Murder through the Mirror by L. B. Hathaway

Author:L. B. Hathaway [Hathaway, L. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Whitehaven Man Press
Published: 2023-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The woman crumpled then, and admitted it.

Minnie was the devil in the mirror, and she tried her best to draw on the back of the coaster how the ingenious trick worked.

While Onneri stood in front of a completely normal mirror on the stage below, with his back to the audience, she stood on a platform directly above him. Right above him.

The platform was hidden by the top of the curtains.

She faced the stage on her high-up platform, wearing an identical suit to the magician himself, but with a horned skull strapped over her head.

Minnie stood in front of an identical mirror to the one on stage below, but it was positioned at a very particular angle, with its top part nearer her head than the bottom part, and it was held like that by special transparent cords.

Bright flash-lights surrounded her to illuminate the scene.

And in the space in front of her, right under her mirror, cut into the platform, was a large square dangerous hole.

At a given agreed moment Onneri’s mirror below was also pulled by transparent strings so that it, too, moved backwards into the identical slanted angle to Minnie’s mirror above, but imperceptibly to the audience members.

The two mirrors were both now lined up directly in line with each other, at the same angles, ready to receive each other’s reflections.

And as soon as the ‘slanting’ of Onneri’s mirror was done, Onneri and Minnie began to coordinate their moves, in tandem. Onneri would reach out to touch the mirror, so would Minnie. He would step back in disbelief, so would she.

‘I dunno how he did it,’ said Minnie. ‘It was right proper magic. Apparently, I appeared in the mirror down on the stage, just as I was, in front of him. With that stinky sheep’s mask on. I could also see him, up on the platform with me, in my mirror! It was creepy, clever. And that’s what he wanted to keep a secret!’

Minnie exhaled in disbelief. ‘It was blimmin’ dangerous work though. He told me if I lost concentration and fell down the hole which had been cut in front of me up on that platform, I’d be dead on the floorboards below, and if I didn’t break my neck fallin’, he’d break it for me as I’d have ruined his best ever trick.’

‘What a truly lovely fella,’ said Lovelace. But he was staring at the coaster with a look of genuine admiration.

‘I’ll show this to the Forensics team; perhaps it may help them understand what was going on, or how Onneri died. It’s ingenious, though, I’ll give him that. He perhaps was a true genius? A rival for the best of magicians. It’s so simple, yet so clever: like a child’s giant periscope. Designed for the stage!’

Posie watched as Minnie Wheeler and Miss Peterson were led off to a taxi outside by a bobby, both obviously keen to get back to the luxury of the Ritz, not knowing how long the arrangement would last, and she watched their retreating backs disappear into the swirling snow.

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