The Sultan's seal

12

The young boy tamps a golden wad of fragrant tobacco into the bowl of the old man’s narghile. As he kneels, head lowered, to attend to their water pipes, Kamil can see the whorls of his short hair, like the grain in wood, and the flanges of his ears.

Ferhat Bey waits until the boy leaves and he has taken a deep draught of fresh smoke before turning to Kamil and continuing.

“There isn’t much I can tell you. We searched the area thoroughly. There were no clues.”

They are sitting in a coffeehouse in the Beyazit quarter, not far from the entrance to the Grand Bazaar. The coffeehouse is part of a large complex of buildings attached to a venerable old mosque. It is late afternoon, a hiss of rain on the flagstones. They sit on a bench, feet tucked under their robes against the wet chill. An old man reclines on the bench in the far corner of the room, his eyes closed, a gnarled hand curled around the mouthpiece of his narghile. The air is redolent of scented tobacco and drying wool.

Kamil takes the amber mouthpiece from his lips and exhales slowly. The light from the window shudders and is gone. Kamil adjusts his woolen mantle around his shoulders.

The former superintendent of police is a wiry, gray-haired man with a deeply seamed face but hands incongruously unmarked by time, as fair and supple as a girl’s.

“We thought immediately of Ismail Hodja’s household, of course. The body was found right behind his property, after all, and there are no other residences in the area.”

“Yes,” Kamil murmurs his assent. “That would be the first place to look. Did you find anything?”

Ferhat Bey does not answer for a moment, his eyes fixed on the coals, then returns his attention to Kamil. He is painfully aware that Kamil has neglected to defer to him and assumes this is because Kamil is the son of a pasha and used to taking on airs. Still, in deference to his age, Kamil should speak less directly. One shows respect through formality, through indirection; there are necessary locutions within which questions and responses should be couched, muffled, like winter padding on a horse’s hooves, so that the ring of fact on stone remains the prerogative of the elder, the teacher. What has he got to teach this upstart? thinks Ferhat Bey bitterly. He had failed and this brash young man will fail too.

“Who made up the household at that time?” Kamil asks.

The old man sighs and answers slowly, showing his displeasure at being interrogated. The young upstart should read the file; he had noted at least this much before he stopped writing.

“Household? Ismail Hodja, of course. His sister and niece. The niece’s governess, a Frenchwoman. She found the body. A gardener and a groom that live on the property. Daily maids and a cook that live in the village.”

He stops and draws on his pipe. Kamil waits until Ferhat Bey has expelled the smoke into the room, but when the old superintendent does not continue, he presses him eagerly.

“Can you tell me what they said, where they were that day and the night before? Did they see anything?”

Ferhat Bey wishes he had not agreed to this meeting. Stubbornly, he draws out the silence.

Kamil understands that he has been too forward. This man is too old to be converted to a modern approach to solving crime, Kamil thinks. To him, the important thing is that he is an elder who was once a man of rank. The puzzle of a crime is worth nothing when measured against your place in society. The fact that Kamil resists this himself does not mean that others agree. He adjusts his manner accordingly.

“Superintendent Efendi,” he says, using the man’s title out of politeness, “I would much appreciate any help you could give me in solving this crime. I wonder whether your experience with the other investigation could help me shed light on this one. There seem to be some similarities, although I could be wrong. I defer to your judgment in this.”

Mollified, Ferhat Bey’s interest is piqued.

“What similarities?”

“Both young women were English and had positions as governesses with members of the imperial family. Both bodies were found in water. The second woman probably was thrown into the Bosphorus between Emirgan and Chamyeri.” He tells Ferhat Bey what the night fisherman saw. He does not mention the pendant, or the dilated pupils.

The superintendent looks up at Kamil craftily, his eyes scanning Kamil’s face for a reaction to what he says next.

“Do you think there’s a connection to the palace?”

If there is, Ferhat Bey is thinking with satisfaction, it will ruin this man like it ruined him-left with a pension that barely covers his tobacco. The scorpion, he knows, has made its nest in the magistrate’s woodpile. Feigning disinterest in the answer, with a barely discernible smile, he brings the tea glass to his lips, then sets the empty glass down.

Kamil doesn’t answer right away. He signals to the boy, who rushes over to refill their glasses from the enormous brass samovar huffing on a corner table. The men silently go about the ritual of preparing their tea. Each balances the saucer and glass on the palm of his hand, measures sugar from a jar, and stirs up a small whirlpool that skirts the lip of the glass but remains confined within it as if by a mysterious force. Kamil holds his glass up to the light, admiring the amber red of the liquid.

“Excellent tea!”

Ferhat Bey doesn’t care about the color of his tea. He is waiting for an answer. He wonders if Kamil is being insolent or whether he truly doesn’t know. Well, if he doesn’t know, I won’t tell him, thinks the old man. Let him find out the hard way that crimes linked to the palace are crimes best left unsolved.

Still, he is curious about the new case.

“It may be a coincidence,” he offers slyly, hoping to get Kamil to lower his guard and tell him about the present case. He isn’t interested in discussing history.

Kamil sets his glass down carefully.

“Perhaps.” He sits quietly, eyes caught by the motes of dust jostling in the beam of light from the window. Such chaos, he muses, yet the world is by its nature orderly. There is always a pattern.

The loud click of glass meeting saucer brings his attention back to the superintendent. He is impatient, Kamil thinks. Good. Perhaps he is willing to share some of his memories of the case. He turns to the old man.

“I can’t tell whether there is a link because I know so little about the first murder.” He does not add that Ferhat Bey’s case notes were so incomplete and poorly organized that it had been impossible to gain insight from them.

Ferhat Bey sighs. It seems he will have to pay for his entertainment with memories after all, but he will not reveal everything. Let him figure it out for himself. And by then it will be too late. He can’t help smiling at the thought, but it appears on his face as a smirk.

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever is most important to know. Where the body was found, who you spoke with, what they said. The condition of the body,” he adds carefully.

“The body? She was dead, that’s all. Face up in the pond. We thought she had drowned, but the surgeon pressed on her chest and found there was no water in her lungs. She had been strangled. You could see the mark on her neck. Knife-sharp, but not a knife. A very thin, strong cord.”

“Silk?”

Ferhat Bey grins. “Yes, a silk cord. No other cord would leave that kind of mark.” Everyone knows that is the method preferred by the royals. He is no better match for them than I was, despite his fancy new title.

“Was she a virgin?”

Ferhat Bey is somewhat taken aback by Kamil’s straightforward way of bringing up a most delicate subject, even among men. It would be quite different if they were drinking buddies or school friends, then they could discuss such obscene things freely. But they are colleagues and he is an elder. He deliberates briefly whether this is disrespectful or not, but concludes that Kamil is simply socially inept. Not uncommon among spoiled children of the elite, he thinks. That will make him all the more susceptible to the rot at the palace, he thinks with satisfaction.

“No.”

“Another similarity.” Kamil pauses. “Was anything else remarkable about the body, other than this and the cord line at her neck?”

“Well, I’m not sure one could call the fact that she wasn’t a virgin remarkable,” Ferhat Bey chortles. “After all, she was a Frank, and you know how their women are.” He settles himself back and puffs with satisfaction on his water pipe.

Kamil smiles wanly, refusing to be drawn in.

“Anything else?” he repeats.

The superintendent stirs restlessly. He doesn’t know what this young upstart is after.

“Nothing else. Unless you’re interested in rumors.”

“What rumors?”

“There was some talk that she was having an affair with a Turk, a journalist.”

“Was she?”

“How would I know? No one had any real information, and there are hundreds of journalists these days, far too many, if you ask me.”

“How did you make the connection to the palace?”

Ferhat Bey winces.

“There was a witness,” he admits grudgingly.

Kamil is surprised. He hadn’t heard there was a witness.

“To the murder?”

“No, to the abduction. Except that apparently she went willingly. One of the eunuchs said a carriage picked her up by the back gate. And it wasn’t the first time. She always went alone, always with the same disreputable-looking driver. The eunuch planned to tell her employer to fire her for lack of-what did he call it? — moral fitness. That was before she turned up dead.” He squeezes out a wheezing laugh.

“Whose eunuch?”

Ferhat Bey is agitated. He has let himself slip. He hadn’t meant to let Kamil know about the eunuch.

“He belonged to Asma Sultan’s household in the harem,” he admits reluctantly.

“Asma Sultan?” Kamil tries to remember where else he has heard the name recently.

“Sultan Abdulaziz’s daughter, may he rest in peace. She’s married to Ali Arslan Pasha.”

The grand vizier’s wife. Sybil in the snow. He sees her, cheeks red, traveling in the sleigh with her mother to Ali Arslan Pasha’s harem.

“But there were a lot of other women in that harem,” Ferhat Bey continues.

“Other high-status women?”

“The pasha didn’t have the same appetite as his father-in-law. Or else his wife made sure he kept his sword in his scabbard.” Ferhat Bey wheezes a laugh. “So no concubines, just Asma Sultan and his daughter, Perihan Hanoum. The rest were servants, like the English-woman. Although Asma Sultan’s relations came and went so often they might as well have been living there. They all knew the governess,” he adds.

“Who else visited?”

“Her nieces Leyla and Shukriye were there a lot. Shukriye Hanoum was engaged to that sot Prince Ziya, who was killed with his pants down in Paris.”

Kamil tries to keep his irritation in check. He had never met Prince Ziya, but knew enough of his reputation as a thoughtful man and supporter of just causes to have a great deal of respect for him. He had never believed the rumor that Ziya died in a brothel.

“So what is the link between the palace and the murder?” Kamil asks. The old superintendent had implied there was a link. He is certain he hadn’t misheard.

“That’s the link. Asma Sultan’s hawk-eyed eunuch. Go ask him yourself. Be sure to bring a large gift.” He sniggers. Asma Sultan, her eunuch, and the woman Hannah were pawns in a game played by giants. He has just put this young upstart on the game board. Still, he shouldn’t have brought Asma Sultan’s name into it. He doesn’t want any more trouble than he already has.

“You never found the carriage or the driver?”

“No.”

The superintendent knows his reputation as a failure. He could explain that he was forced to take early retirement and leave this case unsolved. But trading his reputation for the truth might very well lose him more than his position. His notes on the case had been incomplete for this very reason.

Kamil asks, “What about the household at Chamyeri? What did they tell you?”

“Nothing. No one claimed to have seen anything. Other than that hysterical goose of a Frenchwoman. She found the body, ran to the house, packed her things, and was ready to go even before we arrived. She didn’t even speak our language, so we had the young girl, Ismail Hodja’s niece, translate for us.”

“What was the Frenchwoman doing back by the pond?”

Ferhat Bey thinks a few moments. “Well, she said she had been taking a walk. I suppose that’s reasonable.”

“Was she in the habit of walking there? If I remember correctly, the pond is quite secluded, in the forest.”

“Who knows the minds of women?” Ferhat Bey answers in an exasperated tone. “They walk in the woods. Maybe she had a lovers’ tiff and wanted some privacy to lick her wounds.”

“Did she have a lover?”

The superintendent has reached the end of his patience. Clearly, the man has no imagination, he decides.

“How should I know? I can’t very well ask a young girl to ask the woman if she has a lover, can I? And she’d never admit to it if she did. What difference does it make anyway? We had a witness. It had nothing to do with that household.” He decides to stop before his tongue slips further along the path he has already negligently directed the young man toward.

The light filtering in the window has become tepid and wan. Outside, the rain has stopped and a chill night wind has begun to blow. The room has begun to fill with men who have closed their shop doors and look forward to their moment of comfort before they walk through the dark streets to their homes. Their breaths have condensed on the windows in a ragged tongue of moisture.

Ferhat Bey mutters that it is time for him to leave and rises shakily to his feet. Kamil thanks him for his kindness and assistance and offers to help him home. The old man growls and waves him off.

“I don’t live far. I’ll walk.”

He hobbles into the courtyard. Kamil stays behind to pay the owner. When he emerges, the superintendent is gone. Kamil shrugs, wraps his cloak closer about him, and passes through the great stone gate into the street beyond.

As soon as Kamil is out of sight, Ferhat Bey emerges from the shadows at the back of the courtyard. He stands for a while, squinting against the wind, as if waiting to see if Kamil will return, then goes back into the coffeehouse.