THE CAMBODIAN CURSE AND OTHER STORIES
Page 25
“You’re bleeding,” Sanjay said, kneeling to examine my arm. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. Then another. I must have been seeing double. No, that wasn’t it. It was a set of five white handkerchiefs tied together. They must have been for one of his tricks.
“I think it’s broken,” I said, my head spinning. I closed my eyes and the sound of scraping stone filled my ears. Was I hallucinating?
“Stay there,” he said, as if I was going to go anywhere.
I opened my eyes as a new shot of pain surged through my arm.
Sanjay used the handkerchiefs to tie a wooden spoon from the lab to my arm as a makeshift splint.
“We have to get you out of here,” he said. “I’ll go over every inch of the room again.”
“You don’t need to,” I said, pointing to the stone stairs with my good arm.
Natural light cascaded over the steps. I hadn’t imagined the sound of scraping stone. The doorway down to the lab had opened back up. I’d never been so happy to see the light of day.
“The dragon opened up the door,” Sanjay said, following my gaze.
“We didn’t hear it because of the falling rock.”
“Come on,” he said. “I can carry you up the stairs.”
“I can walk,” I said.
My voice was shaky and I wasn’t sure I believed my own words. But the thought of being carried to my rescue like a damsel in distress wasn’t much more appealing than being stuck down in that alchemist lab. “I just need a second.”
Sanjay held my good arm to help me across the room. Hot pain throbbed each time I took a step. Drops of blood followed in my wake.
“Wait!” I said.
“Do you need me to carry you after all?”
“No,” I said, holding my arm in my other hand. I winced in pain. “This is another diversion.”
“That’s great, Jaya. We can talk about diversions later. Now come on.”
“Stop,” I said. “I need to think.”
“No, you don’t,” Sanjay said. “You need to get to a hospital.”
“Clayton is smart,” I said. “Really smart. Just like how he dresses so outrageously so he can hide in plain sight when he wears more normal clothing, this lab is the same false front.” I paused and steadied myself on the edge of a table. “If someone happened to find their way into this lab, all it would do is tell them that he takes his alchemy seriously. Those gold flakes are a prop. This place has another hiding place—the real one.”
“That’s great, Jaya, but this accident—”
“Don’t you get it? That wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t that a rock was so unstable that it fell when the doorway opened back up. That rock fell because we were too close to his hiding place. It’s a booby trap. A booby trap that opens the door back up, for the person who got caught in the trap to be relieved to have a way out—instead of searching for the real hiding place. We were looking for a way out, so we weren’t looking for a hiding place. Those dragons are the perfect hiding place.”
“You’re not going to let this go,” Sanjay said.
“No,” I said, ignoring the growing bloodstain on the splint wrapped tightly around my arm.
Sanjay’s shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Two minutes. Then we get you out of here.”
“The dragon’s mouth,” I said as I reached the dragon. “The stone tongue is a different piece of stone, not a continuous carving.”
Sanjay inspected the mouth of the dragon, grumbling about how I didn’t have the magnifying glass I use for historical documents. His grumbling cut off abruptly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A key hole in the back of the dragon’s mouth,” he said.
“We don’t have the key,” I said.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Sanjay pulled one of the tools from his escape acts and poked it into the dragon’s mouth.
A few moments later, a sharp click sounded. Sanjay lifted out the tongue of the dragon. Beyond it were three black velvet bags.
Opening the first drawstring bag, a smile spread across Sanjay’s face. He pulled out the gold chess figure of a crazed rook biting his shield.
SEVENTEEN
Two hours later I sat in a reserved box watching Fool’s Gold. My arm rested on a pillow in its new cast.
The house was packed. The media was having a field day with the fact that Clayton Barnes had been arrested for stealing the gold and silver Lewis Chessmen and was suspected of countless other thefts of gold treasures.
The media attention was great for business. Not only had Daniella’s show sold out all its scheduled performances, but Feisal had a bidding war for the chess set.
Sanjay had insisted we go straight to the hospital, rather than stopping at the theater to hand over the gold chess pieces to Feisal. But while I was getting my cast, Sanjay had called Feisal who came by to pick up the pieces that Sanjay and I happened to have “forgotten” were in my bag when we handed over the other evidence to the police.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Feisal had said, bowing and kissing my fingers that poked out from the cast.
Clayton made a full confession after being assured he would get a deal for returning several missing treasures. He couldn’t return all of the treasures he’d stolen, though. He hadn’t been selling the pieces intact. He’s been melting down treasures in his alchemy lab. It was easier—and safer—to sell gold once it had been disguised.
Clayton’s theft of the chess set was never meant to be an impossible crime. His plan had been to have an alibi for the time when the theft was supposed to have taken place, and for Izzy to be the one person without an alibi. With Izzy’s past, he was sure the police would have things wrapped up quickly. The German tour group in the hallway ruined the simple plan.
Clayton had used the key, which Astrid left at an appointed spot, to get into the suite and break into the safe early that morning. He’d set an explosion on a timer to go off during the picnic. He was a good thief, and part of his MO was that he was exceedingly careful, taking steps such as never having an accomplice know his identity. That’s why even though the police had long suspected him, they had never been able to prove anything.
Clayton needed Astrid’s key because he hadn’t wanted to be seen picking a lock in a crowded hallway. He could open the safe himself when he had more time and knew Astrid would be making sure the suite’s occupants were otherwise occupied. Astrid’s other role was to make sure Izzy would be fixing a security problem at the theater while everyone else had the alibi of the picnic. Clayton hadn’t counted on Daniella being suspicious of the theater’s security breach or of the depth of her feeling for Izzy. That’s why he tried to get me to distract Daniella, so we wouldn’t look carefully into what had happened.
In retrospect, Clayton should have anticipated human emotions to get in the way, since it was precisely his own feelings that had tripped him up. He knew he would be inconveniencing Feisal by stealing the chess set, but he never imagined Feisal wouldn’t have insurance. When he learned Feisal had cut corners and didn’t have insurance, he decided to anonymously return the silver half of the chess set, so Feisal could recoup some of his losses. The only reason Clayton had decided on this theft in the first place was because he was desperate. He was running low on funds and didn’t see an alternative. He got sloppy.
I heard about Clayton’s confession from Feisal when I arrived at the theater from the hospital. Being the good man that he was, Feisal was already talking about forgiving Clayton.
“Is your cast dry yet?” Sanjay asked as the stage lights flickered and signaled that Fool’s Gold would begin soon.
“I think so,” I said. “Why?”
As the lights when down, Sanjay whipped out a black marker from a hidden pocket and signed his name across the cast with a flourish.
I hadn’t ever thought that Sanjay’s illusions as The Hindi Houdini could help solve crimes, but it was those clever deceptions of his that had been the key to piecing together how the theft was done. I also hadn’t previously thought my research skills as a historian could help catch a criminal, but maybe there was something to it.
I never did get that relaxing vacation I was after. But sitting in the theater box with Sanjay after we’d caught a clever thief, seeing Daniella and Izzy find happiness, and knowing I’d helped save Feisal’s antiques business and ensure he’d get to stay in the country that has become home, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Author’s Note
I’ve always loved the Golden Age of detective fiction, when puzzle plot mysteries and short stories were popular. Authors like John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson, and Ellery Queen (the pseudonym for Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee) took the challenge to readers even further, often writing locked room or otherwise impossible crime stories (the definition of which is explained by Doug Greene in the Foreword).
From the time I sat down to write my first short story, I knew it would be this type of “fair play” puzzle plot, where the writer plays fair with the reader by planting all the clues in plain sight. I wasn’t sure if I was a skilled enough writer yet to successfully write an impossible crime story, but I knew I wanted to try. I wrote “The Shadow of the River” in longhand one afternoon at the San Francisco Public Library. It was a simple twist, but I was so proud of finishing that story that I submitted it to an anthology competition of blind submissions—where it was accepted. My subsequent stories became more complex as I became a better storyteller, and I always challenged myself to come up with an impossible crime twist that would baffle readers as they had fun trying to figure it out.
While Doug Greene and I were chatting at Malice Domestic last year, he asked me about the locked room methods I used in my stories. I hadn’t realized until that moment that each of my stories used a different method, each of them one of the methods laid out by John Dickson Carr in his famous Locked Room Lecture. I had pushed myself to make each story surprising and different, but I hadn’t realized just how much I was following in the tradition of the authors who’d inspired me.
So now I will issue my own challenge to you, the reader: Did you spot the different methods used in each story as they followed the categories of the famous Locked Room Lecture? Hint: There’s at least one story that features more than one method.
And one more challenge: There are several “Easter eggs” hidden in these stories—fun hidden references to literary characters and authors I love. Fans of Elizabeth Peters, Aaron Elkins, and Juliet Blackwell, I hope you caught the nods to these fabulous authors.
Thanks for reading! To stay up to date with my latest publications, you can sign up for my email newsletter at www.gigipandian.com/newsletter/
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Gigi Pandian is the child of cultural anthropologists from New Mexico and the southern tip of India. She spent her childhood being dragged around the world, and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gigi writes the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mysteries, the Accidental Alchemist mysteries, and locked-room mystery short stories. Gigi’s fiction has been awarded the Malice Domestic Grant and Lefty Awards, and been nominated for Macavity and Agatha Awards. Find her online at www.gigipandian.com.
The Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery Series
by Gigi Pandian
Novels
ARTIFACT (#1)
PIRATE VISHNU (#2)
QUICKSAND (#3)
MICHELANGELO’S GHOST (#4)
THE NINJA’S ILLUSION (#5)
Short Stories
THE LIBRARY GHOST OF TANGLEWOOD INN
THE CAMBODIAN CURSE & OTHER STORIES
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