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The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt
Michael Pearce


Winner of the CWA Last Laugh Award, an irresistible historical mystery in which the Mamur Zapt investigates the illegal trade of antiquities in the Cairo of the 1900s.Cairo, 1908. Captain Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt or head of Cairo’s Secret Police, turns his attention to the illegal trade of antiquities when Miss Skinner arrives. She’s a woman with the habit of asking awkward questions. But what is she doing looking for crocodiles? And mummified ones at that?Owen’s new brief is to see that Egypt’s priceless treasures stay in Egypt. But when Miss Skinner narrowly escapes falling under a conveyance, Owen must labour to thwart killers and face an even graver problem: whether to ask the pasha's lovely daughter to marry him….


















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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1992

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1992

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259402

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780007485031

Version: 2017-08-31


CONTENTS

Cover (#ubc46e339-2437-540c-a61b-911847f23cd2)

Title Page (#ud49cc9b3-95e1-5e4b-a506-86468c83a634)

Copyright (#ub90dee16-389d-558b-8437-5ce2cda3ce82)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_cc743376-2748-559f-b098-701d42b640db)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_5338ace8-ba29-5146-a6ae-f2430bf1ee1c)

Chapter 3 (#ulink_46e59128-8f9a-503f-9916-f9736d51e031)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Michael Pearce (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_461f1429-71a5-5e5e-b3ec-ed0d331604b0)

A tall, thin, angular woman came through the door of the hotel.

Immediately a hand was thrust up at her. It was holding something grey, crumbly and rubbery—rather like old fish—from which a faint aroma arose.

‘What is this?’ she said, sniffing suspiciously.

‘Real mummy!’ said the voice behind the hand. ‘Genuine mummy flesh! Only ten piastres!’

‘Thank you, no!’ said the woman firmly.

Her initial hesitation, however, proved fatal. In a moment they were all round her. Other hands pushed out brandishing bits of bandage (mummy linen), bits of wood (mummy coffin), bright blue saucers straight from the tombs (well, near them, at any rate), genuine old scarab beetles (and some of them were), little wooden images of the gods, little clay images of scribes (such is our fate), little plaques of rough clay engraved with religious images and little coloured wooden Ships of the Dead.

She tried to brush past.

Something was held up in front of her to block her way. It was a mummified arm, complete with fingers.

As she recoiled, a voice said: ‘For you, Madame, for you!’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘For you especially!’ the man insisted.

‘Thank you, no.’

A young man in a white European suit and a fez came through the door behind her and at once released a torrent of Arabic so impressive that even the hardened owners of the hands were taken aback. The porters lounging at the doorway, shaken, rushed forward and chivvied them from the terrace.

‘Why, thank you, Mr Trevelyan!’ said the lady in a cool American voice. ‘You come to my rescue yet again!’

The young man bowed.

‘A pleasure, Miss Skinner.’

He looked up and saw the man sitting on the terrace.

‘Gareth!’ he said. ‘This is a bit of luck!’

Owen had just been thinking how nice it was to see so many old swindlers of his acquaintance back in town, only that day arrived from Upper Egypt where they had been passing the winter selling pillaged or fabricated antiques to the tourists on Cook’s Nile steamers. He recognized some of the old faithfuls. That surely was—

And then Paul Trevelyan had come through the door.

‘Gareth! There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

He shepherded the woman across.

‘Captain Owen,’ he said, ‘the Mamur Zapt.’

Owen rose.

‘Miss Skinner.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Captain Owen,’ she said, extending a hand, then sitting down in one of the chairs opposite him. ‘But who or what is the Mamur Zapt?’

‘It’s the traditional Arabic title of the post I hold.’

‘And what post is that?’

‘It’s a kind of police post.’

‘You are a policeman?’

‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘yes. You could say that.’

The woman frowned slightly. She was about thirty and had a long, thin, sharp face. Sharp eyes, too.

‘There seems some doubt about it,’ she said.

Paul Trevelyan came to his assistance.

‘Captain Owen looks after the political side,’ he explained.

‘The post was originally Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police,’ said Owen.

‘Ah!’

‘But, of course, things are very different now.’

They certainly were. For this was 1908 and although the Khedive was still the nominal ruler of Egypt and Egypt was still nominally an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans were no longer in power.

Nor were the Egyptians, for that matter. The new rulers of Egypt were the British, who had come into the country thirty years before to help the Khedive sort out his chaotic finances: come and stayed.

‘The British seem everywhere,’ said Miss Skinner.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. We’re advisers only, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And you yourself,’ said Miss Skinner pointedly, ‘you are an adviser, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Whom do you advise?’

‘Oh, lots of people. The Khedive—’

Formally, that was.

‘The Chief of Police—’

Who happened to be British.

‘Mr Trevelyan’s boss?’ asked Miss Skinner.

The Consul-General. The British Consul-General, that was. The man who really ran Egypt.

‘You could say that,’ said Owen, smiling.

‘I get the picture,’ said Miss Skinner.

‘Miss Skinner’s interests are archæological,’ said Paul firmly, deciding that it was time to re-route her.

‘And statistical,’ corrected Miss Skinner. ‘There are a number of things I wish to look into while I am here.’

Behind her back Paul raised his eyes heavenwards.

‘I am sure our Finance Department will be glad to help you,’ said Owen, who had a grudge against the Finance Department.

Miss Skinner pursed her lips.

‘It is the flesh and blood behind the statistics that interests me. I am not sure that Finance Departments are so good at that.’

‘I am taking Miss Skinner to see some of the excavations,’ said Paul doggedly.

‘Fascinating!’ said Owen.

The vendors of antiquities, recovered, had regrouped in front of the terrace and were now beginning to slide their wares beseechingly through the railings. Miss Skinner looked down.

‘Fake!’ she pronounced.

‘But nice, don’t you think?’ said Owen, who rather liked the blue scarab beetles and admired the workmanship that went into the barques.

‘I am only,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘interested in the truth.’

There was something of a pause.

‘And where,’ asked Owen chattily, seeing signs of desperation in Paul, ‘were you planning to go?’

‘Der el Bahari, primarily.’

‘Oh, there are lots of things to see there. You’ll find it very interesting,’ Owen assured Miss Skinner.

‘There’s an American team up there at the moment,’ said Paul. ‘I gather they’re making some promising finds.’

‘I know Parker,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘I’m afraid I don’t like his methodology.’

‘Ah well,’ said Owen, ‘you’ll be able to help him put it right, then.’

He felt something touching his foot and glanced down. A particularly resourceful vendor had laid out some ushapti images on a piece of coffin and was poking it under the table for them to see.

Miss Skinner picked up one of the images and turned it over between her hands. She seemed puzzled.

‘It looks genuine,’ she said, ‘but—’

‘It probably is genuine.’

‘But how can that be?’

Owen shrugged.

‘It might even come from Der el Bahari. That’s where a lot of these men came from.’

Miss Skinner’s eyes widened.

‘You mean—these things are stolen.’

‘Accumulated, say. Perhaps even over the centuries. The ancestors of these men, Miss Skinner, built the temples and tombs in the Valley of Kings. And ever since they have been, well, revenging themselves on their masters.’

‘Then they are grave-robbers,’ cried Miss Skinner, ‘and must be stopped!’

As Paul piloted Miss Skinner down the steps, the vendors closed in again. The man with the mummified arm pushed his way through the crowd and waved it once more in her face.

‘For you, Madame, for you!’

‘No,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘no.’

‘For you especially,’ the man insisted.

‘Grave-robbers!’ said Monsieur Peripoulin hotly. ‘That’s what they are!’

‘Oh, come—’

‘That’s what they are!’ the Frenchman insisted. The sweat was running down his face, which wasn’t surprising since he was wearing a dark suit and a stiff, high, white collar, which was, apparently, what he always wore at the Museum.

‘Just tourists,’ said Owen.

‘Not the ones I’m talking about,’ Monsieur Peripoulin declared. ‘Tourists go to the bazaars and buy a few souvenirs. These men usually go straight to the excavations and buy there.’

‘They can’t, surely,’ said Paul. ‘Excavations are closely controlled these days and all finds have to be listed and reported to the Director of Antiquities.’

‘Closely controlled!’ said Monsieur Peripoulin scathingly. ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!’

Paul sighed. The meeting had been going on for two and a half hours now and it was past midday. He had been relying on the French habit of dropping everything at noon and going for lunch, but the elderly Frenchman seemed as determined as ever.

‘What exactly, Monsieur Peripoulin, are you proposing?’ he asked wearily.

‘A licence system,’ said the Frenchman immediately. ‘That is what we need. Anyone wishing to export an antiquity should have to obtain a licence first.’

‘Don’t we have that already?’ asked Carmichael, from Customs. ‘Or the next best thing to it. If anyone wishes to export antiquities they have to send them first to the Museum.’

‘Yes, but that’s only to determine export duty,’ said Monsieur Peripoulin. ‘We put a value on it—and that’s not always easy, let me tell you: what value would you put on the Sphinx?—seal the case and notify the Mudir of Customs.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked the man from Customs.

‘It just goes ahead automatically. No one makes a conscious decision.’

‘We make a decision,’ said Carmichael. ‘We decide what level of duty applies.’

‘Yes, but you don’t ask yourselves whether in principle the thing should be exported at all. It’s that kind of decision I’m talking about.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Paul, chairing the meeting on behalf of the Consul-General. ‘Are you suggesting that we should interfere with the free flow of trade?’

‘These things cannot be seen solely in terms of money,’ declared Monsieur Peripoulin stoutly. ‘They are part of Egypt’s priceless heritage.’

‘I quite agree,’ said the man from Finance: an Egyptian. He was an Under-Secretary—which was a sign that someone somewhere was taking the meeting seriously—and his name was Abu Bakir.

Paul raised an eyebrow.

‘Naturally, works of art have an intrinsic value,’ he said smoothly. ‘Once they are on the market, however, they have a market value.’

‘The question is: how do they get on the market?’ said Abu Bakir.

‘It is not their value that I am concerned about,’ said Monsieur Peripoulin, ‘but their location.’

‘That, too, is determined by the market.’

‘But ought it to be? That is what I am asking. It is an issue of principle,’ the Frenchman insisted.

‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘but which principle? At this stage in Egypt’s development I would have thought the overriding necessity was to ensure Egypt’s economic health. And that is best done by adherence to the principles of Free Trade.’

‘I am afraid,’ said the Egyptian, who was, after all, from the Ministry of Finance, ‘that I have to agree.’

‘What?’ cried Monsieur Peripoulin, throwing up his hands in dismay. ‘You are willing to see Egypt’s treasures disappear?’

‘I did not say that,’ said Abu Bakir. ‘I did not say that.’ He turned to Paul. ‘Can we return for a moment to a distinction Monsieur Peripoulin made earlier?’

‘What distinction?’ said Paul, glancing at his watch.

‘The one between the ordinary tourist and the specialist buyer. As far as the ordinary tourist is concerned, I think I agree with you: we should not interfere in the ordinary processes of trade. With respect to the specialist buyer and the exceptional item, however, I find myself tempted by Monsieur Peripoulin’s licensing proposal.’

‘I don’t think we can take a decision on something as major as that today.’

‘Perhaps not, but I don’t think we ought just to leave it. Perhaps we can ask Customs to look into it and report back?’

‘We could do that,’ assented Paul.

It being past lunch-time, everyone was prepared to agree and the meeting broke up. As they walked out, Monsieur Peripoulin put a hot hand on Owen’s arm.

‘All this is missing the point. Licence, not licence, that is not the point. What happens when the goods don’t come to us at all?’

‘They should all come to you.’

‘But what happens when they don’t?’

‘Ah well,’ said Abu Bakir over Owen’s shoulder, ‘that’s where the Mamur Zapt comes in.’

‘Not the Mamur Zapt; the police,’ said Owen.

‘The police!’ said Monsieur Peripoulin dismissively.

‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Carmichael, from Customs. ‘The police can’t do much about it. Half the staff goes out under Capitulatory privilege.’

‘That’s why I said the Mamur Zapt,’ said Abu Bakir.

‘I don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ said Owen.

‘Very sensible of you,’ said Paul.

‘If it’s tied up with the Capitulations we won’t get anywhere.’

The Capitulations were privileges granted to European powers by successive Ottoman rulers in return for organizing international trade.

‘True,’ said Paul.

‘In that case that’s something for the Foreign Office, not me.’

‘Mm,’ said Paul.

‘In fact, I wonder why I was there at all. Who called the meeting?’

‘I did.’

‘You did?’ said Owen, surprised.

They were at a reception that evening in what Old India hands called the Residency and new English ones the Consulate-General. The house was, indeed, in the style of English building in India, designed to protect against the heat rather than against the cold. The floor was tiled, the roof domed, the windows shuttered and the doors arched. Through one of the arches Owen could see Miss Skinner talking to Abu Bakir.

‘Yes. It’s moving up the political agenda.’

‘The export of antiquities?’

‘People are getting interested.’

‘What people? Peripoulin goes on about it, I know, but—’

‘Other people. People outside Egypt.’

‘They’re the ones who are buying the stuff!’

‘Yes. But other ones are asking questions about it.’

‘About us exporting antiquities?’

‘And other things, too. About our stewardship, for instance, of Egyptian treasures.’

‘We’re looking after them all right, aren’t we? Old Peripoulin—’

‘We’re selling them off. At least, that’s how some people see it.’

‘We’re not selling them off. Private individuals are. That’s nothing to do with us.’

‘Isn’t it? Some people think it is. Some people think there ought to be a regulatory framework.’

‘I see. So that’s what the meeting was about.’

‘It’s very important,’ said Paul, ‘that people get the right impression.’

‘Maybe. I still don’t see why I had to be there, though.’

Paul smiled.

Across the room Miss Skinner was now talking to Peripoulin and another Frenchman, L’Espinasse, the Inspector of Antiquities.

‘There’s that damned woman. Why are you spending time on her, Paul?’

‘Her uncle could be the next President of the United States.’

‘Really?’

‘If he wins the election in a year’s time. He’s sent her out here on a fact-finding mission.’

‘You’d better make sure she finds the right facts, then.’

‘I am sticking to her like glue,’ said Paul.

Miss Skinner came towards them.

‘Perhaps you gentlemen can explain to me why it is that all the people in the Antiquities Service are French? No, don’t tell me! Can it be that the English concentrate on the money and leave the culture to the French?’

‘Shame, Miss Skinner! There are eminent English archæologists working in the service, too!’

‘And are there Frenchmen working in the Ministry of Finance?’

‘We work a lot in French,’ said Paul truthfully but evading the point. ‘Egypt’s links with France go back to the time of Napoleon.’

‘The first of the spoilers!’ declared Miss Skinner. She waved a hand at Owen as she moved away. ‘I’m so looking forward to tomorrow!’

‘What’s this?’ said Owen.

Paul looked uncomfortable.

‘I was hoping you’d come round for a drink.’

‘Certainly.’

‘And bring Zeinab.’

‘Certainly. But why particularly bring Zeinab?’

‘Miss Skinner would like to meet her.’

‘She’s never heard of Zeinab. Unless you’ve been telling her!’

‘She wants to meet an Egyptian woman. An ordinary Egyptian woman.’

‘Well, Zeinab’s not exactly ordinary—’

‘She’s the nearest I can get. You won’t believe how difficult it is in Egypt to meet an ordinary woman.’

‘I’ll see if she’s free,’ promised Owen.

‘I’m trying to get Miss Skinner’s mind off antiquities. The Woman Question is my big hope.’

‘Just a minute: antiquities. One of Miss Skinner’s hobbyhorses doesn’t happen to be the export of Egypt’s treasures, does it?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Paul, ‘I believe it does.’

Monsieur Peripoulin bestowed a fatherly pat as he went past.

‘A useful meeting!’ he said. ‘At last things are beginning to move.’

‘That meeting,’ said Owen, ‘it wouldn’t have anything to do with Miss Skinner’s being here, would it? The fact that you called it, I mean?’

‘It’s been in our minds a long time,’ said Paul.

Some time later in the evening Owen came upon Miss Skinner and Abu Bakir having an earnest chat in one of the alcoves.

‘I was just explaining to Mr Bakir,’ said Miss Skinner, her face slightly flushed, ‘that my friends and I are very concerned about the fact that so many of Egypt’s remarkable treasures are departing her shores.’

‘And I was explaining to Miss Skinner,’ said Abu Bakir, smiling, ‘that many of us in Egypt are concerned about that also.’

‘True,’ said Owen, ‘very true.’

‘Mr Bakir was explaining to me the Nationalist position.’

‘Not just the Nationalist position,’ said Abu Bakir quickly, his smile disappearing. ‘It is one, I believe, that the Nationalists share with the Government.’

‘Although, as you were saying, the vested interests of the big landlords make it very difficult to get anything through the Assembly.’

‘I was giving Miss Skinner some of the political background,’ Abu Bakir explained.

I’ll bet you were, thought Owen.

‘There are political difficulties, it is true,’ he said out loud, ‘but I think we’re beginning to face them.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘Monsieur Peripoulin was telling me about some meeting you had had recently.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Owen, ‘a very important meeting.’

‘Meetings are all very well,’ said Miss Skinner, frowning, ‘but it’s the action that results from them that is important. I understand, for instance, that there is a widespread evasion of the controls on the export of antiquities. What is being done about that?’

‘Ah,’ said Abu Bakir, ‘but that is just where we are taking action. The Mamur Zapt—Captain Owen here—is about to take steps to stamp that out.’

‘Are you?’ said Miss Skinner, beaming. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. I shall follow what you do with great interest.’

Owen was sitting in a café in the Ataba-el-Khadra watching the world go by. The Ataba was a good place for that because it was at the end of the main street, the Muski, which connected the old native city with the new European quarters. The square was, moreover, the main terminus for nearly all of Cairo’s trams.

At any hour of the day and deep into the night the Ataba was a tangle of trams, arabeahs—the characteristic horse-drawn cab of Cairo—great lumbering carts carrying stone, great lumbering camels carrying forage for the city’s donkeys and horses, native buses, of the open-sided ass-drawn variety, motor-cars (a few; tending towards the stationary) and sheep.

Quite why there should be so many sheep in the Ataba was a mystery. Certainly the Arabs were very fond of their fat-tailed Passover sheep and shopkeepers liked to keep one tethered outside their premises, to eat up the garbage, it was claimed; but why so many should be wandering loose in this most hazardous of places was hard to comprehend.

You would feel something nudging your knee and look down and there would be a sheep painted in blue stripes and often with a child’s shoe hanging round its neck on a cheap silver necklace.

The answer lay, perhaps, in the fact that despite the trams and despite its proximity to the new European quarters the Ataba remained obstinately part of the native city. The people you saw were the ordinary people of Cairo: blue-gowned labourers, veiled women in black, office workers in suits and tarbooshes, the red, pot-like hat of the educated Egyptian, shopkeepers in striped gowns and tarbooshes but with a turban bound round the tarboosh.

The hawkers, too, of whom there were very many, were ones who served the ordinary Egyptian rather than the tourist. Instead of the souvenir-seller and dirty-postcard-seller of the great hotels you saw the brush, comb and buttonhook-seller, the pastry-seller, the lemonade-seller and the water-carrier.

It was two different worlds and despite the incessant clanging of the trams and the shouts of the street vendors Owen on the whole preferred this one to the hotel one.

He had been visiting the fire station on the Ataba and afterwards had adjourned with the chief, as was proper after transacting business, to the coffee house. They sat there now benignly watching the mêlée in the square.

‘So what would you do,’ asked Owen, ‘if you wanted to get out and your way was blocked?’

‘I would ring my bell and shout.’

‘But nearly everyone else in the square is ringing a bell and shouting,’ Owen pointed out.

‘I would exhort them,’ said the Fire Chief.

And by the time you got anywhere, thought Owen, half the city would have burned to the ground.

‘Is there no other exit?’

The Fire Chief pushed back his tarboosh and scratched his head.

‘Well—’ he was just beginning, when on the other side of the square there was a fierce squeal of brakes and a tram-bell started jangling furiously. An arabeah veered suddenly and there were agitated shouts.

A crowd seemed to be gathering in front of one of the trams. It looked as if there had been an accident.

A policeman somewhere was blowing his whistle. Owen could see him now pushing his way through the crowd. The crowd, unusually, parted and Owen caught a glimpse of a still form lying beside the tram.

It seemed to be a woman, a European.

He got to his feet. The Fire Chief, used to dealing with accidents, fell in beside him. Together they began to force a way through the crowd.

Even in that short time it had grown enormously. It was now well over a hundred deep. Traffic everywhere had come to a stop.

Some of the other trams had started ringing their bells. People were shouting, sheep bleating. As ass began to bray. It was bedlam.

The whole square now was an impenetrable mass of people. Owen looked at the Fire Chief and shrugged.

Over to one side was a native bus, totally becalmed. The driver had given up, laid his whip across the backs of his asses and was waiting resignedly. His passengers, content to watch the spectacle—all Cairo loved a good accident—chattered with excitement.

The Chief laid his hand on Owen’s arm and nodded in the direction of the bus. They made their way towards it.

The bus was one of the traditional sort and was basically a platform on wheels. From the corners of the platform tall posts rose to support a roof. The sides were open and the wooden benches faced towards the rear.

The Chief put his foot on the running-board and jumped up. The next moment he was shinning nimbly up one of the posts and clambering on to the roof.

Owen followed, less nimbly. For an instant one foot hovered desperately in the air. Then someone caught hold of it and gave a heave, the Chief caught his arm, and he levered himself up on to the roof.

He could see now right across the crowd. There was a little space beside the tram where some arabeah drivers and the conductor of the tram were holding back the crowd. The driver had collapsed against the side and was clasping his head in his hands, his face turned away.

The crowd by the tram suddenly eddied—a horse, it looked like, had objected to being hemmed in—and Owen caught another glimpse of the woman.

Something about her seemed familiar.

And the next moment he had slid to the ground and was fighting his way through the crowd towards her.

‘Make way! Make way!’

Someone looked up at him and took it into their head that he was the doctor.

‘Make way for the hakim!’ he shouted. ‘Make way!’

Others took up the shout.

‘The hakim! Make way!’

The crowd obligingly parted and hands tugged him through. He arrived dishevelled beside the tram and looked down. There, lying so close to the tram that she was almost beneath its running-boards, was Miss Skinner.

‘I did not see her!’ said the driver tearfully. ‘I did not see her!’

Somebody had stuffed a jacket under her head and a water-carrier was tenderly, uselessly, splashing water on her face.

There was no blood.

‘Get an ambulance!’ said Owen.

The cry was taken up and passed through the crowd and at its back someone ran off into the café. But the Ataba was totally jammed and the ambulance, like the fire-engine, would be unable to get through.

And then, over the heads of the crowd, something was being passed, and there, scrambling over people’s heads and shoulders, nimble as a monkey, was the Fire Chief.

A stretcher was passed down and, a moment later, the Chief arrived.

He dropped down on his knees beside Miss Skinner.

‘God be praised!’ he said.

‘Be praised?’ said Owen harshly.

‘She is not dead.’

The Chief seized a water-skin from the carrier and squeezed some of the water out on to Miss Skinner’s face.

Her eyes opened. For a moment they remained unfocused. And then the sharp look returned.

‘What is going on?’ demanded Miss Skinner.

‘An accident,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve had an accident. Just stay there for a moment. You’ll be all right.’

Miss Skinner’s eyes closed again. The Fire Chief dexterously wedged the stretcher under her. Cooperative hands hoisted it into the air. It was raised head high so that it could be passed back over the crowd.

As the stretcher lurched upwards Miss Skinner’s eyes opened again.

‘Accident?’ she said sharply. ‘That was no accident! I was pushed!’


CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_8a2a4470-7c9b-5e3e-9d58-ba7e2446919f)

‘Look,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘I know a push when I feel one.’

She was sitting in a chair in the hotel lounge. Owen had suggested she remain in bed but Miss Skinner thought that was no place for a lady to receive a gentleman. She had made an appointment with Owen for six o’clock, taken a slightly extended siesta, and now here she was, not quite recovered—there was a nasty bruise on her face—but inclined in no sense to take this lying down.

‘In the crowd,’ murmured Owen, ‘so easy to mistake—’

Miss Skinner made an impatient gesture.

‘A push is a push,’ she said firmly.

‘So many people,’ said Owen, ‘perhaps carrying things. A porter, maybe. A package sticking out.’

‘A hand,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘gave me a deliberate push.’

Owen was silent. An image of the Ataba came into his mind. So many people milling about, jostling each other in the crowd, hurrying to catch a tram. The easiest thing in the world to bump into someone, collide. But a deliberate push?

‘Let me see, Miss Skinner: you were standing precisely where? Near where I saw you, obviously, but, just before you fell, precisely where?’

‘I had been looking at one of the boards—’

‘Ah, so you had your back towards the traffic, then?’

‘—but it was not the one I wanted and I had just turned away. I was looking for the one to the Zoological Gardens and this one, I remember, was for the Citadel. There! That will help you to place it.’

‘Thank you. That is very precise. You had turned away, then—?’

‘—and was about to move on to the next one when it happened.’

‘That, again, is very precise, Miss Skinner. “About to move on.” You had not, then, moved?’

‘A step, perhaps.’

‘Or two. But still very close to the Citadel board. And in the middle of the street.’

‘Along with everybody else,’ said Miss Skinner defensively.

‘Of course. No criticism implied. But you were in the middle of the street and could very easily have been bumped into.’

‘I think I would have noticed if an arabeah had hit me,’ said Miss Skinner tartly. ‘That is, of course, before I was hit by the tram.’

‘I was thinking of a person, Miss Skinner. Perhaps running for a tram.’

Miss Skinner sighed.

‘A collision is not like a push. This was a push. A definite push.’

‘Perhaps as they collided with you they put out a hand—’

‘No one,’ said Miss Skinner, her voice beginning to rise, ‘collided with me or bumped into me. What happened was that someone put a hand out and gave me a deliberate push just as the tram was approaching.’

‘But, Miss Skinner, why would anyone want to do that?’

‘You tell me. You’re the policeman. If, indeed,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘you are a policeman!’

Owen could not see it. An accidental collision, a stumble, a trip, yes. But not a push. Not a deliberate push.

‘A sheep, perhaps?’ he ventured.

‘A sheep?’ said Miss Skinner incredulously.

‘They nudge you,’ Owen explained.

‘Look, Captain Owen,’ said Miss Skinner in rising fury, ‘this was not a nudge, nor a bump, nor a jostle. This was a push. A hand. In the small of my back. Just when a tram was coming. I have been assaulted—criminally assaulted—and I demand that you take action to find out who my assailant was and to see that he is punished. At once!’

The arabeah-drivers, while waiting for custom, liked to gather round a pavement restaurant near where they parked their cabs; round, because what the restaurants consisted of was a large circular tray with little pegs round the edge on which the customers stuck their bread. In the middle were lots of little blue-and-white china bowls filled with various kinds of sauces and pickles and a few large platters on which lay unpromising pieces of meat.

The customers squatted round in the dust. They did not consist entirely of arabeah-drivers. The restaurant served as a social centre for that part of the Ataba and people dropped in and out all day, drawn by the smell of fried onions and the constant Arab need for sociability.

It was natural for Owen, beginning his inquiries with the arabeah-drivers, to migrate in that direction and soon he was part of the squatting circle dipping his bread with the rest of them, his inquiries now part of the general conversation.

‘Why was she catching a tram anyway?’ asked one of the arabeah-drivers. ‘She ought to have been using an arabeah.’

‘That’s right. She wouldn’t have had to have wandered round, then. She could have just signalled to us and we’d have looked after her.’

‘Particularly if she was carrying things. Much more sense to take an arabeah.’

‘Was she carrying things?’ asked Owen.

‘I don’t know. It’s just that if she was—’

‘I thought she was carrying something,’ said one of the other drivers. ‘One or two small things. Perhaps she had been shopping.’

‘You saw her, then?’

‘I saw her go down. She certainly seemed to be carrying something.’

‘How did she come to go down?’ asked Owen. ‘Was she wandering about in front of the tram or something?’

‘No, no, she was round the side.’

‘What did she do, then? Walk into it?’ asked one of the drivers.

‘Must have.’

‘She ought to look where she’s going, then.’

There was a general laugh.

‘Maybe it came up behind her,’ suggested Owen. ‘You know, alongside her. She was standing a bit too close and it just caught her.’

‘It’s easily done, I suppose.’

Owen turned to the driver who had thought he’d seen her carrying something.

‘Didn’t you say you’d seen what happened? Was that how it was?’

‘No, no, I didn’t really see it happen. I just saw her go down. I had just cut across in front of the tram—plenty of room, a couple of metres at least—and of course I was looking out to my left and I glanced along the side of the tram and she was already falling. It must have happened just at that instant.’

‘Was she falling into the tram or away from it?’

‘I don’t know, it was all over in a flash. But I saw she’d gone down as I stopped and ran over to her.’

‘Was she all covered with blood?’ asked someone with relish.

‘No, she—’

The driver launched into his tale, which he told with gusto but without the kind of detail that interested Owen. After a while he stood up and slipped away. He would come back to the restaurant the next day and the days after. If anything new emerged it would certainly be retailed to him.

He went next to see the tram-driver, whom he found drinking tea with his fellows.

‘It wasn’t his fault!’ they chorused. ‘He couldn’t have done anything about it. She just stepped straight into him.’

‘You didn’t see her coming?’

‘How could I? She was down at the side.’

‘You were moving, though. She must have been ahead of you.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘There were lots of people ahead of him! You can’t see them all!’

‘Were there lots of people? Was there a crowd?’

‘There’s always a crowd in the Ataba.’

‘Yes, but was this woman part of a crowd or was she standing on her own?’

‘I didn’t see. I didn’t see her at all until there was this bump. You know at once. I jammed on my brakes and looked down and there she was!’

‘It was the first time you’d seen her?’

‘Of course! I swear on the Book—’

But then he would.

The conductor was strong in support.

‘There were a lot of people milling about. There always are. And those stupid arabeah-drivers!’

‘Yes, those stupid arabeah-drivers!’

‘It’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often.’

So not much joy there. Owen did a round of the stalls nearby, the tea stall, the sweet stall, the Arab sugar and Arab cucumber stalls, but although they all remembered the incident well—it had clearly made their day—and although all claimed to have been intimately involved, none of the owners, it transpired after some time, had actually seen anything.

Next he tried the street-sellers, many of whom had regular pitches and who, being more mobile than the stallholders, had secured places near the front of the crowd. All of them, however, were observers after the event; somewhat to their regret.

They had at least seen something, though, and he tried to turn it to advantage. Could they describe the bystanders who had been at the front of the crowd, the ones who, presumably, had been nearest when the accident, or whatever it was, had happened?

Yes, they could: unfortunately, in implausible detail.

But did they recognize anybody?

‘Don’t I remember seeing Hamidullah?’ the lemonade-seller asked himself.

‘Hamidullah?’

‘The carrier of water.’

‘I remember a water-carrier,’ said Owen.

‘It would be him.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Oh …’

The water-carrier, apparently, made long patrols of the town, passing through the Ataba three times a day, in the morning, afternoon and evening. Owen tried to establish the times more precisely.

The lemonade-seller did not possess a watch; could not, indeed, tell the time. Owen tried to get him to work it out in relation to the muezzin’s call but then realized that one of the times, at any rate, he knew exactly. That was the one which coincided with Miss Skinner’s fall. He would have to leave that now, however, till the next day.

Feeling that at least he had established something, and fed up at having had to spend most of the day on this daft business, he decided he’d had enough and went in to drink coffee with the Fire Chief.

‘God be praised!’ said the Fire Chief. ‘You have come at last!’

Owen explained what he had been doing all day. The Chief, who must have seen him, affected surprise.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’ve got to look into it if it’s a European.’

‘Not all Europeans,’ said Owen grimly. ‘Just this one.’

‘Are you going to punish the tram-driver?’

‘Well, no, it wasn’t really his fault.’

‘All the same …’ said the Fire Chief, casually conveying the centuries-old Cairene assumption that punishment was related more to the satisfaction of authority than to the desserts of offenders.

‘From what I can make out,’ said Owen, ‘it doesn’t seem to have been anybody’s fault. It was just an accident.’

‘What else?’ said the Fire Chief.

What else, indeed? Even if it had been a push, it was almost certainly an unintended one. Miss Skinner had perhaps backed into somebody and they had merely warded her off. And then perhaps they had panicked when she had fallen over and made themselves scarce. He wished he could find someone who had seen what happened. If that was all, then they could forget about it.

It must have been something like that, an accidental jostle in the crowd, someone turning suddenly. What else could it be?

A deliberate push? That was ridiculous. Who would want to do a thing like that? Miss Skinner was unknown in Cairo. All right, in her short time here she had not exactly endeared herself to people, but hardly to the lengths of provoking someone to push her under a tram!

She was a European and Europeans were not exactly popular? Well, yes, but physical attacks on Europeans were few and far between. People fancied they occurred much more often than they actually did.

And that was probably it. Miss Skinner had almost certainly imagined the whole business. She didn’t seem the fanciful sort, but you never could tell.

What else could it have been?

‘I’ve got something for you,’ said the Fire Chief.

He fished in a cupboard and produced a parasol and two or three small packages.

‘Someone brought them to me,’ he said. ‘He found them under the tram, just where she had been lying.’

One of the packages was torn and Owen could see what was inside. It was a ushapti image of Osiris, about a foot tall and made in glazed faïence. It was well made but Owen was surprised. He pulled it out and turned it over in his hands.

‘She’d been out shopping,’ said the Fire Chief.

‘Yes,’ said Owen.

But why had she bought this? For this one, well made though it was, was still a fake.

The meeting with Zeinab had gone well; so well, that Miss Skinner expressed the wish to repeat it. And if possible in Zeinab’s own home.

This proved a problem, for Zeinab had taken it for granted that the meeting would be in some such place as the terrace at Shepheard’s, which was where one normally met. She had no intention of allowing anyone into her appartement other than Owen.

‘What’s the idea?’ she said to Owen.

‘I think she wants to see you in your natural habitat.’

‘Shepheard’s is my natural habitat,’ said Zeinab.

‘Yes, but she thinks you have a home.’

Zeinab considered.

‘Perhaps we could meet at my father’s,’ she suggested.

Zeinab’s father was a Pasha and possessed a town house, a fine old Mameluke building.

‘I think—I think she had in mind an ordinary house.’

‘This is an ordinary house,’ said Zeinab, in a tone that brooked no argument.

‘It will do fine,’ said Paul hastily.

When, however, Owen arrived, shortly before the appointed hour, Zeinab was not there.

‘I don’t know where she is,’ said Nuri Pasha, who had long ago given up attempting to keep track on his daughter’s movements. He admired her deeply—she reminded him of her mother, his favourite courtesan—but understood her not at all.

‘Miss Skinner will be arriving at any moment,’ said Owen, consulting his watch.

‘Cette américaine,’ said Nuri a trifle anxiously, fearing that he was going to have to provide the entertainment on his own, ‘est-elle jolie?’

Owen had not really considered the matter. He did so now. Miss Skinner’s trim form rose up before him; but also her sharp face.

‘Une jolie laide,’ he said at last, not wishing to discourage Nuri but feeling obliged to be truthful. Ugly-pretty.

‘Ah! C’est piquant, ça!’ said Nuri, intrigued. Like all upper-class Egyptians, he habitually spoke French.

‘Elle est formidable,’ Owen warned him.

Nuri brushed the warning aside. So long as the other parts of the equation were all right, the more formidable the better, so far as he was concerned. He liked a challenge.

Owen felt a little worried. Nuri’s interests centred fairly narrowly on politics and sex and he was inclined to associate women exclusively with the latter. Owen felt that Nuri needed more briefing.

However, at this moment the servant came in to announce Miss Skinner’s arrival.

‘Chère Madame!’ said Nuri, rising to kiss her hand.

‘Mr Pasha!’ said Miss Skinner, surprised but not discomfited.

‘Call me Nuri,’ said Zeinab’s father, retaining her hand and leading her over to the divan.

Owen was glad that Paul was there. He had a feeling that things might be about to go wrong.

Fortunately, Zeinab appeared at this point, dressed as for a visit in discreet black, which owed, however, more to the fashion house than to Islamic tradition.

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at Samira’s. Her favourite niece was being circumcised and it went on for ages—’

‘Circumcised?’ Miss Skinner’s voice rose to a squeak. ‘Female circumcision?’

‘Barbaric,’ said Nuri. ‘Reduces the pleasure enormously.’

‘Miss Nuri, there are one or two things I would like to discuss—’

Paul somehow succeeded in detaching Miss Skinner from Nuri and leading her over to sit beside Zeinab, whose entrance, Owen thought, had not been entirely uncontrived.

He returned and sat down beside the disappointed Nuri.

‘What an opportunity!’ he said. ‘The very man to tell us all the Khedive’s secrets!’

‘Alas, my friend,’ said Nuri sadly, ‘I am no longer one of his intimates.’

‘Say not so! Why, only last week I was talking to Idris Bey and he said—’

‘Did he?’ said Nuri eagerly. ‘Did he now?’

At the other end of the room Miss Skinner was deep in conversation with Zeinab. Owen shuddered to think what she might be hearing. Zeinab’s knowledge of the life led by ‘ordinary’ Egyptians was sketchy but her imagination vivid.

Paul, meanwhile, had slid smoothly on to current politics and was now, thank goodness, giving Nuri the political background to Miss Skinner’s visit.

‘Antiquities? I’m sure I have some. Or can lay my hands on some if Miss Skinner wishes to buy—’

‘No, no. It’s the actual excavation she’s interested in. But also the export of such treasures from Egypt.’

‘An excellent thing. What good can they do here? Some clumsy peasant is sure to break them. Much better to sell them. If only,’ said Nuri wistfully, ‘I had an unopened pyramid or two on my estates!’

‘Miss Skinner’s position is, I think, a little different. She wishes to stop the export of antiquities from Egypt.’

‘Stop!’ cried Nuri, aghast. ‘But why should she want to do that?’

‘She feels, I believe, that Egypt’s remarkable heritage should be preserved.’

‘Oh quite,’ said Nuri. ‘Absolutely.’

He seemed, however, a little cast down.

‘But, tell me, my friend,’ he began again tentatively, ‘exactly what business is it of hers? These treasures do after all belong to us.’

‘I think she feels, mon cher Pasha, that they belong to the world.’

‘Belong to the world?’ said Nuri, stunned.

‘In the sense that they are part of the heritage of us all.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Nuri. ‘In that sense. As long as it’s in that sense. Though I still don’t see—’

There was a little silence. At the other end of the room Miss Skinner and Zeinab chattered happily away.

Nuri sniffed.

‘In any case,’ he said, ‘heritage! Pooh! That is all in the past. We must look to the future. I was saying so to the Khedive only the other day. We were discussing, as it happens, the sale of a temple, complete with colossi—’

‘I think,’ said Paul, ‘that would be the kind of thing she had in mind.’

‘The sale was to the British Museum, of course.’

‘A difficult balance of interests,’ said Paul, smiling and shaking his head. ‘Difficult for all of us.’

Nuri caught at his arm.

‘And therefore, my friend, to be approached with circumspection. You will urge that, won’t you? This could create such problems for us—’

‘A few antiquities?’

‘Not so few. Not these days. Now that the price of cotton is so low. Some of my colleagues are going in for it in a big way. Raquat Pasha was telling me that he had appointed a European agent. Sidki Narwas Pasha has a permanent arrangement with a German museum. Two or three are getting together. Even the Khedive—’

Owen listened with deepening gloom. They were all in it, the big Pashas, the Khedive, the museums. It was a national industry.

‘We rely on it,’ Nuri was saying with emphasis. ‘Absolutely rely on it. You must do something, my friend.’

Across the room Zeinab and Miss Skinner were bringing their conversation to an end.

‘Surely there is something you can do, mon cher?’ said Nuri earnestly to Paul. ‘Persuade her to take up other interests, perhaps?’

‘Well, there is the Women Question—’

‘Ah yes,’ said Nuri thoughtfully.

‘But more immediately,’ said Paul, ‘there are her archæological interests. I am taking her down to Der el Bahari at the end of this week.’

‘Are you? Are you, indeed?’

The conversation ended and the women rose together.

‘You do see now, don’t you, Pasha,’ said Paul quietly, ‘the importance of these political questions?’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Nuri. ‘Oh, quite.’

‘It would be very unfortunate if Miss Skinner were to get the wrong impression.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Nuri Pasha. ‘I know exactly how to handle Miss Skinner.’

Owen stuck his head into the bar room.

‘Trevelyan here?’

‘No,’ said someone. ‘He left this morning. He’s on his way to Der el Bahari by now.’

‘With our blessings,’ said someone else.

‘There’s a lot of money riding on it,’ said Carmichael, from Customs.

‘Why’s that?’ asked Owen, coming definitely into the room.

‘It’s that damned woman,’ said someone, Jopling, from Finance. ‘We’ve promised him free drinks for a month if he can keep her down there for a fortnight.’

‘More if he can do it for longer.’

‘It’s the end of the year,’ someone explained, ‘the financial year, that is. We’re up to our eyeballs in work reconciling everything in sight. And then this damned woman comes along, poking her nose in.’

‘I don’t mind her poking her nose in,’ said Jopling. ‘It’s having to take time off to answer her silly questions.’

‘If she’d just read the Accounts,’ said someone else, obviously also from Finance, ‘that would be fine. But she wants to go behind them, keeps asking what they mean.’

‘As if they meant anything, other than just an end-of-year story to keep everybody happy.’

‘So we promised Trevelyan he could have free drinks every evening if he’d only get her out of our hair.’

‘It’s worth it.’

‘It certainly is,’ said Owen. ‘I’d have cut myself in if I’d known. Wahid whisky-soda, min fadlak.’

He collected the whisky-soda and sat down in a corner with Jopling and Carmichael.

‘Has she been getting in your hair, too?’ asked Carmichael.

‘My God, Owen,’ said Jopling, ‘if she’s been looking at your finances—!’

‘Thank you, not yet. She’s concentrating on the whitewash boys rather than the workers. It’s the antiques export business,’ he said to Carmichael.

‘That? The export licence stuff?’

‘She can forget that,’ said Jopling. ‘The Treasury people back in Town are all Free-Traders. Now that the Liberals are back in power. They won’t hear of a licence.’

‘I don’t know where she stands on the licence business,’ said Owen. ‘From what I’ve gathered, it’s more a question of whether to allow antiques to be exported at all.’

‘She wants to ban that? Bloody hell, that would create a rumpus.’

‘It would. It is already.’

Jopling regarded him curiously.

‘How do you come to be involved? It’s not really your line, is it?’ Like many people, he was uncertain exactly what was the Mamur Zapt’s line. ‘More Carmichael’s.’

‘Enforcement,’ said Carmichael. ‘He’s on the enforcement side.’

‘Stopping the smuggling? Blimey, you’ve got a job on! Good luck, mate!’

He drained his glass. Carmichael ordered another round.

‘That’s not the only thing,’ said Owen. He told them about the incident in the Ataba.

‘Somebody tried to push her under a tram?’ said Jopling. ‘Wish I’d thought of that. Might have been cheaper than the beer.’

‘No one did anything,’ scoffed Carmichael. ‘She’s imagining things.’

‘That’s a bit like the conclusion I’m coming to,’ said Owen.

Owen heard the water-carrier before he saw him. Even in the uproar of the Ataba-el-Khadra he heard the clanging of the little brass cups. They gave out a note as clear as a bell.

And there he was, the brass cups slung round his neck in front of him, on his back a resplendent brass urn and, lower down, dangling from his waist, two black bulging water-skins.

In the richer parts of the city the water-sellers sometimes wore the old national dress; in the poorer, they dressed in rags. This one compromised, wearing shirt-style tunic on top, rags below, so that it didn’t matter when he walked into the Nile to replenish his skins.

As he moved through the crowd, slowly because of his burden, he gave the traditional cry: ‘May God compensate me!’

Owen caught his eye and the man moved towards him.

‘Compensation is at hand, brother!’ he said.

The man smiled, produced a cup, bent deftly and a cool, clear spurt of water leaped over his shoulder and into the cup without spilling a drop.

‘And there is yet more compensation if you can tell me what I seek to know.’

He took the cup and sipped it.

‘If I know, then I will tell you,’ said the man.

‘Two days ago,’ said Owen, ‘you were at this spot at this time and you were able to help a lady when she fell.’

The water-seller looked at him curiously.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I remember the lady.’

‘What else do you remember?’ asked Owen. ‘Did you see her fall?’

‘I saw her fall and I saw her hit the tram and I thought: God protect her! And I think He did, for when I got to her she was lying beside the tram, hurt, I think, but not broken.’

‘This is good water,’ said Owen. ‘Give me some more.’

The man bent again and refilled the cup.

‘She hit the tram,’ said Owen. ‘The tram did not hit her?’

The water-carrier made a gesture with his hand.

‘Are they not the same?’

‘No,’ said Owen, ‘for you speak as if the tram might not have hit her had she not herself moved.’

‘She was falling,’ said the water-carrier. ‘She fell towards the tram.’

‘And hit its side?’

‘Yes. High up. Which is fortunate, I think, as it knocked her away, so that she did not fall beneath the wheels.’

‘She must, then, have been standing close to it?’

The water-carrier nodded.

‘Yes, effendi, in the street, quite close to its path.’

‘But not actually in its path?’

‘No, not in its path.’

Owen handed the cup back.

‘You speak as if you saw all clearly,’ he said.

The water-carrier bowed his head.

‘I did see all clearly. I was standing not far from her and there was no one between us.’

‘Then perhaps,’ said Owen, ‘you can tell me how she came to fall?’

The water-carrier hesitated.

‘I should be able to,’ he said, ‘but—’

‘Did she stumble?’

‘She stumbled, yes. But that was after—’

‘Yes?’

The water-carrier hesitated for a long time and then looked Owen straight in the eye.

‘After she was pushed,’ he said.


CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_0fbfabd5-69f4-5fc4-a066-7e4718610d40)

‘Hamidullah,’ said Owen, ‘this is a big thing that you have said.’

He had taken the water-carrier over to the pavement by the arabeah stand and they were sitting down on the kerb. A yard or two away the cab-horses munched the green fodder spread for them in the gutter.

‘I know,’ said Hamidullah, ‘and it was not said lightly.’

‘Then say it again.’

‘She was pushed,’ said Hamidullah. ‘I saw it with my own eyes.’

‘Tell me what you saw.’

‘I saw her coming my way. And I said: “Hamidullah, that lady is not for you. She will not want your water.” For she was a splendid lady and had a mighty hat. I kept my eye on her, though, for she was coming in my direction and I did not wish to brush against her with my bags lest her fine dress be besmirched. And as she came towards me—’

The water-carrier stopped and looked bewildered.

‘What as she came towards you?’

The water-carrier hesitated.

‘I would not say it if I had not seen it. A hand reached out and thrust at her.’

‘Where did it touch her?’

Hamidullah reached up under his urn and touched himself in the small of the back.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Right here. I was amazed. I could not believe my eyes.’

‘It was a heavy push?’

‘Effendi, it must have been a heavy push to make her fall like that. One moment she was walking along mightily. Like this.’ This water-carrier stuck his nose in the air and mimicked marching. ‘The next, she had fallen like this.’

The water-carrier sprawled along the pavement.

‘It was not then, oh, a little push such as one gives when one is impatient and someone is in the way?’

‘Oh no, effendi. One should not give a push, even a little one, for that is lacking in courtesy. But this was not a little push. It was … I stood amazed!’

‘You see, Hamidullah, if it was not a little push, such as one might give in passing if one is lacking in courtesy, but a big push, then someone must have meant to injure the lady.’

‘Well, yes, effendi. That is why I stood amazed. For this was not—not discourtesy, effendi, this was—well, wrong!’

Hamidullah looked at him wide-eyed, still shocked.

Over his shoulder Owen could hear the horses munching and there, its head swaying incongruously above the roofs of the arabeahs, a camel was approaching with another load of forage.

Owen restrained an urge to pat the water-carrier.

‘It was wrong, Hamidullah,’ he said solemnly, ‘and therefore I have one more thing to ask you. You saw the hand; did you see the man?’

‘No, effendi.’

‘You saw the hand,’ said Owen. ‘Did you not see to whom it belonged?’

‘There were people standing. The lady stepped out to go round them. And then, as I watched, a hand reached out from among the people and gave her a push, a fierce push, as she went past. I saw only the hand.’

‘No face, no clothes?’

Hamidullah shook his head.

‘There were people in the way. I saw only the hand.’

‘The hand must have been attached to an arm; tell me about the arm.’

‘I—I do not remember.’

‘How was it clothed? In a sleeve like mine or a sleeve like yours?’

‘Like mine, effendi.’

‘The colour?’

‘I do not remember.’

‘Blue? White?’

Hamidullah hesitated.

‘Blue, I think, effendi.’

‘A fellah’s?’

‘I—I think so, effendi. Effendi, I am sorry. I did not see. It all happened so quickly.’

Owen could get no more out of him. A hand in the crowd he had seen: but that had been all he had seen.

‘And that’s not enough,’ said Garvin, the Commandant of the Cairo Police.

‘Enough to constitute an assault, surely,’ objected McPhee, the Deputy Commandant.

They were sitting in McPhee’s office. Owen had gone on to see him the moment he got back to the Bab-el-Khalk and McPhee, who took seriously any attack on a European, had asked Garvin to come in and join them.

‘Technically, perhaps,’ said Garvin. ‘But doesn’t it depend on the severity of the push?’

‘It was a violent push,’ said Owen. ‘Both Miss Skinner and Hamidullah said so.’

‘A well-to-do lady, genteel, in Cairo for the first time? Not used to Cairo crowds? Any push would probably seem violent to her.’

‘Hamidullah thought so too.’

‘Well,’ said Garvin, who had been twenty years in Egypt and knew his Cairenes, particularly the poorer ones, ‘isn’t the same likely to be true of him? Any push, given that it was to a Sitt, would seem violent to them.’

‘It was violent enough to make her fall over,’ Owen pointed out.

‘She was pushed, and she fell over. The two don’t have to be connected. Maybe she was just caught off balance.’

‘The tram is what bothers me,’ said McPhee.

‘Nothing to do with it. It just happened to be passing at the time. That’s all.’

McPhee was unconvinced.

‘I’m not happy about it,’ he said. ‘Egyptians are not like that. They don’t go round pushing people. They’re like Hamidullah. They’d be shocked at anybody pushing a lady.’

‘A crowd,’ said Garvin. ‘Somebody standing in the way?’

McPhee shook his head.

‘They’d go round them.’

‘In any case,’ said Owen, ‘it wasn’t like that. Not according to Hamidullah. He says she was the one who was going round. She stepped out to pass and then a hand came out and pushed her.’

‘That’s the bit I find—’ said McPhee.

‘A hand in the crowd!’ said Garvin. ‘That’s all. That’s not much to go on, is it? Not much to ask the Parquet to build a case on.’

‘We’ve got to do something about it,’ said McPhee. ‘We can’t just leave it. If only in the interests of the lady’s future protection.’

Garvin was silent for a moment, turning things over.

‘Is that a factor, though?’

‘Of course it is!’ said McPhee. ‘Really—!’

‘Yes, but is it?’ Garvin insisted. He turned to Owen. ‘How long did you say she’d been in the country?’

‘Ten days.’

‘Hardly long enough to earn yourself an enemy, is it? And she’s not likely to have brought one with her!’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m just wondering whether the attack was directed against her personally.’

‘She was the one who was attacked, wasn’t she?’ said McPhee belligerently.

‘Yes, but not because she was Miss Skinner.’

‘Why, then?’

‘Because she was something else. A European—or seemed so to them. Or—how about this?—a European woman.’

‘Some fanatic?’

‘Offended because she was improperly dressed. Wasn’t wearing a veil.’

‘This is Cairo,’ Owen objected. ‘Surely they’re used to European women?’

‘Perhaps whoever pushed her was not.’

‘Or some brand of Nationalist. Offended, anyway.’

There was a little silence.

‘It has to be something like that, doesn’t it?’ asked Garvin. ‘It couldn’t really be because of anything personal to Miss Skinner. She’s not been here long enough for that.’

Owen thought about it.

‘You could be right,’ he said slowly.

‘And if I am,’ said Garvin, ‘we don’t have to worry about protecting her. It’s a one-off and won’t be repeated.’

‘It had better not be,’ said Owen. ‘Her uncle could be the next President of the United States.’

McPhee went over to the window and poured himself some water from the earthenware pot standing there to cool.

‘It mightn’t be a bad idea if someone spoke to her. Tipped her off about the veil.’

‘Owen can do that.’

‘No, I can’t. She’s not in town any longer.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Der el Bahari.’

‘Der el Bahari? All the better. She’ll be out of harm’s way there.’

But Miss Skinner would return. And when she returned she would want to know what he had done about that antiquities business. He decided to start at the Museum.

An under-keeper, harassed-looking, intercepted him at the door.

‘We’re moving the cow,’ he said.

‘Cow?’

‘You know. Of course you know.’

Owen racked his brain.

‘The Cow of Hathor,’ said the under-keeper impatiently.

The name tickled his memory.

‘Haven’t I read something about it?’

‘Eighteen months ago. The newspapers were full of it.’

‘I remember! It was found—found in some temple—’

‘Menthu Hetep.’

‘—and brought here. There was a lot of fuss about it.’

‘Rightly so,’ said the under-keeper huffily. ‘It’s one of the best things we’ve got.’

Some workmen walked backwards into the foyer pulling on ropes as if they were a tug-of-war team.

‘Steady!’ cried the under-keeper. ‘Steady!’

Behind them glided a podium on which stood a beautifully formed cow, carved out of limestone and painted reddish-brown with black spots. On its head it wore a hat.

‘A lunar disk,’ corrected the under-keeper, ‘with two feathers. It’s the normal head-dress of Hathor.’

‘I see. But what—?’

Below the head was the carved form of a man.

‘He’s the king grown up,’ said the under-keeper. ‘This is him as a boy.’

At the other end of the cow, sucking milk from its udders, was a small boy. There was an intimacy and humanity about the composition unusual in Egyptian statuary.

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said the under-keeper affectionately.

The tug-of-war team disappeared down a corridor and the cow slid after it, hotly pursued by agitated Museum officials in tarbooshes.

‘Now what was it you wanted? The Despatch Room?’

He led Owen beneath the jaws of some twenty-foot-high colossi, past a row of intimidatingly lifelike painted statues of Pharaohs and into a room in which were several half-open sarcophagi and various mummies in different degrees of undress.

The under-keeper stopped for a moment, startled, but then recovered, strode firmly across the room and moved a brightly gilt sarcophagus lid which was leaning against the wall.

‘You never know what to do with these damned things,’ he said.

Behind the lid was a door which led down some steps into a basement. Some men were bending over packing cases and a clerk was standing by with what looked like an invoice in his hand.

‘Hello, Lucas,’ said the under-keeper, ‘we’ve come to see what you do about exports.’

‘You’ve come at the right time,’ said the clerk, glancing at the invoice. ‘Would you like to do some valuing while you’re here?’

The clerk, like most of the clerks in Cairo, was a Copt and had the round and slightly flattened face of some of the statues upstairs. The Copts were the original people of Egypt; the Arabs had come later.

‘What have you got for me?’ asked the under-keeper.

Lucas indicated the packing cases.

‘How many? Three? Oh, that won’t take long.’

He bent over one of the cases and looked at the label.

‘Brownlow,’ he said, ‘Captain Brownlow. One of the boys going home on leave.’

He began to take things out of the case.

‘One set of Canopic jars, eighteenth-century, good condition, fifteen hundred piastres; one jar, large, Twenty-Third Dynasty, slightly chipped, seven hundred piastres; one kursi table, small, twelve hundred piastres; four mummy-bead necklaces—all the girlfriends, I expect, no, he could have sisters, where was I, Lucas—?’

‘Necklaces,’ said the clerk, pencil busy.

‘Necklaces, oh, say two hundred each. Six clay ushapti images, six hundred piastres, wait a minute, these look like ours—’ the Museum had an excellent Salle de Vente—‘shows he’s got good taste, anyway; ornamental scarabs, good God, how many? Say three hundred piastres—’

He went on to the next box. The clerk checked the items and entered a value for each.

‘Quick,’ said Owen.

‘It looks casual, I dare say,’ said the under-keeper defensively, ‘but when you’ve done hundreds of them and there’s nothing out of the ordinary, you can do it pretty fast.’

‘What happens when there is something out of the ordinary?’

‘I check it in the catalogues, see the latest prices. Usually there’s something fairly similar. Of course, if you get something like the Cow, what do you do? Pluck a figure out of the air, I suppose. One bust of Nefertiti, oh, a million, say? Pounds, not piastres. One mummy, Tutankhamen, two million? What am I bid for this Pyramid?’

Owen laughed. ‘It gets impossible, doesn’t it?’

‘Things like that ought to be treated differently. There ought to be a permit system or something.’

‘Yes. I’ve heard that argument.’

‘The trouble is that whatever value you put on it, they’ve only got to pay 2.5% tax.’

‘On a million … ?’

The under-keeper gave a quick, dismissive shrug.

‘Yes, but it doesn’t really work like that. If it’s something really special—like the Cow, say,—what stops it from being sold abroad is the publicity. It’s not so much publicity in the country, though we do what we can—remember all that stuff about the Cow?—it’s more what goes on outside the country. Say what you like about the Consul General, but he’s usually sensitive on such matters, especially the new one.’

‘Yes, there’s a lot of interest in our export of antiquities just now,’ said Owen with feeling.

‘All it does, though,’ said the under-keeper with equal feeling, ‘is to encourage them to by-pass the ordinary procedures. They pick up something, keep quiet about it, and smuggle it out of the country without us hearing anything about it.’

‘How do they do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the under-keeper. ‘You’ll have to talk to the Customs people at Alexandria about that.’

The workmen were busy repacking the cases. As each one was finished, a senior workman came forward and nailed the lid back on. The clerk examined it carefully and then applied a seal.

‘We do what we can,’ said the under-keeper.

‘What happens after this?’

‘The case gets taken away and sent to Alexandria. One copy of our valuation goes with the case. Another is sent to the Mudir of Customs at Alexandria. We keep a third.’

‘So a copy travels with the case?’

‘Yes, and is matched up against the one we send direct to the Mudir.’

‘What happens if there is no valuation statement?’

‘You’d better ask the Mudir.’

On the way out they went by a different route so that the under-keeper could check that the Cow was safely in position.

‘One of our most popular exhibits,’ said the under-keeper fondly.

Owen lingered to look.

‘Nice, isn’t it? One of the best things we’ve ever had from Der el Bahari.’

‘Why don’t we got to Alexandria for a couple of days?’ suggested Owen.

‘What for?’ asked Zeinab.

‘The sea air. Escape from the heat.’

‘Half of Cairo will be doing that,’ said Zeinab. ‘Not me.’

‘Oh, come on. I thought I’d take a look at the Customs arrangements down there.’

‘Customs arrangements?’ said Zeinab incredulously. ‘Well, that does sound tempting!’

‘We could,’ said Owen, who had anticipated this response and done his homework, ‘go to the Zizinia in the evening. They’re doing I Maestri Cantori di Norimberga, which we’ve not seen yet. And we might be able to fit in La Bohème as well.’

‘That’s different,’ said Zeinab.

And so two mornings later Owen arrived at the office of the Directeur Local des Douanes d’Alexandrie.

‘But, my dear fellow,’ cried the Mudir of Customs, ‘why did you not come on a donkey?’

Why not, indeed? To get to the Customs House he had been obliged to walk along nearly two miles of quays. The quays were paved and the stone was so hot that even with shoes on Owen stepped gingerly. The sea to his left reflected the sunlight so dazzlingly that he was almost blinded; and immediately to his right had rumbled an almost continuous train of mule carts which threw up such a cloud of dust that by the time he arrived at the Customs House his tarboosh was quite white.

The Mudir tut-tutted and wiped him down and ordered a lemonade.

‘Now, my dear chap,’ he said, ‘what is it this time? Hashish, guns or dirty postcards?’

‘Antiquities.’

‘Antiquities?’ The Mudir was surprised. ‘But they’re straightforward. Relatively!’ he added hurriedly.

‘All the same …’

The Mudir led him into a long shed. There was a large door at one end, beyond which Owen could see a queue of waiting vehicles.

‘Goods Arrival,’ said the Mudir.

Porters were bringing packing cases in through the door in a steady stream. They carried the cases high up on their shoulders, one man to a case, irrespective, it seemed, of the dimensions of the case. As each one came through the door, an official seized him, turned him round, read the label on the case and directed him to one or other part of the shed.

Sometimes the porters came clutching documents in their hands. Usually, however, the paperwork was handled separately by an effendi, be-suited and be-tarbooshed, who fussed around chivvying the porters and generally taking responsibility for the consignment.

‘They’re the Agency people,’ said the Mudir. ‘We get to know them quite well.’

‘What do they do?’ asked Owen.

‘Well, suppose you had brought some antiquities and you wanted to send them back to England: you could do it yourself or you could ask an Agency to handle it for you. Most people use an Agency. It saves a lot of work. You see, if it’s antiquities you have to send them to the Museum to be valued—’

‘Yes,’ said Owen. ‘I know about that.’

‘You do? Well, you can see it’s much simpler if an Agency does it all for you. They pick up the antiquities, pack them, send them to the Museum, collect them, despatch them to Alexandria and see them through the Customs here. Much simpler.’




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