The Falcon at the Portal: An Amelia Peabody Mystery (13 page)

"Why in heaven's name would they—any of them—do such a thing?" Emerson exploded. He caught my eye. "All right, Peabody, all right. We'll leave motive aside for the moment. Who else?"

"Karl von Bork. Though ordinarily I would dispute the assumption that husband and wife should be regarded as a single entity, I fear that Karl and Mary fall into that category. She was an artist, and a good one, when he, and we, first met her. It should be added," I added, "that they are solely dependent on Karl's earnings and that they have several young children. Children are a considerable expense, what with one thing and another, and a man who would not stoop to crime on his own account might do so in order to provide for those he loves."

"As von Bork did once before," said Emerson, looking grave. "Curse it, Peabody, I must confess you have made a serious case."

"But he's a friend of ours!" Nefret exclaimed.

"So is Mr. Carter," said Ramses. "Hadn't you realized that if the culprit is an Egyptologist he is bound to be a friend, or at least an acquaintance?"

"No, but see here," Emerson exclaimed. "We cannot dismiss the possibility that there are two people involved, and that the artist at least is Egyptian. The late and unlamented Abd el Hamed was the only one I've known who had that degree of talent, but this person may be unknown to us—a forger of unusual ability, discovered and trained by our hypothetical... Oh, good Gad! There is no solid ground here; we are fencing with shadows."

"True," I said. "It is time we went on the offensive! If we threw out a few hints to some of the likely suspects—"

Emerson jumped to his feet with a roar. "I knew it! I knew you'd come to that! I absolutely forbid you to run randomly around Cairo accusing people of criminal activities! One would have supposed that by this time you might have learned not to put your head under the blade of a guillotine in order to get a good look at the executioner. Concentrate on the damned house. There's enough to be done there to keep you out of mischief."

"There certainly is a great deal to be done," I replied pleasantly. "And it will be accomplished more quickly and easily if I can count on your wholehearted cooperation. I refer to all three of you. To leave me with the tedious tasks of cleaning and moving while you are enjoying yourselves with our pyramids would be unfair. You agree, of course."

"Of course," Nefret exclaimed.

"No reasonable individual could deny your premise," said Ramses.

"Bah,"
said Emerson.

"So that is settled," I said, with more optimism than confidence. "We had better retire now if we are to go to the site tomorrow."

"Would you mind very much if I didn't come with you tomorrow?" Nefret asked. "There is a visit I must make. They will be expecting me."

I glanced at Emerson. I could see by his grave look and compressed lips that he did not like the idea any better than I did, and that he knew as well as I that it would be futile to object.

"You must do as you think best, Nefret," I said.

"She will anyhow," said Ramses. "Do you mind if I come with you, Nefret?"

Her blue eyes flashed. "As a chaperon, Ramses, or a bodyguard?"

"As a friend."

"You do know how to get round a girl, don't you?" She smiled and offered him her hand. When he would have taken it, Horus bit his finger.

From Manuscript H

"How much farther?" Ramses asked.

"We're almost there." Nefret took a firmer grip on his arm and hopped neatly over a steaming pile of camel dung. She did not look at him. Keeping one's eyes fixed on the ground was expedient in the alleys of el Was'a, where one had to walk a sort of hopscotch pattern around piles and puddles of noxious substances.

The narrow twisting lanes were crowded, but not as crowded as they would be later in the day, when the shutters covering the ground-floor windows would be raised and the women would take their places behind the iron grilles, gesturing and calling out to the men who paused to inspect them as if they had been animals in a zoo. The area between the Ezbekieh and the Central Train Station was so notorious it was featured on certain tours, though not those of the respectable Mr. Cook.

Just now they were the only foreigners in sight, and Nefret was approximately as inconspicuous as a tigress in her boots and trousers, her golden head bare. People stared and whispered, but made way for them. The camels and donkeys did not. Ramses pulled Nefret to one side to let a cart rumble past. Mud splashed his boots. He hoped it was mud.

"Couldn't you have selected a more salubrious location?" he asked.

"You know better than that. They wouldn't have come to me. I had to go to them."

The house was one of the tall narrow blank-fronted houses of medieval Cairo. There was no sign or nameplate, and after Nefret had rung the bell they were subjected to an intense scrutiny through a narrow slit in the door before chains rattled and bolts squeaked. These sounds were accompanied by a high-pitched ululating cry which most Europeans would have taken for a distress signal. Ramses knew what it was; he was not surprised when the door flew open and Nefret was surrounded by a group of women, all shrieking with joy and all trying to hug her at once.

One of them, a middle-aged woman wearing a physician's white coat over her long tob, advanced toward Ramses with a firm stride and an outstretched hand. Her abundant black hair was heavily streaked with gray and she spoke Arabic with a strong Syrian accent.

"Marhaba, Emerson Effendi. You honor our house."

"Just call him Brother of Demons," said Nefret, laughing. "Ramses, this is Dr. Sophia."

He had not met her, but he had heard Nefret and his mother speak of her with admiration and respect. She deserved both; Syrian Christians were slightly more liberal in their views than most Middle Easterners, but Sophia Hanem's medical degree from Zurich had been acquired after long years of struggle with her family and her government. Nefret had been fortunate to find her to take charge of the clinic.

Ramses was left to cool his heels in the office while Nefret went with the doctor on her rounds. It was a bright, sunny room, lit by wide windows opening onto an interior courtyard, its scrubbed tile floor and whitewashed walls a striking contrast to the filth of the exterior. A girl who could not have been more than thirteen brought him tea; he could not help wondering whether she was one of the pathetic children the clinic had succeeded in freeing from degradation and virtual slavery. Some of the girls were even younger. It was quite some time before Nefret returned, and she did not linger over her farewells. The doctor was not offended at her brusque manner; she smiled rather sadly at Ramses and shook her head. He nodded, to show he understood.

His mother had warned him. "She is always in a wretched mood after she has visited the place. Don't be put out if she snaps at you. She isn't angry at you, but at—"

"At the miserable sights she has seen and at her inability to put them right. Never mind, Mother, I'm quite accustomed to being snapped at by Nefret."

The door closed behind them. Nefret let him take her hand and draw her arm through his. He didn't know what to say to her. In her present mood an expression of his admiration and sympathy might be taken amiss. He had just about decided to risk it, when she stiffened and stared—not at him, but at two men wearing European clothing and matching tarbooshes. Both were smoking cigars. Catching Nefret's eye, the taller of the two came to a sudden stop, spoke briefly to his companion, and strode toward them. The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses. An officer, even in mufti, had that effect on the citizens of el Was'a.

"Good heavens, Miss Nefret, what are you doing here?" Percy tossed his cigar away and removed his fez. "Let me escort you to safety."

"I am perfectly safe," Nefret said. "And I know precisely what I am doing. May I ask, Lieutenant, for what purpose
you
have come here? The brothels in the Wagh-el-Birka are more to English tastes."

No lady was supposed to know that word, much less be familiar with the relative amenities of the Cairene establishments.

Percy turned beet-red and glared at Ramses, who was choking with horrified amusement.

"I say! See here, Ramses, this is your fault. Bringing her here— teaching her about—about—"

"I really wouldn't take that approach if I were you," Ramses said earnestly.

It was too late. Nefret was almost as red in the face as Percy.

"Ramses hasn't taught me a damned thing about brothels," she shouted. "Do you suppose I would ever speak to him again, or let him touch my hand, if I believed he would go to such places? A man who would take advantage of those poor women is the lowest form of life on earth. What about you,
Lieutenant
Peabody? You haven't yet told me why
you
are here."

Ramses no longer found the situation amusing. She was so angry she was shaking, and Percy had gone a very ugly color, and people were edging closer, staring. A nasty public scene wouldn't serve any useful purpose.

"On duty, are you, old chap?" he suggested helpfully and with only a slight touch of sarcasm.

"Yes." A hint was all Percy needed. Ramses almost admired him for being so quick to recover. "Sometimes the men come here. We do all we can to discourage them, of course."

Ramses nodded encouragingly. "Well done. Shall we leave him to it, Nefret? Father and Mother will be waiting for us at Shepheard's."

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry, Percy, if I misjudged you." She smiled at him.

That was the trouble with Nefret—one of the troubles with Nefret, Ramses amended. She was as changeable as a spring day in England, blowing a gale one moment, sunny and bright the next. Some people made the mistake of assuming that because her emotions were so volatile they were not sincere and wholehearted. He knew better. Nefret was perfectly capable of knocking a fellow flat on his back one minute and bandaging his broken head the next.

"You misjudged Ramses too," she went on. "It was my own idea to come here. I thought you knew I had opened a clinic for the prostitutes. They have no other medical services available, and they are in great need of them."

"Oh. Oh, yes. I had heard, but—but I never supposed you would come here yourself!" The storm clouds gathered again on Nefret's brow, and Percy said earnestly, "I cannot begin to express my admiration for your courage and compassion. But my dear Miss Nefret, I find it hard to forgive you for believing I would be capable of such contemptible behavior. You can only make it up to me by allowing me to escort you safely to the hotel."

"I think I can manage," Ramses said meekly. "We don't want to interfere with you in the pursuit of your duty."

Leaving Percy smirking and fondling his mustache, they headed back along the lane. "Stand up straight," Nefret muttered. "Why are you slouching?"

"Am I?"

"You sounded like a perfect fool."

"Did I?"

Nefret laughed and gave his arm a squeeze.

They were within easy walking distance of Shepheard's. One of the ironies visitors often commented upon was the proximity of the "Red Blind" district to the most elegant hotels in the city.

"It is good to have you back," Nefret said shyly.

Shyly? Nefret? Ramses glanced down at her in surprise. "I haven't really been away," he pointed out.

"Not this past summer, but you haven't spent the entire season with us for several years."

He recognized the implicit reproach and tried to think of a way of responding to it without admitting it. "The truth is I was finding Mother's dear dahabeeyah, as she will call it, rather too confining."

Nefret laughed. "I know what you mean. It wasn't so much the cramped quarters as the feeling that Aunt Amelia knew every move one made and overheard every word one said."

"The new house will be a great improvement. Mother has actually proposed giving us an entire wing to ourselves. I suspect that was Father's idea."

"They really are sweet," Nefret said with fond condescension. "She still blushes like a prim Victorian maiden when he looks at her in a certain way, and he keeps inventing feeble excuses to get us out of the way when he wants to be alone with her. Do they really believe we don't know how they feel about one another?"

"They enjoy the game, perhaps. I wonder if we could persuade Mother to let us have keys to our own rooms."

"I shall insist upon it," Nefret said firmly. "Confess, Ramses; she anticipated I would want to visit the clinic and ordered you to go with me."

"No. Honestly." It had been his father who gave the order. Not that he had needed it.

In fact, there was probably no part of Cairo where Nefret could not walk unscathed and unmolested. A sentimentalist would claim that her efforts on behalf of the lowest and most degraded members of the population had made her an object of veneration. Ramses, who was not a sentimentalist, suspected that the reverse was true. Most Egyptian males despised women in general and prostitutes in particular. They hadn't objected when she decided to open a free clinic for the fallen women of el Was'a, but they certainly had not admired her for it. No; Nefret's immunity was due in part to her nationality and in even larger part to the blunt hints he and David had dropped in certain quarters— and perhaps in largest part to the fact that she was under the protection of the famous and feared Father of Curses.