A Burial at Sea

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

The next two rooms were cluttered with, in the first, small card tables, and, in the second, a great number of books. Neither looked particularly lived in. Lenox found his small door and, with a sharp inhale to brace himself, opened it and walked downstairs.

The door to the kitchen was wide open, though the room itself was dim and empty. Apparently the restaurant on the ground floor was closed, too. Still, there was a flickering light in the far corner of the room.

“Hello,” Lenox said, staying by the door.

“Bonjour,” a voice said.

Lenox waited for the man to go on, but he was silent.

“What brings you here?” he said at last.

The other man paused. “I like spending time in a closed kitchen.”

No. The line was: The kitchen is always closed when one is hungriest.

“It’s easy to get a meal in Port Said after midnight,” Lenox said. “Ask anyone.”

A long pause. “Ah. So you know the code. Let us speak.”

Lenox hesitated for one, nearly fatal second, and then turned and walked through the door and out onto the street.

“Hey!” a voice called out behind him, and there were footsteps.

Lenox turned, saw a short, stubby man bearing down on him—he is over six feet, the note had said of Sournois—and began to sprint toward the brightly lit boulevard at the end of the street. He couldn’t risk getting in Chowdery’s carriage; there wasn’t time.

So he ran. He was twenty paces ahead, but his fitness was still terrible, and already he could feel a sear in his lungs and his legs. Judging from the noise of the man’s footsteps the distance between them was shortening. Perhaps fifteen paces now. The boulevard was just ahead, and with a lung-busting spurt of effort, Lenox reached it and turned left.

There were men walking hand in hand together, as was the Egyptian custom, and others sitting outside and sipping mint tea. There were still food sellers and beggars, too.

Lenox turned into the second doorway he saw, thanking God that he had kept a hand by his face in the kitchen, just in case. He saw his pursuer sprint breathlessly past, and then, twenty feet on, stop and whirl around.

Lenox retreated farther into the doorway.

A voice behind him said something in an unfamiliar language, and Lenox, his nerves already frayed, now took his turn to whirl around.

It was a young boy. Lenox raised a finger to his lips, to indicate quiet. The boy, with a look of immediate comprehension, nodded, and waved a hand: follow me.

There was no other option, and so Lenox trailed the boy down a mazy corridor, which led into an inner courtyard. From there they found another corridor, and then another. The noise of chatter on the street would get louder and softer as they walked. Finally they took a flight of stairs up, and Lenox, now uneasy, began to wonder what the boy’s plan was.

When they reached a balcony he saw. There was a line of donkey-drawn taxis below.

Lenox nearly laughed, and then gave the boy half of the change in his pocket, several shillings. The boy grinned and nodded, then vanished back into the corridor.

Lenox went down to the taxis.

“You know the English consulate?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the first one, nodding rapidly.

“Take me there, please.”

There was Chowdery’s carriage and driver, he reflected; well, it was too bad. He wasn’t going back.

What had gone wrong? Suddenly he realized: Mainton. Of course. He had been discovered. He could only hope that Sournois was still alive.

He thought again of his instructions: Should anything go amiss, you must for your own safety immediately make your way to the consulate, and then with all possible haste to your ship.

There was nothing he could do for Sournois. He would fetch McEwan and his things and go to the Lucy. With the protection of the men and the officers he might still meet with Ismail the Magnificent in two days, but for the rest of the time he would have to cancel all of his other plans and stay aboard the ship.

So he had failed. It was a bitter thought.

He gave the driver who brought him to the consulate a handsome tip, and then pressing an additional coin on him asked the man to drive by Scheherazade’s to find the waiting carriage there, and tell its driver to head home.

He walked up to his room with his lungs and the muscles in his legs burning. The house was quiet and dark, but there were servants still awake. The man he had met in the kitchen could not reach him here, he hoped. Still, it begged the question: should he return to the Lucy tonight or in the morning?

Tonight, probably; and yet his fatigue was so great that when he went into his room and McEwan appeared, he did not ask the steward even to pack.

“Wake me early,” was all he said. “It will be a busy day.”

“Yes, sir. Would you like a glass of wine, or perhaps something to eat, before you retire?”

“Perhaps I would like a glass of that red—but no, no, I think not. You filled my water pitcher? Good, then I shall have that. Better for a clear head. Oh, and while I have you—you posted that letter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”

“Good night, McEwan.”

He sat at his desk for fifteen minutes or so, drinking a glass of water and thinking over the events of the evening. The next morning he would ask Chowdery about any French delegation in Port Said, and perhaps he might hear word of Sournois’s official duties in that fashion. Beyond that he saw little that he could do.

He changed into his nightshirt and went to bed then, restless in his mind but also tired, or somewhere beyond tired. Soon he was asleep.

He woke because he felt something sharp at his neck.

He tried to jerk away but a strong hand had him by the shirt.

“Who is that?” he said.

“I knew I’d get my penknife in you,” a voice close to his ear said.

A chill coursed through his body. “No,” he said. “It cannot be. Billings.”

A match struck against the wood along the side of the bed, and the candle on Lenox’s nightstand flared up into light. The knife still to his throat, Lenox saw, in the flickering light, the face of the former first lieutenant of the Lucy.

He was dark from the sun now, rather like Lenox. His expression was neutral. There was nothing in it of the fiendish madness the detective had seen on that lifeboat. But this calmness was in itself a fearsome thing.

“How did you get here?”

“We were prepared,” said Billings. “Coin, water, food. What sort of fool do you take me for?”

“Where is Butterworth?”

“I left him.”

“You killed him.”

“If you prefer. He didn’t want me to come here.”

“He was wise.”

The knife pressed into Lenox’s throat. It must have been drawing blood, by now. His horror of knives had awakened. “Was he wise? I suppose he may have been. Just like Halifax. Just like Martin. Just like … you.”

“Me.”

“I told you I’d put my penknife in you, didn’t I, Lenox?”

“We were friends aboard the Lucy, Billings.”

A look of bitterness snarled the younger man’s lip. “Friends,” he said with heavy scorn.

Lenox considered shouting, but knew it would mean his instant death. “You have gone mad. Come back to sanity, I beg of you. Give yourself up.”

But Billings was too far gone. His eyes were wild and angry; the sane part of himself, the one that had allowed him to act as a competent naval officer these many years, seemed to have receded once the secret of his other side was out. It was often the way, Lenox knew. When the veneer had fallen away, it was hard to put it back up, for men like Billings.

“I’ll give you up,” said Billings.

“Did you even mean to carve up Halifax?”

“What?”

“You meant to kill him—but your gruesome little surgery. You couldn’t help that, I suppose, but it wasn’t part of the plan, was it?”

“Shut up.”

“Take your knife from my throat and I’ll let you leave.”

“Ha.”

“Billings, I warn you—”

“You warn me! I ought to—”

And then, to Lenox’s very great shock, he discovered that his own warnings were more potent than either he or Billings had imagined. There was an extremely soft footfall, and an instant later something heavy and black swung through the air and knocked Billings in the back of the head.

The murderer stared at Lenox open-eyed for a moment, and then fell, his knife tumbling harmlessly from his hand.

“Who is that?” said Lenox.

“It is I, McEwan, sir.” The steward was breathing heavily. “I came because you have a guest.”

“At two in the morning?”

“Yes, sir. And if I say so, it couldn’t have happened at a better time.”