The Illusion of Murder (13 page)

The grip on me is relaxed again and hands go behind my shoulders and give me a shove, forcing me forward against the reed fence, and I scream as the fence parts like feathers against my weight and my whole body pours through as I plunge into the abyss.

I hit bottom, the wind exploding out of my lungs as a burst of light in my head leaves my mind dark.

14

I lie sprawled out, not moving and with a strange sense in my head that I’m still falling down a bottomless pit. As I reach out to break my fall I realize that my hands are already on solid ground, as is my whole body. I’ve landed on a layer of sand covering the rubble pile created by the cave-in. The fine grains of sand feel soft and cool when I grasp it through my fingers and push back with my feet in a weak attempt to move. I feel more sand with hard objects beneath.

Struggling to get up, I raise dust and such, clogging my windpipe, polluting my lungs, and I start choking, unable to keep the cloud of particles that’s floating in the air from getting in my nose and mouth and eyes. I clamp my teeth together to try and filter the air between them, making it a little easier to breathe in the stifling atmosphere.

Looking up at the opening above lit by moonlight, I sway dizzily, and I have to balance myself to stay upright in order to keep from falling. The opening is much too far away to reach, even standing on the debris.

A torch that must have fallen with me is lying on the ground. It puts out little light, leaving the area around me lost mostly in dark shadows. I have to keep it going.

Taking a step I feel something move under my foot and I look down and freeze in place.

I’ve stepped on a snake.

It slips out from under my foot and I frantically put my foot back down on it, pressing down just behind its neck.

It thrashes, whipping its body back to hit the side of my leg. I feel it slipping out from under my foot again and I follow it with my foot, pressing harder, trying to keep the toe of my shoe close to its head so it can’t bite me.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t move, can’t reach the torch, can’t even bend down to grab a rock. Fright chills my blood. I feel faint and sense a loss of feeling in the foot holding down the snake.

*   *   *

“S
HE JUST WANDERED AWAY FROM THE TABLE
,” Lady Warton tells Lord Warton, Von Reich, and Fouad, the sheikh’s majordomo.

Frederick Selous joins the group in time to hear the statement. “What direction did Miss Bly go?” he asks.

Lady Warton waves vaguely toward the back of the pavilion. “I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Has anyone checked to see if she’s returned to the launch?” Selous asks.

All the guests but the group from the
Victoria
had left the pavilion, most of them returning to their steam launches.

“Yes,” the majordomo says, “I sent a servant to check. She has not been there. No one remembers seeing her anywhere on the grounds. I’m told she spoke earlier to the site’s caretaker. I have sent a man to his house to discover whether she told him anything that would provide a clue as to her whereabouts.”

Lord Warton snorts. “Frankly, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if the young woman was left behind when the ship sailed.”

“She’s on a race—” Von Reich starts.

“The race be damned. She’s been nothing but a nuisance, starting rumors about what happened in the marketplace.”

Frederick Selous gives Lord Warton a restrained smile. “I think our first concern should be her safety.”

“Of course,” Lady Warton says, “that goes without saying, though I share your sentiments about her,” she tells her husband. “It’s just like the foolish young woman to wander off when our boat is ready to take us back to Port Said.”

“What efforts are being made to find Miss Bly?” Selous asks the majordomo.

“I’ve sent servants to scour the area. The problem besides the darkness is that there are so many perils. Thieves have dug many holes in search of treasure, sometimes reaching burial chambers.”

“Are the openings marked?” Selous asks.

“Only a few are fenced because one cannot keep up with the work of those who lust for the treasures of the pharaohs. There have been hundreds of pits dug over time. Thieves will often cover the opening to their holes so they’re not obvious.”

“The thieves work at night?” Von Reich asks.

“Yes.”

“So Miss Bly could have run into these tomb raiders?”

“Anything is possible,” the majordomo says. “She could have simply wandered away from camp and lost her way back. And there are more dangers in the night than ones who walk on two feet. There are packs of lions and jackals—”

“Human jackals, too, I imagine,” Selous says. “How much Mahdi activity is there in the area?”

“The fanatics are found everywhere in Egypt where there is sand,” the majordomo says.

Selous nods at a large group of guards who don’t appear to have any tasks except to stand around and talk and smoke.

“You say servants have been sent out to look for the young woman. Can you have guards join the search?”

The majordomo smiles with false sympathy. “I regret that His Highness has more servants to spare than guards.”

*   *   *

I
T
’
S GONE
.

Dear God, the snake has slipped out from under my foot.

I don’t move an inch, but I’m shaking so badly I’m sure the snake will interpret it as movement.

Looking in front, in back, all around, I don’t see it. It’s slipped away into the darkness. It could be coiled and ready to strike the moment I move, but I can’t stand in place. The torch is fading, the shadows thicker. I have to get to the torch and use it to find a door or I’ll be entombed with the snake and whatever else is lurking about.

I’m sure I saw something move at the sarcophagus a moment ago. I don’t want to even think about what could be in the stone coffin or anywhere else in this chamber with morbid images from the
Egyptian Book of the Dead
on its walls and pillars.

Letting out a sob, I go for the torch, sure that I’ll feel the snake’s fangs biting into me before I reach it. I grab it off the ground and wave it to keep the flame going. It’s just a bunch of sticks tied together and dipped in pitch. The light it casts is hardly more than a kitchen match, but it’s all I have.

Raising it up, I can make out the opening above that I’d fallen through. Much too high for me to reach.

Most of the chamber is lost to me in shadows and darkness, with a slight edge taken off a pitch-black area in the direction of the stairwell I’d seen from the outside.

It makes sense that the chamber I’m standing in is accessed by the stairway and that what I see across from me is a small doorway. I don’t rush for it because I can’t see well enough to know if there’s a big pit between me and the door—not to mention that whoever pushed me in might just be waiting there to finish me off. And finish his search, too. The man wasn’t feeling my body out of lust—he was searching for the key, I’m sure of it.

I don’t see or hear anything that tells me anyone is up there at the opening. I have no idea where my companions are or the caretaker, for that matter, and don’t know if one of them might even have given me the shove, but I had to try and let someone know I’m in harm’s way.

“Help! Help!”
I yell up.
“I’m down here! I need help!”

No one is coming, I know that, but I yell out of desperation anyway. The thought that I may never make it out scares me, but I can’t let it control me.
Take a step,
I tell myself,
one step at a time, just keep moving, never give up, never stop fighting back.

There must be a way out the door that I think leads to the stairway. I don’t know what or who is on the other side of it, but if it’s someone who is coming down to finish the job, I am already trapped, so I must drive myself forward and meet my enemy head on rather than have him jump on my back.

Moving toward the door takes me out of the light that comes from the opening above and I step slowly, cautiously, praying the snake has returned to its hole.

My foot hits something that feels like wood. Squatting down to get a closer look I make out the shape of a ladder covered by sand, at least it seems to be a ladder of branches tied together by twine. Not at all what an archaeologist would use, the rickety-looking thing doesn’t feel very sturdy and most likely was made by locals who come down and hunt for artifacts.

I don’t dare use it to go up the opening because whoever shoved me in might still be up there, so I keep moving in the darkness toward what I believe is a door and stairway. Until I hear the tumble of rocks breaking loose.

Is someone coming down the stairway to finish the job?

Backing away, I nearly fall when my foot hits the ladder again. Grabbing one end, I pull it up, completely out of the sand. It’s surprisingly heavy and awkward but my adrenaline is pumping. I start raising it, trying to keep my footing as I push up, one rung at a time, getting it higher and higher until I lift it into position in the opening above. It reaches through the hole just far enough to keep the frame upright.

Starting up the crude steps, rocks and dirt rain down on me as the ladder breaks loose some of the debris at the top. The ladder is so rickety, I can’t imagine it held the weight of a man; it seems more for children. A rung breaks as I take a step and I grab on, taking some of the weight off under my feet by holding tightly onto the two vertical posts.

Another step and it feels like the whole thing is just going to disintegrate and collapse in a heap.
Slowly,
I place my feet toward each side, hoping that there will be more support because that’s where the rungs are tied to the vertical posts.

Another two steps and I reach up for the lip of the opening and feel the ladder shifting under me. I freeze in place, tightly holding on to both vertical posts to keep them stable, but the ladder starts to twist, one post moving away; I can’t keep it straight and I hear the twine holding the rung under my foot snap as I reach with my hand for the rung above. I barely get a handhold when the steps under my foot let loose and I start to twist and fall and let go, hitting the floor on my feet and pitching forward.

Sheer panic gets me back on my feet as the sound of someone coming down the passageway becomes obvious.

I look around for a weapon. But what can I use? A piece of the ladder? The dry rotted wood would hardly batter a fly. Bending down to grab a rock I see what looks like a black whip. The whip moves and I nearly jump out of my skin.

A snake.

It starts to move away from me as a door opens and light flows into the room as a man enters. I only see a black figure.

Screaming, I grab the tail end of the snake and throw it at the man coming toward me. It hits him on the chest and falls to the ground. He quickly picks up the snake and steps toward me, coming into the light that’s shining from above.

Gripping the writhing snake behind the head, he holds it up to me. “Good snake. Eats rats.”

The caretaker smiles at me.

“I heard your cries for help.”

15

Why me?
Why am I so lucky to nearly get killed and end up subjected to the tender mercies of a dreadful woman who probably gives out pieces of coal to mudlarks at Christmastime?

Out of the chamber and reunited with my companions, Lady Warton helped brush me off, but it came with such unspoken disapproval that her attitude shouted at me.

No one else said a word, but the verdict expressed on each of their faces was the same: I clumsily “fell in.” I had leaned too close and the fence gave way, I fell, hit my head, and imagined being assailed by a strange man. The other scenario, offered by Von Reich to assuage my anger, was that I had run into a tomb robber who wanted my purse and jewelry. I was too embarrassed to mention that his hands violated my body, searching for the key.

I pretended to accept Von Reich’s assessment only because I couldn’t counter with my belief that I had been attacked for the key—not without revealing I have it. I came close to revealing the motive when I told him that the man wasn’t a local but one of the guests who followed me after I left the tent.

“Why would a guest do that?”

“Because they … they—I don’t know,” I stammered, tripping over my tongue as I swerved verbally to avoid mentioning the key.

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Anyone!” I snapped and walked off in a huff to kill the conversation.

“Who” could have been anyone in the pavilion, from the sheikh to his guests, who knew I had gotten the scarab in the marketplace. That included my companions, Frederick Selous, the snake-loving magician, and, I had to admit, just about anyone else in the tent who had a secret interest in the marketplace intrigue.