Covert in Cairo, page 7
Kitty continued scanning, page by page.
I took a mental picture of every page as she went.
A rattling from the tomb entrance made me turn around. At last, Frigo’s man had returned with two uniformed policemen. They entered, torches in hand. Judging by their accents, one was British and the other was Egyptian. My countryman commanded us to step aside. Seemed the British constabulary ranked higher than their Egyptian counterparts.
Kitty slipped the notebook into the pocket of her sun frock.
I almost scolded her, but then thought better of it. Yes, we were here to trail Fredrick Fredricks. No, Captain Hall hadn’t authorized us to investigate local murders. Still, from my past experience, I knew Fredricks always managed to have his fingers in every pie, especially the spicy ones. Anyway, there was most certainly a connection between the dead Frenchman and our missing agent. That was reason enough to investigate.
I palmed the photograph of the mysterious woman I’d purloined from the dead man’s wallet. Just in time too. The officers shooed us out of the tomb, but only after taking down our names and hotel, and warning us not to leave town.
“I will interview you at your hotel later today.” The British officer gave us a stern look. “Where I expect you all to stay until I arrive.” He tilted his head and squinted at me. “Have you disturbed the body or surroundings in any way?”
A lump formed in my throat, and I tightened my palm around the photograph.
“No, sir,” Frigo answered. “Just guarding the boss, waiting for you.”
Obviously, Frigo had his own reasons for lying to the police. I wondered if they had anything to do with the motives for his boss’s murder.
“Looks like he fell and hit his head,” the Egyptian officer said.
“Yes, sir.” Frigo nodded. “Terrible accident.”
I was convinced it was murder and not an accident, but I kept my mouth shut. Frigo had covered for me, and I would cover for him… unless, of course, he turned out to be the murderer.
“An accident.” The British officer circled the body. “We’ll see about that.” He glanced up at me. “What are you still doing here? Didn’t I tell you to go?” He touched his Billy club.
“Righto.” I led the party out of the tomb.
Once outside, I slipped the purloined photograph into my handbag.
The midday sun was blinding. I shielded my eyes with my hand.
Good grief. The camels.
I’d forgotten that our only way back was to ride those mangy beasts.
When we finally reached the hotel, I had to make the excruciating decision whether to have a refreshing bath or a strong cup of tea. The damp earthy smell of camel clinging to my person gave me no choice but to retreat to my room. I couldn’t be seen—or smelled—in public until I’d scrubbed the desert and the camel off my skin.
On the bright side, I’d always found soaking in the bath provided the relaxed state of body I needed to focus my mind. I did some of my best sleuthing in the bath.
As I ran the bath, I reviewed the possible suspects.
First, there was Mr. Carter, no fan of the French, and a particular adversary of Monsieur Lorrain, who had insulted him in public. Next came Lady Enid, also insulted by Jean-Baptiste Lorrain, and of course her husband, General Clayton, who’d threatened a duel at dawn to save his wife’s honor. Overly dramatic, if you asked me. And I suspected Lady Enid had her own ways of disposing of an adversary. What about the jealous Cleopatra? She might have killed her lover in a passionate rage. Then there was Frigo, who’d lied to the police and winced at the mention of the Germans.
I stepped into the tub and sank into the warm water. One disadvantage of formulating lists of suspects in the bath was the impossibility of writing them down given the dampness. And, although I had a photographic memory, I first needed to see something to preserve it intact in my mind’s eye.
Scrubbing my skin with a cloth and a deliciously lemon-scented soap, I reviewed the clues we’d found in the tomb.
Monsieur Lorrain was hit on the head with a heavy sharp object, which was not found in the tomb. Obviously, the killer had hidden the murder weapon or taken it with him… or her. Unless, of course, Monsieur was killed elsewhere, and his body taken out to the tomb. That also would explain why there was so little blood around the ghastly wound.
The killer must have escaped through some secret passageway. Otherwise, we would have seen him… or her. Either that or the killer was well hidden in the tomb, perhaps in the chamber Clifford found. Although Clifford said it was boarded up. So, scratch that. Then again, if the killer had taken the Frenchman’s body to the tomb after he’d killed him elsewhere, that would explain why the tomb was locked. It would not explain why we heard someone rumbling around inside.
Jean-Baptiste must have taken this killer to the tomb, opened the padlock, and entered of his own free will—or at gun point. The killer delivered the fatal blow and then locked his victim into the tomb. How did the attacker know Jean-Baptiste wouldn’t be found in time? Perhaps the assailant intended only to wound the Frenchman.
Or if the perpetrator had attacked Jean-Baptiste somewhere else and then carried him out to the tomb, then, with the Frenchman unconscious, how had the killer opened the lock? Lockpick set? Hairpin?
Where there was a will there was a way, as my grandmother used to say.
From what I’d seen of Jean-Baptiste, with his trademark insults, it was just as easy to imagine the Frenchman had started a fight, a fight he couldn’t win in his inebriated state. In that case, the police were right. It was an accident. Or self-defense, even.
What of the mysterious clue in the date book? HG at GAI 11. Once I cracked that code, I’d be closer to solving the crime and perhaps locating Agent Dankworth, too.
A knock on the door interrupted my speculations.
“Aunt Fiona.” Kitty’s voice was impatient.
I didn’t blame her. Although Kitty never complained, she couldn’t be happy covered in desert dust and camel muck. On the camel ride back from the tomb, she’d enlightened me about what transpired with Jean-Baptiste when she escorted him to his room. Thankfully, she edited out the whispers and kisses. The most important information was about Agent Dankworth. Apparently, Jean-Baptiste and Agent Dankworth were working together to infiltrate an illegal antiquities ring.
Is that why the Frenchman was killed, and the British agent went missing? Illegal antiquities?
“Yes, dear.” I pulled myself up out of the bath and pulled the plug to drain the water. After all, Kitty wouldn’t want a dirty bath. “I’ll be out momentarily.” Fetching a towel, I dried myself, wrapped the towel around my torso, and exited the lav.
Kitty stood staring at me. “I’m always astonished when I see you without your wig.”
I touched my head. I must look like a drowned porcupine. I snatched up my wig from the corner of the table and tugged it on. After nearly six months going undercover, I could tug one on in my sleep—that is, if I’d remembered to take it off before bed. I straightened my wig. “The lavatory is all yours.”
While Kitty bathed, I popped down to the reception desk.
If Jean-Baptiste had gone out again after Kitty left him, someone at the hotel would have seen him.
7
THE FIBER
Sure enough, the receptionist reported the night clerk had mentioned a drunken Frenchman staggering out into the street just before eleven last night. He’d noted the time because his shift started at eleven.
HG at GAI 11. Eleven o’clock. Part of the mystery solved.
If Jean-Baptiste was going to meet someone last night at eleven, who and where?
Who was HG? And where was GAI?
When I got back to the room, Kitty had commandeered the dressing table for another one of her forensic experiments. No doubt something she’d learned at her “boarding school” in France.
She was hunched over a microscope. On the floor next to her sat a wooden box, presumably the case for the instrument. Poppy was asleep on her lap.
“Look!” She scooted her chair back. Poppy yipped in complaint and jumped down.
“Where in heaven’s name did you get that?” The instrument had a brass lens case and a black base. It looked sturdy. A magnifying glass sat below the lens cylinder. Very fancy. Probably French.
“I brought it with me.” She stood up. “I got it—”
“Don’t tell me.” I took her seat. “France.”
“Look into it and tell me what you see.” She beamed. Poppy sat on the floor next to her, looking up at me expectantly as if she, too, couldn’t wait for my reaction.
I leaned my eye into the microscope. I’d never looked into one before. What a strange sensation. The cool eyepiece against my brow. One eye closed. The other looking into another world. I had no idea what I was looking at.
“A scaly orange worm?” Whatever it was, it was creepy.
She laughed. “How about this one?” She removed the slide I’d been looking at and replaced it with another.
I leaned in again. “A blade of grass?” I stared into the microscope. “No. A green straw.” When I looked up at her, she was giggling behind her hand. “Alright. Tell me. What am I looking at?”
“Fibers from under Jean-Baptiste’s fingernails.” She clapped her hands together.
Poppy barked. The girl and her dog were a bundle of excitement. Kitty was more passionate about Jean-Baptiste dead than alive.
“Fingernails.” How gruesome.
So, she wasn’t just holding his hand and mourning his demise when we found his body in the tomb. She was collecting evidence. Clever girl.
“He had these fibers under his nails from a struggle with his killer.” Her eyes danced as she removed several items from her bag and placed them on the table: a small, folded piece of white paper, and a matchstick.
“What kind of fibers?” I leaned closer.
“Your scaly orange worm is actually wool.” She replaced the slide again. “See the even, overlapping scales? That’s fine wool. Probably from sheep and not camel.”
“Orange wool.” Had the killer worn an orange jumper? It was a bit hot for jumpers.
“That’s right. And the green cylinder is silk.” She changed slides again.
I took another look. “So, our killer was wearing silk and wool.” Jolly clever.
“Perhaps.” She stood behind me, her breath on my neck. “See the tiny white wispy hairlike fibers attached to the bottom of the silk?”
I strained to see through the lens. “I do.”
“That’s flora, not animal fiber.” She used a pencil to point to the strands on the slide.
“A plant? What kind of plant?” My friend and amateur botanist Daisy Nelson would know. Too bad she refused to set foot out of Old Blighty.
“A white one… and fresh too.” From her folded paper, she pinched another small bit of green and orange fiber, struck a match, and burned it. “A flower of some sort.”
“Now what are you doing? Witchcraft?” Daisy was a witchy woman. For all I knew, Kitty was one too. The acrid smell of burning hair hit my nostrils.
“Confirming the fibers are silk and wool. Cotton smells like burning paper. Wool and silk smell like burning hair.” She withdrew a tiny glass vial from her bag. “One more test to go.”
Like a chemist in a laboratory, using tweezers, she dropped another tiny fragment of orange fiber into the vial. “In this acid, plant matter will dissolve within minutes. Silk will dissolve within fifteen minutes. But not wool.”
“And what will that tell us?” I waved my hand in front of my nose.
“I want to confirm that it is plant matter attached to our wool fibers.” She tilted the vial back and forth, stopped it with a rubber stopper, and then leaned it against the microscope.
While we waited, I finished dressing for luncheon.
Kitty brushed Poppy’s topknot into a soft ponytail and tied it up with a pink ribbon. After a few minutes, she examined the vial. “Just as I suspected.” She poked the air with her finger. “Jean-Baptiste was not killed in that tomb.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Sitting on the edge of my bed, I pulled on my practical Oxfords. “We heard him alive.”
“That may be, but he was attacked elsewhere.” She brought the vial over and sat next to me. “The white fibers are gone. Next the silk will disappear. Watch.”
We sat together watching the vial. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the green strand dissolved. Only the orange fiber remained.
“Wool.” I tapped the vial. “But how do we know Jean-Baptiste was attacked elsewhere? Couldn’t the killer have been wearing a silk shirt and wool trousers?”
“It’s possible.” She stood up, went back to the dressing table to pack up her instrument and paraphernalia.
Poppy followed close on her heels. The pup jumped up on the dressing chair, and watched with interest.
“More likely, the fibers come from a carpet. An orange and green carpet made from fine silk and wool in the Persian style.” Kitty placed the microscope in its case and latched it shut. “Rarely are clothes made of both silk and wool. And these fibers are interwoven.”
“And you learned all that from your three tests?” Very clever. If Jean-Baptiste was killed elsewhere, then that explained the lack of blood, the lack of murder weapon, and the lack of murderer at the scene.
“Microscope, fire, and solvents can tell us a lot about fibers.” She gathered up her paraphernalia and put it away in a small leather pouch.
The girl was a wonder.
“So, if we find a green and orange Persian rug, we may find our killer, too.” I gathered up my handbag from the dressing table before it got mixed in with Kitty’s chemicals.
“Exactly.” She smiled.
I glanced at my watch. “Heavens. We’re late for luncheon with Clifford. Wait until he hears what we’ve found.” Kitty, with her fiber forensics, and I, with my interview of the receptionist, had discovered that before his death, Jean-Baptiste met someone at eleven o’clock at a place with a Persian rug.
But who and where?
Kitty bent down, scooped up Poppy, and kissed the squirming ball of fur on the wet nose. “Be a good girl.”
She’d better be a good girl. I didn’t want any wee accidents.
Waiting for us on the terrace, with his hair slicked back, receding hairline and all, Clifford looked fresh in his linen suit. Kitty’s lacy pink hat and frilly pink frock made her appear even younger than her eighteen years. I’d opted for a plain white blouse and a tan cotton skirt, a skirt with lots of pockets, of course.
The older women on the terrace glanced around and smiled approvingly. Good grief. I hoped they didn’t think we were the girl’s parents.
Since the hotel was overrun with British visitors, Shepheard’s had a wide selection of good old English food—toad-in-the-hole, bangers, suet pudding—so my countrymen didn’t have to venture into the local cuisine. Clifford insisted it would be good for me to broaden my horizons to order from the Egyptian menu. Perhaps he was right.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I would try something new. Today, I needed comfort food. Even on a good day, toad-in-the-hole was too much. Buttered toast and tea, on the other hand, were the perfect antidote to murder.
Clifford was all too happy to dine on kofta and kebab. Kitty had discovered an Egyptian dessert made of puff pastry with pistachios and sultanas called Om Ali, and now she would eat nothing else. Given I’d taken to ordering toast with marmalade and tea for every meal, I shouldn’t criticize. At least Poppy agreed with me. She loved toast as much as I did, especially if it was slathered in butter.
Sigh. Clean clothes, a fresh pot of tea, and a pleasant breeze. Who could ask for more? Between sips and nibbles, I removed a notebook and pencil from my handbag. I would put to paper my mental lists of suspects and clues.
“My money’s on that Carter chap.” Clifford waved his fork, which was laden with some unidentifiable meat. “He hates the French, has a reputation for violence, and was seen arguing with Lorrain.” He popped the bit of meat into his mouth. “He’s our man.”
“I concur.”
Clifford gave me an incredulous smile. It wasn’t often I agreed with him.
“At least, he is on the top of my list of suspects.” I wrote his name on my pad of paper. “Right up there with the mysterious HG at GAI.”
“Speak of the devil,” Kitty whispered over the lip of her coffee cup. With her eyes, she indicated the table to our left under the shade of a palm frond.
I glanced over.
Mr. Carter was joining Lord Carnarvon and his daughter Evelyn at their table. Lady Evelyn’s face brightened and Mr. Carter’s reddened as they exchanged greetings.
I strained my ears to hear their conversation.
“Rum do about that French archeologist chap,” Lord Carnarvon said, sipping a beverage from a V-shaped glass.
“Lorrain was a hack and thief.” Mr. Carter snapped his napkin open and laid it on his lap.
Crikey. The man didn’t mince words. Were they talking about Jean-Baptiste’s rudeness at the party? Or had they already heard about the murder?
The rest of their animated luncheon conversation was Mr. Carter explaining a crazy-sounding theory that some twelve-year-old king had moved his entire family—mummies and all—across the desert to Giza. A twelve-year-old king? Ridiculous. Then again, Mary Queen of Scots ascended to the throne at only six days old.
I was chomping at the bit to interview Mr. Carter and his party. How to approach them? I patted my pocket, eager to try out my credentials. Without credentials, why would they tell me, Fiona Figg, glorified file clerk, anything?
Steeling my nerves to try my scheme, I only half listened to Clifford nattering on about a fox hunt at the Gezira Sporting Club later today.
He had ordered a pudding course called kunafa that looked like melted cheese with crispy hairs on top. He insisted I try it. Reluctantly, I took a bite. Oh, my. Absolutely scrummy. I knew what I was having for breakfast tomorrow.
