With its crowds, too. Owen loved the bustle of the bazaars, of the whole native city, in fact; but after you had spent some time in them, especially when it was as hot as this, you felt an overwhelming need for space and air, and after forcing their way through the blocked thoroughfares of the Tentmakers’ Bazaar they were glad to emerge into the more open streets. Mahmoud summoned an arabeah, one of the two-horse kind, and they sank into it gratefully.
Zeinab agreed that she would like a coffee and Mahmoud wanted to talk about what they had seen, so they stopped the arabeah when they reached the Ismailiya Quarter with its more Westernized restaurants into which women could go, and got out. It was late in the afternoon, almost evening by now, and the restaurants were beginning to fill up as people emerged from their siestas and began to promenade the streets. The shops took on a new lease of life, the street-sellers, with their lemonade and nougat, ostrich feathers, mummy-beads and scarabs, carnations and roses, and the street-artists, with their boa-constrictors and baboons, took new heart, and the city in general resumed its normal manic rhythm. They found a restaurant in a side street, where they would be pestered less, and took an outside table.
“Of the three, he’s the most likely,” said Mahmoud.
“Yes, but how certain are you that it’s one of the three? How certain are you in the first place that it’s a scentmaker?”
“Not at all,” Mahmoud confessed.
“I mean, it’s a brilliant deduction,” said Owen, “but it’s just a deduction.”
“Just a deduction?” said Mahmoud, a little sharply.
“There isn’t any real evidence.”
“There is real evidence but not much of it. So you’ve got to use what there is. Hence deduction.”
Owen was silent. He was tempted to ask if Mahmoud had learned that in college. Mahmoud, unlike Owen, had been trained for the job he was doing and sometimes reminded Owen of the fact. Owen did not like being reminded that he was, so far as police work was concerned, an amateur.
“Is there any corroborative evidence?” he asked.
He rather distrusted Gallic logic. Brilliant, yes, but was it sound? The Parquet lawyers, French-trained and French in style, had a name-among the English-for unreliability. Sometimes they homed in on the right conclusion with remarkable speed; sometimes they missed the point altogether.
“A bit,” said Mahmoud. “Three other people noticed the woman. One of them remarked on the scent.”
“Did they see her with the man?”
“Two of them did, including one who noticed the scent.”
“Anyone get a good look at him?”
“No. None of them would be able to identify him. Except as a Copt, that is. They’d all noticed that.”
“They would!”
“Yes. You’d prefer it not to be a Copt, wouldn’t you?”
“Just at the moment I would.”
“It’s rather pointing that way, though.”
“What else have you found out?”
“Nothing to link Zoser directly with the Zikr. One person thinks he saw him there. That was earlier in the evening, though.”
“Have you checked whether he was in his shop?”
“Yes. He wasn’t.”
“Have you asked him why?”
“Haven’t asked him anything yet. I was hoping for a positive identification. I don’t suppose-?”
Owen shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t see him.”
Mahmoud sighed.
“I was afraid of that,” he said. “That leaves us with Miss Postlethwaite.”
“That girl!” said Zeinab.
“Yes. You see,” said Mahmoud, turning to her, “she was the only one who really saw them.”
“Notices everything, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Mahmoud enthusiastically. “She’s an extraordinarily good observer.”
Something must have told him that he’d not said quite the right thing, for he looked at Zeinab uneasily afterwards. Mahmoud stood a little in awe of Zeinab. It was partly her social position, partly her father, the formidable Nuri Pasha. Mahmoud detested everything that Nuri stood for: the old, near-feudal Egypt, with its hereditary great landlords, of whom Nuri was one; court-based politics, in which Nuri was adept; the power of the old order to block and frustrate all attempts at reform. But although he looked down on Nuri he also looked up at him, and because of that Nuri had a unique ability to touch Mahmoud on the raw. Something of all that had rubbed off on Zeinab, although Zeinab was Nuri’s daughter only by a slave girl, a well-known courtesan, who had had mind enough of her own to refuse to join Nuri’s harem. That was another thing which made Mahmoud uneasy, for modern and emancipated though he was, he could not completely shake off the attitudes and sexual constraints of the old, Islamic society. He even felt slightly awkward sitting out with her in a public place having coffee.
Zeinab added to his unease by opening her handbag, taking out the three small bottles of perfume and dropping them deliberately on the floor. She summoned a waiter to clear them away.
“Presumably you’ve done some background checking?” said Owen.
Mahmoud turned back to him with relief.
“Yes,” he said. “I had my people check out the three scentmakers. One of them, the first one we saw, I think we can rule out straight away. He’s not very strong physically, suffers from some sort of debilitating illness, hardly ever goes out. The fat one doesn’t go out much either but in principle we can’t rule him out. The third one could do it physically and gets out far more. He’s very active in his local church, attends services there at all hours, mortifies himself, fasts, that sort of thing.”
“A zealot?‘’
“Devout.” Like Nikos, Mahmoud did not wish to be pushed into too firm religious characterization.
“Politically active?” Owen pressed.
“Not so far as I am aware.”
“I’m looking for motive.”
“That’s the problem. I can’t find one. That applies to them all. As far as I can tell, they have all three led blameless lives, had no criminal connection, kept themselves to themselves and as separate from Moslems as they could, and had no occasion to even meet a Zikr, let alone enter into a relationship with one which might lead them to want to kill him. They, and Zoser particularly, don’t seem to have had much personal life at all.”
“They sound very dull,” said Zeinab.
“What church does he go to?” asked Owen. “Zoser, I mean. You said he went to a local church.”
“The Mar Girgis-Church of St. George.”
“By the Tunisian Bazaar?”
“Yes. You know it?”
“I know someone who goes to it,” said Owen.
Mahmoud shrugged.
“Nothing special about it. Very Orthodox, a bit fundamentalist. Zoser’s quite well known there. He’s not one of the elders, he’s not rich enough for that, or educated enough. He’s just there at all the services.”
“With his wife?”
“With his wife.” He looked at Owen. “I was wondering-” he said tentatively.
“Yes?” said Owen.
“What were you wondering?” asked Zeinab.
“If you would like to go to church next Sunday,” Mahmoud said, looking at Owen, “with Miss Postlethwaite.”
“Why her?” asked Zeinab.
“She’s the only one who could make a positive identification,” Mahmoud explained. “She’s important.”
“I can see that,” said Zeinab.
“It would be difficult in a church,” said Owen. “The women are kept separate from the men.”
“She could see him, though he wouldn’t be able to see her. That might be an advantage.”
“Why do you have to go?” Zeinab asked Owen.
“She would have to be escorted,” said Mahmoud.
“Couldn’t you do that?”
No, Mahmoud couldn’t. He knew that and so did she. It would have to be a white man, an Englishman preferably. Zeinab knew that perfectly well. She was just trying to be awkward. And she was succeeding as far as Mahmoud was concerned. He flushed and his face went a little stiff.