It was the practice in Egypt to bury the dead on the day that they departed; a sensible, hygienic practice in the heat.
“But, then,” I pointed out, “that could not have happened anyway. They will have to send for the mamur from Toukh and by the time he gets here and has heard all the depositions it will be Tuesday and by then we will have returned to Cairo.”
He still seemed a little troubled, however.
“It is, perhaps, as well, after all, that Clara couldn’t come,” he said suddenly.
At the very last moment, even as the carriages were being loaded, one of the children had developed a stomach-ache.
“It’s just excitement,” Herbert had said. But Clara, a connoisseur in her children’s illnesses, had shaken her head.
“It’s more than that,” she had said. She had suspected that it might be the onset of malaria.
“If you think that, my dear,” said Herbert, “then we shouldn’t go!”
“It seems a pity, though,” said Clara, “when you and Pip have been so looking forward to it.”
And indeed we had. We had been slaving away in the Counting House for nearly two years without a break.
“No, you must go,” she said now with decision. “You go and I will stay here with the children.”
Of course, we dissented vehemently.
“No,” she said firmly, “you must go. I have been thinking for some time that you are both beginning to look rather peaky. And, besides,” she had said, with a smile, and putting her hand on my arm, “you will enjoy recapturing the intimacy of those old bachelor days in London!”
“Just as well that she couldn’t,” I said now to Herbert, and we returned to the house.
Running along the front of the house was a broad verandah, on which there was a table and some cane chairs with cushions. After the sand storm of the previous day the cushions were covered with sand which had drifted in. Herbert raised the cushions to give them a shake and in doing so uncovered a pair of scorpions.
“How very annoying!” said Herbert, brushing them away. “The headman swore that the house had been cleaned!”
It had, indeed, been flooded, as was the usual custom when a house was about to be reoccupied, to rid it of any infestation.
“I suppose their attention did not extend to outside the house,” I said.
“Yes, but—”
I laid my finger on my lips.
“Now, Herbert,” I said, “did we not swear before we left that we would pay no attention to trifles? That we would put aside all care for the proper discharge of duties in others? Put the Counting House entirely behind us?”
“We did, old chap, we did. And we will!”
He plumped up the cushion and sat down, and I went into the kitchen to find a bottle to replace the one that had disappeared. The sand which had blown in the day before, just after we had arrived, was still there on the floor of the sitting room, and still there were the huge, bestial footprints.
I took the bottle out on to the verandah and poured out two glasses.
“Your health, dear Herbert! And a very good Christmas!”
“And to you, too, my very dear Handel!”
He put the glass down.
“If a strange one.”
“You are thinking of your family,” I said gently.
“I acknowledge it. Of the children especially. The Christmas stockings, you know.”
“We can go back at once, if you wish.”
“No, no. Clara would not forgive me.”
He toyed with his glass.
“And, besides,” he said, “are there not things to be done here?”
“You are still disquieted about the body, Herbert?”
“I am, I must confess. For suppose the body is not to be separated from the strange things that happened last night? If we conceal those things from them, how are they to proceed?”
“You mean, we should disclose -? But I thought we had discussed that, Herbert.”
“Yes, yes. And you rightly convinced me that the strangeness of the happenings here might prey upon their weak minds. But you see where that leads to, Handel?”
“That we should tell—”
“No, no. Not at all. That we should investigate the matter for ourselves and present our findings to them when we have all the answers.”
* * * *
The house we had secured was in a remote village, about fifty miles from Cairo in the Damiatta direction. It had once been a farm house and was surrounded by plantations of orange trees and fields of dourah, which is the corn they have thereabouts, and cotton. Being closer to the sea, the air was fresher than it was inland and the temperature slightly lower, a mere ninety degrees in the shade and 120 in the sun. At night the temperature fell sharply and we deliberated whether to sleep outside on the verandah or to retreat indoors where it would be warmer. In the end we decided for indoors.
That night, as I lay in my bed, I could hear through the open window as well as the singing of grasshoppers and frogs the distant cry of wolves, answered occasionally by the cries of jackals and hyaenas. Later, there appeared to be a pack of wild desert dogs circling the house. It was, as Herbert had said, a strange place to spend Christmas.
* * * *
Clara had entrusted me with a veritable mound of presents, among which I was surprised to find a not inconsiderable number for myself. We opened them over coffee on the verandah. I could see that they turned Herbert’s thoughts to home so after a while I crept away leaving him there to muse. He was still sitting there an hour later, when I thought the time had come to direct his mind to other things.
“My dear Herbert—” I said.
He sat up with a start.
“You are right, my dear Handel,” he said. “It is time to begin.”
* * * *
The facts, such as they were, were that we had arrived the previous afternoon, just as the sun was setting in a red ball of fire above the desert. Even as we looked, it seemed to darken over.
“Is that a sandstorm?” said Herbert. “How untimely!”
We went round the house closing all the shutters. By the time we had finished, the wind was rising and fine particles of sand were beginning to seep through the slats of the shutters. We knew from long experience that there was nothing now to be done but sit it out. We gave ourselves a hasty supper and cleared the plates away before the full force of the storm hit us - there is nothing worse than sand in your food, in your wine, in your mouth. Then we sat down opposite each other and put blankets over our heads and a bottle of wine on the table in front of us. From time to time one of us would put out a hand and refill the glasses, putting a table mat over the glass as soon as it was filled, to keep out the sand. Then we would retreat beneath our blankets.
And then, I suppose, we went to sleep, for the next thing I was aware of was an exclamation from Herbert.
“The bottle, Handel! What have you done with the bottle?”
“On the table.”
“No, it is not!”
I emerged from under my blanket.
“I am sure I restored it to the table. In any case, was it not you who helped last?”
There was a little silence.
“On reflection, Handel, it was. But, then, where the deuce could I have put it?”
“On the ground, perhaps.”
Herbert stood up and looked around. I heard him give a startled gasp.
“My dear Handel! Look! Look!”
I stood up beside him. The floor was covered with a thin film of sand. And in the sand were some enormous footprints.
* * * *
They were of bare feet. They entered from the door, made straight across the room, passed the table and then went out through the door which led on to the verandah.
“He . . . she ... it took the bottle,” said Herbert, in a stunned voice.
It could have been any of the three. The foot was large for a man, very large for a woman. Which made one think . . .
&nbs
p; Some ape-like creature? But what ape-like creature existed in the wastes of Egyptian desert? A jackal? Of that size? Preposterous! A hyaena? Ridiculous! It was not to be thought of.
A man, then. That was most likely. The bottle argued for that, too. But, then, would any man round here have a taste for the best Cypriot wine? Would not wine have been against his religious principles? Unless, of course - But the bare feet argued against the presumption that he was an Englishman or a European.
We followed the tracks out on to the verandah. The storm had died down a little now although a thin wind put grit into our mouths and stung our faces. The footprints led to the edge of the verandah and then down and across the yard. In the darkness we had no inclination to follow them.
* * * *
But the next morning they were still there on the verandah. Out in the yard, however, where the sand had blown more freely, we quickly lost them. There was a new, thick layer of sand which covered everything. Whatever footprints there had been had disappeared.
Around the farm, enclosing the buildings and the yard, was a six-foot-high wall, a barrier against the wild dogs and other unwelcome creatures. Part of the wall was sheltered by one of the outhouses and on that part we found traces of intrusion. The man, or creature, had obviously placed its hands on top of the wall - we could see the marks, although they were less clear than the footprints. The sand on top of the wall was disturbed, as if someone had clambered over. And, down on the other side, where the out-house still gave shelter against the wind and the sand, just for a few yards, were the footprints again. Only not going away from the house but coming towards it.
* * * *
So much we had seen on that first exploration. But that was not all. For, as we returned to the house, going round the side of one of the out-houses, back in the yard, we came across the body of a man lying face down in the sand. The sandstorm had blown over him and left a layer of sand all over the body. From its undisturbed thickness and from the stillness of the body we had known that the man was dead.
And had been content to leave it so. In Egypt the sight of a dead body is not uncommon: a beggar expired in the street, an infant baby dead in childbirth or abandoned shortly after birth by its mother. After a while you become hardened. You do not normally enquire too closely.
But perhaps Herbert was right. The circumstances were so strange in this instance that inquiry into them could not responsibly be left to others.
“My dear Herbert—”
It was time, yes, to begin.
* * * *
The first thing to be done was to identify the dead man and the manner of his death.
“Need we?” But Herbert answered himself. “Of course, Handel. You are right.”
Which meant revisiting the ice-house. We pulled the body out into the sun and examined it. It was that of a middle-aged man, a fellah - that is to say, a peasant - from his clothes and general appearance, possibly from the village nearby.
“Where else, out here, could he be from?” asked Herbert.
But that, in my view, raised once more the question of informing the villagers, who, if, indeed, he came from the village, would be able to identify him at once.
There was, however, a powerful argument against this. Examination revealed a savage wound in the neck. The flesh was so badly torn that it was impossible to tell how it had been inflicted. A knife, perhaps? But used with an astonishing degree of violence. What, however, could not be ruled out was ...
“I am afraid so, my dear Handel.”
A bite.
And if so, a bite perhaps from that strange creature — if creature it was and not a man, which would have been stranger still - that had invaded our privacy two nights before.
But what effect might this have if it were revealed to the village? Would it not cause alarm and despondency? Terror, even? Might it not lead to acts of despair in a people lacking Christian philosophy?
“No, Herbert. Better to remain mute until we can present them with the answer as well as the question.”
But how to advance beyond the question in the first place?
Herbert bent over the body.
“Handel.”
“Herbert?”
“Do you smell what I smell?”
I forced myself to stoop closer.
“He had been imbibing.”
From his lips, where now the flies buzzed incessantly, came a faint smell of alcohol.
“And consider the fingers, Handel.”
“The fingers?”
They were abraded, as if he had been scrabbling at something.
“The wall?”
We went back to the wall, to the place we had found. What we saw now, inspecting it more closely were faint smears of mud, dried out, of course, but still perfectly clear.
“Handel.”
“Herbert?”
“The fingers, again. Did you see the nails? They were packed with mud.”
“And the knees,” I said. “And the feet. Muddy also.”
“A potter, perhaps?”
“Or someone working on the canal?”
The fields around the village were irrigated by a system of canals which drew water off the Nile and fed it over the surrounding land. The system worked well and to it was due the astonishing abundance of the fields. But the abundance came at a price. The canals had to be maintained as they quickly became choked with sand. Every year, in the dry season, after the Inundation, gangs of labourers descended on the system and worked to make it good again, digging out the sand, repairing the sides, and re-piling the earth on the raised banks which protected it against the wind and the sand.
The work was heavy and was not done voluntarily. A corvee had been introduced by means of which villagers were compelled to give their labour. Although the work was in their interest, the villagers saw the benefit as going largely to the Pasha, and it was bitterly resented.
We walked down to the village, passing women hoeing in the fields. One of them, an unusually tall black lady, straightened her back and looked at us. The others continued their labour indifferently.
The canal was on the other side of the village. What we had hoped to see, I do not know. What we saw were men up to their chests in water digging out sand and throwing it up on the sides while others went along moving the sand back and forming banks. Behind them, patrolling steadily, was a man with a long whip, the overseer, usually the Pasha’s man, exercising the whip whenever he thought fit.
We went back to the village. It was a small one, just a few houses clustered around an open space which served as a square, one or two tebaldi trees and beneath them a well. Women were dipping a bucket into the well and filling their pitchers, and, not far away, a group of men were sitting, the village elders.
One of them rose as we went past. It was the village omda, the headman, whom we had met when we arrived. He asked us if the house was to our liking. We said it was; only the sand had blown in during the storm. He said he would send a woman up to clean through the house again. She had done it earlier, he said apologetically, only at this time of year, when there were frequent sandstorms, it was hard to keep it like that.
I said that to us, after Cairo, the village seemed very peaceful. He said that all the men were away working on the canal. He hoped they would not be away for too much longer as there would soon be a need for them in the fields.
We asked him if he found it difficult supplying the necessary labour for the corvee. He shrugged.
“They know it has to be,” he said.
I asked if any of the villagers tried to evade it. He said that if they did it would fall upon the family and on the village, so on the whole people didn’t.
Herbert asked if anyone at work ever tried to slip away. Seldom, said the omda, for then the whole gang was flogged. He seemed about to add something, then stopped; then burst out that in fact it had happened only a few days before. A man had disappeared. “The wound is still fresh in our minds,” he said. He pointed to a wom
an filling her pitchers alone by the well. The other women had departed.
“That is his wife,” he said. From now on, he said, or at least until he gave himself up, his wife would have to fill her pitchers alone.
“And what if he never comes back?” Herbert asked.
The headman did not answer directly. He said only that the Pasha’s reach was wide.
We walked back up to the house in silence.
Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology] Page 29