Page 120 of Disturbing the Dead
The serialized stories depict Gray as a brilliant detective, but also something of an adrenaline junkie, rushing headlong into danger. While the writer gets a lot of things wrong, they’re dead-on with that part. Brilliant but also an adventure hound, much like his new assistant.
The clue might have been sent to the guy most likely to hare off after Selim without bothering to notify the police. Such a person would burst in, see the rope and the booze bottles, and go “Ah-ha! I deduce this is our killer and, in his guilt, he drank himself into a stupor.” Because, obviously, if you’ve strangled someone, you’re still carrying around the rope days later.
Whoever set this up fancies themselves a criminal mastermind when, like most self-declared criminal masterminds, they just make our job a whole lot easier with their clumsy attempts to stage a crime scene.
Selim is resting at his sister’s and joking—sheepishly—about setting a record for number of times rendered unconscious in a week. Yep, there’s a serious dose of déjà vu here. The guy was knocked out in the tunnels below and now, well, now it seems he was knocked out there twice.
Selim had been in the tunnel the night he disappeared. Speaking of amateur sleuths, he’d gone down hoping that being there might jog a memory. Had he seen or heard something the day before and then forgotten it after he lost consciousness? Could some clue to his brother-in-law’s murder be locked deep in his brain?
Selim might not have set a record for number of times being knocked out, but he has probably set one for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. First, he’d encountered a fleeing killer while he was trying to sneak in to surprise the children. This time, while he poked around the tunnels for clues, someone was making off with the artifacts.
“I heard someone coming,” he says. “I did not know what to make of that. Would the killer return? If so, for what reason? My indecision cost me precious moments, and when I did spot the thief, it was too late. I saw him with a bag and I grabbed it from him. It fell, and a roll of papyrus tumbled out. Then someone clubbed me from behind. The blow did not knock me unconscious, but it befuddled my mind, and the brute overpowered me.”
“You saw the thief?” McCreadie asks. “Is it someone you know?”
Selim shakes his head. “I strongly suspect he is only working for whoever was stealing the artifacts, and I believe I know who that was.”
He seems poised to tell us, because surely that will be our next question. Instead, I ask him to describe the man he saw. The guy was in his thirties, large and rough looking, and while I didn’t get much from the neighbor, what little I did get matches this guy to one of the men who hauled Selim into that tiny apartment. It is not, however, the person who ambushed him in the tunnel after Sir Alastair’s murder—Selim confirms that person was notably smaller.
“What happened next?” McCreadie asks.
Selim hesitates, probably confused that we’re not asking him to name his suspect for the antiquities thief. But he answers, telling us how he was sedated, and briefly woke a few times in the darkness, bound hand and foot, before being sedated again.
Gray confirms that rope burns on Selim’s wrists and ankles support this story.
After that, Selim remembers waking once, sick to his stomach, barely managing to vomit safely before falling back into a heavy sleep.
McCreadie grills Selim on everything he can remember about the person who grabbed him, the papyrus roll that fell from the bag, and the places he woke in. He has nothing on the last, and only what he’s already provided on the first.
It seems the attack on Selim was, once again, just bad luck. But after he’d been knocked out, whoever was in charge of the theft decided he could be useful. Selim’s attacker stashed the artifacts in the tunnel for safekeeping while he hauled Selim out. Then, the next night, Muir went back for the artifacts… and found that the so-called secret tunnel wasn’t so secret, with people traveling to and fro like it’s Toronto’s underground PATH system after a Leafs game.
Me being down there with Mrs. Wallace had launched another scheme. Knock out Mrs. Wallace and strangle me the same way Sir Alastair had been strangled, so Selim could be blamed for both deaths, since they already had Selim in their keeping and could use his boots to make tracks. Hell, killing me might also affect the investigation, if the loss of his assistant—and his presumed lover—threw the illustrious Dr. Gray off his game.
Now comes the moment Selim has been very politely awaiting. He has told us that he knows who took him captive, and we haven’t even asked for a name. That’s because we have a feeling this will be the least surprising part of the story.
“Lord Muir,” he says when McCreadie finally asks. “Now, before you say anything, I know it is a very serious charge to make. Worse, I have no solid evidence that he took me. I did not see him or hear him speak or even overhear my captors say his name. What I have instead are the results of my own detective work, which point to him as the person stealing Alastair’s antiquities. It is entirely possible that this latest theft—and my capture—was undertaken by a different person. Yet even if it was, I must step forward with my suspicions regarding Lord Muir as I realize it might affect the investigation into Alastair’s death.”
Selim takes a deep breath. “Alastair believed Lord Muir was behind recent thefts of antiquities destined for museum collections and research. It put Alastair in a very difficult position, with Lord Muir being his patron. He had asked me to investigate, using my contacts in the antiquities community. I have been doing that, coming to visit the city whenever I can, under the guise of having a mistress here.”
I think back to the letter Muir found. “Did Sir Alastair write to you about the artifacts?”
He frowns.
“We have heard something about a letter between you and Sir Alastair, urgently wishing to speak to you about the artifacts.”
“Ah, yes. I was in London, and he had the note sent there. I returned here to discuss it. If that is important, I can likely produce the note.”
“If you could, please.”
“So you were in Edinburgh investigating,” McCreadie says. “There is no mistress?”
“I will not pretend I am a monk.” He notices me, and color rises in his cheeks. “Er, that is to say, well…” He clears his throat. “I have no mistress. I am too busy with my work for entanglements of that nature. When the time comes, I have aunts who will find me a wife, if I do not wish to find my own. The ruse of a mistress allowed me to slip about the city at night without my sister asking questions.”
“You were helping your brother-in-law find the thief.”
“Discreetly. Very discreetly. To even say they were stolen is… complicated, if the person taking them is the one funding the expeditions. I had the sense there were other points of contention between the two men, and it was all very…” He shrugs. “Complicated.”
“So what did you discover?”
