The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in Nile. Michael Pearce

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СКАЧАТЬ was very particular about that. The Prince had his own room, of course, and Narouz wanted a cabin next to him. He didn’t even want to be with the harem.’

      ‘Strange! And then, of course, there were those other women.’

      ‘He didn’t say anything about them. Not until we were nearly at Beni Suef.’

      ‘They were foreigners, weren’t they?’

      ‘I’m not saying anything.’

      ‘They must have been. Our women wouldn’t have behaved like that.’

      ‘Indecent!’

      ‘Did they wear veils?’

      ‘They wore veils,’ the Rais conceded grudgingly. ‘But they showed their ankles!’

      ‘Oh!’ said Mahmoud, shocked.

      ‘How could Hassan be expected to steer when they were flaunting their ankles in front of him?’

      ‘Impossible,’ Mahmoud agreed. ‘Impossible!’

      They were standing in the stern of the vessel looking up at the back of the cabins. The steersman’s platform, with the huge horizontal rudder bar he used for steering, was right beside them.

      ‘But I don’t understand!’ said Mahmoud. ‘The woman who stayed up there alone—’

      ‘Shameless!’ said the Rais.

      ‘Shameless!’ agreed Mahmoud. ‘But she was right in front of him. Surely he would have seen if she had—well, fallen off.’

      ‘Ah, but it was dark, you see. We had stopped for the night.’

      ‘So the steersman wasn’t there?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Where was he?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said the Rais. ‘You’d better ask him.’

      ‘And where were you?’ asked Mahmoud.

      ‘I was up here,’ said the steersman. ‘We’d finished for the day, so I tied the rudder and then came up forward.’

      They were sitting in the shade of the cook’s galley. It was a small shed, rather like a Dutch oven in shape, set well up into the prow to remove it as far as possible from the passengers’ cabins. The cook stood up on the forward side, so that the shed protected him when there was a favourable wind. They could hear him there now.

      The spot was clearly a favourite one with the crew and there had been several men dozing there when Owen and Mahmoud had appeared. They had gone aft to leave them to talk to the steersman in private, but one of them, the cook presumably, had disappeared into the galley.

      ‘She was still up there at that point?’

      ‘Yes.’ The steersman’s wrinkled face broke into a smile. ‘I reckoned the midges would soon drive her down.’

      ‘It was dark by then?’

      ‘Just. They were up there admiring the sunset but I wanted to stop while there was still a bit of light. There are one or two things you have to do and you can always do them better if you can see what you’re doing. Besides, the Prince didn’t want us to go too far. He wanted another night on the river!’

      ‘Oh, he did, did he? And why was that?’

      ‘Why do you think? Perhaps he likes it better on the water.’

      ‘That’s what is was about, you think?’

      ‘What else could it be? He goes down to his estate and doesn’t stay there a moment, we call in at Luxor and he doesn’t want to go ashore. We go straight down and straight back and the only thing we stop for is to pick up some women at Beni Suef!’

      ‘Those women,’ said Mahmoud, ‘what were they like?’

      ‘Classy. But not the sort you’d want to take home with you.’

      ‘Foreign.’

      The steersman hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. Two of them were, certainly. The other—that’s the one who finished up in the river—I’m not sure about.’

      ‘You’re sure about the others, though?’

      ‘Oh yes. You could hear them talking. Mind you, she was talking with them. I don’t know, of course, but it just seemed to me … well, and then there were the clothes.’

      ‘What about the clothes?’

      ‘Well, they all wore the tob.’ The tob was a loose outer gown. ‘And the burka, of course.’ The burka was a long face veil which reached almost to the ground. ‘But from where I was you could see their legs.’

      ‘Yes. The Rais told us.’

      ‘I’ll bet he did! He oughtn’t to have seen that, ought he? I mean, he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking. You’d have thought a man like that, strict, he’s supposed to be—’

      ‘The women,’ said Mahmoud patiently.

      ‘Yes, well, the thing was that—I mean, I couldn’t see clearly—but I reckon those two had European clothes on underneath their tobs. You could see their ankles. But the other one, well, I caught a glimpse. She was wearing shintiyan.’

      ‘Pink ones?’ said Owen.

      ‘Why, yes,’ said the steersman, surprised. ‘That’s right. How did you know? Oh, I suppose you’ve seen the body.’

      ‘Never mind that,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Let’s get back to when she was on the top deck. She was up there when you last saw her?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Alone?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Why didn’t she go down with the others?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Had they been quarrelling?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘You heard them talking.’

      ‘Well, it was not so much quarrelling. I think the Prince was trying to get her to do something. Like, persuade her.’

      ‘And she didn’t want to?’

      ‘I couldn’t really tell,’ confessed the steersman. ‘I couldn’t understand the language, see? It was just the impression I got. He wasn’t nasty or anything, not even angry, really. He was just trying—well, to persuade her, like I said.’

      ‘He didn’t get anywhere, though?’

      ‘No.’

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