The Illusion of Murder (30 page)

“They wouldn’t do it, but they did do their best to get her here in time to catch the English mail for Ceylon. If they had not arrived here early, she would have missed that boat and been delayed ten days. But she caught the boat and left three days ago, while you’ll be delayed here five days.”

“That is rather hard, isn’t it?” I say quietly, forcing a smile that is on the lips, but it comes from nowhere near the heart.

“I’m astonished you did not know anything about it. She led us to suppose that it was an arranged race.”

“I don’t believe my editor would arrange a race without advising me,” I say stoutly. “Have you no cables or messages for me from New York?”

“Nothing,” he replies.

“Probably they don’t know about her.”

“Yes, they do. She had worked for the same newspaper you do until the day she started.”
*

“I don’t understand it,” I say quietly, too proud to show my ignorance on a subject of vital importance to my well-doing. “You say I can’t leave here for five days?”

“That’s correct, and I don’t think you can get to New York in eighty days. She intends to do it in seventy. She has letters to steamship officials at every point requesting them to do all they can to get her on. Have you any letters?”

“Only one, from the agent of the P and O requesting that the captains of their boats be good to me because I am travelling alone. That is all,” I say with a little smile.

“Well, it’s too bad because I think you have lost it. There is no chance for you. You will lose five days here and five in Yokohama, and you are sure to have a slow trip across the Pacific in this season.”

“I promised my editor that I would go around the world in seventy-five days, and if I accomplish that I shall be satisfied,” I stiffly explain. “I am not racing with anyone. If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that’s their concern. I promised to do the trip in seventy-five days, and I will do it.”

*   *   *

I
LEAVE THE STEAMSHIP COMPANY OFFICE
with thoughts chasing their tails in my head. My statement that I am not in a race is, of course, an attempt to hide my horror that I might actually be beaten by someone who has stolen my idea and is able to make better connections than me because of the weather.

Put the fear away in a dark cabinet,
I tell myself. I will surely lose if I go about dreading failure rather than anticipating success.

I’m in a rickshaw en route to my hotel when I see a familiar figure in another one, turning into a street ahead.
Lady Warton
.

I find it odd that the woman is alone. I’m also without a companion, but that is my way and lot in life. Her ladyship, however, is of a social milieu that would frown upon her presence on the chaotic streets of Hong Kong without an escort. She’s also more reclusive and conservative in her social affairs than I imagine most women of her position.

More out of curiosity than anything else, I signal my driver to turn at the same corner. The first thing that comes to my reporter’s mind is that the woman is on a romantic rendezvous … with someone besides her husband, of course.

As we come around the corner I spot her stepping from the cart in front of a restaurant.

Two men are standing by to greet her.

I’m so startled I forget to tell the rickshaw driver to turn back around and end up going by them. I turn my head in the opposite direction as I’m carried past the group as they head into the restaurant.

My heart is pounding and my mind is swirling.

Frederick Selous is one of the men who greets Lady Warton.

The other is the drunken sailor who was so offensive in the Colombo marketplace.

45

I continue on to my hotel, where a room has been secured for me by the purser of the
Oriental
. The purser also had the monkey sent over to the steamship
Oceanic
, with my instructions that it be cared for by my cabin steward until we sail.

When I’m crossing the lobby to go to my room a woman approaches me.

“Miss Nellie Bly?”

“Yes.”

“I’m John Cleveland’s wife”

“Amelia?”

“Yes, Amelia Cleveland.”

I suffer a rare infliction of speechlessness and simply stare at her. She’s a bit older than me, about thirty perhaps. An attractive, conservatively groomed woman with heavily rimmed eyeglasses, and very blond hair pulled back in a bun and mostly hidden under her hat, she’s wearing widow’s black and speaks with a British accent.

“I understand you observed the terrible incident.” She dabs the corner of her eye with a lace handkerchief.

“Yes, yes, I did. It was … a tragedy.”

Getting my wits together, I direct her to a couch so we may sit sidesaddle facing each other.

“What a surprise,” I tell her. “I didn’t realize you were in Hong Kong. I was prepared to track you down to the ends of the Earth once I returned home.” I shake my head, still bewildered by her sudden appearance.

“John planned to meet me here. His cutlery company was posting him here after he finished visiting accounts in Egypt. It must have been nightmarish for you to see him cut down before your eyes.”

I can only nod. How do I tell her about the lifeblood gushing from his wound, the anguish on his face?

“He spoke your name to me. His last thought was of you.”

“Oh … oh my.” She stares down at her lap and appears ready to collapse in grief.

“I’ll get you a glass of water.”

She grabs my arm as I rise.

“Did he give you anything for me?”

“Oh Lord, I forgot! Of course he did. I’ll get it.”

I hurry away toward the stairway up to my room, leaving her on the couch. I can handle most things in life but I am not good with grief. I flee rather than confront it. My mother says it’s because I grieved so when my father was taken from us when I was six. Disappearing to my room to get the key out of my shoe will give me an opportunity to regain my composure.

I’m stopped short of the stairway by a clerk who hands me an envelope that bears the insignia of the cable office. I open it and read the response from the London correspondent as I go up the stairs.

JC
34
YR OLD BACH
—
WORKED CUTLERY CO
8
YRS
—

DIED CONSUMP
2
YR LONDON
—
WENT GRAVESITE

I freeze in place halfway up the stairway and stare at the message. John Cleveland had indeed been a cutlery salesman, for eight years. But he died of natural causes two years ago at the age of thirty-four. The correspondent had visited the gravesite to make sure he really was dead and buried.

Most important, the man had been a
bachelor
.

Spinning around, I stare at the woman who had gotten up and is now standing by the couch. Whatever she sees in my face causes her to panic. She turns and runs for the entry.

I start after her and become entangled with a man and woman coming up the stairs. Brushing by them, their “How rude!” remark follows me as I race for the entrance.

Once I am outside, I look right and left, starting this way and that way, but she is gone, swallowed by the crowds of people on the sidewalks and an army of sedan chairs and rickshaws flowing in both directions on the street.

Reluctant to give up the chase, but knowing it’s hopeless, I slowly go back inside.

As I head for my room, a thought strikes me, and I am able to confirm it as soon as I get there and check the exact positions of my personal effects: My room had been searched.

Having so few possessions on the trip, it’s easy for me to check and see that nothing is missing, not even my jewelry, which makes it a certainty that the intruder was not a sneak thief.

At the window I stare down at what appears to be organized chaos on the street below. Hong Kong is a city that never sleeps, and I shall get little of it myself this night as my mind wrestles with the singular events of the day.

No matter what I do, the marketplace incident thousands of miles behind me seems to dog my heels like a witch’s curse.

Lady Warton has apparently joined whatever scheme Frederick, Sarah, the sailor, and Lord knows who else has cooked up.

My room has been searched, and now a woman has pretended to be the widow Cleveland.

However I toss the pieces, they don’t fall into a revealing pattern like Chinese tea leaves, though I do get one revelation: I’m glad I took Frederick up on his invitation to spend time together. While he is keeping an eye on me, I can keep an eye on him.

46

A chit slipped under my door the next morning from Frederick informs me that he will be delighted to see me—in an hour.

I groan aloud and stumble back to bed and under the covers to deal with the situation. I have many questions to ask the great hunter, but from my experience with him I know that a frontal attack will not work. I shall have to be more subtle than in the past.

Mr. Selous has declared war on me.

I shall respond in kind, but rather than engage in verbal fisticuffs, I must be clever and subtle, neither of which are my strong points. I must show restraint and learn something from him rather than showing what a weak hand I have been dealt.

I have to learn how to duck.

I’m still completely perplexed about the incident with the woman last night who claimed to be Amelia Cleveland and her desire to obtain what John Cleveland had given me.

Had she known it is a key, I’m sure she would have asked for it.

What the key is for, who the woman is, and which of my shipmates are in league with her, are all a puzzlement to me.

Neither moping nor hiding my head under the blankets will prove fruitful, so I get up to prepare my body and mind for my meeting with Frederick.

*   *   *

W
HEN
I
COME DOWN FROM MY ROOM
and into the lobby, I give Frederick a pleasant smile. As a proper young lady, all books on etiquette decree that I am to shine in conversation—though not so brightly as to eclipse my male companion—and listen intently with eyes open a little wider than normal as he relates his triumphs of manhood.

In other words, I will know my place in the presence of a man this morning.

He gives me a gentlemanly bow. “And how are you today, Nellie?”

“In a hurry. There are many things to see in Hong Kong and I intend to see them all. Let’s get going.”

I fly by him, biting my tongue to keep from lashing out at him about his rendezvous with Lady Bitch.

Outside the entrance I let out a big sigh and pause to let him catch up. So much for Miss Manners. This will not do.

I have to change my attitude or I shall not be able to flush out my game.

“Please forgive me, Frederick. I received some bizarre news at the steamship line company yesterday and it has me quite befuddled.”

After quickly telling him that I have found myself in a competition not of my making, I ask what we will see first.

“We are going to scale the highest mountain on Hong Kong Island.”

*   *   *

V
ICTORIA
P
EAK
,
ABOUT EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FEET HIGH
, and named in honor of the Queen, is fortunately “scaled” first by taking an elevated tramway that takes one to Victoria Gap, two-thirds of the way up.

Opened two years ago, the fare is thirty cents going up and fifteen cents coming down. Before the tram was completed, people were carried up in sedan chairs.

Frederick explains in the tram that during the summer months Hong Kong is so hot that those who are in a position to do so seek the mountaintop, where a breeze lives all the year round.

At the Gap we secure sedan chairs, and it requires three men to a chair ascending the peak, just as it did over the rough terrain from the pier. At the Umbrella Seat, which is merely a bench with a peaked roof, everybody stops long enough to allow the carriers to rest, before we continue on our way, passing sightseers and nurses with children.

After a while the carriers stop again, and we travel on foot to the signal station.

My mood is greatly refreshed looking out because the view is superb.

The bay, in a breastwork of mountains, lies calm and serene, dotted with hundreds of ships that seem like tiny toys. The palatial white houses come halfway up the mountain side, beginning at the edge of the glassy bay. Every house we see has a tennis court blasted out of the mountainside.