“No. I tried operating it for two years by myself but I gave it up and opened a shop specializing in riding clothes and riding equipment. I was just thinking how different my place is from that shop we just left.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this, but I suspect that Abdul’s uncle, who owns the shop, kicks back something to the agency. I don’t know the arrangements. I know that Van Alt hates the whole shopping aspect of these trips, but the agency is convinced the customers want it.”
“Some do,” she agreed. “But not every tour can provide a murder.”
“We do our best.”
“It sounds harsh, I know,” she said, her face turned away toward the desert bordering their route, “but in my opinion, Mr. Beasley’s death was a small loss.”
“I know who killed Beasley,” Hunter said.
He had dropped into the bus seat beside Rogers vacated by Mrs. Murray. His voice was portentous, as if he were awed at finding himself the possessor of such information, and at the same time he appeared eager, as if he were unaccustomed to having his statements regarded seriously and was pleased to be in a situation where his words would receive weight. Rogers observed his khaki shorts and knee-length stockings. A forty-five-year-old boy scout, he thought.
“Who killed him?”
Hunter glanced over his shoulder to check that the seat behind them was empty.
“Last night when we got back to the boat after the sound-and-light performance, I found that I had left my fly whisk behind. I recalled looping it over the back of the chair in front of me, so I went back to the temple and found the row and the chair where I had been sitting, but there was no fly whisk. It’s nothing to make a fuss about, I suppose, but I had come to regard it as a good-luck piece.”
“What bearing does—” Rogers began.
“I’m coming to that. I was about to go down the steps of the forecourt into that cross street or whatever when the lights went out. They were a sketchy arrangement anyway — naked bulbs at irregular intervals — but when I reached the street in front of the forecourt steps I could see, in the moonlight, two people coming behind me through the temple itself. I stepped back into the shadows until I could see who they were. They stopped on the steps. Van Alt and Beasley.
“ ‘I don’t like the way you’re running this tour, Van Alt,’ I heard Beasley say. ‘You’re a lousy tour director.’
“ ‘I am regarded as the best tour director in Egypt,’ Van Alt said.
“ ‘That’s what you say,’ Beasley said. ‘Why do you give Aggie the brush-off when she asks you questions about when to be ready for the bus and things like that? You don’t answer. I invite you for a drink at my table and you pass me by like I’m not there. Maybe the others will put up with stuff like that, but you ain’t going to pull it on Aggie and you ain’t going to pull it on me. A tour that costs this much dough ought to be run by a person who can hear when somebody talks to him.’
“ ‘What are you talking about, you stupid Yank?’ Van Alt says. ‘Of course I can hear.’
“ ‘Yeah? Well, O.K., then,’ Beasley goes on, ‘let me tell you what I’m going to do. When I get home I’m going to complain to the Seven League Tour Agency about you. How do they get away charging such high prices and then give us a director who is hard of hearing? The least they’ll do is make you take a hearing examination. Then let’s see if they renew your contract.’ ”
Hunter paused, and then continued.
“Beasley said a couple of words I won’t repeat and continued down the steps. I think he made the wrong turn because he went toward the obelisk. Van Alt ran after him and they disappeared behind the obelisk. I could hear a scuffle, then Van Alt reappeared, came back toward the steps, and turned into the main avenue. He was almost running.”
“But I don’t see that—” Rogers began.
“Beasley was found at the base of that obelisk, wasn’t he? The place where I heard them struggling? Van Alt must have hit him on the head and killed him.”
“Hit him with what?”
“That’s what I’m leading up to. My fly whisk originally had an ebony handle, covered with leather braiding. Some time ago I had the wood replaced by an iron bar twelve inches long and the leather rebraided over it. That fly whisk was more dangerous than any blackjack.”
“So?”
“When Van Alt came back past my hiding place, he was carrying my fly whisk.”
“I know who killed Beasley,” Van Alt said, making the statement in the same off-hand confident manner with which he related triumphs over hotels and airlines. Rogers did not ask the obvious question, knowing that Van Alt would proceed.
“The first night going upriver, I came up here on deck, partly to avoid the tour — they always stay inside with the air-conditioning — and partly to watch the river. I saw Hunter sitting where you are now. He saw that I had seen him so I couldn’t very well not acknowledge that he was there, and I sat down to chat with him for a few minutes.
“ ‘This is my last trip to Africa,’ he said as if we had been discussing African trips for an hour. I made some noncommittal reply.
“ ‘I can’t afford these trips any more,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost all my money.’ Then he blurted out, ‘I’m going to have to go to work.’
“I was about to offer some tongue-in-cheek condolence — I’ve been working ever since I was seventeen — but he went on. ‘My grandmother left me some money,’ he said. ‘Enough so I could live on the income. But I’ve spent most of it on travel. I’m deeply interested in Africa, especially Egypt and the Sudan. This is the second time I have taken this Nile cruise.’
“Eventually he explained the details of the disastrous transaction. He’d met a man at his broker’s office, a man he had seen around but didn’t know well. This man put him in touch with a newly organized company that was going to construct a gambling casino and hotel somewhere on one of the Caribbean islands. There were three principal stockholders and because they needed additional capital they were willing to take in smaller investors. Hunter’s lawyer advised against the idea but Hunter went ahead anyway. He liquidated the assets his grandmother had left him and put everything into the new company — Insulae Unlimited.”
“I think I can see what’s coming,” Rogers said.
“Right. The casino was about half finished when Insulae ran out of money. They had paid every thing they had to the construction company, which had run into all sorts of unforeseen obstacles in the course of construction — at least that’s what they said. Insulae went into bankruptcy and Hunter got paid off at about five cents on the dollar. The land and the half-built casino were bought by a new company that went ahead and finished the project with the same builders.
“The upshot is that Hunter helped pay for the casino but never got to own any part of it. The three principal stockholders claimed to have suffered just as much as Hunter and the other minor holders, but Hunter’s sure they conspired with the building company to swindle him.”
“But how do you tie this in with Beasley s murder?”
“I have an old friend. We used to be guides for the same company. He’s become some kind of a social director for the hotel that the successor company to Insulae put up. He was planning to leave and wanted to know if I’d be interested in taking over his job. He told me that the construction company involved in the bankruptcy was owned by a man named Beasley.”
“But it isn’t likely that Hunter would know about Beasley.”
“Maybe he didn’t. But I think he did know who was behind the swindle. The other day when we were at one of those bus stops on the field trip, Hunter spilled a whole string of credit cards out of his wallet. I helped him pick them up and among them was a business card. The name caught my eye. Beasley Builders — Sam Beasley, President.”