A Dead Man in Istanbul Page 8

  ‘Did he pay like a Prince?’ asked someone sceptically.

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ said the barber offhandedly.

  ‘He must have been crazy,’ declared the sceptic. ‘Coming here when he could have gone to one of the big shops in Istanbul!’

  ‘I expect he liked the personal touch,’ said the barber.

  ‘Or maybe he couldn’t find anyone else at the time. You know how it is with these rich people. It’s always got to be “Now!” with people like that. I expect he was just passing by when the idea struck him. “Have a haircut!” And he looked around and saw Ibrahim. Lucky Ibrahim!’

  ‘What would a man like that be doing “just passing”? A place like Sestos? In the middle of the desert?’

  ‘He came in a felucca,’ someone else said. ‘Old Ali, the goatherd, told me. And then he walked over here.’

  ‘Walked over here? A man like that? You’d have thought he’d at least have had himself carried.’

  ‘Well, you never know with rich men. They get these ideas –’

  ‘He really was a Prince, though,’ someone put in. ‘The felucca had a green flag and gold tassels. Old Ali told me.’

  ‘It must be Prince Selim, then,’ someone said. ‘He’s the only one with a felucca.’

  ‘A Prince! Here!’

  ‘In my chair,’ said the barber, modestly.

  ‘You would have thought,’ grumbled Felicity, as they walked back to her boat, ‘that after making all that fuss about having a Hero to swim to, he would at least have had one! I mean, I would have done it if he’d asked. It would have been better than nothing. But perhaps he thought that cousins wouldn’t count?’

  ‘You would have counted for me,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Would I?’ said Felicity, pleased, and going slightly pink.

  They found Felicity’s boat bobbing peacefully at anchor beside the rocks. The old goatherd was nowhere to be seen, but in the distance there was the faint bleating of goats.

  The wind was behind them on the way back, which was just as well, because it was dark by the time they reached the Yacht Club.

  Seymour took Felicity out to dinner as a reward; which was more, she pointed out, than Cunningham had ever done.

  They chose a rather posh, Western-style restaurant, where, said Felicity, women were less likely to be viewed askance. There were, in fact, few women at the tables but enough to make Felicity feel comfortable.

  It was only when they were some way on in their meal that Seymour noticed Mukhtar, sitting in an alcove with three other men. Mukhtar caught his eye at the same moment and immediately jumped up and came across to them.

  Seymour introduced Felicity as Cunningham’s cousin.

  Mukhtar gave a flicker of surprise but then bowed, in a nice, old-fashioned way, over Felicity’s hand and said how sorry he was about her cousin. He went back to his table but returned a little later and invited them to join him and his friends for coffee.

  The friends, all young, slim and trim, as Mukhtar was, rose and welcomed them with smiles; although Seymour noticed that they seemed a bit awkward with Felicity, addressing their remarks to Seymour and shyly avoiding looking Felicity in the face. (Felicity told him afterwards that it was probably because they had never seen a woman without a veil before.)

  They were in general, though, very Westernized, talking with enthusiasm about things Western, which they equated with things modern. The Ottoman Empire, they said, needed to change. It was too locked in the past. As the discussion continued, they lost their self-consciousness and became more and more excited. (Felicity said afterwards that this was the way it often was in young Ottoman circles, that ideas excited them.) Seymour thought it was refreshingly different from England, where ideas seemed to excite no one. Although perhaps it was different in university towns.

  He had assumed that they were university students but they said no, it was hard to sustain a university course if you didn’t have money. No, they said, they were at one of the army schools for young officers, which meant, they said, smiling, that they got paid while they were studying.

  Mukhtar seemed a little older than they were, and Seymour asked if he had gone to an army school, too, before taking up his job.

  Mukhtar said yes, but didn’t seem inclined to expand: but then he said, yes, but he had been to law school as well and also studied languages. Seymour was impressed by this. The post of terjiman was obviously a more considerable one than he had taken it for; and he was a little surprised to find Mukhtar involving himself with something so lowly as the investigation of the murder of an actress in some little theatre.

  As Seymour was walking Felicity back to her apartment he asked her where she had learned her Arabic and Turkish.

  ‘Nowhere, really,’ said Felicity. ‘I just sort of picked them up.’

  ‘You must have a facility for languages.’

  ‘Gosh, no!’ said Felicity, overwhelmed by the thought. But then, a little later, she said that perhaps she had.

  ‘The trouble is, though,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t help.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With what I am going to do with my life. I mean, I can’t do a job or anything. Because I’m a woman. If I was a man I could go into the Foreign Office. Like Peter did. He was good at languages, too. But they don’t take women. Nor do the banks, nor any of the businesses here. Neither here nor, as a matter of fact, in England. I would like to be an interpreter, a proper one, I mean. But you,’ said Felicity, blushing, ‘you are the only person I’ve had a chance to interpret for.’

  ‘I was an interpreter once,’ said Seymour. ‘In the East End. Before I became a policeman.’

  ‘Gosh!’ said Felicity, wide-eyed. ‘How marvellous!’

  Seymour had liked his work as an interpreter; but he had never thought of it as marvellous. With Felicity leaning towards him, however, he was rapidly persuaded and told her about the kind of things he had done.

  ‘Golly!’ said Felicity. ‘How terrific!’

  ‘It wasn’t as terrific as all that,’ said Seymour hastily. ‘It was terribly badly paid.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind that.’

  ‘Well, no. But my father did. He was having to support me. After a year or two he said, “Were you thinking of earning a living sometime?” And it was just at that time that the offer came from the police. I’d done a lot of work for them, you see, and suddenly they noticed me. “You’re a bright lad,” they said. “Why don’t you join us?” I jumped at the chance. It was a big step up from being an interpreter. That,’ said Seymour, ‘is how low an interpreter was.’

  But Felicity didn’t seem to take the point.

  ‘An interpreter!’ she said dreamily. ‘In the East End! How fabulous!’

  Chapter Six

  The next morning he went to the Embassy and found Rice-Cholmondely and together they made a list. Then they worked through it.

  ‘Elsie Faversham?’

  ‘I don’t think so, old boy. Standing on a rock? Wouldn’t that attract attention? They wouldn’t have wanted that. What with her husband –’

  ‘Ulla Svensson?’

  ‘Doubtful, old boy. I mean, she’s Diplomatic. At least, her husband is. Would stir up no end of trouble. Got to be discreet, old boy, if you’re in the Diplomatic. And standing on a rock beside the Dardanelles . . .’

  Seymour sighed. They had already been through fifteen names on the list of Cunningham’s lovers, and to each of them Rice-Cholmondely had raised objections.

  ‘Fatima?’

  ‘No, no. She’s the wife of . . . well, a very senior man at the Sultan’s court. You just don’t do things like that if you’re an Ottoman wife. Stand on a rock for all to see? Look, being out anywhere with a man is bad enough. You’d be dead in five seconds and so would he.

  ‘The fact is, old boy, women don’t do that sort of thing. Not out here. You’ve got to behave yourself in public. That is, if you’re a woman. And making an exhibition of yourself beside the Dardanelles . . .�
�� Rice-Cholmondely shook his head. ‘No respectable woman –’

  ‘Ah,’ said Seymour, ‘but suppose she wasn’t respectable?’

  ‘Cunningham was a member of the British Embassy,’ said Rice-Cholmondely stiffly.

  ‘How about the actresses in the theatre?’ said Cunningham. ‘He went in for them, didn’t he? They’re not respectable. And they might have been glad of the part.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been difficult for them to get away?’ objected Rice-Cholmondely. ‘At that time? Wouldn’t they have been due onstage?’

  ‘It might have been possible for one of them to get away. Lalagé, for instance.’

  Rice-Cholmondely was unconvinced.

  ‘Can’t see it, old boy. Too big a hole in the cast.’ He was silent for a moment or two. Then he said, ‘There’s Leila, of course.’

  ‘Leila?’

  But then Rice-Cholmondely shook his head.

  ‘Can’t see it, though. Can’t see her waiting for anybody. And certainly not on a rock beside the Dardanelles. Not her sort of place, old boy. Now, the Grande Rue, perhaps –’

  ‘At least she seems a possible. Where could I find her?’

  ‘In the Fields of the Dead, old boy. About four o’clock. Any afternoon.’

  As they went out on to the terrace for coffee Seymour heard faint sounds of music from somewhere deep in the recess of the Embassy. The uncertain chords suggested a quartet.

  ‘The Embassy Chamber Music Ensemble,’ said Rice-Cholmondely. ‘The Old Man’s very keen on it. He plays second violin.’

  Some time later the quartet emerged to join the others on the terrace. There was the Ambassador, pleased; the first violin (actually, quite a good player), grim; the viola, depressed; and Felicity, flustered, with cello.

  ‘I don’t really play,’ she confided to Seymour, ‘but they’re short of a cello and I did play at school. Only in the junior orchestra, though.’

  ‘You play very determinedly, Felicity,’ said the Ambassador, encouragingly. ‘Everyone had their coffee? How about another go?’

  ‘Not this morning, I’m afraid,’ said the first violin. ‘I’ve got a meeting.’

  ‘What a pity!’ said the viola, emerging suddenly from his depression.

  ‘A pity!’ echoed Felicity, with relief.

  ‘Oh, well . . . Tomorrow, then? Afternoon?’

  ‘I didn’t realize that the Embassy was so keen on music,’ said Seymour.

  ‘It is,’ said Ponsonby darkly, ‘and that’s why it’s less than keen on the Ensemble.’

  ‘And where,’ asked Seymour, his mind still on Cunningham, ‘did Cunningham stand on this?’

  ‘As far away as possible,’ said Ponsonby, picking up his cup and a file of papers he was working on, and going inside.

  ‘Felicity,’ called the Ambassador, ‘the landau’s ready when you are.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ said Felicity, picking up her cello. ‘It’s such a business walking when you’re carrying a cello,’ she said to Seymour.

  ‘Do you mind if I come with you?’ said Seymour.

  ‘My brother is also a musician,’ announced Ibrahim, the coachman, as he stowed the cello away and helped Felicity up into the landau.

  ‘Oh, yes? And what does he play?’ asked Felicity.

  ‘The kaval.’

  He put his hands to his mouth and made as if to blow.

  ‘He’s a worried man, though, is my brother,’ said Ibrahim, getting up into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘He plays in the theatre band, you see, and there was a woman murdered there the other night, strangled, the police say, with a string from a musical instrument. Of course, everyone knows that she was strangled with a bowstring and that it was the Fleshmakers who did it. But the police want to cover that up, so it’s the band that’s going to get it in the neck. No, no, not the neck, exactly, at least, not like her, that is. But they all think that the band will be blamed.’

  ‘Yes, but your brother should be all right,’ said Seymour. ‘If he plays the –’

  ‘Yes, but the police don’t know the difference between a kemengeh and a kaval. They’re all the same to them, just musical instruments. And, anyway, what does it matter, so long as someone is caught and blamed? That’s what my brother says, and he’s afraid it might be him.

  ‘I tell him that he might be better off in prison. I mean, if the Fleshmakers are on the prowl. Although, of course, they might be just after women. You know, one of those women, indecent ones. In which case he would be all right.

  ‘But he says they might not just be after a woman, which no one would mind, but after the theatre in general. You know, for having women on the stage, and all the other sins that go on. There’s plenty of that, I can tell you. And that’s what I said to my brother. “That’s the sort of place the theatre is,” I said, “and always will be. You’d best be out of it.” “I need a job,” he says. “Well, you find some other one,” I say. “Because if the Fleshmakers have got wise to what’s going on there, they’ll be back, you mark my words. And it won’t be long before the band is running out of strings.”’

  ‘My cousin tried to play the saz,’ said Felicity, as she settled back in the landau. ‘Peter,’ she said to Seymour.

  ‘Saz very difficult,’ said Ibrahim.

  ‘I know. Peter used to go for lessons to an old saz player in the band.’

  ‘Saz player in band?’ said Ibrahim.

  ‘I know it’s unusual. He wasn’t in the band at first. He used to play to the people outside waiting to come in. But Peter heard him and told the theatre they ought to employ him. “He’s the genuine article,” he said. “He’s special.” Well, they used to listen to Peter at the theatre so they did what he said. The trouble was, they didn’t know much about music and they put him with the band. The band nearly walked out.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Well, it’s a very different sort of music. People who play the saz are folk musicians. They sing and play on their own. I don’t think Peter ever thought he should play in the band. But he thought he was so good that they ought to make use of him somehow, perhaps as an individual turn.

  ‘But they just shoved him in with everyone else. The band didn’t like it and was forever causing trouble and in the end the theatre got rid of him. But while he was there, Peter used to go to him for lessons.’

  ‘Not possible learn saz,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Not for Englishman. Need soul.’ He beat on his chest. ‘Turkish soul. Cunningham Effendi not Turkish. Impossible! The saz plays for the Turkish heart. Saz music comes from inside. Deep, deep inside. And from past. From Turkey as it was once, not as is now. Days when Sultan was well, Sultan. Foreigners play? No, not possible. Saz Turkish. Speak for Turkey.’

  Seymour got out of the landau at the bottom of the hill and made his way through the narrow, dark, crowded streets to the theatre. Mukhtar was standing on the steps talking to someone. Seymour hung back for a moment not wishing to interrupt.

  The person Mukhtar was talking to was a youth of about seventeen, or so it seemed to Seymour, and the conversation didn’t seem to be going smoothly. The terjiman was plainly irritated and the boy sulky. Seymour guessed that he must be a member of the theatre’s troupe, for he seemed partly in greasepaint. At any rate, he was wearing dark eyeshadow.

  Seymour couldn’t hear what they were saying and probably wouldn’t have been able to understand it anyway, since they were talking in Arabic. All he could go by was the dumb show and there was plenty of that. The boy was defiant and everything he did, from the languid, almost insolent way he stood to the bored expression on his face, seemed calculated to annoy. It was a good case of what the sergeant in the Whitechapel police station would have called dumb insolence.

  And if he was trying to provoke the terjiman, he was certainly succeeding. Seymour could see Mukhtar’s irritation even from where he was standing. Eventually he pushed the youth angrily aside and went up the steps into the theatre. Behind his back th
e youth saluted him mockingly.

  Seymour asked one of the attendants if Nicole was rehearsing. Not at the moment, the man said; they were taking a break. He said he would look for her, and shortly afterwards she came out.

  Seymour apologized.

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt whatever you’re doing,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not. I could do with some air, and I could do with a fag, too, but they don’t like women smoking.’

  They went round the corner of the theatre and Nicole squatted down in the shade, exactly like the old women sitting in the doorways cutting up vegetables.

  ‘Don’t tell me!’ she said. ‘It’s my bright eyes you’ve come to see. You just couldn’t stay away.’

  ‘That’s it!’ said Seymour. ‘How did you guess?’

  They both laughed.

  ‘So . . .’ she said.

  ‘A question I wanted to ask,’ said Seymour.

  ‘About Lalagé?’

  ‘It might be. It starts with Cunningham, though.’

  ‘That bastard!’

  ‘You know his plan to swim the Straits?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ said Nicole.

  ‘Part of it was to have a woman he was swimming to.’

  ‘A Hero, yes.’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Nicole wearily.

  ‘Did he ask Lalagé to do it?’

  ‘Play Hero, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, ’e asked.’

  ‘And she said no?’

  ‘She was tempted. The way ’e put it. “Your chance!” ’e said. “To play a really big part! It’s like Cleopatra. A leading role! You can be a star for once in your little life. The world will be looking at you, Lalagé. Or I bloody will by the time I’ve swum across!”

  ‘“It’s crazy!” I told ’er. “You don’t want to ’ave anything to do with it. ’E’ll probably drown, or one of those big boats will go over ’im, and then where will you be? Stuck on those bloody rocks!” In the end she said no, but it wasn’t because of that. It was because ’e wanted ’er to do it in the evening, when she would ’ave been onstage. “You’ll lose your job,” I said. “And then where will you be? Who’s going to pay the rent?”’