Perhaps he and Russell could delay their departure for home, just a day or two. After all, this might prove the final opportunity for a pair of Europeans to do so: If the Revolt to the north managed to join hands with the uncontrolled tribes to the south, the French would be squeezed out in no time at all.
He latched the tiny window, dropped his cigarette stub into the low-burnt coals, and went to bed.
CHAPTER SIX
In the morning, there was a tap at the door.
“Come!” Holmes called. He was at the window again, his breath making clouds in the cold air, attempting an analysis of the neighbourhood’s geometry. He crossed the room, rubbing his hands into circulation, and his nostrils flared at the aroma. “Salaam aleikum, Youssef,” he said.
“As salaamu aleik, Monsieur,” the servant replied. “Monsieur’s coffee.”
“I shall miss your daily visits,” Holmes said. “The aroma alone could wake the dead.”
From the moment he entered Dar Mnehbi, six days earlier, Holmes had seen that Youssef was no mere servant. The man was, rather, the steward of this diminutive medina palace, and while he occasionally held sway over the official Residency as well—a considerably grander palace, in one wing of which Lyautey and his wife lived, closer to the city walls—for the most part, the Residency was a place where silk-robed, white-gloved servants waited on men in European clothing, while Dar Mnehbi was for the homespun supplicant at home in the medina.
Lyautey, truth to tell, seemed to prefer his medina dwelling as well, and often used the excuse of late nights to sleep in his simple rooms here.
Dar Mnehbi was, in fact, a complex of linked buildings, since the original palace was too small until the neighbouring dar was taken over and converted into a combination guard house and guest quarters. It was now connected to Dar Mnehbi proper by a corridor and steps, its rooms adapted for the peculiar requirements of Europeans: the house hammam turned into a bath-room with a geyser tank, windows brutally punched through external walls, internal doorways converting individual salons into suites, with beds from France and the light-weight, decorative salon doors replaced by sturdy bolted wood. It did still have the central courtyard with fountain, cobalt-and-cream tiles, and a halka overhead, open to the sky.
Youssef had run the Dar Mnehbi complex for a decade, in charge of everything from the choice of flowers in the library to the brewing of such superb coffee in the kitchen. He was a tall, dignified Berber who wore his trim turban and striped djellaba with the air of a Roman Senator, and if Youssef chose to deliver food and drink himself, Holmes thought it was more as host than as servant.
“Black as hell, thick as death,” Holmes muttered in Arabic, watching the slim hands pour the liquid into the miniature cup.
The dark eyes looked up in surprise, then Youssef ventured the first humour Holmes had been able to tease out of him. “If Monsieur wishes his coffee sweet as love, I shall need to bring more sugar.”
Holmes laughed. “Thank you, my brother, I will take it bitter.”
The man set the cup before Holmes, and said, “Few Europeans enjoy their coffee in this manner.”
“It is a preparation better suited to walking over the desert than driving in a motorcar,” Holmes agreed.
The Moroccan adjusted the spoon a fraction, tugged the tray’s cloth a centimetre, then left. In all the days of Holmes’ stay here, it was the most Youssef had said in his hearing.
When the tiny cup was empty but for the grit, Holmes’ nerves felt as if they had been connected to a low-voltage wall socket, but he felt vaguely dissatisfied until he spotted the carafe of drinking water on the side table. Water after coffee: another desert habit learned from the Hazr brothers.
Despite its Western-style renovations, Dar Mnehbi was a touch old-fashioned, a sumptuous expanse of tile and carpets with cramped private quarters, shared bath-rooms, few windows, and fewer fireplaces. The Residency, a short uphill stroll away, was an impressive, light-filled palace where guests could arrive in motorcars and be provided with taps that gushed hot water. Dar Mnehbi, deep inside the ancient walls of the medina, provided the French with a very different set of resources and messages. The Residency displayed power and flash; Dar Mnehbi made a clear statement of ferocious intent: The Resident General was an integral part of Fez, and he was here to stay.
Offered rooms in either place, Holmes had chosen to stop here rather than in the Residency, and had spent the past few days happily wandering the tangled streets that were equal parts Granada and Cairo, and wholly their own. Fez was the centre of Morocco, its heart and soul, rich and clever and lovely, and deadly as a Miniago stiletto. And its Resident General, manly and open with no taste for intrigue, was both unsuited for the task and the best hope of the country.
Yes, Holmes decided, he would return here with Russell before they sailed back to England. Having spent the past year in foreign parts, once they reached home, he doubted he’d prise her away from Oxford for a long time.
He coaxed a hot bath from the geyser (his last, he suspected, for some days), then packed his bag and left Dar Mnehbi, heading for the railway station.
Eleven days after leaving Fez—days filled to overflowing with sand, remote hills, the Arabic language, the Islamic world, and rather more excitement than Maréchal Lyautey would approve of his country having given one of its visitors—Holmes stepped off the train in Rabat, drawing a deep breath of the fresh sea breeze.
It was jarring, to go from a time spent far from motorcars and telephones, beds and newspapers, into the modern European bustle of Rabat. Holmes looked down at his travel-stained garments. He’d bundled away his disreputable djellaba, but in truth, the European trousers and jacket were not much of an improvement. He needed a bath, and a shave.
Rabat was enough of a European centre that, as he’d suspected, Fridays were less scrupulously observed than elsewhere in the Moslem world. Outside the train station, he brushed aside the mid-day clamour of hotel-boys and taxi drivers and headed to the portion given over to native trade. He picked out a cart with wheels that appeared to have seen grease in the past decade, addressing the startled driver in Arabic.
“Salaam aleikum. Do you know the Hotel de Lyons? Near the waterfront?”
“A’salaamu aleik,” the driver replied automatically. “Yes, of course. But—”
“Good.” Holmes threw his case into the back, and, after a murmured Bismillah, climbed in beside it.
The bemused fellow looked at his horse, at Holmes, and followed him up.
When Holmes had left Russell, seventeen days before, they’d agreed to meet on Friday the nineteenth, at the hotel where Fflytte Films was ensconced. He rather hoped she would be out when he arrived; no need to inflict his present disarray on her. And (here he fingered a neat circle near the hem of his jacket, wondering if he could contrive to make it look less like a bullet hole) no need to point out that he’d had a more interesting time than she.
Seventeen days before, there had seemed little point to him cooling his heels while she finished with her cinema project. And since he’d found a replacement for his rôle in the moving picture (a corpulent ex-headmaster who looked the very image of a modern Major-General—far more than Holmes ever did), he had packed a bag and merrily left his wife behind, to pay his respects to a distant cousin and explore a country he’d never seen.
He turned his attention to his driver, engaging him in fluent Arabic while absorbing the man’s gestures and the distinctive manner of driving (one never knew when one would need to act the part of a Moroccan horse-cart driver) and noting the details of the town around him. He saw more European faces on the short drive to the hotel than he’d seen the entire previous week—strolling the pavements, eyeing the windows, sipping coffee along sidewalk cafés. He had to agree with the Maréchal: A person would never believe that bloody rebellion seethed just 125 miles away.
They arrived at the hotel, which was run-down enough that a doorman did not instantly appear to order the cart and its pas
senger back into the street. Indeed, there was no doorman. Holmes climbed down, haggled cheerfully with the driver, and carried his own bag inside.
He recognised the figure at the desk, a Moroccan who pretended to be French; only after he had spoken to the man in that language did the man recognise him.
“Monsieur … ’Olmes?”
“The very same. Is my wife in?”
“Monsieur, your wife left us, long ago.”
Holmes’ arm checked; there was surely no reason for the cold sensation trickling into his chest. The film crew she was assisting had been delayed, that was all.
“When is the crew expected back?”
“Oh, Monsieur, the others, they returned three—pardon, two days past. Late on Wednesday. They remained here for one day, then early this morning—before dawn, even—they all boarded the sailing boat. To do the filming, you know? But they will be back tonight. Insh’Allah.”
His hesitation before adding the final word had the sound of an ominous afterthought. Holmes gazed at the man, who shifted the desk register between them, as if a display of its names would assuage this glaring customer.
Russell must have decided to change hotels again. To more comfortable rooms. “Did she leave a message?”
“She did not. Her bags are here, of course. As is your—”
“Bags?” he said sharply. “She left her bags here?”
“One she left, the other was brought back.”
“She abandoned her things?”
Either the desk man was remarkably perceptive, or the creeping panic Holmes felt was visible in his face, or his voice.
“Monsieur, please, there is no cause for concern. Bismillah. Her friends—if I may be blunt for a moment, I should say they were irritated, but not at all worried. She simply did not come back with them.”
“My wife walked away from all her possessions, and none of the company was concerned?”
“Put like that, it does sound remarkable, Monsieur, I agree. But I can only say again, they did not seem in the least troubled. They merely left her bag with me, rather than having it clutter the room of one of the others. Clearly, they expect her to return.”
Holmes took a breath. “My wife had left one of her cases with you, you say?”
“When they went off to the desert, the motorcars were very full of equipment. M. Fflytte asked his company to leave any excess luggage here. The others have retrieved theirs, of course. Your wife’s remains. With, as I said, the one brought back in her absence.”
“Let me have them both.”
“Certainly, Monsieur. Oh—stupid man that I am, I forgot—a gentleman left a message for you.”
Aha—it was Russell, in disguise. But when Holmes looked at the envelope, in hotel stationery and the same ink as that in the register, one eyebrow rose. He ripped the envelope open, and read, in beautiful Arabic script:
My brother, if you are available to assist in a grave matter, you will come to Fez and drink coffee at the shop nearest the train station, when they open in the morning or before they shut at night.
At the look in Holmes’ eyes, the desk man immediately recalled the need for the two bags from the storage-room. He placed them on the floor, hastily retreating behind the solid desk again. “Will, er, Monsieur be requiring a room?”
“No—yes. Good idea.” He needed to go through Russell’s things, and it would give him a chance to clean up a little: In his current state, he would intimidate no one into parting with information. He held out his hand for the hastily proffered key, then asked, “Are there any of the film crew who didn’t go on the ship today?”
“Only two or three of the local men, Monsieur, who were not needed.”
“Where are they?”
“I am not certain, Monsieur.”
“They live in town?”
“Yes, Monsieur. Or so I presume.”
Holmes eyed him: That addendum had been too hurried, and his look of innocence too open.
However, bags and bath were more urgent than pinning down whatever mild chicanery the desk man might be hiding. And in any event, the local help were less likely to know what had happened to Russell than the crew itself. Without a word, he caught up the bags and headed for the stairs.
He went through every centimetre of both bags. One contained garments and equipment she had not thought necessary for a week’s filming in the desert. The other bag’s garments were less precisely folded and had sand in them. He strewed the room with the contents, and when the bags were empty, prodded the seams for hidden pockets, ripping apart one of the handles that felt lumpy.
He found neither passport nor revolver. Nor was the small leather valise she used inside the larger bags. The absences were reassuring, suggesting that her disappearance was deliberate, the lack of word merely an oversight or mislaid letter.
The water from the taps was actually warm; the water in the bath when he climbed out was opaque. He opened his shaving kit, squinted at the reflection in the spotted glass, and closed it again. Shaving could wait until he was certain that a beard would not be required.
He shoved his young wife’s clothing any which way into the bags, did the same with his own, and returned to the lobby.
“Where do I find those local crew members?” he demanded.
“Monsieur, I have no idea, I—”
Holmes put both hands on the desk, leaning forward until the man drew back. “I see that there is money involved. Some minor crime. I am not interested. I merely require to speak with the crew.”
“I … that is … Yes, Monsieur.” The desk man wrote an address on a piece of paper, and pushed it across the wood.
Holmes took it without looking, then said, “The gentleman who left the envelope for me. When was he here?”
“Monday.”
“What, four days ago?”
“Yes, Monsieur, in the afternoon. Not a European, Monsieur; a big man with—”
But Holmes turned on his heel and made for the door. He knew what the man looked like.
With his hand on the door, he whirled to see the desk man’s face. The Moroccan looked relieved, but it was not the queasy relief that comes from getting away with a profound wrongdoing. Whatever scam the man had going on with this crew of locals, it did not touch on Russell’s safety.
It took a couple of hours to run the crewmen to earth. They were not at the medina coffee house whose address Holmes had been given, nor at the home where he was directed next, but in a warehouse of sorts clear across town, not far from the hotel where he’d begun.
Four men looked around as he pushed open the door. All wore beards, turbans, and djellabas; three of them had the build of stevedores; one of them was six feet tall, an extraordinary height here. The youngest man, a slim figure whose beard was precisely trimmed and whose robe was more neatly tailored, spoke up, in French.
“You are in the wrong place, Monsieur.”
“I think not,” Holmes replied, then changed to Arabic. “I need to ask about one of the moving picture crew. You are just returned from the desert, I think?”
“The picture crew is off working on a boat,” the man said, sticking to French.
Holmes shifted back to that tongue, since the others were Berbers, and to at least one of them, Arabic appeared to be a closed book.
“My wife, Mary Russell, was with them when I left Rabat, but at the hotel, they tell me that she did not return with the others.” He slid his hand into his jacket, drawing out his note-case. He opened it, and removed several franc notes, which he tucked beneath the handle of a hammer that lay on the packing case by his side. He looked at them, and said simply, “I am concerned.”
The four men consulted in silence for a moment. One of the heavily bearded individuals said something in a language Holmes recognised, although he only spoke a few words of it. Thamazigth was the language of the Berbers of North Africa, and of an intriguing structure. One day, he intended to study it properly. Today he merely required communication.
“Do you know the person I mean? Tall, blonde, she wears spectacles.”
“A lady with … much assurance.”
“That’s a diplomatic way to phrase it. Did she go with the company to the desert?”
The slim young man’s eyes gave the briefest flick over the money, before he lifted himself onto a crate and took out a cigarette.
When he got it going—Holmes blamed the picture industry, for making every man a dramatist—he blew out a smoke cloud and answered, “Yes, she went along. But she did not come back.”
Patience, Holmes.
“Tell me what happened.”
“We were at Erg Chebbi, near Erfoud. You know Erfoud?”
“I know where it is. Past the bled and over the mountains to the Sahara proper.”
“Precisely. And that is why M. Fflytte took everyone there, because he wished to film the sand dunes for his picture. We warned him, there are few sheikhs in Erfoud.” He chuckled; two of the others did as well; the big man just stared.
“Such was the plan before I left,” Holmes said. “Why did she not come back with the others?”
“It was Tuesday night,” the dapper man persisted. “The filming was all but finished, although Monsieur Fflytte planned to spend the following day filming scenes he thought he might want. That were not written into the script, you understand?”
“Yes.”
“So.” The man examined the end of his cigarette, flicking the ash until he was satisfied with its shape; the only thing that kept Holmes from going after him with the hammer was the knowledge that it would cause even more of a delay. “We had a very full day, on Tuesday, from before sunrise—M. Fflytte wished to capture the sunrise—to sunset, which he also desired to film. We had fallen upon our dinners like hyenas (How those pretty blonde English girls can eat!) and the younger ones had gone to their tents, while some of the others, as this would be their last night in the desert, lingered around the fire with cognac.