“I see,” I said. “Well, I assure you that I am not working for anybody. The first time I came to this theater was with my young man and we witnessed that horrible scene with Scarpelli. My intended went onstage immediately after the tragedy happened to see if he could help. I went with him. Bess Houdini saw all the blood and had hysterics. I took her away and calmed her down and she became instantly attached to me. She came to my house to thank me and invited me to come and watch the show. That’s the whole truth.”

Ted stared at me again, then nodded. “Maybe it is, and then again maybe it isn’t. I’ve always found that women make the best liars.”

“So you’re not going to give me the Houdinis’ address?” I asked. He was now beginning to annoy me—partly because he could see through me, I suppose. “I just thought it would be the friendly thing to do to go and check on Bess, seeing that I was there as her guest last night and I was supposed to be meeting her for lunch today, an appointment which she obviously won’t be well enough to keep.”

This last was a lie, of course, that came to me in a flash of inspiration.

“They’ve taken a house up in Harlem, from what I hear,” he said, “but as to the address, you’d have to ask Mr. Irving, and like I say, he’s in no mood to talk nice to anybody today.” He turned away, then looked back at me. “Your best bet would be to come back to the theater tonight. Houdini will be doing his act whether his wife is fit to join him or not.”

This made sense, but it was Bess I wanted to see and I had seen how protective Houdini was of her. She was now my client, as far as I was concerned. She had hired me to do a job and from what I had seen last night, that job had become all the more urgent.

“Why don’t you write her a note and I’ll make sure that one of them gets it,” Ted said, seeing my frustration.

“That’s not going to be any use for my luncheon appointment today, is it?” I said. “Still, I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

He handed me paper and a pencil and I wrote, “So sorry about what happened last night. If you’d like to talk about it, you know where I live. Yours fondly, Molly.” I suspected that Ted would snoop and read it so I left it at that.