When he finished with the muffin on his toasting fork he removed it, laid down the fork, took up a knife and smeared the crisp round with butter from a tin, and then balanced it on top of the plate at his right. He pushed the plate a fraction of an inch towards Ali, who with Mahmoud had gone up to the man and dropped to his heels across the small stove from him. Ali took two muffins, passed one to Mahmoud, and as they began to eat, the man reached down for his fork and proceeded to spear it into another muffin.
Holmes and I made our way down the room to the scene of domesticity and source of meagre warmth, following a path through the stores and shrouded equipment. We ducked our heads around a hanging oil lamp, settled onto a rough bench, and waited.
When our host was satisfied with the current muffin, he buttered it, put it with his others, and then picked up the plate and handed it to Holmes.
“There’s honey in here somewhere,” were his introductory words to us. “I’ll find it if you like. I haven’t any jam, I’m afraid. I can’t bear the stuff any longer, not since they started providing it in the trenches every night before a big push. I was only in France six months, but I can’t even look at a bowl of jam now without smelling mud and urine and unburied bodies. If you will excuse the reference. Shall I go digging for the honey?”
We reassured him that buttered crumpets were sufficient, and set to demolishing our share of the crisp, buttery, delicious, and utterly English fare. Fortunately, the crumpets were solid enough evidence to restore a degree of reality to the setting.
The left-hand plate was soon empty, the right-hand one containing the toasted crumpets nearly so. The round man reached behind him for a kettle, set it over the flame, took a khaki handkerchief from his shirt pocket, dusted his hands, and folded it away.
“I must say,” he mused, sounding as if he were continuing a conversation, “I was intrigued when I received word that you were coming here, Mr Holmes. Particularly when your brother suggested that we might put you to use. You and Miss Russell, of course,” he added, with a small bow in my direction. “However, I will admit to a certain hesitation. After all, there is some difference between London and Palestine.”
“But I take it our two guides have set your mind at ease that we will not commit some glaring faux pas and do not actually require nursemaids to help us survive our time here,” Holmes said evenly, sounding more amused than perturbed.
“You have passed their little tests satisfactorily,” the man replied, his eyes crinkling in his round face. “You did not drop from exhaustion or limp with sore feet, you did not lose your tempers or put your hands on a scorpion, you retained the appearance of who you are dressed to be, and you saw through the façade of the letter in the safe. And, Miss Russell, you make lovely maps. By the way, do call me Joshua. Everyone does.”
“ ‘Sending spies into the land,’ ” I murmured in Hebrew, thinking how appropriate the word “spy” was here, since in Hebrew its root meaning is one who wanders about on foot. I had the blisters to testify that this was what we had been doing ever since we arrived.
“Quite right,” he said in English, sounding pleased.
“And do your spies gather information, or spread rumours?” I asked him. “Those of your biblical predecessor seemed to do something of both.”
“As with my predecessor, it is not always clear just what the purpose of my people might be. Perhaps, as you say, something of both, listening and speaking.” He showed us his yellow teeth in a smile.
“And now that we have proven ourselves minimally competent,” Holmes said, dragging the conversation back to the main matter, “you have what my brother, Mycroft, might call a ‘task’ for us.”
Joshua shook his head and looked mournfully across the steaming kettle at Mahmoud, then said something in Arabic. It sounded to me as if he were accusing Holmes of drinking uncooked coffee beans.
Holmes responded with a brief phrase of his own, which my ears translated as, “When the dogs bark at night, it is [foolish?] to look to the sheep the next morning.”
I could not see what this had to do with coffee beans, but Joshua seemed to think it a worthy retort, because he nodded briefly. “You may be right,” he said. “However, I think in this case we may delay long enough for a cup of tea.”
He walked around to a heap of canvas and brought out a wicker basket, which proved to contain a formal tea service that had probably been designed as a picnic fitting for the boot of a Rolls-Royce. From it he unpacked five delicate flowered cups and their saucers, then a matching china teapot, milk jug, and sugar bowl, arranging them all to his satisfaction in our midst. Milk came from a small corked bottle sitting on the ground near his feet, and was poured into the jug. He performed the entire rituaclass="underline" warm the pot, spoon the tea leaves, add the boiling water, wait the requisite three minutes, and then pour the tea through a silver strainer. When we each had a cup in our hand, Joshua sipped his twice and then rested his saucer on his knee.
“The problem is,” he said, again with the air of picking up a conversation that had been briefly interrupted, “that if one is given only the mildest inkling of dogs at the sheepfold, it is difficult to justify turning out the entire house to stand defence. Particularly when the family has just spent the last few years eradicating the countryside of dogs, with all apparent success.”
Holmes raised a disapproving eyebrow and said sharply, “Five days ago three men were killed in the outskirts of Jaffa. This is success?”
“An unfortunate incident, with potentially far-reaching consequences, but an isolated occurrence. We have caught the men.” Ali grunted; Mahmoud put down his cup and took up his prayer beads, thumbing through them as Joshua continued. “It seems to have been a revenge killing. Yitzak was responsible for the jailing of three young Moslem Arabs last year, for beating up a Jewish boy who had made eyes at their sister. One of the lads died in jail last month, of the influenza. The two men who have been arrested were the dead boy’s uncles.”
“You would say then that it was a coincidence that Yitzak saw one of his attackers listening to a firebrand mullah the week before?”
“Not necessarily a coincidence. The mullah’s speech might easily have urged them to action. Tragic, and contributing to a state of mistrust, but nothing more, and certainly nothing to do with Yitzak’s… association with us. We can only be grateful that his wife and children were not at home. I do not believe they would have been let alone.
“There is, however, another matter.” He gazed down at the dregs in his cup as if unwilling to raise his eyes to the men across the stove from him. Ali eyed him warily; Mahmoud’s fingers slowed on the polished beads.
“Mikhail the Druse is dead,” Joshua said in a quiet voice, and then he did bring his eyes up, looking across at Mahmoud, whose face turned to stone. Ali’s cup fell, shattering into a thousand pieces of porcelain against the hard earthen floor, and he whirled to his feet and strode rapidly away from the light into the dark leg of the L. “He was shot,” Joshua continued implacably. “There is no certainty, but it appears to have happened two or three days ago. There are jackals in the wadi.”
“Who?” Mahmoud’s voice had gone hoarse.
Joshua shook his head. “It could have been some woman’s husband.”
“Mikhail loved women,” Mahmoud admitted slowly, his fingers wandering briefly to his scar. “And he was often in difficulties over them. ‘The cupboard is not locked against a man with the key.’ ” His heart was not in his aphorism, however, and it did not sound to me as if he believed much in a jealous husband.