‘Murder!’ shrieks Peterson-Lee. She’s putting on a good act, but I don’t know why she’s bothering. She jumps up, like she’s going to run, but Harry waggles the Colt .45 a bit and she collapses again. The lady takes several deep breaths and says in this fake-calm voice, ‘I have no knowledge of any murder or of how that ruby got here. You have to believe me. Please. I would never hurt anyone, let alone murder someone!’
‘I thought you were a reincarnation of Cleopatra,’ I say, still holding the phone. ‘It’s not like she would have a problem with murder. Who did she bump off, couple of brothers, couple of sisters, right? One real femme fatale. So are we supposed to think it’s a coincidence, you coming all the way across the pond right now and hey, look what happens, your rival Wallace gets murdered and the ruby gets stolen?’
She just gapes at him. ‘Wallace? Wallace who?’
‘Mr Horace P. Wallace, lady.’
She shakes her head in horror. ‘Horace P. Wallace? But I was only speaking to him a few hours ago!’
‘Speaking to him … stabbing him … ’
‘No!’ She sounds shocked, but it’s kinda weird. There’s this sort of glow to her face. A kind of … horrified ecstasy. ‘The curse!’ she breathes. ‘The curse has claimed another victim!’ And she liked that. She was a pagan priestess, exalting in the power of her god. ‘I had hoped to prevent this. I had hoped the girl would be the last … ’
‘Girl?’ I say, cos I can’t think of any girls associated with the thing. ‘What girl?’
She looks at Harry. ‘You know, surely? You were on the ship.’
Harry’s eyes spring wide open. ‘A girl – from the ship? Dead? Who? Tell me who, dammit!’
Oh, like that, is it? I raise an eyebrow, but he’s not looking at me.
‘The daughter,’ she said. ‘Oh, I suppose you might not have heard, they didn’t want it talked about. But Badger’s daughter, Ruby. She threw herself over the side of the ship.’
I didn’t take my eyes of Harry’s face, and there was definitely relief there. There’d been some shipboard romance, I guess, but not with Ruby Badger. Well, jealousy ain’t my colour. Not like I’m looking for him to put a ring on my finger.
‘Poor kid,’ he says.
‘So why do you want the stone, seeing as it comes with a free curse?’ I ask Peterson-Lee.
‘The curse is hardly going to affect its rightful owner,’ she says, as if it’s obvious.
We’re both getting pretty sick of this nonsense. Enough digressions. I turn my attention back to the telephone and ask to be connected with the police department.
‘Look, we know how it went,’ Harry says. ‘You wanted that stone, Wallace got it instead. You jump on a ship to New York to rub him out. Maybe you didn’t mean to – who knows. Maybe you just saw red.’
Saw red. Appropriate. I get my connection and ask for a cop to be sent up here.
‘I … I did travel in the hopes of meeting with Mr Wallace,’ Peterson-Lee says. ‘And I did telephone to his office earlier to make an appointment to see him. But I did not see him, and I most certainly did not kill him, nor did I steal the ruby. Apart from the auction in London, I have not seen it since it lay on my breast, the day I … left this world.’ Well, ignoring the fact that she’s clearly two bricks short of a pyramid to start with, the way her eyes keep being drawn to it, the hungry expression on her face – I can tell, that stone has one hell of a hold on her.
‘How d’you think you’d get away with it?’ I said, putting the phone down. ‘I guess the English police treat you with kid gloves, being rich and all, but you’re in New York now, that sort of thing don’t fly over here. The cops’ll be here soon, and you’re gonna be lucky if you’re not sleeping out on Riker’s Island tonight. Won’t be as sweet as this room, but at least you’ll still get a private bathroom. Well, your own bucket, anyway.’
Harry and Phil and I wait for the cops to arrive. It’s fair to say they’re not happy with us for doing their job for them. Stern is not the word. Not that I mind a little bit of stern, under the right circumstances. I’m guessing Harry could be quite the disciplinarian if he put his mind to it.
We tell our tale. The cops are real interested in the ruby, not to mention the fur-coated dame at the Pink Tiger and Wallace’s note of ‘SPL’, but their general position is that we should have told them of our suspicions and let them deal with it. We explain, eyes wide, that we didn’t want to bother them with what was no more than a hunch, a mere guess that the police would not have wanted to act on. A cop takes charge of the ruby and the tub of face cream then Mrs Peterson-Lee gets led away, protesting her innocence and demanding to speak to the British Ambassador – but our grilling continues. On and on it goes, and in the end I agree they’re right, it was a real dumb thing to do, and I’ll never do anything like it again, promise, officers. I nudge Harry and he reluctantly says something along the same lines. So does Phil. He’s not used to having to placate authority figures, I can tell, but sometimes it’s the smartest move, even if it hurts your pride a bit.
Finally they let us go, although of course they’ve taken our names and told us we’ll get called on again. Gee, can’t wait.
No point in playing the rich bitch any more, so I let Harry and Phil ride down in the lift with me. ‘Good stuff,’ I tell him. ‘Looking in that face cream – that was a real good call.’
‘Yeah, well, working with Wallace – you pick up a few tips. You got the map?’
I produce it from its hiding place in my cleavage, although that wasn’t the best place I could have chosen to stash it; a couple cops had been staring so hard I’d begun to think they had x-ray vision like that gink from the comic books. ‘Back to my office?’ I suggest. Harry and Phil agrees.
So back we go. Harry gets out the map and the letter we rescued from Badger Junior, and lays them both on the desk. Now we get down to the serious work.
Funny thing, I’d thought that once we had the map and the key, the rest would be a piece of cake. I’d not really considered we’d have a problem deciphering the code. Of course, I don’t expect the letter to actually contain the key or nothing – but I have enough faith in my abilities to be pretty sure I’d work it out anyway.
Seems I overestimated myself a bit.
We pore over it until late. Harry suggests breaking to go pick up something to eat, or a drink at least. No way. No way am I gonna let this beat me. He can go if he wants, I tell him, Phil and I am going to make do with the flask from my pocket and a Baby Ruth candy bar I found in the desk drawer. Harry shrugs and decides to stick it out too.
Trouble is, as the night wears on, it starts to look more and more like I’m out of my depth. Out of my depth is not somewhere I like to be, and it ain’t a place where I often end up. But I’m circling the drain right now.
In the end, I throw back my chair and admit defeat. Temporary defeat, anyway. Harry wants to go out on the town – together. I want to go straight to my bed – alone. I get my way. Sorry, Harry – under other circumstances, you know? Well, I know you know. I’ve seen you looking.
And I guess I’ve been doing a little bit of looking right back at you. But not tonight.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EGYPT, 30 BCE
I laid aside the book, frowning at that chapter I’d just read.
I had one question only.
Who the hell was ‘Phil’?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EGYPT, 30 BCE
The book that I’d written had no character called ‘Phil’ in it, anywhere. I flipped back to the start of the chapter and skimmed it again. This Phil didn’t actually do anything. He’d just been inserted in randomly and rather inelegantly
… with Harry and Phil hurrying after me like a well-trained secretary …
It’s even better when Harry and Phil then joins me on the fifth floor and I say, ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’ as he gets his breath back …
I let Harry and Phil ride down in the lift with me. ‘Good stuff,�
�� I tell him.
‘Back to my office?’ I suggest. Harry and Phil agrees.
He can go if he wants, I tell him, Phil and I am going to make do with the flask from my pocket …
You see? Those lines were clearly talking about one person. Someone had added in an ‘and Phil’ or a ‘Phil and’ to all of them, without changing the grammar of the sentences to agree. I wasn’t cross; for someone stuck 50 centuries or so before their own time, reluctant guardian of a potentially universe-destroying Device and dying of blood poisoning, syntax probably wasn’t Ventrian’s absolute number one priority.
Well, not too cross. I’d have them corrected for the second edition, I’m not a monster.
Of course, I’d expected to find some changes in the book. If Ventrian had left me clues, that’s surely how he’d do it. But I was expecting something more along the lines of letters at the beginnings of lines spelling out words or perhaps some sort of code; even symbols such as those featured on the map in the book itself. Not a random character named Phil.
Perhaps Phil was a real person. Maybe Ventrian was telling me to find him. ‘Phil’ probably wasn’t the most common name in Ancient Egypt, but there were about 600,000 people in Alexandria at this point in time, and no telephone directories.
I needed more information.
A large, sleek cat came and settled beside me on the bank. It obligingly raised its head so I could rub it under the chin, then rolled over to show its stomach. I felt gratified at its trust, and did not fall into the trap of rubbing its belly. At the back of my mind I seemed to remember that in Ancient Egypt, the punishment for killing a cat was death. Rubbing a cat’s belly probably wouldn’t bring quite such an extreme penalty – maybe tarring and feathering, or being pilloried – but better to avoid it all the same.
Holding the book in one hand and tickling behind the cat’s ears with the other, I carried on searching for clues.
CHAPTER TWENTY
NEW YORK, AD 1939
Late night follows late night, and we don’t get nowhere.
Wallace’s nightclub had been closed for a couple days while the cops investigated, but it was open again now. Turns out it had been in a bit of a muddle, finance wise, which no one had suspected. But Harry had jumped in to sort things, and it was quickly getting back on its feet – mainly cos everyone wanted to hang out at the ‘murder club’. Nothing like a bit of homicide to raise a profile. Harry had got rid of the peroxide blondes and was going in for moody lighting and torch singers instead, and the place was raking it in. Clever man, Harry.
Clever and cute. Dear Santa, please remember I’ve been a very good girl this year.
Harry being busy, Phil and I’ve done a lot of sitting and staring at the documents all alone. I’m getting real sick of it, and it’s denting my usually rock-solid self-confidence. I’m a detective! This should be easy for me!
‘Trouble is,’ Harry says one time he pops in, ‘we’re not in Egypt.’
‘I don’t see how that would help,’ I say, because I don’t.
He shrugs. ‘Just a hunch. If we had the landscape in front of us, it might give us some clues. I’ve been there, two, three times, but that ain’t the same thing.’
I’m not convinced. We need to crack a code, knowing there’s a sand dune one way and a couple of pyramids the other way isn’t going to help with that. Still, I guess, if all else fails … No, scratch that. No way can we afford the trip. At least I can’t, and Harry and Phil had to confess to having empty pockets too.
The thought that cash might hold us back drains all my enthusiasm away. I’m not in the mood for yet another late night. Mind you, I’m not in the mood for an early night either. ‘Let’s get rid of the cobwebs,’ I say to Harry and Phil. ‘Fancy a dance? Anywhere but the Pink Tiger. I want to get away from all this.’
Now, Harry and I had shared a hell of a lot of lingering looks since we first met. Sometimes I’d swear you’d see steam coming out of my ears, the heat he was shooting at me. There was an unmistakable promise in his eyes, and a hint in mine that I might not be unreceptive. He’s been angling for a night on the town every time he stops by. So to say I’m surprised when he shakes his head is an understatement. I’m the person who says no – no way am I the person who gets said no to.
There’s a look in his eyes, though, a suppressed excitement. He’s meeting someone else, maybe? I don’t know how I feel about that. All he says, though, is that he has an idea. He’ll tell me if it works out.
‘Great,’ I say. ‘Well, doesn’t that give me something to look forward to.’
He doesn’t even spot the sarcasm. I get a peck on the cheek, and he heads off.
I sit at my desk for hours after he’s gone, trying to figure things out. Trying to figure him out. Trying to figure me out. Do I want Harry? Or do I just want Harry to want me …?
It feels like my head has barely hit the pillow when someone begins thumping at my door. I stagger out of bed, sweep up half a cup of cold coffee on the way, and pull it open. Guess I’m not looking at my best, which is reflected in the expressions of the people standing there.
Older guy, younger girl. Business suit on him, twin set on her plus hair up, glasses – you know, the whole ‘Take a letter, Miss Jones’ vibe as she scurries behind him.
‘Yeah?’ I manage to croak gruffly.
‘You Melody Malone?’
I wave at the sign on the door. ‘If I’m not I’m having a hell of a time with her man.’
The woman rolls her eyes in disapproval. Hey, I don’t come to your place and drag you out of bed at the ungodly hour of – half past two in the afternoon. Oh. Well, I don’t come to your place and drag you out of bed. Let’s leave it at that.
‘Come in,’ I say.
They come in. I indicate the chair in front of the desk, and pull out another for the – look, I’m not going to straight away say ‘secretary’, jumping to conclusions, votes for women and all that – I’ll just say lady.
I sit down on my side of the desk. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Cuttling,’ he says. ‘Calvin Cuttling.’
I’m not sure what to reply. That don’t seem like a proper sentence in actual English. Then I get a feeling I’ve heard the words before. Yeah, I have. Him and Mrs Peterson-Lee – they were the rival bidders for the ruby. Collector from Chicago, that’s him – and I’m not saying every Chicago businessman is in the Mob, but I’m thinking I need to be careful what I say. Thankful Harry took the goodies – by which I mean the map and the letter – away with him. Having what could be a clue to an incomparable historical discovery nearby can make a girl a bit on edge when an obsessed mobster comes calling.
Phil and I offer coffee – hot this time – but Cuttling shakes his head as though I’m offering him rat poison. I pour myself a cup anyway. ‘And what can I do for you, Mr Cuttling?’ I ask.
‘I got a lot of eyes and ears down this way,’ he says. ‘Most every place, I’ve got them, ain’t that right?’ He looks at his female companion, who nods. ‘And I’m hearing that you might have got eyes on something that I have a very particular interest in. A big interest, with money to match.’
He can only mean either the map or the letter. The thing is, though, no one should know about them. Harry and Phil and I haven’t told a soul – or I haven’t, at least.
‘Not sure what you’re getting at,’ I say.
‘Look, lady, I’ve spent the last 16 hours on a train from the windy city,’ he says. ‘Don’t mess with me. Miss Jones?’
Holy moly, that was actually her name. ‘Your secretary?’ I ask innocently.
‘Kinda. Read out that message.’
She pulls out a notepad and flips straight to a page, making a show of her efficiency. ‘“If you want to know how to find Cleopatra’s tomb, go see Melody Malone, Floor 33, RCA Building, Manhattan. She’s got something that’ll lead you there.”’
I stare at her. ‘You … got that message? From who?’
‘The gentleman did
n’t say,’ Miss Jones replies.
‘Who was he?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Fat lot of use you are,’ I mutter under my breath, then say in normal tones: ‘What was this? A phone call?’
She nods.
This seems impossible.
Then there’s another knock on the door. I hadn’t locked it again, so I just call out, ‘Come in’.
In comes Harry. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You got our message, then, Mr Cuttling.’
Harry introduces himself to Cuttling and Miss Jones. Miss Jones suddenly becomes all kittenish. I roll my eyes.
‘Could I see you in private for a moment?’ I say to Harry, adding ‘Do excuse me,’ to the visitors.
Harry follows me into the back room with its sticks of furniture. It’s not the way I’d expected him to enter the place where I keep a bed. Maybe that’s why I find myself adopting a sort of nagging wife pose, arms folded in front of me and no smile at all.
‘Well?’ I say.
To his credit, he looks a bit ashamed. ‘Yeah, I put my foot in it a bit.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Look, Malone, you know the bouncer at the Mastaba Club?’
‘The one they call Silent Joe? Always on duty at the door, throws you out and don’t say a word?’
He nods. ‘Well, he’s been talking.’
I laugh.
‘Oh, I get it. I’m stupid.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. I mean, Silent Joe? Who woulda guessed?’
‘Thing is, cos he don’t say a word ever, you kinda get to thinking he don’t hear anything neither. I been having a few meetings, hinting I might have something big going on and might be looking for someone to bankroll it, and I guess I never thought about him being there.’
‘Looks like you better pay a bit more attention next time, maybe.’
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