The Serpent's Daughter (7 page)

“A most interesting tale, Mademoiselle. But you will pardon me if I do not believe all of it. This overheard conversation, for instance, is most fanciful.” He looked sidewise at her and pursed his lips as though amused. “Please come inside. I have something to show you.” As he led her past the front desk, several privates and one sergeant saluted. All stared at Jade as though they’d never seen a woman before. “In here,” he said, indicating a back room.

Jade stepped inside, her attention immediately arrested by a shrouded figure lying on a long mess table. Captain Deschamp pulled back the sheet.

“That’s the man I saw dead in the tunnel,” said Jade. “Who the hell is he and how in thunder did he get here?”

“Both are interesting questions,” said Deschamp. “We believe he is Achmed ben Sayid, a local guide for hire. A maid found him in your rooms this morning. He had this in his hand.”

He held out a blue leather pocketbook, engraved in gold with the letter
I
.

“My mother’s pocketbook! But it wasn’t in his hand before, and he wasn’t murdered in my room.”

“And you are certain of that?”

“Dead certain. I saw him in the Azilah tunnels. His knife was in his back. He had no pulse. His arm was just starting to stiffen, but not his lower body.”

“As you can see, Mademoiselle, this man’s arms are by his side, which makes me question the veracity of your statement. ”

Jade thought for a moment, her mind replaying the events in the tunnel. “How was he lying when you found him?”

Deschamp made a point of consulting a report. “Lying facedown.”

“Then he was moved,” Jade said, triumph in her tone. “Look to see where the blood pooled in his body. I think you’ll find it wasn’t where you’d expect if he died facedown in our room. You might also discover that his left shoulder is dislocated where someone forced it back down after rigor set in.”

The captain inspected the corpse briefly, then snapped his head around to Jade. “You are right. It is pooled on his right side, and his arm has been forced. Such a thing does not change when a body is moved. But how is it a young lady such as yourself knows of these things?”

“I drove an ambulance during the war, Captain, so I am on intimate terms with blood and death. Even before that, I hunted and I know what happens to the blood in game animals if they are not bled out.”

Deschamp studied Jade’s face as if seeing her for the first time, taking her measure. “It would seem that you are a remarkable young woman,” he said. “One would assume that your mother is equally remarkable.”

Jade caught the tenor of his statement. “She is not a murderer, Captain, if that is what you’re suggesting. She would consider it unladylike.”

“Perhaps. But would she kill in self-defense? What if this man attacked her? I have made inquiries. Your mother hired this man to be a guide and translator for her.”

Jade studied her words carefully before speaking. “Have you considered all the inconsistencies here? You suggest this man was brash enough to assault my mother
in her hotel room
? Then my mother stabbed him in the
back
to escape, but the man fell to his right side, where he lay long enough for his blood to pool before he rolled over onto his face? That my mother would then not have the presence of mind to retrieve her pocketbook from him before running away?” She shook her head. “No, I am convinced someone abducted my mother, possibly in the Azilah tunnels. I beg you to help me find her.”

“We will find her, Mademoiselle, but I must ask you to remain in Tangier until we do.”

“You still think I have something to do with this man’s murder? Do you think
I
killed him?”

“I do not know what your role was, but I would prefer not to have two fugitives to search for. There is more at stake here than just the murder of this man.” He stopped and studied Jade again, locking his brown eyes on her green ones. “Why were you meeting your mother in Tangier?”

“Mother planned to spend time at her old home in Andalusia. She wanted to acquire a horse stud for our ranch in the States. She asked me to join her.”

“That does not answer my question. Why did you meet in Tangier? Why not in Spain?”

Why indeed?
“I was in British East Africa. North Africa seemed a good place to meet. Someplace neutral.”

Deschamp made a notation in his notebook. “So you spend quite a bit of time in East Africa? Do you travel to Mombasa often?”

Jade’s senses again went on alert. What was this man fishing for? “No.”

“I have been given a dossier on you, Mademoiselle del Cameron. It is a most interesting read.”

“The devil, you say,” retorted Jade, outraged at the idea. “Who in tarnation sent you that?”

Deschamp ignored her question. “Am I correct that drugs were once found in one of your safari vehicles?”

“It wasn’t my vehicle.”

He looked up and arched a brow. “No?” He turned a few pages back in his notebook and read. “You hired a Harry Hascombe to run your safari, did you not?”

“Yes, and he hired Roger Forster and Roger hired the cars.”

“And you shot Forster?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” He made another notation. “Apparently
you
do not consider such an act unladylike.”

Jade took a deep breath and struggled inwardly for a grip on her temper. Losing it would not help her position. “I presume, Captain, that you are making some sort of connection, but I’ll be deuced if I can see what it is.”

Deschamp closed his book. “We searched your rooms, of course, and found a packet of hashish in your mother’s luggage. There has been quite a lot of hashish entering my native country of late.”

“What?” Jade felt as if the bottom had fallen out of her world and she’d been sent plummeting into hell. Her mother was missing, possibly injured or dead, and now they were accused not only of murder, but also of smuggling drugs. Her head ached and a sudden pain gripped her stomach. Finally she felt enough in control of her voice to speak. “Captain, I told you I found a note for my mother, which I thought came from the Tremaines. Perhaps you should question them. If nothing else, surely someone noticed a person or persons entering the hotel with a dead man.”

Deschamp didn’t answer immediately. He just watched Jade as if evaluating the truth behind her reaction. “I shall contact you at your hotel as soon as we know anything more.” He bowed stiffly, dismissing her for the moment.

Jade didn’t budge. “I’m not convinced, Captain, that you have the authority in Tangier to confine me to the city, much less my hotel. The American Consulate will likely have something to say about this.”

“As you wish, but I assure you, the consul would prefer not to be involved in a murder investigation in a French city.”

“Tangier is not a French city. It doesn’t appear to be
any
government’s city.”

“No, but Azilah is, and you have been most insistent that the murder took place there. I thank you. You have given me all the authority that I need.” He smiled, his head bobbing slightly in smugness. “Should you try to do anything rash, you should know that we hold all your travel papers. You cannot leave.”

Jade stormed back toward the hotel, stopping once when a sound or a shadow or some unidentified sense alerted her to another presence. She pivoted, hoping to catch sight of whomever dogged her steps, but saw only the usual assortment of white-robed men.
Deschamp probably has someone watching me
. Once in the hotel, Jade ignored the desk clerk and gave a cursory glance to the lobby. Empty. She took the steps two at a time up to her room, feeling the need to think and sort everything out before deciding her next move. She didn’t have the chance. There on the desk was a typed note.

The note was signed with a picture of a full moon eclipsing the sun. The picture troubled Jade, but not nearly as much as knowing that
Jemaâ el-Fna
translated into “the Square of the Dead.”

CHAPTER 5

—The Traveler

A MOON ECLIPSING THE SUN
. Jade’s right hand went to her skirt pocket and retrieved the charm she’d pulled from the owl pellet. They matched. She’d taken the trinket out of the owl pellet as a curiosity, the mouse’s attraction for something shiny perhaps having drawn the owl’s attention. At the time it merely struck her as an ironic lesson, applicable to human greed and demise. And now? Now it took on a far more sinister meaning. Whoever had hidden in the tunnel had waited for her.
I took the left fork. That’s why they missed me
. Jade hadn’t followed the dead man’s signal. She’d followed the voices instead.

Then who were the people she had heard talking in the left tunnel? Were they connected in any way to her mother’s abduction or to the Moroccan’s murder? Did the charm belong to one of them? It could have fallen from a man’s watch fob, a woman’s bracelet, or it may have even been a protective talisman worn by the dead guide. If the latter, Jade thought, it ended up being as useless as a lucky rabbit’s foot was to the rabbit.

One thing seemed certain. Someone in the right tunnel had something to do with her mother’s disappearance. This note in her room proved that. Someone had wanted her to take the right-hand fork. She hadn’t; they had waited, then left.
Probably hauled the dead man back with them
. She imagined them toting the corpse back to the hotel, perhaps pretending the man was drunk rather than dead. That alone told her they were not waiting to warn her. Was she supposed to be kidnapped, too, or were they going to demand ransom? Whatever the question, the answer waited in Marrakech.

Jade ransacked her and her mother’s belongings for anything of value that she could use to barter for her mother’s freedom. It didn’t amount to much, just her mother’s opal necklace and earrings. She rolled the results in some dark hosiery and shoved it in a carpetbag along with a clean dress for her fastidious mother. Then she exchanged her filthy skirt for a pair of trousers, decided that might be too scandalous for the Moroccans, and pulled her old ambulance corps skirt out of her trunk to wear over them.

The calf-length garment, designed to be worn over her corps trousers and boots, felt like an old ally, and aroused a rush of sensations. She closed her eyes and heard her comrade Beverly’s melodic laugh, tasted Bovril’s strong beefy flavor, smelled the pungent aroma of carbolic acid soaps, and felt the rumble of not-too-distant artillery fire. She exchanged her walking shoes for her stout pair of high boots, equipped with a knife sheath. She tucked her trouser legs inside the boots to hide them, and slipped her hunting knife into the sheath. Most of the francs went into her pocket; a few into the carpetbag along with a packet of coffee, a tin of matches, and a compass. The flashlight went into her camera bag.

I’m ready for you, you sons of hyenas. To perdition with Deschamp
. The man would only claim she had typed the note herself. No, she’d head to Marrakech alone. She snatched up her carpetbag as well as her canvas camera bag and headed out only to stop abruptly at the door.
Think,
she told herself. If she left in broad daylight, Deschamp would stop her. She’d better wait for dark.

Jade dropped her bag by the door and paced the room, feeling very much alone when, on the third pass, she realized she didn’t need to be. She’d wire Beverly and her husband, Lord Avery Dunbury, in London, where they awaited the birth of their first child. Avery had connections everywhere. Surely he’d be able to enlist someone here to come to her aid. Jade wrestled for a moment about also sending a wire to her father on their ranch in New Mexico and decided against it for the time being. There was nothing he could do besides worry, and she wasn’t sure she could reach him, anyway, since he’d be up in the high pastures, making the rounds of the flocks.

She sat down at the desk to compose her message to Bev and Avery. Would Deschamp find out? Probably, if he was having her tailed. Might as well make it difficult for him.
Wonder if he reads Swahili? How in the world do you say “kidnapped” in Swahili?

After a moment’s reflection, she settled on the following message:
Mother stolen. We are suspects in murder. Going to Marrakech. Reply as received here. Later messages to mission there.
She signed it with her Swahili name,
Simba Jike.

Jade frowned. If Deschamp did see this, he’d know she’d gone to Marrakech, but she couldn’t conceive of a way to disguise the city’s name and still get the information to Bev and Avery. Then she remembered that the imperial city stood just north of the Atlas Mountains. Jade burned the first paper, took another blank sheet, and rewrote the message, disguising Marrakech as “the red city holding up the world.” She hoped they’d look at a map and make the connection. Of course what they could do, Deschamp could, too. Well, she had to try something. She just wished her Arabic was better to help her enlist the aid of one of the area children.

She took a seat on the hotel’s lower terrace and ordered coffee, sipping as she watched the assorted Moroccans parading in front of her. Of particular interest was a boy about eight or nine years old selling oranges. She watched him accost several tourists like a natural-born salesman. He spoke French!

“Here,” she called to him in French. The boy trotted over with his basket of fruit.

“Fresh oranges, Mademoiselle,” he said, and named an outrageously high price.

Jade offered a fourth that amount, and the boy countered with something closer to half the original cost. Jade picked up an orange, turning it over in her hand as though scrutinizing it. In the meantime, she motioned the boy to lean closer, pointing to the orange. When he did, she spoke slowly and softly in French.