A Dead Man in Istanbul

by Michael Pearce

  ‘I can throw something in here,’ said Seymour. ‘They went round together, Selim and Cunningham, as you know. But their relationship, though close, was also rather an odd one. Certainly with respect to sexual relationships. Someone suggested to me that it was as if Cunningham had to go first, as if Selim could only fall for a woman if Cunningham had tried her out first. Or perhaps it was simply that Selim was always to some extent dominated by Cunningham. But I think it happened again with Lalagé Kassim.’

  Mukhtar nodded.

  ‘It could well be. And it would add complication to the strange, three-way relationship. A relationship that was already complicated, since Miss Kassim was spying on Prince Selim and at Cunningham’s instigation; although as I have said, Cunningham was on Selim’s side. Perhaps, I asked myself, he was trying to bind Selim closer through use of this item of information that Miss Kassim had discovered, if there was such an item. If there was, incidentally, I have not found it. Yet.

  ‘So, for the moment, I am concentrating on the other of my tracks. And here there is progress. You received my note about the saz string, yes? That, and the flight of the saz player, Babikr, says something, yes? Or so it would appear.

  ‘But I am not sure that it is quite as it appears. Why would the saz player want to kill Miss Kassim? There was no relationship between them. She disdained him, he appears, if anything, frightened of her. Hate? No, I find no hate. No motivation personal to him.

  ‘I suspect, in fact, that he was merely an agent for someone else. And that brings me back to the theatre and its being a battleground for the rivals to the Sultan’s succession. Selim was using it and rather successfully. Someone may have seen the need to – is this the right expression? – put a spoke in his wheel.

  ‘Miss Kassim may have been the spoke. I am sorry to have to admit this, it does not reflect well on my country, but women do not count for much in our society. It will be different in the future, I hope. But at the moment a Lalagé Kassim counts for nothing. Someone may have decided to kill her as a signal to Selim, a warning to stop his theatre games. And they may have decided to use the saz player for that purpose.

  ‘I do not know. But we shall see. For my colleagues have found the saz player out in the countryside and tomorrow they will be bringing him to me for questioning. And since I owe you something for the suggestion that put me on to him, perhaps you would like to be present? We shall turn over the card together, yes?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was a different feeling about the Embassy the next morning. Felicity, who was having a cup of coffee with Seymour, was tense; but so was everyone else. The diplomats went round with a preoccupied air. Servants, dressed in their best and with splendid red sashes, were everywhere, flicking with dusters at imaginary specks of dust. Cavasses strained to attention at every corner, while the Chief Dragoman darted around peering at them and everything to make sure all was in order.

  The Ambassador, affecting confidence, announced that the quartet’s rehearsal would go ahead as planned.

  ‘Fiddling while Rome burns?’ said Ponsonby, as they went past.

  The sounds that came from the inner room where they were practising were far from assured and it was with relief, to them, evidently, as well as the audience, that they stopped after half an hour and came out on to the terrace.

  Chalmers bustled around.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ he said. He glanced at his watch.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Rice-Cholmondely. ‘We’re not going to synchronize watches, are we?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  A landau came in at the Embassy gates and drove up to the front of the Embassy. It contained a strikingly beautiful woman in a large hat and a flame-coloured gown.

  The Chief Dragoman rushed forward and handed her down.

  ‘Why, Iskander!’ said Lady Sybil. ‘How nice to see you again!’

  The Ambassador came forward.

  ‘Richard!’ cried Lady Syb. ‘How are you? It’s been years!’

  ‘Too many!’ said the Ambassador. ‘But you’re still looking –’

  Lady Sybil examined him critically.

  ‘But you’re not!’ she said firmly. ‘You’ve let yourself go. Or is it the bird-watching? John!’ she cried, catching sight of Ponsonby. ‘Where was it? Prague, or Vienna?’

  ‘Vienna, I think,’ said Ponsonby.

  ‘And Alastair!’ She gave her hand to Rice-Cholmondely. He bowed over it with old-fashioned courtesy.

  She seemed to know everyone. Seymour was struck again by the smallness of the world of the English upper classes, where everyone knew each other, were probably related to each other, had perhaps been to school with each other, and had very possibly had affairs with each other.

  Lady Sybil looked around.

  ‘Where’s my niece?’ she said. ‘They told me she would be here.’

  Felicity, who had been lurking behind Seymour, came forward reluctantly.

  ‘Hello, Aunt Syb,’ she said.

  ‘Darling!’ They exchanged kisses. ‘So this is where you’ve been hiding since you ran away!’ She held her at arm’s length. ‘You look the better for it, I must say. Good colour. Is it the sunshine? Or are you having an affair?’

  Felicity blushed.

  ‘It’s the sailing, I expect,’ she muttered.

  ‘Nonsense! There’s a different look in your eye since I saw you last. And that is certainly nothing to do with sailing. Who is this young man?’

  ‘This is Seymour,’ said the Ambassador. ‘He’s a detective. Out from London to look into –’

  ‘I know,’ said Lady Sybil.

  ‘Of course, of course. Sybil, I’m terribly sorry, we all are –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Lady Sybil impatiently. She looked at Seymour. ‘I shall want a word with you, young man,’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I gather we are staying at the same hotel. Perhaps you will join me for dinner?’

  ‘I would be delighted.’

  ‘I was hoping, Sybil, that you might join us at the Embassy –’ began the Ambassador diffidently.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Lady Sybil. She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, dear. I look forward to it immensely. But perhaps you will show me around? I’d like to see how the place has changed since I was here last. And then, perhaps, we could come out here again for a drink? With John and Alastair and these other nice young men. Dinner at seven, sharp,’ she said to Seymour. ‘And, Felicity, I’d like to have a word with you, too. Perhaps you could come to the hotel before breakfast? I am always awake by five.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ said Felicity.

  ‘Well, young man,’ said Lady Sybil, over dinner that night, ‘have you found out who it was that killed my nephew?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Good!’ Lady Sybil nodded approvingly. ‘Rupert – he’s the nephew that works at the Foreign Office, one of their rising stars, I always believe in working with rising stars, rather than those whose sun is setting, although, of course, it usually starts setting as soon as they reach the top, and I do believe in starting at the top – Rupert said that you were the man for the job. “Why?” I said. “Because he doesn’t think like us,” he said. “Well, that’s a mercy,” I said. “Foreign, is he?”’ She looked at Seymour. ‘You are foreign, aren’t you?’

  Seymour rose in rebellion.

  ‘English,’ he said firmly. ‘Born and bred.’

  ‘You look foreign,’ said Lady Sybil doubtfully. ‘The darkness, and something about the cheekbones. Central Europe, I would say. Hungary?’

  ‘It is true,’ said Seymour stiffly, ‘that my mother was born in one of the Austro-Hungarian provinces.’

  ‘And your father? One of the Seymours of Northumberland?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Seymour, ‘he runs a timber business in the East End.’

  ‘But the name . . .?’

  Seymour was getting fed up with this social placing.

  ‘. . . was adopted by m
y grandfather when he came to England. He was a Pole. His name was Pelczynski. He said that no Englishman would even be able to spell it, so changed it to Seymour.’

  And put that in your pipe and smoke it, or the equivalent, thought Seymour.

  Lady Sybil seemed, however, to have suddenly gone far away.

  ‘Pelczynski?’ she said. ‘I knew someone of that name. A taxi driver. He used to drive a cab.’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Seymour grimly.

  ‘A tall, dashing, handsome man, who’d been an officer somewhere. In Russia, was it? And had had to escape because he was a Pole and they thought he was a revolutionary?’

  ‘He was a revolutionary,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Stefan? Of course he was! It was very romantic. Thrilling, too! He used to tell me all about it. I was very young, then, just a girl, but . . . I knew him very well.’

  Oh, no! thought Seymour. Not Grandfather, too!

  ‘And you’re his grandson?’ Lady Sybil inspected him critically. ‘Stefan was fair. You must take after your mother.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ said Seymour, anxious to move on, or, at any rate, away.

  ‘Well, that is a relief!’ said Lady Sybil. ‘I’ve always said, we need to co-opt people from abroad. The English are so unimaginative. Take my family, for instance: thick as posts. So we’ve got to look outside our native stock. That’s why we’ve got so many Scots in the Government. And Welsh, too. Although Lloyd George is not, it may surprise you to know, a man who knew me! And Winston, too; his mother was an American. And he certainly doesn’t think like an ordinary Minister. Rupert was quite right. You’re clearly the man for the job. As you’ve shown. For you found out who murdered Peter. And now you’re going to arrest him.’

  ‘I am afraid, Lady Cunningham, that it is not as easy as that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘There is, for one thing, the question of what he was doing when he was shot. He was spying.’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘You knew? But of course you did! He used to feed back his information through you.’

  ‘Well, of course he did. He wanted to be sure that it reached the right people. And that meant not going through his superiors. Otherwise it would have just stuck on desks. You have no idea of the time it takes for anything to get through the system. And then, of course, they might have altered it. He wasn’t having any of that! So, no, it had to go straight to the Prime Minster. I took care of that.’

  ‘But, Lady Cunningham –’

  ‘The trouble was, he didn’t feed through all of his information. He kept some of it back. He didn’t trust the Prime Minister, you see, to get it right, even when he did have the information. So he thought he’d better sort things out himself.’

  ‘Yes, I do see that. And perhaps he told you what he had in mind?’

  ‘It was something to do with the succession, I believe.’

  ‘Yes. The present Sultan is ailing and his sons are jostling over who will take his place. Your nephew favoured a friend of his.’

  ‘Well, of course! That is the thing to do. Go for the devil you know rather than someone you don’t know, who is chosen by others and on whom, therefore, you can’t rely.’

  ‘I think your nephew had other reasons than that as well. For one thing, his candidate was quite Westernized and likely to favour the things that the Western powers wanted. To be fair, he stood for modernization and reform, too. But I suspect that the main reason in his favour was that your nephew thought he could influence him.’

  ‘Well, that is, surely, very sensible of him.’

  ‘I am not so sure, actually, that he was quite as influence-able as your nephew thought. However, he certainly did all he could to advance his interests. Perhaps he hoped that the Prime Minster would, too?’

  ‘That was certainly the burden of the information that he wanted me to pass on.’

  ‘But, you see, Lady Cunningham, to side with one interest is to run the risk of antagonizing others.’

  ‘Well, of course.’ There was a short pause, and then she said, ‘And you believe that may have been the reason for his death?’

  ‘Not quite. To do with the reason, perhaps. Lady Cunningham, we are in danger here of mixing in high politics and I do not share the confidence of your nephew that I can run the country better than those who have been elected to do so. I said that I knew who had killed your nephew. I think I do, but there are one or two things I need to confirm first. Tomorrow evening I should be in a position to enlighten you. I would suggest that we meet again for dinner but I know that the Embassy is hoping –’

  ‘I will ask them to postpone it until the next day, when, perhaps, we shall all be in a position to celebrate.’

  ‘Thank you. And I would like, if I may, to bring a friend with me tomorrow. He is the Ottoman official who has been handling the case.’

  ‘Please do. I look forward to meeting him. You know,’ she said, as they rose from the table, ‘you remind me so much of your grandfather.’

  The saz player, Seymour noticed, had been brought not to a police station but to the military barracks at which he had met Mukhtar before. The barracks seemed to contain some cells, in one of which the saz player had been temporarily lodged. It was at the end of a long corridor and, Seymour, thought, probably underground. It was completely bare and the saz player was sitting bowed on the ground.

  ‘You must come with me,’ said Mukhtar, and took him to another room, which was furnished sparingly with a table and two chairs, one on either side of the table. Mukhtar summoned another chair and they sat down, the saz player, Babikr, on one side of the table, Mukhtar and Seymour on the other side.

  ‘Babikr,’ said Mukhtar softly, ‘you need not fear, but you must answer my questions.’

  The saz player nodded. He had been allowed to keep his saz and now it stood beside him on the floor. From time to time his hand reached down to touch it, as if he needed its reassurance. He was dressed in an old white galabeeyah and had a beaded skull cap on his head. Apart from a first, agonized look at the terjiman he kept his eyes fixed on the table.

  ‘Babikr,’ said Mukhtar, ‘why did you run away?’

  The saz player moistened his lips, as if he was about to speak, but then shook his head mutely.

  ‘Were you frightened?’

  Babikr nodded, but kept his eyes on the table.

  ‘Who were you frightened of?’

  The saz player said nothing but made a gesture of despair. Seymour guessed that he had been frightened of just about everything and everybody: the big city, the fluent people, the hostile band, even, perhaps, those who had befriended him. In picking him off the street Cunningham had done him no service.

  ‘Perhaps you were frightened of me?’ suggested Mukhtar. ‘Perhaps Mr Cubuklu told you that I wanted to talk to you?’

  After a moment, Babikr nodded.

  ‘Perhaps Mr Cubuklu could see that you were frightened, and said that you didn’t need to see me if you didn’t want to, you could run away?’

  In Whitechapel, thought Seymour, there may be objections to the questions, but here in Istanbul, given the nature of the man, he could see you wouldn’t get far if you tried anything different. Certainly it produced a response: Babikr nodded.

  ‘I expect he said he would help you. Did he tell you where to go? No? Just that you should go at once? And did he suggest that you should send him a letter telling him what you were doing? No?’

  Letter? The saz player looked aghast at the thought.

  He shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Good. Now I have a question on something else. Mr Cubuklu asked you to play for him, yes? And to play before all the people. Yes?’

  The memory alone seemed to make the saz player wretched.

  ‘I expect you found it very hard to play before the people like that. It was not the way you usually played, was it? Not in a rich room and before rich people.’

  Babikr shook his head vigorously.

  ‘But you di
d it because he asked you, and had been kind to you. Did he ask you to do anything else for him?’

  The saz player was locked in immobility.

  ‘I think he did, Babikr, and I want you to tell me what it was.’

  Babikr opened his mouth as if he was going to speak, but then could not.

  ‘I think he asked you to do something that shocked you.’

  Babikr said nothing.

  ‘Something which made you very unhappy.’

  Mukhtar waited, but the saz player didn’t, perhaps couldn’t reply.

  ‘Babikr, this is something which you must tell me.’

  He waited again, but the saz player seemed able only to look at the table in misery.

  ‘Let me try to help you. I want to help you, Babikr. At the theatre, the theatre where you worked, there was a woman.’

  Unexpectedly, this produced a response.

  ‘Two,’ muttered Babikr.

  ‘Two women? Ah, yes. One was kind to you, wasn’t she? when the band was being unkind. The other – well, she was not kind to you, was she?’

  Babikr shook his head.

  ‘Not kind. Did you hate her for that?’

  Babikr looked startled.

  ‘Hate?’

  Seymour had the impression that the saz player had never in his life hated anybody, that it was, in a sense, too bold a thing for him to do.

  ‘No?’ said Mukhtar. ‘Well, perhaps that was a pity. For it would have made it easier for you to do the thing that Mr Cubuklu asked you to do.’

  And now Babikr really did seem paralysed. For a long time he sat there just gazing at the terjiman.

  ‘God knows all,’ he said at last, hoarsely.

  ‘Well, of course, he does. He sees all and knows all. Remember that, Babikr, for it means that even if you say nothing, what is known, is known. So I ask you again: what was it that Mr Cubuklu asked you to do?’

  Babikr’s face began to work.

  ‘God sees all and knows all. He knows what you did. But if it was at another’s bidding, then that counts for you. Did Mr Cubuklu ask you to do something to Miss Kassim?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Babikr.

  ‘To take one of your strings?’

  ‘Yes.’