looking.”
Trenchard laughed, and led the way out through the offices to the street and a short distance along the crowded thoroughfare in a direction Pitt had not been before. He found himself staring at the beautiful buildings decorated with stone fretwork like lace in its intricacy, balconies with roofs supported by simple pillars. He saw one, shaded from the heat, where a group of elderly men sat on thick turquoise-and-gold cushions eating bread, fruit, and dates as they talked earnestly to one another. They barely glanced at the two Englishmen, contempt and dislike in their eyes for a moment, then masked, because they dared not let it be seen. Behind them, a large man with skin almost as black as his beard, dressed in loose trousers caught in below the knee, seemed to be waiting their pleasure. Pigeons fluttered around, and a tall, narrow-necked vase was stuffed full of pink roses.
Pitt thought it might have looked exactly the same a thousand years earlier.
Trenchard found the cafe of his choice and ordered food for both of them without consulting Pitt, and when it came it made not the slightest pretense at European form. They ate with their fingers, and it was delicious. The color, the smell, the texture-everything pleased.
“I have been making a few enquiries of my own about Ayesha Zakhari,” Trenchard said when they were halfway through the meal.
Pitt stopped with a morsel of food in his hand. “Yes?”
“As we had supposed, she is Coptic Christian,” Trenchard replied. “Her name tells us as much. It seems she was deeply involved with some of the leading Egyptian nationalists in the Orabi uprising, just before the bombardments of Alexandria ten years ago. I am sorry, Pitt…” He looked rueful. “I have asked discreetly among the friends I have here, and it seems eminently probable that she went to London with the express purpose of ensnaring Ryerson, in some foolish and highly impractical idea that he could be persuaded to alter the British financial arrangements with Egypt… cotton at least, perhaps more. She has always been hotheaded where her idealism is concerned. She fell in love with Alexander Ghali, Ramses’s father, and even when he betrayed his cause, she was among the last to accept the truth about him.” Trenchard’s face was filled with profound emotion, a mixture of pity and contempt so deep even the mention of the facts which provoked it made his whole frame stiffen and his elegant hands suddenly look awkward.
Pitt felt overtaken by a feeling of emptiness also. “Disillusion is very bitter,” he said quietly. “Most of us fight to deny it as long as we can.”
Trenchard looked up quickly. “I’m sorry, Pitt. I am afraid you are likely to find that she is impulsive, romantic-an idealist who has been betrayed, and now acting from her own pain, and trying to make the old dreams come true, however unrealistic the means.”
Pitt looked down at the food in his hand. It no longer held the exotic charm it had only a few minutes ago. That was absurd. He had never even seen Ayesha Zakhari. It should matter nothing to him except professionally that she was irresponsible, a political failure who had allowed personal hurt to spoil her judgment. Yet suddenly he felt tired, as if he too had lost a dream.
“I’ll see what else I can find out about Lovat,” he said aloud.
Trenchard was watching him, his face full of regret. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I knew it would have been very much pleasanter to think there was some other explanation. But possibly Lovat gained enmities in England?”
“He was shot in Miss Zakhari’s garden at three in the morning!” Pitt said with a touch of bitterness. “And with her gun!”
Trenchard gave a slight gesture of resignation, graceful and sad. It had an elegance, as if he had picked up something of the innate dignity of the civilization he so admired.
They finished the meal. Trenchard insisted on paying, after thanking the proprietor in fluent and colloquial Arabic, then he accompanied Pitt to the bazaar and helped him to bargain for a bracelet set with carnelian for Charlotte, a small statue of a hippopotamus for Daniel, some brightly colored silk ribbons for Jemima, and a woven kerchief for Gracie.
Pitt ended the afternoon with information he accepted was inevitably true, however much he would have preferred it not to be, and gifts he was delighted with, and for which he knew he had paid a very small price indeed.
He thanked Trenchard and returned on the tram to San Stefano, determined to find the army barracks where Lovat had served and spend the rest of his time in Alexandria pursuing Lovat’s military and personal career and anything he could find out about him. Somewhere his path had crossed Ayesha’s, and there had to be more to learn about it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLOTTE FOUND IT very difficult trying to occupy her mind with anything, knowing that Pitt was in Egypt, alone in a land of which he knew nothing. More dangerous than simply its unfamiliarity was the fact that he was there to ask questions about a woman who might well be a heroine in her people’s struggle against British domination of Egyptian affairs. She tried to occupy herself with any number of other thoughts, mostly trivial, but they all fled before the enormity of his absence once she turned off the last of the gaslights downstairs and went up to her bedroom alone. Then she lay in the dark and her imagination raced.
Therefore she was pleased to see Tellman on the evening of the third day after Pitt had left. Gracie answered the back door to find him standing there looking tired and cold, his face pinched from the wind. He came in at her invitation, stamping his feet a little on the scullery floor as if to get rid of water, although it was not raining at the moment, but it had been. He took off his coat.
“Good evening, Mrs. Pitt,” he said, looking at Charlotte anxiously, as if somehow it was still his concern to care for her in Pitt’s absence. The old habit died hard, as did the pretense that he did not care.
“Good evening, Inspector,” she replied, amusement in her smile as well as pleasure to see him. She gave him his title intentionally. She had never used his Christian name. She was not even sure if Gracie had more than the odd, highly informal time. “Come in and have a cup of tea,” she invited him. “You look cold. Have you had any supper?”
“Not yet,” he replied, pulling out one of the hard-backed chairs and sitting down.
“I’ll get yer summink,” Gracie said quickly, putting the kettle onto the hob as she spoke. “In’t got nuthin’ left over for yer, though, ’ceptin’ cold mutton an’ bubble an’ squeak-’ow’s that?”
“Very good, thank you,” Tellman said without pleasure, glancing at Charlotte to make sure that was acceptable to her also.
“Of course,” she agreed quickly. “Have you heard something about Martin Garvie?”
He looked across at her, then at Gracie, his face full of pity and a gentleness exaggerated by the gaslight’s soft glow catching the angles of his high cheekbones and hollow cheeks.
“No,” he admitted. “And I’ve looked every way I can without police authority.” The urgency in his voice made it impossible to argue with him.
“Wot did yer get, then?” Gracie asked, putting the frying pan on the top of the stove and bending to riddle the ash down and allow the fire to burn hotly again. She did it almost absently, still looking mostly at Tellman.
“Martin Garvie’s definitely gone,” he answered unhappily. “Nobody’s seen him in almost two weeks now, but nobody’s seen Stephen Garrick either. None of the servants, which is what you said, so at first they supposed he was in his rooms, taken sick, in one of his tantrums-”
“Not for more than a week, without the cook at least being aware of it,” Charlotte interrupted. “Whatever illness he had, she’d be sending food of some sort up to him. And in that length of time, surely they’d have the doctor in?”
“So far as I can find out, there’s been no doctor,” Tellman answered, shaking his head a little. “And no other caller for him either.” His face tightened, his eyes black. “He’s not in the house-and nor is Martin Garvie. There’d be food, bed linen, if nothing else…”
Gracie fetched the cold potatoes from the larder. She started to peel and chop the onions with a brief apology, fishing for a handkerchief at the same time. “Bubble an’ squeak’s no good without onions,” she said, by way of explanation. The frying pan was already beginning to get hot.
“Were there no letters?” Charlotte asked. “Invitations? Surely they would be replied to… or at least
