The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, page 11
Miss van Vredenburch was seated next to me, rigid and relaxed at the same time. Could she pilot an aeroplane? When I mentioned to her that I would just as soon we took our time, she informed me blandly that if we were still in the air after dark, we would surely crash and die. She was still peeved with me, I think.
I was surprised she had come along at all. I had already begun to suspect when she brained the watchman that she was more than simply a chauffeur—but a female bodyguard seemed a perfectly preposterous idea. Especially since she had traded in her uniform that morning for a crepe georgette in blue, complimenting her eyes. Very fetching.
Dr. Watson was across from me, grinning his fool head off. Yet somehow he still seemed comforting. Then he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a shiny silver pistol, and all my fears came flocking round again. I hoped Anna had not seen it. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the world, but I could feel the juddering everywhere. I could tell when the plane was taking off; there was a delicious feeling of weightlessness coupled with a horrid feeling of gaining weight at the same time. The wind was so loud I felt it would soon beat in the walls of the cabin and squeeze us all to death.
“Headwinds,” commented Sir Sherlock, as if that explained anything.
Then it began to get cold, and colder as the flight went on. I began to think I had the chills, but when I appealed to Sir Sherlock, he said no, that the higher we went, the thinner the air, the colder it would be. All this had to be shouted over the wind.
“You might have warned us about that,” harrumphed the baronet to his wife. He was huddled in his lightweight morning coat.
“I did warn you, but you pooh-poohed me,” said Lady Evelyn tranquilly. She was, I noticed, wrapped quite snugly in a fox fur. She definitely hadn’t warned me.
“Oh, come, you’ve been to the Valley of the Kings, Beauchamp.” Sir Sherlock rubbed his hands together briskly. “You’ll be inveighing against the heat as soon as we land.”
“I’ve been, yes. Have you?” said the baronet, positively glaring.
“With Hogarth in 1906 at Asyut. Unfortunately, I did not discover the find of the century,” drawled Sir Sherlock.
“But you didn’t stir up any elementals, either,” Lady Evelyn pointed out rather sharply.
“No, just a few potsherds. I did cut my finger rather badly on one.” I expected a chuckle, at least from Dr. Watson, but there was only silence, or else the sound was drowned in the roar of the engines. Lady Evelyn had taken on Sir Sherlock, and even Dr. Watson and myself, to investigate these elementals. But did she believe in them? Sometimes the whole affair seemed a lark to her. Other times it seemed deadly serious. She was a volatile sort.
It was Sir Sherlock who discovered the blankets under our seats, which made the cold just tolerable. There was also a bowl beneath each seat, purpose unclear. Did they usually serve meals on board? The thought made me queasy.
As for Dr. Watson, he still had that grin plastered on his face like a rictus, and I realized he was scared to death. Did he know something dire about our pilot? I crossed, wobbling, to him, leaned over and,
whispering, asked him whether he knew a Lawrence Ross.
“Ross? Hmm . . .”
“Airman Ross.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
So Dr. Watson was not in on the secret. Indeed, he seemed at times the most incurious man I had ever met in my life. I wondered that he and Sir Sherlock were such great friends. Perhaps it was only the cold getting to me. I tugged the blanket tighter around myself.
Soon we were descending, and I began to feel easier. That hadn’t been that bad after all.
“Cairo?” I asked hopefully.
“Pisa!” shouted Sir Sherlock.
“Italy? What are we stopping in Pisa for?”
“Refueling.”
Well, then. I looked out, trying to find the famous leaning tower but saw no towers at all. When I expressed my disappointment, Dr. Watson said something about our flight path, which made no sense at all. We were in the air. We could choose any path we saw fit.
We were hardly on the ground more than a few minutes before we were in the air again. We were barely in the air again before we touched down in Rome and then Crete (the landing strip there was in a dormant volcano, which left me extremely unsettled) and Athens. They all looked alike to me. Air travel was dull.
We were out over the sea again, headed for Libya, when the plane nearly dropped out of the sky and I nearly lost my breakfast. I remember being helped back into to my seat by someone. I thought we were about to crash. No, someone explained (I had my head in my hands and didn’t see who), it was a perfectly normal thing for a plane to do. Something to do with air currents. I knew about ocean currents, but air currents were an entirely new concept. I resolved never to ever fly again. A promise I was unfortunately to break, and sooner than I ever would have expected.
Then I heard a sound that did make me look up. Only for a moment. Dr. Watson had discovered the use of the bowls. He had his head hidden in his but could not hide the awful retching sounds he was making. That explained the smell of disinfectant. I cowered under my blanket.
In the end, the sun was red and the sky purple before we were circling over Cairo. Why we were circling and not landing was not at all clear.
“Headwinds,” said Dr. Watson. I think I would have slapped him had he not still looked so green.
We were all relieved when we did land. As I stepped off the plane, I felt the dry heat hit my face. It was a relief. I felt the grittiness of sand in my mouth. But the reason I passed out was none of these, but the overwhelming press of thousands of dead souls.
Chapter Nine: Dr. John Watson
Mrs. Roberts came around after a cold compress was applied to her forehead. I was able to get some aspirin down her throat. She had been acting out of character all day, probably distraught by anticipation of her maiden flight. First there was that question about her friend Lawrence Ross, and then something about “spirits.” If she wanted spirits, I suppose Egypt could supply aplenty. Half the city of Cairo was a necropolis.
We registered at Shepheard’s Hotel, where we would stay the night before taking an auto to Luxor. We had been slated to take the train down, but Holmes kept saying that haste was necessary, and we had brought the driver along. Whether it was faster through the desert by train or auto was a moot question. Our pilot, sadly, was on his way to Damascus.
Shepheard’s was certainly opulent enough to make me wish our stay was longer than just one night, which is to say it had all the Western amenities with just enough Moorish arches, splashing fountains, and perfumed terraces to remind one that he has been transported to the Orient. The “long bar” unfortunately turned out not to have been named for its size but for the amount of time it took to be served. It seemed to be a favorite watering hole for military types, with which Cairo was bursting.
But the next morning Mrs. Roberts had a high fever. There was no question of our taking a train or auto anywhere. Holmes fretted, but I absolutely forbade it. She wasn’t up to any tricks this time. She spent much of the time in a delirium, talking to people who weren’t there. Or perhaps they were.
“What about a boat? Could she travel by boat?” asked Lady Evelyn on the third day of Mrs. Roberts’s malady, when she seemed no better and Holmes was wearing a rut pacing the floor.
“Boat to Luxor? That could take a week!” complained her husband, always the cheery soul.
“I suppose a boat would do no harm. So long as there’s a cabin that’s light and airy,” I opined. “It might even be beneficial.”
“A boat it is, then,” said Holmes. “Better to travel slowly than not at all.”
“I’ll see to the arrangements immediately.” Now that we were in Egypt, Lady Evelyn had begun to assert herself more authoritatively. We were in her territory. In short order she had secured a dahabeah, which was explained to me as a sort of private sailing houseboat, the traditional mode of navigating the Nile before steamers had entered the picture.
Also in short order she had us each assigned to procure the necessaries for our journey, which meant we would have to do battle with the vendors of the myriad bazaars the city was burgeoning with. But I was relieved when she insisted that no one go out alone—here she looked pointedly at Miss van Vredenburch—the streets were too dangerous for neophytes, which apparently included everyone except herself, though both Holmes and Beauchamp acted slighted by the insinuation.
I looked up dahabeahs in Cook’s. According to that traveler’s bible, it would take us forever to reach our destination, if indeed we ever reached it at all. That was not encouraging. But apparently calms and contrary winds are rare in February, and our nights were cool once the sun set.
We could evidently count on nothing, or nothing decent, from the boat’s owner, so we should have to furnish our own blankets, sheets, pillows, towels, mosquito nets (a must!). The beds were provided. Very decent of him.
We would have to seek out a decent chemist for quinine, chlorodyne, brandy, calomel, camphor, emetic of ipecacuanha, rosewater, zinc, (for ophthalmia, as my eyes were already feeling gritty as the desert), and common soap.
Also provisions, of course—a great deal of fresh fruits and vegetables, rice and mutton, butter, flour, sugar charcoal, and coffee. (No tea? I’d take it upon myself to procure tea.)
Lastly, we could not forget presents. Over and above the usual baksheesh, certain local types would need to be mollified further: gunpowder (!), watches, telescopes, shawls, and pipes might be expected to smooth the way. English gunpowder was better than gold, I was informed. No wonder Egypt was a powder keg.
The streets wound about so willy-nilly that I could wish we had bread crumbs to strew to find our way back to the hotel. Of course, I was afraid they would all be eaten by the ragamuffin little beggars pulling at our coats wherever we went. If we’d stayed a week in Cairo, Holmes would have developed a fine little set of irregulars.
All this took haggling. It wasn’t that we required everything of the cheapest, but the local merchants would be insulted if we did not bargain them to the edge of death. I had learned how to say, “How much?” in Arabic—bekam dee—but since I could not even guess at the answers, the phrase proved of limited use. One item we discovered was a blessing: sunglasses, like the film stars wear. Of course I had prescribed them for years for cases of syphilis, but they turned out to be the exact thing needed for desert sun and sand. We bought a dozen pairs. I was even able to buy some lighter clothes for practically the price of a song.
“Shouldn’t we pay a visit to the Continental-Savoy since we have the opportunity?” I asked Holmes one day when we stumbled upon the hotel in our travels.
“Whatever for?”
“It’s where Lord Carnarvon died. We could search for clues.”
“His Lordship died there nearly a year ago. Did you think they’d sealed up his rooms all this time? Or that the maids didn’t dust under the bed?”
“Well, what do you plan on doing, going to the tomb and asking the elementals politely who it was that stole whatever it was? Don’t tell me that gibberish wasn’t all made-up. She’s playing you for a fool!”
“Did I tell you that Miss van Vredenburch came to me with a confession?”
“What, has she been bilking Lady Evelyn on the petrol fund?”
“She says that she heard Gould as well. She didn’t see him, but she heard him. Heard him say, ‘she stole the name.’”
“Do you believe her?” I questioned.
“Do you?”
“I don’t know—I’m not Sherlock Holmes, blast it!”
“Oh, my dear Watson, neither am I anymore. I’m just old Sir Sherlock. I spend my time messing about in the garden and listening to the gramophone. I’m here as much to feel the warm sun on my bones as to solve a mystery.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was having me on, but he looked somber enough.
“Mrs. Roberts could have been throwing her voice. It’s not a difficult talent to cultivate from what I understand,” I claimed.
“Once more unto the breach, dear Watson,” was all the answer Holmes gave. I had scored a point, I was sure.
I would rather not go into my visit to the Great Pyramid at Giza. Oh, the pyramids are colossal, and the Sphinx mysterious and grand, just as they’d been advertised. But I made the mistake of entering and summoned my own kind of curse. You see, one enters, virtually crawling, through a long, dark, narrow shaft that leads down to the subterranean chamber—also a dark, narrow shaft, filled with dozens of children skittering back and forth playing tag as if they were in Brunswick Square. About halfway down, I experienced an acute attack of claustrophobia—I was in a grave, mind you—and turned around and crawled out as fast as my hands and knees would carry me. Not my bravest moment.
But, excepting that, Cairo was a charming city. Especially in the evenings, the call of the muezzins to prayer from a thousand minarets, the splashing of the fountains, the lamps lit through high stained-glass windows, turned every door into a secret invitation to a thousand and one nights. No, not the thousand and one nights of the books. It was more muscular, more rooted. It was only for a short time, at twilight, that the night weighed anchor and one could, if one had a mighty enough oar, cast off for distant shores. Perhaps twilight is like this everywhere, but the sudden rain of stars and the exhalation of the lotus made it more imaginable in Cairo.
We were four days preparing for our journey up the Nile; I could have wished it were four months. Not that I was glad Mrs. Roberts had taken ill, you understand. I was glad Miss van V. had come along. We took turns watching over our patient. She was attentive but did not cosset her, which made her an excellent nurse.
We also received an honor we could not possibly have accepted had we not been stranded in Cairo. The lady Evelyn announced that we were invited to dinner with the sirdar, Sir Lee Stack (sirdar being an ancient Persian title adopted by the governors-general).
The dinner was to be held in the Sirdaria, the aptly named compound ruled by the British on the isle of Zamalek in the Nile.
“An oasis, with lovely gardens and fragrant trees,” promised Lady Evelyn.
“And completely impenetrable,” added her husband.
I wondered why it was necessary that it be so impenetrable. I learned that night.
The Sirdaria was indeed attractive, a great stretch of verdant parkland, fanned by a cool breeze, with clusters of tall trees—and even thicker clusters of armed guards, some English, some Egyptian, all of whom seemed to mean business.
The dining room was like something out of a sultan’s palace, except that the soldiers lining the arched bays along the walls were equipped with Enfields, not wicked, cruel scimitars. But I’d wager that if they fixed bayonets, they could have killed just as swiftly and silently as mamluks. It almost put one off one’s feed.
We were introduced to quite a distinguished group. Besides Sir Lee and his wife, Flora, there were the High Commissioner Lord Allenby and wife Adelaide, H. H. Asquith, the newly created earl of Oxford (ostensibly retired from politics, but who believed that?), as well as his son Herbert, who was something of a poet. The last member of the party was Stack’s aide-de-camp, Captain P. K. Campbell of the Black Watch, which had spearheaded the lion’s share of the battles in the Turkish campaign.
Sir Lee was a splendid example of British soldiery. The sirdar, governor-general of the Sudan and commander of the Egyptian army, was a square-jawed, square-shouldered, clear-eyed exemplar of manhood, and his wife, Lady Flora, was just as trim and well turned out as he.
Then I noticed a dark fellow in a tarboosh all alone in one corner, holding himself aloof but absorbing every word and gesture of our group.
“Who is that gentleman?” I asked discreetly.
“Sa’ad Zaghlul,” Stack answered shortly.
“Zaghlul Pasha?” asked Beauchamp, alarmed. “Isn’t he the leader of the insurrectionists?”
“And now premier of Egypt,” rejoined Stack. “The sands here are constantly shifting. The trick is to keep the scales balanced.”
“And to keep the Sirdaria well guarded,” Campbell emphasized.
“Well, perhaps, but does that mean you have to invite him to dinner?” Beauchamp’s sense of decorum was obviously offended.
“I prefer to keep an eye on him. Besides, I wanted your opinion of him, Sir Sherlock.”
“My opinion?” said Holmes, somewhat taken aback.
“Yes. In the accounts I’ve read, you seem able to fillet a man after only a glance.”
“Ah, that is due more to Watson’s poetic license than to my abilities.”
I was about to defend my fidelity to facts when Holmes touched me on the sleeve to stop me.
“The fact that he wears a tarboosh places him squarely in the Turkish camp, even as his immaculate evening wear proclaims him thoroughly westernized. I suspect that he has comfortably straddled both camps all his life. He is somewhat ascetic, which gives him advantage over his foes. You’ll notice he wears no jewelry or even a handkerchief square.”
“But he does have a tie pin,” pointed out Lady Evelyn.
“I was getting to that. A coral tortoise. His time in the Seychelles was vital to the forging of his ideas. Perhaps most troubling is the perfectly groomed spread-eagled moustache, which points to an overweening vanity. He will have his way, no matter whether an entire people suffer for it.”
I was about to applaud but caught myself in time.
“You’ve confirmed my worst fears. He wants to provoke me to violence, creating an outcry among the people. Egypt is a powder keg,” pronounced Sir Lee solemnly, echoing Holmes’s phrase uncannily.
Egyptian politics was apparently more complicated than I had given it credit for. Of course, the Oriental mind is deep and often devious. I would not step into Sir Lee’s shoes for the world.
