The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [134]
My throat still ached, despite the prompt and efficient medical assistance that had been provided to me and to Emerson. But the pain of that was nothing to the mental anguish that filled me. I had erred. Yes, I – Amelia Peabody Emerson – had failed to pursue the rigorous and logical deductions that are essential to a criminal investigation.
There is some excuse for me, I believe. The events of that exhilarating day had followed one upon the next with such bewildering speed that I had never had the leisure to think them through. Yet I knew that was not the real reason for my failure. Jealousy had blurred my mind; mistrust had prevented me from following the path of reason. How true it is, as the Scripture says, that ‘jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.’
Once again I hovered over Emerson and pressed my lips to his wounded brow. The physician had been forced to shave a patch of hair before bandaging the furrow that had creased his scalp. One of the glossy black locks reposed even now in my bosom, for I had picked it up from the (rather dirty) floor and vowed I would carry it always, to remind me how close I had come to losing something dearer than life itself. Never again would I doubt him. Never!
After repeating the gesture and the vow a number of times, I discovered I was calm enough to resume ratiocination. I began with Miss Minton’s revelations. It was no coincidence that the police should have chosen that hour and that evening to visit that particular opium den. Miss Minton had got the message to a colleague; and he had notified the police. Had he warned them we would be there, or had he used some other device to persuade them to investigate? The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that the second alternative was the right one. Our presence had gone unnoticed until Emerson announced it with his customary vim and vigour. The fact that the police had been so swift to respond to a suggestion, however cleverly worded, from a member of the press, strongly suggested that they had already been suspicious of Ayesha and her establishment.
The despicable Inspector Cuff had deceived me. He had never believed Ahmet was the murderer. He had put the man under arrest for two reasons: one, to arouse consternation and alarm among his associates, in the hope of provoking a careless move or injudicious statement; and two, because he expected that that well-known informer might disclose useful information under the pressure of police interrogation. What did Cuff know? I did not have the answer, but I was certain of one thing: if Cuff believed the man he was after was an Englishman and a member of the aristocracy, he would proceed with extreme caution. An accusation against such a man would have to be supported by the strongest possible evidence.
That Ayesha had known the truth was confirmed by her own words. ‘He’ had ordered her to lure me into a trap. Her reluctance to carry out the mission of betrayal must have aroused his suspicions and caused him to fear she would betray him instead (as I am convinced she would eventually have done). He had therefore followed her; perhaps he had been close enough to hear her warn me.
The fact that he had been sufficiently alarmed to attack me was encouraging. Less encouraging was the fact that I had no idea what I had said or done to alarm him. Was it possible that my visit to Ayesha had been enough in itself? That did not seem likely. It was, surely, more likely that I had stumbled on some clue whose meaning I had overlooked.
Ayesha had let slip one word during our initial conversation that I had considered significant. She had spoken of an English ‘lord.’ I had never used that word. But on reconsideration I was inclined to wonder if it meant to her what it meant to me. As I