“This is where August Schmidt keeps his tools,” Homer Timm told us. “This is his space.”
“Is he back at work?” Caleb asked.
The principal shook his head. “No, he’s too frightened to return. And we can’t allow it. The students would be alarmed.”
That was news to me. I imagined the timid German at home, awaiting arrest for murder. Worse, this storeroom yawned before us, one man’s domain, and its contents seemed to suggest guilt.
Caleb Stone peered into the room. “Who goes in here beside Mr. Schmidt?”
“No one.” From Homer Timm.
But I interrupted. “Well, students rehearsing our plays would sometimes run up for hammers…”
Mr. McCaslin added, “And, you know, nails and…” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Show me how the panel works,” Caleb Stone demanded.
All of us pushed closer, peering. Houdini walked up the stairs and into the janitor’s storeroom, and I moved next to him. “There really is nothing hidden here,” he pointed out. “Look.” He showed us a panel built into a wall. “It looks like one of the series of panels that make up the back wall. Very basic. With a simple latch to close it. Another storeroom. Whoever built it probably figured there might be a need for moving from one space to the other. A place to put unused furniture.” I noticed that a small table was set against the panel, covering part of it. Closed and latched, the panel became part of the wall. Examining it, I realized it was easy to not see the latch. Would August Schmidt have known this? Houdini undid the latch, and suddenly there was the other secret room. I stepped closer to examine it, then I backed out as others moved up the steps to look. I stood on the small landing that led out of the janitor’s room and down to the auditorium. If I craned my neck, I could glimpse the back of the stage. From the landing I spotted the work smocks and caps hanging on hooks, aprons lying on a table, even boots placed along the wall-all the possessions of August Schmidt.
Caleb Stone and Amos Moss nodded at each other. I sensed what they were thinking-Here it is. It has to be August Schmidt. That unassuming man, that sad soul who played his role well, masking his true murderous intent, a man who hatched some nefarious plot, discovering the unused storeroom, opening that latched panel. Somehow, he seduced the innocent Frana, confusing her, enticing her, promising wonders.
That struck me as nonsense. Wouldn’t someone have seen him? Who knew there’d be no one watching? But these men wanted to believe Frana planned an escape, slipping into that room at two o’clock to meet an anxious Schmidt, the two running out the back into the woods, laughing as they escaped.
The scenario was impossible. Someone waited for Frana. But not the meek Schmidt. What life in New York could he offer her? Absurd! No Sherman House drummer was familiar with the school building. But it could be anyone in town, some old-timer who knew the school, maybe even a former student or teacher who long ago discovered the locked storeroom when visiting the janitor’s room for a pail or a broom, and, years later, now an “older” man, suddenly found a use for such information.
I turned to Houdini, who was now standing apart from the others. He looked tired, drawn; these exercises carried a heavy toll for the man. Concentration and imagination, indeed.
“Thank you,” I said. He was waiting for someone to acknowledge him.
Caleb Stone gave his thanks, and Houdini bowed. He turned to go. “My work here is done.” He smiled at me. “This was not really an escape, Miss Ferber. This was just a discovery I made. You could have done this. This is just a door in a wall. A panel. That’s all. No one bothered to look.”
Chief Stone interrupted, sheepish. “It was common sense, really. But it never occurred to me. We never came back to look.” He scratched his head. “I’m feeling a little foolish.”
Houdini interrupted him. “Why should you think that way?”
“Well, it was right in front of our eyes.” The chief’s head twisted around. “For Heaven’s sake, a storeroom door. I never thought…”
“No, it wasn’t.” Houdini was kind. “There was no latch visible from the inside, sir. You see, I’m always looking for means to escape. That’s the way my mind works.”
“But, my God, a doorway…”
Quietly Houdini assured him, “Once you’d reexamined the room, you’d have found it. Surely.”
The chief started to say something, but Houdini held up his hand. “It’s just that I got here first. And, you know, I do like to put on a show.”
“But…”
“No trickery, really. You didn’t need the great Houdini for this. You needed to open your eyes.”
I shook my head. “What was obvious was obviously not obvious.”
Boon frowned at me.
Houdini’s look took us all in. “Isn’t it strange, then? With all my elaborate escapes and tricks and illusions, I find a door in a wall…and, well…you may remember this one day as my finest performance.”
Chapter Thirteen
I headed home from the Crescent office late in the afternoon to take my father for his walk. I passed in front of the fountain near City Park, where Hosea Thigpen or Mad Otto was declaring perdition and wrongdoing and the wages of unrepented sin. No one was around to hear him and I doubted whether he knew I was there. Usually I paid him little mind, but today I paused and watched him gesturing and posturing, eyes wide and teary. I wondered what drove a man to become so monomaniacal, so maddened, so removed from reason and common sense?
A man like Houdini practiced deliberation, logic, order, discipline…and a spirit of freewheeling fancy. His geography was always the world out there. Somehow Houdini had realized that life was magic-not just the pyrotechnics he enacted on stage but the wonder of his days. He saw everything as adventure, as thrill. Though he dressed like an out-of-town drummer, when he moved through the streets he became an explorer searching for uncharted continents.
Appleton was filled with vagrant souls whom no one bothered-Mad Otto the Prophet, Minnie the Hatrack, Isaac Solid who drove hay wagons up College Avenue and hurled lumps of horse manure at fleeing matrons. Mary McGregor wandered the lanes with a bundle of toys wrapped in a blanket hugged to her chest as she told passersby of her new-born infant; Barry Knott, one hundred years old, fell asleep in the outhouse every day. They wandered and no one thought ill of them. People here assumed goodness in others, even among the lunatics. No one locked their doors at night because they believed no one would ever think to rob them.
Until now, that is.
Until now.
Frana Lempke’s murder had altered the comfortable landscape. The Ferber household was never locked, nor were our neighbors’ homes. As I walked along busy College Avenue, I noticed something new in town. A well-dressed businessman checked his gold watch, a woman shopping in Voight’s filled baskets with tonic and hairpins, an East End society matron picked over notions for whist prizes at My Store, children pumped hoops across the wooden sidewalks or played leap frog in the park-they had all become worriers now. They started when you approached quickly from behind. They watched you. Or was I just imagining it? Who do you trust when that golden bowl has just been shattered?
In my talks with folks, I sensed panic. Would this murder plague the town, unsolved, throughout the summer? Merchants worried, and I’d overheard one fussy shopkeeper berating Caleb Stone, demanding the murder be solved by the Fourth of July. Appleton’s huge patriotic celebration, barges and fireworks on the Fox River, was in jeopardy. Hordes of out-of-towners crowded the avenues, spending their money, and the specter of heinous murder might prove a damper on the festivities.