“Efficiency” was one of the many watchwords that might apply to Shepheard’s. In almost less time than it takes to write, two of Charpentier’s Berber workmen, manipulating accordion-like Chinese silk screens, had partitioned off a section of corridor at the end of the seventh floor. Behind these and out of the public’s view as I watched, they deftly employed razors to slice through the yellow wallpaper Holmes had described, revealing the outline of the door whose existence the detective had inferred. The door’s panelling and bevelled edges had been cunningly overlaid with plaster to produce a flat effect for the wallpaper and the doorknob itself removed along with any trace of a room number.
Monsieur Charpentier favored me with an unhappy expression as he withdrew a key from his pocket and, punching the wallpaper at intervals, after several attempts succeeded in locating the covered keyhole and unlocking the door.
“Shukran,” he addressed his carpenters. “Leave the screen.” Tipping their fingers to their foreheads in salute, the fellaheen silently withdrew.
“Please hurry.”
Nodding, Charpentier pulled open the door using the inserted key for a handle. I followed him into the darkened room and hastened to unbolt the double window, admitting the detective and handing him his coat.
“Good lord!” was his first exclamation. “Thank you, my dear fellow!” was his second.
He looked about, rubbing his upper arms to warm them. Spying the light switch, he turned it on, bathing the large, beautifully appointed, if dust-covered, room with amber illumination. Somewhere there lingered the faint aroma of perfume.
I closed the window panels, secured them once more, and drew the curtains, turning in time to see the detective face the hotelier.
“Now then, Monsieur Charpentier, it is time for us to speak candidly.”
“And you, monsieur,” the hotelier replied, attempting to recover his composure. “You are not Sherlock Holmes. In Dr. Watson’s accounts he is much taller. You are Colonel Arbuthnot, whom I have previously met searching for this room!”
This was a surprising start to the conversation, but Holmes, I cannot resist saying, rose to the occasion and, taking full inventory of the man, addressed the Frenchman thus:
“You were born in Marseilles towards the end of May. Your father was a shipwright and your mother a seamstress. Your older brother is a doctor and your sister drowned when she was twelve in a boating accident. You were educated at L’Ecole du Saint Esprit in Grenoble and studied hostelry for a time in Zurich. You have been with Shepheard’s for approximately fifteen years, starting as third bellman.”
Before the open-mouthed hotelier had time to expostulate, Holmes went on, “This gentleman will confirm my identity,” indicating me. “He is the selfsame Dr. John Watson who so ably chronicles my”—he hesitated—“exploits in the pages of The Strand.”
“That is so,” I answered promptly and with conviction, inwardly delighted that the detective’s approval of my work was now part of the public record. “I am Dr. Watson and this man is definitely Sherlock Holmes and he is exactly as tall as I say he is.”
“As I was saying,” Holmes pursued before this case of identity stretched into reductio ad absurdum, “I believe you have some explaining to do.”
The man pinched the bridge of his nose, red from the embrace of his pince-nez and squared his shoulders. “And if I refuse?”
“Monsieur Charpentier, a British subject has disappeared and you have not only failed to report the fact; you have connived to conceal its occurrence.”
“I did report it!”
“Oh?” We were both startled by this response.
The Frenchman sank into the nearest chair.
“What do you wish to know?”
Holmes, who had been meticulously examining the room with his habitual attention to detail, now gently tugged a long, ebony hair from behind a cushion wedged on a small green settee, holding the strand to the light, where it glistened.
“Shall we start at the beginning? The Duke of Uxbridge was a guest in suite seven-eighteen every year,” he prompted. “This suite.”
“Yes.”
“He arrived this year, as usual?”
“Yes.”
“The date being.?”
“November the first.”
“But he was not alone.” Holmes dangled the hair close to the man’s face.
“Not this year, no.” The man averted his eyes, refusing to look at it.
“Monsieur Charpentier, I am neither a dentist nor a barber. I am no more interested in pulling teeth than I am hairs. The duchess and her brother-in-law will be here shortly, so you must speak quickly. Who was this woman?”
The man tugged at his own locks, smoothing grey curls back behind his ears.
“A dancer.” Holmes raised his eyebrows. “The wrong sort of dancer,” the hotelier acknowledged. “She specialises in Raqs sharqi.”
“Raqs sharqi?”
Holmes’s repetition of the words appeared to embarrass the Frenchman. “An Egyptian or Turkish dance in which the torso and pelvis take precedence over hands and feet. Their claim to Egyptian tradition is ridiculous despite the occasional resemblance to ancient wall paintings. Westerners and European tourists flock to her performances. Natives, too, it must be said—but men only. Such exhibitions are not deemed fit for polite company. The duke very likely encountered her at her place of employment. They resided here together.”
“The date being?” Holmes was once more writing in his pocket book.
Charpentier tugged at his curls again. “Late November? We do not keep strict records of such—”
“Irregularities? For how long?”
“Over two months. We—the management—as I say, are accustomed to…” He hesitated, in search of the euphemism that best suited his present requirements—
“Turning a blind eye?”
“Exactement,” he whispered.
Holmes took a turn about the room. Charpentier seized the moment to blow his nose. Our movements had stirred the room’s unattended dust and motes floated and danced in the light.
“And where are the duke and his inamorata now?”
“That’s just it!” wailed the other. “We’ve no idea! On the third of January they left together. The porter remembered carrying a valise of Moroccan leather and a red carpet bag to the hotel omnibus which took them to Ramses station, but nobody knew where they were going and we deemed it—”
“Impolite?”
“Indiscreet, to make enquiries. We assumed from their luggage their trip was to be a short one.” He shrugged. “Then, as time passed—”
“How much time?”
“Two weeks! By which time, when they failed to return, the situation…” He trailed off.
“Became a burden,” Holmes supplied.
“To put it mildly, monsieur! What were we to say—and to whom? The woman in question—”
“The dancer of the ‘wrong sort’—”
“Precisely. We knew she was of interest in certain quarters.”
“British or Turkish quarters?”
“That is where I made my mistake!” he cried. “I went to the Turks. Egypt is officially under Ottoman control, as you are doubtless aware. I spoke with a Major Haki who, acting, he said, under directions from the office of the Khedive, told me under no circumstances to make mention of either the affair or the disappearance.”
“Why on earth not?”
Charpentier blew his nose again. “He saw no reason to explain matters to me! I carry a French passport. Cairo is”—again, searching for the right words juste—“complicated. Porous. Wheels within wheels. Shepheard’s ability to function is dependent on a variety of permits. Licences. Inspections. A clutch of regulations that can change at any time. Baksheesh!” he added peevishly, as the last straw. “Complying I deemed the lesser of two evils,” he concluded, hanging his head. “How relieved I am Monsieur Shepheard did not live to see this!”*
As Holmes studied the hotelier, pondering the latter’s rationale, I wondered what would have happened with Major Haki had the detective not managed to preserve his incognito.
“What is the dancer’s name?”
“She is known throughout Cairo as Fatima. I am unaware of any other.”
“And where does she dance? No evasions, please. Time is short.”
“At the Cave of Ali Baba. In the French Quarter. Such entertainments are ‘after hour’ affairs. As such they generally do not commence before midnight. We have since made discreet contact, but no one at that establishment has either seen nor heard from her. The proprietor, a certain Majid, is most upset. A bit of a character,” he added, without elaboration.
Holmes surveyed the room again, lost in thought. There were, I sensed, a great many directions in which matters might unfold and it was incumbent on my friend to choose the right ones.
“And His Grace’s bill?”
Charpentier eyed us with another injured expression. He seemed to possess an endless repertoire. “Remains outstanding. And astronomical.”
Holmes and I exchanged looks. The same word had been used to describe His Grace’s gaming debts at White’s. Duke Michael appeared to be running true to form.
“What have you done with their possessions?”
“I disposed of them.”
“It is a mistake to lie to me, Monsieur Charpentier. You did nothing of the kind because for all you knew, they might at any time return and reclaim them.”
Charpentier jumped up, hands outstretched, imploring.
“But they haven’t! What were we to do, I ask you! Defy the Turkish authorities, reveal a scandalous liaison, and face a host of enquiries from His Grace’s … relatives or other … interested parties with questions we would be quite unable to answer! And so, we—I—thought it best to—”
“Pretend the man had never been here.”
There was a leaden exhalation. “I panicked.”
“And relied on the discretion of your staff.”
“They are Sudanese and entirely reliable.”
“Not entirely,” I struck in. “Your man Mustafa was ready to talk.”
His head jerked up at this.
“Mustafa? Many are called by that name.”
“The heavyset waiter in the dining salon.”
Charpentier blinked in recognition. “What did he say?”
“He said nothing. He was murdered before he could tell us what he knew.”
The hotelier doubled over as if punched and tripped backward onto the settee.
“Mon Dieu.”
“Monsieur, you are being disingenuous at best,” Holmes said quietly. “Cairo, where three competing national interests jockey for primacy, is inevitably honeycombed with spies, and Shepheard’s, with its international clientele—many in uniform—wining and dining, must be the locus of endless intrigue. I’ll wager half your staff is listening to the other half while many of your guests are doing the same. Waiters are ideally positioned to eavesdrop on all. It wouldn’t take long before your man Mustafa learned there was an Englishman asking questions about the Duke of Uxbridge. Or that his suite had been concealed.”
Charpentier said nothing.
“Where are the possessions of Fatima and His Grace?”
For a time no answer was forthcoming. The man’s head drooped between his knees, and he breathed with difficulty. The detective allowed him several moments’ grace before prompting him.
“Monsieur Charpentier.”
“In the luggage room. In the basement. Six trunks.”
Holmes considered for some moments, staring at the Persian carpet, then looked up with decision.
“Have this room cleaned and aired immediately and bring all their effects back as they were. When the suite is presentable have your Mr. Dumfries conduct Her Grace and Lord Darlington here. They are stopping at Osiris House.”
Charpentier did not look up. “It shall be done as you say, Monsieur Holmes.”
Once again, we were obliged to wait.
“I know this room.” Almost two hours later, the Duchess of Uxbridge stood uncertainly on the ragged threshold, framed in the open doorway by torn strips of yellow wallpaper.
“Of course you do,” the detective concurred. “It is suite seven-eighteen, where you stayed with His Grace when you visited Cairo in previous years.”
“You said it didn’t exist,” the duchess accused the detective, literally as well as figuratively standing her ground.
“Is that your rationale for not entering?” Holmes enquired. “In truth, until ninety minutes ago this room had indeed ceased to exist. It had been carefully concealed. It was I who exposed it.” Holmes was not without vanity and the duchess had offended him with her ultimatum.
As if to show she was unafraid, the woman now entered, sniffing suspiciously. The place had only just been cleaned and was still redolent of the efforts to rid the rooms of their musty odor.
“Will Lord Darlington be joining us?”
The schoolmaster, who had remained in the corridor, hearing his name, now wandered absently after his sister-in-law, looking about with his usual blank expression.
Holmes watched the duchess in silence as she inspected the room, evidently recalling time she had spent here.
“I smell eau de Cologne.”
“Yes.”
“Not mine.”
“No. What I have to tell you may prove distressing,” said he, eyeing Lord Darlington. “Would you prefer to hear it alone?”
She faced the detective. “Please explain yourself. Darlington can hear whatever it is you have to say.”
“Very well.” Holmes waited, untroubled by the silence between them.
“Is my husband alive?” she asked after a pause.
“I cannot say.” Her shoulders sagged at this. “But I know a good deal more than when you allotted me forty-eight hours to progress in my investigation. Be kind enough to open the right-hand wardrobe door behind you.”
This was not what she expected to hear.
“The right-hand wardrobe door,” Holmes repeated in a firm tone.
Frowning, she obeyed and opened the door. Inside were an assortment of her husband’s clothes, singlets, hose, morning coats and cutaways from Jermyn Street and Savile Row, shirts from Turnbull & Asser, his Winchester tie and several hand-stitched brogues and patent leathers, also a carbine in its long holster from Purdey & Sons. On the shelf below was a dish of cufflinks, studs, and stick-pins alongside an old, silver-backed hairbrush from Yardley’s. I know for I had recently placed them there.
Holding it at arm’s length, with evident distaste, the duchess now drew forth an aquamarine faïence hippopotamus, which she set down without comment, as much as to say, “Here is all my husband has to show for his Egyptian enthusiasms.” Remembering her previously expressed scorn on the subject as well as Professor Tewfik’s demonstration, Holmes and I thought it best to remain likewise silent and refrain from speculation as to the object’s value or provenance. Learning the thing was worthless would merely serve to stoke her anger when the detective would prefer her attention.
“Now open the left, if you please,” he instructed.
I began to wish I were someplace else.
The duchess stared at the contents of the open left-hand door. Jumbled in silken profusion were the colourful garments that belonged to another woman. These included scarfs, shoes, dresses, blouses, gowns, stockings, and several items of a more intimate character. Their style, moreover, was less European than Asiatic. There was an open red leather box of serviceable paste jewellery, shiny earrings, a garnet necklace, and the like. And emanating from the midst of the closet, more of the perfume the duchess had detected on her initial tour of inspection.
For a time, she faced the wardrobe, motionless, her rigid back to us. Blinking uncertainly, Darlington tactfully closed both doors and, taking his sister-in-law by the elbow, turned her to face the detective. Her face was a mask, the features frozen as if her countenance would fragment were she to adjust her expression.
“Please sit.”
Like an automaton, she allowed Lord Darlington to lead her to the chair lately occupied by Charpentier. Born in Brazil, married in England, and now betrayed in Egypt. Were it not for her previous disrespectful treatment of my friend, I might almost have pitied her. As she sat, Holmes rose to his feet. He was, I knew, still attempting to marshal his thoughts, deliberating such facts to lay before her as she could tolerate on the one hand, while retaining certain others he was not yet prepared to divulge.
“Almost three months ago here in Cairo your husband met and contracted an intimacy with … an exotic dancer. She took up residence with him here.” With a sweeping gesture, he indicated the suite. “A little over a month ago they both departed for what the staff of this hotel assumed was a brief excursion, from which they never returned. Are they alive? Have they met with an accident or foul play?” The detective ticked off the possibilities on his fingertips. “At this juncture it is impossible to say. For reasons beyond my understanding at present, the hotel felt compelled to conceal this suite, rather than acknowledge either had ever occupied it. Last night at dinner our waiter attempted to sell me information on the subject, but he was murdered before he could speak.”
Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly. I noticed Holmes made no mention of what Mustafa had scratched in the dirt as he died, nor did he allude to the man’s last words—if indeed what I heard could be called words.
We sat in silence for several moments.
“Is it possible they were kidnapped?” Darlington wondered aloud.
“It is not.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Over a month has passed and there has been no ransom demand.”
The duchess cast her eyes upwards, seemingly unsure where to look.
“You and His Grace were not, I gather, on intimate terms of late?” Obliquely phrased, the detective’s meaning was nonetheless unmistakable.
“We were not on intimate terms.” Her voice was so low it was hard to hear.
“I am sorry for your difficulties, Your Grace.”
“Do you—do you think they have run off?” the duchess asked, after an awkward pause.
“No.” Both appeared surprised by his answer. “But they did decamp on short notice. I take it your husband was fond of his comforts?” Holmes gestured to the wardrobe. “We are creatures of habit, most of us. This Yardley’s hairbrush, for example. The silver handle with his engraved escutcheon is scratched, suggesting long usage. Was it a gift from Your Grace?”
“It is one of a matching pair, one for each hand. He has numbered them among his toiletries for as long as I have known him.”
“The mate has not been found. Would I be correct in assuming it is hard to imagine the duke, long accustomed to such niceties, setting out to reinvent his life without at the very least his familiar brushes and their reassuring, if tarnished, ancestral crest, to say nothing of the rest of his private necessities? When a man has a cherished personal possession, a hairbrush or favorite article of clothing, he is unlikely to abandon it, whatever other claims may be made on his attention.”
“You forget,” Darlington pointed out in his usual monotone, “my brother had ample motive for wishing to disappear. Such a motive may have trumped a sentimental attachment to a hairbrush which he could, for a need, replace.”
The detective regarded Lord Darlington as if seeing him in a new light. But he shrugged. “The motive, perhaps, but not the means. How would he replace them? What would he use for capital to mount his resurrection? His financial well-being is currently buried in the copper mines of Brazil, or am I mistaken?”
“Our finances are complicated.” Like Charpentier, people seemed always to utter the word in a whisper. “I control the copper.”
“To be sure, but the estate and title itself cannot be claimed without ascertaining the fate of His Grace. And there is this.”
Holmes rose and opened a drawer on the left side of the wardrobe, taking out a dark blue velvet reticule, whose contents he emptied onto the low table between them next to the aquamarine hippopotamus.
We four stared at a necklace which comprised a dozen large, gleaming black pearls. Unlike the costume jewellery or the Egyptian faïence trinket beside them, the pearls were doubtless genuine.
“I don’t imagine Miss Fatima received these from your husband. Not in his straitened circumstances. But however she obtained them, I cannot imagine any woman, no matter how amorously susceptible, setting out to restart her life and leaving these behind. Can you?”
The duchess stared at the pearls as if hypnotised, her silence an answer.
“And if escape and disappearance was your husband’s intention, why not use these? They would take him far. No,” the detective answered his own question, “His Grace had pinned his hopes and limited expertise on the gold of Tuthmose, possession of which he was convinced would dwarf all other solutions.” Holmes paused, allowing his conclusions to sink in before adding, “No one witnessed any act of coercion, nor did your husband sense any need of protection. He did not trouble to bring this carbine. I therefore infer their journey was conceived as a short excursion, prompted perhaps by news or information of some sort. The pair didn’t plan to travel long or far but were sufficiently eager for His Grace to forgo the mate of a favorite hairbrush, yet not so entirely heedless that he overlooked his toothbrush. After all, they had a train to catch. The hotel omnibus took them to the station with light luggage, principally a fine Moroccan travelling case. Sightseeing perhaps. An overnight trip or possibly merely a picnic. And then something happened.”
He did not allude to the fates of any other Egyptologists.
“What is to be done?” the duchess demanded finally in the same whisper.
“What is to be done must be done without your interference or supervision,” the detective explained in a firm but not unsympathetic voice. “When I have news to convey you may be assured I will convey it. Otherwise, I must be turned loose to pursue the case as I see fit. Are you prepared to accept these conditions? If not, I will reluctantly suggest you seek assistance elsewhere.”
The duchess hesitated, looking briefly at Darlington, the first time I had ever seen them exchange glances.
“Will you at least tell me what direction you intend to pursue?”
Now it was the detective’s turn to hesitate. Clearly the duchess had no intention of slipping the leash entirely. He placed his fingertips together in a gesture I well understood.
“I will not.”
Another silence followed this. Her Grace was unaccustomed to confrontation, much less denial. After some moments, the woman extended her hand without looking, and as before, Lord Darlington was there to take it, gracefully helping her to her feet.
She cast a look at the detective but said nothing before the pair silently left the room.
Holmes appeared momentarily at a loss following this exchange. He fumbled for his tobacco, struck a match on the chrome ashtray strike-plate, and puffed on his briar. I do not believe it gave him any pleasure to enlighten the duchess regarding her husband’s infidelity, though I sensed this was by no means a unique occurrence for her. I took the occasion to light a cigarette and we sat for a time in companionable silence. Cleaned and spruced once more, the room was decidedly agreeable.
“What do you make of her?”
“The duchess?”
“The dancer. One might easily make the case for such a woman, obliged by circumstances and her sex to live by her wits, throwing her cap in the way of a duke, but how long, one is forced to wonder, before his own situation became clear to her? After all, she has proved sufficiently clever to acquire these.” He indicated the pearls on the table where he had placed them.
“And what then?”
“Precisely, my dear Watson. And what then?”
Unable to answer his question, I posed one of my own. “I observe that when you spoke with Her Grace and Lord Darlington just now you made no mention of VR 16, whatever that may be.”
“Sixty-one,” he corrected me, tapping out ash from his pipe on the ashtray. “Give that woman an inch and she will demand a league.” He sat back. “I have been pondering those marks in the dirt and for the life of me I cannot associate the letters VR with anything other than the late queen, which would hardly seem pertinent. Likewise the numbers six and one suggest nothing at present.”
“May I ask another question?”
“By all means.”
I gathered my thoughts. “If I am keeping a correct count, three Egyptologists, a waiter, and a Swede in London some years back are now all dead. It is clear that there is some connection between these fatalities, but what can it be? Bechstein may have been merely foolhardy, neglecting to bring his compass, but why was he wandering away from his dig in the first place? And do you believe Phillips really fell to his death? Professor Jourdan was murdered; that is beyond question. Was it a mere robbery or something more? And as we know, that Mustafa person was on the point of giving us information regarding this subject when he was summarily dispatched. That makes five. Excepting Ohlsson, are we meant to imagine they were all somehow struck by the same hand? If gold is at the bottom of all this, the pattern is decidedly irregular.”
“Decidedly, on first glance,” my friend agreed. “But put aside for the moment the suicide in London. The other deaths all occurred here in Egypt. What have the victims in common? As you yourself said, Doctor, the pursuit of treasure. That would seem to be some sort of pattern.”
“But while Jourdan and Phillips died violently,” I objected, “Bechstein seems merely to have left his compass—”
“But did he leave it? Or was he relieved of it? If the latter, what then befell was not mischance but violence of perhaps a more subtle cast. That would make three dead treasure hunters in toto. Are you fatigued, my dear fellow?”
“Quite the contrary. Overstimulated.”
“Good. Mustafa’s clue must wait, for the curtain is about to go up and we must not miss the performance.”
“Performance?”
“At the Cave of Ali Baba. Weren’t we told the risqué event begins at midnight?” Holmes was replacing items back in the wardrobe and closing the double doors as he spoke. “It is time we learn about Raqs sharqi.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Belly dancing.”