Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [43]
• • •
Five
• • •
The interview had taken longer than I had expected. Darkness had fallen when I left the hotel. It was a lovely evening and I did not hurry the cabdriver; accustomed as I am to the bustling traffic and interesting odors and cacophonous street sounds of Cairo, I quite enjoyed the drive. It gave me time to think over what had transpired. All things considered, I believed I had handled the matter quite well.
When the cab stopped in front of the house, Ali the doorman rushed at me waving his arms and thanking God in a loud voice. Ali is an excitable fellow who enjoys theatrics, but he tends to take his cues from certain other persons, so I was not surprised when Emerson burst through the open door and added his voice to Ali’s. Emerson was not thanking God.
“What kept you so long? How dare you be so late? What happened?”
“Pay the driver, Emerson,” I said, as soon as I could make myself heard. I had been about to do so myself, but knew this little task would distract him.
“What? Oh.” He was not wearing a coat. After fumbling in his trouser pockets he found a fistful of coins, handed them to the driver, put his arm round my waist, and propelled me into the house.
“You gave him far too much,” I said. “Why are you carrying on like this? I told you where I was going.”
“Hmph.” Emerson stopped outside the door of the parlor. He was still holding me very tightly. “Perhaps I had a premonition.”
“You? You don’t believe in premonitions and forebodings. You always sneer at mine.”
The parlor door opened, and Emerson released me as if I were red-hot.
“Ah,” I said, seeing Nefret and Ramses side by side in the doorway. “Good evening, my dears. Are you dining? You didn’t tell me.”
“I told Fatima,” said Nefret. “She always prepares food enough for a dozen. When you didn’t turn up I asked her to put dinner back.”
“Mahmud won’t like it,” I said. Our cook is somewhat temperamental.
“I had a few words with him,” said my daughter-in-law firmly. “There’s time for your whiskey and soda, Aunt Amelia. Come and sit down and tell us what that woman wanted.”
I realized that Ramses must have discussed with her our earlier encounters with Miss Minton, and that they had concluded—correctly—that the lady had an ulterior motive for wanting to see me. I had intended to tell them the whole story anyhow. After a number of unfortunate incidents, resulting from the misguided attempts of certain persons to shield other persons from knowledge they (the certain persons) considered dangerous, we had made a pact, the four of us, to conceal nothing. At least Nefret and I had. Emerson and Ramses had agreed in principle, but both of them suffered from the innate conviction of male persons that they are the natural protectors of helpless females, and although both of them knew that Nefret and I were far from helpless, I did not trust either of them to stick to his promise.
So I took off my hat and took a chair and a glass of whiskey, and launched into my narrative. I was able to render it with all the panache of the original because I had brought the original away with me, slipping the pages into my handbag while Miss Minton’s vision was blurred by tears. (It was not a nice thing to do, but as I had once remarked, all is fair in love, war, and journalism. In this case all three considerations applied.) I fully intended to return it, with my apologies—or perhaps without them—after I had taken a copy.
Nefret was the first to speak. “So that was it. I was afraid she’d heard some rumor about what Ramses did last winter. It would make a sensational story.”
That idea hadn’t occurred to me. Perhaps it would only have occurred to a woman so passionately devoted to her husband that