‘Are not they kept barred, too?’
‘Not always, Effendi. Sometimes the Sitt opens the shutters to let the air through.’
‘And did she that night?’
The servants conferred.
‘Effendi, I think so,’ said the youngster hesitantly, ‘for I saw that one of the windows facing on to the street was open.’
Mahmoud asked him to show him the window, and they all trooped round.
There were, as was usual with houses built in the style of the old Mameluke houses, no windows on the ground floor, the wall rising sheer to the box windows above. These were of the old meshrebiya sort, glassless and made of heavy, ornamented latticework. At one corner, however, there was a smaller window, put in later, still glassless but shuttered against the light.
‘How could they have got up then?’ said Mahmoud.
‘A boy, Effendi,’ said the gardener. ‘They would have stood him on their shoulders and he would have been able to climb the rest. Then he would have gone down and unbarred the door.’
***
Mahmoud took the houseboy into the house.
‘You know the house,’ he said. ‘Let us go through it together. And if you see anything that I do not see, tell me.’
They went through the rooms, the houseboy wincing at the sight, until they stood in the doorway of the old lady’s working room.
‘Tell me what you see.’
‘Effendi,’ said the houseboy, distressed, ‘I see only confusion.’
‘Go on looking.’
After a while, the houseboy said:
‘Effendi, this is little, and perhaps it is not what you want, but the picture has been moved.’
‘I am sorry?’
It was not, in fact, a picture but an ikon, standing above the old lady’s desk, its two doors open like wings to show the head of a saint on the panel between them.
‘It has been moved.’
‘Moved?’
The houseboy went forward, took the doors in his hands and opened them out fully so that their backs were spread against the wall. The whole thing had been pulled roughly forward. The boy settled it back firmly.
‘That is how it should be,’ he said. ‘That is all, Effendi,’ he finished apologetically.
***
Outside in the corridor they heard the tap of a stick on the marble floor and a moment later Irena Kundasova came into the room, supported by Natasha. Her eyes went at once to the scatter on the floor.
‘They do not change,’ she said.
‘You remember us, madame?’ asked Owen.
She looked at him.
‘You are the Mamur Zapt,’ she said, ‘and this nice man is from the Parquet. You wanted to know why Tvardovsky died. Well, have you found the answer?’
‘There are more questions than answers.’
‘That is true,’ she said.
She hobbled across and looked down at the letters on the floor.
‘They are from Nikolai,’ she said. ‘It does not seem right that they should be left lying on the floor.’
She went awkwardly down on her knees and began to gather them up.
Natasha dropped down beside her. The old lady gently pushed her away.
‘No,’ she said, ‘this is for the widow. Your turn will come soon enough.’
‘Mother,’ said Mahmoud, speaking in the intimate voice of the Arabic, and not in the French that they had previously been using, ‘they did not come for letters.’
The old lady sat back on her heels and looked up.
‘No,’ she agreed.
‘What did they come for? Have you, perhaps, family jewels?’
‘My necklaces!’ said the old lady, struggling up in a panic.
The woman helped her.
‘They are in my bedroom. They—’ She stopped.
‘But they did not come to my bedroom,’ she said.
‘Money?’
‘What I have is in my desk.’
Mahmoud took the notes that were scattered around on the desk.
‘Was there more?’
‘I do not think so.’
‘Valuables of any other sort?’
She raised her head.
‘Our house is full of beautiful things,’ she said proudly. ‘It always has been. My mother—’ She looked around confusedly. ‘Our house is full of beautiful things,’ she began again. ‘Would you like to see—?’
Natasha led her gently back to her room.
***
‘Effendis!’ cried the Mudir, coming into the room with affected confidence. ‘Have no fear! I will beat the truth out of them.’
‘Them?’
‘Ali and Mekhmet and Ja’afar.’
‘You have seized the men who did this?’
‘Not quite yet, Effendi. But I will!’
‘Just a minute,’ said Owen. ‘How do you know it was Ali and Mekhmet and Ja’afar?’
‘They are the thieves in this town, Effendi. It must be one of them. Oh, they will deny it and say they were with Bahija, or some slut or other. But I will get the truth out of them, never fear!’
Mahmoud showed him the money on the old lady’s desk.
‘Would Ali or Mekhmet or Ja’afar have left this?’ he demanded angrily.
‘They might have missed it,’ muttered the Mudir, crest-fallen.
‘Or perhaps whoever did it was not Ali or Mekhmet or Ja’afar.’
The Mudir was silenced.
Briefly.
Then he started again.
‘Effendi—’
‘Yes?’
‘Perhaps they were not looking for money.’
‘Well, that is possible. Indeed, very likely.’
‘But, Effendi, what sort of bad man is it who breaks into a house and, seeing money, does not take it?’
‘Not the ordinary sort of bad man, certainly.’
The Mudir looked troubled.
‘Effendi, I know all the bad men in Medinet—’
‘They may well not have come from Medinet.’
‘No? They came from somewhere else?’ said the Mudir, brightening. ‘Ah, well, there’s not much I can do, is there? Not if they came from Abchaway or Abouxah. You’d have to speak to the people there—’
‘Let us,’ said Mahmoud, ‘start, for the moment, somewhere closer. Medinet, for example. Check first if anyone has been seen looking suspiciously at the Sitt’s house as if wondering how they might enter. Check next if anyone saw anything last night. Check, third, if there have been any strangers in Medinet. Ask at the railway station.’
‘Effendi, I will! I will ask Tarik, he is always hanging about there. It is his job, you see, Effendi, he begs at the gate—’
***
Mahmoud began to go carefully through the rooms. After a while, Owen left him to it. This was a job Mahmoud could do far better than he could. The Parquet officers combined the role of investigating lawyer with that of investigating detective.
There was as well, ever since last night, a coolness between them. Mahmoud was unfailingly courteous but he had somehow put a distance between them.
Owen wandered out into the big central courtyard. The air was loud with the cooing of doves. They perched on the branches of a large sycamore fig tree which stood in the centre of the yard, its great branches offering shade to almost the whole of the yard, or waddled around in the dust, their rich feathers shining, almost sparkling, in the sun. The ones on the ground were mostly gathered in front of the takhtabosh, the long ground-floor gallery which ran the length of one side of the court and where they had first met the old lady. He saw now that they were picking at grain which had been thrown there, perhaps by Irena Kundasova herself.
Jasmine and roses hung round the columns of the takhtabosh and the mixture of
scent, to someone like Owen with a keen sense of smell, was almost overwhelming. There was another scent mixed with them and it was only after a while that he realized where it came from. There were gates on one side of the courtyard which opened on to the river. On either side of the gates were tubs with orange trees in blossom.
He walked across to the gate and looked down at the water. A small boat was tied to the bank. It was full of onions and tomatoes, huge ones, the size of tennis balls and glowing with warmth and colour.
When you thought of Egypt in abstract you tended to think of desert; but it was equally valid to think of it as a garden. Where there was water as well as sun, things grew amazingly. And there was water in Egypt, where the Nile ran, especially, of course, but also in the Fayoum, where, over countless generations, man had extended the waters of the Nile so that a whole basin had become fertile and prolific.
Less fertile now, perhaps. The lake had shrunk. The soil had dried out and become desert. But might not the desert be reclaimed? That had been Tvardovsky’s vision. Owen was no economist but, looking now at the giant vegetables in the boat, and almost intoxicated by the wreaths of jasmine and swathes of roses which hung everywhere, he was almost persuaded to share it.
Some men were coming through the courtyard. He recognized the cook and the gardener and the boy supporting them, but there was someone else with them, an old man.
They came up to the gate, greeting him shyly, and stood looking down into the boat. The old man jumped down and began to hand the vegetables up.
‘Well, Abdullah,’ said the cook, looking at the vegetables critically, ‘these are fine tomatoes.’
‘They are,’ agreed the old man.
‘It is the soil,’ said the gardener. ‘Over where you live, Abdullah, I think the land still keeps some of the wetness of the lake.’
‘It does, but that doesn’t mean it can do without watering.’
‘Is all the land over there like that?’
‘It is not just the water,’ said the old man. ‘Do you know what else I think it is?’
‘No?’
‘Shit.’
‘Shit?’
‘People have been shitting there for millions of years.’
‘Yes, but they’re not shitting there now, are they?’
‘No. But this is where the great town was and I reckon they did lots of shitting in the past.’
‘Well, I’m dammed! So this’—he picked up a particularly large onion—‘could have been grown on a Pharaoh’s shit?’
‘That’s my theory,’ said the old man.
The gardener took the onion and smelled it thoughtfully.
‘It stands to reason,’ he said, ‘it could make a difference. If it was the Pharaoh’s.’
‘That’s my theory, anyway.’
‘Well, you are a fortunate man, Abdullah, to have the Pharaoh’s privy on your land,’ said the cook. ‘That ought to be worth a bit.’
‘It ought.’ The old man looked worried. ‘Perhaps I should have asked for more,’ he said.
‘More?’
‘When I sold the land.’
‘You’ve sold the land!’
‘But, Abdullah,’ said the gardener, distressed, ‘why did you not tell me? I would have given you a good price for it. Especially in view of the privy.’
‘Ah,’ said the old man, ‘but your good price would not have been as good as the price I got. That was a big price from big men.’
‘Big men?’
The old man laid a finger to his nose.
‘And, besides, he was a friend of the Sitt.’
‘What, not that daft effendi who was always poking around?’
‘The same.’
‘What the hell did he want your land for? I can’t see him growing onions!’
‘I don’t know what he wanted it for and I didn’t ask. Not once he’d mentioned the price he was willing to pay.’
‘You really fooled him, Abdullah,’ said the cook enviously.
‘Fooled? It’s good land. Although perhaps,’ said the old man, winking, ‘not quite as good as that!’
‘Abdullah,’ said the gardener, ‘beware! When God smiles on you like this, you need to watch out. He’s bound to have something else up His sleeve.’
The old man heaved the last string of onions up and climbed out.
‘Well, perhaps. He has. For now the Effendi has died.’
‘What difference will that make now? For surely he has already paid you the money?’
‘Only part of it. For I still work the land. “Go on working,” he said, “for I have no need of the land just at the moment. And, besides, it is better if it is not known that I hold the papers. Let us not say too much about this. But here is some money now for your son’s wedding and there is more to come. Meanwhile, reflect on what you want to do with it; for money is like dung—it needs to be put in the right place.”’
‘Well, that was wisely said. Only I would have asked for it all on the spot if I had been you.’
‘I wish I had done. For now what happens, now that the man is dead? Who holds the papers? Who will pay me what is owed?’
‘You would have done better to have sold it to me,’ said the gardener, ‘for I would have given you cash. Especially if I had known about the privy.’
***
For a moment Owen thought it was a hyena entering the kitchen. He opened his mouth to shout. Then he saw that it was a man, horribly deformed and walking on all fours, so that his hip stuck up in a grotesque hump higher than his shoulders, giving his back the long tilt-down characteristic of the hyena. His head hung down. It was almost as if he was nosing the ground.
‘Why!’ exclaimed the gardener. ‘It’s Tarik!’
The Mudir came out of the house accompanied by Mahmoud.
‘Greeting, Tarik,’ said Mahmoud, dropping into a squat opposite him.
The man sat back on his haunches, almost like a dog, with his arms straight down to the ground before him.
‘And to you, peace,’ he replied, in a low, hoarse voice.
‘The Mudir tells me that you sit at the station?’
‘I do, Effendi. Every day and all day.’
‘Then you see all who come?’
‘I do, Effendi.’ The man hesitated. ‘Effendi, I know you seek for strangers. But yesterday no strangers came.’
‘That surprises me, Tarik; for is not Medinet a busy station?’
‘It is, Effendi, but it is busy with the ordinary people of the Fayoum coming and going; some to the fields or to the quarries, others to work on the roads or canals. Few come from Abchaway except those going to the hotel on the lake and none have come for the hotel this week. The only effendis who have come this week are Ferguson Effendi on Tuesday to inspect the Irrigation Works and a man yesterday going to the Kfouri Cotton Mills, and he is no stranger, for he has been here before.’
‘The men we seek may not be effendis.’
‘Still I would have seen them,’ said Tarik positively, ‘for I see all who come, and I know all who live in Medinet.’
‘And there were no strangers among them?’
‘None, Effendi.’
***
Natasha came downstairs shortly after.
‘Irena Kundasova is asleep,’ she said.
‘Will she sleep long? There are questions we need to ask.’
‘Probably not long. The old sleep in fits and snatches. But do not ask her any more, not just now. It is too disturbing for her. All this’—she gestured at the room—‘it has carried her back. She recognizes it.’
‘Recognizes?’
‘Once one has lived in a police state,’ said Natasha, ‘one recognizes such things.’
‘Egypt is not a police state,’ said Mahmoud.
‘I thought so, too, when I came
to Egypt, at first. But when I saw all this’—she looked around the room—‘I recognized it too.’
‘This is not the work of the police,’ said Owen.
‘No? Well, that is what I said to myself. At first. Egypt is not Russia, I said. And so I sent for you. That was a mistake.’
‘You should have sent for the Parquet,’ said Mahmoud primly.
‘No. Not that. That was not the mistake. It was only just now, when I was lying beside Irena Kundasova thinking how cruel men can be, that I realized.’
She turned to Owen.
‘I shouldn’t have taken so long, should I? Because you had told me that day by the lake when we first met. We made a joke of it, remember? You told me you worked for the Khedive, “in a general capacity,” you said; and I said, in Russia we have people like that, too. And we both laughed. And then I forgot about it.
‘But then, just now, lying beside Irena Kundasova, it came back to me. And with it, in my mind, a picture. It was of you. The morning that Tvardovsky died. You had just got into your boats, he into his, you into yours. You were right beside him. You had a gun, a different one from all the others, a small one. I saw it. I was watching from the bank. You took it out of your pocket and put it in another pocket. Where it could be got at more easily. And then the reeds closed behind you both and that was the last time I saw Tvardovsky alive.’
Chapter Eight
‘You are quite mistaken,’ said Owen.
Natasha shrugged.
‘Am I? In my country when a man goes for a walk with the Head of the Secret Police and does not come back there is no need to ask what happened.’
‘This is not your country, madame,’ said Mahmoud.
‘It is the same.’
‘It is not the same,’ said Mahmoud, stung.
‘Why would I want to kill Tvardovsky?’ said Owen.
‘Because you are the Khedive’s servant. Remember? You told me that day by the lake. At least you were honest.’
‘The Khedive, then,’ said Mahmoud: ‘Why would he wish to see Tvardovsky killed?’
‘Because he, too, is a servant. Their servant. He does what he is told. He has to. He is in debt and the British have an army here.’
‘That has been true for a long time. Why should it suddenly be necessary to kill Tvardovsky?’
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