The Illusion of Murder
Page 33
My ears are ringing; the air is full of gun smoke. Both Bela and Lord Warton are down and neither is moving. Or breathing.
The redheaded copper is coming down the corridor with a gun in hand.
“Don’t shoot!” I yell at the top of my lungs as I lay my head back down. If he said anything, it is lost in the ringing of my ears.
A few minutes later, I am seated in Frederick’s compartment. He is giving me an apology, which my numb brain doesn’t process.
“Cenza—” I interrupt.
“Jumped from the train. Probably dead.” He kneels before me. “Sweet Nellie, I almost got you with that shot through the window, but I had to try it.”
“Had to try it? Had to risk killing me to get a shot at that man, woman, whatever he is?”
“You have to understand—”
“That you were willing to risk killing me for queen and country?”
“I fired from the Amelia at Lazarus, Lady Warton, whatever that monster is called.”
“And almost got me? You—the world’s greatest hunter?”
“I told you I was a poor shot. I have to—”
“See the white of their eyes, I remember.” I get up slowly, resisting Frederick’s offer to help me.
“Nellie, I need to talk to you about what you’ve seen and heard. A revelation about the personage in the Amelia having an affair with an actress could have a dire effect on an elderly woman whose health and welfare is of prime importance not just to my country, but to the world at large.”
I brush by him and slide open the compartment door.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“To freshen up and get the glass out of my hair. And keep myself from finding a gun and showing you what it’s like to nearly get your head blown off.”
“Please. Another Nellie nearly killed her with grief. Don’t be the one who actually puts her in a grave.”*
“I still have an issue to resolve with you.”
His eyebrows go up. “Just one?”
“One at a time. Did you fight off that assassin the night I was attacked on the bow?”
“Nellie, sweet Nellie, I wish I had so you would remember me for something besides a near miss.”
“Then it must have been Von Reich.”
“Lord Warton saved you.”
“What?”
“Sarah confided in me that she saw him running away when she found you lying on the deck. Warton was not a good man, not even a very pleasant one, but as you found out today, he will stop short of murder.”
“I will have to thank him in my prayers. After I forgive him for getting me almost murdered in the first place.”
“You are not a forgiving woman, Nellie Bly.”
“Mr. Selous,” tapping his chest with my forefinger, “I have been battered, slandered, beaten, and kicked … and I have endured and fought for truth, and justice, and the American way. Or something like that. And right now—”
He pulls me to him, embracing me, smothering me with his warmth and masculinity. Our lips touch and a warm flush flows all the way down to my toes.
I finally push him back with weak knees. “Don’t go away.”
Before I slip out the compartment door, I tell him, “I’m taking you up on your offer to join you on a safari. You need someone to teach you how to shoot properly. Point and shoot, just point and shoot, don’t aim; I’ll show you how.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep”—he looks back at me with those blazing blue eyes—“because I’m going to hold you to that one.”
For a moment we just look at each other before I race down to my compartment and start picking the shards of glass from my hair.
He almost killed me. And yet I want nothing more than to rush back and have him take me into his arms and never let me go.
The race is still on. I will crawl to the finishing line if I have to, but for just a few precious moments I want to be held in his strong arms, feel his warm breath against my neck, and have him kiss me.
Maybe I’ll cry, but that’s a woman’s prerogative, isn’t it?
“Take a deep breath,” I tell myself. I have people counting on me to finish the race and that is exactly what I am going to do.
NELLIE ARRIVING AT FINISHING LINE IN JERSEY CITY
L’ENVOI
Almost before I knew it I was at Philadelphia, and all too soon to please me, for my trip was so pleasant I dreaded the finish of it.
A number of newspapermen and a few friends joined me in Philadelphia to escort me to New York. Speechmaking was the order from Philadelphia on to Jersey City.
I was told when we were almost home to jump to the platform the moment the train stopped at Jersey City, for that made my time around the world. The station was packed with thousands of people, and the moment I landed on the platform, one yell went up from them, and the cannons at the Battery and Fort Greene boomed out the news of my arrival. I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.
To so many people this wide world over am I indebted for their kindnesses that I cannot, in a little book like this, thank them all individually. They form a chain around the Earth.
To each and all of you, men, women, and children, in my land and in the lands I visited, I am most truly grateful. Every kind act and thought, if but an unuttered wish, a cheer, a tiny flower, is imbedded in my memory as one of the pleasant things of my novel tour.
From you and from all those who read the chronicle of my trip I beg indulgence. These pages have been written in the spare moments snatched from the exactions of a busy life.
FOR THE RECORD
I covered 21,740 miles in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes.
I spent 56 days, 2 hours and 4 minutes in actual travel, and lost by delay 15 days, 17 hours and 30 minutes.
My average rate of speed was 28.71 miles per hour.
First-class tickets around the world (ships and trains) cost $805 (not counting the special train).
Nellie Bly, Around the World in 72 Days
COVER OF NELLIE BLY’S BOOK
AROUND THE WORLD IN 72 DAYS
HISTORICAL NOTE
Who was the man in the Amelia?
For reasons that are not clear but perhaps arose from a sense of respect that Nellie had for Queen Victoria, the grande dame that an entire age of history is named after, Nellie never, even in her secret journal, revealed the name of Sarah’s lover, “the personage” in the Amelia.
However, looking at the evidence, we find that the man had British “coppers” as bodyguards when he travelled, his very presence in the United States was a well-protected secret, and he was an aficionado of horse-racing.
These facts all fit Edward, Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria’s oldest son, a playboy who angered her when her beloved consort, Prince Albert, died two weeks after travelling ill in the dead of winter to an army camp to chastise Edward for having an actress smuggled into his tent.
This was the probable source for Frederick Selous’s comment that a “Nellie” had almost killed the Queen with grief: The actress was Nellie Clifton.
Queen Victoria never forgave her son. She wore mourning black the rest of her life and wrote her daughter about Edward, saying, “I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder.”
Prince Edward, who enjoyed the night life of Paris, was a rumored lover of Sarah’s, but the “smoking gun” of the evidence was Nellie’s facetious remark, “How is old Bertie?”
“Bertie” was the pet name given to Edward by his family.
Prince Edward assumed the throne after the death of his mother, and is remembered by history as Edward VII, an able monarch who also has a period of history carry his name: the Edwardian Era.
THE EDITORS
EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES
FORGE BOOKS BY CAROL MCCLEARY
The Alchemy of Murder
The Illusion of Murder
This is a wo
rk of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE ILLUSION OF MURDER
Copyright © 2011 by Carol McCleary
All rights reserved.
A Forge® eBook
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2204-3
First Edition: April 2011
eISBN 978-1-4299-6070-0
First Forge eBook Edition: April 2011
* Pulitzer’s concern was well taken. The world of 1889 was infinitely more dangerous than today, not to mention the lack of modern conveniences—no airplanes, automobiles, credit cards, ATMs, not even cell phones! A time when “high-tech travel” was on trains called Iron Horses and steamships had auxiliary sails to use when the boiler failed. —The Editors
* Nellie lied about her age to maintain a “girl reporter” image. She was actually twenty-one when she left the factory for a reporter’s job. She was twenty-five years old in 1889. Leaving school because of a “heart condition” was also a fib. She left school to work because her widowed mother could not afford to keep her in high school. —The Editors
* Nellie also wrote a book in 1887 called Ten Days in a Madhouse about the exposé that brought attention to the terrible conditions in the women’s asylum. Her experiences in the madhouse ultimately led her to Paris and the events told in The Alchemy of Murder. —The Editors
† Veils were in fashion and also commonly used to hold ladies’ hats in place. Ruchings were lace trim on collars and sleeves that could be taken off and washed. —The Editors
‡ Two hundred British pounds equaled U.S. $1,000, the equivalent of about U.S. $25,000 today. Not an excessive amount to take considering that she had to pay for all her accommodations and transportation for nearly three months en route and this was an age before credit cards and ATMs. —The Editors
§ Not buying tickets for the entire trip was a good decision because she missed the mail boat in London and instead crossed the English Channel to Boulogne, traveled across France and down the boot of Italy to Brindisi by rail and carriage, where she boarded the steamship Victoria for Port Said. —The Editors
* Mrs. Winchester kept the house under continuous construction for the last thirty-eight years of her life, from 1884 to 1922. Once seven stories high, it was damaged in the great earthquake of 1906 and is now only four stories, with 160 rooms, 47 fireplaces, and 10,000 panes of glass. The number 13 appears in various motifs around the house. —The Editors
* In 1935, a French archaeologist unsealed a Tanis tomb overlooked by looters and discovered treasures that rival those of King Tut. On a lighter note, Tanis is the city where the Ark of the Covenant was found in the first Indiana Jones movie. —The Editors
* Frederick Selous was more famous to Victorians than Nellie. The most notable African explorer and big-game hunter in an era in which such men were admired as the epitome of manhood, Selous was the inspiration for H. Rider Haggard’s hero in King Solomon’s Mines, which inspired more than a century of books and movies about adventures and the search for ancient treasures, including the Indiana Jones movies. —The Editors
* Nellie went to Mexico during a violent era of revolution and banditry and left after receiving a message that her life was in danger if she wrote any more exposés about conditions in the country. After she became famous, she wrote about her experiences in a book entitled Six Months in Mexico. —The Editors
† Nellie is too inhibited to reveal the substance used for invisible ink by Sarah’s lover, but a clue can be found in the story of Sir George Smith-Cumming, who entered British Intelligence in Victorian times and was the model for intelligence chief “M” in the James Bond stories. Smith-Cumming had his men use semen for invisible ink. —The Editors
* A lantern slide show was an early form of slide projection. The slides were glass plates upon which pictures were painted. The slide could tell a story or show exhibits of art, history, etc. Over time, a technique was developed to use transparent photos and the modern slide projector came into being. —The Editors
* Sarah is forty-five years old, but looks younger and lies about her age. As stated earlier, Nellie also lies about her age, claiming to be twenty-two but has taken three years off her age to create a “girl reporter” image. She was twenty-five when she made her trip around the world. —The Editors
* Nellie was taught to shoot by Annie Oakley when Nellie participated in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Both women were five feet tall and lied about their ages to keep a “girl” image. Annie performed for Queen Victoria and other royalty; at the Prince of Prussia’s request, she shot the ashes off a cigarette held by him. An interesting slant on her aim that day is that had she missed and hit the prince, World War I might have been avoided because he became Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. —The Editors
* The woman is Elizabeth Bisland, who had worked at the World and became an editor at Cosmopolitan. When Cosmopolitan’s publisher heard about Nellie’s trip, he sent Bisland with only hours’ notice around the world travelling in the opposite direction, certain that the west-to-east route would beat Nellie’s time. Nellie relates how she learned of the “race” in Hong Kong but never mentions Bisland’s name in Around the World in 72 Days. —The Editors
* Ah Cum was the name of Nellie’s guide in her book Around the World in 72 Days. —The Editors
* “Alley Sloper” was Victorian slang for a person who snuck out when the landlord came to collect the rent and sloped down an alley to sneak away. —The Editors
* Cameras used “glass plates” coated with a chemical to take pictures. —The Editors
* Nellie once went undercover as a servant girl to expose the abuse of employers. —The Editors
* Frederick Selous is obviously referring to Queen Victoria. The reference to a death blow from “another Nellie” is dealt with in an historical note later because Nellie never explained it in her journal. —The Editors