An Egyptian Affair (The Regent Mysteries Book 4)

by Cheryl Bolen

  “Never.”

  “Please, Habeeb, take me to her and help me speak with her,” Daphne said.

  He shrugged. “I do not know where to find her.”

  Jack’s brows lowered. “She’s not staying at her mistress’s house?”

  Daphne glared at her husband. “No woman—especially a woman who could identify the murderer—would want to sleep in that house after so horrible a crime.”

  “You do have a point there,” Jack conceded.

  “Both servants were very, very sad and cried much. They waited until the day after the murder to come and get their things. One of them brought her father for protection."

  “How will we ever find them?” Daphne spoke to herself.

  “A quarter of a million people are crammed into this city,” Jack said.

  “You want me to try to find them?" Habeeb asked. “I know the city well. I know which areas of the city they might have gone to.”

  “Yes, please,” Daphne said. “And Habeeb?”

  His big brown eyes regarded her.

  “I should like you later this afternoon to undertake another commission for us. Of course, if you locate the dead woman’s servants you must let us know immediately.”

  “Yes, Sitti el Kebin.”

  “Before the sun goes down I should like you to go to the Sheikh al Mustafa’s, which is near the Pasha's palace. Never let them know you are dragoman to the foreign couple. Don’t go to the front entrance. Go to the back and make inquiries as if you would like to become a servant in their household.”

  “What kind of inquiries?”

  “Somehow I shall need you to ask if the Sheikh was gone from Cairo this past year. It is important that I know when he was gone.”

  “It’s also important,” Jack said in a stern voice, “that no one knows we are responsible for asking you to find out that information.”

  “You are my masters. I answer to no one else.”

  It was then she noticed there was a sack on the ground.

  Habeeb bent down and handed it to her. “I have those costumes, Sitti el Kebin, that you asked me to procure. I flatter myself that they are long enough for you and the Captain.”

  “I am very grateful. I must reimburse you the expense. How much did they cost?”

  “Only four paras.”

  Jack gave him the money.

  * * *

  Owing to their early rising, they were the sole occupants of the breakfast room. The Egyptian servants who had previously set up the food on a rough-hewed sideboard had also put a fresh cloth on the table. She and Jack helped themselves to strong Turkish coffee, watermelon, toast, and freshly churned butter.

  “I feel so bloody impotent,” Jack said when they sat down. “This is our fourth day in Cairo, and we’ve learned nothing that we didn’t know when we left London.”

  She grimaced as she swallowed the sludgy coffee. “We have learned that Prince Singh had a mistress.”

  “Whose death we are most likely responsible for.”

  “There is that. There is also the fact that we can possibly eliminate one suspect—if the Sheikh’s absence can be verified.”

  “So that leaves us with the shady antiquities dealer, Ahmed Hassein.”

  “Let us not discount Lord Beddington, though it’s unlikely a man as wealthy as he would ever resort to murder to obtain what he wants.”

  “I’d like to question the man, but I understand the voyage up the Nile to Thebes can take almost four weeks, one way.”

  She shook her head. “Certainly not worth two months of our time for so slim a prospect.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “I will own we have nothing to go by. We must find your Gareth Williams.”

  “I feel almost certain he’s the one who killed the woman.”

  “But what we really need to know is who is it he takes orders from.”

  “Exactly. I fear the Welshman won’t be easy to find, even though a British man is scarce in this city.”

  She nodded. “You’d think even if he were going by another name, Arbuthnot would know of a Welshman living here. Isn’t that part of his position—knowing all the British subjects?”

  “Unless the British subject doesn’t want his countrymen to know he’s here. Treason is punishable by death.”

  “There is that.” She then brightened. “I know what!”

  He stopped buttering his toast and shot her a mischievous glance. “What does my lady know?”

  “Your fellow officer—the one who served with you and the Welshman in the Peninsula . . .”

  “Harry Petworth?”

  Jack leapt up, then bent down to kiss her cheek. “Another excellent suggestion.” He raced from the room, out the front door.

  Mr. Maxwell strolled into the eating room. She had been waiting for the opportunity to speak privately to him.

  "Please, come sit by me," she said.

  He obliged.

  She lowered her voice. "I wished to pass along a vital warning to you."

  His brows drew together. "About the suspects?"

  "Oh, no. Something altogether different." She drew a breath. "Since you are a man and since you may seek a female for a certain activity, as men are want to do, I must encourage you to only go to the dancing girls."

  "But, my lady, such an activity as dancing has no appeal to me for I never learned to dance.

  At that moment, Rosemary entered the chamber, and Daphne knew such conversation must cease.

  "Why are you discussing dancing girls?" Rosemary asked.

  Mr. Maxwell's brows scrunched together. "I believe your sister was under the misapprehension that I was desirous of dancing."

  Rosemary's eyes widened. "You don't like dancing?"

  He shrugged. "It is a skill I've never acquired."

  Rosemary shot a hostile glance at Daphne. "I don't know why you would try to force him to dance. It's not as if he doesn't have enough to occupy him."

  Jack returned with the soldier.

  “Have I ever formally presented you to my wife, Petworth?”

  “No, sir.”

  Jack turned to Daphne. “Lady Daphne, may I present to you Harry Petworth of His Majesty’s House Guards?”

  “Delighted.”

  Petworth bowed. “It is my pleasure to protect the wife of the infamous Captain Dryden—as well as to serve our Regent.”

  Jack then introduced him to Rosemary, then to Mr. Maxwell.

  “Please,” Jack said, “help yourself to some breakfast and come sit with us. We have a new assignment for you.”

  The soldier piled his plate, poured the coffee, and came to sit beside Jack.

  “When we were in the Peninsula, did you know Gareth Williams?” Jack asked him.

  The other man’s eyes narrowed. “That dirty, no good . . .” He glanced at Daphne. “’Tis only my lady’s presence that keeps me from launching into a string of curse words. I ain’t never served with a more despicable man than Gareth Williams.”

  “He’s in Cairo,” Jack said.

  Petworth whirled at Jack. “You’ve spoken with the coward?”

  Jack shook his head. “No. I saw him the day we disembarked at Bulak.”

  “He knows you saw him?”

  “Yes. He spun away and disappeared into the crowd of Arabs, and I haven’t seen him since.”

  The normally pleasant-faced Petworth sneered. “I’d like to get my hands on him.”

  “There’s still another vile act we believe he’s guilty of,” Daphne said.

  Jack’s voice was grave. “I have some reason to suspect he’s the one who killed the Egyptian woman yesterday.”

  Petworth winced. “Then I hope to God I do get my hands on him. How could a man do something so despicable? She was . . . even in death, the prettiest thing I ever saw. What depravity could make a man commit so heinous a crime?”

  “Most crimes of that sort are committed for two reasons: rage or financial gain,” Daphne said. “We believe he did it f
or the latter.”

  Petworth set down his cup of coffee and swung his glance from Daphne to Jack. “What can I do to bring the blackguard to justice?”

  “We need you to find him,” Jack said. “He apparently hasn’t had any connection with the English authorities here, and it’s very likely he’s using another name.”

  Petworth's eyes slitted. “He’s probably gone over to the French. Dirty traitor.”

  “I’m not certain he could speak their language,” Jack said.

  “But we believe he’s learned to speak in Arabic,” Daphne said. “At least the murderer who called at the dead woman’s house was a European man who spoke Arabic,” Daphne said.

  "He had fled to Morocco—where he would have been obliged to learn Arabic in order to survive," Jack said.

  “What about the dead woman's servants?” Petworth asked. “Have they returned? When we left the scene at nightfall, they still hadn’t come back. I suppose your faithful dragoman waited until they finally showed?”

  “Yes, Habeeb’s been most competent," Daphne said. "Unfortunately, the female servants merely gathered their things and disappeared again.”

  Petworth nodded. “I can understand them not wanting to sleep there.”

  As trustworthy as she knew Petworth was, there was a limit as to how much information she was willing to share with him. The less people who knew about the hair, the better.

  "Delicious stuff," Petworth said as he finished his watermelon. “I take it you’ll want me to wear civilian clothes whilst I look for the slayer of women?”

  “Yes. Did you bring other clothing?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re very near my size. I’ll get you some of mine,” Jack said.

  “Jack even has a native costume, if you’d care to dress in it.”

  “With my red hair?” He burst out laughing. “Besides, I draw the line at dressing in those robes. Looks too much like a woman.”

  It occurred to Daphne that Harry Petworth's red hair was even more of a freakish display here in Cairo than her own unruly golden mop.

  “You may think a Bedouin's dress not masculine, but the Bedouins are noted for their courage,” she said.

  “That they may be, but you’ll not catch Harry Petworth dressing like no lady.”

  "Even though it’s easy to recognize Europeans, it will still be difficult to find that swine Williams since there are a quarter of a million people in Cairo,” Jack said.

  Petworth whistled.

  “You’ll need to take your dragoman with you to serve as interpreter. Hopefully, you will be able to find people who will know the direction of the British man,” Jack said.

  Petworth pushed aside his emptied plate and cup and got to his feet. “I’ll find the cheating, stealing, murdering coward. You can count on it.”

  * * *

  While they were awaiting word from Mr. Briggs on a possible meeting with the Pasha, Jack and Daphne, along with Rosemary and Mr. Maxwell, strolled toward the old city gates where a great caravan was entering Cairo.

  Daphne was especially impressed about these people’s packing skills. Each of the camels—even larger in real life than she’d expected—hauled huge bundles that held tents, cooking utensils, food stores, as well as the goods they were bringing to market.

  “Mr. Maxwell,” Daphne said, “You are just the person who can explain why these camels have just one hump.”

  “The dromedary that's native to the Arabian peninsula and neighboring lands, like Saharan Africa, will always have just one hump," Mr. Maxwell explained. "The dromedaries of India, on the other hand, will have two humps.”

  Rosemary turned admiring eyes upon him. “I didn’t know that. How clever you are!”

  Daphne would wager Rosemary’s worshipped Captain Conceited wasn’t half as clever as Mr. Maxwell.

  The poor man’s lips clamped shut. Rosemary’s praise embarrassed him to the point he was incapable of saying anything.

  “Do you know, Mr. Maxwell,” Daphne said by way of changing the subject to something more comfortable for the bespectacled man, “Jack and I have obtained Arabic costumes.”

  He smiled at them. “Capital! I’ve brought mine as well. Now we need only get one for Lady Rosemary for our own caravan.”

  Rosemary frowned. “I do wish, Daf, you’d have told me you were getting a costume. You know I would adore that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, would you? You’re so particular about your dress. I had no notion you’d like to dress as a native. We’ll have Habeeb get something made for you. Your height is comparable to most of the native women we’ve seen here.”

  “Where is Habeeb?” she asked.

  “He’s undertaking a commission for us,” Jack said.

  “Once Rosemary has her costume, we must make a caravan.” Daphne’s smiling face looked up into her husband’s. “I should like to travel to Gizeh to spend one night in a tent and pretend that we are desert nomads. Would that not be fun, dearest?”

  Her husband frowned. “We didn’t come here to have fun.”

  “Don’t be such a curmudgeon. One night in the desert. Two days. What would it hurt?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten there’s a murderer out there.”

  “I daresay he’s not in Gizeh,” Daphne said.

  “Oh, please, Captain,” Rosemary implored, “I beg that you will consider it.”

  It took him a moment to respond. “I'll consider it.”

  While they stood there, fascinated over the lengthy caravan of Bedouins, Arbuthnot approached them. “I have more good news. Mr. Briggs will take you to meet the Pasha this afternoon.”

  Chapter 7

  “You know, dearest, now that Rosemary has found out about Amal's murder,” Daphne said, “I think we should take her into our confidence.”

  “I’ve been thinking along those same lines myself. It’s not as if Maxwell doesn’t already know everything. And I think it’s for her own protection that she be given a complete accounting of our mission.”

  “I’ll go speak with her. Then when Mr. Briggs collects us in his carriage, she can come. She would love to see the inside of a Pasha’s palace.”

  “I don’t think all of us will fit in the carriage. I wanted to bring Maxwell, too.”

  “If Rosemary and I sit on the same bench as the slender Mr. Maxwell, I think we’ll all fit fairly comfortably.”

  Less than an hour later, Daphne had apprised Rosemary of their investigation, and they were all traveling to the palace in the Consul’s coach. Even with its windows open, the heat was stifling, but the shade was welcome.

  The flies were not.

  “The Pasha was a most able Albanian soldier,” Mr. Briggs told them. “His native tongue is Turkish, but he can communicate in French.”

  “Do you speak Turkish, Mr. Maxwell?” Daphne asked.

  “Enough to get by tolerably,” he answered.

  “I have been wanting to ask,” Mr. Briggs said, eyeing the scholar, “are you the Stanton Maxwell who wrote Travels Through the Levant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Maxwell's terribly clever,” Rosemary said. “He speaks in at least ten tongues.”

  "I enjoyed your Travels very much," Mr. Briggs said, eyeing the author. “Are you by chance related to Osborn Maxwell of Cambridge?”

  “That would be my father.”

  “Now that’s a clever man for you. He is one of the only Englishmen I’ve read who understand Arabs.”

  “You must direct me to your father’s writings,” Rosemary said to Mr. Maxwell. “You know how profoundly interested I am in anything to do with the Orient.”

  “I may have something with me I could share,” he said, his head turning to the slender lady beside him.

  The coach stopped in front of an entrance to the Pasha’s palace. They disembarked. Steps leading to the massive doorway cut between broad sweeps of rich green grass adorned with clusters of towering palms.

  This close, the palace was even larger
that it had appeared from a distance. She tried to determine how it compared in size to the Regent’s Carlton House and decided that even though this stucco palace was choppier with varying heights and jutting appendages, the two royal residences were comparable in size.

  As they followed one of the Pasha's servants down an interior arcaded corridor, Mr. Maxwell commented, “You will see the Pasha and his staff dress more colorfully, less austere than other Muslims. The Turks are not as fiercely religious as are many Muslims. It has been my observation that the closer one lives to Mecca, the more religious one is.”

  "Astonishingly astute statement," Mr. Briggs said. "It makes perfect sense to me."

  The servant's dress was vastly different from what Daphne had become accustomed to in Cairo. The servant they followed wore a belted dress that stopped around the knees, and on his feet he wore fuchsia-colored satin slippers with toes that curled up. His head was bound with an ivory turban, and his face was mostly covered with a bushy black beard.

  They came to a large and relatively cool chamber. The tiles which paved the floors here were glazed terracotta. The walls were pale stucco more than a foot thick. The ceiling soared at least twenty feet—possibly more.

  Dominating the opulent chamber was what appeared to be a giant bed. This was no ordinary bed. Its large, square tester was covered in silk in an intricate pattern of gold and green with borders of crimson. From it, thick gold silk tassels wagged, and more of the rich gold braid and tassels adorned the pillows piled around the Pasha. Each pillow was of a different colour. There was magenta, emerald, royal blue, purple, orange, red, and much gold.

  The Pasha himself sat on the bed, regarding them. He was a middle-aged man possessed of a beard that had a few years previously must have been all black but which was now primarily gray. On his head was an aquamarine silken turban, and his orange robes were also of silk. Like his servant, he wore the shoes with the turned-up toes.

  Mr. Briggs had said the Pasha had been a formidable soldier. She could not for the life of her picture the man going into battle dressed like that. Then, in an odd juxtaposition of thoughts, she thought of Jack dressed in such a manner, and she almost burst out laughing.

  She was immediately remorseful. Daphne had always prided herself on her ability to empathize with those of different cultures, never to mock them.