Modern Flash Fiction

Madame Toussaint shuffled the cards with the images toward her, turning some to align the tops. Her wrinkled hands matched the creases in the cards, the lines telling as many stories as the faces and veins. She placed the tarot deck face down, then blew out the only candle. After chanting a few words, during which she swapped the deck with one in her lap, Madame Toussaint snapped a match against a flint and relit the candle. She cut the deck, flipping over the top half to show The Magician.

Sir Arthur watched this routine carefully, looking for any flaws his scientific prowess could detect. He thought it properly lacked haste. He was sure Harry wouldn’t waste time giving the procedure a second thought, perhaps too caught up in his skepticism to pay attention this early in the process.

“Do you think he might wonder why you snuff out the candle, only to relight it?” was his only query. It needed to have meaning, even if it didn’t.

“I can explain that away in all sorts of manners. Shall I exhibit a few for you?”

He declined. “Do whatever feels right in the moment,” he allowed. Harry probably wouldn’t stop her, and he might well forget to ask later if he gets caught up in trying to explain away myriad other aspects of the evening’s event.

It’s been said Madame Toussaint studied at the Sorbonne, although no one knows what. She herself had said she grew up in New Orleans, the daughter of Creole slaves, but she couldn’t tell you how a beignet tasted. A poster in her living quarters notes her as a featured performer in the Barnum & Bailey traveling circus, which one assumes was how she ended up in London, but her talent then was escapologist, not talking to the dead. But this previous life, this previous mischief, might serve her well tonight.

She fanned out the cards, showing The Magician on all of them.

“Much easier to do it this way than to spend too much time with patter to get him to select the card we need him to choose. Wouldn’t you agree?”

She nodded, then scooped the cards into a pile, tapping them into place to neaten their appearance. She told Sir Arthur it cost her a pretty shilling to not only get a full deck of the same card but to have them look like they were as crimped and tattered as her own deck. She returned the stack to her lap, bringing up the full deck and scattering them on the table, flipping a few over to complete the disheveled look.

Madame Toussaint reached under the table and pulled three brass keys from a small ledge attached to the underside. She placed these on the table.

“He might be able to detect that one of these is a little lighter than the other two, but if he doesn’t, then you’ll know which key to pick. Of course, if he lets you choose first, it doesn’t matter,” she said, letting him compare the weights to see if he could deduce which was lighter. He succeeded immediately.

As she placed the keys back on the ledge, the front bell rang. Medina, the maid, opened the door and allowed the aloof couple to enter.

“Madame Toussaint, may I please introduce you to Bess and Harry?” said Sir Arthur, not allowing Medina to spoil any of his fun.

“I see you’ve already allowed Dr. Doyle to soil the atmosphere, but I’ll forgive you if the evening proves as entertaining as I imagine,” said Harry.

“I could say the same of you,” said Sir Arthur. “But what kind of night could we have without your presence, Mr. Houdini?”

Christopher Stolle is a book editor, baseball enthusiast, music aficionado, trivia guru, and, occasionally, writer. His writing has been published by Indiana University Press, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Coaches Choice, Roe River Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Flying Island, among many others. He lives in Richmond, Indiana.