The Illusion of Murder

by McCleary, Carol

  Giving a quick look around to make sure he is not observed, he tosses the weapon overboard, hearing a faint plop as it hits the water and begins its journey to the bottom of the sea.

  Making his way back to his cabin he thinks about the newspaperwoman who has thrown a kink into the best-laid plans of men—and nations.

  She has botched things up on many levels. It’s easy to see that she will keep getting in the way—if she manages to stay alive.

  25

  “They’re trying to murder me, not you. They thought you were me, that’s why you were attacked.”

  The statement from the woman barely penetrates my brain because I’m in a state of shock after finding out her identity.

  I can’t keep from staring impolitely at her.

  That she just took credit for being the intended victim of the deck attack on me is unimportant. All that is completely irrelevant at the moment as my mind tries to deal with the incredible sight in front of me.

  Had Cleopatra left her tomb and wandered around the boat in widow black, I would not have been more surprised.

  “Sarah Bernhardt,” I whisper.

  “Yes, yes, I’ve already told you, in the flesh.”

  “The Divine Sarah.”

  Sarah Bernhardt is not a person, at least not in the sense that I am one, that the president of the United States and the occupants in the next stateroom are persons.

  The Divine Sarah is a living goddess.

  The most glamorous actress in the world, the most revered tragedian, most beloved, most sensuous, the most everything, with fame, scandal, and love affairs that provided juicy tidbits for gossip columns and afternoon teas all over the world.

  The woman every woman desired to be; the woman every man wants to love.

  From reading gossip columns I know that she was born in Paris, her mother was Jewish, her father probably Dutch, but no one knew for sure because his sole contribution appeared to have been slipping into her mother’s bed just long enough to contribute his seed.

  Sarah cloaked herself in glamorous scandal as other women hid themselves behind layers of clothes and respectability. Struggling to earn a living as an actress, she became a courtesan, her beauty and charm making her a favorite paramour of nobles and royalty.

  Her love affair when she was nineteen with Belgium’s Prince de Ligne produced her only child.

  As she grew in years and fame—she had to be over forty as she paced in front of me, but looked a decade younger—she had become a living legend, the Divine Sarah, the greatest actress in the world, and an Aphrodite whose rich and famous lovers were rumored to include even the Prince of Wales, a playboy whose romantic romps to Paris were legendary.

  She goes back on top of her coffin with her long cigarette holder and blows cigarette smoke at me. “Young woman, we must get beyond your amazement that I am on board.”

  “I thought you were that Winchester woman.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s too complicated to explain. What are you doing on board … incognito? Hiding in your cabin?”

  Sarah slides off the coffin again and paces with the nervous energy of a caged animal in the small room, using her foot-long ivory cigarette holder as a music conductor’s baton to highlight her words.

  “I cannot reveal my mission. It is a matter of importance that is unequaled in human affairs.”

  I have no idea what she is talking about, but it sounds important. Exciting, in fact. “Unequaled in human affairs” brought to me images of the march of armies on darkling plains, war ministries called into secret sessions, dispatches carried through the night by spies on galloping horses.

  She is the greatest actress in the world and I naturally assume that she is playing a role, but it didn’t alter the fact that there had been a murder in the marketplace and attempts at Tanis and now aboard the ship.

  It cannot be a coincidence.

  The world’s greatest actress, the consort of kings and millionaires, the toast of three continents, is telling me that she is involved in the same intrigues I have become entangled—but she won’t tell me her role, though she has cast me as her understudy for the attack on the bow of the ship.

  Just as important, she offers me no clue as to what game is being played that could mean war between nations.

  As I watch her pacing, I realize that while I have solved the mystery of the woman in black, I have not made any headway as to why a man died in the marketplace or why an epidemic of violence seems to hover around me like a maelstrom ever since.

  Had I not been such a dunderhead, I would have realized the real identity of “Sarah Jones” days ago.

  Everyone knows the Divine Sarah sleeps in a coffin because it helps her understand roles involving suffering and tragedy.

  LIFE HAS TAUGHT ME THAT IF ONE IS TO BE SOMEBODY, IT CAN ONLY BE AFTER DEATH.

  —SARAH BERNHARDT

  26

  Trying to get Sarah to sit still and discuss the situation is about as easy as stopping the ship by dragging my foot in the water. It is not so much that she is flighty, as bursting with energy. I suspect that she needs a release after being cooped up in a cabin for days.

  When she finally sits quietly back down on her coffin, and has me sit in a chair, she gives me an assessing look.

  “I’ve heard about you,” she says. “My steward says you’re an eccentric, rich American heiress, traveling about with a hairbrush and a bank book, with nothing to do, so you do strange things to get attention.”

  At first I’m furious and then I break into a giggle. “I am guilty of having a hairbrush.”

  “Who are you exactly?”

  “Exactly, I am a newspaperwoman. I have done a number of exposés that have brought about social reform or exposed corruption.”

  As she asks pointed questions about my career, I give her details explaining how I got started as a reporter when I was working in a Pittsburgh factory, doing the same laborious job as a man but only being paid half a man’s wage.

  Angered by a Pittsburgh Dispatch article that essentially said a woman’s only worth was as a helpmate to a man, I wrote a letter to the editor pointing out the injustice of that position and signed it “Lonely Orphan Girl” out of fear I would lose my job.

  That letter got me a job as a reporter, but after a few searing articles about how the common worker was being mistreated, a group of businessmen paid a visit to my editor and I found myself covering weddings and funerals.…

  Even after I made a daring trip to untamed Mexico at my own expense to show I could handle a foreign correspondent’s job, I was still assigned a “proper job for a female reporter”—the society page.*

  “I abruptly left my job in Pittsburgh and went to New York, certain my success would open doors for me. Instead, I found that there was no room for a woman reporter even in America’s largest city. After banging on doors for months, and down to trolley fare, which I had borrowed after my last cent was stolen, I physically barged into the office of Joseph Pulitzer and informed the startled publisher that I could do a story that would turn the city on its head.”

  I describe for Sarah how I had to fool a boardinghouse landlady, police, psychiatrists, and a judge that I was insane.

  Sarah laughs. “You should be on the stage.”

  “I find I can only act in real life. I have been on a stage just long enough to find out that I cannot fake it.”

  “Tell me why you have come knocking—pounding—at my door.”

  “Are you aware that a man was murdered in the marketplace in Port Said?”

  She shrugs. “My steward said there was some native dispute.”

  “I don’t think so…”

  I relate the events from seeing the murdered man fall off his bike, to him whispering Amelia’s name in the marketplace—omitting my search of Mr. Cleveland’s cabin—up to my fall into the Tanis tomb and to the attack on me, characterized as “female hysterics.”

  The last bit got her on her feet, ready to storm t
he captain’s cabin.

  “No, please, if I antagonize the captain again, he’ll drop me off at the next port. Besides, you’d have to reveal your identity.”

  After I finish my tale, she says, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t think your little marketplace matter has a connection to the matter I am dealing with.”

  Little marketplace matter?

  “Sarah, I need to know more about the situation you are in. If you’d share with me—”

  She brushes away my need to know with a wave of her cigarette holder. “I have been sworn to secrecy.” She gives me a dark look. “Speaking to a newspaperwoman would hardly satisfy that oath. No word of it will escape from my lips even if I am being stretched on an inquisitioner’s rack. However, I am frankly bored to death locked in this sardine can. Helping you with your little mystery would add some relief. Tell me what you know about this man Cleveland.”

  Admitting to my burglary, I tell her how I managed to get rid of the steward so I could make a search of Cleveland’s room.

  “You entered a strange man’s room and searched it? That was naughty of you.” She says it with a big smile.

  Sarah’s estimation of me has gone up.

  She asks what I observed in the luggage and makes an exclamation when I come to the books and writings.

  “That list of numbers you saw is a secret code. That’s what one of the books was for, probably that law book that struck you as odd for a cutlery salesman to lug about. I once had a lover who was a spy. An Italian count. He used ordinary books for constructing his codes.”

  “How is it done?”

  “It’s so simple, a child could do it, but impossible to decipher unless you have the right book. The spymaster gives his spy a book that is not in general use in the foreign country where the spy is being sent—”

  “That Yorkshire law volume would be perfect,” I add.

  “Exactly. To compose a message, they find the correct words in the book—”

  “The numbers are the page, line, and position of the word.”

  “Nellie, you are quick, aren’t you? Since both the spy and his supervisor have the same book, it’s easy for them to decode messages. My lover sent his messages in invisible ink, especially the ones to me.”

  “Why did he use invisible ink?”

  “He was married.”

  “Oh.” I am awed by the fact the woman had a lover—and openly admits it. A married one, at that. What a daring and shocking admission for a woman. And very French, of course.

  “Don’t sound so prudish, my dear. Certainly you have had a love affair with a married—ah, yes, I see from your blush that you have. To read the messages, I ran a hot iron over the paper or held it over a warm radiator.” She sighs. “He was a wonderful lover, warm to a woman’s needs, and generous. They caught him spying and hanged him. Your spy, that cutlery salesman, he may have used invisible ink, too.”

  “The paper I saw had writing on it.”

  “Of course—a sheet of paper without writing on it would raise suspicion. The invisible words are written between the lines.”

  I snap my fingers. “Lemon juice, my brothers used it to make invisible writing when were children. Milk, too. What did your lover use?”

  “Nothing so ordinary.”

  She leans forward and whispers in my ear. I blush from head to toe and quickly change the subject.†

  “I suspect you’re right about the books,” I say. “It made little sense for a cutlery salesman from Liverpool to have a book on the laws of York, though I could understand why he might have one about Egypt. And you might be right about the invisible ink. The numbers I saw may have been a draft he prepared, to be turned into an invisible message between the lines of an otherwise innocent appearing correspondence.”

  “It’s too bad you don’t have the paper with the numbers on it and the book. Is the luggage still in Cleveland’s suite?”

  “No.” I tell her about seeing an empty trunk hitting the water.

  “Did all the luggage appear empty?”

  “Now that you ask me, yes, I believe so.” I shake my head to stir up the memory. “The way the boatman handled them so easily, taking them out of the lowered netting and tossing them back to his mates. They may well have been empty.”

  “So, the contents may still be aboard with your British lord sitting on them. Who may not even know the importance.”

  “I’m sure Lord Warton and the others must realize Mr. Cleveland was a spy. Or at least suspect it.”

  “That doesn’t mean they know how the spy game is played. Or be aware that invisible ink could be part of what the chief of the Paris police calls modus operandi.”

  I have to wonder if the Parisian chief is her lover, too.

  Sarah lets out a great sigh. “Well, my dear, it is very late, and after listening to your tale, there is only one thing for you to do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Go on with your own affairs, your race to beat the record around the world, and leave matters of spies and revolutions in the hands of the politicians. No matter what you do, you’ll receive no thanks for your efforts and may in fact jeopardize your goal because politicians are devils.”

  It is good advice and much more palatable coming from this woman of the world who wants me to succeed than Mr. Selous, whose advice is based upon my gender.

  I look her in the eye. “Sarah, do you want to share with me your—”

  “No!” She gets up and dramatically sweeps to the porthole and opens it, staring into the dark night. “It is a secret I cannot share. If the secret is revealed, armies will march, empires will tremble.”

  I am awestruck. “Are you a spy? Entrusted with a national secret?”

  “Me? A spy? Of course not.”

  “Then … then who’s trying to murder you?”

  “My lover’s family, of course.”

  27

  My head is pulsating when I leave the great actress to return to my own cabin. So many things have happened so quickly in this land of mystery and magic. Now I find Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in the world, is on the ship—and she has become my friend and confidante. I wish I could wire Mr. Pulitzer and tell him about it. But she has sworn me to secrecy about her presence.

  The ship is underway, moving down the canal toward Suez Bay, and I step out on deck to get air, joining other passengers seeking even the stingy breeze that the forward movement of the ship brings over the deck before I am banished below so the men can have the deck to themselves.

  Crewmen are hanging lights at the front of the ship and a group of us watch them as they put the lights over the side.

  I lean against the rail and eavesdrop as a man tells his companion that the lights are electric, powered by the ship’s steam engine, and that before the introduction of electric headlights, ships were compelled to tie up in the canal overnight because of the great danger of running into the sandbanks.

  Being near the bow reminds of me of my close call with the grim reaper. I didn’t make an issue of it, but I’m not convinced that Sarah was the intended victim any more than I had leaned too heavily against the frail railing at Tanis or mistook “Amelia” for an Arabic word. I had been searched at Tanis for the key and I’m sure a Mahdi dagger man had come aboard to kill for the key, just as one had killed for it in the marketplace.

  The death of Mr. Cleveland and the key are directly related to the political unrest in Egypt, I’m sure of it. What I can’t comprehend, and without help from the great actress, is how those matters are related to her problems with her lover’s family.

  Having worked out nothing that sounds like a solution, I return to my cabin, certain that I will not get good sleep again.

  As I step into the tiny cubbyhole that serves as my bathroom, I smell face cream.

  My cream is in an airtight jar and I had not opened it since applying cream this morning. Opening it, I can see that the contents have been stirred around.

  Bending down, I take a sniff of t
he drain opening in the sink bowl and smell a hint of cream.

  Someone had opened my cream jar and stirred around the contents. In the process, a glob of cream had fallen into the sink and had been washed down to cover the intruder’s tracks. They were obviously looking for the key.

  I look around my cabin, seeking other clues that someone had invaded my personal space.

  I find none, but have no other explanation for the condition of my cream jar other than someone had made a thorough search of my cabin and that the jar of cream was part of the search. Certainly my male steward had not been playing with my facial cream.

  My room had been searched to find the key given to me by the man murdered in the marketplace.

  “That settles that,” I tell the room’s walls.

  There is no longer any doubt that the attacker on the bow had been an assassin and who the target had been. I feel like running back and telling the Divine Sarah she is wrong. I am not the understudy, but the star of this murder mystery.

  My sense of having been violated once again chills me with anger, but a more practical thought sneaks in: Sarah’s speculation that the contents of Mr. Cleveland’s luggage might still be aboard.

  From Sarah’s description of the process, I’m certain that Mr. Cleveland had written a coded message, though I didn’t know if what I had seen was the finished message or one in progress. Or if he had another message hidden on the papers in invisible ink.

  Knowing what Mr. Cleveland wrote in the coded message might flush out my enemy.

  How could I go about finding it without jeopardizing the race … or my life?

  More urgent at the moment than secret messages is the matter of not being murdered in my bed by an intruder who returns to search my person.

  I wedge the chair back under the door handle and crawl into bed, clutching my pair of scissors.

  PART III

  Day 19

  PARTING THE RED SEA

  28

  Leaving the Suez Canal behind, the ship takes us the length of the Red Sea and to the Gulf of Aden at the western part of the Arabian Sea. Hopefully, I have left behind in Egypt the curse of the pharaohs that has brought so much hell into my life.