Condemned to Repeat Read online

  I love mystery dinners. The aspect of having to listen carefully to each actor, who was salting his or her dialogue with hints or clues, then setting everything you had heard against what was on the clue board and coming up with a solution, has always appealed to me. I had treated Steve to one once, though, and he hated it. Although the steak dinner had been terrific, he had felt the entertainment to be more like work than play. Personally, I think it was because he guessed wrong and didn’t win. His defence was that, since they were actors, they all seemed to be lying to him.

  Marni didn’t think it was necessary for me to be at the rehearsal process for the actors, so I wasn’t altogether certain how the evening was going to progress. The only thing I knew for certain was that the victim was going to be played by Tanya Rivera, because she had to be across town at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre for an eight o’clock curtain. The concept was that Miriam Stewart, playing one of the magicians’ assistants, would lead people upstairs to the Rutherfords’ bedroom and discover Tanya’s body in the long walk-in closet. They would cover her in a sheet and lead people downstairs to wait for the “police detective,” who I was certain would be dressed in a trench coat and homburg.

  Once everyone was downstairs, I was to give Tanya the high sign and she would sneak down the maid’s staircase and out to the side driveway, where her car was parked. From there on in, photos that had been already posed and shot would be used on the clue board.

  In movies, time is often treated in a montage format, so that before you know it, days or hours have passed and all the people have arrived and put on running shoes, or built a barn, or got into the shape required to box for glory. While it never quite rings true to viewers, I swear sometimes it just happens in real life. Although I don’t recall hearing an Oscar-worthy song playing, between bringing in Stephen Dafoe’s plastic totes and being given the final pep talk as a group by Marni before the doors were opened on the evening’s event, time seemed to fly by in a blur. People arrived, props were placed where required, a bulletin board was set up in Mr. Rutherford’s study, and the dining tables were set and ready. Dafoe was organized to perform at the west end of the front parlour, to a standing audience. After his half-hour show, the patrons would disperse to their tables. Two actors would eat in the dining room, one at each table in the inner part of the tea room, and two more in the sunroom addition. Those places were marked reserved. The rest of the seats were up for grabs.

  Marni looked us all over. The actors playing erstwhile magicians and assistants were dressed in various combinations of tuxedos and fishnets and satin. Dafoe, in contrast, was wearing a loose corduroy suit, looking more like a junior high social studies teacher than a magician. The three of us assigned the tasks of keeping visitors out of restricted areas and away from artifacts were in the standard white shirt, dark skirt, and tights.

  The actors had all been introduced to us and seemed very nice. Tanya Rivera asked me to take her through the path she’d have to creep along in order to leave unobserved. As we walked up the stairs, she asked about my job, seeming genuinely interested. With her BBC English accent, almost anything she said sounded gracious, and I found myself describing the goals of the website historical project in more detail than I usually offered.

  “Of course, working on history is supposed to help us speak with the dead, but I don’t think they had this in mind. It’s fun, though, to participate in these sorts of events and I think they will likely attract more people to the history of the House as a byproduct than anything I might put up on the website.”

  “It’s true what Woody Allen said, isn’t it,” Tanya mused. “Ninety per cent of success is just showing up. Anything that makes people talk about Rutherford House, or brings people to it, is good news for Rutherford House in general.”

  “Right, so Marni’s special events concept is one I can really get behind. It’s just that I’m not too certain the board feels the same way. This evening may be the breaking point. At least we have a full house of participants. If everyone who is here tonight tells two people, and they tell two people…”

  “As I recall, this results in a screen-ful of people with shiny, flippy hair,” Tanya deadpanned, and I laughed.

  “Well, whatever it takes,” I said. “Here, madame, is your closet. Lovely and spacious and dark and creepy. Just what the director ordered.”

  “Eww, yes, well what do you expect when the director is your husband?” Tanya laughed. “Mark knows I hate enclosed spaces. Do you think we could keep the door ajar?”

  “I think, honestly, we would have to if we want anyone to even look in here. There are several doors that will be closed and locked to the public, so they could overlook it entirely if we don’t call attention to it. The only problem is that, from the way the house has settled over time, the door’s inclination is to swing shut.”

  “Hmmm, perhaps I should wedge one of my shoes in the jamb, keeping it from closing completely. And the sight of a jewelled satin slipper should be anachronistic enough in this room to bring the perspective this way.”

  “That sounds good to me. How soon after the dinner do you have to slip away up here? I can make sure there is no one on the stairs.”

  We plotted her retreat a bit more and settled on some hand signals to let me know when she’d be on the move from the dinner table and when she would have to lie doggo in order to be found by Miriam and the trailing crew.

  Once the play logistics were all satisfactorily organized to Marni’s specifications, I was sent back to help Stephen Dafoe as best I could. From what I could tell, he had everything under control, but he didn’t seem to be intent on shooing me away, so I hung around.

  He had set up a tripod table at the end of the room, centred so he could stand to either side or behind it. With Marni’s permission, he had drawn the west curtains. I guess it wouldn’t do to have some anthropology student from the Tory Building wandering over and peering through the window to steal a trick. To be generous, it might have had something to do with sun glare.

  Dafoe himself had changed from his corduroy outfit into tuxedo trousers and a swirling jacket that was almost a cape; it was fitted at the front, but swung from the shoulders into a wide back. The collar stood up, and shone with a satin finish. The reflection from the satin highlighted the arch to his eyebrows and made his eyes seem blacker. Perhaps it really was true that clothes made the man.

  He noticed me staring at him and smiled, which really didn’t do all that much to put me at ease. It was a carnival smile, half-amused, half-cruel. It was a smile that was looking for the next sucker.

  “Magic is what people want it to be, Randy. I may call you Randy?” I nodded, once again ruing the fact that my face was, as my boyfriend Steve would say, more transparent than glass. “If we hope to deliver illusions to the masses, we must dress the part, which is danger. No one trusts what they cannot explain, and what you cannot trust, you fear. Ergo, if we open the door to fear just a bit from the beginning, we have set the stage for the audience to buy into the whole experience.”

  “Maybe you could just get a rabbit with fangs,” I suggested, trying to lighten the mood. The chill in the room couldn’t entirely be the fault of the ancient boiler. Dafoe laughed, and with that the illusion disappeared. He once again seemed like the nice man whose rubber storage boxes I’d help schlep in a couple of hours ago. Almost done his preparations, he pointed out a few things. On a hat stand to the right was hung a wizard’s cape, a top hat, a furled umbrella, and a cane. To the left was a purple box on wheels with green and blue and gold question marks painted all over it. These, he said, contained his illusions. From the table in the centre, he would perform what he called “close magic,” which used cards and water.

  As he said “water,” he pulled a goldfish bowl, complete with placid orange fish, out from under his coat and set it on the table. Startled, I laughed and clapped, and Dafoe produced a short Prussian bow.

  “That was wonderful! Marni actually wanted to know if you nee
ded me for anything—to hand you things or make sure people are standing in a certain formation, that sort of thing.”

  “I’m not sure I brought along the sequined costume,” he began, and then laughed again at the horror of my reaction. “Relax, I was only joking. I appreciate the offer, but,” and he swirled his cape around for effect and turned his face once more into the devilish mask, “I work alone.”

  If that wasn’t a curtain line, I had never heard one. I did my best heel-clicking bow to him in return and left the room.

  3

  --

  I was on my way upstairs, where Roxanne had sent me to close off the door to Marni’s office and the adjacent door to the attic, where we kept all the extra artifacts and seasonal props like Canada Day bunting, to make sure no one went rummaging about in those rooms during the event, when I heard the front doorbell jingle. People had begun to arrive. I hurried down the stairs, carefully re-hooking the velvet rope stretched across from newel post to newel post, to help Jossie, the waitress, deal with the coats. We had a coat rack on wheels for the event, because we were pretty sure the Arbour closet wasn’t going to suffice. Earlier, I had helped stick the double tags of numbers on each hanger, and now we dutifully took jackets and raincoats, and handed the owner one of the tickets. Marni had told us that the service was free, but that if we were to set out one of Mrs. Rutherford’s pretty cut-glass bowls near the closet, we might receive some tips by the end of the evening. I noticed Jossie had found a suitable bowl and even primed the well by setting two coy twoonies and a loonie at the bottom. She winked at me, and we continued to work until it seemed like the entire house was full, and the coat closet smelled of a damp flock of sheep in a soggy forest. It had started to rain while we were setting up, and I hadn’t noticed, really, until the first sodden visitors had begun to arrive.

  This sort of weather wasn’t enough to dampen Edmontonian spirits, though, and none of us had worried that it might keep people from coming to the event. After all, it had been such a mild autumn so far. A little rain was nothing to people who lined up in -20°C weather on Boxing Day to get door-crasher specials from The Brick. Edmontonians kept shovels and Kitty Litter for added traction in the trunks of their cars throughout the winter, along with survival kits in case they got stuck. In the last couple of winters, record lows had been broken (along with record highs—the weather really was unpredictable) and there had been no discernible exodus from our fair city.

  When I had been studying for my MA, I attended a conference on Canadian literature. I recalled some phlegmatic undergrad asking the panel why it seemed like all Canadian novels had such a focus on the environment. I think it had been Professor Dick Harrison who had drily replied, “Canadians respect the weather because here the weather can kill you.” It was true, but like any adversary, if you had a healthy respect for it, and made preparations with it in mind, you could live a pretty pleasant life.

  More umbrellas were arriving than usual. In fact, I had noticed recently that more Edmontonians were using traditional umbrellas. Maybe we were experiencing more constant rain, or maybe they were tired of replacing cheaper collapsibles that stripped themselves backwards in an up-gust of wind. Jossie offered to run upstairs and grab another umbrella stand while I stayed on duty for more outer gear. You know you’re working in a historic building when you have access to more than one umbrella stand. I was just hoping she wasn’t going to come downstairs with an ancient elephant’s foot. I’d seen one of those at the Victoria and Albert Museum once and didn’t want a replay.

  I needn’t have worried. I doubt Premier Rutherford would have allowed such an unenlightened object into his house. He had been a forward-thinking visionary of a man, perhaps not as effective a political animal as some might have wished for, but a decent man with such wonderful ideas that few could stand in his way. There was a story of him luring Henry Marshall Tory from the east to what was then a huge meadow along the side of the North Saskatchewan River and saying, “I want to build a great university here and I want you to run it.” Rutherford was not an easy man to say no to, and Tory became the first president of the University of Alberta, with the only truly “ivory” tower on campus named after him.

  The large bamboo basket, which Jossie had finally returned with, soon filled up as well, but just as we were considering using a cauldron from the kitchen, a bell rang in the front staircase area, and we realized that the evening had begun. Sure enough, as we filled in behind the rear of the crowd, Marni was standing on the stairs, where so many speeches had been made, explaining the logistics of the evening to eager, upturned faces. Everyone seemed prepared to have a lovely time, except perhaps for the short, old woman glowering by the entrance to the study. Her squatness was made even more obvious in contrast to the tall elegance of the two men near her, one university-aged and the other an older gentleman. I wondered briefly if she could be one of the actors, already in character, but although both she and the older man looked familiar, I knew she hadn’t been milling about earlier in the afternoon. She was a guest, not a helper. I made a note to myself to ask Marni if she knew who it was. Maybe she wasn’t actually annoyed with anything, either; she could be a person whose face actually had frozen the way our mothers warned us about when we pulled ugly looks at them. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I squeezed around the crowd to situate myself at the inside edge of the parlour door, telling myself it would behoove me to be able to retreat easily when having to go help Tanya, but knowing it was just a matter of my really wanting to be able to observe Dafoe da Fantabulist’s act, which Marni was about to usher the crowd in to behold.

  The magician was nowhere to be seen, but since I’d entered the room, he had erected a screen, made of a shimmering black curtain, which covered the back wall. People began to stream into the parlour, but in an orderly fashion, with no one moving forward past the glittering golden rope that had been placed straight across the floor in front of the magician’s area. As the room began to fill, we became aware of a soundscape that had started so softly, I doubt any of us could say when it had actually begun. Almost familiar orchestral music, which toyed with recognizable themes but veered away just as you were about to name the piece, started to swell; and, just as magically, the chattering in the crowd fell silent.

  Cymbals crashed in the music, and the shimmering curtain shuddered and suddenly there stood Dafoe, looking even more diabolical than I had noticed before, due to a cleverly positioned low light from somewhere near his tiny table, which made his eye sockets deepen and his cheeks cadaverous. I heard a couple of people gasp in surprise, and I knew that this was going to be a great magic show.

  As the fish he’d magicked for me earlier swam about in his little glass world, Dafoe made decks of cards fly about, fanning them to show each and every number and suit, and then re-fanning them so that they were all the queen of spades. He pulled eggs out of the ears of people closest to him, broke them into the fish bowl, produced a wand to stir up the mess, and covered the bowl with a silk cloth. Tapping the bowl three times, he pulled away the cloth and displayed a small cage holding a happy little hamster running on a wheel. Before anyone started worrying about the fish that had been swimming with albumen a short time earlier, Dafoe excused himself, coughed politely and removed the fish from his mouth, then placed it in a sparklingly fresh bowl of water. People were applauding wildly before he even approached what he had told me were his actual illusions. He moved toward the hat stand and, taking the top hat, he pulled out a placid rabbit, two more hamsters, and a budgie, who politely sat on a tiny perch I had not previously noticed, built onto the top of the hat stand. Pushing the hamsters into separate cages and holding the rabbit under his arm, its long legs dangling as if it was a stuffed animal inured to being hauled up the stairs to bed, Dafoe continued to pull things out of the hat, only this time they belonged to people in the room. A pink, sequined cellphone was snatched back by a woman in the front. A wristwatch was dangled before a man who had to check his wrist to p
rove to himself it was actually gone. Keys were claimed by a young Asian man, who blushed for no reason I could think of, unless it was just the embarrassment of being singled out. When Dafoe pulled out a bra covered in Day-Glo green shamrocks, though, everyone laughed and no one stepped up to admit it was theirs. Feigning puzzlement, he stuffed it back in the hat and retrieved a bouquet of pussy willows, which he presented to an older woman with a sly wink, as if to say it was a fair trade for the lingerie she wouldn’t own up to. More applause ensued.

  Donning the swirling, long cape, Dafoe moved the tiny table behind the curtain and pulled the question-marked box on wheels to the centre of his stage. Turning it around and around, he demonstrated its construction. It had a latch at the top, which held up a side of the box. When undone, the side came down to show an empty box within, painted a dull black. Into this box, Dafoe placed the top hat. He re-latched the side, turned the box around twice, tapped it with his wand, and opened it up to show the hat had disappeared. He continued to do this with all the props—the hamster cages, one by one, the fish bowl, the tiny table, which folded as you lifted it up, and eventually, even the lop-eared bunny that had been draped over his left arm the entire time. Dafoe then removed his long cape, folded it into a compact square, and placed it into the box, disappearing it. Standing now on a stage containing only the hat stand with the budgie and the umbrella and the mysterious box, Dafoe silently took the umbrella off the stand, led the budgie with his finger onto his shoulder, bowed his clipped little half-forward bow, opened the umbrella towards the audience, setting off a poof of smoke, …and disappeared.