A Dead Man in Athens (5 page)

The Second Secretary stopped.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘in the Balkans
everything
is political.’

At lunch he found himself sitting opposite another Englishman, who had, apparently, arrived in Athens only a few weeks before. His name was Stevens and he was an engineer.

‘Aeroplanes,’ he said to Seymour.

‘Ah, yes. The new Bl´eriot machines. I saw two of them yesterday.’

‘Bl´eriot machines?’ said the First Secretary. ‘I wouldn’t have thought there was enough work to keep you going, Mr Stevens.’

‘The Government’s ordering three,’ said Stevens, ‘and it’ll be my job to service them. I’ll have to build up servicing facilities. Because there could be more.’

‘More?’ said the First Secretary. ‘What on earth would they want more for?’

‘The war,’ said Stevens. ‘If it comes.’

The First Secretary looked at his plate.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘The war.’

‘But I still don’t see –’ said the Second Secretary. ‘I mean – what
use
would they be?’

Stevens put down his knife and fork.

‘What
use
would they be?’ he said incredulously. ‘Why, they would make all the difference. Look, suppose you’ve got mountains, right? As you have in Greece. Lots of them. And there’s an army on one side of the mountain and an army on the other. The one that’s got Bl´eriots would be able to know what the other was doing.’

‘Yes, but you could send someone to take a look, couldn’t you?’

‘In any case, Mr Stevens,’ said the First Secretary, smiling, ‘this is Greece. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing.’

‘Yes, but you’d know it much more quickly,’ said Stevens. ‘And if you sent someone on foot, the army could have moved by the time they get back and reported.’

‘Armies have managed all right so far,’ said the Second Secretary.

‘But
have
they managed all right? This would
improve
things. The generals would have more information.’

‘Would that improve things?’

‘And in any case,’ said Stevens earnestly, ‘it’s not just information. You could drop things.’

‘Bricks and things, you mean? But wouldn’t that be dangerous? You might hit someone –’

‘Bombs,’ said Stevens.

‘Bombs!’ said the First Secretary, aghast.

‘I don’t think that’s very sporting,’ said the Second Secretary.

‘It’s the way it’s going to be,’ said Stevens.

‘But that’s – that’s terrible! It would transform –’

‘Exactly,’ said Stevens, picking up his knife and fork again and plying them with relish.

‘Have you come across a Miss Metaxas?’ asked Seymour, some time later. ‘I gather she’s interested in – what was it that you called it? – servicing Bl´eriot machines.’

‘Oh, yes. But that’s the private machines. I’ve seen her with the mechanics. You don’t often see a woman – but she’s quite good. For a woman, I mean.’

‘She works as a
mechanic
?’ said the First Secretary.

‘That’s right, yes,’ said Stevens. ‘On the private machines. There are three of them. That’s a lot, you know. For a place like Athens. I’ve met the people who fly them, too. They’re amateurs, of course. But good. They could come in handy if it really does get to war. They’d need training, of course, but with experience, they could be really something. There’s a lot of dash about them.’

‘We’re trying to see that it doesn’t get to war,’ said the First Secretary.

Stevens shrugged. ‘Well, good luck. But from what I can see, over at the army base where I’ve got my workshop, they’re taking it for granted.’ He looked at the First Secretary. ‘You know, you want to get in on this.’

‘The last thing I have in mind!’ said the First Secretary.

‘No, no, from the country’s point of view. England . . . I mean. There’s money in it. For British industry, I mean. And it would bring the industry on. A few big contracts would do wonders. And I could help, you know. I’m well placed. I could push things our way. You want to think about it.’

Seymour walked back to the Sultan’s residence through a deserted Athens. Everyone was indoors retreating from the heat. In the main square the tables were empty and the cabs had come to a halt. Their drivers were sleeping inside their cabs or else were stretched out in the shade between the wheels. The sunlight was blinding on the new white marble of the buildings. In the drive leading up to the house the guards were once more asleep. They barely looked up at him as he passed.

He had half expected to find the Acting-Vizier’s assistant asleep too but he appeared at once.

‘Certainly!’ he said, and led Seymour to the dark room with the cushions that he had been in before, which obviously served as a reception room. ‘What is it that you would like to know?’

‘I would like you to tell me about the harem – how it is organized, who runs it, who controls access to it, that sort of thing.’

‘Well, of course, it is a very much reduced harem compared with what it was in Istanbul. In Istanbul there were over a hundred wives and many concubines as well. And many servants. The harem spread over several buildings. But when His Highness was . . . obliged to leave he was not able to bring them all with him. The space . . .’

He frowned.

‘When we were in Salonica we had more space. That was where we were moved to first. It is, in fact, in Ottoman territory and the Sultan was treated with proper respect. Even though . . . circumstances had changed.’

‘Why did he move to Athens?’

‘He was worried about his health. The move was not – is not – intended to be anything other than temporary. There are better medical facilities here. And he felt . . . nervous about being treated in Salonica.’

‘I see. And what – in general terms, if you like – was the nature of his problem?’

The assistant hesitated.

‘It was hard to establish. That, roughly, was why we came to Athens.’

‘And then the cat died –’

‘Which naturally gave a focus to his worries.’

‘Now, of course, the place the cat died was the harem.’

‘Yes. You were asking me how it was organized. There are six royal wives – here, that is – each of whom has her own room. It was difficult to find a house with a sufficient number of rooms. The rooms had to be exactly equal, you see, or it would cause trouble. We had to have alterations made. For example, the Sultan’s own apartments are actually outside the harem and we had to have a communicating door put in –’

‘Doesn’t that create a security problem? I understood that access to the harem was strictly controlled?’

‘It is. The communicating door is kept locked and only the Sultan has a key.’

‘I see. And the six rooms where the wives are, are they kept locked too?’

‘Only when the Sultan is inside. Otherwise they are kept not just unlocked but open.’

‘Open?’

‘The doors are always kept open. There is a degree of . . . what shall I say, invigilation in the harem.’

‘And that is the function of the eunuchs?’

‘Largely, yes.’

‘And they report to . . .?’

‘Abd-es-Salaam. The Acting-Vizier.’

‘Is there a Chief Eunuch?’

The Vizier’s assistant hesitated.

‘Ali is the senior eunuch. But there is not yet a Chief Eunuch as there was in Istanbul. The situation is . . . rather fluid. In Istanbul everything to do with the harem was handled by the senior royal wife and the Chief Eunuch. But the senior wife died just before the . . . changes, and the Chief Eunuch was . . .’

‘Deposed?’

‘Translated to higher things. In Paradise. So the structure of the harem is somewhat undetermined. Especially with respect to the senior royal wife.’

‘And who is the senior royal wife?’

‘That is the principal thing undetermined. There are two claimants.’

‘Samira and Irina?’

‘That is right, yes. Normally there is no problem about deciding who is the senior. It is the one who is mother of the Sultan’s heir. But the mothers have all been left behind in Istanbul and none of the wives here is yet a mother.

’ ‘So Samira and Irina are fighting it out?’

‘The question is not yet resolved,’ said the Vizier’s assistant evasively.

Afterwards Seymour went down to the kitchens. He found the kitchen servants just getting up from their siesta. They came crawling out from under the tables and under the counters, from behind the strings of onions, peppers, aubergines and garlic that hung from hooks in the ceiling making little private alcoves where people could rest in peace, and from unlikely nooks such as below the sinks. The senior servant was not among them. He was a privileged man and went home to his wife for a couple of hours after lunch. Seymour was pleased. It meant the men might talk more freely.

‘I’m glad I didn’t come earlier,’ said Seymour apologetically. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to disturb you.’

‘You haven’t disturbed us,’ they said amicably.

‘And I don’t want to get in your way if you’re busy.’

‘Oh, we’re not busy,’ one of them assured him, putting a large black kettle on the stove.

‘It’s a slack time for us until we start on the evening meal,’ another explained: which was what he had counted on.

‘I expect you need a bit of that,’ said Seymour.

‘We do, we do.’

‘I mean, you’ve got to feed the whole household: the Vizier, the servants, the harem, the Sultan himself, I expect.’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s a lot of food. And then how do you get it round to them? There must be a lot of coming and going. It’ll be like a madhouse here at certain times of the day.’

‘It is at
all
times of the day,’ said someone, grinning.

‘What do they do? Send servants to collect it?’

‘Some of them do.’

‘The harem would have to, wouldn’t it? I mean, you couldn’t have any old servant going there.’

‘No, no.’

‘They’d have to be women, for a start.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do they send the maids along? The ones who wait on the wives?’

‘Heavens, no! They wouldn’t dirty their hands with anything like that. No, there’s an old servant, Amina, her name is, who takes the food.’

‘Just the one servant?’

‘Well, call it one and a half. She’s got a girl, Chloe, who helps her.’

‘Does all the work,’ said someone. ‘Amina mostly sits on her ass.’

‘I wonder that they brought her.’

‘Had to. She’s been with the harem for a long time and knows too much. They didn’t want to leave her behind in case she started talking to people.’

‘Which she is prone to do.’

Seymour laughed.

‘And there’d be plenty to tell, I expect,’ he said.

‘There would!’

‘They get up to it, do they?’

‘They’d like to. But it’s not so easy. Abd-es-Salaam keeps an eye on them. And then there are those eunuchs, with nothing to do except watch over the women.’

‘But I’ll bet they’d like to,’ said Seymour. ‘Locked up in there.’

‘Well, there you are.’

‘Ever tried it yourselves?’

‘What, with the wives? Not a chance!’

‘Too risky. He’d have your balls off in a flash.’

‘All right, not the wives, then. But how about the slave girls?’

‘You might get somewhere with them,’ the man conceded. ‘But it wouldn’t be easy. Not with the eunuchs watching. And the wives would be looking out for it, too. They wouldn’t want them to be having something that they were not.’

‘Hard to get at them, is it?’

‘You could say that.’

‘There’s easier stuff around,’ said someone else.

As Seymour left the kitchen, the Vizier’s assistant fell in beside him. Invigilation was not confined to the harem, he realized.

‘You have been checking the milk again?’

‘I think the milk was pure when it arrived here,’ said Seymour. ‘Whatever was added, was added either in the kitchen or in the harem.’

The Vizier’s assistant nodded.

‘It is a pity that that girl didn’t taste it, as she was supposed to.’

‘Quite a lot was added to the milk,’ said Seymour, ‘apart from the poison. If the doctors in the laboratory are right.’

‘Yes?’

‘Marzipan. Or something like it. To disguise the taste. And alcohol.’

‘Alcohol!’

‘To befuddle the cat.’

The Vizier’s assistant was silent for a moment, thinking.

‘Wouldn’t the alcohol take time to work?’

‘It would.’

‘And doesn’t that mean that it was given to the cat earlier? Before the poison?’

‘It might.’

The young man thought.

‘And wouldn’t that mean that it was administered in the harem? Not the kitchen? And before the milk was fetched?’

‘There is another question,’ said Seymour.

‘Yes?’

‘It applies to both the alcohol and the poison. If they were administered in the harem, how did they get into the harem? With all the . . . invigilation.’

Seymour had wanted to speak to Amina, the servant who delivered the food to the harem, but she was nowhere to be found. The Vizier’s assistant, whose name, he said, was Orhan Eser, conducted a search for her, with growing exasperation.

‘Amina is becoming impossible!’ he said.

He hauled out a terrified little girl, who, it appeared, helped Amina to deliver the food.

‘Where is Amina?’ he demanded.

The little girl was tongue-tied.

‘Is she sleeping?’

The little girl managed to nod.

‘She does a lot of sleeping these days,’ she whispered.

‘And where is she likely to be sleeping?’

‘She will beat me if I tell,’ said the little girl.

‘And I will certainly beat you if you don’t tell!’

The little girl looked at him with horrified eyes.

‘Come, where is she?’

‘She sometimes sleeps in the broom cupboard.’

‘Show me!’

But Amina was not there.

If the Vizier’s assistant had not been a devout Muslim, he would have sworn.

‘Leave it till tomorrow,’ said Seymour, ‘and let me have a word with her then.’

Chapter Four

The next morning when Seymour arrived, Amina was waiting for him, with the Vizier’s assistant standing grimly over her. Harem rules did not apply to her but the general Muslim rule that a woman should speak to a man only in the presence of a male relative did. Orhan Eser, however, was having no nonsense this time. He would do, he said firmly: and Seymour suspected that enough conversation had gone on before he arrived for Amina not to demur. She stood meekly before them, a small, bent figure dressed entirely in black, with a headdress completely concealing her face and falling right down to her waist.

Orhan Eser volunteered, too, to interpret, and Seymour was not unhappy about this. They spoke in Turkish and Seymour had enough Turkish to be able to monitor the conversation a little: although he did not tell Orhan Eser this.

‘It’s about the cat,’ Orhan Eser said to Amina.

‘I didn’t do it!’

‘No one’s saying that you did. We just want to know some things.’

‘I don’t know anything about it!’

‘The things are general,’ said Orhan Eser.

‘You deliver the food to the harem?’

‘She delivers the food to the harem,’ said Orhan Eser.

‘And do you go right into the harem?’ Definitely not.

‘You give it to the eunuchs at the door?’

A nod of the head.

‘Always to the eunuchs? Do you ever give it directly to the waiting ladies?’

Never.

‘And does she ever speak to them?’

Never.

‘Never?’ said Seymour sceptically.

To his credit, Orhan Eser was able to inject the scepticism, and invest it, too, with a degree of threat, which clearly made an impression.

‘Occasionally.’

‘What about?’

There was a lengthy exchange between Orhan Eser and the old woman.

‘A degree of badinage sometimes takes place,’ said Orhan Eser stiffly.

‘And what about the royal ladies? Does she ever speak with them?’

Never.

‘Never?’

Well, very occasionally.

Could she give an example?

She certainly could. At length. A couple of weeks ago the food had been cold. And the Lady Samira had come down and berated everybody: the eunuchs, the kitchen, Amina, although it was not her fault, she was merely – et cetera, et cetera.

‘So it does happen that she sometimes speaks to them?’

Not exactly.

What, then?

‘They speak to her. She would never presume –’ et cetera, et cetera.

‘And do they ever ask her to do things for them?’

Do things?

Well, like take a message for them.

Much agitation. Never, never would Amina do such a thing. She knew her place, she had always been loyal to the Sultan, served him for forty years, all of it in the harem, and no one had ever suggested –

And did things ever pass the other way? Go into the harem?

‘Gifts, say?’

Amina did not think so. His Highness no doubt lavished gifts on his favourites, but she knew nothing about that.

Or, said Seymour, medicine?

Ah, well, said Amina, suddenly growing garrulous, that was a different matter. Sometimes, occasionally, when they had a headache. Or at a certain time of the month. Or when one of the ladies was suffering from constipation. That was only reasonable, Amina herself suffered from constipation, and –

And love potions.

‘What?’ said Orhan Eser.

Love potions. Amina’s voice changed and became, if that was possible, almost a smirk.

‘But – but –’ said Orhan Eser, and Seymour was following the Turkish perfectly. ‘Who for?’

Amina, presuming on her standing as an old servant and going well beyond the bounds of permissible familiarity, gave him a nudge.

‘Why, His Highness, of course!’

‘The Sultan?’

‘To pep him up.’

‘Amina –’

‘They all do it. All the wives when they think it’s going to be their turn. Priming the pump, so to speak!’ she cackled.

‘That will do, Amina!’

‘Although they say he doesn’t need it!’

‘Enough!’

Amina went off, still cackling.

It was with some relief that Seymour was able to put his questions directly and not through an intermediary. All the eunuchs spoke French and one, even, English, although he was more at home in French and Seymour conducted the conversation in that language. They all swore that nothing passed into or out of the harem, nothing at all.

Food? Well, of course food. They had to eat, didn’t they?

What happened when the food was brought? Did they take it from Amina with their own hands?

Well, not exactly. One of them stood by the door and watched Amina give it to the maids, who distributed it around the harem. It was not for them, superior creatures as the eunuchs were, to do such menial tasks themselves. As is the way with superiors all over the world, they preferred to watch others do it. And that, in any case, was their job: to watch, and see that nothing untoward occurred.

And what happened afterwards? When the dishes were removed.

The maids placed them at the door.

And then?

The door was opened and they were taken away.

By Amina?

Not always by Amina. Usually she left it to the little girl who worked with her, Chloe, her name was. Amina, too, in her way, was a superior person and did not deign to bother herself with dirty dishes.

The door was opened, then: who by?

The eunuch on duty.

And did he have speech with Chloe?

He might let drop a word, but Chloe was really too low in the pecking order to be worth exchanging many words with.

Nevertheless, the maids? Did they ever have a chance to enter into conversation at the door?

Well, they might – he knew what women were. But the eunuch on duty wouldn’t let them talk too long, they had work to do, and the royal wives would be angry if they summoned a maid and she wasn’t immediately available.

What about the royal wives themselves? Did they ever come to the door?

No. Well, the Lady Irina had come to the door recently to complain about a crack in one of the plates. She had pointed it out to the eunuch, and the eunuch had pointed it out to Chloe, and Chloe had dissolved into tears, and the eunuch had said she was a silly girl, and the Lady Irina had got into a temper and said that it was nothing to do with Chloe, it was for the eunuch to sort out. She had spoken very intemperately to the eunuch and he had been very much hurt. He would have complained, but there was no one at the moment for him to complain to. He had mentioned it to Ali, and Ali had remonstrated with the Lady Irina, but she had told him to piss off, which was not a seemly thing for a royal wife to say, and the wives were beginning to get out of hand and His Highness should do something about it –

Okay, okay. Leave the food. Does anything else go into the harem? Medicine, for instance? He had heard that medicine sometimes passed into the harem.

Well, of course, if the doctor prescribed it. There had been a lot of doctors lately, usually to see His Highness, of course. But sometimes while they were there the royal ladies sought to take advantage of it and called them in – Into the harem?

No, no. The wife would be taken out of the harem and put in a separate room, behind a screen, and the doctor could talk to her there.

With a eunuch present?

Of course.

Seymour asked if he could have the doctors’ names. There were twelve of them.

‘Just the ones called into the harem, please.’

That reduced the list to five: an eminent Italian specialist who had since returned to Rome, an equally eminent (although this was disputed by the Greeks) specialist from Istanbul who had been visiting relatives in Salonica, and who had returned to that city, a Frenchman working in Athens, and two Greeks. The second Greek name on the list was that of Dr Metaxas.

Seymour went to see the other Greek and the Frenchman that afternoon. They had both prescribed medicines for ladies of the harem, the Frenchman a purgative, the Greek a sedative. Neither had thought their patients in any danger, or indeed, ill.

‘Nerves,’ said the Greek specialist.

‘Biliousness,’ said the Frenchman.

And the cat, said Seymour; had they been called on to prescribe anything for the cat?

They both looked at him strangely.

He had arranged to meet Samira at five o’clock. Or, rather, she had arranged to meet him.
Could
she do that? With all these restrictions on access to the harem and the ‘degree of invigilation’ that prevailed? He had assumed that the ladies of the harem were totally controlled, suppressed, supine, unable to take any initiative whatsoever. Admittedly, Samira and Irina could hardly be described as subdued but the impression he had of the others was that subjugation had drained away all capacity of initiative, leaving them inert and resigned to their lot, content to stay within the rules laid down for them.

But could the rules be bent? It seemed so, if Samira could indeed override the system. And at first it looked as if she could. Just before five Seymour was hanging around, not exactly expecting to see her but anxious not to lose the opportunity if he could, when along came Talal, the eunuch. Seymour learned later that the time of five o’clock was not casually chosen. It was when Orhan, the Vizier’s assistant, was still at his rest and supervision left to the eunuchs, who were more subject to being overborne.

He led Seymour into a small room off one of the inner corridors, dark – lit by only a single, beautiful, old oil lamp – and with rich carpets on the walls and soft cushions on the floor. On one of these the Lady Samira was sitting impatiently.

‘At last we are alone!’ she said. ‘Apart from Talal, Ali and Hassan.’

‘That was the condition,’ murmured Talal imperturbably.

‘And we are to remain at arm’s length.’

‘
Two
arms’ length!’

‘Well, of course, I may define that in a way very different from yours.’

‘We are going by my definition,’ said Talal.

‘Perhaps we can relax the conditions at future meetings,’ said Samira. ‘Because there will have to be a lot of meetings if I am going to tell Mr Seymour all the things that I find out. Because I shall be working hard on this, as I really want to find out who killed that rotten cat, especially if it was Irina.’

‘You have ten minutes, My Lady Samira.’

‘Thank you, Talal. I know I can count on you to remind me of anything that is unpleasant. But you are right, Talal: time is pressing, and Mr Seymour waits.’

‘I am, naturally, very interested to hear what you have to tell me, Lady Samira.’

‘I am sure you are. But let us, for the moment, get back to the cat. The key thing, it seems to me, is who was free and unobserved between the moment when Miriam left the bowl and the moment some time later when she went back to find the cat already stricken. We can narrow it down a little. The poison would have taken some time to work so it was probably put in the milk very soon after Miriam left. Furthermore, the cat was not waiting greedily in the room when Miriam put down the bowl, as it normally is, but slumped on a cushion in the neighbouring room, where Irina was stuffing it with chocolates.’

‘My Lady Samira, are you sure about this? Because it does not quite correspond to what the Lady Irina told me.

’ ‘Look, if you are expecting any correspondence between what the Lady Irina tells you and the truth, then you are totally misguided.’

‘But are you certain that she was in the adjoining room, and with the cat?’

‘Certainly, Zenobia saw her.’

‘And she was feeding the cat sweets?’

‘Stuffing the brute.’

‘With chocolates, did you say?’

‘She had gone through boxes of them.’

‘And . . . did any of the chocolates contain marzipan?

’ ‘Marzipan?’

‘Could you check that for me?’

‘I certainly could.’

‘Lady Samira,’ interposed Talal, ‘would you kindly observe the “arm’s length” condition.’

‘I am.’

‘You’re not. You’ve moved closer.’

‘That is so that Mr Seymour can
hear
.’

‘He can hear perfectly well.’

‘He can’t. Can you, Mr Seymour?’

‘What? Excuse me –’

‘You see? He can’t hear.’

‘That is because you’ve dropped your voice.’

‘I have a sore throat. It may be that my voice fades occasionally. So, out of courtesy to Mr Seymour, I lean close –’

‘Your ten minutes is up.’

‘Look, you can see how important Mr Seymour thinks what I have to tell him is.’

‘You can tell him next time.’

‘Talal, I am doing this for the Sultan. He is
very anxious
to find out who killed the cat. And Mr Seymour is helping him. And I am helping Mr Seymour. And you, Talal, are not helping at all.’

‘Ten minutes! Up!’

Samira got to her feet unwillingly. Then, before Talal could stop her, she walked over to Seymour and put out her hand.

‘Until we meet again,’ she breathed.

‘Lady Samira, this is indecent!’

As Seymour was walking along Stadion Street he heard himself hailed from a passing carriage. It was Aphrodite Metaxas. The carriage pulled into the side of the road beside him. It was one of the little, open, four-seater ones, with, for some reason which he was never able to establish, the British coat of arms painted on the doors.

‘Are you going our way?’

‘I’m going to Constitution Square.’

‘Get in.’

He climbed up and sat down beside her.

‘You know about these carriages? They’re like taxis. You pay ten lepta a seat. You only find them in Stadion Street, but they’re handy for me coming from the School of Medicine.’

‘You’ve been in the lab this afternoon, have you? Not working on the Bl´eriot?’

‘Yes, I’m there most afternoons, actually. I only told my father I was in the workshop so as to provoke him.’

‘And are you really thinking of changing faculty?’

‘Not really. There’s not much working on actual engines in the engineering faculty of Athens University, I can tell you! And my father would be so disappointed. He’s set his heart on me becoming a doctor. Why, I ask him? Doctors are two-a-penny in Athens. Listen, he says, you’ve got to think of your future. What happens after I am gone? Oh, I’ll marry some rich man, I say. You’ll be lucky, he says: rich men can afford to be discriminating. Anyway, I say, there’ll be more money in becoming a Bl´eriot mechanic than in becoming a doctor. They’re in much shorter supply. And they’ll be greatly in demand when the war comes and we get more machines. No, they won’t, he says, not after the machines have crashed. Which they’re pretty likely to do if you’re the one who is servicing them.’