by L. C. Tyler
‘Of course not.’
‘You shot Purbright. Why should I trust you or believe you?’
‘That wasn’t us either,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Somebody else shot Purbright.’
‘Who?’
‘Somebody on the boat. If not you . . . then somebody else who must still be on board. Perhaps the same person who tried to kill you and Mr Proctor at Edfu.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘You should be grateful, Ethelred,’ said Mahmoud with a smile. ‘Here you are enjoying a nice boat ride with us instead of being back on the Khedive with a murderer who, if what you are saying is true, may be about to strike again.’
The man at the tiller, perhaps impatient with my questions, gave the throttle a savage wrench. The bows rose suddenly in the water, throwing me back hard against the seat. I held on for dear life as the boat raced northwards, into the night.
Seventeen
‘Well, at least we’re safe now,’ said Campion, though any threat that Ethelred had posed had always been mainly to Ethelred.
We listened thoughtfully to the sound of the outboard engine dying away. For a while nobody spoke.
‘Have they all gone then?’ asked Proctor eventually. ‘I thought they were going to question Ethelred here on the Khedive.’
‘They have obviously taken him to the nearest police station,’ said Campion. ‘That seems to me an entirely proper procedure.’
‘But they’ve just cleared off and left us here on the sandbank?’ said Proctor, who was perhaps less concerned about procedure.
‘They’re not policemen,’ said Tom again. ‘They won’t be going nearer any police station than they can help. Hell – if I’d just asked them that question a minute earlier . . .’
‘Inspector Mahmoud said that Inspector Majid had misheard,’ said Campion, carefully stressing the rank of both gentlemen. ‘In any case, you can hardly expect the Cairo police to be au fait with every single Scotland Yard unit. Let’s look at this sensibly. Ethelred comes in here brandishing a gun like a maniac, and accuses the two policemen of murdering Purbright. The policemen act sensibly – to ensure none of us gets hurt, they lie down on the floor and try to reason with him. They even offer to let him search them. That’s scarcely how a terrorist would behave, is it? Ethelred’s been acting oddly the whole trip in my humble opinion. Who do you want to believe?’
‘All the same . . .’ said Tom.
‘The policemen can’t be the ones who killed Purbright,’ said Campion. ‘It’s ridiculous. I’m sure it was an accident, but Ethelred must have fired the gun.’
‘That’s true about the policemen, that is for sure,’ said Captain Bashir, unexpectedly. He didn’t seem happier than any other captain to have his boat on a sandbank with no working engines. He could therefore have been excused the tiniest grudge against Mahmoud and Majid. If he was now about to defend them, at least nobody could accuse him of being unduly prejudiced in their favour. So we listened to what he had to say. A pin dropping could have been heard from one side of the boat to the other. (Having no working engines helped.) ‘If the shots are fired at the same time that the engines fail, then it is impossible that either of the two gentlemen is the killer. They both come to the bridge and tell me they are policemen. We have to get to Kom Ombo as fast as possible and make contact with the authorities. I protest – we are going as fast as we can – but they give me no choice. When the engines blow, we are still on the bridge, still arguing. So, neither of them leaves until well after the shot was fired.’
Campion looked unconvinced, but Proctor was eyeing us all suspiciously, trying to work out who had done him out of his fee plus reasonable receipted expenses.
‘When do you think somebody will come and pull us off the sandbank?’ asked Sky Benson, raising a practical issue that had been on my mind as well.
‘We have only Mahmoud’s assurance that anyone has been sent for. If those guys are not police, then we may have a long wait,’ said Tom.
‘We can phone the nearest police station ourselves,’ said Campion.
‘Good idea. Anyone manage to hang onto their mobile?’ asked Tom.
Nobody had.
‘Any other way of communicating?’ Tom asked the captain.
‘They took the phones and the ship’s radio,’ he said. ‘They are thorough.’
‘Then, Captain Bashir,’ said Campion, ‘you must launch the ship’s tender and get help. I am sure that the policemen will already have radioed ahead, but it may reassure those like Tom who doubt it. For my part, I shall go and see if I can retrieve the gun that Ethelred claims was in the cabin by the dining room. After that, Captain, I should be grateful if you would question the crew. I shall question the passengers to set people’s minds at rest that it was not one of us. If the opportunity arises, we shall hail a passing boat and ask it for assistance.’ It was the sort of speech that Purbright might have made and just got away with. Delivered in Campion’s petulant whine, it did not carry a great deal of authority. The captain in particular looked pissed off at being ordered around on his own boat. Proctor sniggered. Sky Benson made a point of looking out of the window, though there was nothing to see except the black river and a few bright stars. Still, objectively, it was not such a bad plan for a group of people stranded in the middle of the Nile with a killer amongst them and no means of communicating with the outside world.
‘You mean, launch the tender onto the sandbank that we are currently stuck on?’ asked Captain Bashir with an air of disdain.
‘Certainly. And then push it into the Nile,’ said Campion, as if they did little else at the UCL archaeology department.
‘Using the one undamaged winch to get it clear of the tree that it is in?’ asked the captain.
‘I am sure that it could be manhandled by four or five of the crew . . .’ Campion began; but nothing in the captain’s expression suggested to him that it would be worth completing the sentence.
‘Who says you get the gun anyway?’ asked Proctor, deciding that he might as well nit-pick as not. ‘You could be the killer as easily as . . .’ He looked round the room trying to spot a more likely killer, but neither Ethelred nor the two policemen were there. I too wouldn’t have trusted Campion with a gun, though. I hadn’t forgotten his late-night conversation with Sky.
‘I think the gun should be handed over to Captain Bashir,’ I said. Other than Tom and John, he was the only one left I trusted entirely.
‘It would be quite safe with me,’ said Campion. He clearly saw himself in the role of a natural leader and was disappointed that we couldn’t see it too. ‘In any case, we have all agreed that the most likely killer is Ethelred. He burst in here threatening everyone. He did have a gun, even if he doesn’t know how the safety catch works. I repeat: I’m not saying it was deliberate. The way he was waving that thing around, it is much more likely to have been a tragic accident. But the police quite clearly suspect him and I say they are right to do so.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Tom. ‘In fact, the second gun more or less clears him.’
‘Does it?’ asked Proctor.
‘I’d say it does. Ethelred would scarcely require two guns so, if there really is a second gun in that cabin, somebody else on board the boat has been using one this evening.’
‘But even if it belongs to one of us, why would anyone leave a murder weapon lying around?’ I said. ‘The obvious thing is to throw it into the Nile. Nobody would have heard the splash with all that noise. So, why leave it somewhere that even Ethelred could find it?’
To that question, as to so many others, there was no obvious answer. John was in any case wrestling with another problem. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘are you sure about this child protection thing? Couldn’t you be misremembering? Hell, all these initials . . .’
‘Or maybe Inspector Majid misheard you?’ said Proctor. ‘There was quite a lot going on at the time.’
‘Why don’t I just go and get the gun?’ said Campion, returning to his role as natural
leader.
‘No,’ said Proctor. ‘I think we should stay put and each state clearly where we were when the shot was fired. Then we’ll decide who gets the gun.’
Proctor and Campion tried staring each other out, but it was pretty shoddy work. Neither was what you would describe as an impressive starer.
‘Tell you what,’ said Tom, pointedly ignoring them both. ‘I’ll start. John and I had both turned in for the night. We were sitting in our respective beds, reading, when the engines began to get noisy. So we decided to take a look.’
‘There were crew running everywhere,’ continued John, ‘mainly heading for the bridge or the engine room. Everyone could tell the engines weren’t going to stand the strain. A couple of waiters came out on deck to find out what was going on, then went back in again. Ethelred was standing up near the stern, looking out for somebody or something. I didn’t see any gun. Anyway, we went back towards the bridge. Inspector Mahmoud was there with the captain, then after a while Majid came and joined him. Most of the crew seemed to end up there too, trying to find out what was going on. Everyone was fairly cross with everyone else, and they were all shouting a lot, so we just snuck off back to the saloon. The deck was fairly deserted by then – I don’t remember seeing Ethelred at all. Eventually the noise got really bad, the engines blew and we came to find the rest of you. And here we still are.’
‘So Mahmoud and Majid were not together on the bridge the whole time?’ asked Proctor.
‘They are both on the bridge when the engines blow up,’ said Captain Bashir. ‘That is when you hear the shot, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Proctor. ‘And when I heard it, I was here with Elsie and Jane Watson. So the shot was definitely not fired by me or Elsie or Jane.’ He was keen we were clear on that point, as indeed I was quite keen myself. Jane Watson just shrugged. It took more than a murder to make her worry what people thought about her. ‘What about you, Professor Campion?’ Proctor continued. ‘Where were you when the shot was fired?’
‘In bed,’ said Campion.
‘Any witnesses to that event?’ asked Proctor.
‘Scarcely,’ said Campion.
Proctor smiled. Campion was not going to be the one who got to fetch the gun.
Sky Benson half raised her hand. ‘I was also in bed,’ she volunteered. ‘Alone. No witnesses of any kind.’
‘This is a complete waste of time,’ said Campion, seeing the way things were going. ‘Most of us won’t have witnesses as to where we were. And we don’t need them because none of us did it. But we do know that Ethelred went off with Purbright. And we do know he had a gun. From what Tom and John say, it sounds as though he was later lying in wait for him on deck, at almost exactly the time the shot was heard.’
‘One of the crew did see him,’ said the captain. ‘He is trying to hide, for sure. He is – what do you say? – flattening his body against the wall.’
‘What more proof are you after?’ Campion was pathetically triumphant. ‘The only reason nobody actually saw him fire the shot was that everyone was in bed or had gone to the bridge or the engine room to find out what was happening. It’s obvious. The police have taken the right man away. We are all safe. Let us now just go back to our own beds and sleep. Help is undoubtedly on its way.’
Most of us might have been inclined to go along with the idea of sleeping, but Herbie Proctor had an announcement to make.
‘Some of you may not know,’ said Proctor, ‘but I am a private detective.’ It was quite touching that he thought he still had any part of his cover intact. We let him continue. ‘I was hired to guard Mr Purbright. He’d had death threats. Purbright is not his real name. His real name . . . ‘ Proctor paused very unnecessarily for effect: ‘. . . is Raffles.’
Nobody could think of anything to say in reply to this, but there was a gentle thud as Sky Benson dropped her copy of Snow on the Desert’s Face onto the floor.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
Tom was looking puzzled. ‘You mentioned the name Raffles before. Why do you think that’s what he was really called?’
‘He was employing me to protect him,’ said Proctor.
‘Nice work in that case,’ said Tom. ‘What were you protecting him from?’
‘There had been threats against him,’ said Proctor.
Campion was frowning. ‘I vaguely seem to remember somebody of that name was tried for murdering his wife? You are not, surely, saying that this was the same man?’
‘Yes, but he was found not guilty,’ said Proctor irritably.
There were more puzzled looks – this time exchanged between Sky Benson and Campion.
‘What exactly makes you think he is Raffles?’ asked Campion.
‘He’d contacted me. I’d arranged to meet him on the boat,’ said Proctor.
‘I’m losing track of this a bit,’ said Tom. ‘Why should Ethelred want to kill this Raffles person? Even if Raffles does sound a rather unsavoury character. Did Ethelred even know that Purbright was really Raffles?’
‘Yes,’ said Proctor. ‘I told him. But the killer can’t have been Ethelred. Whoever killed Raffles tried to kill me earlier today at the temple – that’s obvious. Ethelred was with me then, so it can’t have been him.’
‘Well,’ said Campion, ‘I can see that, if people knew you were guarding Purbright . . . or Raffles or whatever you want to call him . . . they might have felt they should get you out of the way first.’
Proctor had lost a client rather publicly, but it clearly assuaged his professional pride a little that he himself should also be a target. He nodded sagely.
‘Precisely. While I was around it would have been difficult for anyone to kill my client,’ he said, puffing out his chest to the limited extent it would puff.
‘Except that they did kill him,’ said Tom.
‘Yes,’ said Proctor, implying this was only a slight flaw in his theory.
‘Well, that does put a very different complexion on things. So, let’s start from here: Who would want to kill Raffles?’ Tom continued.
‘Plenty of people,’ said Sky, wrapping her dressing gown more closely around her. ‘At least, I would imagine so. He may have been found not guilty but he got off on a pure technicality.’
Campion seemed keen to get us back to his idea of spending the next few hours asleep. ‘Look,’ he interrupted, ‘this isn’t getting us anywhere . . .’
‘You know about the trial, Sky?’ asked Tom.
‘I thought everyone did,’ she said. ‘For a couple of weeks it was in all the papers, and on television. It was a really dreadful case. I felt so sorry for the children.’
All of that was probably true, though there had been plenty of dreadful cases since then, equally well reported, and my own recollection of the Raffles case was now patchy at best. I vaguely remembered that the children had had to be called as witnesses.
‘Well, maybe we are getting somewhere,’ said Tom. ‘If there are a lot of people out there who think Raffles was guilty, then maybe one individual might have decided that justice would be done by bumping him off?’
‘Two people,’ said Proctor. ‘The letter said it was two people.’
‘So you’re saying they might have found out he was travelling to Egypt, booked on the same cruise and waited for their chance?’ Tom asked.
Proctor nodded.
‘But why would anyone take that sort of risk?’ asked John.
‘I don’t know,’ Tom replied. ‘Perhaps if it was your sister or daughter who had been killed by him? Then, what if you chanced to find out that this Raffles guy would be here, on this boat, without the sort of protection he might have in England?’
‘Very picturesquely described I am sure,’ said Campion, ‘but not very likely, is it? We are going round in circles. The police think that Ethelred killed Mr Purbright – or Mr Raffles if you all prefer. That’s good enough for me.’
‘They are not policemen though,’ said Tom.
‘Just as I say,’ continued Cam
pion. ‘Round and round in circles. The majority of us are happy to believe the police.’
‘I’m not sure you have a majority,’ said Tom.
Campion folded his arms and looked round the group, defying us to vote against the proposition. ‘Well, my vote is certainly for Ethelred. How about the rest of you?’
‘I really have no idea,’ said Jane Watson. ‘You can scarcely solve a murder case by each of us putting crosses on a ballot paper.’
‘Quite,’ said Annabelle.
‘Absolutely,’ said Lizzi.
It was a shame that the vote had been called off because I had been planning to rig it in favour of Annabelle, Lady Muntham, by some devious method yet to be explained. But I just said: ‘I’m sure it wasn’t Ethelred. Or my two policemen.’
Campion looked miffed that public opinion was not as much in his favour as he had hoped. As with most of the other suggestions that evening, it had not taken us as far as it might have done.
Still, my Annabelle theory had its merits, and I needed to run it past somebody that I could trust. I beckoned to Tom and we found ourselves a secluded corner of the saloon, away from the others – and especially away from Annabelle.
‘There’s another possibility,’ I said in as low a voice as I could manage. It was a weird idea, but no weirder than some of the others. ‘What if the stone was aimed at Ethelred after all, not Herbie? And what if the shot that killed Purbright was aimed at Ethelred too?’
‘Who would want to kill Ethelred?’ asked Tom.
‘He’d received a death threat,’ I said. ‘There was a text message from somebody saying they were going to kill him.’
‘Who sent it?’
‘He just said it was a friend.’
‘So, who are his friends?’
‘He doesn’t have many, to be perfectly honest. But there’s Annabelle . . .’
‘The Annabelle who has just joined us?’ asked Tom. ‘Does she know Ethelred?’
‘A while ago,’ I said, ‘a mate of Ethelred’s – Sir Robert Muntham – died and left his house, Muntham Court, to Ethelred.’
‘And where does Annabelle fit in?’