Oh!
The Greek seemed cast down.
Maybe our other place said the Levantine, relenting.
Other place?
Weve got a place up in the Ismailiya. Thats where we put the better-quality stuff. Its brassware, antiques, mostly, but occasionally we get some European furniture. You could try there.
Thanks, said the Greek gratefully. He hesitated. You dont think theyd have any cotton?
No! The Levantine almost shouted. Its only the better-quality goods. Everything else comes here. Cotton comes here.
Yes, I see. And when ?
Look, began the Levantine again, desperately.
Owen went out into the huge square beneath the Citadel in which the Market of the Afternoon was held. All round the edges of the square camels were lying and among the camels were great cakes compounded equally of dates and dirt. The Market itself was up on a raised platform. You climbed the steps and found yourself in a kind of giant village market, where the stalls were often mere pitches, with the owner sitting on the ground and all his goods spread round him in the dust. Potential customers would crouch down and finger the goods; and the dust came in handy for writing out the bills.
The goods in the Market of the Afternoon were different from those in the bazaars. They were for the most part copper or brass and almost entirely second-hand, the copper pots often worn with the use of generations. Everything here was for use, although the use was sometimes a little strange: the manacles for the punishment of harem women, for instance. Yet among the worn and battered goods you could occasionally find things of value, brass bowls inscribed with Persian hunting scenes, finely wrought candlesticks for standing on the ground, intricately chased scriveners pots, one of which had been acquired here once by none other than the Mamur Zapt.
In the centre of the Market was a restaurant area, the restaurants consisting often merely of large trays on the ground, with meat and pickles in the middle. Customers sat round on the ground and dipped their hands in.
It was at one of these that Owen found the Arab who had collected the angrib from the auction room.
Sold it yet, then?
The Arab pointed out beyond the stalls to where a man was loading a donkey. The donkey already had panniers hanging down on either side but now the man put the bed across its back; and then he climbed up on top himself.
Ill let the signora have the five per cent, the Arab said to Owen.
The Signora? You reckon shell be taking it on? asked the man crouched next to him.
Her or someone else.
They wont be like Sidi Morelli, said his neighbour definitely.
No. He was one of us.
It was a phrase that recurred whenever people spoke of Sidi Morelli. Owen heard it again that evening when he returned with Mahmoud to the coffee house at the end of Mahmouds street, the one to which Sidi Morelli had been carried when he died, and where he had been in the habit of going every evening, punctually at six, to play dominoes with his friends.
They were sitting there now at their usual table, the table that Owen had seen them at that evening. The dominoes had been spread out on the table but they werent really playing.
Mahmoud made straight towards them. They seemed to know him and stood up to shake hands. Mahmoud introduced Owen, first as a friend, and then, scrupulously, feeling that they should know, as the Mamur Zapt. They looked at him curiously but acceptingly. To be someones friend was sufficient to invoke the traditional Arab code of hospitality.
Sidi Morelli had been a friend, a long-standing one. The four of them had first started meeting, they explained, ten years before.
Hamdan and I were sitting here
With the dominoes.
when he came across and asked if he could join us.
The dominoes were all in use, you see.
Well, of course we said yes.
But that was only three. However, just at that moment Fahmy came in
Whom he seemed to know
He used to come to me for ice, Fahmy explained.
And so then there were four of us and there have been four ever since.
There was a little, awkward silence.
The patron came across, carrying two water-pipes. Behind him his small son struggled with a third. They put the bowls down on the floor beside the three men. The patron looked enquiringly at Mahmoud and Owen. They shook their heads.
He never smoked either, said Abd al Jawad sombrely.
The patron touched him commiseratingly on the shoulder, then went off for the coffee pot.
How can it be? said Fahmy suddenly, plainly still distressed. Doesnt God look down?
He looks down, Hamdan chided him, but he does not always interfere.
He sees further than we do, said the third man.
Hamdan and Abd al Jawad were, it transpired, shopkeepers. Fahmy kept an ice house just round the comer. They all lived and worked within three hundred yards of the coffee shop.
Have you been to the Signora? Hamdan asked Abd al Jawad.
Yes. I said that we would wish to do what we could. Of course, it will be in the Italian church.
Fahmy picked up one of the dominoes. He put it down again, however, aimlessly.
Its not the same, he said.
No.
You know no reason? asked Mahmoud.
They shook their heads.
He had no enemies, said Abd al Jawad.
People always say that, but
He had no enemies, Abd al Jawad insisted stubbornly.
Mahmoud let it rest.
He was no different that night?
No different.
Tell me how it was.
Well, he came, and sat down as usual, and we played
What did you talk of?
Fahmys nephew, and would he marry.
It happens, you know, Mahmoud, said Abd al Jawad, with an attempt at humour.
He has just returned to Cairo, Fahmy explained.
Where had he been?
In the Sudan. He is a soldier.
Fahmy was worried that he might many someone unsuitable while he was there.
We told him that he was much more likely to marry someone unsuitable back here in Cairo.
And that the only thing to do was to get him properly married beforehand.
Yes, said Hamdan. In case he was sent away.
Fahmys worried that he might be posted.
Well, said Fahmy defensively, it could happen, couldnt it? Especially these days.
Egypts not going to get involved in the war. The British will see to that
I wouldnt want him to go to the war, said Fahmy.
Then you can look on the British as a blessing, said Hamdan wryly, but with a quick look at Owen.
Owen laughed.
That is not how we are usually seen, he acknowledged.
The slight note of tension that had crept in seemed to ease.
Mahmoud brought it back again.
Sidi Morelli was Italian, he observed, as if casually.
He was one of us, said Abd al Jawad quickly, almost reprovingly.
Afterwards, Mahmoud took him to the spot where Sidi Morelli had been found lying. It was no more than twenty yards from the coffee house, but around the corner and along the Nahhasin. The Nahhasin was quiet at that point and almost deserted. There was a group of shops further along but here there were only houses, and they were the old, traditional ones which presented a blank wall at ground level containing only a door. The windows were higher up, at the level of the first storey, and tonight, at any rate, they were without lights. The street was dark and Owen could quite see how someone might have stumbled over Sidi Morelli.
Afterwards, Mahmoud took him to the spot where Sidi Morelli had been found lying. It was no more than twenty yards from the coffee house, but around the corner and along the Nahhasin. The Nahhasin was quiet at that point and almost deserted. There was a group of shops further along but here there were only houses, and they were the old, traditional ones which presented a blank wall at ground level containing only a door. The windows were higher up, at the level of the first storey, and tonight, at any rate, they were without lights. The street was dark and Owen could quite see how someone might have stumbled over Sidi Morelli.
He suddenly realized that that was the point of them being here. Mahmoud had wanted to see it as it had been the evening before, at the time when Sidi Morelli had been killed. It wasnt exactly a reconstruction, although Mahmoud, trained, like the Parquet as a whole, in French methods of investigation, favoured reconstructions. It did, though, enable him to see it as it had been, and to check on one or two things: the witnesss story, for example, of how he had come to find the body.
Times, too. Owen guessed that they had retraced Sidi Morellis movements pretty exactly. Their arrival at the table might had been arranged to coincide with the moment when Sidi Morelli had reached it the previous night. Similarly, their departure might well have coincided with his. He had got up and left the table, shaking hands, as was the Arabic custom, with everyone else in the coffee house and then set off round the corner and along the Nahhasin towards his house.
And exactly here, where a little, dark alleyway ran off between the houses, someone must have been waiting for him. They had probably been standing in the darkness of the alleyway and then, as he had passed, reached out and pulled him into the shadow and strangled him; so quickly and efficiently that he had not had time to utter a cry or make a sound loud enough to catch the attention of those seated in the coffee house not twenty yards away. And then they had fled, almost certainly up the alleyway.
Well, yes, said Mahmoud. Except that there were some porters further along the alleyway hauling up a bed and they claim that no one passed them.
He led Owen down the alley. At its far end the blank walls of the big houses of the Nahhasin gave way to tenements. From some of the upper storeys came the weak light of oil lamps. They could see the window through which the bed had been hauled. Its frame was still out and beneath it, on the ground, there were still some bulky objects awaiting their turn to be lifted.
There would have been a lamp up there, said Mahmoud, and possibly one on the ground, where they were working.
Pretty dark, said Owen, looking round, even so.
But narrow, said Mahmoud. They are sure they would have seen him. Still, I think it more likely that he escaped along here than that he went down the Nahhasin. I asked the men who found the body and they were positive that they had met no one coming away from where Morelli had been killed. The alleyway seems somehow much more likely.
They retraced their steps.
It all happened in about five minutes, said Mahmoud. From the time he left the coffee house to the time they found him.
How was he killed?
Strangled.
Not garotted?
No.
Quick, then.
No money was taken, said Mahmoud.
No money? But then ?
He was killed for some other reason.
Owen didnt like the sound of that. He hoped that Mahmoud would soon find a reason, some private, personal motive, rooted in family, perhaps, or in business. The alternative opened up too many disquieting possibilities. One of us Morelli may have been; but had he been one of us enough, at a time when war was placing such a new, heavy stress on old identities and relationships?
There was a reception at the Abdin Palace that evening and Owen, as one of the Khedives senior servants, was bidden to be there. Although there were plenty of other Englishmen in the Khedives service the whole British Administration, nominally, for a start he was, in fact, one of very few Englishmen present, an indication of the chill that had come over the relationship between the Khedive and the new British Consul-General. The absence was all the more marked because the reception was for someone who was to all intents and purposes an honorary Englishman.
Slatin Pasha had entered the Khedivial service some thirty years before and had been appointed governor of a province in the Sudan. During the Sudan uprising he had been taken prisoner and had been a slave of the Khalifa for eleven years. His famous escape, made with the help of the British Intelligence, had led to him becoming the darling of the British public. He had paid many visits to Windsor and been showered with honours by the Queen, including a knighthood. He was just the man you would have expected the Consulate to turn out for; and yet no one was there.
Slatin was very keen on honours and the reception was in recognition of him collecting yet another one a short time before, this time from Austria. Slatin was himself an Austrian and had naturally been pleased. All the same, he was not entirely happy about this evening.
It wont do, Owen, it wont do, he said, looking around him. Its bad if His Lordship wasnt invited to something like this.
Perhaps he was invited and just didnt come.
Then thats bad, too. Countries should come together in Egypt even if they have their differences elsewhere.
Not always easy, said Owen.
Slatin looked at him in his sharp, bird-like way.
Especially it is not easy for people like you and me, he said.
Owen suddenly wondered about Slatin. He was the most Anglophile of Anglophiles; and yet he was also Austrian. If the two sides started pulling apart, how would he react? Which would he choose?
Dilemmas, dear boy, dilemmas! said Slatin, and scurried away.
And how far would their common service to the Khedive, to Egypt, that most cosmopolitan of countries, containing so many different nationalities, be able to hold the strain?
Across the room he saw Ismet Bey talking to this was surprising, you hardly ever saw a woman on an occasion like this a tall, blonde woman, about thirty. No veil, either; she must be foreign.
Later in the evening, one of the German attachés caught him by the arm.
Come over, Owen. Theres someone Id like you to meet
It was the girl.
Fräulein von Ramsberg; the Mamur Zapt.
Ah, the Mamur Zapt! said the girl, as if she knew about Mamur Zapts.
Fräulein von Ramsberg has just completed a crossing of the Sinai desert. On camel.
Good heavens! said Owen.
But you yourself, who have lived so long in this part of the world, have no doubt made similar journeys? she suggested.
Im afraid not.
No?
I do occasionally go out of Cairo. Reluctantly, said Owen.
The girl laughed.
You are a city man. Well, there are different sorts of Arabists. I am a desert one.
I do admire people like yourself who make these long, arduous journeys.
This wasnt entirely true. In fact, it wasnt true at all. He thought they were crazy. He had done some camel-riding, which he had found most uncomfortable, and quite a lot of horse-riding, especially in India; but on the whole he preferred sitting in cafés.