The Illusion of Murder (19 page)

I describe for Sarah how I had to fool a boardinghouse landlady, police, psychiatrists, and a judge that I was insane.

Sarah laughs. “You should be on the stage.”

“I find I can only act in real life. I have been on a stage just long enough to find out that I cannot fake it.”

“Tell me why you have come knocking—pounding—at my door.”

“Are you aware that a man was murdered in the marketplace in Port Said?”

She shrugs. “My steward said there was some native dispute.”

“I don’t think so…”

I relate the events from seeing the murdered man fall off his bike, to him whispering Amelia’s name in the marketplace—omitting my search of Mr. Cleveland’s cabin—up to my fall into the Tanis tomb and to the attack on me, characterized as “female hysterics.”

The last bit got her on her feet, ready to storm the captain’s cabin.

“No, please, if I antagonize the captain again, he’ll drop me off at the next port. Besides, you’d have to reveal your identity.”

After I finish my tale, she says, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t think your little marketplace matter has a connection to the matter I am dealing with.”

Little marketplace matter?

“Sarah, I need to know more about the situation you are in. If you’d share with me—”

She brushes away my need to know with a wave of her cigarette holder. “I have been sworn to secrecy.” She gives me a dark look. “Speaking to a newspaperwoman would hardly satisfy that oath. No word of it will escape from my lips even if I am being stretched on an inquisitioner’s rack. However, I am frankly bored to death locked in this sardine can. Helping you with your little mystery would add some relief. Tell me what you know about this man Cleveland.”

Admitting to my burglary, I tell her how I managed to get rid of the steward so I could make a search of Cleveland’s room.

“You entered a strange man’s room and searched it? That was naughty of you.” She says it with a big smile.

Sarah’s estimation of me has gone up.

She asks what I observed in the luggage and makes an exclamation when I come to the books and writings.

“That list of numbers you saw is a secret code. That’s what one of the books was for, probably that law book that struck you as odd for a cutlery salesman to lug about. I once had a lover who was a spy. An Italian count. He used ordinary books for constructing his codes.”

“How is it done?”

“It’s so simple, a child could do it, but impossible to decipher unless you have the right book. The spymaster gives his spy a book that is not in general use in the foreign country where the spy is being sent—”

“That Yorkshire law volume would be perfect,” I add.

“Exactly. To compose a message, they find the correct words in the book—”

“The numbers are the page, line, and position of the word.”

“Nellie, you are quick, aren’t you? Since both the spy and his supervisor have the same book, it’s easy for them to decode messages. My lover sent his messages in invisible ink, especially the ones to me.”

“Why did he use invisible ink?”

“He was married.”

“Oh.” I am awed by the fact the woman had a lover—and openly admits it. A married one, at that. What a daring and shocking admission for a woman. And very French, of course.

“Don’t sound so prudish, my dear. Certainly you have had a love affair with a married—ah, yes, I see from your blush that you have. To read the messages, I ran a hot iron over the paper or held it over a warm radiator.” She sighs. “He was a wonderful lover, warm to a woman’s needs, and generous. They caught him spying and hanged him. Your spy, that cutlery salesman, he may have used invisible ink, too.”

“The paper I saw had writing on it.”

“Of course—a sheet of paper without writing on it would raise suspicion. The invisible words are written between the lines.”

I snap my fingers. “Lemon juice, my brothers used it to make invisible writing when were children. Milk, too. What did your lover use?”

“Nothing so ordinary.”

She leans forward and whispers in my ear. I blush from head to toe and quickly change the subject.
^†

“I suspect you’re right about the books,” I say. “It made little sense for a cutlery salesman from Liverpool to have a book on the laws of York, though I could understand why he might have one about Egypt. And you might be right about the invisible ink. The numbers I saw may have been a draft he prepared, to be turned into an invisible message between the lines of an otherwise innocent appearing correspondence.”

“It’s too bad you don’t have the paper with the numbers on it and the book. Is the luggage still in Cleveland’s suite?”

“No.” I tell her about seeing an empty trunk hitting the water.

“Did all the luggage appear empty?”

“Now that you ask me, yes, I believe so.” I shake my head to stir up the memory. “The way the boatman handled them so easily, taking them out of the lowered netting and tossing them back to his mates. They may well have been empty.”

“So, the contents may still be aboard with your British lord sitting on them. Who may not even know the importance.”

“I’m sure Lord Warton and the others must realize Mr. Cleveland was a spy. Or at least suspect it.”

“That doesn’t mean they know how the spy game is played. Or be aware that invisible ink could be part of what the chief of the Paris police calls modus operandi.”

I have to wonder if the Parisian chief is her lover, too.

Sarah lets out a great sigh. “Well, my dear, it is very late, and after listening to your tale, there is only one thing for you to do.”

“Which is?”

“Go on with your own affairs, your race to beat the record around the world, and leave matters of spies and revolutions in the hands of the politicians. No matter what you do, you’ll receive no thanks for your efforts and may in fact jeopardize your goal because politicians are devils.”

It is good advice and much more palatable coming from this woman of the world who wants me to succeed than Mr. Selous, whose advice is based upon my gender.

I look her in the eye. “Sarah, do you want to share with me your—”

“No!” She gets up and dramatically sweeps to the porthole and opens it, staring into the dark night. “It is a secret I cannot share. If the secret is revealed, armies will march, empires will tremble.”

I am awestruck. “Are you a spy? Entrusted with a national secret?”

“Me? A spy? Of course not.”

“Then … then who’s trying to murder you?”

“My lover’s family, of course.”

27

My head is pulsating when I leave the great actress to return to my own cabin. So many things have happened so quickly in this land of mystery and magic. Now I find Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in the world, is on the ship—and she has become my friend and confidante. I wish I could wire Mr. Pulitzer and tell him about it. But she has sworn me to secrecy about her presence.

The ship is underway, moving down the canal toward Suez Bay, and I step out on deck to get air, joining other passengers seeking even the stingy breeze that the forward movement of the ship brings over the deck before I am banished below so the men can have the deck to themselves.

Crewmen are hanging lights at the front of the ship and a group of us watch them as they put the lights over the side.

I lean against the rail and eavesdrop as a man tells his companion that the lights are electric, powered by the ship’s steam engine, and that before the introduction of electric headlights, ships were compelled to tie up in the canal overnight because of the great danger of running into the sandbanks.

Being near the bow reminds of me of my close call with the grim reaper. I didn’t make an issue of it, but I’m not convinced that Sarah was the intended victim any more than I had leaned too heavily against the frail railing at Tanis or mistook “Amelia” for an Arabic word. I had been searched at Tanis for the key and I’m sure a Mahdi dagger man had come aboard to kill for the key, just as one had killed for it in the marketplace.

The death of Mr. Cleveland and the key are directly related to the political unrest in Egypt, I’m sure of it. What I can’t comprehend, and without help from the great actress, is how those matters are related to her problems with her lover’s family.

Having worked out nothing that sounds like a solution, I return to my cabin, certain that I will not get good sleep again.

As I step into the tiny cubbyhole that serves as my bathroom, I smell face cream.

My cream is in an airtight jar and I had not opened it since applying cream this morning. Opening it, I can see that the contents have been stirred around.

Bending down, I take a sniff of the drain opening in the sink bowl and smell a hint of cream.

Someone had opened my cream jar and stirred around the contents. In the process, a glob of cream had fallen into the sink and had been washed down to cover the intruder’s tracks. They were obviously looking for the key.

I look around my cabin, seeking other clues that someone had invaded my personal space.

I find none, but have no other explanation for the condition of my cream jar other than someone had made a thorough search of my cabin and that the jar of cream was part of the search. Certainly my male steward had not been playing with my facial cream.

My room had been searched to find the key given to me by the man murdered in the marketplace.

“That settles that,” I tell the room’s walls.

There is no longer any doubt that the attacker on the bow had been an assassin and who the target had been. I feel like running back and telling the Divine Sarah she is wrong. I am not the understudy, but the star of this murder mystery.

My sense of having been violated once again chills me with anger, but a more practical thought sneaks in: Sarah’s speculation that the contents of Mr. Cleveland’s luggage might still be aboard.

From Sarah’s description of the process, I’m certain that Mr. Cleveland had written a coded message, though I didn’t know if what I had seen was the finished message or one in progress. Or if he had another message hidden on the papers in invisible ink.

Knowing what Mr. Cleveland wrote in the coded message might flush out my enemy.

How could I go about finding it without jeopardizing the race … or my life?

More urgent at the moment than secret messages is the matter of not being murdered in my bed by an intruder who returns to search my person.

I wedge the chair back under the door handle and crawl into bed, clutching my pair of scissors.

PART III

Day 19

P
ARTING THE
R
ED
S
EA

28

Leaving the Suez Canal behind, the ship takes us the length of the Red Sea and to the Gulf of Aden at the western part of the Arabian Sea. Hopefully, I have left behind in Egypt the curse of the pharaohs that has brought so much hell into my life.

Just before we come to the British port known as the Aden Settlement, we pass high brown mountains.

“They are known as the Twelve Apostles,” Von Reich informs me when we meet during an early morning deck stroll. “In Aden there is a tradition that the town dates back to Genesis and that Cain and Abel are both buried there.”

Even though I had read the same thing in the ship’s bulletin, I permit him to expound in his pedantic manner.

Watching his expression, I wonder if I can find a clue to any change in his attitude toward me since I have become a pariah to his British friends and the ship’s captain. He signals nothing, not even the concern he had expressed earlier, but I suspect his lack of interest in me recently has been fed by the overtures I see him making to other women on board.

We come in sight of the British colony at Aden and it looks like a large, bare mountain of wonderful height, but even by the aid of a spyglass I’m unable to tell that it is inhabited.

I continue my morning constitution as Von Reich stops to watch a soccer ball booted back and forth on deck by a group of young men.

After the ship stops to drop anchor in the bay, the breeze dies and I escape inside. I am on a mission.

I give the assistant purser a big smile and a cheery “Good morning,” and hope the devil has well oiled my lies.

It’s obvious that Lord Warton has taken custody of Mr. Cleveland’s possessions, but where are they now? While Warton could have some small items in his own cabin, the books for instance, he would have arranged for storage of the luggage as a whole because the only storage area in a cabin is for steamer trunks slipped under the bunks. I’m hoping that the pompous peer is as unfamiliar with the codes of spies as I suspect he is of growing wheat in Morocco.

“I’m planning to purchase a large item in Aden and will need somewhere to store it. Is there a place on board to store something too large for my cabin?”