Tasha Alexander - Tears of Pearl

“What a surprise to see you, Lady Emily. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve come on a strange errand,” I said. “Perestu asked me to do it on her behalf.”

“The valide sultan?” He tugged at his shirtsleeves, adjusting his cufflinks.

“I understand that you shared a close friendship. She speaks very highly of you.”

“She is an excellent woman.”

“I do not doubt it,” I said. “She told me that, years ago, she gave to you a ring as a token of her friendship. Strangely enough, that same ring has turned up in the harem—in the possession of Sir Richard’s daughter.”

“Impossible,” he said. “I keep it under lock and key in my house.”

“You can imagine how upset she was to see it—at first she feared that you might have given it away—”

“I would never,” he said.

“Of course not. But I’m sure you can imagine she was devastated to see the ring back in the harem.”

“I—I—” He stammered but formed no coherent words. “The ring is in my house,” he said, tugging again at his sleeves, this time so hard that I feared for his cufflinks. “Follow me there now. I will show you.”

It took us fewer than ten minutes to reach his residence, and he marched into his study with me tailing behind, barely able to keep up with him. He pulled down a wooden box from a high shelf on a bookcase and placed it on his desk. “It’s in here,” he said, pulling out a set of keys from his jacket, fumbling until he found the right one. He placed one hand on the side of the box and was about to push the key into the lock when the top sprang open.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I know it was locked. I can’t bear to even look. Please. Will you?”

Inside, resting on a blue velvet lining, were an engraved silver christening mug, a piece of faded ribbon that looked as if it might have once been pink, and an ivory comb. I held out the container to him. “There’s no ring.”

“This cannot be,” he said. “Who would do such a thing?”

“Do you have any ideas? Who knew you had it?”

“I—I—” His voice choked. “I can’t bring myself to even say it.”

“You must, Mr. Sutcliffe.”

“I showed it to Benjamin. We were talking one day—he was remembering his sister. How they used to play. I told him about my children and showed him these souvenirs I keep. The ring was in the box as well.”

“But why would he take it?”

“He must have needed money for his elopement. Why didn’t he ask me?” He pressed the palm of his hand hard against his forehead. “I suppose I wouldn’t have given it to him. And he didn’t know me well enough to ask.”

“We don’t know that Benjamin took it,” I said. “What of your staff?”

“They’ve all been with me for years.”

This, of course, meant very little, but I saw no reason to mention it at the time. He was clearly distraught. Regardless of the identity of our thief, I could at least put to rest Perestu’s fears that her friend had knowingly abandoned her gift.

“There’s no question that Colin will locate Benjamin. And when he does, we’ll be able to ascertain whether he took the ring.”

“He took it.”

“We must remember, Mr. Sutcliffe, that he has not been proven guilty.”

“You suspect someone else?”

“I’m only saying we should not leap to conclusions.”

“I will ask that you forgive me, Lady Emily, but I cannot think of him as anything but a thief and worse.”

“What’s obvious is not always right,” I said. “Real life is not as simple as the sultan’s operas. Like the performance of La Traviata we saw at Yıldız.”

“Ended neatly, to be sure, but so much tragedy,” he said. “And I can’t stand more tragedy. Truth is, I much prefer something more lighthearted, with a happy ending. Particularly when I consider what we all faced when we left the theater.”

I stood quiet, stunned, and then took my leave from him, wondering how he could have forgotten the end of the opera. I could picture him in the courtyard with the rest of us, standing over Ceyden’s body. But if he’d been in the theater, he wouldn’t have thought the show had been a tragedy. I began to wonder if I needed to think in another direction entirely.

“What does the doctor say?” I asked when I returned from Mr. Sutcliffe’s, my head spinning. “Is he progressing as expected?”

Sir Richard’s health had been improving, but he was not yet well enough to leave his bed. Miss Evans had given the cook urgent suggestions as to appropriate recipes to help him regain his strength—again reminding me of my mother—and was convinced they would make all the difference in his recovery.

“Yes,” Miss Evans said. “He stopped taking the drug so suddenly, it was a terrible shock to his system.”

“If he was deliberately taking it, I cannot understand why it’s impossible for us to locate the bottle,” I said.

“He must have hidden it somewhere,” Miss Evans said.

“But why? It’s a common enough sleeping aid. His servants wouldn’t have thought anything of him keeping a bottle around. It doesn’t make sense.” I stood up, unable to keep still. “I’m going back to the embassy to look through his office again.”

Margaret threw on a hat and started for the door with me. “Any more from Ivy?” she asked. I told her about the latest letter.

“Oh, Em, don’t you just want to go home?” she asked. “There’s no shame in it, you know.”

“I think I shall, when Colin returns.” The pain of missing him had moved from dull to sharp, more of a stab than an ache. Wanting only to move forward, I opened the door to let us out of the house. On the step was a young Englishman, out of breath, his face bright red and covered in sweat.

“Lady Emily, the ambassador sends me with urgent news. I’m afraid there’s been another murder at Yıldız, and... well... that Mr. St. Clare was involved yet again.”

I did not wait to hear another word. We hailed the first available carriage, paying triple to motivate the driver to rush. Once through the palace gates, we were admitted to the harem, where there was none of the usual clamor of voices and laughter. Perestu received us in a small salon in her apartments, her face drawn, no spark in her eyes.

“It is good of you to come. We’ve suffered more tragedy today.”

“Who? What happened?” I asked.

“Jemal. The same as the others, with a bowstring.”

“And because the method has not changed, Mr. St. Clare is suspected again?” Margaret asked.

“We are not so unsophisticated. The guards searched Jemal’s room and discovered a bundle of letters—written to him by Mr. St. Clare.”

“May I see them?” I asked.

“If you wish, but there’s no need. They prove that Jemal was letting him into the palace to meet with a concubine—Ceyden, obviously. And that he was accepting regular payments for granting the privilege.”

“And there’s no question they were written by Benjamin?” I asked.

“None. The first is signed—it came shortly after Mr. St. Clare had assisted in rescuing the ladies whose boat capsized in the Bosphorus. The handwriting on the others is a perfect match.”

This was disheartening, and I could feel myself taking it harder than perhaps was reasonable. Too many troubling thoughts tugging at already fraught emotions; never before had I felt so scattered. I hardly knew Benjamin, had no reason to take more than a professional interest in his situation, yet coming to a point where his guilt seemed inevitable stung me, and not only because it would prove my instinct wrong. A wave of nausea hit me, and I clung to the arms of my chair to steel myself against it, unaccountably feeling as if I were about to burst into tears.

“Where was the body found?” I asked, my voice strong despite my spinning head.

“In one of the gardens. I’ll have someone take you.”

There wasn’t much to see. I searched the area—not looking at the body, which had already been covered with a makeshift shroud—and then went to the eunuch’s room. Beyond the letters, there was nothing of interest. The ordinary possessions of a man. As for his correspondence with Benjamin, there could be no question of the relationship between them. Jemal was taking bribes.

“What do you think?” Margaret asked, whispering as we walked through the palace gates, headed to the docks on the Bosphorus.

“There’s still no absolute proof, of course, but...” The water’s beauty eluded me entirely. “I’m afraid it doesn’t bode well.”

“Motive?”

“He could have killed Ceyden because she’d decided not to run away with him, and Jemal because he’d decided to stop accepting bribes.”

“Poor Sir Richard.”

“Although...” I stopped walking. “Why, if Ceyden was already dead, would he need continued access to the harem?”

“Maybe it wasn’t a question of bribes,” Margaret said. “What if Jemal had threatened to blackmail him?”

“Jemal had already given evidence against him. Killing him would have made little difference at this point. And why, if Benjamin fled after suspecting he’d be arrested, would he have returned to Constantinople?”

“Jemal might have had further proof—something more solid.”

“And tested Benjamin by coming forward with just a bit of it first?” I considered the possibility. “Maybe. But it doesn’t sit right, somehow.”

“What, then?”

“What if Benjamin wasn’t in love with Ceyden?”

Fired with new enthusiasm at this revelation—for I considered it nothing short of just that—I turned on my heel and went straight back to Yıldız.

“Roxelana?” Margaret said as we walked to the harem. “In love with Benjamin?”