by Kari Bovee
“I’ll go with you to save you a trip,” Annie volunteered. “Besides, I hate to wake Frank,” she whispered.
The doctor took up his bag and led her out of the room. Once they were in the hallway, he turned to her.
“I’ll check back in with him in the morning. I should also be able to evaluate the contents of the vial before then.”
“Excellent, Dr. Adams. The sooner we find out who murdered Mr. Bhakta, the better we will all feel—I’m sure of it.”
Chapter Twelve
The doctor’s infirmary, situated on the middeck at the aft end of the ship, resembled a tiny apothecary shop with glass bottles of all shapes and sizes, and round vials set in neat shelves. An examining table took up most of the compact room, and in the far corner sat a small writing desk with a lamp and stacks of papers.
A portrait of a woman hung on the wall. Annie admired the strong, yet feminine face with rounded cheekbones, square chin, and light eyes that shone with determination.
“Your wife?” Annie asked.
Dr. Adams stopped to admire the portrait. “No. My late mother. She died in a fire when I was young.”
“How tragic. I’m so sorry.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Dr. Adams went to the desk and set down the fabric-wrapped tear catcher. He then took down one of the brown bottles from the top shelf. From a drawer in his desk, he pulled out a small, cloth bag and poured some of the contents of the bottle into it.
“Here you are,” he said, pulling the strings of the bag tight. “Sodium bicarbonate powder. Put a teaspoon of this in some water, stir it up, and make sure he drinks it down. I think he should be feeling better by tomorrow.”
“Oh, thank you, Doctor. I certainly hope so. I hate Frank feeling so awful. If I don’t start feeling better soon, I may have to take some myself.” Annie swallowed down the bile that threatened to rise in her throat.
“You feel ill?” Dr. Adams asked.
“Yes. Off and on. I’ve been able to keep my mind off of it—most of the time. I’ve also been so worried about Frank, and my sister Hulda. Well, I’m sure you don’t need to know all about my troubles. My stomach hasn’t been bad enough for me to want to take anything for it, aside from some ginger tea.”
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt you to take some medicine, either. Here,” he said, opening the bottle again. “I will give you a bit more, just in case, eh?”
“Thank you, Doctor. Have you had any luck in your sleuthing?”
Dr. Adams shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’ve spoken with a Mr. Richard Haley, Mr. Herbert Satterlee, Reginald Cleary and his wife, and Mr. Alston MacKenzie. I cannot link them to any motive for killing Mr. Bhakta.” He poured more powder into the bag, pulled the strings tight again, and handed it to Annie.
“Thank you, Doctor. Hopefully you will be able to find the guilty party soon,” she said. “We’ve only a week and a few days left on our voyage. I’m sure the Indians will be glad of that. What are your plans when we arrive in England, Dr. Adams? Will you attend the jubilee?”
“No, the queen’s fiftieth year on the throne holds no magic for me. Her leniency toward the papists’ agenda is an abomination, so I will not be celebrating.” Dr. Adams’s mustache twitched under stiff lips.
“Oh, I see.” Annie didn’t know how to respond to such a declaration. She hadn’t expected such an unsolicited opinion from the doctor on anything but medical issues and realized she was embarrassed for not recognizing the doctor as a person with more dimensions. She herself had suffered from people’s opinion of her as simply a performer and nothing else—having no other passion than shooting.
It did, however, surprise her to hear that the doctor had such a strong—and negative—opinion about the queen.
The next morning, Annie took her time rising from bed. Frank was sleeping peacefully, and she didn’t want to disturb him. She also hadn’t slept well during the night, and she woke feeling more tired than when she’d gone to bed. She’d gotten up a couple of times to make Frank his sodium bicarbonate. Although exhausted, she did feel less queasy, which pleased her.
She heard a gentle knock at the door.
Annie got up from the bed and wrapped herself in a dressing gown. She opened the door and found Dr. Adams and the captain standing there.
“Excuse me, Miss Oakley. We didn’t mean to wake you,” Dr. Adams said.
Annie ran a hand through her unruly hair. “Please, please come in.”
Frank, who had begun to rouse when Annie got up, sat up in bed and rubbed his hands over his eyes. Annie left the door open for the captain and Dr. Adams to enter, and the captain closed it behind them.
“Mr. Butler, how are you feeling this morning?” Dr. Adams asked.
Frank blinked a couple of times. “Better—I think.”
“Excellent. Same rules apply as before; no alcohol, plenty of rest.”
“Of course, of course,” Frank said, pulling the covers over his lap. Annie sat down on the bed next to him.
“What was it you needed to discuss with us? Could you identify the substance in the tear catcher, Doctor?” Annie asked.
“Actually, I could, but I didn’t want to alarm you, since you feared that Mr. Butler was being poisoned—which, I must state again, I do not believe.”
“What is the substance?” Annie asked, her eyes darting to the captain who stood stoic as ever, his dark mustache making his frown seem all the more pronounced.
The doctor’s bushy eyebrows came together forming an ochre-and-silver caterpillar above his eyes. “I can scarcely believe it, but it looks to be viper venom.”
“Good God!” Frank said, his face going ashen again. “Where would anyone get that?”
The doctor handed Annie the tear catcher ensconced in the piece of fabric she’d given him. “The type of venom I found in the vial comes from snakes in the eastern regions—the tip of Africa, India, but most likely Sri Lanka.
“Oh my,” Annie said. “Captain, has this ship been to the tip of Africa? India? Sri Lanka?”
“Not to my knowledge.” The captain lowered his brow. “I’ve been captain of this ship for three years. The former skipper handed over all his logs and I examined them carefully. No voyages to that part of the world.”
“But are you sure there are no snakes aboard?” she asked.
The captain’s stern face grew sterner. “Miss Oakley, I don’t know what you are driving at, but Dr. Adams had the ship scoured from stem to stern. With these animals on board, we could not take any chances. That would be an enormous liability. Dr. Adams said he saw no evidence of bite marks or puncture wounds on Mr. Bhakta’s person.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But, as it is, Captain, our safety has been compromised.” Surely, he could not argue the fact.
“Excuse me, Miss Oakley,” the captain said, sounding a little too much like a strict father, unlike her own. “I assure you, there are no snakes aboard. But if you are concerned, perhaps you should remain in your stateroom. We can have your meals sent here.”
Annie gripped at the bedsheets. How dare he speak to her this way? She’d done nothing but try to help, concerned for Frank and Hulda’s safety, the safety of the passengers and herself.
“No snakes, you say.” Annie bristled. “At least not of the reptilian sort.” Clearly, someone wanted Mr. Bhakta dead, and clearly, the captain did not think her worthy of this discussion.
“A snake does not have to be on board for this to have happened,” Dr. Adams said. “Viper venom can be medicinal. It can be used to treat apoplexy in emergency situations.”
“And do you carry this sort of medicine?” the captain asked.
“Yes, a small amount. Not enough to kill.”
“But who else would have access to this kind of snake venom? Where is Sri Lanka?” Annie asked.
The doctor looked from Annie to Frank, then back to Annie.
“Southeast Asia. Near India.”
Annie stood up, her exhaustion suddenly gone. “Well, we need to find o
ut from the passengers if they’ve visited that country in recent months.”
“Annie,” Frank admonished.
“I’m more determined than ever to help, Frank. You can’t change my mind.”
“We already know of one passenger who has visited Sri Lanka,” said the doctor.
“Who?” asked Annie.
“Mr. Patel.”
Annie gasped. “How do you know this, Dr. Adams?”
“He came to me complaining of seasickness, and we had a conversation. He told me he’d gone back to his homeland of Sri Lanka a few months back to attend his father’s funeral.”
“But why would Mr. Patel want to kill Mr. Bhakta?” Annie asked.
Frank reached for her hand. “It doesn’t mean he did, Annie. It’s just another piece of information. But he was on deck with Mr. Bhakta when we went overboard.”
Annie held the tear catcher up to the light. Then she held the glass up to the light. Too hard to tell if the fingerprints smearing each object matched. Perhaps her test wouldn’t work after all. She plopped down onto the desk chair.
“How frustrating. I need a way to get the fingerprints off the tear catcher and the glass and then compare them side to side,” she said out loud to herself.
Half asleep, Frank mumbled something from the bed.
Annie looked through all of the items she had previously spread out on the desk. She found a glass pot with a honeycomb design on the label. Beeswax. Hulda told her it had been used to attach wigs to linen skull caps. Annie now remembered she’d seen Kimimela, her late costume designer, use beeswax to affix a fake strip of hair to one of the Indian player’s heads. In the enactment of the scalping of Yellow Hair, the great Buffalo Bill “scalps” the fake hair off the Indian’s head. Annie had been pretty impressed at how real it looked, especially at a distance.
Annie opened up the jar and pushed her finger into the waxy substance. It felt hard but malleable. She scooped a blob out with her finger, and realized she just left her own fingerprint in the stuff. She retrieved her oldest pair of gloves from her trunk, put them on, and returned to the desk. Taking out another blob with the tip of her gloved finger, she laid it on a piece of parchment and flattened it as best she could. She then took the tear catcher and held it under the light, to see which part of it had the most fingerprints and then pushed that side of the tear catcher into the beeswax. The print was impossible to see in the yellow waxy substance. She took the ochre powder she’d used before and sprinkled some on the wax. She lifted the flattened beeswax and shook off the excess powder. To her delight, the faint image of the fingerprints showed themselves on the wax.
“Success!”
“What’s that?” Frank said, sitting up in bed.
“Just a minute.” Annie completed the same process with the glass and then compared the two sets of fingerprints. The larger prints, obviously Frank’s, had come from the glass, so she focused on the other sets of prints, the smaller ones. She looked from the blob with the glass’s prints to the blob from the tear catcher. She blinked, trying to focus. She blinked again.
“Frank,” she said, turning in the chair to face him. He’d put on his spectacles and was reading the paper.
“Yes, dear.” He lowered the paper.
“The prints match.” A surge of excitement sent her fingers tingling.
“What?”
“Whoever handled this glass also handled the tear catcher.”
Frank’s eyebrows pinched together. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. They look to be the same.”
“But you and the doctor have also handled the tear catcher—and you’ve handled the glass.”
“But not with bare hands. Don’t you see, Frank? I’m on to something, here. I’ll have to take your fingerprints to make sure they are the larger ones on the glass, and to be sure, I’ll use my own to compare the tear catcher—but I can almost guarantee, the smaller set of prints won’t be mine.”
“If you are going to continue with this—and I wish you wouldn’t— you need to be sure, Annie. Murder is a serious accusation.”
Annie gritted her teeth at Frank’s doubting her methods and his continual urging for her to stop her investigation. She would not be swayed. As much as she loved him, sometimes his authoritarian methods got under her skin.
“I’m doing this because I’m concerned about you, Frank. I’m concerned about all of us.”
“I don’t doubt you are brilliant, my dear. But you need to proceed cautiously. You are not a law enforcement official, nor are you a detective. I just don’t want you to damage your reputation by doing something foolish like wrongly accusing someone.”
Now he sounded like her manager, which he was, but still—it felt like a criticism, like he didn’t believe in her at all. How could he be so dismissive of her theory? Her eyes welled up with tears.
“Annie? Are you all right? Are you crying?”
“No,” she said, swallowing her emotions. Why did she feel so hurt? She knew her feelings were irrational, but she couldn’t fight them off.
Frank got out of bed and came to her. She turned her back on him and sniffed her tears away. He put his hands on her shoulders.
“Darling, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I didn’t think you would take offense to what I said. I’m just looking out for your best interest, your future.”
“I know. I just—I’m, well. . . .” Annie didn’t know what to say or how she felt. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. She wasn’t the emotional sort.
“Talk to me, Annie. What has you so upset?”
“Nothing, Frank. It’s nothing. I’m fine,” she said, knowing full well she was not.
Chapter Thirteen
Unable to reconcile her hurt feelings with Frank, Annie left their room saying she wanted to check on Buck. Frank didn’t protest— another thing that hurt her. Why didn’t he insist she stay so they could work out their tiff? Why didn’t he come after her?
She stood in the hallway a few doors down from their room, her back resting against the wall, unsure if she should go back to talk it out with him or go to see her horse. Why couldn’t she make a decision? She slid down the wall, sat on the floor, and started to cry.
What was wrong with her? Typically not a weeper, there she sat, crying her eyes out—and over what?
A door opening startled her. She quickly wiped her tears and looked up and to her left, where she saw an older woman sticking her head out into the hallway.
“What is this?” the woman said. She stepped out of her room and stood over Annie. She had a kind face with large, dark eyes. A halo of gray wisps had come loose from the massive bun piled high on her head. She wore a high-necked, black lace gown with sleeves that culminated in a point at the back of her hand. “You are crying?”
“I’m sorry,” Annie said, getting up. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.” She stood and faced the woman who stood about as tall as Annie—a mere five feet—but so much smaller. She had a child’s body, but with a grandmother’s face.
“You do not disturb me,” the woman said, her voice thick with a lilting accent. “But you cannot sit out here crying. Please come in. I have tea. You will have a cup, and all will be better, no?”
“I don’t want to trouble you—I’m fine, really.” Annie said, sniffling.
“You are not fine, as you say. Do, come.” She ushered Annie into her room with a wave of her hand. The smell of ginger tea filled the room. It was dark, as the woman had pulled the curtains over the window, but a few candles flickered on the bureau.
“Excuse the darkness,” she said, motioning for Annie to sit in the armchair next to the reading table. “My eyes are sensitive to the light.” She poured the tea into two cups. “Miss Oakley, I’ve been expecting you.”
“You have?” Annie said. “But I—”
“I am Madame Mattei,” the woman said with a nod of her head. She handed Annie a teacup. “Drink this. It will settle your stomach.”
“But my
stomach is fine. I—”
The woman raised an eyebrow at Annie.
“How did you know my stomach has been bothering me?”
The woman shrugged a shoulder. “Now, what did you want to speak with me about?” She asked, sitting in the chair next to Annie’s.
Annie shook her head. Had she fallen asleep in the hallway? Was this some sort of strange dream?
“You have some questions for me?” Miss Mattei said.
“I do? Oh, well, maybe. Did you speak with Miss Wilson?” Annie figured Emma had spoken to the woman, asked her some questions.
“Who is this Miss Wilson? I have met no one. I stay in my room. My eyes cannot handle the light.” Madame Mattei took a sip of her tea, set the cup in the saucer, and looked expectantly at Annie. Annie thought she could feel the hair on her arms rise.
“Then, you must have spoken with the captain? Dr. Adams?”
“No. I have spoken with neither. Sometimes I have a . . . connection with people. Certain people. I have one with you. You have a curious-ness about you. Sometimes it gets you into trouble, am I correct?”
Annie set her teacup down and looked toward the door, wondering if she should bolt. This had to be one of the strangest conversations she’d ever had. She looked back at the woman who regarded her with such kindness in her face, Annie’s skepticism about her started to abate. She did have questions for Madame Mattei. She had questions for all of the passengers.
Annie took another sip of tea and then cleared her throat. The tea had the pleasant effect of calming her and keeping her low-level nausea at bay.
“What takes you to England, Madame Mattei?”
The woman’s face crinkled up in a smile. “I am going home, to Belgium. I have lived in America for many years, but it is now time for me to go home. From Dover, I will sail to Calais. Comprenez-vous?”
“Oh. I see. What did you do in America? Do you have a family? Children?” Annie finished her tea and set the cup and saucer on the table.