She laughed. “No, it’s all bunkum. All illusions. My Harry loves to go to these spiritualists’ meetings, then show everyone what frauds they are. They’re really just illusionists like us, Miss Murphy. We’ve never come across a genuine one yet.”

I nodded agreement. “I can believe that. I once had to investigate the Sorensen Sisters. Have you come across them?”

“They’re good,” she said. “Even Harry had to admit they’re convincing. But he’s had great fun exposing some of the others.”

“I don’t suppose they took that well.”

She chuckled. “No, he’s made them mad all right.”

“I was going to ask you if you had any idea as to who might want to wish your husband harm. Certain spiritualists he has exposed should go on my list then. Who else?”

“Everyone worships him,” she said.

“You just said he has his rival illusionists.”

“No one can rival Harry,” she said. “He’s in a class by himself. Oh, he has his imitators right enough—men who call themselves ‘Boudini,’ or ‘Houdani,’ or ‘the Real Handcuff King.’ Harry’s taken on quite a few of them. He loves a good scrap.”

“Fought them, you mean?”

“No, set up a public challenge to do what he does. And on every single occasion they’ve been humiliated. Totally humiliated. He’s made a laughingstock of them.”

“I see. So one of them might well want to get even, don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” she said.

“But none of them has actually threatened your husband that you know of?”

“Not that I know of. Of course Harry doesn’t tell me everything. He doesn’t like to worry me.”

This was not going to be easy. If she was delicate and he babied her, there might be quite a lot he didn’t tell her, and was not likely to tell me either. And my first and biggest challenge would be persuading him to take a tall, healthy-looking Irish woman who had never been either dancer or contortionist as his assistant.

“Mrs. Houdini,” I said. “Are you sure you really want me onstage as Houdini’s assistant? Couldn’t I just watch as well from the wings?”

“Of course you could, but people would get suspicious, wouldn’t they? Most theater folk think it’s bad luck to have someone watching backstage.”

“But I could never learn the sort of things you do in such a short time.”

“Let’s face it, the crowd really comes to see Harry. What the assistant does is to distract the audience at the crucial moment. You could do that. And I’m sure we could teach you some of the mind reading too.”

“But I thought the show only ran for the rest of this week. That’s hardly enough time to train me to do anything.”