The Illusion of Murder (34 page)

Her liaison with the assistant is not something that would erupt overnight while her husband’s body still lay warm. That raises an interesting question: What was the purpose of the public clawing at each other if they were having an intimate relationship?

Had Mr. Murdock been aware of his wife’s affair with his assistant? More important, did the affair play any role in his death?

My session with the woman had not added to the biggest question of all: Was there any relationship between his death and the Port Said matter?

Well, this leg of my journey is turning out to be very interesting. Upside down on the bottom of the world, everything looks a bit cockeyed.

STEAMSHIP RMS
OCEANIC

HONG KONG–TO–SAN FRANCISCO RUN

53

We are sailing between Hong Kong and Yokohama, Japan, as the New Year approaches. Standing at the bow, the forbidden zone, I let the wind and ocean spray blow at me as I stare at the horizon and wonder why I have been so fortunate as to find myself on this great adventure—and worry that I will not succeed, that the copycat reporter will not just steal my thunder but humiliate me into leaving reporting.

Black and white—that is how I’ve been told I see things. Win or lose. No compromises.

It is a fault, I know, but it is how I feel. That fault of mine is probably why I also so furiously hold on to Mr. Cleveland’s memory—like a dog that’s hopped onto the back of a meat wagon, I have clamped my jaws on the matter and all the kicking in the world won’t make me let go.

Casting aside dark thoughts about my many imperfections, I ruminate about the race. My fate lies with the ship because this last leg of my journey by water is by far the longest on any conveyance I’ve used—over sixteen hundred miles to Yokohama, Japan, and then nearly five thousand miles across the wide Pacific to San Francisco. After that, by Iron Horse across the continent to the East Coast.

The quiet of the sea and my avoidance of company on this leg has left me alone with my thoughts, a dangerous situation that too often gets me into trouble. Pondering over the fact that a magician on board whose specialty is reading sealed messages will put on a New Year’s Eve performance is exactly the sort of thing to stir up that overactive imagination Frederick Selous and Lord Warton accuse me of possessing.

Naturally, I have hatched a plot to shed some light on the mystery with a little sleight of hand myself, and before the ship’s bell rings in the New Year it will be time to put my plan into effect.

*   *   *

I
N JUST HOURS THE YEAR
1889 will be found only between the pages of history books, and 1890 will take birth.

The day has been so warm that we wear no wraps. In the forepart of the evening the passengers sit together in the social hall talking, telling stories and laughing. I don’t feel like socializing, but I force myself to participate because the audaciousness of my plan has me nervous.

The captain owns an organette, which he brings into the hall, and he and the ship’s doctor take turns at grinding out the music.

Later in the evening we go to the dining hall where the purser has punch and champagne and oysters for us, a rare treat which he had prepared in America just for this occasion.

Afterward, a jolly man from Yokohama, whose wife is equally jolly and live spirited, teaches the assembled a song consisting of one line to a melody quite simple and catching: “Sweetly sings the donkey when he goes to grass, Sweetly sings the donkey when he goes to grass, Ec-ho! Ec-ho! Ec-ho!”

I sip punch as I listen to the passengers singing and laughing. I don’t dare imbibe in the champagne because I will need steady legs and my wits about me.

The magic show is announced and we assemble in the dining room once again where a small stage has been erected.

It’s time for my own magic to come into play. The plan I’ve concocted is to make whoever hired “Amelia Cleveland” in Hong Kong expose themselves.

To carry out my scheme, I needed Sarah, Lord and Lady Warton, and Frederick at the same table.

To accomplish this, I sweet-talked the captain into inviting me and the people on my list to his table, and threw in Von Reich for good measure because he seems to be joined at the hip with the Wartons.

Getting Lady Warton and Sarah to the table was a challenge because they are both recluses. Lady Warton attends few events, but the captain convinced her to attend, though she still wears a veil.

I have coaxed Sarah from her cloister by challenging her to attend in disguise. It was a challenge she couldn’t ignore and she assumed the character of an elderly Russian dowager, a role she once played.

No matter what my suspicions are of Sarah’s role in the matter, I not only admire her as a person, but like the rest of the world, I am awestruck by her talent. Frederick confided in me that he once saw her on the stage in Paris in a role in which she never left her chair—yet mesmerized the audience and overshadowed the other performers.

I got them to the captain’s table, which is the closest to the stage, because I will be there myself—and I want to see their faces when I spring my trick.

The magician who claims to be able to “read” messages placed in envelopes calls himself the Great Nelson. There seem to be quite a number of magicians with a first name of “Great.”

At the beginning of the show, paper, pencils, and envelopes are provided to members of the audience, who are invited to jot down a short message, no more than ten words, and place the paper in the envelope and seal it.

The envelopes are made of paper too thick for the magician to see through even if he held them up to a light.

When it is time to collect the envelopes from the passengers, the magician says, “Now I will need a volunteer to collect the sealed messages.”

I jump up from my seat at the captain’s table and immediately begin gathering envelopes.

“Madam, please make sure the messages are sealed and that there is no envelope among them that the human eye can see through.”

Gathering the envelopes, I slip in my own, making sure it is close to the top so it will be selected early in the performance. I hand him the stack on stage and turn around to return to my seat.

“You are not done, young lady.” He turns to the audience. “To prove that I am using my miraculous ability to see through the envelopes, I will have this charming lady hand them to me one at a time.”

“Oh, I can’t—”

“Let’s have a hand for this young woman who has so generously volunteered her services.”

I smother a groan as the audience claps. I needed to be back at the table, watching my companions.

“Please hand me the first envelope,” he tells me.

I grimly hand it to him. He hardly looks at it and announces, “The message inside reads:
THIS SHIP IS THE BEST SHIP
.”

He rips open the envelope and reads the message aloud again, exactly as he had stated it before he looked. Peering out to the audience, he holds up his hand to shield his eyes from the stage lights which make it much brighter onstage. “Is that correct?” the magician asks someone, then holds up the message in triumph to the audience. “As you witnessed, I read it correctly
before
opening the envelope.”

Another round of applause and I hand him the second envelope. He repeats the message inside without looking, then tears open the envelope and reads the writing aloud, confirming its contents about the size of a hat with a woman in the audience whom I recognize as having been a fellow passenger with me since Colombo.

My envelope is the third one read.

“Now this is a bit unusual,” he tells the audience before opening it. “It reads,
VIRGINIA LYNN SENDS HER REGARDS
.” He opens the envelope and extracts the paper I wrote on. He reads the message aloud and then shields his eyes and asks the audience, “And would the author of this missive confirm that I am correct?”

No answer, and he repeats the question. Finally, not wanting to see the man embarrassed or threaten his reputation because of my machination, I timidly raise my own hand. “I wrote it.”

“And is it correct?”

“It’s correct.”

Standing sadly on the stage, handing the magician another envelope, I suppress a desire to leap off the stage and run out of the room screaming. What a fiasco! The words of Robert Burns come to mind about the best-laid plans of mice and men going astray.

Defeated by stage lights! I had planned to be at the table and see the faces of my suspects when Virginia Lynn’s name was spoken. Instead, I am onstage and unable to see the audience because of the bright lights.

All I have managed to achieve is to look ridiculous to at least one person in the audience: whoever hired Virginia Lynn.

Rather than return to my companions when my envelope duties for the Great Nelson are finished, I pause by the table and whisper to Sarah, “I have a headache,” and leave for my cabin to mope.

I get only a few paces out of the dining room before Sarah is on my tail.

“You must tell me how the envelope trick is done. You’re the only one Von Reich will reveal magic secrets to.”

“He made me promise not to reveal the secrets to anyone.”

“Tell me or I will start a rumor that you have the Big Pox.”

“That is disgusting.” The Big Pox is syphilis, the dread of every good woman whose husband drops his pants outside the home in too many places. “All right, he actually never made me promise specifically for the envelope trick, though he did for each of the others.” A technicality, but one I would take advantage of.

“So tell me.”

“He opens the first envelope and reads the message, but tells the audience something entirely different from what the person in the audience had written on the paper.”

“Something different?” she repeats. “I don’t understand.”

“Remember before he opened the first envelope, he told us that the message was about the ship being the best. Then he opened the envelope, read the note inside, and announced that he was right.”

“Yes.”

“The message he read to himself was actually the one a woman had written about the size of a hat, but he lied and told us it was about a ship so he didn’t have to reveal that he had read the hat message.”

“Someone confirmed the ship message.”

“No. If you think about it, you’ll realize you never actually heard anyone confirm aloud that it was the correct message. The Great Nelson simply looked out at the audience and pretended someone had written it. It was very dark in the room, so no one would be suspicious if they didn’t see anyone wave or nod to confirm he was right.”

“So he makes up a message and has an imaginary person confirm it.”

“Exactly.”

“What did that accomplish?”

“It permits him to read the
first real message
. So now he knows that the message in the first envelope speaks of a hat because he has already opened and read it when he pretended to confirm his ship version. Then he opens the second envelope—”

“I get it. He reads the second message to himself so he knows what it says, but actually tells the audience
what the first one had said
. He’s always one step ahead, pretending he’s reading messages through the envelope when he has actually already opened up the previous envelope and memorized the contents.”

“Always such simple solutions to complicated tricks,” I tell her. “So unlike life.”

She gives me a frown and I wonder if she is going say something about my failed attempt to expose the person who hired the woman in Hong Kong. If she does, I will know she is the one who hired the imposter.

“You should get off to your cabin and crawl into bed,” she says. “You do look worse for wear. Take your headache powders. If that doesn’t work, I have a bottle of coca wine.”

I turn down the coca wine, a strong wine mixed with cocaine, and retreat to my room, my tail between my legs.

The monkey starts to screech and jump up and down in his cage when I walk in but immediately shuts up when he sees the look on my face.