Ancient Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (13 page)

“Do all women in Egypt wear those black robes and veils, Harold?”

“I believe so, Daisy. Egypt is a Moslem country, you know, and they like to keep their women under wraps.”

“But Turkey is, too, isn’t it? And the women in Constantinople at least wore colorful robes.”

Harold shrugged. “I don’t have any idea how the cultures of either country work.”

“Golly, I’ll feel sort of out of place in my lightweight clothes.”

“No, you won’t. There will be gobs of tourists to keep you company.”

“In August?”

Harold frowned at me. “Very well, I guess August wasn’t the most appropriate time to visit Egypt. Still, I want to see you on a camel. After we do that, we can go back to England early if it’s too hot to carry on in Egypt.”

“I don’t want to spoil your trip, Harold.” By that time I’d begun to feel guilty for bringing up the subject of heat. I was always feeling guilty about something or other in those days.

“You won’t be spoiling my trip,” Harold said upon a sigh. “If anything spoils my trip, it’ll be the damned weather, and that’s not your fault.”

“Well, I hope it cools off a little. Maybe it will be cool on the Nile?”

“Maybe.”

The notion of taking another boat, this one up the Nile, made my stomach feel queasy, but I didn’t let on.

And then, at long last, we got to Cairo.

Chapter Eleven

Wow, talk about your teeming masses! I’ve never seen so many people as there were at that dingy little train station in Cairo. And hot? Merciful heaven, but it was hot in Cairo. I feared for the length of our stay there. Fortunately for us, one of the Cook’s people was there to meet us and he swept us off to the grand and glorious (that’s what Harold called it) Shepheards Hotel, which had been a haven for the wealthy tourist for decades. After we got there, I had to agree with his assessment of the place.

“The tour will begin the day after tomorrow,” our Cook’s guide told us, seemingly unaffected by the blistering heat, perhaps because his robe and turban were blindingly white. “Bright and early.”

Harold checked us in to the hotel, and much to my surprise a bundle of letters awaited me. Naturally I’d been writing to my family practically every day from the moment our journey had begun, but I hadn’t expected anyone to write back, mainly because I’d be on the move. I perked up considerably when I clutched the small stack of envelopes.

“Your family loves you, Daisy,” said Harold. “I think it’s grand that they all care so much.”

But my attention had been diverted by the return address on one particular envelope. Why in the name of heaven would Sam Rotondo be writing me?

“Daisy? Are you still with me? Are you feeling faint from the heat?”

“What? Oh. I’m sorry, Harold. I was just . . . surprised by this letter. It’s from Sam.”

Harold’s eyebrows rose and waggled, and he looked like a villain out of an old-time melodrama. “Aha. Is there dirty work afoot? Does he want you to solve a crime?”

I gave him a good frown. “Nuts. Sam’s always made pains to keep me out of the investigations he’s worked on.”

“Not always,” said Harold in a voice as dry as the weather.

“Well, yes, but that was only once.” And both Harold and I had been arrested for our efforts. Oh, very well, to be completely honest, we’d been picked up in a raid on a speakeasy—where I had not gone to drink and carouse but rather to conduct a séance—and that’s what had precipitated my involvement in the case in question.

“Let’s go to our rooms. I’m sure they have fans in the rooms. We’ve got first-class accommodations, according to my travel agent.”

“Good idea.”

“I’ll come to your door at fiveish, and we can take tea on the famous balcony of Shepheards, which overlooks the busy streets of Cairo. Maybe we can locate a fakir charming a cobra or something.”

“I thought fakirs with cobras lived in India.”

“They’re got ‘em here, too. Mother told me all about them.”

“My goodness.” My provincial mind could hardly make heads or tails of the sights I’d already seen, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for more of them. Yet here I was, poised for further exotica whether I was ready or not. But first I wanted to read Sam’s letter. And the rest of them, too, of course. It’s only that I’d expected communications from my mother, father, aunt, sister, brother and nieces, friends, etc. I hadn’t expected to hear from Sam until I got home to Pasadena in another month or two. Or three.

The first thing I did once I’d been seen to my room and my things had been disposed of, not by me but by a servant, was arrange my letters. By the way, I don’t think I’d ever get used to being waited on hand and foot. I’d make a lousy queen.

I had intended to read the letters from my family first, but discovered myself tearing open Sam’s missive, my curiosity enormous. It read as follows:

Dear Daisy,

I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. I keep remembering Billy telling me to keep an eye on you, and I can’t do that now that you’re thousands of miles away in Egypt. But I wanted you to know that you’re in my thoughts, and I’m keeping an eye on the rest of your family while you’re away.

Enjoy yourself. Please send me a postcard from Egypt.

Respectfully,

Sam (Rotondo)

Talk about your basic cases of astonishment! He hadn’t written a single, solitary scolding word. To tell you the truth, I was touched, and I itched to take up pen and paper and write him back instantly. However, I read through the rest of the missives like the dutiful kinswoman and friend I was:

Ma was fine.

Pa was fine.

Aunt Vi was fine.

My sister Daphne, her husband Daniel, and their two little girls were fine.

My brother Walter and his wife Jeanette were fine.

Mrs. Pinkerton was fine, and gushed all over the paper about how wonderful I was. I’d have taken her words more to heart if I didn’t know I was a fake who’d been falsely taking money from her for years and years. Not that she didn’t want to be taken advantage of. But I think we’ve already covered the Pinkerton situation.

Even Johnny and Flossie Buckingham were fine.

So why didn’t I have a mad desire to write all of them back, but only Sam?

Fortunately, before I could come up with a satisfactory answer to my question, Harold knocked on my door. “Time for tea, Daisy!” he called out cheerily.

“On my way,” said I, wondering if I should have changed my clothes. The dress I wore, the same sleeveless gray one I’d worn on the train, was kind of rumpled. Maybe Shepheards frowned upon rumpled people. Oh, well.

I opened the door and asked, “Do I have to change clothes to take tea on the balcony?”

Eyeing me up and down with no particular relish, Harold said, “I wouldn’t have hurt you to have changed into something a little less dismal, but I know you’re determined to carry out this mourning thing until you’ve wrung the last of its discomfort from it.”

“Harold!”

“Sorry, Daisy. It’s just that I prefer you in brighter colors.”

“Yeah, well let something happen to Del and then tell me how bright you feel and for how long, Harold Kincaid.”

“You have my profound apologies, Daisy. Would you like me to grovel at your feet?”

I smacked him on the arm and said, “Let’s go get some of this tea about which you speak and see if we can find ourselves a fakir. Other than me, of course, but I’m another kind of faker.” I grabbed a straw hat on my way out, in case hats were de rigueur at Shepheards.

And, boy, did we! Find fakirs, I mean. There were also were dozens, if not hundreds, of dirty little children begging for money—or “baksheesh,” as it’s called there—and innumerable Egyptian guides everywhere, eager to rent rides to tourists on donkeys or camels. I eyed the camels with speculation. They were the dromedary variety. I remembered that from a lecture Billy had given us at the dinner table once, in which he’d explained the differences between dromedary and Bactrian camels. I never thought I’d get to ride on either type, and I still wasn’t altogether sure I wanted to. Those things were tall and, from what Billy had read in the National Geographic, they weren’t the best-tempered of beasts.

“I love the blankets they have on the camels, Harold,” I said as a very proper waiter whose dark skin proclaimed him some type of native specimen pulled out my chair for me. “Look at how beautifully they’re woven and in such intricate patterns, too. The colors are gorgeous.”

“They probably all smell like camel,” said Harold, destroying any romantic thoughts I’d begun to harbor for camels, which, granted, were few at that point.

Although it was only five or so in the afternoon, the heat still bore down on us in waves, making me glad for the umbrella on our table and for the straw hat whose ribbons I had tied under my chin. Harold sported a pith helmet. I didn’t tell him so, but he looked kind of silly in his “tourist” uniform, which consisted of a tailored white linen suit and that pith helmet. As soon as we sat and were under the shade of the umbrella, he shucked the helmet, probably because it had made his head sweat. I could tell, because his thin hair was plastered to his head.

“I don’t know how much of this heat I can take, Daisy,” he said. “I’m sorry I dragged you all the way out here.”

Shrugging, I said, “It gets this hot in Pasadena. Sometimes.”

“Not very bloody often.”

“True, but as long as we’re here, we might as well take in a pyramid and the sphinx and stuff like that.” I hoped I wouldn’t cry when I looked at all the amazing Egyptian monuments Billy had told me about. He’d been fascinated by Egypt, probably because so many astounding things were being discovered there around that time.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Howard, wiping his face with his handkerchief.

A waiter came over, and I let Harold order for the both of us, since he was accustomed to giving orders to waiters and I wasn’t. When the “tea” arrived, I was amazed that, along with the beverage, a platter containing about a thousand little tiny sandwiches and cakes accompanied it.

“Egypt is still a British protectorate,” Harold explained. “So I asked for a proper English tea.”

“English people eat all this for tea? What do they have for dinner and how do they fit it in on top of this?”

Pouring out a cup of steaming tea for me—I’d have preferred cold lemonade, but I didn’t want to make a fuss—he said, “This meal would be considered dinner for the lower orders of the British Empire, my dear.”

“You mean people like me?”

He nodded. “Indeed. It’s only the very wealthy who can afford to have this kind of tea in the afternoon. Then they go to their theaters, balls and parties and eat supper at midnight or so.”

“Good Lord, really?”

“Well, to tell the truth, I think the custom is fading out, but yes. That’s the way it used to be.”

“So the people who do all the work have sandwiches and cakes and tea for dinner?”

“Not exactly. They eat their final meal of the day then, but they still call it having tea.”

“How long are we going to stay in England on our way back home? Maybe I’d better study up on the language and culture. It sounds more complicated than Egypt.”

With a laugh, Harold urged me to try one of the tiny sandwiches, all of which had their crusts removed, naturally. “Try one of the cucumber sandwiches. They’re good.”

“If you say so.” I peered at the tray Harold held out to me, trying to find myself a cucumber sandwich. I wasn’t hungry, but I did want to please Harold, who had gone to a whole lot of trouble for me. At the risk of being rude, I pointed at a sandwich. “Is that a cucumber sandwich?”

“How the devil should I know? Take a bite out of it and you tell me.”

So I did. And it was. A cucumber sandwich, I mean. It wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t heavy, and I appreciated that aspect of it particularly.

“Oh, look,” said Harold. “There are tomato sandwiches, too.”

“Don’t they put anything on them but tomatoes? Heck, Aunt Vi would combine the ingredients and give us tuna-fish with cucumbers and tomatoes both on the bread.”

“Different cuisines, sweetie.”

“I guess so.”

After tea, which didn’t last very long, since I couldn’t eat more than a bite of two of the sandwiches and didn’t want any of the cakes, Harold and I decided to stroll across the street to see the gardens. Billy had told me about the gardens, too, and my heart hurt when I thought I should be with him on this trip and not Harold. But if Billy had lived, we never could have afforded to visit Egypt, and even if we’d come into a pile of money, Billy’s health wouldn’t have allowed him to take the trip, so it didn’t make much difference. Why was life so difficult? You needn’t attempt to answer that question. It was rhetorical.

The aroma of the roses and other flowers was very pleasant, and I again wished Billy could have been with me. Stupid thing to wish for, but there you go. After we’d wandered about a bit, Harold said, “Well, it’s a nice garden, but it’s too damned hot out here. I say we head for the hotel and rest until dinnertime.”