Three

S

o Lestrade took Aubrey Herbert’s advice, or at least part of it, by buying a Panama at Messrs Netherby and Netherby, in the Rue Nueve. He baulked at the galabieh, however. They only sold those in the Old Native Quarter and having walked past a few of them, he suspected that the old natives didn’t give any quarter at all. Besides, they were all blues and whites and didn’t match his eyes, not even  the whites.

He sat the next afternoon in the lounge of Shepheard’s Hotel, supping a rather fine brandy and facing a rather mystified policeman.

‘You look mystified, Norroy,’ he said, smiling at the ox-like inspector whose hair lifted rhythmically as the ceiling fan caught it. Beyond the shadowed awning of the window, Cairo slept in the noonday heat, the demon sun glaring off dome and minaret. As the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, echoing and re-echoing over the silent city that Allah was great and that Mohammed was his prophet, Lestrade noticed all the waiters turn sideways and nod in the same direction, then carry on about their business.

‘I don’t really know what I’m doing here, sir,’ Macclesfield confessed. ‘One minute I’m working on an old boy, battered to death in the basement of St Bart’s, the next I’m sitting in a hotel in Egypt, drinking . . . whatever this is.’

‘Think yourself lucky,’ Lestrade chuckled. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not available out there,’ he nodded to the city. ‘Alcohol is apparently taboo to the Mohammedans. They cut their hand off for touching it.’

‘I’m still mystified,’ Macclesfield shrugged.

‘Show me your warrant card, Norroy,’ Lestrade said.

The Inspector frowned. ‘All right,’ he said. He’d worked with Lestrade before, as a sergeant on the Magpie case. You didn’t ask questions of this man. You just did what he said. There was always a reason. A rhyme. He yanked it out of his inside pocket.

‘Looks new,’ Lestrade commented. ‘That’d be because of your recent promotion.’

Macclesfield chuckled. ‘That’d be because I lost the original,’ he said. ‘Bit embarrassing, actually. It was only my second day as Inspector and I couldn’t find it.’

‘Where did you lose it?’

Macclesfield shrugged. ‘Damned if I can remember,’ he said. ‘It was a routine day. I don’t think I left the Yard.’

‘Canteen?’

‘Canteen,’ Macclesfield nodded. ‘Urinals. Garage. That was about it.’

‘Garage?’ Lestrade frowned. ‘You mean you have a motor? In my day, inspectors walked.’

‘In my days too,’ Macclesfield nodded grimly. ‘I sometimes wonder what the police strike was all about a few years back.’

‘It was all about being abandoned by the great British public,’ Lestrade shook his head ruefully, ‘and by the top brass. I went to the wall because of it.’

‘I know, sir,’ Macclesfield nodded. ‘It’s funny, I never had you down for a militant.’

‘Liberal,’ Lestrade corrected him. ‘Life long. Still, now women have the vote . . . God, Emma will become illegible in two years . . .’ He shuddered at the thought of it. ‘But I egress. The matter in hand . . .’

‘The warrant card, sir?’ Norroy Macclesfield’s eyebrow was arched in a silent question. Not for the whole world would he have asked Lestrade why he wanted to know. Not for the whole world would Lestrade have told him to mind his own business.

‘Oh,’ Lestrade bluffed. ‘I’d heard they’d issued a new pattern recently. But no, it’s the same as mine used to be. Well,’ he was happy to change tack, ‘keep it handy. You might need it later for this Carnarvon business.’ He looked into Macclesfield’s calm dark eyes. Good lieutenants like him deserved better. ‘You’re here’, said Lestrade, ‘because the family suspect that Lord Carnarvon’s death was not the accident it appears. You’re here to use your considerable powers of arrest. I don’t have any.’

‘Won’t we be treading on a few toes, sir?’ Macclesfield asked.

Lestrade chuckled. ‘I expect so, Norroy,’ he said. ‘So what’s new? Why do you think they appoint you blokes with size-eleven feet? What have we got on Carnarvon?’

‘Little enough, really.’ Macclesfield let the unaccustomed claret swirl once more around his tonsils. ‘Bit of a facer, the family leaving like that.’

‘Yes, it was odd, wasn’t it? Evelyn and Lady C having invited me out, you’d think they’d hang about for a bit.’

‘I tried to speak to Sidney Smith.’

‘Who’s he?’ Lestrade wanted to know.

‘The Tabeeb el Sharah, as they say in these parts.’

‘All right, Norroy,’ Lestrade humoured him. ‘So I didn’t have the benefit of a Board School education. Enlighten me.’

‘It means legal doctor, guv. He’s a sort of Home Office pathologist.’

‘Any good?’

Macclesfield shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I was passed on to the Sirdar.’

‘Who?’ Lestrade had had that explained to him already, but he hadn’t been at his most receptive then.

‘Local army commander. Bloke called Lee Stack.’

‘Useful?’

‘No,’ Macclesfield said. ‘Seemed to think I was a small-arms dealer. Sent me on to the Procurator-General.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Well, from what I saw, as little as possible. Bloke called Hughes. Head of the Parquet.’

‘Isn’t that a floor?’

‘Apparently it’s the Ministry of Justice.’

‘Ah.’ Lestrade blew smoke rings to the spinning fan. ‘We clearly have a lot to learn about this country, Macclesfield.’

‘Their criminal law is based on the Code Napoleon, you know.’

‘Get away!’

Macclesfield nodded. ‘As I live and breathe.’

‘So why did you want to see this legal doctor chappie?’

‘Well, he knew Carnarvon – and all of them involved in the tomb. I thought he might have some ideas on the cause of death.’

Lestrade sighed. ‘We could certainly do with some of those,’ he said.

While Inspectors Hambrook and Fabian acted as escorts to Miss Bandicoot-Lestrade, the three of them taking in the fabulous sights of Cairo, a deputation called at the Shepheard’s Hotel to see a man who was legend west of Port Said.

‘You want my what?’ Lestrade asked the three.

‘Your autograph, sir, please.’

Lestrade looked at Macclesfield, but the Inspector had turned away in an effort to keep his chuckling shoulders under control.

‘Well, I’d be delighted, Constable . . . er . . .?’

‘Guest, sir,’ the tallest said. ‘Tom Guest. Of the Parquet, Camel Patrol.’

‘I see.’ Lestrade scrawled his name on the outstretched pad. ‘And . . . er . . .?’

‘Keen, sir.’

‘Yes, I can see that; but what’s your name, lad?’

‘Keen, sir. Reginald. Parquet, Camel Division.’

‘Ah, of course.’ He scribbled on his piece of paper. ‘And?’

‘Nettlefold, sir, Pomeroy Nettlefold. Parquet, Matrimonial Disturbances Squad.’

‘Get a lot of that, do you, in Cairo?’ Lestrade asked, affixing his monica. Then he wrote his name.

‘Ooh, bags, sir,’ Nettlefold told him. ‘In Islamic Law a man is allowed four wives, but you know how it is – wife number four is a luscious piece of crackling who has taken the place of wife number one, shrivelled to the constituency of a dried prune. Motive enough for the old poisoned-fig ploy.’

‘Poisoned figs?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘Ingenious. Personally, I find figs so repulsive, I wouldn’t know if they were poisoned or not. Well, thank you, gentlemen, I’m entirely flattered . . .’

‘Mr Lestrade.’ said Keen, ‘we . . . well, we’re all hoping to make a name for ourselves in the Egyptian service. We all speak fluent Arabic and don’t take bribes and so on. We’re . . . well, frankly, unspeakably ambitious and we’d like to know more about your famous cases.’

‘My . . .?’

‘The Baskett Case, for instance . . .’ Nettlefold began. ‘Old Beelzebub Baskett . . .’

‘Was guilty as sin, whatever the newspapers said,’ Lestrade answered him. ‘Though I concede we were lucky to have a judge who was more than a little parmesan. Now, gentlemen, please. I hate to be rude, but Mr Macclesfield and I have work to do.’

‘Aha,’ said Guest. ‘So this isn’t a holiday, Mr Lestrade?’

‘Let’s say a working holiday. I’m curious to know, gentlemen, how you knew I was here at all.’

‘Ah, the jungle drums,’ Guest smiled. ‘Nobody crosses the Sharia El-Kubri without the Parquet knows about it. Do you mind if we ask if your visit has anything to do with the late Lord Carnarvon?’ Lestrade looked at his men. Three fresh-faced rookies, who, were it not for the copper of the Egyptian sun on their cheeks, might have come straight out of their first day on the beat. The uniform was different, but the shining zeal was the same. ‘It might,’ he said, charily. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because the damnedest thing has happened,’ Guest told him. ‘Up-country. A Frenchman called Le Clerk has been found with a broken neck. Fell off his horse.’

‘What’s damnedest about that?’ Lestrade asked. As a copper in the Mounted Division he had regularly fallen off his.

‘Well,’ Guest checked that no fellah lurked in the lounge’s shadows. ‘This Le Clerk had just visited the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen too, like Lord Carnarvon. Coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

Lestrade would. But he wouldn’t say anything at all until he’d had a second opinion. Jack Holinshed knew where the morgue was. Egypt to him was a second home. So were Syria and Palestine. He didn’t like to brag of it, of course, but he’d been at Allenby’s elbow when the great general thundered into Jerusalem, riding knee to ham through the trenches of Megiddo. And he hoped that Lestrade would excuse him, but he’d seen enough corpses for a lifetime. He’d wait in the rooms above.

So it was that Sholto Lestrade stood alone but for the dead in the mortuary basement. He was grateful for the relative cool of the cellar, even if the uneven flagstone floors threatened to play merry hell with his tarsals. Shafts of Cairo sunlight streamed in through the wooden slats, illuminating the naked woman who lay there.

For a while he tried to avoid her, listening to the hubbub of noises from the Old Native Quarter in the street above – the braying of donkeys and the haggling of merchants. Then, professional curiosity got the better of him and he found himself staring death in the face, as he had so often before.

‘Who the devil are you?’ The English bark made him turn.

‘Sholto Lestrade,’ he said. ‘Scotland Yard.’

‘Scotland Yard.’ All he saw at first were laced shoes on the uneven stair, topped by a dusty white coat. ‘Let me see your papers.’ The feet clacked down the steps and their owner stood in the light shaft. ‘I’m Sidney Smith.’

‘The legal doctor,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘My papers are in my hotel room.’

‘Always a mistake.’ Smith said, placing his sandwiches and a flask on the dead woman’s slab. ‘How do I know you’re not some Peeping Tom?’

Lestrade glanced down at the deceased. ‘She was about forty years old,’ he said. ‘Led an outdoor life. She’d had children. And whoever killed her choked the life out of her with a ligature.’ He squinted at the purple bruising on the neck. ‘Hemp, I’d imagine, with the knot to the left. Probably struck from behind.’

‘All right,’ Smith was too wily a character to be impressed, ‘so you’re a knowledgeable Peeping Tom. What did she do for a living?’ Lestrade blinked. He checked the hands. The fingernails were good. Then the feet. Likewise. But the skin of the soles was hard and calloused. ‘She walked a lot,’ was the best he could do.

‘A knowledgeable Peeping Tom who knows nothing about Egypt,’ Smith continued with his diagnosis. ‘Look at her reproductive organs, man.’

‘Er . . . I don’t really like to,’ Lestrade said.

‘Tsk, tsk.’ Smith shook his head. ‘Still, that doesn’t prove you aren’t a detective, just that you’re a typical bloody Englishman. Standing there like some blushing girl. She’s got pubic hair.’

‘So she has . . .’ Lestrade was out of his depth.

‘Well, I know its existence shocked the burnt sienna out of old John Ruskin, but we men of the world shouldn’t be surprised by it. In Egypt, however, it speaks volumes.’

‘It does?’

Smith nodded. ‘It means she was a doxy, Mr Lestrade or whoever you are. A prostitute. You were right to look at her hands. No manual labour. Her feet are calloused because of the beat she walked. Serviced her clients standing up, I shouldn’t wonder. Sandwich?’

Lestrade shook his head.

‘In Egypt, good girls shave their pubic hair. It’s a sign of purity. Prostitutes keep theirs, for aphrodisiac purposes, so I’m told.’

‘Told?’ Lestrade raised an eyebrow.

‘Good God, man,’ Smith’s eyes widened, ‘with Mrs Smith up at the villa such experiences are bound to be a little second-hand. Now, unless you’re the vile sort of chappie who poses as a policeman in order to stare at women in the altogether, what’s your purpose here?’

‘Alain Le Clerk,’ Lestrade said.

‘Ah, the flying Frenchman.’

‘Do you have him here?’

‘I have what’s left of him here.’

‘Some constables of the Parquet told me he died as a result of a fall from his horse.’

Smith turned to the far corner. Then he turned back to Lestrade. ‘Just a minute.’ he said. ‘Do you have any jurisdiction here?’

‘None whatsoever,’ Lestrade assured him. ‘Just a nose for an accident that wasn’t an accident.’

‘You mean, he didn’t fall; he was pushed.’

‘Something like that,’ Lestrade nodded.

‘Well,’ Smith slid open a metal drawer that grated like the bars in hell, sending myriad dust particles flying into the sunbeam, ‘you’re misinformed. The fall was accidental all right.’

‘Oh.’ It wasn’t the first time Lestrade had got it wrong.

‘But that’s got bugger all to do with it. In my not inconsiderable experience, a man whose stomach contains three grains of henbane often does tend to fall off his horse.’

‘Henbane?’ Lestrade peered down as Dr Smith whipped back the grey winding sheet.

‘Hyoscyamus Niger; a pretty little plant that grows fairly furiously all over the Nile Delta. It has a rather lovely yellow flower and its seeds are quite commonly used in seasoning hereabouts. Has a root a bit like a parsnip. Mind you, mistake it for one, and I’ll guarantee you won’t live to sample the cheese and biscuits.’

‘That fast?’

‘It can be.’ Smith was busy rummaging in a cupboard above the mortal remains.

‘Is there an antidote?’

Smith paused in mid-rummage. ‘My dear fellow, he’s dead. Pathologist of extraordinary brilliance I may be. Jesus Christ I most assuredly am not. Oh, I don’t say if I’d got to him in time, pumped his stomach out and shot him full of tannic acid . . . maybe even morphine or pilocarpine. Even so, it would have been touch and go. As it is, of course, there’ll be a devil of a stink.’

‘The climate?’ Lestrade pulled a distasteful face.

‘No, I mean politically. You know it’s Zagloul, don’t you?’

‘Zag . . .?’

‘Here.’ He found a glass jar with amber liquid in. ‘Pass me that cat, will you?’

‘Aarghh!’ Lestrade had put his Panama down on what he assumed was a hat, curled up in the darkened corner. As it turned out, he was wrong by one letter and the slightly bemused beast was just coming to in the total blackness, staring into a hatband that said six and seven eighths.

‘Go on, man, it’s only Nefertiti.’

‘It may only be Nefertiti to you . . .’ Lestrade muttered. Then he whipped off the Panama and grabbed the grey, sinuous creature before it could uncoil. ‘Why am I doing this?’ he said. ‘Other than that you asked me so nicely, I mean?’

‘You’ll see.’ He took the animal by the scruff of its neck and tilted its head to the light. ‘Watch the pupil.’ And he poured some of the amber liquid into the cat’s eye. The pupil shrank to a pin-prick and the animal leapt clear, hissing and taking a slice out of Lestrade’s hand as it bolted for the steps.

Smith shrugged. ‘It goes with the territory for a laboratory cat,’ he said. ‘You should see the tests she undergoes when I’m using gelignite. She’s not really an Egyptian Rex – it’s just that all her fur has burnt off over the years. No, don’t feel sorry for her.’

‘I’ll try not to.’ Lestrade licked the agonizing lacerations and began rummaging for his handkerchief. ‘What did that little experiment prove?’

‘The presence of henbane.’ Smith slid the bottle back whence it came. ‘The liquid is a sample of urine I took from the deceased this morning. Any of the solanaceous plants contain an element of atropine – that’s what caused the pupil dilation. Sandwich?’

‘No, thank you,’ Lestrade declined again. ‘Did you know him?’

‘Le Clerk? Yes, I met him once. A few months back. Rather a ladies’ man, I understand. I didn’t care for him much. Too much of a gigolo, if I’m not mixing my races.’

‘What do you suppose happened?’

Smith sniffed. ‘I thought that sort of thing was what you chappies did,’ he said.

‘Oh, we do,’ said Lestrade. ‘But I have to admit I’m on alien ground here.’

Smith smiled and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You’ll have to go up-country,’ he said. ‘Visit the murder scene. The Pyramids and beyond.’

‘Beyond?’

Smith chuckled. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Lestrade, than are dreamed of in Scotland Yard. Look, I’m pretty busy now, or I’d offer to take you.’

‘I daresay Mr Holinshed will do the honours.’

‘Holinshed?’

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘Never heard of him. Unless he’s that bloke that Shakespeare based his plays on. Still, you’ll need a native guide.’

‘I will?’

‘Oh, yes. Unless Holinshed has some Egyptian blood in him, he’ll take you round in circles out there. It’s not like Margate, you know, Lestrade. Here we have serious sand. You stray a yard or two from the river and nobody will be responsible. I know a chappie who’s pretty reliable. Of course, you won’t be able to start until tomorrow.’

‘Too hot?’ Lestrade asked.

‘No, no. I’ve just got to bail out the reliable chappie. He’s in jail at the moment. Now, is there anything else, only I’ve got to lock up shop and get some zizz. Siesta, you see. Sandwich before you go?’

‘When Smith said “ship of the desert”,’ Lestrade said, ‘I naturally assumed he meant a boat.’

‘I expect he thought you wanted to get there quickly.’ Jack Holinshed was busy with his girths. ‘Travelling by steamer or felucca would take two days at this time of year. You’d die of boredom.’

‘I think that end might be preferable.’ Lestrade looked up at the pallid, thickly smelling beast that was to be his companion of a mile. ‘Either way, there’s likely to be another death on the Nile.’

‘This is Mustapha.’ Holinshed waved to the scrawny Egyptian in the red-and-gold galabieh. His eyes gleamed over a hawk nose and he could have earned a fortune modelling for the god Horus until he smiled and the evil stare was broken by a gappy grin.

‘Ah, Lestrade Pasha, it is an honour on my house to be allowed to serve you. Of the very many and very illustrious personages I have carried up-country, never have I had the honour to carry one who is solving the murders in the Yard of Scotland.’

‘You are remarkably well informed.’ Lestrade’s eyes narrowed. What with the topi cutting a groove in his forehead and the Keating’s Powder coating his lips, the morning was not going well. ‘How do I get on this thing?’

‘Not from that side!’ Mustapha screamed. ‘Cleopatra, she has the patience of Allah, but it is of singular importance that you do not come upon her from the blind side.’

‘Um . . . look . . . er . . . you haven’t got a horse, have you? Or a donkey, perhaps? I’d even settle for an Austin Seven.’

‘Ah, the automobile of Austin Pasha is a veritable triumph of British engineering, but my Cleopatra was made by Allah for traversing the desert. She is a member of that group of even-toed ungulates, the mammals who ruminate. Note her divided upper lip.’

Lestrade did, with some distaste.

‘Her two pairs of canine teeth.’

Lestrade liked the look of those even less.

‘If I were to be able to show you her stomach, you would observe that it has three compartments, not unlike the cells I recently vacated. The most remarkable feature of Cleopatra’s physiognomy is that the corpuscles of her blood are not circular as in other mammals, but oval as in birds and reptiles. They are also nucleated . . .’

‘How do I get on, Mustapha?’ Lestrade sensed senility overtaking him and the heat of the sand beginning to burn through his boots.

‘On that – if you will excuse the lascivious nature of the word – erect hump, Lestrade Pasha. Put your hand on the pommel of the saddle, thus.’

Lestrade did.

‘Your other hand likewise on the cantle, so.’

Lestrade obeyed.

‘Now, it is for Lestrade Pasha to mount by placing his illustrious loins astride Cleopatra’s hump.’

‘Like this?’ Lestrade’s right leg swung across the ornate leather saddle, but the dromedary bucked upwards with a sickening, hoarse cry and on clambering to its front feet, threw Lestrade right over its head.

‘Nearly, Lestrade Pasha.’ Mustapha beamed his encouragement. ‘Perhaps this time if you put your foot in the stirrup first.’

‘Yes.’ Lestrade spat sand and allowed the camel driver to dust him down. ‘Yes, that would probably increase my survival rate.’ He glanced up at Holinshed, already atop his beast, looking like Lawrence of Arabia. ‘Done this before, have you?’

‘Oh, beginner’s luck, old man,’ the blond rider grinned. ‘You’ll get the hang of it.’

Mustapha whispered something Egyptian in the camel’s ear and the beast snorted, rolled its left eye and dropped to its knees again. ‘She is ready now, Lestrade Pasha,’ the camel driver said, his hands outspread. ‘Once you are in the saddle, hook your left foot under your legendary fundament, as Holinshed Pasha has done.’ Lestrade glanced across. He stood rather more chance of hooking his left foot under Holinshed’s fundament from where he stood. Summoning up what little remained of his dignity, he launched himself for a second time. Cleopatra snorted again, her lips quivering, either with contempt or disbelief, and Lestrade gripped the reins for all he was worth as she lurched upright.

‘Is that it?’ he called out to Mustapha. ‘Am I doing it right?’

‘You will be, Lestrade Pasha,’ Mustapha said, ‘when you sit upright. At the moment you are, by my estimation, at an angle of forty-five degrees to the vertical. It is rather like rowing with one oar on the Lake of the Serpent in London. You will go round in a circle and the view will become very monotonous.’

He reached up and pushed Lestrade upright.

‘She will do ten miles an hour when she smells water or a man camel,’ Mustapha said. ‘She can do without water for three days because of her stomach pouches.’

‘How long can she go without a man camel?’ Lestrade thought it prurient to ask.

‘Fear not, Lestrade Pasha,’ Mustapha swung lazily atop his own beast, ‘she is not in season. She will not, at the moment, look at a man camel twice, for all they whistle at her. Hutt! Hutt!’ Mustapha’s beige beast reared up out of the sand.

Holinshed moved his animal in close to Lestrade’s. ‘Use your crop on her neck,’ he said. ‘And keep her rein short – you know, like Lady Jane Grey’s.’ He winked at the former detective. ‘She’ll roll like a drifter. Why else do you think they call these things ships of the desert? The trick is to roll with her. Try to fight her and you won’t be able to stand for a week. Hutt! Hutt!’ And he flicked his crop across his camel’s ears as the animal loped forward.

‘Hutt! Hutt!’ said Lestrade. Cleopatra turned her wrinkled old neck and chewed the cud or whatever it is camels chew in the Native Quarter of Cairo. A gang of ragged street urchins was rapidly closing in as the camel bellowed and flicking her fly-whisk tail, thudded off down the road in the wake of the others.

It helped a little, on the two agonizing days of their journey, that Mustapha kept up an almost running commentary on the lush pastures they trotted through. Learning that the area of the country was some 385,000 square miles came as no surprise to Lestrade. His backside felt that he had ridden every one of them. He was a little surprised, however, to learn from their guide that only some 13,600 square miles was habitable. Personally, what with the flies in his mouth and the sand in his eyes, he’d come to the conclusion that none of them was.

Slowly, they left behind the greenery of the Nile and the grey alluvium of its flood plain (Lestrade didn’t remember any of this from his days at Mr Poulson’s Academy for Nearly Respectable Gentlefolk when Mr Mercator had tried to teach him geography). Perhaps it was the heat or the flies, but Lestrade didn’t remember much after they carried him into the oasis at Beni Suef. He lay in the darkness of his tent, the mosquito net wrapped around him like a shroud.

Mounting the next morning was surprisingly easy, for a man who felt as though he’d left his legs in the lagoon at Menzala. Flocks of scrawny sheep met the travellers on their way, the hunched camels of the day; and tall, black-robed Bedouins glided past, born to their tall saddles and silent gazes.

‘Apart from the camel,’ Mustapha was in full flight, ‘the ass, the sheep and the buffalo have been placed for our use by Allah. Among the fauna of the desert you see before you, the hyena and the gazelle may be found in numbers, with the hare, the jackal and the fox.’ He turned in the saddle. ‘In the valley of the great Nile, the lynx, the ibis and the bats. And Cleopatra in her wisdom will step over the echis, the horned viper and the hooded snake. There are scorpions without number and the fleas are legion.’

Lestrade had already discovered that and his chest was red raw with his scratching. So much for Keating’s Powder. Nightfall on the second day, when the stars came out like diamonds above the dying glow of the sun, saw them at Abu Qurgas.

Mustapha was well into the anthropography of his people by noon the next day, when the sun was a demon burning into Lestrade’s forehead. On the guide’s advice, he’d abandoned his topi and wore the Arabic headgear favoured by Holinshed, his face swathed in yards of white cloth and the barrels above his brow flashing gold in the sunlight.

‘The Bedouin are the people of the tent,’ Mustapha said, pointing at their low black camps that ringed the sandy hills. ‘They look down their noses at us fellahin. That is because they are shorter than we are, less rangy and have coarser hair. Were it not for the camels they ride, they would in fact be looking up at us most of the time.’ He unhooked a goatskin sack from his saddle bow. ‘Camel’s-milk elevenses, Lestrade Pasha?’

They carried Lestrade Pasha to a shady grove of pomegranate trees and there he closed his eyes and tried to remember where his feet were. He was just losing the will to live when the sound of a motor klaxon brought Cleopatra to her feet, braying in retaliation. A cloud of dust rose in the shining, wobbling distance as a black speck began to grow before the travellers’ eyes.

‘What do you make of it, Mustapha?’ Jack Holinshed was just finishing his millet and raw vegetable pasty.

‘It is one of Mr Ford’s motor cars of the type called Model T,’ the guide said, shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘An inferior marque, of course, to anything made in England.’

‘Of course,’ Holinshed smiled. ‘Can’t see who’s in it, I suppose?’

‘It has the pennon of the Sirdar on its bonnet.’

‘The what?’ Lestrade croaked through parched lips. Would he never remember the meaning of that word?

‘The Most Illustrious Commander of the Egyptian Forces,’ Mustapha told him. ‘Lee Stack Pasha, May His Tribe Increase. A product of your public-school system and your Sandhurst. This man is Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte rolled into one.’

‘All right, Mustapha,’ Holinshed scrambled to his feet, dusting the sand from his boots, ‘he can’t hear you yet.’ He trained his binoculars on the black speck. ‘Lee Stack be buggered,’ he said. ‘I met Stack at Biarritz last year. If that’s the Sirdar, I’m a Buddhist.’

It wasn’t the Sirdar. So it followed that Holinshed’s Anglicanism was in no doubt. Instead, a rather small, unprepossessing man in a fawn-coloured jacket braked, turned off the ignition and clambered out of the Model T’s cab.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘We heard about you chappies over the wireless. Thought I’d give you a bit of a lift. I’m Clifford Hanger, Publicity Man for the Tomb That Time Forgot.’

‘Jack Holinshed.’ Holinshed caught his hand. Hanger pumped it vigorously. ‘This is . . .’

‘Superintendent Lestrade.’ Hanger beamed. ‘Yes, I know.’ He grinned at the recumbent form. ‘Is he all right?’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Holinshed. ‘He looks dead.’

‘He’ll be fine,’ Holinshed told him.

‘Ah, yes.’ Hanger took one look at Mustapha. ‘No roomee,’ he said loudly. ‘Car full. No room. You go. Go back Cairo. Take camels. Oh God, don’t any of these buggers speak a civilized language?’

‘Oh yes, Effendi,’ Mustapha beamed. ‘And I think you will find that my English is not at all bad either. I and my camels – oh, pardon – my camels and I – were hired by the Most Illustrious Dr Smith Pasha, the Dissector of Dead Persons, to take Holinshed Pasha and Lestrade Pasha to the Valley of the Kings. I cannot break my word what I have given before Allah.’

‘Really?’ Hanger beamed at him. He muttered again to Holinshed, ‘these people break their word more easily than they break wind. Well, all right,’ he called to the guide. ‘But on your own fez be it. You’ll have to trot along behind. Mr Lestrade, can you walk?’

‘Walk?’ Lestrade repeated. His eyes flickered for a moment. ‘Be gentle with me.’ And his head lolled backwards.

The Winter Palace Hotel at Luxor was every bit as plush and comfortable as Shepheard’s in Cairo. Hanger’s Ford was every bit as uncomfortable as Cleopatra’s hump and it was with vast relief that Lestrade allowed himself to be carried from one to the other and to slump in the fan-cooled lounge while white-fezed waiters plied him with cocktails. He sent a telegram down-river to Emma to tell her that they’d arrived and that he was all right. As all right as a man could be who’d just spent the last two hours being talked to by a man in advertising.

Over dinner, which was all in French, the ex-Chief Superintendent sat between Jack Holinshed and Clifford Hanger. Mustapha they hadn’t seen since their arrival, but he and Holinshed had kept pace with the Ford all along the indescribable road from Manfalut to Karnak. Above the roar of the engine, Hanger had gestured to the far bank of the Nile that there was Thebes. Lestrade had misheard him and kept an even tighter grip on his wallet.

‘Don’t you tan at all?’ Lestrade asked Holinshed over a plate of something unidentifiable. His own face was brick red except where the cloth whatsit had been wrapped across his nose. He looked like a panda with no sense of colour.

Holinshed shrugged. ‘Lucky, I suppose,’ he said. ‘What news of the tomb, Mr Hanger?’

‘Call me Cliff,’ the Publicity Man beamed, pouring a little more champagne for them all. ‘Well, it’s a bit of a bugger at the moment. I don’t mind telling you, Lord C’s death has left us all in a bit of a pickle.’

‘It has?’

‘Well, the thing of it is, you see, dear old Howard’s no great shakes when it comes to the front.’

‘Front?’ Lestrade had been listening to this man’s conversation since that squiggle in the Nile below Dairut. He hadn’t really under- stood much of it.

‘Publicity - you know, salesmanship. That’s what I was before this. Didn’t I tell you? You know “That ‘Kruschen’ Feeling”?’

Lestrade did, having often been wedged between a rock and a hard place.

‘“That ‘Kruschen’ Feeling”?’ Clearly Holinshed had not.

‘The advertisement for “Kruschen Salts” – it’s in all the best mags. Shows an old boy – oh, begging your pardon, Mr Lestrade – sliding down a banister. Pa Kruschen. “Here’s the dear old boy again – just brimming over with high spirits and the sheer joy of living. He gets up every morning feeling he could do the staircase in one.” Yes, I know.’ Hanger read the faces of his audience. ‘Bit Over The Top, isn’t it, as we used to say on the Ypres Salient. Actually, there’s no scientific evidence that Kruschen Salts do you any good at all and they taste like camel shit. Still, they’re made in Manchester, so that explains a lot.’

‘And what brought you to Egypt?’ Lestrade asked.

‘The SS Dementia,’ Hanger beamed. ‘Out of Southampton. Ha, ha! No, seriously though; Lord C advertised for a PR man.’

‘A PR man?’ Lestrade was grateful for a reason not to put a forkful to his lips.

‘Public Relations. That’s my job.’

‘I heard The Times was on that,’ Holinshed said.

‘Percy Merton?’ Hanger sucked on his teeth. ‘An amateur, dear boy.’

‘Haven’t the Daily Mail flown somebody out?’

‘“Nobody” would be rather more apposite. Arthur Weigall, former Director of the Society of Antiquities.’

‘An expert, then, in archaeology, I mean?’ Lestrade observed.

‘To his own satisfaction, yes.’ Hanger sipped the bubbly.

‘Personally, I think he is to archaeology what the iceberg was to the Titanic. He wouldn’t know an Amenhotep from his elbow. But then, my job is to sell the tomb, not get buried in academic claptrap. What do you both think of this?’

He pulled from his pocket a fairly nauseating little model of a cat. ‘It’s a mummified cat,’ he explained. ‘Or rather, the original was. I’m having them made by the thousand in Cairo and shipped from Port Said. I think they could catch on. I’m calling it Carnarvon’s cat and there’ll be a de luxor edition – like it? – with a nodding head to put on the back seat of people’s motors.’

‘Charming.’ Holinshed’s grin was frozen.

Lestrade was speechless. But then, half a clove of garlic had just reached his taste buds.

‘I’m working on copies of the “Carnarvon Cut-throat” at the moment. “Your very own chance to own an exact replica of the razor that killed Carnarvon.”’ His fingers wrote it in the air. ‘Available in mild steel and bakelite. Three bob. What do you think?’

Lestrade closed to his man. ‘What do you think, Mr Hanger?’ he asked.

‘Cliff, Cliff,’ the ad-man insisted. ‘Think about what?’

‘About what happened to Lord Carnarvon?’

‘Er . . . well, he died, didn’t he? Look,’ he did so, at them both, ‘my understanding was that you’d been sent out, Mr Lestrade, as a security expert for the tomb. And we could certainly do with some of that.’

‘I am here at the request of the family,’ Lestrade said, ‘to investigate the death of Lord Carnarvon. We’ll discuss Mr Le Clerk later.’

‘Le Clerk?’ Hanger frowned. ‘Look, Mr Lestrade, Egypt is a rough country. It’s full of creepy crawlies of the poisonous variety, burning days and freezing nights. Lord C was never very strong, you know, not since his accident. And Alain Le Clerk, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have put my money on him in the Derby. He just fell off his horse, that’s all. These things happen.’

‘Were you here when Lord Carnarvon died?’

‘My dear fellow, I was at his bedside. We all were – Lady C, Lady Evelyn, Howard Carter.’

‘Carter?’

‘He’s the archaeologist,’ Hanger explained. ‘It’s his dig.’

Lestrade pushed away whatever it was on the plate in front of him.

‘Is the kebab not to your liking?’ a passing maitre d’hotel asked.

‘No, it’s fine,’ Lestrade said, patting the table cloth. ‘In fact, I’ve rarely seen a prettier one. Now, Mr Hanger . . .’

‘Cliff. Cliff.’

‘Now, Cliff Cliff,’ years of interrogation had taught him the value of being the nice policeman, ‘perhaps you could tell us what happened the night Lord Carnarvon died. And Mr Holinshed, I wonder if you could ask if they do a nice spotted dick anywhere in the hotel? I could eat a horse.’

It was the damnedest thing, Hanger had told them. The lights all went out in Cairo at the exact moment that Lord Carnarvon died. He was staying in the Continental Hotel in the city and cut his cheek with his cut-throat razor, the one with the family crest of the gryphon sejant (an ad-man had to know his family crests). Hanger himself had noticed, in between dreaming up slogans for the forthcoming opening of the tomb, how angry and red the old man’s face looked. As though the hawk-headed guardian of the tomb had pecked him on the cheek. The Horus Kiss. He seemed to rally, then the fever set in and a curious lack of lustre seemed to settle on him, like the sands of the desert settle on everything. In the early hours of the fifth of April, with his wife, son and daughter at his bedside, Lord C’s breathing had become ragged, forced. For a moment, his eyelids, fluttered to the ceiling. Then he said two words – or what sounded like two words. Soft wings. Nothing more. The Cairo papers had a mourning frame around their next day’s editions. Traffic in the Sharia Imad-ed-Din came to a halt. There was a minute’s silence as a token of the city’s respect for a great man.

‘Odd that Lady Evelyn didn’t stay to greet us,’ Lestrade mused that night as he and Jack Holinshed waved au revoir to Clifford Hanger, driving into the night.

‘Bodies don’t keep in the Egyptian heat, Mr Lestrade.’ The blond man pulled a long cigar from an inside pocket of his dinner jacket. ‘They wanted to bury him on Beacon Hill, I understand, above his beloved Highclere. You didn’t ask Hanger about Le Clerk.’

‘One death at a time, Mr Holinshed.’ Lestrade pulled out his cigar, rather shorter, from his serge jacket. ‘I find it helps keep things in perspective. The Valley of the Kings tomorrow, then?’

The Valley of the Kings was the valley of the dead, a rivulet of shade and sandstone with a dry wadi meandering to the east. Here, with wailing and with sorrow, the ancient Egyptians had brought their dead kings, the Pharaohs who bestrode the known world like colossi. Hatshepsut slept here, Tuthmosis and Rameses, Amenophis and Siptah, Sethos, Yuya and Merenptah. For a little while, the archaeologists had looked on their works and despaired. Then, they started to ransack them, all in the name of science, of course.