Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond (2 page)

At last Maddie spotted the pastel peach hat trimmings of the hotel’s longest resident, Lady Hartington-Holmes. Her nieces, both destined for the next London Season, were visiting to acquire social polish. As every mention in a Society page enhanced their luster back home, in which effort Maddie had often obliged—although to be frank she could not tell one girl from the other—she had no qualms about approaching the group uninvited. Conveniently, Lady HH was already discussing the morning’s news about Baron Bodmin, specifically his penchant for purchasing jewelry for “that woman.” Maddie accepted a teacup from one niece and a cream cake from another, and raised an eyebrow.

The niece in blue tittered. “That dashing widow!”

“If she was a widow,” the other niece added, as pink as her gauzy shawl.

Blue nodded. “Colonel Muster told me she was . . .”

“Ahem.” Lady HH cleared her throat and the girl fell silent. “Yes, that widow,” said the elder woman with distaste. “Her husband, she said, was an officer in the Fifth, lost on a desert campaign. This visit was in the nature of a pilgrimage, she said. Hah. A hunting expedition, more like. She arrived not long after the baron, and if they were not acquainted before, she lost no time in drawing him like a bee to a blossom. Men. Hah.” She paused to refresh her throat with tea. “No woman of standing accepts diamonds from a man she is neither related to nor expecting to marry.”

Maddie raised the other eyebrow.

“Yes, diamonds,” said the blue niece. “A full set. The necklace, bracelets, earrings. No ring, though, and you know what that means.”

“She wasn’t offered marriage,” the pink niece clarified, her cheeks glowing with the lure of illicit romance.

“And this colonel told you something about her marriage?”

Lady HH huffed loudly. “I learned, eventually, that no officer in the Fifth had ever borne that name. But Colonel Muster did not think fit to inform
me
of the impersonation.” She glared at the blue niece, who apparently had not informed her either.

“Such a lovely party for the baron’s farewell,” said the pink niece, with the clear aim of changing the subject.

“You attended, did you not, Miss Hatter?” added the blue niece.

“I did,” said Maddie. “And I went to the aerodrome to watch the baron’s airship lift off.”

“Aunt would not allow us,” said the pink niece. “Was it terribly exciting, with the sun setting and the banners streaming? The Cairo newssheets all had the same image, blurry and gray, with the mooring lines still attached.”

“Not that exciting. No banners nor a speech of parting. More a sense of a dangerous venture about to begin.” Maddie paused. “The widow was with him at the aerodrome.”

The nieces turned rapt faces to her. “Did she faint?” asked one. “Did she depart with him?” asked the other.

“She wept, from what I could tell,” said Maddie. TD’s picture had helped her recollect the moment: the dainty woman a scant few years older than herself, weeping as the setting sun snagged on the diamonds at her wrist. “I watched the baron board the
Jules Verne
, alone, and he drew up the gangplank immediately. I never saw her after that moment either, although she had been occupying a room along my corridor for weeks.”

“We quite thought she had gone with him,” said Lady HH, “without benefit of matrimony.”

“Perhaps she followed her lover across the desert on a horse,” said the blue niece. “Or hid herself amongst a camel caravan.”

“If she was lost to savages in the desert,” said the pink, “it is a harsher fate than she deserved for flaunting a few diamonds.”

Lady HH glared down the nieces, but ladies at nearby tables were quick to add their iota about the faux widow. Some opined that being torn apart by savages was just what a certain class of woman deserved, and others declared there was no proof the so-called widow had been immoral, only that the baron wished to make her so.

Eventually Maddie tired of trying to winkle out details that might lead to the mysterious widow’s present name or whereabouts, and retired to the lobby. She looked around the vast, hexagonal space, hoping to snaffle a few male guests with quotable opinions of the baron’s quest. The Moorish archway and colourful architectural flourishes had ceased to dazzle months ago, and the immensely high ceiling left her merely grateful that the inevitable heat of a Cairo springtime afternoon had room to rise.

Brass messenger tracks wove almost invisibly through the patterned tiles on the walls unless, as now, one of the flat note-cases, no larger around than the palm of her hand, went crawling up, down, or across a wall before her eyes. A falcon head engraving meant a destination in the Horus wing, but the disc was a bit too far away to make out the little room-number calibrator. Not that it would be for her anyway. She was in the Bast wing at the rear of the hotel, where the Egyptians and their British overlords considered both female deities and living females belonged. If she’d known the baron would disappear in mysterious circumstances, she would have cultivated an acquaintance among the message-transcription staff, and learned of messages sent to or from the baron. Did the hotel keep copies of guest messages? Perhaps she should inquire, pretending to have lost one of hers.

Meanwhile, she scanned the lobby again for any sign of an eminent male who might grant her a word on the record. But it was the wrong time of day for accosting gentlemen. Most were gathered in the smoking room over their brandy, discussing the latest news from London. She needed the latest news too. If the baron was already discovered in England, there would be no point pursuing the story in Cairo, and she would have to wait for another chance to prove herself worthy of a byline

Leaning over a nearby table, she placed a penny in the paw of the brass monkey seated there, and spun him to face her. The creature’s forearm ratcheted upward to deposit the coin in his mouth. He rolled to her edge of the table. After a few clicks and wheezes, his vest-front opened up, revealing a small screen on which scrolled miniscule editions of the London daily news. She twisted his little brass buttons, slowing the feed enough to read the headlines, and pumped his other arm to increase the size of the type-face whenever the baron’s name appeared.

There was nothing new except that the baron’s nephew was on his way to Cairo to make inquiries. He had, it appeared, only learned of his uncle’s disappearance on being accosted by a reporter outside a Parisian gaming house. Perhaps she could nab him for an interview, although, if he was traveling overland as the article indicated, he could not arrive for at least a week. She made a note of his name—Sir Ambrose Peacock—and scrolled on.

When her eyes crossed from the strain of squinting, she poked the monkey’s nose to send it rolling back to its place. No gentlemen had yet strolled by, ready to be snared for a quote, and she did not quite dare to penetrate entirely male sanctums like the smoking room. She would have to try again after the evening meal.

As she was tucking away her notebook, a prosperous merchant strode in. Silken robes and embroidered vests wafted about him, releasing clouds of exotic scent. A clerk scuttled in his wake. The merchant slammed a rolled paper onto the main desk, shouting at the startled manager in fast, incomprehensible Egyptian, and slapped the countertop to punctuate his points. The manager protested, shaking his head and even, briefly, his fist. Much yelling ensued, but without apparent resolution. The merchant stalked out, robes flapping and clerk scuttling crablike after. The scroll stayed on the polished wood of the desk, the manager eying it like he might an asp.

That excitement over, Maddie made her way upstairs. As the ascender wheezed and creaked its way upward, she asked its steward what the fuss at the desk had been about. This fellow, often a recipient of minor baksheesh for explaining Egypt to her, had no hesitation in telling all he knew.

“The jewels, young Sitt. Diamonds and other gems, bought by the English baron who was lost in his airship. He had them here to decide which to buy, and left before sending them back. The jewel merchant is not paid, and now he knows the baron is not coming back, he is angry. The hotel is not paid for the baron’s rooms, and is angry. The lady who was supposed to pay has said she will not pay. Not for the baron’s rooms, nor the baron’s parties, nor the jewels.” He scratched one ear where his fez had rubbed it. “She is angry too, I think.”

“This lady who was to pay, was she staying at the hotel?” Could the tea gossips have had it so wrong, and the widow was supporting the baron instead of vice versa?

“No, young Sitt. That lady is far away in England. She has only the man at the bank to speak for her. The baron had papers to let him take money from the bank.”

Not the widow, but another woman, in England, ensnared by the dashing adventurer. Maddie elicited the name of the bank and handed over a few modest coins, already mentally composing her next headline. Large-living baron bilks lonely lady? If someone could be brought to reveal her name, CJ could surely find the woman for a quote.

As she returned to her room along the quiet, second-class corridor, with its boring British box-shape and the message track with absolutely no ornamentation to disguise its brassy utility, Maddie once more pondered her new byline. It had to look good in 10-point type. Ah, well, she could remain “Our Cairo Correspondent” for one more article.

No portrait, though, not ever. Under the new deal, her parents could withhold her allowance if she were recognized while doing something so outrageous as earning a living. The allowance had paid her way to Egypt and, until the coin began to trickle in from fashion columns, had provided her shelter, her food, and the endless supply of white gloves that gave her dubious profession an air of respectability. If it stopped, her savings would barely get her back to England at the end of the current assignment, and CJ would not offer another post if the project lost her father’s grudging favour. Nobody willingly offended a Steamlord, especially over a family matter.

She stepped into her utilitarian bedchamber and told TD, “Tomorrow I will wear my best suit and the hat with the ribbons that hide you best. We will infiltrate the bank, and then the jeweler. You must record any conversation at the first, and collect images at the second. A pictorial record of pilfered jewels will catch CJ’s fancy no end.”

Setting her notebook on the desk in preparation for an article on Indian-style parasols for Spring, she flipped up the lid on the inkwell and prepared to dip her pen. She paused, and thoughtfully rested her index finger on a faintly shiny bit of the carved walnut surround. One push and she would have her old visiting card back from the secret drawer. The Honourable Madeleine Main-Bearing, daughter of the Marquis of Main-Bearing, could command assistance from any official in the British Empire, and some beyond it. A mere bank manager would be as butter in the sun before that card. But there were only five, and if she carried them, she would be tempted to use them to smooth her path. Showing one would be tantamount to admitting she could not, in fact, make her way in the world alone. She would not admit that. Not yet. She pulled her finger away, picked up the pen, and began to write.

WITHIN A VERY
few minutes of walking into the bank, Maddie found herself returned to the street outside. The sun warmed a face positively chilled by polite refusals. On pretext of adjusting her hat, she touched TD’s beak to stop him recording. The words spoken inside that edifice were not a shining example of investigative journalism anyway. She would have to do better, or resort to her family visiting card after all. Ah, well, the jewel merchant was only a street away, housed not in the medina in the street of the jewelers, but on a thoroughfare catering to Europeans. She would not approach him head-on.