My job? Well, Wallace’s agent over the pond had picked up some geegaw or other for him, and a courier had been entrusted with bringing it across the Atlantic and placing it straight into Horace’s grubby little paws. Trouble was, Horace wasn’t the only one who’d been after this trinket, whatever it might be, and he’d got it into his head that someone might try to intercept the delivery. So, soon as the gangway’s down, I’ll make my way on board (so desperate to see my honey-bunch I just couldn’t wait!), take possession of the parcel and slip off again. Then down’ll come the courier with all fanfare, meet with his boss and attendant heavies and be borne away with the spotlight shining down on all of them. Meantime, I put a lace-trimmed hankie to my eye, bewailing the faithless suitor who’s skipped off somewhere without me, and hurry back to my office, dropping the goods off and picking up a nice packet of folded green on the way.
Easiest way I’ve ever earned a hundred bucks.
Or it should have been.
First bit, no problem. The RMS Tithonia comes sailing in, its rails crowded with homecomers waving in excitement as they get a glimpse of old New York again and new visitors gazing in wonder at the glories ahead of them. Everyone surges impatiently forwards as the gangway’s lowered, and I’m able to mingle with the throng, easily bypassing the stewards who are supposedly keeping order as they usher people from ship to shore.
I have the deck and cabin number of the courier (one Marvin Motson), and a description too: white, five ten, skinny. There’s a cute red-haired steward at the end of the corridor I want, ostensibly there to help the passengers if needed, really there with a white-gloved hand sticking out for tips. I could have slipped past him easily, but Marvin’s fiancée wouldn’t have done that, because she couldn’t conceive that anyone would be mean enough to stand in the way of young love. So when the cute steward challenges me I just flutter my eyelashes and tell him my Marvy hasn’t come out yet so I’ve come in to get him, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and I just sweep right through with him gaping after me.
I find the right cabin and turn the handle, calling out, ‘Marv, honey? It’s me!’ as I do.
The handle turns but the door doesn’t open. Locked.
I call out again. ‘Marvin! Open the door, sweetheart!’
Still nothing.
Luckily I have my little clutch bag with me, containing lipstick, compact, a couple of dollars, and a set of lock picks. Passers-by are concerned only with reaching dry land again and pay no attention as I fumble at the keyhole, waiting for the tumblers to click. A bare minute later and I’m inside.
Uh-oh.
There’s a guy lying on the bunk. White, five ten, skinny. And dead.
I drop the lock picks back in my bag and snap it shut; I need to keep calm here, no point in advertising what could be construed as criminal intent. Then I cross to the bunk and examine the body.
We’re not talking subtle here. There’s a knife sticking out of his chest and the poor guy’s shirt is stiff with blood. But I’ve got a job to do, even if the circumstances aren’t ideal. Even though the logical conclusion is that Mr Motson’s been done away with for the sake of the goods he was carrying, it’s not cut and dried. So I start to search the place – under the bunk, in his suitcase (even the lining), jacket and trouser pockets, between the bed and mattress. And yeah, it’s not a completely clean job. So perhaps it’s understandable that when the steward comes in and sees me literally red handed, he yells the place down, but it’s also understandable that at that point I cease to find him cute.
Few minutes later, there I am with the steward and the purser, and another steward’s gone off to grab the almighty captain himself. I’m wondering whether to stick with the ‘fiancé’ angle and pretend I’d lost my head while overcome with grief, but much as I love playing a role, the truth might be best here. Or as much of it as I care to tell, anyway.
So, as the steward’s gabbling away that he’s caught a murderer in the act, I pull a card out of my purse and let them know I’m here on business.
They take a bit of convincing – it’s not just Wallace’s goons that think you can’t be both a girl and a gumshoe – and the steward’s still inclined to think he caught me in the act, until I patiently explain that he’s actually my alibi: he’d seen me arrive and Marvin here had been dead for maybe 30 minutes, maybe 60 judging by the stiffened shirt and the sticky blood pools, not to mention I had no way of concealing a knife on me – it’s too big for my purse, and would have shown under my clothes (and he’d known that from the start too, for sure). By the time the captain arrives, I’m the one doing the questioning. I want to know about anyone who’s been in this section in the last hour, and luckily for me, the steward had been paying close attention in the hopes of getting those sweet, sweet gratuities. By the time I left I’d got a list and I planned to do a Santa – checking each and every name to find out if they were naughty or nice. That is, if I could persuade Horace P. Wallace to keep me on the payroll.
I decline their kind offer of hospitality until the cops get there, and demonstrate in a few moves just why they don’t want to try and force me. They’ve got my card, anyways, and I ain’t got no plans to skip town. Then instead of sneaking unnoticed off the boat, I walk boldly down the gangway, cool as a cucumber. Wallace is still at the bottom, waiting for the man who’s never gonna come, and he looks furious as I approach him, yelling that I’m not sticking to the plan.
I explain, and it don’t calm him down any. Guy gets so red in the face I’m wondering if he’ll suddenly burst and spray the place with angry blood. ‘Where is it?’ he shouts. ‘Tell me you got it!’
I shrug. ‘I didn’t find anything. I got some names, though … ’
But he’s stopped listening, and his gaze is set firmly in the middle distance, his mind somewhere with the waves far out at sea. Jerry and Spats take an arm each and begin to lead him off, but I’m not going to let my meal ticket get away that easily.
‘Hey!’ I yell, grabbing at his jacket. ‘What’s the deal? What was in the package?’
Wallace turns back to me. ‘The Eye,’ he says.
I’m not squeamish – heck, in my line of work feelings get turned in at the door and you don’t always bother to collect them on the way out – but I’m hoping he doesn’t mean a real eyeball. Whatever, it sure weren’t in the cabin back there. Two eyes only, both staring sightlessly at the ceiling. I must have looked a bit curious, though, because he keeps going.
‘The Eye of Horus,’ he says. ‘It’s a ruby. Size of a pigeon’s egg.’
I’ve never measured a pigeon’s egg. Heck, I’ve never seen a pigeon’s egg. But I’m guessing the idea he’s trying to get across is that this stone is a big deal.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘You splash a lot of cash on it?’
‘Cash? What does that matter? That gem is priceless.’
‘Oh damn,’ I say, trying to sound concerned that the millionaire guy has lost his pretty bauble, as I’m still hoping some of those millions will trickle down to me.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Priceless – and irreplaceable. That ruby? It belonged to Queen Cleopatra herself.’
CHAPTER THREE
STORMCAGE, AD 5147
I didn’t read a lot of books, growing up. I was raised by Madame Kovarian and the Silence to become a fearsome weapon, and fearsome weapons don’t tend to get bedtime stories. But I soon learned that words had power, that words could be arranged in more combinations than there were stars in the sky, made into patterns that created whole worlds inside the minds of those who consumed them.
But even knowing this, I had no all-consuming desire to commit words to paper. I’m an action gal, not a pen-pusher. I wrote my first book just so all of time and space wouldn’t get ripped apart – the book already existed, you see, so not to write it would be a paradox. Melody Malone: Private Detective in Old New York Town was me telling the story of events I’d lived through – the time when the Doctor lost my mother and father
for ever. The decision to give myself a hardboiled alter ego was therefore dreamed up somewhere within the paradox, both made by me and not made by me simultaneously. I liked it, though. I liked Melody Malone. She had her flaws, of course, but then don’t we all?
The book got published, because it had to be. Strange to tell, people liked it. I’d not even considered that people other than the Doctor would read it – it had been written for him alone. My publishers wanted more. I gave them The Angel’s Kiss, set before the previous book. I thought that would round it off. Melody’s story already had an end, so here was the beginning.
Alas no! It seemed the people of the late 1930s were rather taken with the idea of a female PI. Little housewives in Scarsdale and Larchmont, dreaming of being the kind of dame with ice in her heart, a kiss on her lips, and a .45 pointing right at ya, couldn’t get enough of her.
Money. It’s not something I’ve had to worry about very much. But my parents, stuck in the 1930s, needed some. Yes, I could have popped across to the Tower of London and grabbed the Crown Jewels for them, or I could have zapped over to Voga and picked up a ton or two of gold (don’t tell anyone, but that’s how I paid for my own pad in NY; spots in 30 Rockefeller Plaza – formerly the RCA Building – don’t come cheap), but they were set on it being ‘legitimate’. It was part of fitting in, accepting that this was their life now. The royalties from my first two books had been enough to set them up in a sweet garden flat, near enough for us to visit, not so near that we’d trip over each other, but they still needed to put food on the table.
My mother, my lovely Amy, said that she rather liked the idea of writing books herself. She’d experienced so many worlds, she said, maybe that was a way she could share them with others who weren’t so lucky. It pleased me, hearing her say that word – ‘lucky’. She lost a lot, travelling with the Doctor, and at the end there she was, trapped in old New York for ever. That she could use that word, think of the things she’d gained rather than the things she’d lost, made me think she and Dad would be OK. But she wasn’t in a place yet where she could carve out a new identity as an author. So when I was offered a considerable sum – a pile of cabbage, as Melody might put it – for another Melody Malone book, I decided to suck it up to help out Mum and Dad. I could pass the baton on to my mother later, all being well, but, for now, Melody was in my hands.
But goodness, writing is hard. No, that’s not quite it – being allowed to write is hard. No one lets you alone! You’re always there, typing away, easily get-at-able. People popping in for a cuppa, because ‘you’re not doing anything, are you?’ People thinking you’re the detective, and wanting you to find their lost dogs or lost diamonds. Invitations to appear on radio programmes, or give speeches to the women’s movement about women having careers. It all adds up, and by the end of a week somehow you’ve only written six words and two of them are ‘Chapter One’.
The weeks went on, and so did the interruptions. I was close to tearing my hair out. I’d started to think longingly of my cell back in Stormcage, where you could go days without seeing another human being apart from the guard who delivered your nutrition pill. Certainly no one knocked on your cell door with a dish of oatmeal cookies and invited themselves in for coffee. And the idea slowly formed. I needed that peace and quiet. I must have it!
There was no real obstacle. I had no cat who had to be fed while I was away and, while I spoke to my parents fairly often, I didn’t plan to be gone for long – as long as my Vortex Manipulator didn’t go kaput, I could return to somewhen quite close to the time I left, give or take a few hours. (The timelines around New York are extremely tangled; you can only sneak in using something small like a Vortex Manipulator and it has to squeeze you through the gaps like toothpaste. You might arrive a bit late, but at least you’re minty fresh.)
I did, however, need to make sure I arrived in Stormcage at a time when I wasn’t already in residence in my cell – two of me is a little too much of a good thing. Although I can think of a few ways in which it could be fun …
And that is how I came to break in to the crème de la crème of maximum-security prisons in my desperate quest for peace and quiet.
Spoiler: the peace and quiet didn’t last …
CHAPTER FOUR
NEW YORK, AD 1939
Cleopatra? Egyptian dame, died a long time ago. Yeah, I guess I can see why this jewel would be hot stuff. Straightaway I get stuck in to ’tec mode. Gotta make myself indispensable here. I wanted to learn more about this ruby, wanted even more to not have to give back the 50 dollars, especially as I’d eaten my way through the first 50 cents already, and had earmarked a fair chunk of the rest under the heading ‘rent’.
I lay a hand on his arm. ‘Look, the cops’ll be here any minute, and they’ll want to run the show. But if the cops get your stone back? They’ll call it evidence and keep hold of it for months. Plus you know who has the most criminal connections? Cops! You’ll still be sitting waiting nicely to get it back while some fence is already gloating over it in his basement and Mr Dirty Cop’s set off on a round-the-world cruise with Mrs Dirty Cop. I say dealing with this in private is the way to go, and I’ve got one thing that the rest of your goons ain’t got. Well, on top of the other things I’ve got.’
‘And what’s that?’ he says, sneering a bit, but I think he’s getting hooked all the same.
‘Subtlety. I got on that ship all right and I’d have got off it all right if I’d wanted to. I can talk my way into places that the cops can’t get near – let alone your four stooges here – and sometimes I don’t even need to talk.’ I don’t elaborate. He knows what I’m saying; he’s seen me in that red dress.
He nods. Yeah, this is speaking to him. I can see the cogs turning; he’s beginning to see the advantages of having a broad on the payroll.
‘OK,’ he says at last. ‘Do what you gotta do, then you’re coming back to my place.’ By which he means a joint he owns. I ain’t that desperate for work.
So I sashay back up the gangplank. The purser’s at the top with a couple of brawny sailor men, no one’s allowed on the ship until the police arrive. But he knows who I am, and I flutter my eyelashes a bit and make it clear I’d be real grateful for his help, and he don’t even have to let me on board – just get me a list of passengers.
He makes it clear this is a big favour he’s doing me, then calls out for someone. Whoever it is, name of George, they don’t come running, so he asks one of the bruiser brothers with him to go fetch the list for me instead. It takes a while, but the purser don’t seem too unhappy to have me hanging around. I don’t put him off – hey, you never know when a connection could come in handy. My eyes get busy making promises that I’m never gonna keep.
Just when I’m getting pretty fed up of the winsome act, Sailor One returns with a piece of paper. I fold it and tuck it in my cleavage, and tell everyone how grateful I am. Then I’m outta there.
History lesson. Cleopatra: last Egyptian pharaoh. Had a lot going on with her siblings (married some, murdered some, occasionally did both to the same person). Rumour has it she sneaked in to see Julius Caesar, Rome’s head honcho, rolled up in a carpet (rumour don’t state if anyone had bothered vacuuming it first). Had a fling with Caesar, had a son with Caesar. Caesar got a knife or six in the gut, so she moves on to another Roman swell, name of Mark Antony. Formed a drinking club with Mark Antony (that’s my kinda girl). Big sea battle: Cleo and Mark versus Octavian Caesar. Octavian won. Mark Antony tops himself. Cleopatra does the same – legend has it she had a snake smuggled in and bares her breast until it bites her. Gotta give her marks for style.
I had to look up all this stuff at the public library, almost made me wish I hadn’t demonstrated my pocket pistol to that encyclopaedia salesman who wanted me to take a volume a month at ‘such a good price he was practically giving it away’. If I’d just ponied up for volume 1 (AAR-CYC) I’d have got not only Cleopatra but all of ‘Antony, Mark’, ‘Caesar, Julius’ and even ‘asp’ and ‘car
pet’, just in case.
Do I need to know all this to solve the case? Smart money says not. But that library detour means I’m not going to look ignorant in front of Wallace. I’m the gal who has all the facts at my fingertips, no matter the subject. I reckon that’s the kind of ’tec he’s gonna keep hiring.
I head off to the joint Wallace owns, name of the Pink Tiger. It ain’t much gone midday yet, and there’s already a crowd of neanderthals knocking back the hooch as a crooner does his best Bob Hope and Thanks the audience For The Memory, though no one’s stepping up to play Shirley Ross. One of the waitresses plonks a Manhattan down in front of me, while someone else scurries off to tell Wallace I’m here. Finally I’m shown to a little room at the back wherein sits the boss. He gestures me to sit down and pours himself a Cutty Sark, though he don’t bother offering me one. I don’t care about the drink, but didn’t his mamma teach him any manners?
I get out my list and begin to read it through. Sad to say, no one had registered as James T. Burglar, or Mr Dennis Ruby-Thief. Not a single name meant anything to Wallace. Oh well, that would have been too easy. I might even have felt guilty for taking his money. I’d have still taken it, no question, I just would’ve felt guilty afterwards.
‘OK, let’s start from the other end. Who’d know your guy Motson had this ruby?’ I ask. ‘And who’d know he was on this boat? Any names on both lists?’
‘My London agent, Floyd, he’s the one that hired Motson. He’s tight as a clam. Wouldn’t have told a soul.’
‘Was this Floyd the one who picked up the stone? Could someone discover he had it, maybe follow it through till they got to Motson?’
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