‘What happened then?’
‘We went for coffee first of all – with the baby of course. We enjoyed each other’s company . . .’
‘You paid?’ İkmen asked. ‘For the coffee, cake . . .’
‘Yes, but . . .’ She pursed her lips and then said, ‘It wasn’t just about money. There were touches, kisses, freely given . . . Not that it wasn’t innocent, you understand. We were friends. But then when she started to open up about her husband, things changed. I could see how desperate she was to get away from him. I’d already, of course, planned to leave Peter, with Yaşar. But when I discovered – I found his papers for it in his bedroom – that my carpet dealer had bought that other apartment, I felt used and cheap. He could only have another secret apartment for one reason and that was so that he could entertain other women.’
‘But he entertained other women all the time,’ İkmen said. ‘You told me so yourself.’
‘Not at my expense!’ Matilda Melly responded passionately. ‘The money that Yaşar had got for the carpet had been Peter’s and it was meant to be for us – Yaşar and myself. Not for a horde of Bulgarian tarts!’
In the face of such obviously skewed morality, İkmen could only smile and encourage her on with her story. İskender’s periodic sniffs of disgust were, İkmen felt, quite lost on Mrs Matilda Melly.
‘I told Handan and she was very sympathetic. We both agreed that we’d both like to be shot, as it were, of all the men in our lives. It wasn’t just her idea, it was mine too. Get rid of them all!’
‘Including Mrs Ergin’s child?’
‘The idea was that once, well, once everything was done, we would disappear. We’d go off to England first and then decide what we were going to do from then on.’
‘Except that Mrs Ergin has told us that she intended to drop you once in England,’ İskender interjected.
Matilda Melly put her head down as if she were about to cry and then said, ‘That may be what she
says
. If she’s saying that and you’re not just making it all up . . .’
‘We are not making anything up,’ İkmen said. ‘You have my word.’
‘Look, you can browbeat me as much as you like, but I will not talk about who did what and who is and is not guilty!’ Matilda Melly cried.
‘You said earlier that Handan had killed Yaşar Uzun and that you were innocent.’
‘I was shocked, upset. I, I didn’t know what I was doing! Suffice to say, Yaşar Uzun died – call it vengeance, if you will – and Abdullah Ergin ended up suspected of murder. Handan took my passport because we didn’t want to be followed. She made for Bulgaria because she knew, because her husband had told her, that it was an easy place in which to buy dodgy passports. The idea was that she would ditch my passport when she got there and buy a new one in another name.’
‘But it did not prove so easy, did it?’ İkmen said. ‘The Bulgarians have become more vigilant in recent times. And so she continued her journey on your passport and just hoped not to get caught.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you?’
‘Well, as you know, I obtained a duplicate passport from . . .’
‘No, Mrs Melly,’ İkmen said. ‘You left your friends the Monroes yesterday, came into the city and . . . Well, you disappeared. We searched the records of hundreds of hotels and pansiyons.’
‘You didn’t search the beds of every sex-starved gigolo in Sultanahmet though, did you?’ she replied.
‘No.’ In spite of himself as well as the seriousness of the subject matter, İkmen smiled. ‘No, we didn’t do that,’ he said. ‘How very resourceful of you, Mrs Melly.’
She ignored him. ‘And you know the rest,’ she said. ‘You pulled me up at the airport before I could even see the plane that would carry me back to Handan.’
‘Who was nevertheless already in custody in Bulgaria,’ İkmen said. ‘But Mrs Melly, Mrs Ergin, as I have told you, says that you killed Yaşar Uzun. She says it was all your idea, that she was just an innocent pawn in your twisted sexual game with her . . .’
‘Yes, you’ve told me that already,’ the Englishwoman replied. ‘And I have told you that I didn’t do it.’
‘But who are we to believe? You’re saying that Mrs Ergin murdered Yaşar Uzun?’
‘No.’
İkmen frowned. ‘Then what are you saying, Mrs Melly?’
‘Nothing.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not saying I did it, I’m not saying Handan did it. I’m not saying anything.’
‘Yes, but Mrs Melly,’ İkmen said, ‘Mrs Ergin has dropped you from a very big height. She cares nothing for you!’
‘I don’t care. I care for her.’
‘You were quick to condemn her initially,’ İkmen said.
‘I was afraid. My lawyer made me do it! Advised me . . .’
‘Maybe. But with or without your testimony we will convict in the end,’ İkmen continued. ‘By your own admission you and Mrs Ergin wanted to be free of the men in your life. Yaşar Uzun hurt you. Abdullah Ergin’s wife had access to her husband’s gun. No one can provide you with a believable alibi for the night of Uzun’s death. Then there is forensic evidence from your home, which will be, I think, significant. I could go on . . .’
‘I cannot say anything about Handan,’ Matilda Melly said. ‘I won’t.’
‘Even though she has begged us to make you out as the villain in this piece?’ İkmen asked.
Matilda Melly laughed. ‘Even if that were true, yes,’ she said.
İkmen sighed. ‘Then ultimately, Mrs Melly, I can see only a prison sentence, a long one, for you.’
‘And for Handan?’ Her face was taut with tension now. Maybe at last she had recognised the truly dreadful pit she had dug for herself.
‘Yes,’ he said as he rose stiffly from the table. It had been a very long day and there seemed to be little more to be gained from this woman at this time. ‘Most certainly.’
Metin İskender rose too.
‘In the same prison?’ Matilda Melly asked.
And then he saw why she was so anxious and he said, ‘Not if I have any control over it, no, Mrs Melly. Make no mistake, it is our job to punish you, not to help you realise your fantasies.’ He moved back towards the table and said, ‘You know that I pity you, Mrs Melly. Love is one thing, but what Mrs Ergin offered you was only illusory and you just cannot see it.’
And then he asked the constable on duty at the door to open up and let everyone but Matilda Melly out.
Chapter 19
When he arrived at the rather funky shoe shop Inspector Süleyman had told him to go to on Teşvikiye Caddesi, Lee Roberts was disconcerted to see that the policeman was not already waiting for him. Instead, there was a tall, elderly woman with very sharp cheekbones and two old men; one thin and very pale, the other red-cheeked and much meatier, plus a shabby, tired-looking middle-aged man who carried a large blue hold-all. It was he who, on seeing Roberts, smiled and extended his hand first. ‘Mr Roberts, we meet at last!’ he said as he took Lee’s warm hand in his cold one. ‘I am Inspector Çetin İkmen. My colleague Inspector Süleyman was with you yesterday.’
‘Yes.’ This İkmen, Lee felt, spoke even better English than Süleyman. ‘Yes, he was very kind. He phoned and told me to come here. Where is he?’
‘Ah, well,’ İkmen said. ‘I am afraid that for reasons that will become obvious, Inspector Süleyman cannot be with us today. However, we are fortunate to have with us his father, his uncle and his aunt.’
Lee, although bemused, smiled as İkmen introduced him to the three elderly people lined up in front of a shop window full of lime-green trainers and zebra-skin boots.
‘Mr Lee Roberts,’ the policeman said, ‘this is Beyazıt Süleyman Efendi, my colleague’s uncle, his aunt Esma Hanım Efendi and the Inspector’s father, Muhammed Süleyman Efendi.’
As the up-market traffic of Nişantaşı thundered by, Lee shook hands with each of them in turn while İkmen explained, ‘You may have noticed, Mr Roberts, that each of these people is given the designation “efendi”.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, to explain, this is or rather was, for it is little used today, a title given to a person of rank. Inspector Süleyman’s family are related to our Ottoman sultans and so would have been, in the old days, princes and princesses,’ İkmen continued. ‘We think, sir, that it is possible the Princess Gözde your grandfather gave the Lawrence carpet to might have been Princess Gözde Süleyman, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman’s great-aunt.’
‘Is that why he isn’t here?’ Lee asked.
‘In his position that would not be ethical,’ Muhammed Süleyman said with a smile.
‘Which is why I am here instead,’ İkmen said. ‘As an independent witness to what I am sure we all hope will be a productive meeting. Now, Mr Roberts, Beyazıt Efendi and Esma Hanım do not speak English very well and so Muhammed Efendi and myself will translate.’
Lee looked at the smiling meaty old man and the dour-looking stick-like woman with some nervousness. He wasn’t used to aristocrats. In his own country such people were generally considered to be quite eccentric. ‘Right.’
‘So,’ İkmen spread his arms wide in order to encompass the area around him, ‘if you are wondering why we are here it is because this was where the entrance to the Princess Gözde’s mansion once stood. Above this shoe shop are several apartments that share a communal garden around the back of the block. We are now going to go there to take some tea.’
Then without another word to either the old people or the owner of the shoe shop he now led them through, İkmen made his way past the very many funky shoes and out into a large grassy space. Some chairs and a table laid with tea glasses, a samovar and sugar bowl had been set in the middle of the lawn beside what appeared to be a garden pond. However, as they moved closer to the table, it became apparent that the pond, as well as looking rather old, was also very large in size. More of a small lake than a pond.
‘The wife of the owner of the shoe shop has provided tea for us,’ İkmen explained as he ushered Lee to one of the metal garden seats. ‘She remembers this area when the great and the good still lived here.’
‘Inspector İkmen, I am confused,’ Lee said as he sat.
Muhammed Süleyman, who came to sit stiffly down beside him, smiled. ‘It is my sister, Esma, who really knew the Princess Gözde,’ he said. ‘My son, Mehmet, spoke to her for many hours last night. We have many things to show you, Mr Roberts. Much to discuss.’
‘This pond you see here is all that now remains of the palace of the Princess Gözde,’ İkmen said as he first poured out tea and then offered sugar to the others at the table. ‘Like so many of the old palaces of Nişantaşı, it burned down in the 1960s. Now, Mr Roberts, what I am going to show you are some photographs that Esma Hanım has of the house that was once here and of her Aunt Gözde.’
He spoke briefly in Turkish to the old woman who then placed three photographs in front of the Englishman. Taking his own photograph of the Lawrence carpet with the palace in the background out of his pocket, Lee looked at all four prints with a critical eye. Although he didn’t really think that this strange collection of old aristocrats, not to mention İkmen who was apparently quite famous in Turkey, were out to dupe him, he knew that he had to be careful. After all, he wanted to do the right thing by his grandfather’s memory and, if he could, make sure that the carpet reached the people that it should. Certainly the Gothic-style palace in his photograph and the two shots of the Princess Gözde’s residence were very similar.
As Lee looked at the photographs, Muhammed Süleyman said, ‘My aunt was betrothed to a young man in 1916. My sister, who knew our aunt far better than I, says that his name was İsmail Nuri Paşa and he was the grandson of one of the Sultan Reşad’s ministers. Unusually for those days, the young people knew each other and they were in love. But in 1917 İsmail Nuri went to fight for his country and was sent to Arabia with Djemal Paşa’s 4th army. He never came back and the Princess Gözde withered away in her house until she died in 1959.’
Lee looked down at the other two pictures the old woman had set in front of him. One was of a young woman, the bottom of whose face was covered by a gauzy veil. Small and fair, if the lightness of what could be seen of her hair was anything to go by, she sat in a chair beside a table upon which rested a large wooden box. The same ornately carved box appeared in the other photograph too. There an older version of the young woman, unveiled now, clutched the box to her chest as if her life depended upon it. Granddad Victor had always said that the Princess Gözde was a fair-skinned, light-haired lady.
‘My sister says that the Princess Gözde always had that box with her,’ Muhammed Süleyman said.
‘Did she ever see what was inside the box?’ Lee asked.
‘Sadly no,’ the old man replied. ‘All my sister was ever told was that it was something from the Princess Gözde’s lost fiancé. The Ministry of War had told her the train he had been travelling on in Arabia had been blown up. She had, she said, just this one thing left of him. How she came by it, the Princess Gözde never did say. But my sister says that it was in her hands when she died.’
‘The police, they come to house,’ Esma Süleyman explained. ‘Auntie is dead for many days. The box is with her.’
İkmen, still standing, took something out of the blue hold-all he had been carrying. ‘We think that this is what remains of the box, Mr Roberts,’ he said as he handed Lee a large piece of carved wood. ‘When we found the carpet in the wreck of the dealer’s car, the box that had held it had been smashed. But this is one of the end pieces. Compare it.’
Although Inspector Süleyman had told him about the box, Lee hadn’t actually seen what remained of it until that moment. Lee took the piece of wood from İkmen’s hands and placed it on the table beside the photographs he was still studying. The carvings on it looked just like those in the photographs. He took a sip from his tea glass and saw that İkmen was laying something down on the grass beside him.
‘None of these people here claim to have ever seen what was in the Princess Gözde’s box. There was a lock on the lid which apparently was never unclasped,’ the policeman said as he looked down at what he had just put on to the ground with a grunt. ‘And so this carpet, Mr Roberts, may or may not have been inside.’