Mrs. Houdini (28 page)

Bess's seat was on a sofa in the front, next to Mr. Roosevelt. He rose to greet her when she entered, remarking on her dress—a long blue gown, carefully chosen for the occasion. The man was not handsome in the slightest, but he was imposing. What struck Bess immediately about him, besides the thick walrus's mustache that drooped over his mouth, was the softness of his eyes, not nearly as serious as in the photographs she had seen. They reminded her of her late father's eyes—shrewd but kind.

When Harry entered the room, he was greeted with loud applause. He looked around at the filled chairs, pretending bewilderment. “I was told this was to be an informal reading. I suppose I was wrong.” Everyone laughed.

Harry began with some card tricks, and then, per his request, the room was dimmed to near dark. The audience was quiet, leaning forward in the shadowy light.

“I would like to ask you, President Roosevelt, to write a question on this slip of paper—a question to which I shall obtain the answer.”

Roosevelt chuckled and took the paper, trying to balance it on his knee as he wrote.

“I beg your pardon,” Harry said. He reached into the bookcase behind him and handed the former president a book to use as a writing board. Roosevelt thanked him, then turned his back, concealing even the motion of his pencil so Harry couldn't deduce what he was writing. He then sealed the paper in an envelope and inserted the envelope between two blank slates, which were tied together.

“You see,” Harry said, “that I will now attempt to make contact with my spirit control, who will answer your question, through me, by writing on these slates.”

“Who is your control?” someone called out.

“My control,” Harry announced, “is Mr. W. T. Stead. I shall be communicating with him throughout this process.” There was a murmur among the crowd. W. T. Stead was a well-known spiritualist writer who had died on the
Titanic.
Bess knew of this control; Harry had practiced using it on her at home. She had warned him it was audacious of him to choose someone who had passed so recently, in such a terrible manner—especially while they were on a ship—but he was committed to the character. Harry closed his eyes and sat in meditative stillness, his palms flat on the knees of his pants.

Roosevelt turned to Bess. “Does this man not terrify you?”

Bess smiled at him. “Sometimes,” she replied honestly.

Harry was completely “possessed” now, by his spirit control. The room was hushed. With glazed eyes, he inserted a pencil between the slates and started writing. After a few minutes his body began to quiver violently, and he dropped the slates on the floor at the president's feet, then “emerged” from his unconscious state.

Mr. Roosevelt picked up the slates and examined them. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, very softly, “Remarkable.” He turned to the crowd. “My question was ‘Where was I last Christmas?' And he has drawn a map of my entire itinerary in South America! My God, how did you know all this? The papers haven't even published it yet!”

The announcement was met with cheers and great applause. Roosevelt turned back to Harry, who sat calmly in his chair, fully himself now.

“How did you do it, Houdini?” Roosevelt demanded, grinning. “Was that real spiritualism?”

Harry smiled slyly. “Of course not. It was just hocus-pocus.”

“Impossible. It must be telepathy.”

Harry only laughed.

“Remarkable,” Roosevelt said again, standing to shake Harry's hand. The grin had disappeared from his face. Bess could sense the growing unease she had seen time and time again, when one began to doubt all rational certainties about science and magic. If there was one thing Harry's tricks did, it was to make people wonder whether they should be believing in something else.

Later, as they were lying in bed, she rested her head on Harry's chest. “You impressed him, you know.”

Harry kissed the top of her head. “And did I impress you, Mrs. Houdini?”

“I have to admit, I'm not sure how you did this one.”

Harry sat up on his elbow. “Truly?”

“Truly. Will you tell me?”

He grinned. “You couldn't figure it out because most of it was due to blind chance. The book I handed him to write on had been prepared ahead of time with a hidden carbon sheet inside the front cover. As I replaced the book on the shelf, I snuck a peek at the question, and it was one I had prepared for; when I found out Mr. Roosevelt was going to be on the ship, my man at the London
Telegraph
telegraphed me a copy of the article he was publishing about the South America trip.”

“That's incredibly coincidental. What would you have done if he had asked a question you had not prepared for?”

Harry shrugged. “Answered it the best I could, I suppose. Perhaps the spirits really were looking out for me.”

“Don't say that. Not if you don't believe it.” Bess closed her eyes, taken over by sleep. “Do you believe you'll see me after we die?” she murmured.

Harry ran his fingers through her hair. “Mrs. Houdini, if I die first, I believe you'll see me while you still live. In fact, I promise it.”

On their first night in Copenhagen, the sky was overcast, the moon weak through a thick layer of fog. Harry performed at the Cirkus Beketow, the city's premier venue. Young Prince Aage and Prince Axel of the Danish royal family were in attendance, sitting starry-eyed in a box close to stage left. Harry had been rehearsing his Danish and told the audience he was going to attempt to do the entire act in the language.

The Danish people felt an affinity with Harry because of his European origins; he was even more of a sensation in Europe than he was in New York. Moreover, the press had gotten wind of his performance for Roosevelt, and their hotel room floor was papered with messages from press agents requesting interviews, which had been slid under the door by the hotel staff. They had arrived on the continent intact, Harry's seasickness having been much milder than during their last voyage, but he had not been able to shake a feeling of foreboding following Bess's hallucination during their departure. When Bess told him she was going to walk down the Strøget to shop for a dress to wear to his reception, Harry clung to her and begged her not to leave. “I have a feeling something terrible is going to happen to you if you go,” he said. They spent the afternoon lying on the bed instead, reading the American papers.

Under the bright lights of the Cirkus Beketow, Harry performed his transference trick splendidly, disappearing on one side of the makeshift wall and reappearing on the other. After the performance the princes welcomed them at a reception in the circus foyer. No expense had been spared; tables were laid with cream cloths and plates of poached cod, roast pork, and candied fruit. Through the massive windows, Bess saw that the fog had lifted and the stars were white as pearls. She watched with a glass of champagne in hand as Harry stood on the lobby's velvet carpet in a circle of reporters, stiltedly trying to communicate in the little Danish he knew, until he defaulted to German. He was quivering with excitement, still immersed in the thrill of the performance. She watched as Jim Vickery pushed his way through the crowd and discreetly handed him a telegram. Harry asked the men for their pardon and looked down at the paper.

Bess watched as Harry fell to the floor. She tried to push her way toward him, but the crowd had surged forward, everyone trying to help. She could hear him through the barrier of men, crying out, “Mama, Mama!” but she could not reach him, she could not reach him.

Bess had led Harry by the hand to the door of the circus building and into the taxicab, as if he were a blind man. At the hotel he had sat on the bed, still, as Bess packed their luggage. The telegram, from Dash, who had come to New York from Boston while Harry was gone, had said the situation was dire and urged him to come home and forgo the rest of his performances. In Denmark, at the time, it was a crime to break a contract for any reason—even for family emergencies—and as a result Jim Collins was arrested for a period of days while Harry and Bess were on a train to Berlin.

In New York, they had found Mrs. Weiss lying peacefully in her bed, her form white and unmoving. Dash was there, and Gladys, and John Sargent, and Alfred, but no one had spoken a word. Harry had knelt by her side and taken his mother's hand. “It's cold,” he had said, as if he still could not believe she was not merely sleeping. No one had dared touch him then, not even Bess.

“Mother always said,
‘Gibt's nicht, nur Mann und Frau,
'
” Gladys had murmured softly. “Nothing matters but man and wife. And now she is with the one who loved her most.”

At this, Harry had burst into tears. “I loved her most!” he'd shouted. “I loved her most!” Bess had known what he was feeling—that he had failed his mother. He had promised always to take care of her, but he wasn't there at the end, when she needed him most. It had been his duty. The pain from his kidney, which he had dismissed as negligible before, began, suddenly, to cripple him, and he had clutched his side.

This was what Bess had felt when Harry died—a horrid, debilitating pain. And, standing in the library after Charles left, she felt a similar phantom pain sear her insides. She had to believe Charles was a cheat, but still, she could not shake a nagging feeling that perhaps she had been wrong. There was something about him that reminded her of Harry—that same wounded expression, the furrowed eyebrows . . .

The sky was ripe with the first hushed light of morning, and there was a soft knock at the door. Of course Charles had come back; where else would he go? She felt strangely relieved. But it was not Charles standing at her doorstep. It was Gladys.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” Bess asked. “Is everything all right?”

“I came to check on you.”

“To check on me? How did you even know I'd be up?”

“I returned to the city last night, actually. I needed to talk to you.”

George, who had come off his leave an hour earlier, entered the room, his uniform freshly pressed. “Is everything all right, Mrs. Houdini?”

Bess pulled Gladys into the house and sat her down on the sofa, then turned to the butler. “Would you get us some tea?”

When George had retreated into the kitchen, Gladys said, “You know he's Harry's son, don't you?”

Bess grabbed her hand. “Why do you say that?”

“I knew the moment I touched his face. He has the same bone structure as Harry did. Almost exactly the same. And his voice—I wasn't sure I should say anything, but I couldn't stay at the party. I had Lloyd call me a car soon after you left.” She lowered her voice. “Where is he? Is he asleep?”

Bess shook her head. “I sent him away, actually. We had an argument. I accused him . . . of trying to steal from me.” She put her head in her hands. “Did you know all these years that Harry had a son? Tell me the truth.”

Gladys shook her head fiercely. “I swear I didn't.”

“Are you completely certain he is Harry's son? I thought he was trying to deceive me.”

Gladys pushed a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “I'm sorry, Bess.”

Bess was shaken. Had she made a mistake in sending Charles away? Was she wrong that he had planted the photograph in the library? She couldn't bear the alternative—that Harry had kept the photograph a secret from her, had known for years that he had a son. That their inability to have children had, all along, been her fault and not his. Instead of searching the house for something Harry may have left her for her future, apparently she should have been searching for evidence of his deception.

She could not understand why Harry would have made his transgressions clear
now,
when he was not here to console her or explain to her. Why now, when he had kept the secret from her his entire life? Even on his deathbed, he had mentioned no affair, no lost son, no photograph hidden in the library. It was unbearable to recall the afternoon of Harry's death, the way he'd gripped her hand and looked at her with such unspeakable adoration. To think that even then—in that final moment of brutal honesty—he was concealing something from her . . .

She looked at the clock; it was six in the morning now. She opened the last of the curtains, and yellow light poured in. In the center of the room, by the fire, was the leather sofa, and Harry's armchair, where he'd liked to close his eyes and rehearse his tricks before he fell asleep. Stuffed in the crevices between Harry's books were papers of all kinds—documents, letters, photographs. She had spent hours over the years opening volume after volume, searching for something that would alleviate her financial burden; but she had found nothing of value. After Harry's passing, George had offered to help her clear the room. At the time, she had contemplated selling the house and moving to California, but when she couldn't bring herself to touch Harry's things, she realized she could not go anywhere; she was a prisoner of her old life, forever.