The Illusion of Murder (7 page)

“I … I—”

“Yes, I’ve heard that much.”

He is British, something I had already assumed from his appearance and clothes.

“I’m trying to avoid a masher.”

“A masher? On the ship? Come, we’ll inform the captain … after I thrash the man.”

I hold out a hand to keep him from getting around me to the door. “No, we can’t.”

“Why can’t we?”

“I … I—”

“Perhaps the truth might come out easier?”

I sigh deeply and lean back against the door. I don’t know why lies are getting stuck in my throat. A compulsion to tell the truth has rarely crimped my speech.

“I did something I shouldn’t have done. A man was murdered—”

“You murdered a man?”

“No, of course not, a man was killed at the marketplace. Two men, in fact.”

“Yes, I heard something about that. A dispute between locals.”

“No, the man first attacked was British. I’m sure it was Mr. Cleveland, the cutlery salesman across the hall.”

He starts to say something and opens his mouth wide enough again for flies and then closes it.

“You think I’m mad.”

“Not at all,” he says, calmly. “I think that something I ate or drank came from the Land of the Lotus Eaters and has caused me to imagine that a young woman has barged into my room and is telling me a wild story about the death of a cutlery salesman in a marketplace.”

“Lord Warton says the dead man is Egyptian, but I say it was Mr. Cleveland.”

“And what does Mr. Cleveland say?”

“You haven’t been listening to me. Mr. Cleveland is dead.”

“Miss—?”

“Bly, Nellie Bly. I’m an American. Mr.—?”

“Selous, Frederick Selous.” He gave me a gentlemanly nod-bow. “I am British and it is obvious that you are an American. No proper British woman would barge into a strange man’s room at night. However, the fact that you are American, madam, does not make Mr. Cleveland dead.”

“The fact that you are British, sir, does not make Mr. Cleveland alive.”

“Quite true, Miss Bly. But the fact that I spoke to Mr. Cleveland only a few minutes ago does mean he was not murdered earlier in the marketplace.”

Oh Lord …
a big hole has opened under my feet and I am falling into it.

8

I’m sure I left Mr. Selous’s stateroom on two feet, but when I’m in the corridor and his door slams behind me, I feel I’ve crawled out on broken glass.

“Nellie girl, you did it this time,” I moan out loud.

Mr. Cleveland alive?
I can’t believe I have been so bullheaded, stubborn, and stupid.

The corridor is empty—praise the Lord for that—and I walk slowly, in a mental fog, toward my cabin at the far end. How will I face Von Reich and the Wartons tomorrow? More importantly, how do I get myself into these things?

“Madam!”
a voice behind me snaps.

I whip around. The steward has come out of Mr. Cleveland’s room and I brace myself for the accusations that I am certain will start flying. Full of guilt, I’m ready to confess my sins.

“You forgot your headache powders.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Raymond.”

My head is really ready to explode.

*   *   *

A
FTER TAKING THE HEADACHE POWDERS
, I throw myself on the bed and cover my head with a pillow and groan into it. What a fool I have made of myself! It’ll be all over the ship by morning.

My short time in Port Said has been nothing but dreadful. Witnessing a murder and what amounted to an “execution” in a medieval bazaar, then being chased by a mob of murderous fanatics confirms Mr. Pulitzer’s opinion about the dangers of international travel.

Somewhere along the line I have made a complete fool out of myself with important people who have been kind to me and who I will be seeing every day for the next several weeks.

The last realization prompts me to pour another glass of water and add more headache powder.

I can only conclude in my defense that the dark side of Egyptian magic has reached out from a secret tomb buried in the desert sands and turned the day into a nightmare.

What grates me most is that Lord Warton will likely attribute my insistence that the dead Egyptian in the marketplace was John Cleveland to the combination of too much sun and the weakness of a “female disposition.” And I have provided all the necessary ammunition. A hysterical female, for certain, is what I have managed to make myself.

I should never have challenged Lord Warton’s assessment of the identity of the dead man. He is a lord, after all, even though I’m not quite sure what that means—is he an earl or a baron? Whatever his title, it’s something very prestigious because everyone from the captain to the other passengers fawns over him. Compared to a nobleman, what do I know?

A thousand regrets swirl around me as I take off my dress to shake the dust out of it. As I’m giving it a good jerk, something drops out and hits the carpet.

A scarab, the magic amulet of the pharaohs.

“Where did you come from?” I ask as I examine it.

The stone beetle is a couple inches long and an inch wide, larger and heavier than the ones I’ve seen used for jewelry. Red with black eyes and a black spot on its back, the beetle has six brown legs and two short tentacles.

The only way it could have gotten into my pocket was from the dying man as I held him. Why would he put a symbol of Egyptian magic in my pocket? It was his last physical act, besides uttering the name Amelia.

What is so important about the scarab that a man is murdered over it—and caused him to pass it to me with his dying breath?

Nothing about its appearance makes it appealing. It lacks gems or fine workmanship that would give it value beyond a marketplace trinket. The flat bottom has two snakes on each side, their heads meeting at the top, but no other symbols or hieroglyphics. The scarab’s back is smooth with no distinctive horizontal or vertical lines. It does have an unusual feature—it’s meant to be opened. A crack along the side suggests that it’s two pieces wedged together.

A piece goes flying as I pry it open with a nail file and bangs against the wall, breaking into pieces. In a cavity between the two sides is a key, one that has a familiar look to me.

My father had a similar key that he used to remove the big metal cover from a piece of machinery at the mill he operated in Cochran’s Mills when I was a child. When he bought a new machine, he gave the key to me because I loved the bulky, odd shape of it. I still have it, safely tucked away in my jewelry box at home.

The mill was started by my father and named for him, Elizabeth Cochran being my true name. Those who have followed my career know that when I got a job as a reporter I was forced to take the pen name of Nellie Bly to hide my identity because news reporting is considered immodest employment for a woman.

A key that belongs perhaps in a factory, around machinery, is my feeling about the one in my hand. Nothing about it strikes me as Egyptian. It’s definitely the product of an industrialized country.

My world has taken another flip. That was no dispute between locals in the marketplace, but something smacking of intrigue. But why had the key been slipped into my pocket?

The man on the bike that exposed white skin, the man whose dying words were spoken with a British accent, a man with a face I’m sure I’d passed in the corridor—it had to be Mr. Cleveland. Lord Warton taking charge of his luggage, sending it ashore … it can not be a coincidence.

A Brit named John Cleveland died in the marketplace in a dispute over a key hidden in a cheap scarab. I’d stake my life on it.

Staring at the key, I wonder if I have done exactly that.

I push the thought aside. I’m on a British ship. No one can harm me. I hope.

Still, I had no clue as to why he gave me the key. Or why the key was important to the dying man. What would it mean to Amelia? Assets he wanted his family to receive?

It all sounds very logical and reasonable except for some other unanswered questions: Why was Mr. Cleveland running around Port Said disguised as an Egyptian? Why was the key concealed in the scarab? Why was Lord Warton hiding the fact that the man was British?

Finally, of greatest significance at the moment: How could Frederick Selous believe he’d spoken to Mr. Cleveland if the man had died in my arms?

Is there an intrigue that involves the British and the religious radicals trying to drive them from Egypt? But Warton doesn’t strike me as a spy. Not that I have met any, but I do have a reasonable notion that spies are clever and devious. Warton is stuffy and arrogant, rudely so, and my impression is that he is more force-fed educated than bright and scheming.

And his insufferable wife—that mean-spirited woman doesn’t fit my romanticized notion of how a spy’s wife would act.

It seems to me Lord Warton is much more likely to have stumbled accidentally into a murderous situation at the bazaar than being involved in some intrigue. If so, why hide that the murdered man is British?

Protecting the precarious British situation in Egypt would be the obvious motive. Having served in the diplomatic corps, Lord Warton would be sensitive to the fact that Egypt is a tinderbox really to explode. His first instinct might have been to hide the fact that Mr. Cleveland was British. It might serve as fuel for the radicals in their campaign to win converts.

I slip back on my dress because none of this makes any sense if Mr. Cleveland is still alive. And there’s a man down the corridor who says he is.

*   *   *

F
REDERICK
S
ELOUS ANSWERS
the door only after I have knocked several times. The door is jerked open to reveal that he is a bit disheveled and not in good temper. I suspect he had already dozed off.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Miss Bly, it is—”

I make a frontal assault again, stepping in, with him making hasty steps backward. Being caught standing at a man’s door at a late hour would be scandalous.

He backs up, staring at me as if I have entered with a snake in hand. “You are completely demented.”

“I am a newspaper reporter for the New York
World.
I smell a story.”

“For your information, I am also a newspaper reporter.”

My turn to gape. “No!”

“Yes.”

“What paper? The London—”

“The Cape Town
Lion
.”

“The what?”

“A newspaper in South Africa.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Miss Bly, that statement exposes your ignorance of history, geography, and sociology. Africa was populated with humans when dinosaurs still roamed New York.”

It is obvious that this is not a man I will win many arguments with. He is pliable to a frontal assault by a small woman, but once the conversation turned to more heady subjects, he becomes a giant.

“Mr. Selous, I need to ask you a very simple question. What did Mr. Cleveland look like?”

He takes a deep breath. It is easy to see that he is struggling with the temptation to remove me physically from his room. But I am confident that a proper Brit would hesitate to manhandle a woman just as an American would.

Hopefully.

“The man,” he says, slowly, deliberately, “was perhaps in his thirties. Medium build. Average height. Hair … brown, I believe. Eyes … I’m not sure. My inclination is to say brown.”

“Medium built, brown hair, brown eyes, would fit most of the men in the Western Hemisphere.”

He gives me a tight grin. Like a dog ready to bite. “I am certain that is neither the fault of Mr. Cleveland nor me. Now, madam, would you mind leaving my room so I can get back to bed?”

“Where were you when you spoke to him?”

“I was standing beside my luggage on the beach, waiting for a boat to take me to the ship. He told me his name was Cleveland and asked me to tell the captain he would be staying ashore in Port Said. A business matter, he said.”

“Ah…”

He controls himself. “What does ‘ah’ mean? You make it sound as if you have had a revelation from the gods on Olympus.”

“You had luggage with you, obviously boarding the ship for the first time. The man knew that you wouldn’t recognize him while passengers who had come across with him from Italy would.”

“I was the only person on the beach.”

“Very convenient.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“Don’t you see? You don’t know that was John Cleveland; it was just a man who walked up to you and—”

“
Miss Bly.
I am not in the habit of being approached by
dead men
and asked to carry a message. Now, I suggest you take your hysterics out of my cabin before I am forced to have you removed by ship’s officers.”