The Khamsin Curse (27 page)

The Countess could relate to
that blunt confession. Her experience was almost identical. Jim
took her by the hand and she went willingly. He seemed to know
where he was going too. They took shelter in a temple that was
fortunately half-roofed. The roar of the wind was deafening and she
was badly shaken after what had already taken place. She didn’t
want to be on her own. She was glad to be in the arms of someone
strong, someone who had a gun and who would not hesitate to use
it.

“Colonel Moran stayed with you
all night?”

The fan fluttered faster. “You
think he left me alone in that place while he went and shot Mr Lee
and Professor Mallisham? Am I being asked to provide him with an
alibi? Is that the term? Well, let me say, if he had gone anywhere
I would have gone with him. I was terrified of being left
alone.”

“You might have fallen
asleep.”

She shook her head adamantly.
“No, no, I might have dozed off but only for a few minutes at a
time. The wind kept me awake. And my nerves were shot to pieces. He
stayed by my side. I could feel him there.”

“All night?”

“Yes, all night. I know what
you’re thinking. Everyone else will think the same thing. But I
don’t know what I would have done without him. Everyone else seemed
to have someone to look out for them or someone to look after. I
was on my own. I was grateful to have someone too. Was Mr Lee shot?
Was Professor Mallisham shot? Is that how they died?”

“No, that’s not how they
died.”

“But you seem to think Colonel
Moran killed them?”

“When someone is murdered it is
always wise to establish where everyone else was. I just want to
establish that Colonel Moran wasn’t wandering around the
island.”

“Oh, I see, well, he couldn’t
have killed them. Not if they died during the night. He was with
me. I will swear to that in a court of law even if reflects badly
on me and ruins my chances of decent employment. I understand he
has an unsavoury reputation but you have to remember it was
Professor Mallisham who hired him in the first place, and I think
he hired him
because
of that reputation. When Colonel Moran
started shooting those crocodiles I think everyone was thankful to
have him there. I think if you are looking for whoever killed Mr
Lee and Professor Mallisham then you need to look for whoever
released those crocodiles.”

Lorna Baxter made sense. It was
probably a group of native Egyptians, perhaps even men who had
spent time in Afghanistan fighting the British. They were most
likely working as servants the night of the party and when the
others departed they stayed behind.

As the Countess stood up to go,
the scarves hanging on the back of the chair slipped to the floor,
creating silky puddles on the sandy-coloured kilim – daffodil and
fuchsia on puce! “Thank you for being so honest. I will be happy to
write you a reference when it comes time for you to seek a new
position. I can think of several acquaintances who may be in need
of a personal secretary who is willing to travel.”

Lorna Baxter smiled gratefully.
“Thank you again for the scarves. You won’t mention…”

“No, I won’t mention the other
purchases.” She turned to go then whirled back. “You hired the
servants for the party – where did you get them from? Were they
from a local village? Or did you hire them in Cairo?”

“Well, that was the problem. I
wasn’t sure who to hire so I spoke to the three British engineers
one night after dinner. They recommended I use the same family
company who supply provisions to the construction camp. They said
the men would be happy for the extra work if it paid well, and the
women could serve the food. I told them money wasn’t an object.
They promised to speak to their foreman. He took care of it all. A
man by the name of Sharif.”

17

“Sharif organized the servants
for the night of the party!”

Excited by what she had
discovered, the Countess sought out Dr Watson without delay. He was
dozing on a deck chair, the Panama hat over his face to avoid
striking up a conversation with anyone who was so inclined. He
spoke through his hat.

“You think the foreman might
have had something to do with organizing those crocodiles? Is that
what you’re saying?”

“Not only the crocodiles, but
the murder of Lee and Mallisham! He might even be responsible for
the sabotage at the dam! He might be responsible for the secret
messages too!”

Dr Watson removed his hat from
his face. The expression was dour and the tone paternalistic. “Oh,
really, now, you cannot possible link him to that as well. The
sabotage I readily concede. The death of Lee and Mallisham I
concede reluctantly. But those two incidents bear no relation to
what we were asked to look into. As usual we have allowed ourselves
to get side-tracked. You just want a neat finish to everything.
Well, this isn’t a short story in
The Strand Magazine
.
Things like that don’t happen in real life. Real life is more
complicated.”

She was not deterred. “The
sabotage of the dam can affect the outcome of the war. Finances for
one can affect the finances for the other. And let’s not forget
someone tried to kill the advocate for the financier of the dam –
Mr Longshanks. Remember when Herr Graf laughed and said Ibn-the-Mad
wouldn’t be the first person to feign madness? Well, what if Sharif
is feigning
helpfulness
? As foreman, he is in the thick of
all the action and in contact with a vast network of men. Almost
everything that has happened can probably be linked back to him:
Sabotage of the dam, servants for the party, sneaking men onto the
island to commit murder, crocodiles to disrupt and unnerve us,
preserving the sacredness of the island, and why not then
intercepting military secrets and passing secret messages to the
enemy?”

“Intercepting who? Passing on
to whom? It’s all very well having a theory but there has to be a
basis for it.”

“Hayter.”

“What?”

“Colonel Hayter is in a
position to hear military talk or see confidential messages about
troop movements. For example, he knows that an infantry regiment of
Irish Guards is heading to Khartoum.”

“That’s not a secret. Anyone
with a pair of eyes can see that.”

“Yes, granted, but he might
then chat to Jim, I mean Colonel Moriarty, and pick up extra
information that is confidential.”

“If
Jim
divulges
confidential information then he is a fool and not fit to be
leader.”

She noted the smug emphasis he
put on the name. “It could happen quite innocently. Hayter might
simply overhear part of a conversation. It could happen nightly at
The Mena House. The three British engineers might be having a late
night drink and talk about some news they heard from the front.”
She looked over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t about to
have company and lowered her voice. “I just had another thought
about Ibn-the-Mad. What if Colonel Hayter is playing at being
dippy? If he was the man passing secrets to the enemy, what better
cover than as a complete ditherer?”

Dr Watson snapped upright and
the deck chair gave a dangerous groan. “It’s funny you should say
that. On the morning after the double murder I could have sworn I
saw him pour his gin and tonic into a potted palm in the
saloon.”

“Hmm, being a double agent
would explain why he keeps spilling his drinks. The more he spills,
the less he has to consume. So he may play-act the drunk but still
be quite sober.”

Dr Watson had been determined
to pin the murders on Moran but she put forward a convincing
argument. Nevertheless, he was unwilling to let go of his prime
suspect. “Do you think Hayter, presuming it is him, could be
working in tandem with Moran?”

She shook her head without even
turning the question over once, let alone twice. “No, I came
straight to you after speaking to Lorna Baxter. She will swear in a
court of law that Moran did not leave her side during the night, so
he couldn’t have committed the murders. And Gideon told me several
times that British agents had been watching Moran, and he had not
made contact with anyone suspicious. By the way, I was wrong about
Mrs Baxter. Some of her behaviour may be on the dubious side of
moral but it is above suspicion.”

“What do you mean by:
dubious side of moral
?”

The Countess did not like to
betray a confidence and there was no way Mrs Baxter’s personal use
of Mr Lee’s money had anything to do with their investigation, so
she tried to hedge. “I suspected the kilim rug or that papyrus
scroll you saw her pick up in Ali Pasha’s shop might be linked to
the secret codes but she was buying them for herself.”

“Buying them for herself? How
could she afford that?”

“Mr Lee was paying for
them.”

“Well, what’s so dubious about
that?”

“He didn’t know she was buying
them.”

“She was spending his money
without his knowledge?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not dubious, that’s
illegal.”

“Let me just say in her defence
that Mr Lee was a difficult employer who took liberties. She felt
entitled to some recompense.”

Dr Watson was a man who had
been brought up to believe that
moral
and
legal
were
synonyms, but the world was changing more rapidly than he liked.
The earth beneath his feet was a morass of slippery definitions and
the authority figures who inhabited the new world were not
necessarily to be trusted. It was very disheartening.

Worse still, if it turned out
that Colonel Moran was innocent of wrongdoing, and Colonel Hayter
guilty, then he really needed to go into retirement. His thinking
was ‘old hat’.

The twentieth century had left
him behind.

Countess Volodymyrovna decided
to pay Hypatia Lee a visit. There was one question she wanted an
answer to and only Miss Lee could supply it. She knocked quietly
and entered gingerly, signalling for the maid to leave them for the
time being. The maid looked immensely grateful as she slipped out
the door with a tray and several empty glasses.

“Please accept my deepest
sympathy,” said the Countess, softly and sincerely, mindful that
Miss Lee had not only lost her father, but her lover as well. “Is
there anything I can bring you? A small brandy? A glass of
lemonade?”

Miss Lee had cried herself out
and was lying on her pillow with an arm over her face. “No,” she
said sniffily, sitting up and flicking back her blonde hair. “If I
see another glass of lemonade I shall scream. Would you mind
passing me that mirror on the dressing-table.”

“The silver hand-mirror?”

“Yes. Do you know where Mr
Longshanks went? Philomena said he went off in a felucca shortly
after those two loud explosions. Would you mind passing me the
silver hair brush.”

Miss Lee was obviously not as
fragile as she looked. She began to give her tangled locks a
vigorous rake.

“He went to the mainland. He is
going to speak to the British surgeon at the construction site
about performing a post mortem.”

“Post mortem? Won’t the surgeon
need my permission for that?”

“No, the Acting High
Commissioner can give permission where the cause of death may be
uncertain.”

“Uncertain? I thought Daddy and
Max died from the windstorm. I thought they must have choked to
death on all that sand.” She paused in her raking and looked
directly at the Countess.

“I don’t think it was sand.
That’s why a post mortem is necessary.”

“Do my eyes look puffy?”

“No, well, perhaps just a
little, but I’m sure they will look fine in no time at all.”

“Would you mind passing me my
fan. It’s next to that statuette of Ma’at. I begged them not to
leave me. Daddy and Max, that is. Pass me the French perfume
too.”

The Countess could see why the
maid was quick to disappear. She waited for Miss Lee to dab on some
perfume then returned the bottle to its exact position and noticed
some opium twists sitting in a Limoges porcelain candy dish shaped
like a seashell. “You heard voices – that’s why your father and the
professor left you last night, is that right?”

She began fanning her face to
reduce the heat and hopefully reduce the puffiness around her eyes.
“Yes, well, not quite. I didn’t hear any voices. The wind was so
loud and I was crying. Max said he heard someone calling for help.
He said he would go and check. He didn’t come back. Then Daddy said
he heard someone calling for help. He poked his head out of the
temple and called out: Is anyone there? Or something to that
effect. I begged him not to leave me. He said he’d be back in a
minute. He said he wasn’t going far. But he disappeared too.”

“It must have been frightening
for you?”

“Frightening? You have no idea
how terrified I was! Especially after all those crocodiles!” She
gave a shudder and the fan became jerky. “It was like a nightmare!
Who would do such a wicked thing! And on my birthday!” She gave
another jerky shudder. “When Dr Watson appeared suddenly and
offered to escort me back to the Sekhmet, I sensed then that
something terrible had happened to Daddy and Max.”

“You didn’t hear any strange
sounds while you waited?”

She took a moment to think
while she stopped to check her reflection in the mirror and pat her
puffy face with her fingertips. “Perhaps I did, but I might have
just imagined it.”

“Do you think your father and
the professor might have imagined the cries for help?”

“No,” she said firmly, without
hesitation.

The Countess decided to press
the point. “But the wind was roaring and whistling. It could have
sounded like a cry for help.”

She shook her head and began
fanning her face again. “But they both heard it, you see. They
looked at each other. They both looked out into the darkness and
the swirling sand and talked about who it could be. If they
imagined it, they both imagined the same thing. If someone imagines
they hear a voice calling out to them, then it is unlikely the
person who is with them would hear a voice too unless it were
actually true. What I mean is - if Max imagined it then Daddy
wouldn’t imagine the same thing. He might imagine something but it
wouldn’t be the same something. It would be a different something.
Will Mr Longshanks be returning in time for dinner, do you
think?”