The Illusion of Murder

by McCleary, Carol

  Black and white—that is how I’ve been told I see things. Win or lose. No compromises.

  It is a fault, I know, but it is how I feel. That fault of mine is probably why I also so furiously hold on to Mr. Cleveland’s memory—like a dog that’s hopped onto the back of a meat wagon, I have clamped my jaws on the matter and all the kicking in the world won’t make me let go.

  Casting aside dark thoughts about my many imperfections, I ruminate about the race. My fate lies with the ship because this last leg of my journey by water is by far the longest on any conveyance I’ve used—over sixteen hundred miles to Yokohama, Japan, and then nearly five thousand miles across the wide Pacific to San Francisco. After that, by Iron Horse across the continent to the East Coast.

  The quiet of the sea and my avoidance of company on this leg has left me alone with my thoughts, a dangerous situation that too often gets me into trouble. Pondering over the fact that a magician on board whose specialty is reading sealed messages will put on a New Year’s Eve performance is exactly the sort of thing to stir up that overactive imagination Frederick Selous and Lord Warton accuse me of possessing.

  Naturally, I have hatched a plot to shed some light on the mystery with a little sleight of hand myself, and before the ship’s bell rings in the New Year it will be time to put my plan into effect.

  * * *

  IN JUST HOURS THE YEAR 1889 will be found only between the pages of history books, and 1890 will take birth.

  The day has been so warm that we wear no wraps. In the forepart of the evening the passengers sit together in the social hall talking, telling stories and laughing. I don’t feel like socializing, but I force myself to participate because the audaciousness of my plan has me nervous.

  The captain owns an organette, which he brings into the hall, and he and the ship’s doctor take turns at grinding out the music.

  Later in the evening we go to the dining hall where the purser has punch and champagne and oysters for us, a rare treat which he had prepared in America just for this occasion.

  Afterward, a jolly man from Yokohama, whose wife is equally jolly and live spirited, teaches the assembled a song consisting of one line to a melody quite simple and catching: “Sweetly sings the donkey when he goes to grass, Sweetly sings the donkey when he goes to grass, Ec-ho! Ec-ho! Ec-ho!”

  I sip punch as I listen to the passengers singing and laughing. I don’t dare imbibe in the champagne because I will need steady legs and my wits about me.

  The magic show is announced and we assemble in the dining room once again where a small stage has been erected.

  It’s time for my own magic to come into play. The plan I’ve concocted is to make whoever hired “Amelia Cleveland” in Hong Kong expose themselves.

  To carry out my scheme, I needed Sarah, Lord and Lady Warton, and Frederick at the same table.

  To accomplish this, I sweet-talked the captain into inviting me and the people on my list to his table, and threw in Von Reich for good measure because he seems to be joined at the hip with the Wartons.

  Getting Lady Warton and Sarah to the table was a challenge because they are both recluses. Lady Warton attends few events, but the captain convinced her to attend, though she still wears a veil.

  I have coaxed Sarah from her cloister by challenging her to attend in disguise. It was a challenge she couldn’t ignore and she assumed the character of an elderly Russian dowager, a role she once played.

  No matter what my suspicions are of Sarah’s role in the matter, I not only admire her as a person, but like the rest of the world, I am awestruck by her talent. Frederick confided in me that he once saw her on the stage in Paris in a role in which she never left her chair—yet mesmerized the audience and overshadowed the other performers.

  I got them to the captain’s table, which is the closest to the stage, because I will be there myself—and I want to see their faces when I spring my trick.

  The magician who claims to be able to “read” messages placed in envelopes calls himself the Great Nelson. There seem to be quite a number of magicians with a first name of “Great.”

  At the beginning of the show, paper, pencils, and envelopes are provided to members of the audience, who are invited to jot down a short message, no more than ten words, and place the paper in the envelope and seal it.

  The envelopes are made of paper too thick for the magician to see through even if he held them up to a light.

  When it is time to collect the envelopes from the passengers, the magician says, “Now I will need a volunteer to collect the sealed messages.”

  I jump up from my seat at the captain’s table and immediately begin gathering envelopes.

  “Madam, please make sure the messages are sealed and that there is no envelope among them that the human eye can see through.”

  Gathering the envelopes, I slip in my own, making sure it is close to the top so it will be selected early in the performance. I hand him the stack on stage and turn around to return to my seat.

  “You are not done, young lady.” He turns to the audience. “To prove that I am using my miraculous ability to see through the envelopes, I will have this charming lady hand them to me one at a time.”

  “Oh, I can’t—”

  “Let’s have a hand for this young woman who has so generously volunteered her services.”

  I smother a groan as the audience claps. I needed to be back at the table, watching my companions.

  “Please hand me the first envelope,” he tells me.

  I grimly hand it to him. He hardly looks at it and announces, “The message inside reads: THIS SHIP IS THE BEST SHIP.”

  He rips open the envelope and reads the message aloud again, exactly as he had stated it before he looked. Peering out to the audience, he holds up his hand to shield his eyes from the stage lights which make it much brighter onstage. “Is that correct?” the magician asks someone, then holds up the message in triumph to the audience. “As you witnessed, I read it correctly before opening the envelope.”

  Another round of applause and I hand him the second envelope. He repeats the message inside without looking, then tears open the envelope and reads the writing aloud, confirming its contents about the size of a hat with a woman in the audience whom I recognize as having been a fellow passenger with me since Colombo.

  My envelope is the third one read.

  “Now this is a bit unusual,” he tells the audience before opening it. “It reads, VIRGINIA LYNN SENDS HER REGARDS.” He opens the envelope and extracts the paper I wrote on. He reads the message aloud and then shields his eyes and asks the audience, “And would the author of this missive confirm that I am correct?”

  No answer, and he repeats the question. Finally, not wanting to see the man embarrassed or threaten his reputation because of my machination, I timidly raise my own hand. “I wrote it.”

  “And is it correct?”

  “It’s correct.”

  Standing sadly on the stage, handing the magician another envelope, I suppress a desire to leap off the stage and run out of the room screaming. What a fiasco! The words of Robert Burns come to mind about the best-laid plans of mice and men going astray.

  Defeated by stage lights! I had planned to be at the table and see the faces of my suspects when Virginia Lynn’s name was spoken. Instead, I am onstage and unable to see the audience because of the bright lights.

  All I have managed to achieve is to look ridiculous to at least one person in the audience: whoever hired Virginia Lynn.

  Rather than return to my companions when my envelope duties for the Great Nelson are finished, I pause by the table and whisper to Sarah, “I have a headache,” and leave for my cabin to mope.

  I get only a few paces out of the dining room before Sarah is on my tail.

  “You must tell me how the envelope trick is done. You’re the only one Von Reich will reveal magic secrets to.”

  “He made me promise not to reveal the secrets to anyone.”

  “Tell m
e or I will start a rumor that you have the Big Pox.”

  “That is disgusting.” The Big Pox is syphilis, the dread of every good woman whose husband drops his pants outside the home in too many places. “All right, he actually never made me promise specifically for the envelope trick, though he did for each of the others.” A technicality, but one I would take advantage of.

  “So tell me.”

  “He opens the first envelope and reads the message, but tells the audience something entirely different from what the person in the audience had written on the paper.”

  “Something different?” she repeats. “I don’t understand.”

  “Remember before he opened the first envelope, he told us that the message was about the ship being the best. Then he opened the envelope, read the note inside, and announced that he was right.”

  “Yes.”

  “The message he read to himself was actually the one a woman had written about the size of a hat, but he lied and told us it was about a ship so he didn’t have to reveal that he had read the hat message.”

  “Someone confirmed the ship message.”

  “No. If you think about it, you’ll realize you never actually heard anyone confirm aloud that it was the correct message. The Great Nelson simply looked out at the audience and pretended someone had written it. It was very dark in the room, so no one would be suspicious if they didn’t see anyone wave or nod to confirm he was right.”

  “So he makes up a message and has an imaginary person confirm it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What did that accomplish?”

  “It permits him to read the first real message. So now he knows that the message in the first envelope speaks of a hat because he has already opened and read it when he pretended to confirm his ship version. Then he opens the second envelope—”

  “I get it. He reads the second message to himself so he knows what it says, but actually tells the audience what the first one had said. He’s always one step ahead, pretending he’s reading messages through the envelope when he has actually already opened up the previous envelope and memorized the contents.”

  “Always such simple solutions to complicated tricks,” I tell her. “So unlike life.”

  She gives me a frown and I wonder if she is going say something about my failed attempt to expose the person who hired the woman in Hong Kong. If she does, I will know she is the one who hired the imposter.

  “You should get off to your cabin and crawl into bed,” she says. “You do look worse for wear. Take your headache powders. If that doesn’t work, I have a bottle of coca wine.”

  I turn down the coca wine, a strong wine mixed with cocaine, and retreat to my room, my tail between my legs.

  The monkey starts to screech and jump up and down in his cage when I walk in but immediately shuts up when he sees the look on my face.

  I sit on my bed, unsure if I should scream with rage at myself or cry out of pity. What a blunder. Those damn stage lights.

  “I will not give up,” I tell the monkey.

  I shall simply bide my time and make my move when I am ready, while I keep taking one step forward at a time. Even if they are tiny steps I will be that much closer to accomplishing my goal.

  The stewardess pounds on my door shortly before midnight. “Your friends insist you come back and usher in the New Year with them.”

  Knowing that I must face others in the morning anyway, I reluctantly return to the dining room where champagne is being passed around. Frederick hands me a glass.

  “I have made a fool of myself,” I confess.

  He looks puzzled and shakes his head as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Or does he? Is he that good of an actor? Or am I wrong in naming him as a culprit in the Amelia Cleveland charade?

  When eight bells ring, we stand and sing “Auld Lang Syne” with glasses in hand, and on the last echo of the good old song toasting the death of the old year and the birth of the new, we shake hands all around, each wishing the other a happy New Year: 1889 has ended, and 1890, with its pleasures and pains, has begun.

  Frederick escorts me back to my cabin and we stand in the hallway and face each other knowing that we harbor secrets from one another. There is an awkward silence for a moment before he speaks.

  “Nellie, hunting big game is a dangerous business. It also requires great stamina and the ability to live under the most trying conditions. I have never taken a woman on an expedition with the unknown before and have sworn I never will, but after meeting you, I realize that I’m wrong. You would be more capable than most men, yet only half the size.”

  I glow with immodest pride.

  “Not only are you capable,” he goes on, “but you’re also beautiful and charming.”

  “And you are a great liar,” I say, still glowing. “Go on.”

  He smiles. “I’m glad I met you Nellie, and I hope that one day you will accompany me on one of my trips. I think we would make a good team.”

  My heart melts when I look in his soft blue eyes.

  “I should like that very much.” But there is a small part of me that wonders if it is just an empty promise since I am not totally confident of his intentions. I still don’t trust him.

  “Very well then, it’s settled.”

  Before he leaves, he leans slowly forward and kisses me on the lips. “Happy New Year, Nellie.”

  Shortly after, I go to sleep lulled by the sounds of familiar minstrel melodies sung by the men in the smoking room beneath my cabin, the taste of Frederick’s warm lips on my mouth, and the feel of his body against mine.

  54

  Sarah and I leave the ship at Yokohama, Japan, because we will be in the country for five days and wish to stay in a hotel.

  Full of surprises, she meets me on deck disguised as a man—clothes, hair, even a nice thin mustache, which, unless she can perform miracles, is false.

  “What-ya-up-to, girl,” she says, with a Brooklyn accent.

  “Why?” I ask. Not as to why she is disguised, that I know, but why she is dressed as a man.

  “I get bored being just a woman; I like variety in my roles. I’ve played Prince Hamlet, my dear. Believe me, playing an American will not be as challenging.”

  Her voice is not too masculine, but it will suffice.

  We are taken from the ship, which anchors some distance out in the bay, to the pier in a small steam launch. The first-class hotels in the different ports have their individual launches, but like American hotel horse-drawn omnibuses, while being run by the hotel to assist in procuring patrons, the traveler pays for them just the same.

  Frederick joins us on the shore launch. He is in a pleasant mood and gives me a nice grin, but when I see him look at Sarah with a smile in his eyes I am ready to plunge a knife in his heart.

  The port on Tokyo Bay has a pleasant, cleaned-up Sunday appearance. The Japanese rickshaw men are clad in neat navy-blue garments, their legs encased in unwrinkled tights, the upper half of their bodies in short jackets with wide-flowing sleeves. With their clean, good-natured faces, peeping from beneath comical mushroom-shaped hats and their blue-black, wiry locks cropped just above the nape of the neck, they offer a strikingly “clean-cut” contrast to the rickshaw men of other countries. Their crests are embroidered upon the back and sleeves of their top garment as are the crests of every man, woman, and child I see.

  Rain the night previous has left the streets muddy and the air cool and crisp, but the sun, creeping through the mistiness of early morning, falls upon us with most gratifying warmth.

  We are both staying at the Grand Hotel, a large structure, with long verandas, wide halls, and airy rooms, commanding an exquisite view of the lake in front.

  It takes a little persuasion, but finally I convince Sarah to join me in seeing the sights of Yokohama. “Oh my…” is all I can say when Sarah meets me later in the hotel lobby. She has transformed from a saucy young man from Brooklyn to an elderly woman—white hair in a bun, a cane, a little s
louch to her walk, even a big broach in the center of her chest just like my grandmother always had. The lady is indeed an actress.

  “Why?” I ask again, always at a loss for words around the great actress.

  “I have been informed that the Japanese are extremely respectful of their elders, so I thought, What could be more perfect then a daughter out seeing their city with her grandmother?”

  “All right. I thought we’d see Yokohama and then take a trip to nearby Tokyo. Think you can handle it, Gram?”

  * * *

  A RICKSHAW IS TAKING US DOWN a neighborhood street filled with men, women, and children playing shuttlecock and flying kites when Sarah gives me a coy smile. “I saw you looking at that handsome devil Frederick like a lovesick adolescent, so why didn’t you have him join you instead of me?”

  “Nonsense, you saw nothing of the kind. Besides, I enjoy your company better than his.”

  “Rubbish. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other with bedroom eyes.”

  “With what? You’re not intimating that—”

  “That you two are destined to be lovers? Of course I am. If you’re going to keep your passions hidden under a blanket, my dear, do have a man there to share them with.”

  “Sarah, you are scandalous. Please … there is nothing between me and Mr. Selous.”

  “My dear Nellie, you can’t fool me. You’re dying for him to water your garden.” She leans closer with a lewd whisper. “How long’s it been since a man put his—”

  “Stop it! Or I’ll jump from this contraption.” My cheeks are burning but I can’t make up my mind whether to laugh at or run from her impudence.

  “Nellie, you’re a grown woman; you’ve obviously dreamed of him whispering sweet nothings in your ear as you lie with him and he caresses your—”

  “Stop! I won’t listen to you.” I put my hands over my ears.

  She leans close enough so I can feel her lips on my hand covering my ear. “Tell me you don’t lie awake at night and massage your love button while you dream about him fondling it?”