The carriage stopped at the estate’s entrance to let Fatma out. Several other vehicles were parked, bearing the blue and gold of Cairo’s police. Making her way up a set of stairs she rapped the door with her cane. It was opened by a tall older man in a white gallabiyah.
“Good night, young master—” he began in English, then paused, his gaunt face curious. When he spoke again, it was in Arabic. “Good evening, daughter. I am Hamza, night steward of the house. How may I assist you?”
Fatma took both mistake and correction in stride. The suit and boyish face threw most people off at first glance. His eyebrows jumped further at her badge. But she was used to that too. Opening the door wide, he bowed slightly and ushered her through.
They stood in a spacious rectangular room that looked to be a parlor. Vintage inlaid silver lamps hung from a high ceiling of dark wood, their light shimmering off the floor—an expanse of white tiles shaped like stars. The walls were decorated with an assortment of antiques: from a vibrant Safavid painting of polo players to a pair of swords in red-brown leather scabbards. They were broken up by four bulbous equidistant archways, and the night steward escorted her through one, down a corridor no less opulent. Colorful carpets lined the walls like tapestries—a Tabriz of red florals, some burgundy Anatolians, a green Bokhara with yellow prints, all alongside delicate lattice mashrabiyas. As she eyed them a faint sound came to her ears. Like the clanging of metal. Then it was gone.
“I regret welcoming you to this house in such a time,” the steward said. “It blemishes the beauty put into its making.”
“How long have you been with the estate, steward Hamza?”
“Since the beginning. Well over ten years now. And I’ve watched Lord Worthington’s house grow into its present magnificence!”
Fatma wasn’t certain she’d call this fairy-tale palace magnificent. But to each their own.
“Were you close to Lord Worthington?”
“A master can only be so close to a servant. But Lord Worthington always treated me with respect. That can be a rare thing.” They stopped at a set of stairs. “The others are gathered above.” He paused, face grave. “Whatever you find in there, it is only a vessel and not the man. We all belong to God. And to Him we must return.”
He departed, leaving Fatma to climb what might have been the longest stairs in the world. By the time she reached the top she wasn’t winded exactly. But close. From somewhere to her left came voices. Wrinkling her nose at a terrible smell, she followed both to their source.
The room she found was missing its doors. One hung by a hinge. The other lay fractured on the floor. She stepped past them, noting the splintered wooden bar, before surveying the rest. The round space was filled with people. Policemen. Identifiable in their khaki jackets and trousers. They bustled beneath an immense brass chandelier, which shone on the grisly scene.
The missive Fatma received had been short and to the point—casualties reported at the Worthington estate; check for supernatural activity. That hardly did it justice. Bodies covered in white sheets were strewn about the marble floor. A quick count gave her almost twenty. More were at a table in the back. That terrible smell was almost overwhelming now. Burning. But worse. Coppery and almost metallic. Like the most unappetizing cooked meat.
She was still taking it all in when a policeman walked up. He looked her age—twenty-four, maybe twenty-five. But he stormed over, chest out and scowling, as if readying to pull his younger sister from a hashish den.
“You! You can’t just walk in here! This is a crime scene!”
“That would explain the dead bodies, then,” she replied.
He blinked dumbly, and she sighed. Wasting good sarcasm was annoying. She flashed her badge, and he squinted from it to her and back again before his eyes rounded.
“It’s you!”
Fatma had come to learn “It’s you” could mean a lot of things. It’s you, the sun-dark Sa’idi from some backwater village. It’s you, the woman who was all but a girl in their eyes that the Ministry had made a special investigator—and assigned to Cairo no less. It’s you, the strange agent who wore Western suits. A few others tended to get less polite. Egypt boasted its modernity. Women attended schools and filled its booming factories. They were teachers and barristers. A few months back, women had even been granted suffrage. There was talk of entering political office. But the presence of women in public life still unnerved many. Someone like her boggled the senses completely.
“Constable! Are you bothering the agent?”
Fatma looked up to a familiar face—a middle-aged man who wore a fancier police jacket with gold epaulets. It fit his tall and thick frame a bit tightly so that his belly preceded him. The young policeman jumped, turning and coming face-to-face with Inspector Aasim Sharif.
Aasim was a member of Cairo’s police force and a liaison with the Ministry. Not a bad sort—a bit vulgar, but amiable enough when not brooding at the inconveniences of the modern world. He’d even gotten comfortable around her. As comfortable as she could expect. He glared at the young policeman from behind a set of thick long graying whiskers. Big overwrought moustaches had fallen out of favor in modern Cairo’s ever-shifting fashion trends, though they still held sway further south, as her uncles could well attest—and among older conservative Cairenes like Aasim. Prideful badges of nostalgia, she supposed. His whiskers always reminded her of some antiquated Janissary, and they twitched in annoyance.
“I asked you a question! Are you bothering the agent?”
“No, inspector! I mean I didn’t know who she was, inspector. I
