Murder on the Silk Road (11 page)

Suddenly, the air in the tent felt unbearably close and hot. She recognized the feeling: it was the same one that still sometimes overcame her on stage, the feeling that turned her legs into mush and her voice into a feeble croak. There it was called stage fright; here it was just plain panic.
Time to get out of here
. A second later, she was standing outside the tent, hanging onto the tent pole and gasping for breath.

Beep, beep, beep, beep
.

It was the travel alarm clock on Larry’s bedside table. Taking a deep breath, she went back into the tent, and pushed the alarm button down. The beeping stopped.
There, that was better. Much better
. Next to the clock on the bedside table lay a wallet made of alligator hide. Only the finest: “eat well, dress well, sleep well” was his motto. Sticking out of the wallet was a thick wad of Chinese money. The motive wasn’t robbery, then.

Outside again.
Breathe deeply
. Inhale:
one, two, three four, five
. Exhale:
one, two, three, four, five
. Again. Gradually, her breathing returned to normal, and her heart stopped fluttering like a caged bird in her chest.

Overhead, one of the big black birds she had seen circling over the foothills soared on an updraft from the valley floor. Though it had looked small from a distance, she now realized that it was enormous; its wingspread must have been well over six feet. She also realized from its great hooked beak what kind of bird it was.

A vulture.

It was Orecchio who notified public security, which was the Chinese equivalent of the police. He’d offered to jog back to the guest house, and called from there. A young police officer named Ho wearing a dirty white-jacketed uniform met them in the guest house reception room shortly after their return. He had a thin black mustache which Charlotte assumed was supposed to look William Powell-ish, but actually looked more like a pair of tadpoles having a tête-à-tête under his nose. The reception room was identical to all the others they had visited in China—at the art museum in Shanghai, at the cloisonné factory in Guangzhou, at the embroidery shop in Beijing: brass spittoons in the corners; photographs of a smiling Zhou Enlai and a stone-faced Hua Guofeng on the walls; and overstuffed chairs clad in ill-fitting slipcovers, the back and arms protected by crocheted doilies, spaced with geometric precision around the perimeter of the room. A large floor fan in one corner whirred, creating the illusion of coolness. They each took a chair: their party of six; Ho, looking appropriately officious; and his earnest young assistant, who had slightly crossed eyes that blinked every few seconds, like those of a turtle basking in the sunshine. After a few minutes, they were joined by Chu, who wore a dark gray Mao suit that matched the frames of his heavy, thick-lensed eyeglasses as well as his hair, which stood up stiffly in the severe style favored by the cadres, as Party officials were called. He held a cigarette between the thumb and forefinger of his one remaining hand, like a gangster in a Grade B gangster movie. Occasionally, he leaned back to spit into a cuspidor in the corner behind him. As they all drank steaming cups of bitter green tea from lidded cups, Ho asked a few questions: the name of the victim, the location of the camp, the purpose of their visit. Then, after notifying them that he would probably want to talk with them again, he got into a police jeep and sped off into the desert toward the Mountain of the Three Dangers.

The interview was disappointing. Charlotte had the feeling that something more should have happened. The police didn’t seem to care. To them, Larry was just another foreign national who had had the temerity to inconvenience them by being murdered on Chinese soil. Never mind that he was a Fiske, that he was a paleontologist from Yale, that he was a man of vigor and imagination. That didn’t mean anything to them. After the interview, there was little else to do but carry on. They adjourned to the dining hall for lunch, but Larry’s murder had robbed them of their appetites. And the few bites they were able to get down were interrupted every few minutes by the other guests. The word was out that an American paleontologist had been, murdered in the desert, and foreigners and Chinese alike were curious. The waiters stood around in little knots at the edges of the room, looking on as the other guests came forward with their questions. When did it happen? What’s going to happen next? Who will conduct the investigation? The Only person who was able to reply to any of them was Peter, whose years of foreign travel had left him with a good knowledge of official procedure in such situations. The investigation would be conducted by the Chinese police, he told them. The State Department had no authority to interfere, but they would probably send out an official to handle other arrangements, such as notifying Larry’s family of the death and transporting the body back to the States. As for the most frequently asked question—Who do you think did it?—nobody had the slightest idea.

After lunch, Marsha went off to study her manuscripts, and Charlotte retired to her room. She felt as if she was coming down with the flu. Her throat was scratchy and her lungs were congested. She was upset about Larry’s death: it had been horrible, seeing him lying dead like that on his cot, the bloody stab wound in his enormous chest. But her sickness was more than a reaction to that. It was also a reaction to the desert dust. Marsha had warned her that “China catarrh” was common among tourists, as well as among the Chinese themselves, many of whom routinely wore face masks. Everyone in China always seemed to be coughing up phlegm, and cuspidors could be found in every hallway and corner. Her guidebook had suggested that tourists take along antihistamines, and she took one now. She wanted to feel better for her first cave tour, which was in a half hour. Though it seemed disrespectful somehow to take part in an art tour on the afternoon of the day she had found Larry’s body, she had nothing else to do but sit around in her stifling room, and a tour might help get her mind off his death. It was to be a tour of Cave 17, the cave in which Sir Aurel Stein had found the secret library. The lecture was to be given by Victor Danowski. In return for the invitation to study at Dunhuang, the Chinese authorities had asked that the scholars from the Oriental Institute aid them in promoting tourism by giving lectures to the tourists who arrived daily by the busload from the hotels in “Dunhuang town,” as it was called to distinguish it from the location of the caves.

Three minibuses were pulling up outside the guest house just as Charlotte was setting out for the caves a short while later. The first two held tourists who were arriving for the trip to the cave; and the third was the shuttle bus that the guest house provided for the convenience of guests and staff. Emily was just getting off the shuttle bus as Charlotte emerged from the compound gate. Though Emily had disembarked right behind Ned, they gave no sign of knowing each other. If they were an item, Charlotte imagined that they would have to be very discreet. She had just been reading in the English language edition of the
People’s Daily
, the Communist Party organ, about a Chinese woman who was jailed for “incitement to debauchery” as a result of her relations with a French diplomat.

Emily fell easily into step next to Charlotte on the road that led to the foot of the cliff. “Are you taking the tour of the secret library?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Charlotte.

“Oh, good,” she said sweetly. “I am going to be your guide.”

“You speak excellent English,” said Charlotte. “Ned told me last night that you studied at London University.”

At the mention of Ned’s name, a blush crept up the girl’s lovely throat. “Thank you,” she said. “I would like very much to study in the United States some day. In New England, preferably. I am a great admirer of the Massachusetts poet Emily Dickinson. Are you familiar with her poetry?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Charlotte. “In fact, I have a volume of her poems with me.” Charlotte always brought poetry to read on trips. She had long ago learned that, she would never finish a novel, and poems had the virtue of being conducive to the kind of pleasant thoughts that brought sleep to the jet-lagged.

“You do!” said Emily, her brown eyes opening wide in excitement at coming across another fan of her favorite poet.

She wore a demure embroidered blouse of white silk with a black bow at the throat, and black cloth shoes with white anklets. If she had been wearing a long black skirt instead of the standard-issue baggy black pants, her outfit could have come from the closet of the reclusive poet from Amherst.

“I would like very much to talk with you about her sometime,” she continued as they joined the tourists who had gathered at the gate in the fence at the foot of the cliff: German conservators, Japanese monks, Chinese from Hong Kong, and a couple of groups of American and Australian visitors.

“I would like that very much as well,” Charlotte replied.

Excusing herself, Emily went in search of Victor, leaving Charlotte to browse at the souvenir stand, whose odd assortment of merchandise included painted silk fans, plaster casts of the Venus de Milo, reproductions of the terra-cotta warriors form Xian, and Santa Clauses playing electric guitars.

She was about to buy a rice-paper rubbing of a Tang horse for her step-granddaughter, Marsha’s brother’s daughter, when she was accosted by one of the Australian tourists—a plump woman with gray bangs and a sun visor.

“Pardon me,” the woman said. “Has anyone ever told you that you look just like the movie star—what’s her name?—the one who was married to Gary Corbett.”

Charlotte had been married four times, but people only seemed to remember Gary. He was the only one of her husbands who had been a movie star. The fact that he had also been a drunkard and a womanizer was forgotten—even, sometimes, by her. “Do you mean Charlotte Graham?” she asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “That’s the one.”

“Not only do I look like Charlotte Graham,” she said with a smile, “I
am
Charlotte Graham.” She was accustomed to being mistaken for herself by fans who couldn’t quite believe that they were face to face with the real article.

The woman stared at her, her large gray eyes opening wide in amazement. “No!” she said. “You’re having me on.”

“Here it is, right here,” she said, pointing at the name on the traveler’s check she was using to pay for the rubbing.

“Oh, my God,” the woman hooted, peering over Charlotte’s shoulder at the check. “I have to tell my friend. I’ll be right back.” She stuck out her hand. “Vivian Gormley. Nice to meet you.” Then she turned to find her friend.

Mercifully, Victor arrived before Vivian could return. Charlotte was tolerant of her fans. More than tolerant: she loved them; they had brought her great happiness and success. But in a situation like this one, where she couldn’t easily get away, she preferred anonymity.

“Hello, everyone,” said Victor, taking a position at the head of the group. “My name is Victor Danowski, and I’ll be your lecturer this afternoon. This is Emily Lin, our guide. We’re going to visit the secret library, which is located at the other end of the cave complex.” He pointed to the north. “Follow me, please.”

With Victor setting a brisk pace, the group took off down the avenue that ran along the foot of the cliff. Every so often there was a sign with an arrow which directed them to the “Secret Library.” After perhaps half a mile, Victor paused at the foot of a staircase leading up to the caves.

“Here we are,” he said. “Before we go up, I want to tell you a bit about the caves we are about to see: Cave 16 and the secret library, Cave 17. Cave 17 opens off of Cave 16, which is much larger. It was discovered in 1899 by a monk named Wang Yuan-lu who had taken refuge in the caves after fleeing a famine in his native province. Impressed by the artworks and saddened by their neglect, Wang made it his personal mission to restore the caves to their former glory. He was setting up some newly made statues in the cave now known as Cave 16 when he noticed a crack in one of the frescoed walls. Seeing that the space behind the crack was hollow, he opened up the wall and discovered a small room filled with ancient manuscripts and paintings that had been hidden away sometime during the eleventh century, for reasons that are still unclear. The most popular theory is that they were hidden to protect them from an imminent invasion by a barbarian tribe of Tibetan origin.”

Charlotte tried to concentrate on the lecture, but her mind kept returning to Larry’s murder. It seemed to her that he must have been killed early that morning. He hadn’t been dead for long—that much was clear from the fresh smell of the blood. She also doubted that he had awakened: there were no signs of struggle, and there wasn’t even much blood, a sign that he had died quickly. “Dead men don’t bleed,” a detective had once told her. It appeared to have been a simple death. She guessed that the murderer had simply stolen into the sleeping man’s tent and stabbed him in the chest. With a knife, she presumed, though the murder weapon was missing. She hadn’t noticed it in the tent, and, though she had kept an eye out on her way back to the work tent, she hadn’t seen it. She had been reluctant to look around too much for fear of disturbing the scene. She had learned that much from her experience with police work. Don’t walk around, and don’t touch anything. She had made the mistake of tampering with the weapon in the first murder case she had been involved in. She had rotated the barrel of the revolver to see if there were bullets left in any of the chambers, and gotten her fingerprints all over the murder weapon. But she could be forgiven in that case: she was the person who had fired the bullet, killing her co-star on stage in the murder scene in a Broadway play. The killer had substituted a real bullet for the blank in the stage prop. Once she had realized that it was real blood oozing from the wound in Geoffrey’s chest, her first impulse had been to check the barrel. She couldn’t quite believe that the bullet that had killed him had come from her gun.

Now she was party to another murder. In Geoffrey’s case, it had been clear to her from the outset that the murderer was his lover, whom he had recently jilted for someone else. It had simply been a matter of gathering the evidence to put him behind bars. This was a different matter.