“Actually-” said Gideon.
“Wrong,” Bea said. “Bruno, I will never in my life figure out how a meathead like you ever managed to make three separate fortunes.”
The way he beamed at her, it might have been a compliment. “Don’t forget, I managed to blow two of ‘em too.”
The small, tidy Nefertiti Restaurant had been set with places for four at each table: three glasses, multitudinous silverware, thick, spotless linen. They went to a table near a window. Outside, here and there in the growing dusk, the neon signs atop minarets began to flicker on in red and green.
“Now,” Bea said to Bruno once they’d sat down, “how many years have we been coming to Horizon House? Don’t you know Clifford Haddon yet? He thinks all we’ve been doing for the last three days is wondering if he’s cuckoo or not, and it’s been driving him bonkers.”
Julie smiled. “You don’t like him very much.”
Bea seemed surprised. “I don’t dislike him. I admire him very much. But I also know the way the man’s mind works. He can’t stand to look foolish, and the fact that he saw something that wasn’t there, and that everybody knows it- or so he thought-has been preying on his mind. So, being Clifford, he has to make up this fairy story that’s supposed to prove it was really there, only some tricky devil came skulking back in the dead of night and put it back where it belongs. It’s ridiculous, but how can anyone prove it didn’t happen?”
Bruno looked doubtful. “I don’t know, hon…”
“Gideon agrees with me. I can tell from that pensive, furrowed brow. That’s what I like about Gideon. The man’s an open book.”
“Well, I’m not sure about it.” Gideon looked up from the water goblet he’d been turning in slow circles. “What doesn’t quite ring true to me is his recognizing the head when he saw it in the drawer. As I understand it, he only got a glimpse of it the night before, in the dark, with all that commotion over the bones. And he said himself it wasn’t that distinctive-”
“So how can he be so positive it was the very same one he saw the night before in the enclosure?” Bea finished for him. “You’re absolutely right.”
Gideon himself was less sure. “Maybe.”
The waiter approached to pour glasses of red wine for them, then set the bottle on the table: Omar Khayyam Grand Vin Rouge. “Most good wine of Egypt,” he told them. “Very tasty.”
Julie pointed out that they now had a chance to fulfill the promise they’d made to themselves to share a bottle of wine while watching the sun set over the Nile, and wouldn’t it be nice to find a more pleasant subject?
This idea was endorsed by all parties, and they spent a congenial hour and a half over several more glasses of Egypt’s finest and a praiseworthy meal of chiche kabab a la broche and riz au sauce de tomates.
While Bruno related to them the startling experience of G. Patrick Flanagan of California, whose dog converted permanently to vegetarianism after exposure to the healthful rays of pyramid power.
It was, said Bruno, a known fact.
Chapter Twelve
“ Gideon!”‘
He started, deep in some queer, muddled dream about working on an assembly line, trying to nail something together to the beat of tom-toms. The tom-toms were keeping time, like drums on a slave galley, but he couldn’t quite find the beat and his hammer kept going soft on him. And somewhere in the distance someone was calling his name “ Gideon!”‘
His eyes opened. The room was black and silent. Beneath him the bed vibrated with the steady throbbing of the ship’s engines. The tom-toms started again.
“Someone’s at the door,” Julie murmured beside him.
“Right,” Gideon said, more or less coming awake. “Door.”
“Gideon, wake up, will you?” It was Phil. “There’s been an accident. It’s Haddon.”
God. Not the kind of words to bring one gently from sleep. Gideon pressed his fingers to his eyes, rolled out of bed, and stumbled to the door, barking his shin on a corner of the refrigerator in the unfamiliar room. He edged the door open and squinted into the bright light of the corridor.
“Phil-what happened? What time is it?”
“It’s five-thirty. He fell overboard. Last night. He must have been wandering around by himself-”
“Last night! You don’t mean he’s-”
“As a doornail. They found his body half an hour ago, and Wahab’s tearing his hair out.”
“Wahab.”
“The boat manager. Come on, wake up. We’ve already called the police, but Wahab’s screaming for a doctor at the scene and you’re the closest thing we’ve got, so let’s get going.” He pushed the door open further. Oh, Lord, you don’t even have any clothes on. Get dressed, will you?“
“Okay, all right, I’ll be right out.” He closed the door, leaving Phil in the hallway, and flicked on the lights.
“You heard?” he said to Julie as he slipped quickly into a shirt and trousers.
She nodded thoughtfully, sitting up in bed under the covering sheet, her arms around her knees. “Gideon, you don’t suppose…” She stopped, looking hard at him.
He glanced up from tying the laces on his deck moccasins. “Suppose what?”
“You don’t suppose that… that someone…”
But he did suppose. Haddon had tracked down the “missing” head, or so he’d said. He’d made a public fuss about it, he’d offered to show it to one and all, he’d brayed about having “thoughts” on who had done it and why. That had all been less than twelve hours ago, and now he was dead. As a result of falling overboard. In the middle of the night. With no witnesses.
Wasn’t it just a little too convenient, too timely, too… tidy? Wasn’t it possible that he’d touched on something that someone wanted to keep secret so badly that No, this wasn’t even conjecture, not even surmise. It was no more than a mechanical reaction, a kind of conditioned paranoia. There were a thousand other possible explanations, why leap to this one? Damn it, this was what came of taking on more forensic cases than were good for him. He was starting to see murder behind every door, under every freshly spaded garden plot.
And now he even had Julie doing it. “No, I don’t suppose,” he said gruffly. “You know what? You think about murder too much.”
Her lips curved in the palest of smiles. “Gee, why do you suppose that is?”
Apparently, Haddon had fallen from a rear corner of the upper deck, Phil told him as they hurried down the corridor and went below by way of a musty, enclosed stairway that was ordinarily used only by the crew. He had not, as Gideon had supposed, fallen directly into the water, but had struck a one-by-two-foot wooden platform, or step, that projected from the side of the lower deck near the stern to make boarding easier for the men who delivered food and supplies in heavy sacks and boxes. He had evidently landed on his head, then toppled into the water, but one of the epaulets from his jacket had caught on a metal rod that was part of the platform’s support, and he had been dragged along beside the ship since a little after midnight.
“How do you know the time?” Gideon asked.
“One of the crewmen was taking soundings and he heard a thump in the rear, and then a splash. He had a look but didn’t see anything. But then he didn’t think to look straight down almost under the platform; he was looking behind the ship, in the wake. Then this morning one of the cooks saw him while he was dumping garbage overboard. They came and got me. I went and had a look and turned right around and came and got you.”
He pushed open a dented metal door. “Here we are, ground floor.”
The Menshiya was a sort of floating “Upstairs, Downstairs.” Above, on the passenger deck, all was comfortable chairs, lounges, picture-windowed staterooms, and sparkling cleanliness. It was like a roomy, floating palace, seemingly self-maintaining except for the pleasant, cordial Mr. Wahab, and an occasional silent, smartly groomed waiter to bring drinks or serve food. But here at water level, it was a different world, dingy, scuffed,
