Chapter 30
The Henrys and Banks arrived just as the dust from Polat’s vehicle was settling. After Alexander had explained Saffron had just been taken away, the two other men burst into a cacophony of outrage and ideas.
“We are not doing this here,” Mrs. Henry hissed, cutting off Dr. Henry’s demands that they go down to the police station to protest immediately. “Come to our suite, Mr. Ashton, Mr. Banks.”
Alexander allowed himself to be whisked upstairs.
He didn’t bother to correct Dr. Henry when he pushed a drink into his hand, nor prevent him from raging around the room as he complained about the unreasonable treatment of his crew.
Banks stood at Alexander’s side, silent and worried, while Mrs. Henry sat at the writing desk and began writing something.
“Get Demirel in here,” Dr. Henry growled at them, and Banks slipped from the room. “He was supposed to fix this, wasn’t he?”
Alexander stared down into the amber depths of the liquid in his glass, and for a moment wished he could numb himself in its burn. But that wouldn’t do anyone any good, least of all Saffron.
“Excuse me,” he said to no one in particular, and left the room.
He went to his own room, shucking his suit jacket and loosening his tie before opening the window to air out the over-warm room. He allowed himself ten minutes to wallow in fear and self-pity, then he went to the desk.
The letter to Saffron’s cousin, John, was awkward.
He was her closest male relation other than her grandfather, and an attorney besides.
It required several drafts before he was satisfied it conveyed the appropriate urgency without being alarming.
There was a good chance he’d decide to send him a telegraph tomorrow rather than wait for the mail, but it helped to put all the facts and theories in writing.
Writing to Violet Everleigh, his now mother-in-law, was another story. He made several attempts, but they all sounded wrong. How was he to explain that her only child was under arrest for murder in a foreign country? That he, whom she’d met exactly twice, was now married to her daughter?
After staring at yet another discarded paper, he realized that he was in the same situation.
Saffron had never met his parents. His mother was a whirlwind of emotion and affection, and she’d raged from wild excitement that her son was getting married to deep hurt that she hadn’t met the girl he’d asked to join their family.
His father was her foil, hard and unperturbed, the rocky shore against which his mother crashed.
As to the rest of his family, individually they were manageable, but all together they were overwhelming, even to him.
Saffron had had a hard time after all that had happened with her own family earlier that year, and there’d never seemed to be a good time to reveal the extent of his own familial drama to her.
They hadn’t even started properly planning their wedding, yet here they were, married. His father would be disappointed. His mother would be heartbroken. And that would only be their reaction to their quick marriage, not that his wife was being accused of poisoning and killing a man.
He leaned back in his chair, gazing out through the window onto the black night. What was he going to do? He’d no doubt at the time that marrying Saffron now was the best option. He didn’t regret it. But the whole situation seemed suddenly eight times more complicated.
Putting aside the letter to Mrs. Everleigh for the moment, Alexander instead wrote to Adrian.
It was comforting to think that his older brother would be cackling with laughter that his brother had managed to get married and his new sister-in-law was wrapped up in more trouble.
He, at least, would appreciate the absurdity of it all.
He felt better after writing it all out for Adrian.
He addressed the envelopes and put them into a stack on his desk, rearranging the items on the small desk as precisely as he could.
A thought had occurred to him as he wrote out Adrian’s address.
Two, actually. He opened the envelope addressed to Adrian and added a postscript which made him smile slightly, despite everything.
He put it aside, then took out another paper to write to Elizabeth Hale.
The letter came easily enough. He knew she’d be furious to miss their wedding, but glad he’d be able to better help Saffron.
He stood. There was a possibility that he wouldn’t even need to send the letters. This could be all resolved in a matter of hours.
That optimistic thought flickered and died as he recalled the broken glass now hidden in an envelope between the pages of his thickest book in his trunk.
He paced around the room for a minute. The police had searched Saffron’s room. What had they found? Was there more hidden there?
He wished he could search it himself. He wanted to see her things, soak up whatever of her presence he could.
He rubbed a hand over his face. He was being pathetic, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. Saffron had been his wife for all of half an hour, and already, she’d been torn away.
Searching her room wouldn’t help. Dr. Henry was too upset to be of use, and he didn’t know what Demirel could do so late in the evening. The Turks weren’t likely to take kindly to diplomats—
Alexander froze, hand still covering his mouth. Then he went to the desk and began another letter, this one addressed to the British embassy.
Saffron stared at the cracked wall of her room. Now that the police station was quiet, she had a lot of time to herself to think.
Though it was quite late, her mind buzzed.
Polat had questioned her for more than an hour upon reaching the police station, and he did, indeed, formally arrest her at the end of it.
Alexander had been there; she could hear him arguing with the other officer on duty, but he’d apparently been sent away before Polat was finished with her.
Her arrest paperwork, all in the languid Arabic script the Turks used, was completely incomprehensible to her. She’d had to interrupt them to correct her name. She was no longer Saffron Everleigh, at least for legal purposes.
“What?” Polat had spat at her.
“Mr. Ashton and I were married earlier this evening.”
“Why? And why did you say nothing of this before?”
“You may check the registry at St. Mary Magdalene in Bornova to confirm it.”
She was photographed by the second police officer, a mostly silent middle-aged man, and then shown to the little room in which she would spend the night. For all she knew, she’d spend the foreseeable future there.
Inspector Polat had, as promised, searched her room, and taken a number of her research materials as evidence.
She saw them being processed by the second officer when she’d arrived: a stack of her books and notebooks, as well as her chemistry set.
He did not, of course, find the broken vial someone had planted in her bedroom, but what else might the person have stashed among her things?
It was Polat’s questioning that revealed to her the majority of his evidence: the testimony of the crew members that not only had she been seen going in and out of Martin’s room before his death, but she had been morally wounded by the rumor of her infidelity, and that Martin had been the one to tell others of their affair.
Polat therefore viewed her motive as revenge for her damaged honor, something that seemed to be very serious to him.
When she demanded to know who told him that Martin had started the rumor of their affair, he would not answer.
“If it was Mr. Clark, you should know that he has it out for me,” Saffron had told him. “I told you he’s been sabotaging my participation in the expedition for weeks. He admitted he circulated the rumor about the affair—he did so in front of half a dozen witnesses. Ask them.”
But Polat had ignored that, and the explanations of her purpose in Martin’s room, the reason she’d spent so much time with him, and the other possible suspects and their motives.
She asked why she was arrested and not Mrs. Henry or Mrs. Demirel, who were also in and out of Martin’s room. Polat just sneered that they both appeared to have some sense of loyalty to their husbands. She bit her tongue on what she thought about that.
It was beyond irritating that this was how she was to be cast: a faithless seducer foolish enough to let people see her leaving the room of her poisoned lover.
If she ever did contemplate murder, she certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to be seen near the scene of the crime or choose poison.
Everyone knew it was her special area of study.
Still more maddening was that Polat gave her no indication of what the toxin was.
If she knew, she could prove she had no access to it, or better still, perhaps tell him who did have access and point him in the direction of Martin’s real killer.
The police station was now quiet. A clock ticking loudly somewhere beyond her stuffy little room was the only sound within the walls. Her chest began to feel tight and heavy, the lump in her throat painful.
She couldn’t believe she was spending her wedding night in a Turkish jail cell. She and Elizabeth had joked about wedding nights being scary, but this was a little on the nose.
Good Lord, what would Eliza say? She tried to imagine her best friend ribbing her about the ridiculous circumstances, but could only imagine her disappointment that she’d missed Saffron’s wedding.
Her fingers idly traced the pattern of the lace on her dress.
She looked down at it, realizing that this was her wedding dress.
Her pang of sadness recollecting Elizabeth’s excited ideas for her wedding outfit were replaced by a surge of gratitude for Mrs. Henry for giving her something pretty to wear.
The dress was rather lovely. It was a pity she’d ruin it by sleeping in it.
And Alexander …
She couldn’t think of him now, how she ached for him, how he must be feeling. She would tuck those thoughts away; they’d do her no good, stuck in here.
Perhaps when morning came, he would bring some solution. She would walk out of the police station with him, and they could forget any of this ever happened.