A Dead Man in Istanbul

by Michael Pearce

  He opened it. It contained two scented pages in a lady’s neat, educated hand. He glanced at the signature: Sybil Cunningham.

  Lady C.!

  Dear Mr Seymour,

  I was so pleased to hear that you are already in Istanbul. At last someone is moving. You won’t believe how difficult it has been to get things started. In the end I had to go direct to Nicholas. He tried to fob me off with Lancelot. ‘Don’t try to hide behind your Foreign Secretary,’ I said. ‘You’re the man in charge and I want to see something happen.’ Of course, I did go and see Lancelot as well. In my experience of the British Government (which is extensive and a trifle unusual) it is important to Follow Up.

  ‘Lancelot,’ I said, ‘don’t you control your Ambassadors?’ He huffed and puffed, of course. ‘It’s not a question of control,’ he said. ‘You mean they’re out of control?’ I said. ‘I can well believe it, letting their staff get killed and doing nothing about it.’ ‘Something is being done about it,’ he said. ‘What?’ I said. Well, he wriggled and said something about a report. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘if someone is murdered in England, you don’t write reports, you send for the police.’ ‘It’s not quite like that out there,’ he said. ‘I want it like that,’ I said. Well, in the end he agreed to speak to Philibert. Naturally I spoke to Philibert first.

  ‘You’re in charge of the police, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Now send someone out there.’ ‘It’s not as easy as that,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in here tomorrow,’ I said, ‘and the next day and the next day until I find someone has gone.’

  Well, of course, you can never rely on people at the top, so I spoke to a young nephew of mine at the Foreign Office, and he mentioned your name. Apparently he had come across you over something to do with Trieste. ‘Send him,’ I said. ‘I have already,’ he said. ‘It’s just a question of getting a few people above me to sign their names.’

  Now Rupert is quite bright and I trust him. Which means that I trust you, Mr Seymour. However, just to make sure, I am thinking of coming out myself. I look forward to hearing about the progress you’ve made.

  Yours sincerely,

  Sybil Cunningham

  P.S. I have a niece in Istanbul and I have written to her and told her to give you all the help she can.

  S.C.

  ‘Do I recognize that crest?’ said Ponsonby, sitting beside him.

  ‘It’s from a Lady Cunningham.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Cunningham’s aunt.’

  ‘She says she’s coming out here.’

  ‘My God!’ said Ponsonby, going pale.

  He jumped up and hurried across to the Ambassador.

  ‘My God!’ said the Ambassador. ‘Sybil!’

  Over on the far side of the terrace Felicity Singleton-Mainwaring was clutching at a piece of paper.

  ‘Oh, crumbs!’ she said. ‘Aunt Syb!’

  The Ambassador came over to Seymour.

  ‘Seymour,’ he said, ‘how are you getting on? With this Cunningham thing, I mean.’

  ‘Well, of course, I’ve only just started –’

  ‘You don’t think you could, well, speed it up, could you?’

  Seymour went over to Felicity.

  ‘Miss Singleton-Mainwaring –’

  Felicity flinched.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. ‘It sounds so awful.’

  ‘What shall I call you?’

  ‘Felicity will do. That’s pretty awful, too, but –’

  ‘I wonder if you could help me?’

  The next morning, early, she took him down to the Yacht Club and began to get her boat ready. Seymour stood and watched her. Sailing a boat was not among the skills of the Whitechapel police.

  But it evidently was among Felicity’s. The boat lay in a little slipway and in a moment she had pulled it down towards the open water, untied the straps and the rolled-up sail, and hoisted a little sail on the front. Then she held the boat while Seymour clambered in, cast off and let the little sail in front carry the boat out. Then she wedged the tiller between her knees and hoisted the mainsail. In another moment they were heading briskly out into the main channel and then were turning west towards the Dardanelles.

  And then she undressed. Well, not completely.

  ‘Can’t manage in all this rig-out,’ she said.

  She took off her jacket and then her skirt. Beneath the jacket she was wearing a short-sleeved singlet. Under the skirt she was wearing pantaloon-like trousers.

  ‘Much better for sailing in,’ she explained. ‘Although, of course, I have to make myself decent, by their standards, before coming in.’

  The trousers came down to her calves and at some point she had slipped off her shoes, so that she was barefoot. It made her look more Eastern. In England, reflected Seymour, at least, in Victorian England, women showed their faces and were all coy about their ankles. In Turkey it was the other way round.

  They were leaving Istanbul behind them. First to go were the boats, the caiques, dhows and feluccas. Next were the white houses scattered along the waterfront. Last of all were the domes and minarets which rose up above the city and gave it a cast very different from any city that Seymour was familiar with. The domes and minarets lingered for a long time but there was a moment at which he could see them all, both the foreign-looking boats and the unusual houses and the domes, and it was then that the Easternness of Istanbul came home to him.

  The sun, once they were out on the sea, was brilliant. Literally; it flashed blindingly off the water and he began to regret that he had not purchased one of the ridiculous green eye-shades that he had seen people in the hotel wearing. The waves broke up in sparkles and the heat shimmered off the cliffs and above the barren, desert-like brown on the other side of the Straits. Earlier it had been fresh and green with little white houses poking out of it but that had given way to an unremitting brown.

  He took off his jacket and tie and watched Felicity do the work.

  ‘You’re pretty good,’ he said.

  ‘It was either this or horses,’ said Felicity.

  ‘Horses?’

  ‘For my family it was always horses. But I didn’t like horses, and I didn’t, actually, like my family much, so when we moved to Cornwall, I took up sailing. The good thing about sailing is that you can do it on your own and don’t always have to have your family breathing down your neck.’

  ‘Was that why you came out here? To Istanbul?’

  ‘That and Gervase.’

  ‘Gervase?’

  ‘My family wanted me to marry him.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’

  ‘I fled.’

  ‘Why here?’

  ‘Peter – he’s my cousin, you know – was already out here. At the Embassy. And he said, “Why don’t you come out here? No one in the family will have heard of Istanbul so they won’t know where to find you. And none of our set will be out here, which will be a relief.” But what clinched it was that there was good sailing. I was a little keen on Peter, too, of course, but that didn’t last long, not when I actually got out here. A little of Peter goes a long way.’

  Seymour wondered what she did for money. But maybe that was a daft thing to ask of the English rich.

  ‘And now your family is coming after you,’ he said.

  ‘Aunt Syb!’ said Felicity, shuddering. ‘Although she doesn’t really count as family. Not to the family, anyway. I mean, she sort of married in. Why, I can’t imagine. I, personally, would prefer to marry out. As far out as I could get.’

  ‘And Peter?’

  ‘Exactly the same. That’s why he chose the Diplomatic Service. “I want to get as far from England as I bloody can,” he said. You see, he was always the brightest of us. Actually, he was the only one of us who had any brains. People wondered what he was doing among the Singleton-Mainwarings. That may be why Aunt Syb took to him. In fact, he was about the only one of us that she took to, except, for a time, Uncle Rog.’

  ‘Uncle Rog?’

  ‘Peter’s father.’
>
  ‘Now just let me get it clear about all these relationships –’

  ‘Uncle Rog is Uncle George’s brother, and Uncle George was married to Aunt Syb.’

  ‘And where do you fit in?’

  ‘There was a third brother. My Dad.’

  ‘And Peter Cunningham was your cousin. And, presumably, there is at least one more cousin, since Aunt Syb had a child –’

  ‘Richard. But she found him very disappointing. He was too much of a Singleton-Mainwaring. Took after his father.’

  Seymour, lolling back against the side of the boat, admiring Felicity’s expertise and also the trim figure taut against the singlet, found this illuminating. He thought he could see why Lady C. was so interested in Cunningham. But it was also illuminating about the Singleton-Mainwarings. How did a family like that get to be so near the top of the tree? Governor of the Bank of England, and so forth? Whereas Seymour’s own family, and others in the East End like his, were so undeniably near the bottom of the tree?

  Dullness, he thought, might be the answer. Their very dullness. Dullness was safe, reassuring. It did not rock any boats. But where, in that case, did Cunningham fit in? And Lady C.? Who seemed prepared to tip over every boat in sight.

  It was a long journey down to Gelibolu, longer than he had thought. Felicity seemed quite happy about it, though, managing sails and rudder, in fact, doing all the work, which made Seymour quite happy, too. When he had seen her before, hearing her talk to the diplomats on the terrace, he had put her down as one of those gushy girls straight from a posh school, totally brainless but with the world at her feet, not at all Seymour’s type. Seeing her now, though, so aware and so competent, and quite attractive, actually, now that she was, so to speak, stripped down, he began to revise his opinion.

  ‘Shearwater?’ he said, pointing to some birds on the top of the cliffs.

  ‘Storks,’ said Felicity.

  Well, maybe Cunningham knew more about it than he did. However, they were about the only thing of interest on the cliffs. Fortifications? Gun emplacements? It all seemed pretty unlikely, even if it was in the future, as that military attaché had said. He was beginning to share Cunningham’s opinion of Chalmers.

  ‘Can you take us over to the other side?’ he said. ‘If you could find the exact place at which Cunningham put you down, that would be very helpful.’

  The other side was about as bleak as the Abydos side, although less cliffy. Felicity took them in expertly and made the boat fast alongside a big, flat rock. Seymour stepped ashore.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you were left here while Cunningham went off in the boat –’

  ‘My boat,’ said Felicity, still aggrieved. ‘I was worried stiff. Not about him, but about the boat.’

  They were on a sort of rocky point. The rock was so hot that it burned Seymour’s feet through the soles of his shoes.

  ‘It’s baking, here,’ he said, wiping the sweat from his face. ‘What did you do while you were waiting for him?’

  ‘Well, I tried to find some shade. I went up there,’ said Felicity, pointing to a low overhang.

  ‘Let’s go up there.’

  Close to, there were apparent paths.

  ‘Goat tracks,’ said Felicity. ‘There were some goats here. And a man. He was supposed to be herding them but he was fast asleep when I came upon him.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘He gave a shriek and ran away. I think he thought,’ said Felicity, embarrassed, ‘that I was a houri.’

  ‘Houri?’

  ‘One of the girls of paradise. You know, when a Muslim dies and goes to paradise, that is, if he is a true believer, he is given a tent of pearls, jacinths and emeralds, and also seventy-two wives chosen from among the girls of paradise. Well, you know, dressed like this – I had taken off my skirt, you see, and my jacket, that’s how I always sail – I think he thought – and, being a bit different, you know, pale-skinned and foreign – Anyway, he shouted, “Oh, my God, a houri!” and bolted up the cliff.’

  There were some goats around now.

  They climbed up one of the tracks to the top and found an old man lying on the ground. His eyes widened when he saw them, especially when he saw Felicity.

  ‘Again!’ he cried. ‘Oh, my God!’

  He would have run away if Seymour had not been there.

  ‘Ana mush houri!’ said Felicity hastily, which Seymour worked out to be, I am not a houri. The old man seemed faintly reassured. Felicity went on talking.

  ‘You speak Arabic?’ said Seymour.

  ‘A bit,’ said Felicity, blushing. ‘Peter says it’s white man’s Arabic, boss Arabic. But I can’t help that, can I? And it gets by.’

  ‘That’s terrific!’ said Seymour. ‘Now, look, can you ask him some things for me?’

  Through Felicity he was able to establish that the goatherd came regularly to this spot. He had, of course, seen Felicity when she had come here before and had, indeed, watched her from afar the whole time she had been on the rock. He remembered Cunningham returning and picking her up.

  ‘Does he remember Cunningham coming again?’

  Yes, the old man did. At least, he said he did. But what he reported seemed, well, unlikely at the very least. Cunningham had come, he said, not in one boat but in two. One was a small rowing boat, tied on behind the back of a larger felucca. Two men had got out of the felucca, got into the small boat and started rowing.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Seymour. ‘Is he right about this? Wasn’t one of the men swimming?’

  Well, he was. The old man hadn’t liked to say so because he had thought they wouldn’t believe him. But, lo and behold, and God is great (Seymour got that bit), one of the men had slipped over the side of the boat into the sea and begun to swim. ‘Like a dolphin.’ The goatherd had thought he might be a god, or at least a djinn. The strangest things were happening on this part of the coast. Out he had swum, like a dolphin, and the small boat had gone with him. He had watched them until they had disappeared; he assumed, into paradise, especially when he had seen, shortly after, a large cargo ship going past.

  What about the felucca? The felucca had stayed where it was, moored close in, until it had started to get dark, when it had put out again. Once the man had got back.

  Once the man had got back? The swimmer?

  No, no, the man who had got out of the felucca. After the other boat had left. He had got out of the felucca and walked to the town. Sestos. Where he had had a haircut.

  This was the bit where the account had started to seem unlikely. Not to say bizarre. But the goatherd was adamant. The man had got out of the felucca and walked off in the direction of Sestos. And he knew about the haircut because he came from Sestos himself and when he had gone there the next day to take a young goat to Mustafa’s, he had talked with Mustafa about the man, and Mustafa had told him he had gone to have a haircut, and the goatherd had doubted this – why would a fine man go to a man such as Ibrahim for a haircut? – and Mustafa had told him to go and talk to Ibrahim, and he had, and Ibrahim had confirmed it. (And added, why should not a rich man come to him, Ibrahim? Was he not known far and wide as a true barber? And the goatherd had agreed that he was, but had still marvelled.)

  Okay, so he had gone to Sestos to have a haircut, let’s say, for the time being, thought Seymour: what then? Then he had come back to the felucca and climbed aboard and the felucca had sailed off.

  ‘Was that all?’ said Seymour.

  ‘All?’

  ‘What about the woman?’

  ‘Woman?’

  Hadn’t there been a woman? Left on the rock? Or perhaps she had stayed on board the felucca?

  ‘A woman,’ said Felicity encouragingly.

  ‘At my age,’ he said, ‘one houri is enough!’

  Haircut? It seemed unlikely. But there was one way of checking.

  ‘How far is it to Sestos?’ he said.

  The barber’s shop was a chair in the street. Beside it were some bowls and, standing i
n the dust, a row of shaving brushes. Laid out beside them on a not altogether clean piece of towelling was an array of razors of the cut-throat variety. On another piece of towelling were some combs, shaving soap and several pairs of scissors.

  The chair was empty at the moment and the barber himself was squatting in the dust chatting to a circle of cronies.

  Seymour went up to him and gestured questioningly towards the chair.

  ‘Ibrahim,’ said one of the cronies, ‘your day is made!’

  The barber leaped up. He seized a cloth and dusted the chair.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said, ‘you have come to the right place.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘A shave? A refreshing shave? Just the thing on a hot day!’

  ‘A trim, please. Just a trim. What’s the Arabic for trim?’ he asked Felicity.

  ‘Lord!’ said Felicity. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Trim?’ said the barber. ‘I know just what you need, Effendi. There . . . and here . . .’

  ‘Not too much!’ warned Seymour.

  ‘Effendi, you will not know the scissors have touched. But, afterwards, your head will be radiant!’

  ‘Yes, well, thank you. Just a trim, please.’

  The scissors began to snip. The group of onlookers, larger now, watched admiringly. ‘Make it good, Ibrahim,’ advised a man sitting at the front of the circle. ‘This is no ordinary man who is before you. It is not every day that you cut the hair of a foreign Effendi.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Ibrahim airily.

  ‘The rich men beat a path to your chair,’ said another man, enviously.

  ‘Well, yes, that is true.’

  ‘You have had other rich men?’ asked Seymour, including himself, for the first time, in the category.

  ‘Only the other day, Effendi, a man came to me, dressed like a Prince, and sat down in the chair, just like that, and said, “Short back and sides!”’

  ‘Ibrahim –’

  ‘It is true,’ insisted the barber. ‘As true as that I stand here. I wondered at first if he might be a djinn, for he came out of the desert. But then he said, “Get on with it, or you’ll feel the toe of my shoe up your backside,” so I knew he was a Prince.’