The Girl in the Nile

by Michael Pearce

  The girls looked doubtful.

  “Honestly, how would we know?”

  “Did you see anyone strange? You must have got to know the crew.”

  “We knew everybody, more or less. By the end, at any rate.”

  “And there was no one who suddenly appeared and you saw for the first time?”

  “I don’t remember anyone like that,” said Masha. “Why do you ask?”

  Owen thought, then decided to tell them.

  “Because Leila was garotted.”

  “Garotted!”

  “That’s not very nice, is it? You mean, while we were on board—?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus!”

  “It could have been us,” said Masha.

  “I feel like a drink,” said Nanette. She went out of the room and came back with a bottle of whisky and some glasses.

  “No, thank you,” said Mahmoud.

  “Some coffee? I’ll make you some. I could do with some myself.”

  Mahmoud accepted a cup politely, then felt obliged to overrespond and praised its flavor, sweetness, etcetera, copiously.

  The girls understood.

  “Don’t mind us,” said Nanette, putting her hand on his knee. “Sorry about the drink. But I do need it!”

  She poured herself a stiff glass.

  “Garotte!” she said. “Holy Mary!”

  Masha helped herself to some of the coffee.

  “We didn’t see anyone like that,” she said. “If that’s what you’ve been asking us.”

  “You couldn’t tell,” said Nanette. “They look the same as anyone else.”

  “A strange face,” said Owen. “He’d be a little apart from the crew.”

  They shook their heads.

  “We didn’t see anyone like that. Honest!”

  “Just imagine!” said Nanette.

  “A good job we stuck together,” said Masha.

  “She was on her own, of course.”

  “Well, that’s what she wanted. She could have stayed with us.”

  “To be fair, we weren’t too welcoming.”

  “She preferred it that way. Even when she had the chance, she would go off on her own.”

  “That was it, wasn’t it? She was up there on her own.”

  “You think that was it?”

  “Yes. If it had been one of us, it would have been the same.”

  “Jesus!” Masha shuddered. “It could have been me!”

  “I think he was looking for Leila,” said Owen.

  “What, especially?”

  Owen nodded.

  Nanette took another drink.

  “Well, I don’t know what makes you say that,” she said, “but I’d prefer it to be that way. No hard feelings about Leila, that’s terrible! But all the same I’m glad he was looking for one particular woman and not any.”

  Masha poured some of the whisky into Owen’s coffee and took a sip.

  “I don’t know which is worse,” she said. “Someone who is crazy or someone who isn’t.”

  “They’d have to have a motive,” said Nanette.

  “We were hoping you might be able to help us on that,” said Owen.

  “There weren’t any quarrels, if that’s what you mean.”

  “In fact, rather the reverse. He put himself out for her, didn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “The Prince, Narouz. He was rather nice to her, I thought. Kept trying to get her to join in.”

  “Of course, there was Fahid.”

  “He doesn’t really count, though.”

  “He was pestering her.”

  “Yes, but I mean—!” Both girls laughed.

  “Still, he kept on to her. That’s why she went up there on her own.”

  “Yes, but she could have pushed him off, couldn’t she?”

  “I thought at one time he might have pushed her off. I thought that might be it. Not meaning, to, really, just being overkeen.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have been that, would it? I mean, garotte!”

  “Fahid was keen on her, was he?” asked Owen.

  “When he found out,” said Nanette.

  “Found out?”

  “Found out what women were for.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Owen.

  Masha caressed his neck.

  “I’ll give you some lessons,” she offered.

  “I know that bit. But what’s that got to do with Fahid?”

  The two girls looked at him in astonishment.

  “Don’t you know? That was the whole point of the boat trip.”

  Chapter Ten

  “I suppose,” said Narouz, “I have to confess.”

  They were sitting again on the terrace of the Continental. Owen had suggested he visit the Prince at home but Narouz had rejected that in favor of the hotel. He preferred to make his confessions in the open air.

  “Yes,” he said, rolling the ice in his glass and looking down, a trifle wistfully, at the Street of the Camel, “I should have told you before. Only there are some things”—he shifted his gaze to Owen—“that it’s difficult to talk about.”

  “It would surely have been better—” began Owen.

  The Prince held up his hand.

  “You’re absolutely right, my dear fellow. Only one doesn’t always see these things at the time. It seemed a simple family matter. Dynastic, one might say. And, therefore, if you’ll forgive me”—he patted Owen on the arm—“nothing to do with the Mamur Zapt.”

  “Something to do with a clearly criminal matter.”

  “But was it, my dear fellow? Really? Incidental, I would have said. Only incidental.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  The Prince regarded him closely.

  “You’re surely not still thinking—?”

  “At the moment,” said Owen, “I see no reason for dismissing the possibility.”

  “But garotte, my dear fellow! Garotte!”

  The Prince started to extend an arm, as if to invite Owen to share the impossibility of it, but thought better and withdrew it.

  “It’s out of the question,” he said quietly.

  “It exists as a possibility,” said Owen, “until I’ve heard enough to be able to discard it.”

  “He’s just a boy,” said the Prince.

  “Carry on,” said Owen.

  The Prince shrugged.

  “Well, that was it. Still a boy. At his age! I don’t know what they were doing. They keep them in the harem so long these days! In my time—” The Prince sighed.

  “You’re not telling me they’ve kept him in the harem till now!”

  “As good as. Oh, he has his own quarters, his own servants. But they’re all picked by his mother and report daily to her. Can you imagine that? Daily! A report on all his doings. Bowel movements included, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  The Prince looked gloomily at Owen.

  “Well, of course, things couldn’t go on like that. The boy is, after all, an heir to the throne. A distant one, it is true—he comes after me—but nevertheless an heir. It was time he grew up.”

  He dropped his voice conspiratorially.

  “I don’t mind telling you, old chap—but it’s between ourselves—there were the most frightful arguments between his mother and the Khedive. Between ourselves, I think the old boy’s a bit afraid of her. Of course, he had to insist—I mean, it was his duty, wasn’t it? He has, after all, a responsibility to the throne.”

  Owen was slightly losing the thread.

  “What exactly did he insist on?” he asked.

  “Well, first it was that Fahid had to be—simply had to be—prepared for his royal duties. The boy was an absolute ignoramus. You won’t believe this, my d
ear fellow,” said the Prince earnestly, touching Owen confidentially on the arm, “but he actually didn’t know where Alexandria was, never mind Cannes!”

  Owen tut-tutted.

  “Yes,” said the Prince, gratified, “and as for all that economics stuff! Not an idea! Of course, I would not say that I myself had a total grasp of the subject but it is important, especially for a Khedive, to know enough to at least be able to borrow intelligently. But that, of course, was not the worst of it.”

  “No?” said Owen, seeing that he was expected to.

  “No.” The Prince dropped his voice even lower. “He had never known a woman.”

  The Prince looked at Owen, confident of his response.

  “What?” said Owen, more bewildered than shocked.

  The Prince took it for shock.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “That’s how I felt, too. You’d think, with all those women in the harem—! But, of course, they were all under his mother’s eye. Even so, you would have thought—!”

  The Prince shook his head despairingly.

  “What is human nature coming to these degenerate days! Why, in my day, there were women eager enough. After all, surely it is something to be proud of, initiating an heir to the throne into the ways of manhood? Even at the age of eight.”

  “Eight?”

  The Prince shrugged his shoulders modestly.

  “I suppose I was advanced for my years. But that only made it more pleasurable for everybody. Of course, when my mother found out, she had me out of the harem in a hurry.”

  “The Khedive—”

  “Pleased, my dear fellow. Pleased, rather than the reverse. Regarded it as a sign of maturity.”

  “And Prince Fahid?”

  “Not like that at all.” The Prince looked despairing again. “I really fear there’s something wrong with the boy. When I found out, I went to the Khedive at once. I said, look, something must be done about this. Well, naturally he agreed with me. So—” He paused to draw breath.

  “So?”

  He looked at Owen gravely. “The Khedive asked me to take the duty upon myself.”

  “The duty—?”

  “Of seeing that he was initiated into manhood.”

  “And this was the real purpose of the trip to Luxor?”

  “Exactly. He would be under my eye all the time, he would be away from his mother, I could supply the necessary women, a range of them, to make the whole thing easier—but there again, my dear fellow, what difficulty! I had really not anticipated—! The lack of taste, my dear fellow!”

  “Nanette and Masha?”

  “The old Continental tradition: an older woman inducting the young man. It’s better like that. They’re more patient. I thought, too, that he ought to start with someone relatively sophisticated. It sets standards right from the start!”

  “Leila?”

  The Prince hesitated.

  “Well, that, I admit, was partly for my own gratification. A little extra piquancy, you know, the most modest Egyptian woman just coming out of her shell. A different flavor, unusual. But wasted, my dear fellow, wasted on him!”

  “I thought,” said Owen, making the connection with what the girls had said, “that she was the one he went for? That his preference for her was rather marked?”

  “Yes,” said the Prince gloomily, “but for the wrong reasons. He ran to her in flight, my dear fellow, flight from experience—not pursuit of it.”

  “Nanette and Masha frightened him?”

  “Yes,” said the Prince dejectedly. “There you have it. He ran to Leila as to a mother.” The Prince shuddered. “It’s his mother again. That damned woman! She’s a lot to answer for.”

  Owen thought it over. It didn’t quite square.

  “I thought it wasn’t quite like that,” he said. “I thought he actively pursued her.”

  “Like a child his mother,” said the Prince sadly.

  “I don’t think so. Not from what I heard.”

  The Prince looked up in hope.

  “You mean—?”

  “So I heard.”

  “Genuine sexual passion?”

  “That’s the impression I got.”

  “Well,” said the Prince, cheering up. “That certainly makes it a lot better.”

  “Hardly,” Owen pointed out. “The girl died.”

  “Yes, but—you’re not suggesting, my dear fellow, she died resisting his advances?”

  “I was wondering.”

  The Prince, now cheered up enormously, summoned another drink.

  “To be truthful, old chap,” he said confidingly, “I did wonder that myself. But I saw it slightly differently. I thought he might have tried to put his arms round her—I saw it as a forlorn hope—and through sheer clumsiness—the boy is extremely maladroit—knocked her overboard. Caught her off balance, perhaps. It’s easily done, especially on a boat.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Owen. “She was garotted.”

  “I didn’t know that at the time. I feared the worst.”

  “Worst?”

  “That the foolish boy might have killed her somehow. Probably by accident.”

  “You don’t think that now?”

  “Of course not. Garotting requires manual skill, my dear fellow, something that Fahid patently has not got. He would probably have garotted himself if he had tried.”

  “I am afraid it still has to remain a possibility,” Owen insisted.

  The Prince dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

  “I think you can safely forget about that, old chap,” he said confidently. “In fact, you can forget about the whole thing now.”

  “I don’t think so. The girl died.”

  “At least Fahid was nothing to do with it,” said Narouz.

  ***

  His mind now more at ease on both counts, Fahid’s sexuality and also his possible culpability over Leila, Narouz agreed readily enough to Owen talking to his nephew.

  “You may get more out of him than I,” he said. “These days he seems increasingly afflicted with dumbness whenever I am present.”

  He arranged, again, for them to meet at the Continental.

  “It will be good experience for him,” he said, “mixing with ordinary people.”

  The Continental suited Owen, who was meeting Zeinab there himself. Zeinab had not yet appeared and he was sitting alone at a table on the terrace when Narouz arrived with his charge.

  “Do see what you can get out of him,” he whispered as he left. “Was it real sexual passion or not?”

  That was roughly the sort of question Owen had in mind, so he said he would. When he found himself faced by the shy, gazellelike boy, however, the issue was unexpectedly difficult to broach.

  He asked Fahid about the two girls, Masha and Nanette: had Fahid liked them?

  The Prince shrugged in a way like his uncle. Liking clearly did not come into it. Owen got the impression, as he probed, that the boy stood rather in awe of them.

  As, indeed, he did with regard to most adults. He listened to Owen respectfully but rather like a small boy listening to a headmaster. The possibility of a man-to-man conversation on the lines Narouz expected seemed remote.

  Owen asked about Leila. Fahid was noncommittal. So noncommittal that it was plain he wasn’t putting into words anything he felt at all. He replied to Owen’s questions politely and dutifully but evaded firmly any attempt by Owen to establish a kind of intimacy.

  Owen felt increasing desperation and it was with some relief that he saw Zeinab approaching them along the terrace.

  The Prince rose politely. Harem-schooled he might be, but somewhere along the line someone had introduced him to Western styles of social intercourse.

  Zeinab, moving easily into the French idiom current among the Cairene upper classes, sh
ook hands.

  “We have met,” she said, “but it was a long time ago and I don’t expect you remember me.”

  Owen was grateful that she had not mentioned the harem, which was where she had probably met him. Zeinab, as the daughter of a senior Pasha, was on visiting terms with the Khedive’s family, or, at least, its female members. Now that she had arrived, however, the prospect of a man-to-man exchange of confidence seemed to have vanished altogether.

  The Prince murmured something noncommittal. He looked at Zeinab, however, with curiosity. She was clearly Egyptian and clearly a lady of rank but she did not quite fit into any of the categories he was familiar with.

  Zeinab remarked that she had been talking to his mother the week before. The Prince asked cautiously about her health.

  Owen watched the boy working out how to handle Zeinab. The French style gave him the clue. He would treat her as a foreigner. He responded to her conversational initiatives in much the way he had to Owen’s.

  Zeinab soon registered this. She had been asking him about the trip on the dahabeeyah but now she fell silent. Owen saw her thinking.

  Suddenly she pounced.

  “Was Leila the sort of girl your mother would have approved of?”

  “No,” said the Prince immediately, caught off guard. “No,” he added on consideration, a trifle grimly.

  “She didn’t approve of the whole thing, did she?”

  “No.”

  “What about you? I expect you quite liked the idea, didn’t you?”

  “At first.”

  “But then not. Was it those women?”

  The Prince tried to find a bland reply but could not. He muttered something.

  Zeinab leaned forward and put her hand gently on his arm. The Prince flinched slightly. It was normal in Arab conversation for men to touch—in fact, if they didn’t, it struck people as cold—but for a woman to do so, unless she was family, was immodest.

  Zeinab kept her hand there, however, and switched from French to the more intimate Arabic.

  “I expect they did not know how to behave,” she said.

  “No,” the Prince admitted.

  “But Leila knew how to behave, I expect.”

  “Yes,” said the Prince unwillingly.

  “Because she was Egyptian and they were foreign.”

  “That’s right,” the boy muttered.