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struggled to the task of seeing what she saw.
    In pushing the chair she had caused it to stop moving when it was reversed. (Or had it been reversed when none of us was looking?)
    A puff of gray-white smoke was rising from the chair now.
    Cassandra jerked away from Harry, looking stricken; that’s the word.
    Noting her expression and the fixed direction of her gaze, he, too, looked toward the chair. (That made three of us.) They stared at it in choked silence.
    At last the chair turned slowly to reveal the final principal in the murderous drama about to unfold.
    My son, Maximilian Delacorte.

chapter 5
    Max was still a very handsome man. His hair, though streaked with gray, was full and dark. His Vandyke beard set off the perfect cut of his features. Like me, he was tall and well-proportioned, his presence something to behold. (As in all modesty I say it—mine was too.)
    He wore a wine-red smoking jacket over his white shirt and four-in-hand tie. Around his neck hung a gold chain with a pair of glasses dangling from it. In the fingers of his left hand, he held the thin cigar he was smoking.
    He blew out smoke and smiled at them. “Good afternoon,” he said. His tone was mild.
He must not have heard them plotting
, I thought. He sounded too benign.
    Cassandra and Harry could only stare (perhaps
gape
is the word) at him, so caught off guard were they. Like myself, they were clearly wondering how long he’d been sitting there and what he’d heard. Unlike me, they were (I hope) ridden with guilt and dreading that he’d heard it all.
    Max looked across the room at me and signaled, smiling. “And good afternoon to you,
Padre,”
he said.
    How I wished I could return his smile and signal. Lord above, how I wished I could blow the whistle on those two; those three if I included Brian with his most suspicious facsimile of Cassandra.
    It now became apparent that Harry, at least, was wondering more than whether Max had heard his plot or no.
    He was also wondering where in God’s name Max had come from in the first place. The chair had been empty, and it stood behind the desk with no proximity to any wall Max might have popped from.
    It then became evident that Cassandra was wondering the same thing.
    Unlike Harry, however, she meant to use the puzzle as a means to—hopefully—gloss over what Max might have heard of their conversation—or, for that matter, seen of their physical adhesion.
    She pointed at the chair. “When did you build
that?”
she asked, her tone indicating a chiding amusement she could not possibly have been experiencing.
    Max smiled pleasantly. “When you were in Bermuda,” he said. (Would I ever forget those three lovely weeks of her absence?)
    “Well, you really caught us by surprise,” she said, trying to retain that gloss of amusement in her voice.
    “Did
I?” Max sounded almost childlike in his gratification at having succeeded with the illusion. I knew the feeling of course, but I wished that he didn’t feel it at that particular moment.
    Cassandra made a sound of amusement again. “You’ve been saving that for the perfect moment, haven’t you?” she accused.
    “You like it?” he asked.
    “Do I like it?”
she responded scoldingly. “You know very well I like it. It’s a wonderful effect.”
    He smiled and nodded, gratified again. “It
is,”
he agreed.
    Harry began to speak in an attempt to parallel Cassandra’s pose that nothing was amiss. But Cassandra spoke first. “You came in through there,” she said, pointing to the floor beneath the chair.
    Max nodded. “Trap door—indistinguishable, of course.”
    “It’s marvelous,” she told him.
    Harry broke his silence with a burst of (excessive) enthusiasm. “Marvelous?” he cried. “It’s
dynamite!
Hey, Max!”
    He moved behind the desk, where Max stood to greet him. Was I the only one to note how labored Max’s movements were? No, at least one other person noted it as well.
    Max took Harry’s thrust-out hand in both of