The Illusion of Murder (25 page)

*   *   *

A
RRIVING BACK AT THE HOTEL
, I find Sarah and Frederick waiting at the dining room door. They are engrossed in conversation like old friends.

Putting on my bravest smile, I let him guide us to the dining room, determined not to reveal my feelings of jealousy and inadequacy, emotions I hate and would not reveal in public even if I was suffering the infamous Chinese torture of a thousand cuts.

“I’ve stayed here before,” Frederick says. “The food is very good.”

“Then you should order for us,” Sarah says. “We will be helpless, otherwise.”

Oh my God
—she really knows how to warm the cockles of a man’s heart. Her veil is back on. Too bad she hadn’t worn it earlier. Even worse luck, it would have been nicer if she had missed out like Von Reich at getting a room at the hotel.

Petty, petty, petty …

The dining hall is pleasant in its coolness, interesting in its peculiarities, and matches the other parts of the hotel with its picturesque stateliness. The small tables are daintily set and are beautifully decorated daily with the native flowers of Colombo, rich in color, exquisite in form, but void of perfume, which I personally like. I don’t know why, but many perfumes give me a headache. I believe it’s a quirk I acquired from my mother, who never wore perfume, complaining it gave her a headache.

Frederick explains the cooling system. “Those strips of cloth are called
punkahs.
They are an invention of the people in this hot climate of the subcontinent.”

The embroidered
punkahs
are long strips of cloth, fastened to bamboo poles that are suspended within a short distance of the tables. They are kept in motion by rope pulleys, worked by men and boys. They send a lazy, cooling air through the building, contributing much to the ease and comfort of the guests.

As Sarah asks Frederick a question about the beautiful breakwater we had seen from the ship, I look around, soaking in the atmosphere and the scent of exotic foods.

The people of this tropical island are pleasant and polite, being small of stature and fine of feature, with very attractive, clean-cut faces, light bronze in color.

The hotel waiters wear white linen apronlike skirts and white jackets. Noiselessly they move over the smooth tile floor, in their bare, brown feet. Their straight black hair is worn long, twisted in a Psyche knot at the back of the head, though that coil of hair is a woman’s hairdo fashion in America and Europe.

My reverie about the beautiful people and food on the picturesque island is interrupted by an exclamation and a clap of Sarah’s hands.

“I’d be delighted,” she says.

“After dinner about nine would be the right time to head out,” Frederick says to me.

“Sorry … I was thinking about something.”

“There’s a magic show tonight I’m sure you both would enjoy. And Sarah wants to see the famous breakwater. We can stop there on the way to the show.”

“Why don’t you two—” I begin, my feeling like a sore thumb taking over.

“You must come,” Frederick says. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a performance of the world’s greatest magic trick.”

“Please, Nellie, it’ll be such fun.”

“All right.”

The only thing stronger than my jealousy is my curiosity—and dread of being left out of anything. My mother says she never deprived me of anything as a child, but perhaps my fear of being left out came from being a young child in a family of thirteen children.

While climbing the steps to return to my room, a thought pops into my head, filling in a blank that I wasn’t even aware was there.

Sarah wore her veil to lunch.

She always wears her veil in public.

But not when she met Frederick and me in the lounge area. She had it in her hand.

Why would someone who is so easily recognizable have taken off her veil?

Finally, a question to which I have a ready answer.

She wanted to be recognized by Frederick.

But why would she want him to recognize her?

36

Sarah’s cablegram.

The answer to Sarah not wearing a veil when we first met at the hotel came to me when I tried to nap before dinner.

She had revealed herself to Frederick because of the cablegram.

Stupid threat,
she had said. A physical one? One that would make her seek out the friendship of a well-known hunter for protection?

Threats of bodily harm are not sent by cable—the message had to be more subtle than that—but from her anger, there is no doubt that the contents were meant to intimidate her. Certainly it infuriated her and drove her to make contact with Frederick.

I mentally draw a line connecting the cast of characters, as Sarah would call them: Frederick has a connection to Cleveland … now Sarah has a connection to Frederick. Did that mean Sarah has a connection to Cleveland?

Sarah’s friendship isn’t a safe harbor for me. She’s part of the intrigue that began in the marketplace and that still touches me, reaching out from Port Said like the tentacles of Jules Verne’s giant squid.

I never have been comfortable with the notion of there being two separate intrigues aboard, but making a connection between a love affair of the famous French actress, a fanatical religious uprising in Egypt, and the intrigues of great nations over control of the vital Suez Canal, threaten my small brain with a big headache.

Since any kind of rest is futile, I pull myself off the bed. Maybe a leisurely bath will relax me for the evening that I will spend with a beautiful actress who obviously has an interest in the same man I do.

After viewing myself in the mirror, I decide that the only way I could get Frederick to notice me when Sarah is present would be to throw myself in front of an oncoming train. And then it would only be the sound of the train’s horn that directs his attention to my mangled body.…

*   *   *

F
REDERICK AND
S
ARAH ARE WAITING
for me at the carriage stand in front of the hotel when I come out.

I keep a blank face but I find the way they stand and talk interesting for its sheer subtlety. Rather than standing face-to-face as one would when conversing with an acquaintance, they each face slightly away from one another, almost as if they don’t want anyone to know they are talking. A casual observer might not even realize they knew each other. Or had been talking.

Why the charade? What are they up to?

We board a carriage and set out. From the number of people on the streets, it seems that everybody at the hotel and the city at large has come out for a drive, the women and many of the men going bare-headed as a cool evening breeze sweeps in.

When we are out of sight of other Europeans, Sarah takes off her netted hat to get the full benefit of the light breeze. She looks rather young for a woman who became an actress probably about the time I was born. It makes me wonder how old she is. I am twenty-two years old and I suspect she must be a decade past that.
*

The carriage takes us at a leisurely pace through the town, down the wide streets, past beautiful homes set well back in tropical gardens. We go along Galle Face Drive that runs along the beach just out of reach of the waves that break on the sandy banks with a deeper mellow roar than I have ever heard water produce.

“We’re going to the breakwater,” he says, “Sarah wants to see the dedication plaque.”

The breakwater, which is a good half mile in length, is a favorite promenade for the citizens of Colombo, he tells us. “Morning and evening, gaily dressed people can be seen walking back and forth between the lighthouse and the shore. When the stormy season comes the sea dashes a full forty feet above the promenade, which must be cleansed of a green slime after the storms are over before it can be traveled safely.”

Well, maybe there will be too many people around to dispose of me, but I am still irked that they are up to some sort of shenanigans and I am excluded.

Sarah buys a rose from a street vendor and places it on a plaque that says Britain’s heir to the throne, Edward, Prince of Wales, had placed the first stone for the breakwater fifteen years ago.

“It is considered one of the finest breakwaters in the world,” Frederick says.

I take his remark as filling in conversation because he must find her dedication to an old brass plaque a bit unusual. She acts perfectly natural about putting a rose on an old brass plaque—and I mean
act—
that it arouses my own curiosity.

A tidbit about Sarah from the gossip columns back home stirs in my head. “Wasn’t there a rumor a while back that Sarah and the prince—”

“Quite,” Frederick snaps. “We must hurry to make it to the magic show.”

I have inadvertently hit a sore spot and scratched open that British sense of total loyalty and defense to their royals. Her name, of course, has long been linked with love affairs with European royalty, but Prince Edward is not just known for his flirtation with Sarah. He is a playboy of international esteem, known for his taste for beautiful women, fine food, aged brandy, and champion racehorses.

As we walk back to the carriage, I can’t help but think about Sarah’s remark the night I first met her when she told me her lover’s family was out to kill her. I can’t see Queen Victoria setting out to kill her son’s lover. Of course, if Sarah were pregnant or had already produced a claimant to the throne, who knows what a loyal Brit might do without the Queen’s permission …

I let out a long sigh and tell myself that I have enough mysteries to contend with without creating another.

“Did you say something, Nellie?” Frederick asks.

“No. Probably just thoughts leaking from the holes in my head.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. An old American expression.”

That I made up, but it’s how I feel.

37

“The Indian Rope Trick is not just considered the most amazing feat of illusion ever performed,” Frederick tells us, “it’s almost as old as the Himalayas. Claims are found in ancient Greek and Egyptian texts that the magic trick was observed centuries before the birth of Christ. Marco Polo saw it performed during his travels six hundred years ago.”

We listen to Frederick’s explanation of the trick as we sit on logs set out in rows from a mostly open air stage formed by cloth over large pieces of bamboo. Gaily colored sheets of cotton covered the sides and back of the slightly elevated stage. The top was partly open with lengths of bamboo coming across to connect the walls.

The back side of the stage enclosed the trunk of a tall, bushy pear tree.

A drum beats and the
fakir
, the Indian term for a worker of wonders, comes on stage. The
fakir
has the robes of a monk, wisdom’s white beard, and the dark eyes of a traveling snake-oil salesman. A native boy about ten years old wearing a turban and loincloth joins him.

After much hand-waving and spoken incantations in what I imagine is the language of Ceylon, the old man’s demand to the boy is obvious—he wants the boy to go up the tree and bring back something.

“A fruit so tasty only a god is permitted to eat it,” Frederick whispers. “The fruit is guarded by the god’s
jinnis
in the tree.”

The
fakir
stands over a wide woven basket and plays a horn.

I expect an angry cobra with its neck fanning to glide up but instead it is a piece of rope. The rope continues up and disappears in the foliage of the tree.

“It’s being pulled up by a thin line, fishing wire maybe,” I whisper to Frederick and get a noncommittal shrug in return.

After the rope disappears into the spread of the tree, and after a bit of coaching, the boy grabs onto the rope. He begins to climb.

The audience cheers in amazement as he climbs hand over hand until he disappears into the foliage of the tree.

The
fakir
stares up at the tree, then moves about the stage yelling up at the boy, obviously demanding the boy come back with the fruit.

Instead of the boy descending, shouting is heard above, then cries of pain as the tree’s foliage shakes as if a struggle is taking place among the leaves and branches.

Something drops and the entire audience—including me—lets out a gasp.

It’s not a piece of fruit but an arm belonging to a small boy.

The
jinnis
guarding the fruit are obviously bloodthirsty little demons.

Then another piece drops. A leg.

A woman screams.

I begin to laugh hysterically and Frederick grabs my arm and whispers, “Don’t.”

He’s right, it’s purely rude, and I smother my laugh.