‘What by?’
The old man considered.
‘People,’ he said at last.
‘Up here? By the Tree?’
‘That’s where they were.’
‘There were more than one of them, then?’
‘That is so.’
‘And what did you hear?’
‘Talking.’
‘Loud talking?’
‘Not very loud.’
‘Were they fierce with one another?’
‘No,’ said the old man, surprised. He considered for a moment. ‘One of them was a woman,’ he volunteered hesitantly.
‘Ah? You heard her talking? And the other was a man? Or perhaps there was more than one man?’
‘Just the one.’
Owen tried, unsuccessfully, to get more out of him, then went and told Mahmoud.
‘She was wrong, then,’ said Owen.
‘She?’
‘Jalila. The woman he had been seeing.’
He told Mahmoud what she had said to Asif.
‘She reckoned it would be no good him seeing another woman after what he had been doing with her! Evidently she was wrong.’
‘Or lying.’
‘I don’t think she was lying,’ said Owen.
‘Probably not. Let us accept, then, that she was wrong. He was going out to see another woman.’
‘We can’t be absolutely sure. But it seems very likely.’
‘It would have to have been,’ said Mahmoud, thinking, ‘a woman in the village. In that case someone else in the village will almost certainly know her.’
‘Women in this village are a loose lot!’ said Sheikh Isa fiercely. They had run into him on their way back to Matariya. ‘Well, that’s the way of it!’ said Owen, shaking his head sadly.
‘Is it that they do not listen to their husbands’ words?’ asked Mahmoud sympathetically. ‘Or is it that the husbands do not hear your words?’
‘Women are immoral; men are weak,’ said Sheikh Isa.
‘Temptresses, all of them!’ said Owen.
‘That slut Jalila! She should be stoned, for a start!’
‘One bad date infects the others,’ said Mahmoud.
‘They ought to make an example of her! I’ve been saying that for a long time. But will they listen to me?’
‘I expect that’s because too many have been seeing her themselves,’ said Owen naughtily.
Sheikh Isa glared at him.
‘If they have,’ he said fiercely, ‘then they should mend their ways!’
‘Perhaps the fate of Ibrahim will be a lesson to them.’
Sheikh Isa gave him a quick look. He was, for all his vehemence, Owen realized, no fool.
‘Was that it?’ he said.
‘We do not know,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but we wonder. And we wonder especially who was the other woman that he was seeing.’
‘Another?’ Sheikh Isa smote his brow. ‘Another woman, you say? Besides Jalila?’ Mahmoud nodded.
‘Whores!’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘All of them! Whores!’
Passers-by in the street looked up with interest.
‘Well, possibly not all of them,’ said Owen. ‘Perhaps, in fact, just one. Apart from Jalila, of course.’
‘A woman was speaking with Ibrahim on the night he was killed,’ said Mahmoud. ‘After he had been to Jalila’s. We would like to know who she was.’
‘It may be, indeed, it is quite likely, that he had seen her before,’ said Owen.
‘In which case,’ said Mahmoud, ‘someone in the village may know her.’ Sheikh Isa looked at him thoughtfully.
‘They may indeed,’ he said. ‘There are people in the village who make it their business to know everyone else’s business. And tell it!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Gossips, slanderers, spies! Women!’
‘Well-’
‘Come with me!’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘I know who will know!’
An old woman came to the door.
‘Tell us!’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘Tell us!’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Who he was with. Come on! Out with it! Let’s have the name of the whore!’
‘Which whore?’ asked the old woman. ‘There are plenty of them.’
‘The one who was with Ibrahim that night!’
‘You know who was with him that night.’
‘Not Jalila, you fool. The other one!’
The woman regarded him unabashed.
‘Oh ho!’ she said. ‘You’re waking up, are you?’
‘My eyes have been opened!’
‘Well, about time, too. But I can’t help you.’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Not for certain. But I could have a pretty good guess.’
‘Well then?’
‘Oh, no. I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’ thundered the sheikh.
‘You told me not to gossip.’
‘This isn’t gossip!’
‘What is it, then?’
‘Why, it’s-it’s simply giving information. That’s all.’
‘But that’s what I was doing last week when you told me not to!’
‘Don’t trifle with me, bitch!’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid,’ said the old woman, greatly enjoying herself. ‘I do know, as a matter of fact, or, at least, I could make a pretty good guess. But I couldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Just tell me, you old bitch!’
‘My sheikh told me not to!’
Sheikh Isa raised his stick and the old woman darted back behind the door.
‘Shame on you!’ she said. ‘First you tempt me into vice; then you beat me! I shall go to your prayer meeting tomorrow and I shall call out to all the people: “Sheikh Isa tempted me to vice and then when I wouldn’t succumb, he threatened to beat me!” ’ The stick smashed against the door. Evidently Sheikh Isa was not feared as greatly in the village as Owen had supposed. Mahmoud decided to intervene.
‘You joke, Mother,’ he said sternly, ‘but this is no laughing matter. A man has died.’ The woman opened the door and looked at him.
‘Are you the kadi?’ she asked.
‘I am as the kadi.’
‘You’ve been a long time coming. Justice doesn’t get to this place often.’
‘It has come now. And it seeks your help. When Ibrahim went out that night, after he had left Jalila, he went out to meet another woman. Do you know who she might have been?’
The old woman looked at him for a moment or two without replying. Then she sighed and said:
‘Ibrahim was a fool. He never could leave the women alone. But it’s not right that he should die because of that. That’s not justice, is it? So I will tell you. I don’t know who he went out to see that night. But I know who he had an eye for: Khadija.’
‘Khadija?’ shouted the sheikh. ‘Khadija?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You old bitch! You’re just mischief-making!’
‘Who is Khadija?’ asked Mahmoud.
The woman turned to him.
‘Leila’s sister.’
‘The murdered man’s wife,’ said Owen.
‘You lie, woman!’ shouted the sheikh.
‘I don’t lie!’ said the woman defiantly. ‘It’s true! He’s always had an eye for her. Some say he wanted to marry her and not the other one. I don’t know about that but I do know he’s always had an eye for her, even after he got married.’
‘Did you talk to the wife’s family?’ Owen asked Mahmoud quietly.
‘I did. But I didn’t talk to her.’
‘It is possible,’ Sheikh Isa grudgingly acknowledged. ‘Though unseemly!’ He glared at the old woman.
‘Of course, she doesn’t come from our village,’ said the old woman cunningly.
‘That’s true!’ said Sheikh Isa, struck.
‘Where does she come from?’ asked Owen.
‘Tel-el-Hasan.’
‘I must go there,’ said Sheikh Isa, ‘and tell Sheikh Riyad. Together we will denounce her!’
‘Hold back a little,’ said Mahmoud. ‘We do not know yet that she was the one.’
‘He had an eye for her; we know that, don’t we?’
‘Yes, but we don’t know that she had an eye for him.’
‘He wouldn’t have looked in her direction if she hadn’t lured him, would he? Whores! Whores! They’re all whores!’ shouted Sheikh Isa, as he hurried away.
Tel-el-Hasan, where the wife’s family came from, was a village less than two miles away. Like Matariya, it was a cluster of trees. Although the villages were some four or five miles away from the Nile, they were connected to it by irrigation channels. Their chief course of water, however, was the main Khalig Canal, which became the Ismailiya Canal just beyond Matariya. Again, they were not directly on the canal but connected to it through the irrigation system, a mass of small channels, ditches and furrows which ran water across the fields. There was, though, probably at both Matariya and Tel-el-Hasan, an underground supply of water which the wells were tapping and which accounted for the dense foliage of the trees.