Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

Sultan Abdulhamid has taken offense at our government’s steadying hand on the reins of his rebellious Egyptian province. He calls it an occupation and, out of spite, has invited German advisors to his court, thinking to push us out, as if that were possible. The Ottomans need British support. If we hadn’t stepped in after they lost their war with Russia eight years ago and insisted that the San Stefano peace treaty be renegotiated, the sultan would have lost a great deal more to the Russians than a few dusty Anatolian provinces. Father has been trying to convince them for years that we have only their best interests at heart. We want the Ottoman Empire intact as a buffer against Russia, always fattening on its neighbors. You remember that Queen Victoria even sent bandages to the Turkish troops when they were fighting the Russians. What more proof of friendship can the sultan need?

Bernie’s presence here has brought back memories of those lovely summers together in England, when Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace brought him to meet his British cousins. Remembering again the sights and sounds of those summers brings me closer to you as well, my dear sister. Pray keep well and give my love and all the good wishes in the world to your husband and my precious nephews. My congratulations to Richard on his promotion at the Ministry.

I shall end here. The Judas trees are in bloom outside my window in Pera. The Bosphorus glitters like the scales of a sleeping dragon. As you can see, the quiet summer has given way to great, if distressing, excitement. Our paths in life are so complex, dearest Maitlin, and cross at so many unexpected intersections. Who would have expected, when we were children playing catch-me on the lawns, that someday I would be writing to you from what the Ottomans call The Abode of Bliss? Or that Mary should find her end here? Perhaps the Orientals are right when they point out, as they continually do, that we are all in the hands of a fate written on our foreheads before we are born.

I wish you, dear sister, and your family, which is my family, a straight path through life to your own abodes of bliss.

Your loving sister,

Sybil

Michel stands inside the door to Kamil’s office, his feet slightly apart, hands loose at his sides, as if ready to take on an opposing wrestler. Kamil looks up and lays aside the file he has been frowning over. He waves Michel over to a comfortable chair.

“Two herbalists in the Egyptian Spice Bazaar sell dried tube flowers,” he reports, hunched forward in the chair, arms on his knees. “It’s not belladonna, but a related plant, Datura stramonium. The symptoms are almost the same. There’s quite a lively trade in tube flowers, unfortunately.” Michel grimaces. “In the past month, at least four people bought them, three women and an old man. There are other sources. It’s fairly common. It even grows wild outside the city walls.”

Kamil sits behind his desk, its dark, polished mahogany visible in neat avenues between stacks of letters and files. He drums his fingers on the wood.

“I had them track down two of the women,” Michel continues. “Both are midwives who use the herbs to cure bronchial troubles. The man too had a cough.”

“So this leads us nowhere.”

“There’s more. One of the midwives bought a large quantity. She sold them to several households around Chamyeri the week before the murder.”

“Anyone suspicious?”

Michel frowns. “Unfortunately not. The men checked every household and asked the neighbors. They verified that someone in each of the homes had been ill that week. That doesn’t mean someone couldn’t have taken some of the herb and used it for another purpose, but it seems unlikely. These are common village families. What contact would they have had with a British woman?”

“How was it administered?”

“We have to assume she drank it. The only other way to ingest the dried flowers is to smoke them, but that has only a mild effect and doesn’t dilate the eyes. The seeds are poisonous, but there was no sign that she died of something else before falling into the water. Perhaps it was given to her in a glass of tea. Too bad we couldn’t take a look at her stomach fluids,” he mutters.

“Where would such a woman drink tea? And with whom?”

“Not in a village. They wouldn’t even be able to communicate.”

“Chamyeri again. Both women were English governesses.” Kamil draws his fingertip along the edge of sunlight on his desk. “I wonder if anyone in Ismail Hodja’s family speaks English.” He looks up. “What about his niece?”

“Jaanan Hanoum?”

“She must have been there when Hannah Simmons’s body was found. She was a child then, of course.” Kamil’s lips tighten. “It must have been difficult for her. The young woman has had a rough time of it.” He shakes his head sympathetically.

Michel ignores Kamil’s evaluation. “Probably educated by tutors at home, like all women of that class. She had a French governess, but it’s possible she also learned English. Her father is one of those modernist social climbers.”

“He’s an official at the Foreign Ministry, I believe.”

“Yes.”

“But she lives with her uncle at Chamyeri, rather than at her father’s house.”

“Her mother went to live with her brother, the hodja, when her husband took a kuma. A modernist,” Michel adds sourly, “and a hypocrite. The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“The man is insane. Two wives.” Kamil shakes his head in disbelief. “He might as well hurl himself in front of a tram.”

They share an uneasy burst of laughter.

“When Jaanan Hanoum came of age, she moved back to the city, to her father’s house. It’s pretty isolated up there, no place for a girl looking to be married. But since her troubles this past year, she’s been staying at Chamyeri again.”

“Istanbul society can be unforgiving. Poor girl. I wonder how she’s doing.”

“She’s gone. I asked around the village yesterday. They said that three days ago Jaanan Hanoum’s maid had an accident. She slipped and fell into that pond behind the house, and almost drowned.”

“Women should learn to swim,” Kamil snaps irritably. “Just last week I heard of two seventeen-year-old girls that drowned in a shallow stream. One fell in and the other tried to save her. They panicked and pulled each other under. It’s absurd that women are kept ignorant of even the most basic survival skills.”

“Jaanan Hanoum pulled the maid out,” Michel continues, “but she lost her sight. She must have hit her head on a rock. Jaanan Hanoum is on her way to relatives in Paris, left early yesterday morning. Planning to study, apparently.”

Kamil thinks about this, flipping his beads around his hand. “I wonder if either of them knew Mary Dixon.”

“Coincidence?” suggests Michel.

“I have no faith in coincidences,” Kamil mutters.

“If they heard the news in Chamyeri about the Englishwoman’s death, maybe it was just one tragedy too many for the young woman.”

“Maybe. But I still would have liked to speak with her. Who is left up there at Chamyeri now?”

“Just her uncle Ismail Hodja, his chauffeur, the gardener, and some daily staff.”

“I can’t imagine any of them having tea with an English governess, much less drugging and killing her.” Kamil shakes his head. “What else is near Chamyeri?”

Michel stands and paces the room, thinking. The folds of his robe tangle his muscular legs like tethers on a horse. He stops suddenly.

“I wonder.”

“What?”

“The sea hamam. It’s below Emirgan, just north of Chamyeri.”