The Face in the Cemetery

by Michael Pearce

  ‘But I’m her husband.’

  ‘He won’t beat me,’ said the woman calmly. ‘He’s too afraid to. He knows I carry a knife under my burka.’

  ‘Fatima!’

  ‘Go on, ask me,’ said Fatima, turning to Mahmoud.

  ‘Fatima, I will not allow—’

  ‘Out!’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Out?’ said the man, astounded.

  ‘Out!’

  The man shuffled towards the door and then stopped uncertainly.

  ‘But—’

  Mahmoud grabbed him by the shoulder, pushed him through the door and then closed the door behind him.

  ‘He’ll stay there listening,’ said Fatima.

  Mahmoud opened the door, seized the man and pushed him along the corridor.

  ‘Away!’ he said. ‘Or else there’ll be trouble!’

  The man slunk away. Mahmoud closed the door and came back into the room. He was surprised at himself, slightly shocked. He was normally punctilious in his observance of the forms, especially when it came to women. How had this happened?

  Fatima smiled with satisfaction.

  ‘Why didn’t you take a stick to him?’ she said. ‘It would have done him good.’

  Mahmoud pulled himself together.

  ‘Fatima,’ he said severely, ‘a bad thing has been done. God sees all, and therefore you must tell me. Do you know how she died?’

  ‘No. God is my witness, no.’

  ‘It was not an agreed thing?’

  ‘In this family,’ said Fatima, ‘nothing is agreed.’

  ‘The foreign woman was not liked?’

  ‘I did not mind her. She was nice to me when Abu was born.’

  ‘Could something have been put in her food?’

  Fatima considered.

  ‘It would have been hard,’ she said. ‘We all eat out of one pot.’

  She considered some more.

  ‘However,’ she said, ‘it could have been done. For although she took her food out of the common pot, she did not always eat with us. Sometimes she took a bowl outside, saying she would eat it where there was more air. It was then that she would give it to the cat.’

  ‘So perhaps when she took it out, someone could have put something in?’

  ‘That is so. But it would not have been easy, for she would have taken her bowl with her and kept it in her hand.’

  Mahmoud nodded.

  ‘Fatima,’ he said, ‘had she been at all unwell?’

  ‘She was always complaining of the heat.’

  ‘Had she complained of stomach pains? Sickness of the stomach?’

  ‘Hah!’ said Fatima. ‘What a to-do there would have been if she had! They would have thought a child was coming.’

  ***

  ‘What a house!’ said Mrs Schneider with a shudder. ‘What a family! It seemed to swallow her up. You never really saw her. You only caught glimpses of her. And when you did she always seemed so lifeless. As if they had sucked all the blood out of her. She was like a ghost. I had seen her once or twice at the beginning and then she seemed so…so bubbly, almost. So…excited. And then I didn’t see her for some time. When I did see her again there was no…no animation about her at all. The only time she came to life, I think, was when she was playing the piano.’

  ‘She used to play often?’

  ‘Oh, for hours and hours.’

  ‘Got on my nerves,’ said Mr Schneider.

  ‘I didn’t use to mind it,’ said Mrs Schneider, ‘but it must have been difficult for the other people in the house.’

  ‘Did you ever call on her?’

  ‘No…’ Mrs Schneider hesitated. ‘It wasn’t…wasn’t easy.’

  ‘It’s not a thing you do,’ said Mr Schneider. ‘I mean, I see a lot of Hanafi at work, and get on with him very well. He’s an intelligent, hard-working chap. A bit quiet, perhaps. But we’ve always got along well. I daresay if he’d been European we would have met socially. You know, have them along for a drink, or to play cards. But somehow you can’t really do that if they’re Egyptian. They don’t drink, for a start. Probably don’t play cards. And then—well, it’s just not done in Egypt, is it? You never see the women. Do you ever meet your colleagues’ wives, Mr Zaki?’

  ‘No,’ Mahmoud had to confess.

  ‘You meet them, though, probably. But not their wives.’

  ‘I feel sorry now,’ said Mrs Schneider.

  ‘You see, it was awkward. We didn’t know whether to treat her as an Egyptian or as a European.’

  ‘I could have called on her, I suppose,’ said Mrs Schneider. ‘But, somehow, that family—!’

  ‘Hundreds of them!’ said Mr Schneider. ‘God knows what it was like in that house.’

  ‘I thought it might make things worse,’ said Mrs Schneider. ‘We knew they didn’t get on very well.’

  ‘Did anyone call on them?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘Did she have any friends?’

  ‘There was a Greek family over in Minya. She used to give the children piano lessons. Otherwise—’

  ‘There was that man,’ said Mr Schneider.

  ‘What man was this?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘He was based down here for a while. Looking into the ghaffirs. Anyway, he and Hanafi struck up an acquaintance and Hanafi invited him over to his house. And then, do you know what? You’ll never believe this.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘He used to sing.’

  ‘Sing? While he was in the house?’

  ‘She used to play for him,’ said Mrs Schneider.

  ‘Sing! That must have gone down like a bomb with the rest of the Hanafis.’

  ‘They weren’t alone. Her husband was there.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but—sing!’

  ‘He sang very beautifully,’ said Mrs Schneider. ‘And she played very beautifully, too.’

  ‘Yes, but, look, that might be all right in Cairo—though I don’t know how it would go down even there! What would your people think, Mr Zaki, if you brought home some bloke and he settled down to singing with your wife?’

  ***

  Mahmoud had strong words for the mamur when at last he succeeded in cornering him.

  ‘What nonsense is this? She took enough poison to kill herself, bandaged herself from toe to head like a mummy, walked half a mile and then put herself into a grave: is that what you are saying? Suicide? You foolish man!’

  But the mamur was, perhaps, not quite so foolish.

  ‘There are two things,’ he said. ‘The manner of the dying, and the body. As to the manner, who can tell? God alone sees all. But as to the body, that is a different matter. A body causes trouble. Especially if it is the body of a foreigner. The omda comes, the mamur comes, the Parquet come. Even the Mamur Zapt comes! So what do you do if you are so unfortunate as to find one? You get rid of it.’

  ‘You could tell the omda.’

  ‘But then would come the questions.’

  ‘Why not just leave it alone?’

  ‘But then they would ask you why you had not told the omda!’

  ‘Are you suggesting that somebody might just have come upon the body by accident and decided to get rid of it?’

  ‘That is right, yes.’

  ‘Without pausing to ask how the person died?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Even if that were so, you, the mamur, should ask how the person died.’

  ‘I did! I talked to everyone. And we all agreed: she had committed suicide.’

  ‘How could you be so sure?’

  ‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? She was a foreigner.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘A foreign woman,’ emphasized the mamur.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They don’t fit in.’

 
‘If they are taken into a family, they become part of the family.’

  ‘Well,’ said the mamur. ‘Up to a point.’

  ‘Why should she not fit in?’

  The mamur looked at his feet.

  ‘There was no son,’ he said, after a moment.

  ‘So?’

  ‘It stands to reason that she would feel ashamed.’

  ‘You think she killed herself because of that?’

  ‘Best thing,’ said the mamur.

  ***

  ‘There are things to be done,’ said Mahmoud.

  The mamur looked depressed.

  ‘First, where do you buy arsenic round here?’

  ‘Arsenic?’ said the mamur, affecting shock. ‘You don’t buy it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do,’ said Mahmoud.

  The fact was that poisoning your neighbour’s buffalo was something of a traditional sport in Egyptian villages.

  ‘Is there someone in the village?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say—’ began the mamur.

  ‘Then find out,’ said Mahmoud. ‘And ask if the woman went there.’

  ‘These foreigners—’

  ‘Might not know the ways of the village, and so she might have gone to a shop in Minya. Ask there, too. And, finally…’

  ‘Yes, Effendi?’ said the mamur, unenthusiastically.

  ‘The bandages that were used to bind the woman: where did they come from? The hospital? The hakim? A shop? There were a lot of them. Someone will remember.’

  ***

  Finally, Mahmoud had gone to see the village omda. After going through with him his part in the proceedings, he had said:

  ‘Death, I can understand. Hiding the body, I can understand. But to hide it in such a manner and such a place, that I cannot understand. Can you, as a man wise in the ways of the sugar cane people, tell me why that might have been so?’

  ‘They do say,’ said the omda cautiously, ‘that she was taken by the Cat Woman.’

  ‘The Hanafis say that,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but that is mere foolishness.’

  ‘Well…’ said the omda.

  ‘Surely, you, an omda and a man of wisdom, do not believe such nonsense?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Cat Woman! That is the stuff of old women’s tales!’ said Mahmoud scornfully.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘It is a thing of fancy—fancy and superstition. There never was such a thing.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Tell me: have you, has anyone, ever seen such a creature?’

  ‘Abdul has.’

  ‘Abdul has?’

  ‘And Suleiman. And Salah. And Rafig—Rafig tried to seize her, but she slipped from his grasp and ran out into the yard and jumped over the wall.’

  ‘Jumped over the wall? This tale goes from fancy to wildness. Why, the wall is as high as a man!’

  ‘I know how high it is,’ said the omda, nettled. ‘And I know she jumped over it. It wasn’t just Rafig who saw her. Salah was walking in the road outside when she rose over the wall and came down at his feet. He thought it was a djinn come to take him. But then she laughed and ran off into the sugar cane. And when Salah came to himself he ran to Rafig’s door and called to him, and there was Rafig already standing there, bemused.’

  ‘This is nonsense!’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘And then,’ said the omda, ‘they sent a boy for me and when I came we found that things had been taken. As in the other houses.’

  ‘As in the other houses?’

  ‘Not just that night but other nights. Since Ramadan there has been a spate of such robberies. People have taken to barring their doors. But what good is that when she jumps over the wall?’

  ‘This is just some thief,’ said Mahmoud, after a pause. ‘An ordinary thief.’

  ‘Not that ordinary,’ retorted the omda.

  ‘Maybe not,’ conceded Mahmoud. ‘Nevertheless, there is no need to talk of a Cat Woman.’

  ‘It is not I who talk of a Cat Woman,’ said the omda cunningly. ‘It is what people say.’

  ‘Well, I say that it is foolishness,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and I am surprised to hear you, an omda, repeating it.’

  ‘You asked me for a reason why the woman’s body was found where it was,’ said the omda, ‘and I am but giving you an answer: the Cat Woman was taking back her own.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘The provinces,’ said Mahmoud darkly, ‘are very backward.’

  Owen could tell that the Cat Woman rankled. It was an affront to everything that Mahmoud believed in: rationality, progress, the essential equality of Egyptians with people in more developed nations. It was yet another example of Egypt falling short.

  ‘What hope is there for Egypt,’ said Mahmoud passionately, ‘when people believe such things? Even an intelligent man like the omda? It is ignorance, ignorance that is holding them back.’

  ‘But that can be remedied,’ said Owen.

  ‘Yes, I know. Education. Well, yes, I agree we need more of that, and better. But even then! What hurt me most,’ he said, ‘was that mamur. Because, you see, he has had education. Training, certainly. But what use has he made of it? It is not so much his stupid prejudices as his inability to proceed professionally—despite his training! Where are the questions? How could it be suicide? Was someone helping her? Where did the arsenic come from? Did someone have a motive for murdering her? How might the poison have been administered? None of these questions did he ask! His mind was quite closed. It comes as a shock,’ Mahmoud confided, ‘to find such incompetence. But then,’ he went on gloomily, ‘it is not just confined to the provinces. As you yourself know.’

  Owen, who knew Mahmoud’s mood swings well, could tell that he was beginning to work himself into a stew. This was the other side of that enormous drive and passion for perfection—a proneness to fall into depression when things did not work out exactly as he felt they should. To distract him, he said:

  ‘I think I can help you, on one thing at any rate—the identity of the man who sang.’

  He told Mahmoud about Fricker.

  ‘When was he down there?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. Some while ago.’

  ‘I don’t think he can have had anything directly to do with it,’ said Mahmoud. ‘However, it would be interesting to talk to him.’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘Could you arrange it?’

  ‘Certainly. I’ll get you a permit to visit the camp.’

  On second thoughts, perhaps that was not a good idea. There were only Germans in the camp, no Egyptians; even so, Mahmoud might well take exception to the notion of the camp, indeed, to its very existence in what he believed should be an independent, neutral country.

  ‘No, I’ll tell you what, I’ll have him brought up to Cairo. He’ll probably be glad of the outing.’

  ‘Would that be possible? Thank you.’

  Owen told him what he had been able to find out about Hilde Langer.

  ‘That, too, is very helpful. Although I believe that the reasons for her death are to be found not in Cairo but in Minya.’ He grimaced. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘You will be going back there?’

  ‘In a day or two, yes. And then I shall have to stay. Until it is sorted out.’ He grimaced again. ‘Aisha will not be pleased.’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘I must go. She will be expecting me.’

  Yes, he had changed, thought Owen.

  ***

  Zeinab was still not speaking to him. At night she embraced him passionately but angrily and then turned away.

  Tonight she couldn’t sleep. It was exceptionally hot and after a while he got out of bed, soaked some towels in the bath and then hung them across the open doorway leading on to the balcony. It never worke
d, but some people swore by it.

  He got back into bed.

  ‘I saw Mahmoud today,’ he said.

  Zeinab stared implacably at the ceiling.

  ‘Aisha is well.’

  Zeinab quite liked Aisha now, even though she was only about half her age. There was no response, however.

  ‘Mahmoud is a reformed man. He goes home of a night.’

  Zeinab turned away on to her shoulder.

  ‘The case he’s working on has musical connections.’

  Zeinab was sometimes interested in cases with musical connections.

  Not tonight.

  He told her anyway.

  ‘A promising musical career…’

  Not a flicker.

  ‘Of course, it will probably turn out to be a case of domestic violence—’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Zeinab unpromisingly.

  ‘—made more difficult by him being an Egyptian and her being—’

  Zeinab put the pillow over her head.

  Owen gave up and turned away from her.

  ‘When did you say she was in Cairo?’ said Zeinab.

  Zeinab knew the Cairo musical scene. Apart from being an ardent opera-goer, she numbered quite a few musicians among her artist friends. Zeinab had many artist friends. This was chiefly because they were the only people disreputable enough to allow women to mix with them on a basis of equality.

  ‘About ten to fifteen years ago. Before your time,’ said Owen.

  ‘I will speak to Hussein. Perhaps he will remember her.’

  ‘I don’t think she would have been—’ how was he going to put this? ‘—part of Hussein’s musical world.’ Hussein, as far as he remembered, was, or considered himself to be, very avant-garde. ‘From what I can gather, she played mostly at private musical evenings. Soirées. For the German community.’

  ‘I am beginning to feel quite friendly towards Germans,’ said Zeinab, putting the pillow back over her head.

  ***

  Cavendish was in the bar, talking to McPhee. He turned towards Owen as he came in.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘we were talking about you. McPhee tells me you’re on to something.’

  ‘The ghaffirs? Well, I don’t know—’

  ‘It sounds as if it could be something big.’