The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. Michael Pearce

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes opened. For a moment they remained unfocused. And then the sharp look returned.

      ‘What is going on?’ demanded Miss Skinner.

      ‘An accident,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve had an accident. Just stay there for a moment. You’ll be all right.’

      Miss Skinner’s eyes closed again. The Fire Chief dexterously wedged the stretcher under her. Cooperative hands hoisted it into the air. It was raised head high so that it could be passed back over the crowd.

      As the stretcher lurched upwards Miss Skinner’s eyes opened again.

      ‘Accident?’ she said sharply. ‘That was no accident! I was pushed!’

CHAPTER 2

      ‘Look,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘I know a push when I feel one.’

      She was sitting in a chair in the hotel lounge. Owen had suggested she remain in bed but Miss Skinner thought that was no place for a lady to receive a gentleman. She had made an appointment with Owen for six o’clock, taken a slightly extended siesta, and now here she was, not quite recovered—there was a nasty bruise on her face—but inclined in no sense to take this lying down.

      ‘In the crowd,’ murmured Owen, ‘so easy to mistake—’

      Miss Skinner made an impatient gesture.

      ‘A push is a push,’ she said firmly.

      ‘So many people,’ said Owen, ‘perhaps carrying things. A porter, maybe. A package sticking out.’

      ‘A hand,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘gave me a deliberate push.’

      Owen was silent. An image of the Ataba came into his mind. So many people milling about, jostling each other in the crowd, hurrying to catch a tram. The easiest thing in the world to bump into someone, collide. But a deliberate push?

      ‘Let me see, Miss Skinner: you were standing precisely where? Near where I saw you, obviously, but, just before you fell, precisely where?’

      ‘I had been looking at one of the boards—’

      ‘Ah, so you had your back towards the traffic, then?’

      ‘—but it was not the one I wanted and I had just turned away. I was looking for the one to the Zoological Gardens and this one, I remember, was for the Citadel. There! That will help you to place it.’

      ‘Thank you. That is very precise. You had turned away, then—?’

      ‘—and was about to move on to the next one when it happened.’

      ‘That, again, is very precise, Miss Skinner. “About to move on.” You had not, then, moved?’

      ‘A step, perhaps.’

      ‘Or two. But still very close to the Citadel board. And in the middle of the street.’

      ‘Along with everybody else,’ said Miss Skinner defensively.

      ‘Of course. No criticism implied. But you were in the middle of the street and could very easily have been bumped into.’

      ‘I think I would have noticed if an arabeah had hit me,’ said Miss Skinner tartly. ‘That is, of course, before I was hit by the tram.’

      ‘I was thinking of a person, Miss Skinner. Perhaps running for a tram.’

      Miss Skinner sighed.

      ‘A collision is not like a push. This was a push. A definite push.’

      ‘Perhaps as they collided with you they put out a hand—’

      ‘No one,’ said Miss Skinner, her voice beginning to rise, ‘collided with me or bumped into me. What happened was that someone put a hand out and gave me a deliberate push just as the tram was approaching.’

      ‘But, Miss Skinner, why would anyone want to do that?’

      ‘You tell me. You’re the policeman. If, indeed,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘you are a policeman!’

      Owen could not see it. An accidental collision, a stumble, a trip, yes. But not a push. Not a deliberate push.

      ‘A sheep, perhaps?’ he ventured.

      ‘A sheep?’ said Miss Skinner incredulously.

      ‘They nudge you,’ Owen explained.

      ‘Look, Captain Owen,’ said Miss Skinner in rising fury, ‘this was not a nudge, nor a bump, nor a jostle. This was a push. A hand. In the small of my back. Just when a tram was coming. I have been assaulted—criminally assaulted—and I demand that you take action to find out who my assailant was and to see that he is punished. At once!’

      The arabeah-drivers, while waiting for custom, liked to gather round a pavement restaurant near where they parked their cabs; round, because what the restaurants consisted of was a large circular tray with little pegs round the edge on which the customers stuck their bread. In the middle were lots of little blue-and-white china bowls filled with various kinds of sauces and pickles and a few large platters on which lay unpromising pieces of meat.

      The customers squatted round in the dust. They did not consist entirely of arabeah-drivers. The restaurant served as a social centre for that part of the Ataba and people dropped in and out all day, drawn by the smell of fried onions and the constant Arab need for sociability.

      It was natural for Owen, beginning his inquiries with the arabeah-drivers, to migrate in that direction and soon he was part of the squatting circle dipping his bread with the rest of them, his inquiries now part of the general conversation.

      ‘Why was she catching a tram anyway?’ asked one of the arabeah-drivers. ‘She ought to have been using an arabeah.’

      ‘That’s right. She wouldn’t have had to have wandered round, then. She could have just signalled to us and we’d have looked after her.’

      ‘Particularly if she was carrying things. Much more sense to take an arabeah.’

      ‘Was she carrying things?’ asked Owen.

      ‘I don’t know. It’s just that if she was—’

      ‘I thought she was carrying something,’ said one of the other drivers. ‘One or two small things. Perhaps she had been shopping.’

      ‘You saw her, then?’

      ‘I saw her go down. She certainly seemed to be carrying something.’

      ‘How did she come to go down?’ asked Owen. ‘Was she wandering about in front of the tram or something?’

      ‘No, no, she was round the side.’

      ‘What did she do, then? Walk into it?’ asked one of the drivers.

      ‘Must have.’

      ‘She СКАЧАТЬ