Mrs. Houdini(75)

Charles was stunned. “A second code? Do you know what this means, how many people would be dying to get their hands on that information?”

Bess nodded. “It was to be, Harry said, a safeguard of sorts. No one knew of its existence but us.” She handed him the postcard. “In the past week alone, I have found parts of this code in three photographs. All of which were taken by you.”

Charles looked at the card and nodded. “So where is the code in this one?”

Bess hesitated. Once she said it out loud, there would be no going back. There was no third code. If Charles broke her trust and sold her secret, Harry might never be able to come back to her. She would never know what had happened to him.

“There was a song I sang,” she said, running her hands over her wedding ring, “when I first met him. Not ‘Rosabel’—another song. He was barely Harry Houdini then. His name was Ehrich Weiss.” She hummed the tune for Charles.

I’ll take you home again, Kathleen

across the ocean wild and wide

to where your heart has ever been

since first you were my bonnie bride.

She gestured toward the door. “In the front pocket of my case, there, are the other two photographs.”

Charles rummaged through the case and retrieved the photographs. Bess motioned for him to sit beside her. “This one—this was the first I found.” She unfolded the magazine article about the Miss America pageant. “See here, how the billboard and the caption together read ‘Home Again Kathleen’? And this one. Your photograph of the yacht—I only had the billboard, so I had a smaller copy photographed to take with me—‘Home Again.’ And the postcard.” She pointed to the flowery script at the top of the card. “The ocean, wild and wide.”

Charles studied the pictures carefully. “I see the phrases from the song, yes. But—”

Gladys finished his question. “But don’t you think there’s still a chance this could be a coincidence? That you wanted to find evidence of the code so badly that you found a connection where there was none?”

Bess laughed. “A coincidence? That all these photographs were taken by a son I never knew existed?”

“True,” Gladys said. “But what do you hope to gain from this, in the end? Let’s say Harry is trying to communicate with you—”

“Which he is.”

“Yes. What do these photographs tell us, other than that he made it to the other side? Maybe the purpose was simply to bring you and Charles together. Maybe there’s nothing more to it than what you’ve already discovered—each other.”

“No. There’s more to it than we’ve seen so far. There’s a message hidden here.” Bess looked at Charles. “When he died, I think Harry intended to come back for me. Physically, I mean. If he could find a way.”

Charles ran his hands over the photographs. “So you’re saying that . . . what you hope to gain from all this—is that you think you will actually see him?”

Bess nodded. “Yes. Somehow, I will.”

“As in, he is reborn somehow?”

“No, no, nothing like that. But his whole body of work was so visual, you know? He built his life on the seen and unseen. And if he promised he would come back to me—well, I just don’t think he would be satisfied with ambiguity.”

“But then why hasn’t he just appeared to you, say, as a ghost?” Gladys persisted. “Or through a medium? Why all these clues?”

“Because Harry loved tricks. His whole life was an illusion. He lived his magic. Nothing was ever what it seemed.” Even their marriage, she couldn’t help thinking, was an illusion. He had kept secrets even from her.

Charles sat down beside her. “What’s next?”

“We have to look at your other photographs.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “It’s a big task,” he said, standing up. “Come into the study.”

Even though he said he hadn’t, Charles, it seemed, had saved a copy of every photograph he’d ever taken, from the time he was seven years old. There were thousands of pictures, haphazardly tossed in boxes stacked end to end across the study floor. The room was overwhelming. Gladys could not contribute; she sat, agitated, on the desk chair and asked one question after another about the progress they were making. Two hours later, they had come up with nothing. The daylight was dimming, and Charles stood to turn on the electric lights. Bess remained on the floor in the pool of photographs, forlorn.

In the fading sunlight she felt suddenly sentimental. She looked at the disorder around her, Charles eagerly sorting through every picture he had ever taken, because, as she did, he believed in the reality, or the myth, of Harry Houdini’s spirit.

“I treated you poorly, Charles,” she said, looking up at him. He stood above her and pushed his shirtsleeves up his forearms, as Harry used to do. It occurred to her for the first time that she could love this boy—not just in theory, but really, truly, love him. “I’m sorry I lost my temper with you before.”

Charles said, “If I ask you something, will you answer me honestly?”

“Of course.”

“If your husband had told you about me, would you have taken me in? Another woman’s child?”

“You would have been—” Bess stopped. Her voice broke. “You would have been my son. I would have loved you all along.”