“You wished to talk,” he said. “I was about to come and find you.”
“Ah,” Gideon said. Permit me to doubt, he thought.
“Now. What may I do for you? Would you like me to call for something to drink? I can recommend the coffee.”
Gideon wasn’t interested in social amenities. “Where’s Dr. Haddon?” he asked bluntly.
El-Basset eyed him levelly while he took a long pull on his cigarette. The remains, he explained, had been taken by ambulance to the hospital in Sohag, where they would be kept under refrigeration while the American embassy in Cairo was contacted. Then, in all probability—
He paused. “Is there something the matter? You’re frowning.”
Yes, something was the matter. What kind of fatal-accident investigation—an unwitnessed accident under ambiguous circumstances—could be wrapped up in an hour, including releasing the remains? Were there to be no lab tests? No interviews? What was going on?
Not that Gideon said this aloud. He wasn’t intimidated by el-Basset—not exactly—but he was well aware that customs varied from one place to another, that he had no status in this, that he was far from his own turf in every sense of the word, and that there was only one driver’s seat and the commanding general’s well-tailored bottom was in it.
Even so, he didn’t see how he could just drop it. “There were some things I wanted to mention about the body,” he said mildly. “Did you happen to notice the marks on his face?”
“Certainly I noticed them, as did Dr. Dowidar. Everything will be contained in the report.”
“You didn’t find them unusual?”
El-Basset smiled, polished and confident. “When a man falls twenty feet onto his head, a few unusual marks are to be expected.”
“He didn’t get these when he fell.”
Gideon explained about the grating. El-Basset heard him out.
“So it may very well be,” he said. “Thank you, I’ll see that it’s put in the report.”
Gideon stared at him. Put it in the report without checking for himself? “I think it raises some questions,” he said. “General, it’s been my experience that when you find facial impact abrasions from a fall, they indicate that the person wasn’t conscious when he fell.”
“Has it? In
He lit a second cigarette from the first, settled back with his arms crossed, and gave Gideon his attention. It was hard to miss the point: el-Basset would listen, but Gideon had only one more cigarette’s worth of time. There were other things on el-Basset’s plate, other places to be.
“Questions as to just what happened,” Gideon said. “How does a man who collapses unconscious on the upper deck end up over the side?”‘
“How? He arises, then collapses a second time. Dr. Had-don had had a great deal to drink. Dr. Haddon, like many elderly people, was also taking antidepressant medication for his chronic depression.”
“He was?” Gideon said.
If it was true, it cleared up something that had been bothering him. Haddon had been drinking, but not recklessly; not to a fall-down-drunk-and-pass-out-cold degree. But even a couple of drinks combined, say, with one of the tricyclic antidepressants—
El-Basset smiled, pleased at having told Gideon something he hadn’t known. “Oh, yes, I have been talking to people, you know. Our investigation has been quite thorough.”
“Ah,” Gideon said again. You must be an awfully fast talker, he thought.
“Alcohol and drugs,” el-Basset said. “They don’t go well together. What then is so questionable about his falling down while he walks the deck, then picking himself up and falling a second time, but this time, poof, over the side?”
“It doesn’t strike you as unlikely that someone who collapses—goes into a coma—from a combination of drugs and alcohol is going to get up on his own and start walking around again anytime soon? By rights, he ought to still be lying up there.”
Persuasive it may have been with Phil and Julie, but it missed the mark with el-Basset, who tipped his head back to laugh while he blew smoke at the ceiling.
“Yes, it strikes me as unlikely. So? I’m a policeman. If unlikely things didn’t happen every day, what would I have to do? You may trust my judgment, Professor. There is nothing here to require a more serious investigation.”
“I think there is, General.”
El-Basset lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Go on.”
Gideon told him about Haddon’s extraordinary speech the previous evening. El-Basset smiled through it, a gentle, surely-you-can’t-be-serious smile.
“What are you suggesting, my friend? That he was murdered because of something he knew about this Amarna head, something that would be revealed when he showed the head to others?”
“Well… yes. At least, I don’t think the possibility ought to be excluded.”
El-Basset shook his head. “I have noticed this before about you Americans. You have too much crime in America. It makes you suspicious over nothing. You don’t mind my saying this?”
Gideon sighed. Yes, he minded it. “I don’t see what—”
