Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

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?”