred.
“Molly. You came back! I was so worried that something bad had happened to you,” she said, staring at me with those big, helpless eyes. Of course then I felt terrible. It had never occurred to me that my absence would have given her something else to worry about.
“I’m so sorry, I should have been here with you. Something came up and I had to leave in a hurry, but it was thoughtless of me not to let you know that I was all right.” This of course was partially a lie. I’d been kidnapped and bundled into a train. Not exactly all right, then. But I smiled at her brightly. “I’ve been working on your behalf, trying to find out what might have happened to your husband,” I said.
“Is there any news yet?”
“I have none, I’m afraid. I don’t know how the police are getting on,” I said. “Let’s just hope for the best, shall we? Have you eaten anything?”
“I didn’t feel like food.”
“You should eat. I’ll ask your mother-in-law to make you something nourishing. I’m sure she’d like to be busy at a worrying time like this.”
“Okay.” She nodded, then seemed to realize that I was kneeling beside the bed with the suitcase in front of me. “What are you doing?”
“I was wondering if we might find any clue to Harry’s disappearance inside this suitcase,” I said. “Are you sure you have no idea where we might find the key?”
“But Harry wouldn’t want anyone going through that suitcase,” she said in a shocked voice. “He’d never let anyone see the diagrams for his illusions.”
“Look, Bess, do you want your husband found or not?” I demanded. “I’m not interested in his illusions. I’ll make sure nobody sees his diagrams. But it’s just possible he kept other personal things in there while he was traveling. So where do you think we’d find the key?”
“I really have no idea,” she said. “Honestly.”
I rummaged through the drawer where I’d found the passport. So that was why his passport showed him as a natural-born citizen, rather than as a European Jew. I thought—so that he could pass more easily into countries like Germany and Russia. Very useful for Mr. Wilkie. Then I looked in his stud box, and all the places where one keeps keys.
“Of course he could have carried it on his person all the time,” Bess said. “The police parceled up his suit and delivered it to me this afternoon. It’s hanging up.”
“And you didn’t go through the pockets?” I asked, marveling at this lack of curiosity.
“The police said they were keeping the contents of his pockets as evidence for now,” she said. “You’d better ask them if they’ve got the key.”
Then suddenly it came to me. Of course. How thick could I be? There had been two keys in the inside pocket of his tailed coat. One was presumably for the trunk, but the other . . . the other could well be the key to this suitcase. It was small enough. And what’s more, I still had them in my possession. I remembered now that I had kept them clutched in my hand after I had picked them up onstage, and then I had—I tried to recall. Everything had been so chaotic. Bess had been screaming. Police everywhere. I had tucked them into the waistband of my costume—and promptly forgotten about them. There they would still be, unless they had fallen out.
“Bess, I’m going down to see if your mother-in-law will make us supper,” I said. “Then I have to collect an overnight bag from my house and I’ll spend the night here with you.”
Of course I already had the overnight bag sitting in the hall downstairs, but it was a good excuse to go home. She accepted it, at any rate.
“Thank you, Molly. I really appreciate all you’re doing for me.”
Houdini’s mother agreed to make a good chicken soup with dumplings for Bess. “About time that one ate something,” she said. “She’s so thin, you’d think the wind would blow her away. A girl should have meat on her bones—like you.”
I wasn’t sure if this was a compliment but at least she wasn’t scowling at me. I told her I’d be back within the hour and caught the El down to Greenwich Village. I let myself into my house and stood for