The Illusion of Murder (27 page)

I speak loud enough for others on the street to turn and look.

When I think about Frederick in the light of day, my mind unaffected by my feelings, it always boiled down to one thing: If it wasn’t for Frederick’s statement that he had personally spoken to Mr. Cleveland, my insistence that the man had been killed in the marketplace would carry some credibility.

An interesting angle to my ricocheting relationship is his statement that he worked on Warton and the captain to keep me from being arrested.

Why would he go out of his way to keep me around?

Is my next role the sacrificial lamb to slaughter?

*   *   *

A
FTER AN HOUR
of walking the streets of Colombo for the last time, I head for the dock to find that passengers are being ferried out to the
Oriental
.

Frederick is there, talking with the Wartons and Von Reich, and Sarah arrives on my heels. I get in line to rub shoulders with my enemies as we wait for a boat to take us out. As the boys back at the newsroom would say, It’s the only game in town.

Frederick turns to me and says, “Too windy for an outrigger.”

A fresh breeze is up, creating whitecaps on the bay.

I agree. “I already had a bath.”

Everyone either has one hand on his or her hat or is making a mad dash for one headed for the bay. Watching women, Sarah and Lady Warton among them, hanging on desperately to their elaborate hats, many with veils to protect against sun and biting insects, I am again thankful for my simple, unfashionable cap that stays put.

A man and two women disembarking from a carriage catch my attention because of his unusual outfit. He has a wide-brimmed hat not unlike Frederick’s distinctive jungle-tromping headgear, along with shirt, vest, pants, and boots with an unmistakable Australian Outback rancher look that I’ve seen in drawings and pictures.

While the outfit would be considered ordinary work clothes on an Aussie ranch, at a Ceylon dock it appears more like an eccentric taste in male attire … or a costume.

A gust of wind comes up that nearly blows off my own hat and rips the hats off of many a head. Lord Warton makes a dash for her ladyship’s hat and Frederick chases his hat and uses his foot to stop it from taking a swim in the bay.

The Aussie outbacker looks toward us and yells, “Well, hello there!”

I don’t know which of us he’s hailed, but there’s no response and he hesitates for a moment, as if he is puzzled or unsure, and then turns to the two women who even at this distance appear obviously to be yapping at each other in a heated manner.

“That outfit the Aussie is wearing looks almost like a costume,” I say to Frederick as he joins Sarah and me on a steam launch.

“It is. I’ve been told he’s an entertainer. His name is Hugh Murdock, an Aussie who bills himself as the best marksman in the world.”

“Aren’t you the best marksman in the world?”

“Perhaps the best hunter, if you will pardon the boast, but I have always been a terrible marksman. Quite wretched, really. I have to let beasts get so close that I can smell their hot breath before I pull the trigger.”

He nods back at the Aussie group gathering their trunks on the pier. “I hear he also catches bullets in his teeth from a gun his wife fires. Magicians who perform on board get a discount on their fare, so perhaps he’ll give us a demonstration.”

“He better hope the seas are calm when she shoots,” Sarah says.

I no longer had to wonder whether my reputation as a hysterical female and general troublemaker had preceded me. The purser checking off names on the passenger manifest does a double take when I give mine. I can only attribute it to the fact that someone who had previously boarded befouled my reputation. My prime candidate for that someone was Lord Warton, though my list of enemies has more names on it.

Too antsy to remain in my cabin, I stand at the rail and watch the steam launches deposit waves of passengers on the gangplank. As the Aussie sharpshooter comes aboard, it’s not hard to see that the hostility between the two women has flared again.

“His wife and his assistant,” Von Reich tells me as he appears at my elbow. “The one who looks young enough to be their daughter is the assistant. His wife is also a marksman, though not as good as he is.”

“Looks like the assistant has annoyed the wife.”

He grins and strokes his handlebar mustache. “I hear the annoyance may be that the wife resents sharing the marriage bed.”

“Ah…”

That the Aussies’ personal lives are already making the rounds of the ship’s passengers doesn’t surprise me. A ship churns out rumors faster than a society ball.

“I’ve heard that the man claims to be the best shot in the world,” I tell Von Reich. “And that he catches bullets in his teeth.”

“His claim of being the best shot is not valid. I know for a fact he has been beaten by a much better shot.”

“Annie Oakley is the best I’ve ever seen. How can he make the claim of being the number one if he’s been bested?”
*

“My dear, it’s show business; he can claim the moon. Besides, the other sharpshooter suffered an identity crisis after rising from the dead and isn’t performing. As for catching bullets in his teeth…” He grins smugly.

“You know how he does it, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Really? Tell me, please.”

He shakes a finger at me. “No, no, no, that would take all the enjoyment out of it. I am an amateur magician myself. It would be a violation of the code.”

A violation he’s made to me and every other woman on board who teased his ego. But he’s right—I’d much rather see the bullet-catch trick and take a guess myself as to how it’s done … before I’m told the secret.

As the Aussies go by, I think for a moment that the wife is going to slap the young assistant as the wife hisses,
“Bitch.”

I give Von Reich a sage nod. “I suspect that statement sums up the relationship between the parties.”

*   *   *

A
T ONE O
’
CLOCK
, we sail and I stand at the bow, torn with conflicting emotions. I am on my way again! The race is still on! But knowing that the mystery sparked by Cleveland’s words in the marketplace may have also come aboard, I am sick to death of the dark cloud hovering over me. With Egypt thousands of miles away, I have resolved not to play whatever game is afoot with Frederick, Sarah, and whoever else is involved in the intrigue.

When I am back in the States, I will put the matter before the British Ambassador in Washington and demand that Mr. Cleveland’s Amelia be contacted and the odd key that is still in the heel of my shoe be given to her.

The whole sad affair has not just taken some of the joy of the journey away, but threatens to rain on my quest to complete the trip in less than eighty days. Besides, there is one thing I know about game playing—when someone else names the game and has all the advantages, you are bound to lose.

So, I will just concentrate on the stories I’m doing about my travels and finishing the race on time. I’ll step on no one’s toes and set out on no adventures.

How can I get into any trouble just minding my own business?

40

Hugh Murdock comes out of his cabin bathroom and into a hornet’s nest. “Will you two please shut up? You have been clawing at each other like two cats for hours.”

“Get rid of this bitch and I’ll have some peace,” his wife Irene says.

“Go to your cabin,” Hugh tells Cenza, the assistant.

Cenza points an accusatory finger at his wife. “She put me in a room so deep in the hole, I’ll have fish for companions.”

“I hope they’re sharks!” the wife hisses.

Irene and Cenza exchange one more poisonous look before the younger woman leaves.

“I’m divorcing you as soon as we get back home,” Irene tells him. “You brought that little slut along to humiliate me. She approaches you just before we’re ready to sail from Australia and you use some of our last money to buy her a ticket. She can’t shoot, she can’t—”

He waves away her ire. “Be quiet, something’s happened.”

“Something?
Lots
of things have happened besides your infidelities. You’re not just a bad husband, you’re a bad gambler and a bad businessman. What you haven’t lost at cards, you threw into that crazy scheme to raise camels in the Outback. We’re stranded, we don’t have the money to get back home. We don’t even have the money for a hotel when this damn ship docks.”

He ignores her and stands at the porthole chewing on his lower lip.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Someone’s on board that I know.”

“Someone you’ve slept with? I’m not surprised considering how many bitches you’ve crawled into bed with.”

He turns and meets her eye. “You don’t understand. The person I saw can solve all of our problems.”

“Our problem is that we’re broke—”

“That’s what I’m talking about. I smell money.”

Irene calms down. “Tell me more.”

He grins. “Something’s afoot and I can smell money. And I’m going to cut myself into a piece of it.”

“You mean
we
are going to get a piece of it.”

PART V

Day 31

A
GAINST THE
M
ONSOON

41

At first it is so wet-warm in the Straits of Malacca, so sultry and foggy, and so damp that everything rusts, even the keys in one’s pockets, and the mirrors are so sweaty that they cease to reflect. Then the winds they call monsoon pick up and the seas punish us as we sail for the Far Eastern ports of Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong, with the headwinds making the run slower than I had hoped for.

I work on the story about Colombo, both the one I will cable back and the one that will be placed in a secret journal I have begun. I am logging everything that happened since I saw Mr. Cleveland leave the ship in the wee hours that first day at Port Said. If I am lost overboard for whatever reason, I don’t want his last wish to die with me. And I am petty enough to want to see my killer hanged by the neck if my trip to Davy Jones’s locker comes from any hand but that of my Maker.

The bane of ocean traveling soon strikes and almost all of the passengers disappear into their cabins to hide their misery as seasickness becomes epidemic.

During dinner, the chief officer relates the woes of people he had seen suffering from seasickness that threatens now to even overpower the captain. I listen for quite a while, merely because I cannot help hearing, but finally his stories of miserable passengers makes me get up and run outside for the rail. After I do my duty and avoid having it slapped back at me by the wind, I straighten my shoulders and make a determined march back to my dinner plate rather than let the malady control me.

It is amazing that Sarah is able to stay in her stuffy cabin and only occasionally seek a breath of fresh air. I am still clueless about the purpose of her goal to keep her presence a secret, but have no doubt that her journey is intertwined in some way with the events at Port Said. My nose is dying to snoop further despite my vow of abstinence from foreign intrigue, but at the moment the most I can hope for is that I keep my sea legs under me and don’t have to use them to swim if the ship goes down.

While I occasionally see Frederick and other passengers I know, it appears almost everyone has fallen victim to the violent motion of the ship in the monsoon sea and are too miserable to leave their cabins. I am secretly pleased that I have fared better than the great hunter.

The terrible swell of the sea during the monsoon, the rise and fall of mountains of water, is beautiful. I sit breathless on deck watching the bow of the ship standing upright on a wave then dashing headlong down as if it intends to carry us to the bottom.

In a moment of insanity, I fell in love with a cute monkey in Penang and bought it on impulse. The seller assured me it did not bite, but I soon discover that the little beast has a worse temper than Medusa, sending me fleeing for safety after I made the mistake of opening his cage after it got banged around by the ship being tossed in the angry seas.

During the night the monsoon sea washes over the ship in a frightful manner and my cabin fills with water, which, however, does not touch my berth. Escape to the lower deck is impossible, as I can’t tell the deck from the angry, pitching sea.

As I crawl back into my bunk, a feeling of awe creeps over me and with it a conscious feeling of satisfaction. I think it is very possible that I have spoken my last word to any mortal, that the ship will doubtless sink, and if the ship does go down, no one will be able to tell whether I could have gone around the world in seventy-five days or not. The thought is comforting, for I feel I might not get around in even a hundred days.

I don’t worry myself over my impending fate because I am a great believer in letting unchangeable affairs go their way. “If the ship does go down,” I think, “there is time enough to worry when it’s going. All the worry in the world can’t change it one way or the other, and if the ship doesn’t go down, I will have wasted time worrying.”