The Donkey-Vous

by Michael Pearce

  ***

  In the bar they met the French Chargé. He waved to them in friendly fashion and pointed to his glass. “A drink?”

  “My turn,” said Owen. “Fortunately, Paul is buying this round.”

  “You ought to be buying me a drink,” Paul said to the Chargé, “after what I’ve been doing for you this morning.”

  “I will buy you a drink,” said the Chargé. “What have you been doing?”

  “Giving Dassin, Laporte et Lebrun a contract, I hope,” said Paul, waving the barman down.

  The Chargé looked at him curiously. “Really?”

  “Yes,” said Paul. “What’ll you have? The same again?”

  “Yes, please. Funny,” said the Chargé, “I thought…Well, I thought you were operating against us.”

  “Me?” said Paul. “I’m a Francophile at heart. And an Egyptophile. I’m every sort of phile except an Anglophile after a morning like this.”

  “You’ve obviously had a hard morning. But productive, I would say,” said the Chargé, “and I certainly will buy you a drink when you’ve finished that one.”

  “How’s Madame Moulin?” inquired Owen.

  The Chargé pulled a face and drank deep.

  “I’m waiting for her now. In fact, I’m waiting for her all the time. She’s supposed not to move a step without me. But that means I can’t move a step without her. It’s terrible! It’s killing me!”

  He looked at Owen.

  “I had hopes…” he said. “Look, you’re not hiding Moulin yourself, are you? Because if you are, I beg of you, I plead with you—” he clasped his hands in mock prayer—“let him go, just for my sake, so that she will go away again!”

  Paul pulled out his handkerchief and pressed it to his eyes.

  “This is a pretty powerful plea,” he said to Owen. “Are you holding him?”

  “I wish I was,” said Owen. “Then I could release him and we could all go home. I’ll tell you what,” he offered, “since it’s for your sake, I’ll try harder.”

  “Thank you,” said the Chargé.

  “Anyway,” said Paul, “he’s more interested in holding Zeinab.”

  “Zeinab!” The Chargé’s eyes lit up. He put his hand on Owen’s sleeve. “You can help me!”

  “What, again?”

  “I need a woman, an Egyptian woman.”

  “Well…”

  “No, no. It’s for Madame Moulin. She wants to meet some Egyptian women. How about dinner? You can come too. Tonight? Tomorrow? Please! She’s driving me crazy.”

  The Chargé had a French cook. Consequently, an invitation to dinner was not something you lightly turned down. Moreover, it was very rare for Owen and Zeinab to be invited anywhere à deux. He was sorely tempted.

  “Please!”

  Owen made up his mind.

  “It would be very nice. Thank you. We would love to come.”

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you a thousand times!” The Chargé drank his glass at a gulp and ordered another round immediately. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

  Eventually, Paul definitely had to have gone and he and Owen got up together. As they turned to go the maître d’hôtel ran into the room. He made straight for Owen.

  “Monsieur! Oh, Monsieur!”

  “What is it?”

  “Come quickly!”

  “What is it, man?”

  “Monsieur Coletorp ’Artley. He has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Like the other. Oh, Monsieur, a second one!”

  Chapter Eight

  The kidnapping of Colthorpe Hartley was not the same in all respects as the kidnapping of Monsieur Moulin. Like Moulin, Colthorpe Hartley had been on the terrace when it happened, but as it was just before lunch time and still very hot the terrace had been half deserted. Some people liked to take their drinks out there, the heat notwithstanding, but most preferred to retreat indoors into the shuttered shade. Colthorpe Hartley, however, always liked to sit out there while awaiting the return of his wife and daughter from their shopping expeditions.

  “Always?”

  “Yes,” said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley. “We do something every morning and always try to get back just before lunch and Daddy is always waiting for us. He can’t come with us himself, you know, he’s not up to it. But he likes to sit and wait for us where he’ll see us the moment we arrive. I think he misses us, even when it’s just for the morning, especially since his stroke.”

  “It’s pretty hot out there.”

  “He doesn’t sit there for long. He knows when to expect us and goes out about ten minutes before. And,” said Lucy, trying to make a joke of it, “he’s never once been late!”

  “So when you didn’t see him there today—”

  “I knew something had happened to him. I thought perhaps—well, you know, there’s always the risk in his condition. I rushed straight indoors because I thought he might be in his room. Then I ran down and asked one of the suffragis to try the Gents. Then I spoke to Monsieur Vincent in case he had fallen somewhere. Monsieur Vincent immediately got everyone looking and I went back out on to the terrace and told Mummy. We asked people on the terrace but they hadn’t seen him. None of the waiters had either, though one of them thought he had definitely seen Daddy go out on to the terrace. We tried the arabeah-drivers, I mean, it’s not very likely, but there was just a chance, but none of them had seen him either. And then Monsieur Vincent came out looking very grave and said he thought we should ring the police. And only then did I think—well, it’s so unlikely, isn’t it? I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t! Even when it’s somebody sitting right beside you, like Monsieur Moulin, it’s somehow remote, the sort of thing you read about in the papers but which never happens to you. It’s as if you’ve got a great big wall around you and then suddenly the wall falls down and all sorts of horrible things are happening.”

  There was this difference, too, from the Moulin case, that the alarm was raised almost immediately. Colthorpe Hartley could have gone out on the terrace no more than a quarter of an hour before Lucy and her mother arrived and it could have been no more than a quarter of an hour later that Monsieur Vincent had rung the police.

  And Owen had been on the spot all the time.

  “At least you weren’t out on the terrace,” said Garvin sourly.

  Gavin had come across straight away, arriving with McPhee. Owen had had time to get a message to them before they left telling McPhee to bring as many men as he could lay his hands on. As soon as they had arrived he had thrown a cordon around the hotel. It was probably locking the door after the horse had gone but there was a faint chance that Colthorpe Hartley might be hidden somewhere close and every chance had to be followed up.

  McPhee, as before, organized the searching. His face was pale and pink and distressed. These things ought not to happen in his ordered world.

  Garvin was tight-lipped and grim. Like Mahmoud, he had gone straight to the street-sellers. He had been a policeman in Egypt for years and knew not only the language but also how to talk to people.

  Mahmoud himself arrived shortly after. When he was really concentrating he allowed himself little of the Arab expansiveness of gesture and talk which were characteristic of him normally. He was concentrating now. He listened to the manager’s account of what had happened, nodded and went out to the terrace where he stood for some moments thinking. He saw that Garvin was questioning the vendors nearest the terrace and ignored them. After a moment he crossed the street and began to talk to people on the other side.

  Owen had already questioned the hotel staff. The staff on Reception thought they had seen Colthorpe Hartley pass them on his way out to the terrace at about his usual time. He had collected a drink at the bar, the other end of the bar from where Owen had been talking with the Chargé, and then taken it outside. The ba
rtender remembered this. The waiters had a half-impression of his being at a table but since he had made no demand on them had not really bothered to register his presence. There had been only a few guests out on the terrace and they had seen or remembered nothing. When Owen questioned them, though, their response was different from what it had been when Moulin had disappeared. This time there was a distinct uneasiness and a kind of sudden shrinking. Owen knew what it was: fear.

  Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley and Lucy had gone inside and Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley was lying down. Lucy came down to see them and tell him as much as she could, but then she went back to be with her mother.

  Word spread quickly. As guests came out of the dining-room and sat down in the lounge areas to take their coffee those already in the know brought them up to date. Guests returning late from the bazaars were drawn aside into the little groups that stood talking in the foyer or in the bar. On the previous occasion the management of the hotel had played everything down. There was no point in doing that now. The managers themselves were searching with their staff.

  Owen checked the dragomans. They had all been out that morning with various parties. As each party had returned, in time for lunch, the dragoman had shepherded its members up the steps and across the terrace and into the hotel, where he had parted with them after effusive farewells and pocketing his piastres. Then he had gone down the corridor behind Reception and out into the yard by the kitchens.

  Owen went to the yard to check. It was a small area hemmed in by the backs of buildings and reeked of kitchen refuse. Nevertheless, it was highly regarded by the hotel staff. This was because with high buildings all around it there was permanent shade. At any time of the day people could be found lying there. In the afternoon, after lunch had been cleared away and the world was at siesta, it was hard to find a space. By lunch time the sleepers were gathering and the yard would normally have been well occupied. All the local staff had been summoned, however, to help search the hotel. The dragomans, not strictly speaking staff members, would nevertheless have helped but Owen pulled them aside for the moment. They crowded around him, anxious and concerned.

  “Another one? That will be bad for the hotel.”

  “It will be bad for us,” said Osman. He had obviously been recumbent when the summons had come, for he had taken off his fez and skullcap. His hair was clipped and gray and stubbly, which gave him an oddly undressed look. Owen felt almost embarrassed and looked away. Osman felt the embarrassment too and covertly put on the small embroidered skullcap. “It will be bad for us, by God.”

  Abdul Hafiz, beside him, winced ever so slightly at his taking the name in vain.

  “It is a bad thing to do,” he said, “and bad men must have done it.”

  “I know the English ladies,” one of the dragomans volunteered. “They were in my party. I like them. Especially the young one. She talks to me as if I were a person.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Ismail.”

  “And were they in your party this morning, Ismail?”

  “As always. I am their dragoman.”

  “They came back with you, then?”

  “Yes. The young one ran on up the steps to speak with her father. She respects her father, even though he is strange.”

  “I like to see that,” said Osman, who, Owen realized, now that he had seen his hair, was older than he looked.

  “It is a good thing in children,” asserted Abdul Hafiz. “Who does not respect his father respects no one.”

  “This English lady respects her father,” said Ismail, “and so I am sad to see him taken.”

  “The English lady ran on ahead?”

  “Yes. She usually does.”

  “How far ahead?”

  “Not far. I saw her going into the hotel as I came to the foot of the steps.”

  “You followed her in with the rest of the party?”

  “Yes. And then she came running down the stairs and spoke to her mother and her mother went pale and I thought: This is a bad business, surely. I thought perhaps the father had been taken ill and when the mother did not at once fly up the stairs to their room to tend him, I wondered. But then one said to me what the matter was and I understood.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “I thought the mother was going to be overcome so I helped her to a chair. I stood by for a little—I had not been paid—and then I thought: In distress one wants those near to one and not a stranger. So I left the ladies and came to the yard and told the others.”

  “Were you all here?” Owen asked the dragomans.

  “I wasn’t,” said one of them. “We were late today. They wanted to spend more time in the House of Tsakatellis.”

  “You came after?” said Owen, noting the man.

  “Yes. When I came Zaki Effendi was standing on the steps looking stern. I said to myself, there is trouble. But I thought perhaps they had found the body.”

  “The body?”

  “Of the Frenchman. The one who was taken previously.”

  “The Frenchman is dead, then?” said Osman, aghast.

  “I expect so.”

  “But you have not heard so?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The rest of you,” said Owen, trying to recover the thread, “were all here, then?”

  “That is right.”

  “How long had you been here? Who was the last of you to arrive?”

  “I was,” said Ismail.

  “No, not you. Before you.”

  “I was, I think,” said Abdul Hafiz, doubtfully.

  “No, I was,” another dragoman corrected him. “Your party was still in the hall when I arrived, so I kept mine back.”

  “They came very nearly together.”

  “And when was this? How long before Ismail?”

  The dragomans consulted.

  “It was before Mohammed arrived, because we were all given bread.”

  “Except me,” said Ismail.

  “Well, yes,” said Abdul Hafiz. “I was keeping your bread for you.”

  “We were early this morning,” said Osman. “We usually have to keep the bread for two or three.”

  “We were early,” the others agreed.

  Owen would check the time of Mohammed’s arrival independently. He would have been bringing them bread from the kitchens. The dragomans received no wages from the hotel, relying on what they made from their clients for income. The hotel, however, extended hospitality to them in the form of bread (and usually quite a lot of other things) in recognition of their being, as it were, part of its family and not part of another.

  “And did none of you leave?”

  They knew what he meant.

  “None of us left,” said Osman soberly. The others confirmed that with nods. If there had been doubt it would have been indicated.

  “None of us had a hand in this,” said Osman.

  ***

  McPhee’s meticulous searching failed to uncover any more sign of Colthorpe Hartley than it had of Moulin. Nor did Garvin’s and Mahmoud’s questioning produce anything.

  “I find it incredible,” said Garvin, “that a man could be kidnapped from the terrace of Shepheard’s in full view of about a hundred people not twenty yards away without someone seeing something.”

  But no one apparently had. Colthorpe Hartley had disappeared from the face of the earth as completely as Moulin had.

  More completely, for whereas on the first occasion Colthorpe Hartley himself had been able to report something, the presence of the unaccounted-for dragoman, on the occasion of his own disappearance no one had seen anything.

  “And maybe there’s a connection,” said Garvin, frowning. “Maybe Colthorpe Hartley was taken just because he saw something. You said he was on the point of telling you, didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn�
�t put it as strongly as that,” said Owen. “He might have been on the point of remembering something. Something about the dragoman.”

  “How can you be on the point of remembering?” asked Garvin crossly. “You either remember or you don’t.”

  “Not in Colthorpe Hartley’s case. He’s had an illness or something. It’s left him a bit impaired. It’s as if there are things at the back of his mind which don’t quite reach the front.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I can understand that,” said McPhee seriously. “I’m like it sometimes. There’s something at the back of my mind, I can’t just put my finger on it, it’s almost on the tip of my tongue but it just won’t come. And then next day, perhaps, out it pops.”

  “You’re bloody impaired too,” said Garvin disgustedly.

  “That’s how it was with Colthorpe Hartley. He thought there was a chance of it popping out the next day.”

  “Did anyone else apart from you hear him say that?”

  Owen thought.

  “It was out on the terrace,” he said.

  “That’s where you conduct your inquiries, is it? Out on the terrace where every bugger can hear?”

  “He asked me to join him. I didn’t know what he was going to say.”

  “But others could hear?”

  “Yes,” said Owen, remembering. “We were close to the railings. The vendors could have heard.”

  “Could have seen, too. Should have seen. Probably did see. We’re back to them again.”

  “And to the dragoman, too, if that’s what he was taken for.”

  But here Owen’s inquiries, too, had shown a blank. He had checked Mohammed’s delivery of the bread and had been able to establish the time precisely since the maître d’hôtel had intercepted him on his way. Mohammed had confirmed that all the dragomans, bar Ismail, had been in the yard. There was multiple independent confirmation of this, too.

  “One of them could have slipped out,” said Garvin.

  Owen had done his best to check this too. Those in the yard were adamant that this hadn’t happened. They had been having a particularly lively conversation and others besides the dragomans had been involved. If it was so lively, was the possibility not even greater that someone could have slipped out unnoticed? No, because they were all sitting up in a ring of about a dozen people and if anyone had got up the others would have seen. Besides, no one did get up because they were all too engrossed in what was being said. Owen could believe this at any rate since several of the participants, dragomans and non-dragomans alike, had repeated large parts of the conversation word for word for his benefit.