I tiptoed out of the theater, feeling like an invisible ghost. I should make a rule for myself: never deal with hysterical women, I told myself. I remembered the last time I had been employed in the theater by an actress who had lied to me and was using me for her own ends. Was no one in the theater to be trusted? I had been misled and used on two occasions now. Which then brought another train of thought into my mind. Was what I had witnessed just another illusion? Had Bess arranged for the lock to jam so that she could have an attack of hysterics onstage and thus claim to her husband that she was afraid to perform anymore?

I realized I was dealing with a world in which nothing was what it seemed. The smartest thing I could do was walk out of this theater and not look back.

Nine

I was feeling both angry and relieved as I rode the trolley back home. I hated being used, and I was relieved that I was not the one almost suffocating in that trunk. Had Bess really had a premonition or was there information about a threat that she had kept from me? I had heard that theater folk were superstitious—so had Lily had a similar premonition when she climbed into that box to be sawn in half, I wondered. Then naturally I had to connect the two incidents. Bess had come to see me because she feared that someone was about to kill her husband. She had seemed genuinely worried. So was it possible that this was an attempt not on her life but on Harry’s? Perhaps the person who had rigged the lock on the trunk had expected it to be Harry’s coffin, not Bess’s. Any way you looked at it, someone had tried to kill two people in one week at the same theater and that was too much of a coincidence. I couldn’t walk away from this case until I knew more. My curiosity just wouldn’t let me.