The Snake Catcher's Daughter

by Michael Pearce

  Mahmoud, whose logic tended towards the severely linear, was probably one of those. However, Philipides’s remark was not directed at him.

  “They come in from overseas,” he said bitterly, “and they think we don’t know how to do things, when it’s just that we’re doing them in a different way.”

  “You are talking of Garvin effendi?”

  Philipides hesitated but then committed himself.

  “If he had been more patient,” he said, “he would have seen that it was not as he supposed.”

  “You are saying you are innocent of the changes?”

  “Garvin effendi refused to believe that we were merely setting a trap. And I ask myself why he refused to believe us.”

  “And what answer do you give?”

  Philipides lifted his head and looked Mahmoud in the eyes.

  “Because we were Egyptian,” he said; “because we stood in the British way; because he wanted our places.”

  Mahmoud said nothing but gave him the transcript to read.

  The mouth beneath the moustache twitched painfully. “How does this square with your story?”

  “It does not contradict it,” said Philipides defiantly.

  “No? ‘He can tell them things that lead to us’?”

  “I was afraid that it would look as if we really were accepting money in exchange for promotion.”

  “But why should you be concerned about that? Surely, all you had to do was go to Garvin effendi and tell him this was an official inquiry?”

  “I was afraid he would not believe me.”

  “You could have referred him to your superior.”

  “I was working on this occasion for the Mamur Zapt.”

  “Why was that?”

  “It was an inquiry into the police. Wainwright Pasha wanted it to be someone independent. He did not know how far it might involve senior officers. There were rumours—”

  “Rumours?”

  “About Garvin effendi. Some jewels. A present for his wife.”

  Mahmoud glanced at Owen, then made a note.

  “But you, too,” he said to Philipides, “were a member of the police, and if not a senior one, an important middle-ranking one.”

  “Mustapha Mir thought he needed help.”

  “Had he not men of his own?”

  “No. Well, yes, but they were special men. He needed someone inside the Police Force.”

  “Why did he choose you?”

  “I had worked with him before. He trusted me.”

  “Was this authorized by Wainwright Pasha?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And known by Garvin effendi?”

  “He knew I had worked with Mustapha Mir before, yes, but he did not know about this operation. That is why I was worried, why I telephoned Mustapha Mir—”

  “I do not understand this,” said Mahmoud. “If it was as you say, why was not the matter quickly cleared up? Surely, all Mustapha Mir had to do was get in touch with Garvin?”

  “He knew he wouldn’t believe him. That is why he went to Wainwright Pasha.”

  Philipides glanced at the transcript.

  “Look!” he said, pointing with his finger. “It says there that he is going to see Wainwright Pasha.”

  “In that case, why did not Wainwright Pasha speak to Garvin?”

  “He did. But Garvin effendi did not believe him.”

  “Did not believe him?” said Mahmoud incredulously. “But surely Garvin effendi was Wainwright Pasha’s deputy at the time?”

  “He was. There was a terrible argument. And then Garvin effendi went over Wainwright Pasha’s head.”

  “To the Ministry of Justice?” said Mahmoud, puzzled. “But that is not in my files.”

  He looked at the big pile of folders on his desk.

  “Not to the Ministry of Justice,” said Philipides. “To the British Consul-General.”

  “Ah! Oh, I see.”

  “Wainwright Pasha spoke up strongly for Mustapha Mir. He said it was an injustice. But it was no good. They wanted Mustapha out, you see. That was what it was all about. He saw it at once. That was why he kept asking me if there were others or if it was just Garvin effendi alone. I did not understand, I was just a lowly inspector, I do not know about these things. But Mustapha Mir was clever, he did know about such things and he saw at once what was happening—”

  “Just one moment,” said Mahmoud. “What is it exactly that you are saying?”

  “That there was a plot,” said Philipides determinedly, “a British plot. That Garvin effendi saw an opportunity to discredit Mustapha Mir and force him out.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “So that,” said Philipides bitterly, looking at Owen, “his place could be taken by an Englishman.”

  ***

  “A lot of nonsense,” said Owen, when they were alone.

  “Is it?” said Mahmoud.

  “Yes,” said Owen, “it certainly is.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Mahmoud. “Garvin is an ambitious man.”

  “It wouldn’t have been Mustapha Mir’s job that he wanted,” Owen pointed out. “It would have been Wainwright’s.”

  “And he got it,” said Mahmoud.

  “That was later. That was nothing to do with this.”

  Mahmoud, however, looked thoughtful.

  “There are obvious weaknesses in the story,” said Owen.

  Mahmoud nodded.

  “Yes, but I will have to check them. I will have to investigate his accusations too, though.” He looked at Owen. “That means going through the files.”

  “Whose files?”

  “Yours, perhaps,” said Mahmoud. “Or rather, Mustapha Mir’s.”

  Owen was silent. There was a lot of secret material in the Mamur Zapt’s files. Would the Administration agree?

  “More to the point,” said Mahmoud, “I shall have to go through the Commandant’s files. Did Wainwright authorize Mustapha Mir to conduct an investigation into corruption in the Police Force? If he did, there ought to be some reference to it in the files.”

  “Garvin’s sitting on those files now,” said Owen.

  “I shall have to ask him to release them.”

  Owen was silent again. Garvin, he felt sure, had nothing to hide, but he might well object to opening his files to the Parquet. It was the principle of the thing, he would say. The Commandant of the Cairo Police was such an important post that its incumbent was appointed directly by the Khedive, not by the Minister of Justice. There was a reason for that. The Ministry was responsible for the administration of justice; but the Commandant was responsible for maintaining order, and the Khedive cared a lot more about maintaining order than he did about justice.

  It could be put, too, another way. The Khedive appointed the Commandant on the direct advice of the British Administration, and the British were even more interested in maintaining order than they were in the administration of justice. The niceties of the legal administration they were quite happy to leave to the Egyptians; the exercise of power, though, they wished to keep to themselves.

  The British Administration was advisory only. In theory, the Khedive and his ministers could reject that advice. In practice, because of the Egyptian Government’s financial dependence on Britain, and because of the large British army stationed in Egypt, the advice was not something the Egyptians could easily disregard.

  The British were punctilious in observing the advisory form. On the one hand it gave them something they could shelter behind; on the other, it saved the Khedive’s self-respect.

  Up to a point. As the years went by, and memory of the financial crisis receded into the background, the Khedive became increasingly restless. So did ambitious ministers. And so, much, much more so, did the growing forces of Egyptian Nationalism. There we
re many now, especially among the young professionals, who were eager to challenge the advisory form, to bring matters to a head over whether the British were here as advisers only or whether they were here to rule by force. The young lawyers of the Parquet, for instance. Mahmoud.

  Like Garvin, Mahmoud might well see this as an issue of principle. Was the Commandant of the Cairo Police Force subject to the same judicial process as everyone else in Egypt or not? Did he answer to the Khedive and the National Assembly and the Ministry of Justice? Or only to the British?

  “It may be necessary to interview Wainwright Pasha,” said Mahmoud.

  “Wainwright? He left the country years ago!”

  “He is still alive? These are grave charges,” said Mahmoud. “He will have to come back.”

  ***

  “Come back?” said Paul incredulously.

  “Wainwright? Fat chance of that! He’ll be too busy watering his roses, or whatever you do to roses.”

  “If we cover his expenses.”

  “Mahmoud’s very free with my money,” said Paul.

  “He might jump at it. A holiday in Egypt at the Government’s expense.”

  “Wainwright may be daft,” said Paul. “But he’s not as daft as that!”

  “Mahmoud seems very determined,” said Owen. “I think the Ministry might make a formal request.”

  “Well, it will get a formal answer,” said Paul. “Plus an informal one: Ha! Ha!”

  “It’s an issue of principle.”

  “Is it hell!” said Paul. “It’s a matter of practice. How do you compel a chap to come back if he doesn’t want to? Appeal to his better nature? Anyone who’s served in the British Administration hasn’t got one. Compel him legally? That would mean working through the Egyptian legal system, which is some task, I can tell you, especially when you get lawyers on to the job. And then it would have to go through the British legal system, which is even worse. It would take years. Wainwright would have died by the time it got to court. Of course, you could always bribe him, but that, given the nature of the investigation, hardly seems the appropriate thing to do. It might be worth trying, though. Since he’s on a Government pension, he’s bound to be short of money.”

  “I’ll put the suggestion to Mahmoud.”

  “Actually,” said Paul, thinking, “there’s another issue of principle involved, too. It is; once you’ve retired, ought they to be able to get you for the things you’ve done? Assert that as a principle and the prisons will be full of old age pensioners. No administrator will ever take a decision on anything. It’s only because they think they’ll be retired by the time there’s any comeback that they take the decisions they do. No,” said Paul, shaking his head, “this will not do. Mahmoud is tampering with sacred things. The principle of wiping the slate clean when you retire is fundamental to our society. Abolish it and the Western way of life falls apart.”

  “You think there’s no chance then?”

  “It’s Mahmoud v the Rest of the World. Again, poor chap.”

  ***

  “Access to my files?” said Garvin. “He’ll be lucky!”

  “Not so much yours as Wainwright’s.”

  Garvin shook his head.

  “Impossible. Can’t separate them. Besides, isn’t there a question of principle?”

  ***

  “Access to the files?” said Nikos, shocked, standing in front of the cabinets as if an immediate attack was about to be made on their honour. “Never!”

  “Only those dating back to Mustapha Mir’s time,” said Owen.

  “All destroyed,” said Nikos. “It’s an important principle. When you leave office you destroy all your papers. Anyone with any intelligence knows that.”

  “Did Wainwright know that?”

  “Well, of course, Wainwright—”

  ***

  “There may not have been any papers,” Owen said to Mahmoud. “And if there were, there won’t be now.”

  ***

  He found Zeinab fastening a necklace around her neck. It was a silver chain with pendant razzmatazz dangling from the front of it which sparkled and flashed in the lamplight.

  “Very nice!” he said, kissing her just above the pendant.

  Zeinab examined herself in the mirror.

  “Yes,” she said, “it suits me quite well. You don’t usually have such good taste, darling.”

  “What?” said Owen.

  Zeinab put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

  “Thank you, darling,” she said. “We haven’t seen each other for at least two days and I was just beginning to think that in your absentminded way you had completely forgotten about me, when you produce something like this!”

  “Just a minute!” said Owen.

  Zeinab released him.

  “Something wrong?”

  “It doesn’t come from me.”

  “Oh!”

  She sat down on the divan. After a moment she reached up and unfastened the necklace.

  “Another admirer?”

  “Shut up!” said Zeinab, and threw the necklace on the floor.

  He tried to make amends by kissing her but she turned her head away.

  “Perhaps your father sent it,” he suggested.

  “When he gives me presents he likes to give me them directly.”

  “Or one of his friends?”

  It always worried Owen that one day Nuri Pasha might seek to marry his daughter off. Nuri was a westernized Francophile but you never knew in a thing like this and there had been recent signs that he was prepared to use his daughter to cement a political alliance.

  “Marbrouk, for instance?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! He’s still on the Riviera. Where he went at your suggestion.”

  “What about that new man your father seemed very thick with the other night at the Khedive’s reception?”

  “Demerdash Pasha?”

  “That’s right. The pro-Turk one.”

  “He’s not pro-Turk,” said Zeinab, “he’s pro-Khedive. Khedive as he was twenty years ago.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Just because my father flirts with him,” said Zeinab coldly, “that doesn’t mean he flirts with me.”

  “All right, all right. I just thought an alliance might be in the making.”

  “If it was,” said Zeinab, “I don’t think Demerdash would think of consulting me. Or that it was necessary to placate me with gifts.”

  Owen picked up the necklace. It felt heavy. That sometimes meant such things were genuine silver.

  “Whoever sent it will find a way of letting you know, won’t they?”

  “Why? Would you kill them?”

  “Not exactly, but—”

  Zeinab was disappointed.

  “You English,” she complained, “lack passion.”

  “Let me convince you otherwise,” said Owen.

  ***

  The Aalima’s house, or perhaps he should call it coven, was a small modest building in a respectable part of the Gamaliya. Inside, however, it was surprisingly well furnished, with carpets on the walls, several low, well-cushioned divans and an unusual profusion of knickknacks: fine porcelain lamp bowls, copper and silver trays and little silver filigree boxes. A brazier with a coffee pot was already waiting. Witch, she might be, but she knew how to behave.

  She was, this time, decently veiled. Only the fine eyes were visible to remind Owen of the striking face. The matronly bearing, however, remained. Owen was shepherded firmly to one of the divans and given a cup of coffee. The Aalima sat down opposite; alone. She plainly had no truck with the usual convention which required a male family friend to be present when conversation was had with a lady.

  “Well?” she said.

  Owen discarded the smooth introduction he had prepared.<
br />
  “Did you know the Bimbashi was going to be there?” he asked.

  “No,” said the Aalima firmly.

  “Then how was it you had the drug ready?”

  The Aalima started to speak then stopped, as if changing her mind.

  “We always have drugs,” she said. “They are part of the ceremony. We use different ones at different times. This was one we normally use late on: if someone is overexcited.”

  “Why, then, was it given to the Bimbashi?”

  The Aalima’s eyes flashed.

  “It was none of his business!” she said angrily. “It was not right that he should be there. I could not have done everything if he had been watching, I would not have been able to complete the ceremony.”

  “So you sent him to sleep?”

  “What is wrong with that?”

  “You gave him too much. You could have killed him.”

  The Aalima hesitated.

  “We had no wish to kill him. If we gave him too much it was because we wished to make sure. We were not used to giving such doses.”

  Owen nodded.

  “The girl,” he said, “Jalila; she put it in?”

  “Jalila? No. She merely carries the bowl.”

  “Did you put it in yourself?”

  “It was part of the ceremony,” she said evasively.

  “No matter; you are the one who will be held responsible.”

  “He should not have come,” she said.

  “I know; and therefore I am prepared to be lenient with you. Give me the information I want and you need hear no more of this.”

  “What information do you want?”

  “Let me ask my first question again. Did you know the Bimbashi would be there?”

  “No,” she said. “I knew only that he might be.”

  “Who gave you that information?”

  “I cannot say. Truthfully,” she added quickly. “These things come to one, some words muttered in the suk, and one does not always see who has spoken. One only knows afterwards that they are important by the gift.”