Herring on the Nile

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘It must have broken off from the roof, up there,’ I started to say, though I couldn’t have said exactly which part of the roof had given way.

  ‘We need to clear the hall and get people over to the other side of the courtyard,’ said somebody near me. ‘Another piece could come down at any moment.’

  There was general agreement on this point. Though the outer court was entirely open to the sky, and no part of it other than that adjoining the hall offered any threat of falling objects, most of us gravitated quickly to the far side – with frequent backward glances. There I met other members of our party, including Elsie.

  ‘What happened in there?’ she demanded, lick in galarge ice cream with three chocolate Flakes. ‘Did you break something?’

  ‘A rock fell from the roof,’ I said. ‘It just missed me and Herbie Proctor.’

  Elsie nodded, though the rapidly melting vanilla goo was demanding the better part of her attention. I showed her my scratched arm, and received an assurance (between skilfully deployed licks) that I would probably live. Only when I pointed to the widely dispersed remains of the slab on the far side of the courtyard did she begin to take the incident seriously.

  ‘You mean all of those rock bits over there?’

  ‘It was still in one piece when it was dislodged from the roof,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a bit of a coincidence, then,’ she said with a frown.

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning that last night you get a death threat and today a rock almost kills you.’

  ‘Oh, it couldn’t have been the person who sent the text,’ I said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘They’re not even in Egypt at the moment.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Absolutely. It must have been an accident. Maybe somebody who ignored the warning signs dislodged a loose stone. Herbie Proctor and I just happened to be in the wrong place.’

  ‘It’s not a very effective way of bumping somebody off, is it? You can scarcely get pinpoint accuracy.’

  ‘Maybe you could warn somebody off?’ I suggested.

  ‘And you think that’s what happened?’

  ‘I suppose somebody might have wanted to warn Proctor,’ I said. ‘If he’s been hired to guard this Raffles guy – wherever he is – wouldn’t that have made him a target? Somebody could easily have dropped the slab of rock down into the courtyard where we were standing. Most people wouldn’t have gone onto the roof with that sign there, so anyone who went up there would probably have been alone and unobserved. And with all of the confusion afterwards, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to sneak away down that little staircase and out into the courtyard.’

  ‘Did you actually see anyone up on the roof?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We were standing close to the wall, by that column over there. We wouldn’t have been able to see anyone.’

  ‘So, just an old, badly constructed roof?’ asked Elsie.

  ‘I guess so. After two thousand years, you could probably just put the whole thing down to reasonable wear and tear.’

  Lizzi Hull found us at this point and, with no ice cream as a distraction, offered slightly more sympathetic remarks about the incident. She had abandoned her cap for a floppy sun hat, not dissimilar to that worn by Jane Watson – and indeed by many other ladies who were visiting the temple. After a while Sky Benson appeared, equally sympathetic, but currently bareheaded.

  On the far side of the courtyard from us, officials were now hurriedly taping off the entrance to the hypostyle hall. I could see Proctor and another visitor pointing out to them, at a safe distance, where the stone appeared to have fallen from. It looked as though it was being treated as a health and safety issue rather than a crime. Eventually Campion too reappeared. The party was more or less complete and it was agreed that we should make our way back to the bus. En route, I took Elsie to one side, on the pretext of wanting to take a look at the mamissi.

  ‘I’ve just had a thought . . .’ I began. ‘The conversations we overheard last night – Sky Benson was saying that she didn’t think she could go through with it. Campion was saying that, if the opportunity arose, they had to take their chance. Was that rock one of them taking their chance? Herbie Proctor was saying to me, just before the ceiling fell in, that he thought Campion was a phoney.’

  ‘What? Are you saying that Campion could have overheard the conversation, worked out Proctor was onto them, dashed up to the roof and lobbed the slab down?’

  I thought about it. The improbability of the unathletic Campion dashing anywhere, other than to the front of a queue, was the least of the possible objections. It would simply have taken anyone far too long to get up to the roof. Surely?

  ‘I admit he would have had to have been pretty fast,’ I conceded. ‘Proctor had been standing there only for a minute or so.’

  ‘Not him then,’ said Elsie.

  ‘Campion is a fake though,’ I said.

  ‘Are we also back to the very important Ptolemy numbering issue?’

  ‘Yes, but without the note of sarcasm that you just employed. This is an important clue. My theory is that he’s got the same guidebook as I have and that he is reading it up as he goes along, hence—’

  ‘Ethelred,’ she said. ‘That’s the biggest load of boll . . .’ Then she stopped suddenly, in mid-put-down. I turned and looked in the direction she was looking.

  ‘Hello,’ said Annabelle. ‘It’s so good to see you both enjoying yourselves.’

  Nine

  ‘Hello,’ said the scheming bitch. ‘It’s so good to see you both enjoying yourselves.’

  I had been concentrating on explaining things, and Ethelred had been Ethelred, so neither of us had noticed a lady in a large floppy hat approaching us from an oblique angle. For a moment the three of us stood there, Annabelle smiling serenely, me frowning and Ethelred blinking. Of course, Annabelle wasn’t just smiling. Every little nuance of dress and expression was carefully calculated – the cool, white linen blouse with three buttons open at the neck, the immaculate sand-coloured slacks with the large belt that emphasized her teensy little waist, the carefully understated touch of make-up that she’d probably been working on since two o’clock that morning, the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger look in her eyes. Oh yes. Nor was my frown merely a frown – it said quite clearly: ‘I’m onto your game, you bitch, whatever your game turns out to be.’ Ethelred’s blink was, obviously, just a blink.

  ‘I think it’s a little warmer today, don’t you?’ asked Annabelle, taking off her floppy hat to reveal her (dyed) blonde tresses to their full advantage. She gave me the sad half-smile again and I thought: ‘Yes, Botox!’

  ‘Hello, Annabelle,’ said Ethelred finally. He leaned forward awkwardly and kissed her on the cheek. The day was indeed quite warm, but I was afraid that Ethelred’s lips might nevertheless end up stuck to her face, like when you kiss a deep-frozen tub of chocolate ice cream. (It happened once to a friend of mine.)

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded, raising the question that seemed not to have occurred to Ethelred yet.

  ‘I just felt like a little winter break,’ said Annabelle. ‘If you two can visit Egypt, why not I?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to come to Egypt?’ I said. ‘I thought you’d turned Ethelred down?’

  She flashed a look at Ethelred that said quite clearly that he had told me too much for his own good. Ethelred went back to blinking, though slightly more nervously than before.

  ‘I’ve decided that a trip on a Nile paddle steamer would be fun after all,’ she said.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Ethelred, as if there genuinely was some hope that it was not ours.

  ‘The Khedive, of course,’ Annabelle cooed. ‘It’s the best boat on the river. I checked with the little man at the reception desk. There are apparently several cabins vacant. He has given me a nice one near yours.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said.

  ‘That’s nice of you to say so,’ she said.
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  I wondered whether we’d jointly achieved some sort of world record for using the word ‘nice’ sarcastically. Probably.

  ‘So, you’ll be with us for the rest of the trip?’ said Ethelred, still hoping things weren’t as bad as they looked.

  ‘Every single day,’ said Annabelle, confirming that they were. ‘Now, I must run and take a look at the boat thing in the inner temple. I think we still have a few minutes before the coach returns to the Khedive. So nice to see you both.’

  That’s how it is with world records: no sooner do you set one than somebody else breaks it.

  Ethelred was strangely contemplative as we drove through the streets of Edfu on our way back to the boat, our coach driver neatly avoiding horse-drawn carriages operating on the wrong side of the dual carriageway.

  Once on board, Ethelred vanished to attend to his minuscule scratch. Annabelle, too, excused herself, saying that she had to unpack. I wondered what I should do next myself. My policemen had not only failed to report for breakfast but had opted out of the temple visit, so I thought perhaps I would update them on what had happened there.

  ‘From what you say, it sounds like an accident,’ said Inspector Mahmoud with a glance at his colleague. ‘Not something we should get involved in.’

  ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like to contact the local police in case it’s anything to do with the criminals?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I think it was an accident too, but you could talk to them and they would be able to carry out proper searches of the boat for clues . . .’

  Mahmoud shook his head. ‘The last thing we want is that these people discover we are onto them. If we get uniformed policemen trampling all over the boat, we’ll lose the best lead we’ve had for months.’

  ‘And you still can’t tell me who the criminals are?’

  ‘There are two of them. We know that they have come out from London. One at least is already on this boat.’

  At a time when good facts were hard to come by, it was reassuring to find that the number of criminals remained constant at exactly two, regardless of whose version we were listening to. A bit like Noah, I mentally paired off those who had boarded the boat. ‘So that’s Professor Campion and Sky Benson,’ I said. ‘There are the two American boys – but they’ve come from Kansas or somewhere, not London. There’s Purbright, but he’s clearly on his own. So is Proctor. So is the hat bitch. So’s Lizzi Hull. So is Annabelle, Lady Muntham.’

  I paused after this last name so that it could sink into their consciousness.

  ‘Ah, yes, Lady Muntham,’ said Mahmoud. ‘She joined the Khedive this morning, having travelled down from Cairo. Do you know her?’

  ‘A bit,’ I said.

  ‘She has a title. She is presumably very rich?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘She is currently very poor. My ambition is to ensure she remains so.’

  ‘She is famous?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  They seemed let down. Maybe meeting celebs was a perk of the job. Such charms as Annabelle possessed were all freely available for viewing between the hours of eight in the morning and eleven at night, but if they were looking for anything beyond that, they were going to be badly disappointed.

  ‘We’ll speak to her later.’

  Reluctantly I agreed that we didn’t yet have the evidence to put the handcuffs on Annabelle – and to be fair, there was only one of her. ‘It must be possible to narrow things down a bit, though?’

  ‘The two American guys travelled here via London,’ said Majid, running through the passenger list. ‘And they were in Cairo before they came to Luxor. They could be on holiday, like they say, or then again, maybe not. The CIA are checking them out for us.’

  ‘Purbright is travelling alone,’ said Inspector Mahmoud, ‘but there is, of course, the gentleman who failed to join us at Luxor. He is down on the passenger list as “Smith”, which we believe to be a fictitious and assumed name. He may well fit into the equation somewhere. We have been trying to find out about him too. We think he may be in the country and will join the boat later. Purbright and his missing friend remain our best hunch.’

  ‘And Herbie Proctor?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Mahmoud. ‘He doesn’t quite seem up to . . . the crime we are investigating. You can vouch for Mr Tressider?’

  ‘Obviously,’ I said. ‘Completely harmless. On the other hand, I overheard Professor Campion and Sky Benson having a rather strange conversation. He was trying to persuade her to do something she didn’t want to do.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but not the sort of thing you’re obviously thinking, so you can wipe that grin off your face. I also heard Purbright talking to somebody.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wasn’t too pleased to see them.’ Even as I said it, I realized that this piece of intelligence didn’t amount to very much. Majid and Mahmoud exchanged glances again. I was losing credibility as a detective.

  ‘Can you remember anything they said?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘Purbright said something about it being a surprise to see this person but he couldn’t throw them off the boat.’

  ‘No, I suppose he couldn’t. Throwing somebody into the Nile would certainly arouse suspicion. And then?’

  ‘I couldn’t hear the reply, but they stopped talking because . . . because they thought they might be overheard where they were.’

  ‘And that was all?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t know if it was a man or a woman Purbright was talking to?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But maybe it was a woman.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘There was just this note of condescension in his voice,’ I said. ‘It’s something men do.’

  Mahmoud looked at Majid again and shrugged dismissively.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Majid. ‘That is very helpful.’

  I hadn’t achieved much, but I’d achieved all they’d expected. Thanks, guys.

  ‘What do you want me to do now?’ I asked.

  Inspector Mahmoud looked doubtful and seemed to be about to tell me I was released from my snooping duties, but Inspector Majid intervened.

  ‘Maybe you could talk to Miss Benson,’ said Majid. ‘It would help to know a little more about her conversation with Professor Campion – and whether she subsequently spoke to Purbright. It may be that you can catch her off guard in a way that we cannot.’

  This indeed was their problem. Inspite of what Ethelred thought, the two of them were so obviously policemen that they might as well have sat there in full uniform saying ‘Evening all’ to passers-by. They were pretty lucky they had somebody like me to help out.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  Sky Benson put down her copy of Snow on the Desert’s Face. ‘Be my guest,’ she said. It was already too hot for some of the passengers – certainly we were the only ones who had so far opted for a table and a comfy basketwork chair on the sun deck. Sky still wore no make-up but was now dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and sported a necklace of irregularly shaped pieces of coral that she must have bought in one of the shops in Edfu.

  ‘Well, the visit to the temple was more exciting than I expected,’ I said.

  ‘I hope Ethelred is all right,’ she replied. She seemed genuinely concerned. ‘That bit of roof didn’t miss him by much, did it?’

  I nodded. ‘Ethelred’s fine – well, much the same as usual anyway. Were you in the hall?’

  ‘No, I was outside in the . . . I’m not sure what its name is. I still haven’t worked out what the different bits of the temple are called. Anyway, I just heard a bit of a crash, turned and saw a cloud of dust rising. You’d think they’d make sure these places were safe to visit, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You didn’t go up on the roof yourself?’

  ‘With my head for heights? No thanks. Just the look of the stairs up there made me feel faint. Anyway, wasn’t there a sign saying “No Entry” or something
?’

  ‘Yes, but only to stop you seeing the good stuff. How do you find travelling on your own?’

  ‘It’s fine. You get to meet people. Everyone seems very friendly.’

  ‘And Professor Campion?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ She looked at me with an innocence that was almost as tacky as her necklace.

  ‘What did you think of his talk this morning?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s very good,’ she said, but slightly cautiously.

  ‘Where exactly is he a professor?’

  ‘London,’ she said. ‘I think that’s what he told me, anyway.’

  ‘Do you know him well?’

  ‘As well as you can know somebody after twenty-four hours.’

  ‘You didn’t know him before this trip then?’

  ‘No, why do you think that?’

  She was convincing – I had to hand it to her. If I had not overheard her and the professor, I might have almost believed what she was saying.

  ‘You were sitting together on the aeroplane,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, that was quite a coincidence – being given seats next to each other, then finding out that we were on the same boat, I mean. We had a good old chinwag on the way out.’

  ‘Do you also work at a university?’

  ‘No, I’m a librarian,’ she said. ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m a literary agent.’

  ‘What fun!’

  ‘You reckon? Did Professor Campion say why he was on this trip? As an Egyptologist he should have seen most of these temples before. It must all be a bit basic for him.’

  ‘I suppose if you’re really interested in that sort of thing, you can’t get enough of them. You must find the same thing with books.’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Or writers.’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  She picked up Snow on the Desert’s Face again.

  ‘You like Salome Otterbourne’s books?’ I asked.

  ‘This one’s better than Under the Fig Tree,’ she said. ‘But I really prefer detective stories.’

  ‘That’s interesting. Ever contemplated murder yourself?’