“Well, I overheard your husband speaking with such a man. They said something about it being ‘serious stuff’ and the other man said, ‘You can’t be too careful’ and that your husband should ‘hurry up and hand it over.’ ”

“Interesting,” Daniel said. “Did you pick up any ideas about what ‘it’ was?”

“Not at all,” I said. “And when I asked Mr. Houdini about it he said that everything would be taken care of the next day—that would have been today. So it seems that he had something that someone else wanted, and what happened last night prevented him from delivering it.”

“Or he didn’t want to hand it over, killed the messenger who came to collect it, and quietly disappeared,” Daniel said.

“No!” Bess said vehemently. “I keep telling everyone that Harry would never kill. Well, maybe to protect his mother or me, but not for any other reason.”

There. She had admitted that he was capable of killing. I really didn’t know what to believe. I knew how strong he was and thought how easily he could overpower another man, especially a man like the one in the trunk who was slight of build. Houdini had said everything would be taken care of by tomorrow. So had he been planning this all along—rigging the trunk so that the accident happened to Bess and thus making himself a more likely victim in a second accident? I thought about the first accident. Why hadn’t the key been in his pocket as usual that first night? Why had someone had to run to his dressing room for it, and . . . most damning of all, why did the King of Handcuffs, the man who could open any lock in the world, have to wait for an ax to release his imprisoned wife?

“When you feel strong enough, Mrs. Houdini,” Daniel continued in the front seat, “I’d like you to jot down a complete list of the people you know in New York and your recollections of what you have done since you arrived back in the States. We have to find out 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.”