Death Beyond the Nile (Tamara Hoyland Book 5)

by Jessica Mann

  ‘You can think that if you want to,’ Paula told her. ‘I know what happened.’

  A willed blindness, curious facet of someone who seemed otherwise so intelligent. She makes me feel old, Tamara thought. Aloud, she said, ‘What I do think is that what you did was rather ruthless, to put it mildly. Not to mention what Polly did. I mean, your families . . .’

  ‘I am ruthless, and proud of it. But the thing about Polly is that she knows what she wants and makes damn sure she gets it. And what she doesn’t want. She’s spoilt, which is probably inevitable in her circumstances. But it’s partly because she is quite smart, in an unintellectual sort of way. You could call her cunning, underneath that deep, invariable, completely artificial surface.’

  This girl hates her supposed friend, Tamara thought. This is the resentment of the object of kindness. Polly would think that Paula was biting the hand that fed her with attention and status.

  ‘The thing is,’ Paula went on, ‘that Polly has never had to learn that some people won’t do what she wants.’

  ‘In spite of going to an ordinary school?’

  ‘Ordinary! Snobby and exclusive more like. I told you, if my mother hadn’t wanted me to make what she calls suitable friends I’d have gone to the comprehensive like everyone else and never met Polly in the first place.’

  ‘Even if it was snobby, they can’t have given Polly special treatment,’ Tamara said.

  ‘Maybe not special, but unnatural. It rang false. And so does she. Somewhere inside her there is a nugget of certainty that she really is different from other people, not made of common clay. Oh, they all disguise it, they know they mustn’t let it show, but they have all got it. It’s innate.’

  ‘She’s capable of anything is she?’ Tamara said casually.

  ‘I’d say so, murder included. Did she do it? When you came back two people short from Qasr Samaan . . .?’

  Tamara felt a little sympathy for the mother of the gifted child. She parried questions with difficulty and regretted bringing them upon herself. She had spent too much time with people whose brains were blunter than her own.

  ‘The only solution is for you to recruit Paula Crosse to Department E immediately,’ she told Mr Black later. ‘She’s sharp, ruthless and not overburdened by conscience and qualms.’

  ‘You could be describing yourself,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The inquests on Vanessa Papillon and John Benson took place discreetly and with surprisingly little publicity. The flame of Vanessa’s fame had depended on her being there to feed and fan it. She would have been mortified to know how ephemeral it was.

  John Benson’s body was never found. Vanessa’s had been reburied in the Protestant cemetery in Aswan, beside the European consumptives of the last century whose quest for health had failed. Giles Needham had been represented by the expedition’s doctor, who told the one agency reporter present that the archaeologists could not leave their work, already behind schedule as it was. The season was due to end in May. Vanessa’s employers sent a news agency’s Middle East correspondent to represent them, and paid for a headstone on which only her assumed name was carved.

  The coroner heard evidence that the two people had died, and reached verdicts as to how: accidental death from food poisoning in one case, misadventure, resulting in drowning in the other. Sympathy was extended to Vanessa’s family, which consisted of two second cousins, and to Ann Benson.

  There was not much publicity. It was old news, and only those determined not to revive it knew that it would be worth doing so. The hearings had been carefully arranged to be in an obscure place; Vera Pritchard was an obscure name; and the coroner had been guided to say that evidence from two witnesses would be enough. The girl whose name appeared in the evidence as Paula Crosse did not attend.

  Nor did she appear at other public functions, or agree to see anyone who might ask awkward questions in private.

  Tamara’s requests for an audience were stalled, queried and leisurely refused. By the time that it was clear Polly would not see her in Scotland, a smart operator with a camera had shown the world that Polly was back in London.

  There she was even more impregnable. The barriers of courtesy and courtliness were like velvet padded cast-iron. So long as Polly stayed behind them she remained inaccessible.

  She was not to return to college. The announcement said she might be at risk there, and few who read it knew that she was threatened more by wilfulness than abduction.

  There followed a renewed flurry of complaints that no arrests had been made. If Scotland Yard was baffled, it shouldn’t be. Kidnapping a princess, even a minor one, was not any common or garden crime, which it might be forgivable to leave unsolved. Royal lives are more precious—why else would they be more protected? The police claimed to be following up leads, but there was no evidence of decisive action. It simply was not good enough.

  Meanwhile, but for that one snap of Polly being driven in through gates that closed rapidly behind her, there had been no sighting either by Tamara or by the many media hunters who were after the same quarry.

  The protectors of Polly’s family and its dignity had closed ranks around her. Seeming, not being, was what mattered to them. They did not care what she might have done so long as nobody said she had done it.

  A serious police officer, a senior civil servant, and an utterly superior royal one had listened to Tamara’s suspicions. If it had not been for Tom Black what she suggested would have been dismissed with respective incredulity, indifference and outrage. Even in his validating presence, only the policeman was prepared to consider the story interesting. The civil servant said it would be better forgotten. The royal servant promised retribution for anyone who remembered it.

  ‘There go your chances of any honours,’ Tom Black told Tamara. He was a Commander of the British Empire himself, a misleading title which came with a civil servant’s rations, he always said. He had earned others, but kept quiet about them. The DSO, the Legion d’Honneur and the other decorations which at various stages in his varied career he had earned were too showy for a man whose life depended on anonymity.

  Tamara was entitled to an alphabet of academic distinctions and did not care if she never added to it.

  ‘You did say yourself that you weren’t paid to be a detective,’ Tom Black reminded her.

  And nor she was; but Tamara could not on that account suppress her curiosity even though her thoughts were as sterile and unproductive as they had been since the day she arrived back in England in March.

  She went over and over the facts and her suspicions. It was impossible to think herself back to Qasr Samaan. That hot, remote, obsessive place had completely filled her mind while she was there, as though nowhere else existed. In London, on slimy pavements under dripping plane trees it seemed an illusion.

  Tamara was stuck with her book. Working as a freelance to her own timetable was less restful than she expected when she gave up her job. For reassurance she went to stay with Thea Crawford who said she had heard Giles Needham lecturing to the Egypt Exploration Society. He had, as Thea put it, run a mile at the sight of her.

  It was the end of term. Paula Crosse had taken her first-class degree and been offered a job with the World Bank. An advertisement appeared in the Spectator, offering country-house weekends at Fernley, with cordon bleu cookery by Ann Benson and English literature and poetry seminars conducted by Timothy Knipe. Mr Black forwarded a cutting from the Cambridge Evening News in which Dame Betty Macmillan advertised for a tenant for her basement flat in Newnham village. The literary gossip was of a major work by Max Solomon, due out in September and certain to win every prize going. Blooms Holdings, the parent company through which Hugo Bloom had conducted his multifarious businesses, was taken over at great profit to its shareholders by a recently denationalised company in which the government held 49% of the shares.

  In August an unexpected, unpredicted, entirely surprising announcement was made by the royal press of
ficer. Princess Mary was engaged to marry Giles William Fairfax Needham.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  All but one of the people who had observed Polly and Giles at Qasr Samaan were invited to their wedding. All but two gave interviews and told variously truthful or edited details of the events there.

  Janet Macmillan’s mother refused the invitation on her daughter’s behalf, and forwarded it to her for information. Janet had gone to America to work on the new epilepsy treatment. The industrial security ensured by her new employer was rigid. Nobody could find her to ask questions about Qasr Samaan and Polly.

  Of the others, some dined out on the story, some raked the money in. Those who had recognised Polly did not admit it. Ann Benson and Timothy Knipe, who hadn’t, said they had known all along.

  Jonty Solomon wrote a hasty synopsis for a book in which he would tell the inside story of Qasr Samaan, received a lot of money in advance of the rest of the manuscript, and was offered his own chat show. His father said nothing but smiled benignly.

  Public opinion was that Polly’s escapade was romantic, forgivable and justified by events. The starving Sudanese had been fed—admittedly the government claimed that they would have been fed, and had been going to be fed, without the irrelevance of two girls’ adolescent caper—and a princess had found true love. Some policemen had wasted their time but only two daily newspapers and one weekly allowed their columnists to complain of that. Paula Crosse’s offer of a job with the World Bank was withdrawn, but she was immediately invited to join an international organisation for famine relief instead. Princess Mary became its British patron.

  Ann Benson rang Tamara a week before the wedding. ‘We must have a get together. Isn’t it wonderful? Of course I knew it all along.’

  ‘What did you know?’

  ‘Who Polly was, of course. I’ve always been observant about people. Of course poor John didn’t notice anything and nor did dear Hugo. I don’t know what’s happened to him, by the way, there has been no word from him since I got back from Egypt and no answer to his telephone either. I would have thought that the least he could do would be to come and see me. But I suppose they’ll have to ask him to Polly’s wedding too. I’d better not call her that; it might slip out when I see her. Do you think “sir” would be correct for Giles now? And what about a present? I wanted to ask your advice—shall I send them one of John’s little Egyptian treasures that I brought back? I gave one or two to Timothy’s children. They come here every weekend. I want them to come and live here; Fernley has so much to offer the young. Inigo says he’s going to be an archaeologist like Mr Needham when he’s grown-up. Do you think they would like that little alabaster dish? Timothy says it isn’t necessary but after we spent all that time together I feel we are almost family. Do you think we’ll all sit together in the church? I am having an outfit made. It’s so important. The cameras will be on us. John would not have been able to bear it.’

  In recent years royal weddings had been regularly supplied as an equivalent of Roman circuses, to distract the restless populace, Tamara said. Ann Benson, who thought it was very nice to read good news for a change instead of bad, did not understand what Tamara was talking about. Timothy Knipe disapproved of the way so many people made money out of them.

  Giles submitted to being groomed and paraded with a meekness that made Tamara suspect a more powerful motive than love.

  It was announced that Britton’s Best, the supermarket chain, had agreed to fund all future seasons at Qasr Samaan. A cigarette manufacturer was to sponsor an exhibition, and a series of lectures given by Giles would be named after a popular brand of cat food.

  He would have no future problems in laying on excavations and research projects. Donors of money and equipment would be queueing up to hand them over. To pass every non-digging season with Polly and make a few public appearances were a small price to pay for a secure future of discovering the past.

  Two days before the wedding Hugo Bloom was released. The Israelis swapped him for a pair of young Egyptians accused of plotting sabotage.

  Hugo knew better than to return to Britain. He might not be charged with any offence; there might not be any illegality he could be charged with. But he was not going to risk it. His information for Tamara Hoyland must be told outside the jurisdiction or not at all. He had to go to New York and was willing to stopover in Dublin. To no further effort and no closer meeting place would he go.

  *

  The ambivalence of the Irish to the British monarchy was much in evidence in the Dublin hotel. Photographs of the happy couple were displayed everywhere, along with informative family trees that explained Polly’s relatively obscure significance in genealogical terms. Above or beside, was the tricolour; and some slogan-printed stickers cursed the ancient enemy.

  An extra television screen had been set up in the hotel lounge. It was tuned to London. Dress-guesses and jollity interrupted shots of the processional route, the bunting and the crowds.

  Hugo was late. Due in time for dinner, he had not turned up for breakfast. His aeroplane’s estimated time of arrival was deferred further with each telephone call Tamara made to enquire about it.

  She should have caught a flight to London at dawn.

  ‘You’ll get a better view on television,’ Tom Black said. He thought it was important to hear Hugo Bloom’s testimony. ‘It may be the only chance, while he’s just freed and feeling free.’

  ‘All the same, I would have liked to be there.’ Tamara’s new Jean Muir dress was waiting in her cupboard at home. She had bought a magnificent hat. She had been looking forward to concentrating on straightforward vanities.

  ‘Never mind,’ Mr Black shouted down the bad line. ‘Knowledge is power.’

  Tamara never drank during the day. Alcohol now would curdle the breakfast coffee. On the screen champagne corks were popping as fashion forecasters described what the wedding guests ought to wear.

  ‘Whisky sour,’ Tamara told the barman gloomily.

  ‘Drinking their health?’

  ‘No, drowning my sorrows,’ she said, and they were on their last gasp when Hugo Bloom joined her.

  Tamara stared at him over the rim of her glass. Thinner, paler, with white hair at the temples, he looked distinguished still, but not martial.

  ‘I am afraid I am too late,’ he said.

  ‘Engine trouble?’

  ‘Weeks late, I meant. There was a delay in arranging the exchange. The Israelis had nobody suitable to offer.’

  ‘Someone was found in the end?’

  ‘A pair of nice young ornithologists, doing no harm to anyone in the Negev. But they had to be kept in prison for a little while to make it seem convincing. I should have been here sooner otherwise.’

  ‘You must be valuable.’

  ‘Not especially. One coup years ago when I recognised a face in the safe house’s garden; and then an aeon of pretending to love the clarinet and going out for afternoon walks. The few titbits I garnered never seemed worth the effort. Nothing was nearly as useful as Janet’s data would have been. But all we can do is our best, the likes of you and me.’

  ‘And suffer for it,’ Tamara said. It was the risk they took, the likes of Tamara and Hugo. She felt a closer kinship with him, suddenly, than with any man since her friend Ian Barnes, a spy himself, had been killed. That acceptance of danger changed people. It was pointless to imagine that a man who knew nothing of it could know anything of her. ‘At least they got you out in the end.’

  ‘We believe in paying our debts.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I am an Israeli now. But I owe you a lot.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Your country.’

  ‘Yours too, surely.’

  ‘I was born here in Dublin. My family were Jews. I grew up in Belfast and grew rich in London. But that’s over. This is by way of a leaving present. Call it a bread-and-butter letter, so long delayed, I fear, as to be worse than none. My news will not be welcome.’

  Si
nce Polly’s wedding was of more social than dynastic or constitutional significance, there was to be none of the input (in the television commentator’s words) from the armed services that had decorated previous, more important royal weddings. But her father had served in a regiment whose dress uniform was impractically glamorous, and a guard of honour lined the way from carriage to church at least, if not the route, which was, instead, marked by rows of London policemen, facing the spectators rather than the spectacle.

  The processions of guests had begun. Sounds of approval surged cheerily into the small bar. A group of Americans ordered champagne cocktails.

  ‘That sounds a good idea,’ Tamara said.

  Hugo ordered Bollinger. ‘But I am afraid you aren’t going to feel like celebrating.’

  ‘I suppose you actually saw Polly,’ Tamara said.

  ‘Polly? No, I heard Giles.’

  If he had been certain of his guess about Tamara’s role, Hugo would have said something at the time, even though he too was primarily interested in Janet.

  He had picked up the hint of her scientific discovery quite by accident, at a dinner party given by one of his customers. It seemed a good idea to follow her to Egypt, partly for commercial reasons—there might have been a big profit in it for him—but especially for patriotic ones.

  ‘As an Israeli?’ Tamara asked.

  ‘Or an Irishman. They have a lot in common, including short, perilous frontiers.’

  To Hugo, as he tried to win Janet’s confidence and confidences, what the others at Qasr Samaan got up to was irrelevant.

  Tamara very badly wanted not to hear what Giles Needham had got up to.

  He was leaving Claridges, where he had spent the previous night.

  ‘Good-looking bugger, you have to give him that,’ Hugo said judiciously. Giles had achieved an impassivity of feature that would serve him well in his new life. He walked across the pavement to the waiting cars like a batsman to his wicket. The tails of his morning coat flapped in the wet wind. The cameras zoomed onto his unsmiling mouth, onto the unfocused eyes that were not drawn to any of the shouting watchers.