The Oxford Murders Read online

  A cruel surgical light illuminated his bent figure. Only then did I notice with surprise that he had only one arm. His right arm was missing, amputated cleanly at the shoulder, as if he had never had one. He raised his left arm again imperiously.

  “More light!” he demanded again. “I want you to see everything, so that no one can say, ‘It was an effect of smoke and shadow.’ Even if it means you can see my wrinkles. My seven folds of wrinkles. Yes, I’m very old, aren’t I? Almost unbelievably old. And yet, I was once a child of eight, I once had two hands, like all of you, and I wanted to learn magic. “No, don’t teach me tricks,” I’d say to my teacher. Because I wanted to be a magician, I didn’t want to learn tricks. But my teacher, who was almost as old as I am now, said: ‘The first step is knowing the tricks’.”

  The magician spread his fingers and held them like a fan in front of his face. “I can tell you, because it no longer matters, that my fingers were extremely quick and agile. I had a natural gift and very soon I was travelling all over my country-the little conjuror, almost a circus freak. But at the age of ten I had an accident. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident. When I woke up I was in a hospital bed and I only had my left arm. I, who wanted to be a magician. I, who was right-handed. But my old teacher was there and, while my parents wept, all he said was: “This is the second step. Perhaps you’ll be a magician some day.” My teacher died, and nobody ever told me what the third step was. Since then, every time I go on stage I wonder if that day has come. Perhaps this is something that only you, the audience, can say. That’s why I always call for more light, and I ask you to come up on stage, to come and see. This way.” One by one he made half of the people in the front row come up on stage and sit in the chairs all around him. “Closer, closer. I want you to watch my hand, not to be taken by surprise, because remember, I don’t want to perform tricks here today.”

  He held out his bare hand over the table, holding something small and white between thumb and forefinger. I couldn’t see what it was from where we were sitting.

  “I come from a country they used to call the Bread Basket of the World. “Don’t leave, son,” my mother would say. “You’ll never lack bread here.” I left, but I always have this little piece of bread with me.” He held it out again between two fingers, swivelling so that we could all see, before placing it carefully on the table. He pressed down with his palm in a circular movement, as if to knead it. “How strange these trails of breadcrumbs are. Birds remove them at night so that we cannot follow the trails back. “Come back, son,” my mother would say, “you’ll never lack bread here.” But I couldn’t go back. How strange these trails of breadcrumbs are! Trails that you can follow away but not back.” His hand was circling hypnotically above the table. “That’s why I didn’t use up all my breadcrumbs on the way. And wherever I go, I always have with me…”-he held up his hand and we saw that he was holding a small perfectly formed bread roll, the pointed ends protruding from his fist-“…a piece of bread.”

  He turned and held out the roll to the first person in the semicircle.

  “Don’t be afraid. Have some.” The hand, like the hand of a clock, moved to the second person and opened again to reveal a rounded, intact end. “You can take a larger piece. Come, try some.” He turned to each of the people sitting on the chairs, until they had all had a piece of bread roll.

  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully when he had finished. He opened out his hand and there was the little bread roll, still intact. He straightened out his very long fingers before slowly closing his fist again. When he opened it, all that remained was the little piece of bread, which he held up between thumb and forefinger to show us. “You mustn’t use up all your breadcrumbs on the way.”

  He rose to receive the applause and stood at the edge of the stage dismissing the people who had occupied the chairs. Lorna and I were in the second group to go up on stage. I could now see him from the side with his hooked nose, very black moustache, that looked dyed, and lank grey hair clinging to his skull. But I was struck above all by his large, bony hand with liver spots on the back. He slipped it around the glass and took a sip of water before continuing.

  “I like to call this part of the show ‘Slowification’,” he said. He took a pack of cards from his pocket and began shuffling it fantastically fast with his only hand. “Tricks cannot be repeated, my teacher used to say. But I didn’t want to perform tricks, I wanted to perform magic. Can one repeat an act of magic? Only six cards,” he said, taking them one by one from the pack. “Three red, three black. Red and black. The black of night, the red of life. Can anyone control colours? Can anyone impose an order on them?” With a flick of the thumb, he tossed the cards down on the table, one after another, facing up. “Red, black, red, black, red, black.” The cards lay in a row, red and black alternating.

  “And now, watch my hand. I want to do it very slowly.” He moved his hand forward to pick up the cards in the order in which they lay. “Can anyone impose an order on them?” he said again and flung them back down on the table with the same flick of the thumb. “Red, red, red, black, black, black. It could not be done any slower,” he said, gathering up the cards. “Or perhaps…it could.” Again, he tossed down the cards with the colours alternating, letting them fall slowly. “Red, black, red, black, red, black.” He turned towards us so that we could see exactly what he was doing. He inched his hand forward, as slowly as a crab, touching the first card with the tips of his fingers. He picked the cards up extremely gently and, when he threw them back down on the table, the colours had come together once more. “Red, red, red, black, black, black.”

  “But this young man,” he said, suddenly turning his gaze upon me, “remains sceptical. Perhaps he’s read some manual of magic and thinks the trick is in the way I pick up the cards, or in a glide effect. Yes, that’s how he’d do it. That’s how I did it myself when I had two hands. But now I’ve only got one. And perhaps some day I won’t have any.” He flung the cards down on the table one by one. “Red, black, red, black, red, black.” Looking at me again, he commanded: “Gather them up. And now, without letting me touch them, turn them over one by one.” I obeyed, and, as I turned them over, the cards seemed to submit to his will. “Red, red, red, black, black, black.”

  When we returned to our seats, while the audience was still applauding, I realised why Seldom had insisted I should see the show. Each of the tricks that followed was, like the first ones, extraordinarily simple and also extraordinarily pure, as if the old man had truly reached a golden moment in which he no longer needed his hands. And it seemed to amuse him to break the rules of his trade, one by one. He repeated tricks, he had people sitting behind him during the entire show, he revealed techniques with which other magicians throughout the ages had attempted the same effects. At one point I turned round and saw Seldom completely enthralled, happily lost in admiration, like a child who never tires of seeing the same marvel over and over. I recalled how serious he was when he said that he preferred the ghost hypothesis for the third murder, and I wondered if he really believed such things. But it was difficult not to give in to the magician: the skill of each trick lay in its essential simplicity and the only explanation always seemed to be an impossible one. There was no interval and all too suddenly he announced his final trick.

  “You must have wondered,” he said, “why I have such a large glass of water when all I’ve taken is one small sip. There’s still enough water here for a fish to swim about in.” He brought out a red silk handkerchief and slowly wiped the glass. “Perhaps,” he said, “if we clean the glass well and imagine little coloured pebbles, perhaps, as in the cage in Prevert’s poem, we’ll catch a fish.” When he withdrew the handkerchief, there was a goldfish swimming around inside the glass and little coloured pebbles at the bottom.

  “As you know, we magicians have been cruelly persecuted through the ages, ever since the fire in which the Pythagorean magicians, our most ancient forefathers, perished. Yes, mathematics and magic have common
roots, and for a long time they guarded the same secret. We were most savagely persecuted after the struggle between Peter and Simon Magus, when the Christians officially banned magic. They feared that someone else might be able to multiply the loaves and fishes. It was then that magicians devised what remains today their survival strategy: they wrote manuals explaining the most obvious tricks and circulated them among the people, and they used silly boxes and mirrors in their shows. They gradually convinced everyone that there was a trick behind every act of magic. They became armchair magicians, indistinguishable from vulgar conjurors, and in that way were able to continue in secret, doing their own multiplying of loaves and fishes under their persecutors’ very noses.

  “Yes, the most subtle and enduring trick was to convince everyone that magic does not exist. I myself just used this handkerchief. But for true magicians, the handkerchief doesn’t conceal a trick, but a much more ancient secret. So remember,” he said with a mischievous smile, “always remember: magic does not exist.” He clicked his fingers and another goldfish jumped into the water. ‘Magic does not exist.’ He clicked his fingers again and a third fish jumped into the glass. He covered the glass with the handkerchief and, when he removed it, there remained neither pebbles nor fish nor glass. ‘Magic…does not exist’.”

  Twenty-Two

  We were in the Eagle and Child, and Seldom and Lorna were teasing me for taking so long to finish my beer.

  “It could not be drunk any slower…or perhaps it could,” said Lorna imitating the magician’s deep, slightly rasping voice.

  We had gone to see Lavand in his dressing room briefly after the show and Seldom had tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade him to come with us to the pub. “Ah yes, our young sceptic,” the magician had said absently when Seldom introduced me and then, when he found out I, like him, was Argentinian, he said in Spanish that sounded as if he hadn’t used it in a long time, “Magic is safe thanks to the sceptics.” He was very tired, he told us, reverting to English. He was making his shows shorter and shorter but he couldn’t fool his old bones. “We must talk again before I leave,” he said to Seldom at the door. “I hope you find something about what you asked me in the book I lent you.”

  “What did you ask the magician about? What book did he mean?” enquired Lorna confidently. The beer seemed to have a strange effect on her of recovered camaraderie, which I’d noticed in the way she smiled when she and Seldom clinked glasses, and I wondered again how far their friendship had gone.

  “I told him about the death of the percussionist,” said Seldom. “And I asked him about an idea that I considered at one point, when I remembered how Mrs Crafford died.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Lorna enthusiastically, “the case of the telepath.”

  “It was one of Inspector Petersen’s most famous cases,” said Seldom, addressing me. “The death of Mrs Crafford, a very wealthy old lady who ran the local spiritualist circle. The qualifying rounds of the World Chess Championship were being held here in Oxford at the time. A well-known Indian telepath was in town and Mr and Mrs Crafford held a soiree at their mansion to try an experiment in remote telepathy. The Craffords’ house was in Summer-town, close to where you live. The telepath was to be across town, at Folly Bridge. The distance was supposedly some sort of record. Mrs Crafford had gladly volunteered to be the first test subject. With great ceremony, the Indian telepath asked her to sit in the middle of the sitting room, placed a kind of skullcap on her head and left the house, heading for the bridge. At the appointed time, they turned out the lights. The cap was fluorescent and glowed in the dark, and the people in the audience could see a ghostly aura around Mrs Crafford’s face. After thirty seconds they suddenly heard a terrible scream, followed by a long sizzling sound like eggs frying. When Mr Crafford switched the lights back on they found the old lady dead in her chair, with her skull burnt, as if she’d been struck by lightning.

  “The poor telepath was arrested as a preventative measure, until he managed to explain that the cap was totally harmless, simply a piece of cloth covered in fluorescent paint designed purely for effect. The man was as baffled as everyone else: he’d performed his remote telepathy show in many countries, under all kinds of atmospheric conditions, and that day had been particularly clear and sunny. Inspector Petersen of course immediately turned his suspicions on Mr Crafford. It was common knowledge that he was having an affair with a much younger woman, but there seemed to be very little else to implicate him. And it was difficult to imagine how he could have done it. Petersen based his case against him on a single fact: that day Mrs Crafford had been wearing what she called her ‘dress wig’, which had wire mesh on the inside. Everyone had seen Mr Crafford kiss his wife affectionately just before the lights were turned out. Inspector Petersen claimed that at that moment Crafford had connected a wire to the wig to electrocute her, which he later removed when he pretended to go to her aid. It wasn’t impossible, but as was shown later at the trial, it would have been rather difficult.

  “Crafford’s lawyer, on the other hand, had a simple and, in its way, brilliant explanation. If you look at a map of the city, halfway between Folly Bridge and Summertown you find the Playhouse, where the chess championship was being held. At the time of Mrs Crafford’s death, around a hundred chess players were concentrating furiously on their chessboards. The defence maintained that the mental energy liberated by the telepath had suddenly been boosted by all the energy from the players as it passed through the theatre, hitting Summertown like a whirlwind. And that would explain how what was at first merely a harmless brain wave ended up striking Mrs Crafford like a bolt of lightning. Crafford’s trial divided Oxford into two camps. The defence called to the stand an army of mentalists and supposed experts on the paranormal who, predictably, backed up the lawyer’s theory with all kinds of ridiculous explanations, couched in the usual pseudo-scientific jargon. The odd thing was that the more crazy the theory, the more prepared the jury-and the entire town-seemed to be to believe it.

  “At that time I Was just starting my work on the aesthetics of reasoning and I was fascinated by the strength of conviction that an attractive idea could generate. True, one could argue that the jury was probably made up of people with no scientific training, people more apt to trust horoscopes, the I Ching and tarot cards than to doubt parapsychologists and telepaths. But the interesting thing is that the entire city embraced the idea and wanted to believe it, not due to an attack of irrationality but for supposedly scientific reasons. It was in a way a battle within the rational, and the theory of the chess players was simply more seductive, more clearly defined, more pregnant, as painters would say, than the theory of the wire mesh in the wig.

  “But then, just as everything seemed to be going Crafford’s way, the Oxford Times printed a letter from a reader, a certain Lorna Craig, a girl who was a huge fan of crime novels,” said Seldom, indicating Lorna with his glass. They smiled, as if sharing an old joke. “The letter simply pointed out that in an old edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine there was a story about a similar death by remote telepathy, the only difference being that the brain wave went through a football stadium during a penalty shot instead of through a room full of chess players. The funny thing was that in the story the theory of the brainstorm, now put forward by Crafford’s lawyer, was taken to be true and to be the solution to the mystery. But how fickle is human nature: as soon as people found out that Crafford might have copied the idea, they all turned against him. The lawyer tried to persuade the jury that Crafford wasn’t much of a reader and was unlikely to know the story, but it was no use. The idea, by dint of repetition, had lost some of its attraction and now sounded ridiculous, like something that only a writer could have thought up. The jury, a jury of fallible men, as Kant would say, found Crafford guilty even though no other proof against him had been found. Let us say this: the only piece of evidence presented during the entire trial was a fantastical story that poor Crafford had never even read.”

  “Poor Craffo
rd fried his wife!” exclaimed Lorna.

  “As you can see,” laughed Seldom, “some people were totally convinced of his guilt and didn’t need proof. Anyway, I remembered the case the night of the concert. If you recall, the percussionist suffocated just as the music reached the climax. Well, I asked Lavand about the kind of effects that can be created from a distance and he lent me a book on hypnotism. I haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

  A waitress came to take our order. Lorna said I should have fish and chips, and then got up to go to the ladies. Once Seldom had ordered and the waitress had left, I returned the envelope containing the photographs to him.

  “Were you able to remember anything?” he asked. When he saw my doubtful look, he said: “It’s difficult, isn’t it? Going back to the beginning as if one knew nothing. Emptying one’s mind of all that came afterwards. Did you see anything that you hadn’t noticed before?”

  “Only this: when we found Mrs Eagleton’s body, she didn’t have a blanket over her legs,” I said.

  Seldom leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin.

  “That…could be interesting,” he said. “Yes, now that you mention it, I remember clearly, she always had a tartan blanket over her legs. When she was going out, at least.”

  “Beth is sure that her grandmother still had the blanket when she came downstairs at two. The police searched the house for it later but couldn’t find it. Inspector Petersen didn’t mention any of this to us,” I said a little resentfully.

  “Well,” said Seldom, gently mocking, “he is the police inspector in charge of the case. Perhaps he doesn’t feel the need to report every single detail to us.”

  I laughed.

  “But we know more than he does,” I said.

  “Only in the sense that we’re familiar with Pythagoras’s theorem.”