The Illusion of Murder (5 page)

“Please, tell me how it’s done,” I say to Von Reich as the Wartons stop to examine a rack of jewelry. Aboard ship he had told me that he was an amateur magician and showed me several clever card tricks.

“Obviously, the man calls upon the snake goddess to empower him.”

A man with a big flamboyant mustache has to have an ego to match, so I play on his conceit to draw out the answer. “I’m sorry, I just thought you might know, being a magician yourself.”

He pretends to look around to see if anyone is within hearing range.

A man coming toward us is selling scarabs and I keep an eye on him as we walk. The “beetles” were the most powerful amulets of the ancient Egyptians, used to ward off evil spirits, to slay enemies, and now to fleece tourists. I’ve already decided that I would pin one on my dress as a memento of Egypt.

“The
Naja haje
cobra has a unique characteristic,” Von Reich says. “A spot on the back of its head when pressed causes the snake to extend itself full length and become rigid. It snaps out of its paralysis when it’s tossed by the magician and hits the ground.”

I raise my hand to signal the scarab seller to come over but he turns to a man who is suddenly by his side. The man’s wearing a hooded robe, a
djellabah
, but a distinguishing feature of his clothing draws my attention: British Army boots.

It’s the bike rider I’d seen earlier.

From the expression on the scarab seller’s face, I sense tension between the two of them. The seller turns to move away and the hooded man grabs a scarab and abruptly spins around and starts to walk toward us.

The scarab seller yells in Arabic and the bike rider breaks into a run but he goes only a few paces before an Egyptian steps in front of him, his back to me, and I see the flash of a blade.

It all happens so quickly; I see it, but my mind won’t accept it—the Egyptian has stuck a dagger into the gut of the bike rider.

Murder is being committed before my eyes.

The dagger man shouts,
“Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!”

God is great!

5

The two men face each other, so close that the bike rider grips the wrist of the assassin as if they are about to dance, his face a mask of surprise, his mouth open, almost as if the assault left him with an unfinished question, asking
why.
…

The assassin pulls the bloodied dagger out of his victim’s stomach.

Staring down, the wounded man puts both hands over the spreading patch of blood on his abdomen.

The assassin strikes a second time, shoving the blade into the man’s abdomen again. The bike rider’s legs fold and he drops to his knees, then onto the dirt as his attacker holds the bloody dagger high in the air yelling again,
“Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!”

He turns toward us, dagger in hand, his robe splattered with the victim’s blood.

“Shoot him!”
Lady Warton shouts to her husband.

Lord Warton seems paralyzed, frozen in place, his jowls quivering as he stares at the dagger man.

My feet won’t let me move. Like the British lord, I just stand and gawk at the man coming at us with a bloodied blade.

Von Reich pulls out a double-barreled derringer and fires. The bullet knocks the man back, his own face mimicking the surprise that his victim had shown only moments before as he falls backward onto the dirt.

Quick strides bring Von Reich hovering over the man. The assassin looks up and says something in Arabic as Von Reich takes careful, deliberate aim and fires, the bullet catching the man in the center of his forehead, snapping his head back against the ground, his legs twitching, and then he is perfectly still.

The second shot brings me out of my trance and I rush to the bike rider who has gotten back up on his knees. He clutches at me, grabbing at my clothes. Seeing him close up, I realize he’s my neighbor passenger on the
Victoria
who made such an unorthodox departure from the ship earlier.

I try to hold him up but he slips back to the ground and I kneel beside him and cradle his head.
“Get a doctor, he’s still alive!”

He grabs me, pulling me closer.

“It’s all right, we’re getting a doctor.”

He’s trying to tell me something and I let him pull me inches from his lips as he whispers something I don’t catch. “What?”

“Amelia … Amelia…”

That is all he says before he fades in my arms and I feel the life slipping away from him. He spoke with a British accent.

Lord Warton grabs my arm, and pulls me up and away from the man.

“We must get a doctor!”
I yell.

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“No!”
I struggle to get back to the man, hoping he might still be alive but knowing he isn’t.

Lord Warton’s holding me tightly as he pulls me away while Von Reich and others crowd around the body. He finally releases me when Von Reich takes my arm.

“He’s dead,” Von Reich says.

I jerk my arm away. “Leave me alone!” He’s right, there’s nothing I can do, but I need time to gather my wits and let it sink in.

“What did he say to you?”

“Amelia.”

“What?”

“His wife’s name, Amelia, that’s all he said. We must get him a doctor, maybe there’s something…”

Von Reich shakes his head as he reloads his pistol. “A doctor can’t help him now.”

“You poor dear,” Lady Warton says, leading me away with another firm hold on my arm. “His lordship and Von Reich will take care of everything. You’ve been through enough.”

Lord Warton looks up from kneeling beside the bike rider and yells to her. “Go back to the boat. Von Reich will see that you get there safely.”

“But we can’t just leave.” I plant my feet firmly in the ground. “The police—”

“You’re not in America!” Lady Warton snaps. “This is
not
a civilized country. If we are to sail with the
Victoria
, we must hurry to the carriage before we get involved in a deadly dispute between two natives.”

“Natives? The man’s a British passenger on our ship.”

“Why do you say he’s British?” Von Reich asks.

“I saw his face … heard his voice—”

They steer me back toward the bazaar entrance as we talk.

“I saw and heard what you did,” Lady Warton says. “His face was brown, he’s obviously a native.”

“No, I’m sure he’s British.”

“That’s not possible,” Von Reich says. “He appeared Egyptian to me.”

“You had a momentary glance at a hooded man,” Lady Warton says.

“I saw his face.”

“He’s brown.”

“Not his legs.”

“His legs? What about his legs?” she demands.

“His robe pulled up when he fell off his bike on the road. I saw white skin.”

Lady Warton gives Von Reich an exasperated look. He shakes his head and says, “Nellie, I saw only brown skin.”

“I know what I saw. He spoke English.”

“Many Egyptians speak the Queen’s English. We run the country,” Lady Warton says.

Holding back tears, I raise my chin and stand my ground. “The man is a passenger on our ship. I will not abandon him even in death.”

“I’ll take another look at the man,” Von Reich says. “Keep going, we can’t have the carriage leave without us when word spreads of trouble.”

He hurries back in the direction we had come. Still gripping my arm firmly, her ladyship deftly marches me out of the maze and straight to the carriage as easily as if she’d left bread crumbs to guide us.

We’re at the carriage when Von Reich comes back, breathing hard. “I’ve examined the man thoroughly.”

“Arab?” Lady Warton asks.

“All over.”

“I have to see for myself.” I start back for the entrance to the bazaar.

“Get involved and you’ll be detained for questioning,” Von Reich says.

That reaches home and stops me in my tracks. “Detained for questioning” meant not finishing the race. I hesitate, shifting from one foot to the other, not knowing which way to turn.

Lady Warton turns to board the carriage. “I don’t know about you, young woman, but I have no intention of staying for months in this God-forsaken hell while the slow wheels of bureaucracy grind down.”

The mere thought of it chills me even in the dry, hot desert air.

I hate her words—they’re hard and cruel—but I know she’s right. “I suppose there’s nothing that can be done for the poor man.” It sounds like an excuse, even to me, but it’s also the truth. “What about Lord Warton? Shouldn’t we wait for him?”

His wife shakes her head. “He’ll be fine. His lordship has had plenty of practice in dealing with natives.”

Von Reich helps me board the carriage. My knees are shaky and I still fight back tears. “She’s right, Fräulein. You cannot imagine what a nightmare the police of these backward countries are like. Things can get very ugly.”

Things already start to look ugly as we board the carriage. A crowd has gathered and the driver looks worried. “We must hurry. Word spreads.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“A Mahdi follower was martyred by an infidel. The Father of Terror is rising to drive the infidels from our land. That is what people are saying. We must hurry,” he says again.

We’ve not gone a hundred feet before a mob pours out of the marketplace from different arteries chanting,
“Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!”

We duck and cover our heads with our hands as stones start flying at us.

6

The carriage takes us out of the reach of Stone Age weapons, but anger and fanaticism travel faster than the wind. All along our path, men on the street shout angry words and shake their fists at us.

I can’t stop thinking about the man we left behind at the marketplace. A man who died in my arms and spoke his last words to me. He wanted me to do something for Amelia, whom I assume is his wife. How do I find her? What do I tell her? That her husband’s life was spilled on the dirt of a Port Said marketplace? That if he’s a foreigner, the local people would celebrate the death as a sign from God?

If he’s a foreigner?
The doubts of my companions have me wondering if the man really was the secretive passenger I’d seen disembark before dawn. I saw white skin on the bike rider, but it’s possible that it wasn’t the same man. I wouldn’t recognize my own brothers if they were covered head to toe in Egyptian robes.

“You must stop agonizing over what occurred,” Lady Warton says, reading my thoughts. “Life is cheap in these backward countries. They express themselves with violence because they have no books or newspapers. Unless you can breathe life into the dead, there is nothing you could have done.”

“Except make sure his wife Amelia is notified of his death.”

“Did he tell you his wife’s name is Amelia?” asks Lady Warton.

“No, I just assumed—”

She gives me a dark look that says I will never learn. “You must have heard an Arabic word that sounded like the name.”

I keep my peace rather than cause a confrontation. I’m certain he was speaking his wife’s name in his last moment. I’ve not a clue how, but I shall see that the man’s wife is properly notified. But at the moment I need to get my feet solidly back under me and keep focused on the demands of the race I have undertaken.

The tragic events in the marketplace were not imaginable when I took up the challenge and sailed from New York. Told that a man would be sent because a race around the world was too great a task for a woman, I told Mr. Pulitzer to go ahead and start his man—and I’d set out for another newspaper and beat him.

When the powerful publisher finally yielded, he gave me only three days’ notice to prepare for the trip. But the path that brought me to Egypt had not just been Jules’ remark in Paris that a woman was not capable of making the trip in the eighty days his fictional hero had managed, but had begun two years earlier when no New York newspaper would hire me as a reporter because I am a woman.

To prove that I was as capable as a man, I set out on my own to expose the shocking conditions at a woman’s insane asylum by getting myself committed as a patient. It required that I convince a boardinghouse landlady, policemen, three psychiatrists, and a judge that I was a lunatic. The final diagnosis stated that I was a hopeless case, quite incurable, requiring a commitment to the notorious women’s asylum on New York’s Blackwell Island.

I spent ten days in the madhouse and wrote an exposé for Mr. Pulitzer’s newspaper that revealed the brutal conditions mentally ill women were subjected to at the asylum.
*
That venture not only got me a job as an investigative reporter on Mr. Pulitzer’s New York
World
, but ultimately took me to Paris, its magnificent world’s fair, and a confrontation with preternatural evil.