The Winter Thief

13

Kamil left Feride’s house in Nishantashou and rode the short distance to the Swyndons’. He passed a small army of servants wielding shovels and brooms, clearing the streets of snow. Omar got out of a waiting carriage, and they walked together up the drive to Swyndon’s house. It was set on a hill in a terraced garden rimed with snow and afforded a spectacular vista of the Bosphorus glittering in the morning sunlight.

Inside, the view was quite different-heavy draperies, a clutter of waxed furniture, and dark oil paintings. Mrs. Swyndon was a heavy-boned Englishwoman with beautiful gray eyes that regarded Kamil steadily while she absorbed the news of the robbery. Kamil’s English had the burnished pronunciation he had learned at Cambridge University, with an Oriental lilt.

“My husband didn’t return home last night,” she confirmed. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Except for tightening her grip on the wool shawl around her shoulders, Kamil thought she showed little reaction to the news that her husband had been seen at the bank during the robbery but was now missing.

An English neighbor, fetched by Mrs. Swyndon’s servants, arrived. When she entered the room, as if on cue, Mrs. Swyndon began to cry, effectively dismissing the men. They got up to leave. As they retreated down the stairs, Omar commented, “My wife would never mourn me like that.”

“She’d be grateful to be rid of you.”

Omar smiled.

At the base of the stairs, a plump, red-cheeked girl of about seven stared at them from behind the skirts of a frightened-looking nanny.

While Omar waited at the end of the hall, Kamil stopped and asked the nanny her name.

“Bridget, sir.” Her face was that of a woman in her early twenties, but she was very short, barely taller than the child, and her frame so shrunken within her woolen gown that Kamil wondered if she was ill.

“And who is this?” Kamil smiled at the child, who disappeared behind Bridget.

“Alberta, sir.”

Kamil sat on a damask-covered slipper chair, bringing the level of his head closer to the nanny’s. “Are you English, Bridget?”

“Yes, sir. From Canterbury.”

“How long have you been in service here?”

“Two years, sir.”

“Have you noticed anything unusual in the house over the past month? Visitors? Any tensions?”

The young woman colored and looked down. “I’m sure I can’t say, sir.”

“Now, Bridget, you know that Mr. Swyndon has gone missing, so anything you tell us might help us find him. I’m sure no one would see anything disloyal in that.”

“No visitors other than the usual, sir. The missus’s friends and then the families that come for dinner.”

“Anyone coming to see Mr. Swyndon?”

She looked puzzled. “Mr. Swyndon doesn’t do any business here, sir.”

Alberta darted out from behind the nanny’s skirts and blurted out, “But you had a visitor!”

Bridget looked alarmed. “You weren’t to tell anyone, Alberta. You promised.”

Alberta looked at her defiantly, then turned her back.

Near tears, the nanny told Kamil, “I’m not allowed visitors here, you see. I could lose my post if Mrs. Swyndon found out. But sometimes”-she wiped her eyes-“it just gets lonely.”

“Who was this visitor? A friend?”

“A local girl. She came by selling sweets-I do so have a weakness for them. She spoke some English and when she said she’d like to learn more, I agreed to help her. I offered to come to her house on Monday afternoons, which is when I have time off, but she told me her brother wouldn’t permit a stranger in the house. So she came here.”

“How often?”

“Once a week. On my half day off. We went up the hill there.” She pointed. “There’s a small orchard. But when the weather got cold, we stayed in my room.”

“I’m going to tell,” the little girl announced. “She took my bracelet.”

Bridget crouched down to the child, stroked her hair, and said in a soothing voice, “Albie, darling, you don’t want to do that. If I go, who will take care of you? Can anyone else take care of you like I do?”

The girl shook her head no, offering up part of her victory.

“Thank you, Albie.” Bridget kissed her cheek and stood up, holding the girl’s hand in her own. “We’ll find your bracelet. I’m sure you just left it somewhere. You’re always playing with it.”

“I’m sorry to have caused you any trouble,” Kamil said sincerely, touched by the young woman’s tenderness toward this difficult child. It was not the first time he wondered whether he was cut out for fatherhood if this is what it entailed. He adored his nieces, but it was Feride who dealt with the spirited girls day after day.

“It’ll be all right, sir. Albie’s a good girl, aren’t you, Albie?” She beamed at her charge, the smile lighting up her face so that she seemed almost pretty.

“May I ask your friend’s name and where she lives?”

“Sosi. She said she lived in…it sounded like Bangali.”

“Pangalti?” It was a nearby district populated mainly by Christians. The French Catholic Cemetery, a Protestant cemetery, a Greek Orthodox school, a synagogue, and an Armenian church were all within sight of one another. Sosi was an Armenian name. It was probably an innocent friendship. Nevertheless, he’d set a watch for the girl.

They found Montaigne and Hofmeister, the other two officials, inspecting the damage at the bank and watching Hagop suspiciously as he worked on the lock to the second strong room. The captain of gendarmes stood between them and the scowling safecracker. When the officials saw Kamil, they demanded that he stop the break-in. Kamil ignored them and asked instead where Swyndon was. They didn’t know, nor did they know how he could have opened the other strong room without all three keys. After some argument, during which Kamil pointed out that the keys no longer locked anything in, each man gave Kamil his key. Neither of them turned in the locks.