Death Sets Sail Read online

  ‘No,’ I said, sticking out my tongue at her, even though I knew very well that, if anyone could look good in a false beard, it would be the Honourable Daisy Wells.

  ‘Yes,’ said Amina from the row in front of us, turning back to grin at Daisy, who went red and ducked her head back down to her book.

  ‘Of course, it is the pharaohs you’re most interested in seeing,’ I said to Daisy later.

  ‘Of course,’ said Daisy, straight-faced. ‘Why else would we be going?’

  That gave me an idea of my own. During our English lesson a few days later, I folded a piece of paper inside my English composition book, swapped my usual pencil for a rather less usual one that I kept in the bottom of my school bag, and began to scribble something that certainly was not the essay on Spenser that Miss Dodgson had asked for.

  Dear Alexander, I wrote, my heart beating and the letters fading to nothing almost as soon as they left my pen.

  I finished it before I could stop to think what I was doing. Those last two words – and you – had felt wildly daring in my head, but on paper they only looked vaguely embarrassing, like something an overeager shrimp would write. But, all the same, I turned the letter over as quickly as I could, swapped back to my usual pencil and wrote,

  I folded the letter up and addressed it to Alexander Arcady, Weston School. It was a way of writing to each other that Alexander and I had made up years ago, after our first case together on the Orient Express, and had been using ever since.

  I slipped it into the nearest postbox on our way up to House from school that evening, while Daisy was studiously ignoring Amina and Clementine as they giggled together, and then it was too late to worry about it.

  A week later, I got a postcard of the front of the British Museum.

  That x lifted me like a kite through endless rainy Games lessons, through Kitty and Beanie falling out with each other, and Lavinia with everyone, through Prayers and French and Deportment. I tried very hard not to think of it too much, and then could not think of anything else.

  We really were going to Egypt. I suddenly found I was almost too excited to breathe.

  4

  But somehow I had not considered the reality of Egypt before I stepped off the aeroplane into the Cairo heat. I was too caught up in saying goodbye to Kitty, Beanie and Lavinia, in my guilt at leaving them and the even guiltier thrill I had that I was leaving our troubles behind, for a few weeks at least.

  I was also caught up in the shock of my first aeroplane flight. It had all seemed unimaginably glamorous when the three of us waved goodbye to Matron and climbed up into the airliner at Southampton – the stewardesses perfectly dressed and beaming, the seats comfortable and neatly upholstered. Daisy leaned back in her seat and sighed happily. ‘It’s just like Death in the Clouds,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, imagine if there was a murder, now, and we solved it before we even came back down to earth!’

  ‘Not even Poirot could do that,’ I said, rolling my eyes and grinning at her.

  ‘We are far better than that old man!’ said Daisy with a sniff. ‘Why, he didn’t solve his first case until he was ancient – and anyway we’re real and he’s not, and that gives us the edge.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Amina curiously.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Daisy. ‘Never mind.’

  The plane, which had been puttering along the tarmac, suddenly jerked forward and gave a howl that slid upwards into the most body-shaking, screaming whine. I reached out and clung to Daisy’s hand, gasping, as we shook ourselves and shot up into the air. It was not at all like a bird taking off, I thought, as the plane bounced on nothing at all and my stomach bounced with it.

  ‘I think I hate flying almost as much as boats,’ I said through chattering teeth, squeezing my eyes shut. Amina threw her head back and laughed.

  ‘Nonsense, Watson,’ said Daisy, craning over me. ‘Oh, look how small everything is! Just as though we were giants. I think I could reach down and pick that house up. It’s like playing dolls with the world.’

  I ought not to have been surprised that Daisy would enjoy the view so much, but I could only think how much I disliked it. The air smelled wrong, so high up, and my ears popped.

  ‘See here,’ said Daisy, ‘if you’re not going to look out of the window, can we swap seats?’

  She was so on top of the world that she forgot to be cool with Amina and chattered with her all the way until we touched down in Marseilles – and that was when I truly understood the horror that was ahead of me. Up and down we bumped – Marseilles, Rome, Brindisi, Athens (where we stayed at a beautiful hotel owned by Amina’s father’s friend and Daisy pretended to be an American heiress), Alexandria (the Mediterranean below us, so small after we had heard so much about it in Latin lessons) and finally, bone-joltingly, down into Cairo.

  I remembered the moment we had steamed into Hong Kong, in the spring, and realized at last how odd that must have felt for Daisy. Now it was my turn to arrive in a strange city, feeling as though I was swimming with a mile of dark sea below me. Cairo was foreign to me, even more foreign than London. But then I straightened my spine and reminded myself that, if I had made England feel like home, I could do the same with Egypt. I might feel nervous inside, but I would not let that show. I was a different Hazel Wong now.

  Then Amina went rushing through the crowds, shrieking with joy, and threw herself on a man I recognized.

  ‘Manners, habibti!’ said Mr El Maghrabi – but I could tell he did not really mind. He beamed at his daughter, and Amina beamed back.

  ‘Sorry, Baba!’ she said. ‘Baba, you remember Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong.’

  ‘Welcome to Cairo!’ said Mr El Maghrabi, shaking our hands. ‘We are so glad to have you as our guests after what you did for us this summer. Insha’Allah, you will have a wonderful stay here. You are our guests, and anything you need you must simply ask for. You will be cared for by Miss Beauvais – Miss Beauvais! Over here!’

  He gestured to a small European woman being buffeted by the throng of travellers. She had thinning brown hair and a regretful-looking face. When she saw Amina, her expression dropped even further into something very like alarm.

  ‘This is Miss Beauvais. She is Amina’s governess, and Amina is going to be very good to her this holiday – aren’t you, Amoona?’

  ‘Oh yes, Baba,’ said Amina, and she turned her big, wicked grin on him, and then on Miss Beauvais, who took a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it to her brow. ‘Now where shall we go first?’

  That was the beginning of several days spent whirling round Cairo, drinking in the sights of it, the smells of it. I was delighted to realize that, in the furious pace of the traffic, the street-food smells rising, the shouts of people who either hated each other or were best friends, the children playing and the scrawny street dogs barking in the twisty, dusty backstreets, Cairo was an echo of Hong Kong. But, where Hong Kong’s heat is wet, so the air sits heavy and gorgeous on your skin, Egypt’s heat is as dry as sand and bones. Cairo’s buildings are all white and yellow and pink, boxes on boxes, dry bricks crumbling to parched mud, stacked balconies with rows of fat little railings, slim, graceful minarets rising behind them. The sky was blue above us, the palm trees were dusty-leaved, the air sang with prayers and voices I could not understand, and my tongue was heavy with spices I did not know. It was like Hong Kong, but also nothing like it at all, I thought.

  And always, on the horizon, there was the astonishment of the Pyramids.

  ‘Imagine!’ said Daisy to me. ‘I never thought they’d be just there. It’s like going into a field and seeing a whale next to a herd of cows.’

  It was not quite the analogy I would have used, but I agreed with her. The Pyramids had always been stories in my head – like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – and suddenly there were those stories in the vista at the bottom of a street. It made me feel as though the whole of Egypt could not possibly be quite real.

  But then I watched Amina scrambling out of
our moving car to buy us sugar-cane juice from a street vendor, Miss Beauvais’ cries of despair quite ignored, and I saw that I was not thinking properly. This was her ordinary. She took us to the Turf Club (for this Miss Beauvais had to reluctantly pretend to be the mistress, and Amina her servant, for no Egyptians are supposed to be allowed to use the club), and we had tea beside the tennis courts, our white linen table shaded by the trees and groaning with fruit meringues, chocolate tortes, spiced gateaux and creamy pastries. Amina sneaked bites of cake when none of the other members were looking, and shook with suppressed giggles. Miss Beauvais lay back in her chair and ignored us wanly.

  ‘I make her do this quite a lot,’ whispered Amina to us. ‘Miss Beauvais never forbids me anything. She looked after my big sisters as well, and so her spirit is quite broken by now. She’s never any trouble!’

  ‘But why would you want to come here, when Egyptians aren’t welcome?’ I asked, glancing around.

  Amina snorted. ‘That’s exactly why, Hazel – because I’m not supposed to be here! This is my home, after all. Why should the Europeans have all the nice things?’

  We went to the Egyptian Museum (blessedly cool stone walls after the daze and heat of the Cairo streets) and pressed our noses wonderingly against the glass cases that held all the glow and gold of Tutankhamun. I stared and stared at the boy king’s mask, trying to see the real person he had been underneath all the glamour. He had only been a few years older than us when he had died, after all. Did he like being king, or did it weigh him down?

  Daisy, of course, was much more interested in looking at the cases full of unwrapped mummies. She stood in front of them, her eyes wide with curiosity. I tried to stand next to her, to see what she saw, but my eyes began to smart with sympathy. The mummies looked undressed, so sad and small. I did not think they belonged where people could stare at them.

  ‘Poor things!’ I said to Daisy and Amina.

  ‘Oh, shush, Hazel! It’s science!’ said Daisy, but Amina nodded at me.

  ‘I think so too,’ she said. ‘It’s not how they wanted to be remembered, is it? They were real people, not decorations. Shown off like this, everyone thinks they own the pharaohs – there are even some dreadfully stupid foreigners who are always going round Cairo saying they’re the reincarnation of them.’

  ‘Yes, but they are remembered!’ said Daisy. ‘That’s the most important thing.’

  ‘Oh, do you think so?’ asked Amina. ‘I’m not sure I care whether anyone remembers me when I’m dead.’

  ‘You have no ambition!’ said Daisy. ‘I’m never going to die, of course, but if I do I’m going to be remembered. Of course I am.’

  That evening, once the sun had gone down, Amina stole a plate of cakes from the dining room and dragged us up onto the gorgeously tiled and gold-painted roof of her enormous house overlooking the Nile, giggling and shushing us. Out of her pockets she pulled a handful of brightly coloured rockets and, while I gasped, she set them up in a line and lit them. Trails of light spat into the sky, and Amina and Daisy stood on the roof edge, dancing and throwing handfuls of round firecrackers that cracked and popped noisily. I stood watching the lights in front of my eyes and the glitter of the river below.

  Egypt, I thought, was wonderful.

  5

  The following evening, my father and sisters’ train reached Cairo. We went to meet them at the hotel they would be staying at. Before they arrived, I felt mixed up when I thought about it, thrilled and nervous and sick all at once. They were home to me, but the last time I had been home, the last time I had seen them, was in Hong Kong, in circumstances I still hated to think of. And there was something else too: since Hong Kong, Daisy and I had solved three more murders. Would my father be cross with me for having been caught up in them too? He had forgiven me for the trust I had broken to solve the Hong Kong case, but, all the same, I knew he did not like the thought of me mixed up in mysteries.

  I was worrying about all of this as we stood in the glittering gold lobby, guests swirling about us in pools and eddies, waves of conversation rushing over us. I looked around and saw us reflected in mirror on mirror, looking rather small and shabby (or at least I was) next to the velvet and marble and shine.

  Then I was brought back to myself sharply when Daisy nudged me hard in the ribs with her elbow.

  ‘Ow!’ I cried. ‘Daisy!’

  ‘Don’t make a fuss, Hazel! I hardly touched you. Look, over there!’

  I turned where she was pointing, my heart speeding up for a moment in case she had seen my father. But the people she was gesturing at were a group of European men and women, wearing the sort of evening clothes and expressions of scorn and embarrassment that told me they were most likely English people on holiday.

  I stared curiously, wondering why on earth Daisy had picked them out. One of the women, a tall, bony old lady with a pointed nose, was shouting crossly at a porter. The porter raised his hands in apology.

  ‘Hazel,’ said Daisy. ‘Don’t you know who those people are?’

  ‘They’re English,’ I said. ‘But other than that—’

  ‘Hazel, you never read the papers! This is a dreadful failing in you – I’ve told you plenty of times before. They’re—’

  ‘They’re the Breath of Life Society,’ said Amina unexpectedly. I looked at her and saw that she was frowning angrily. ‘Back again! They’re the people I was talking about!’

  ‘What do you mean, again?’ I asked. ‘Who are they? How do you know them?’

  ‘They think they’re ancient Egyptians,’ Amina said, just as Daisy said, ‘They’re the most fantastic cult.’

  Amina and Daisy eyed each other, and then Daisy said, ‘Oh, go on then, tell her.’

  ‘I almost don’t want to,’ said Amina. ‘They’re awful. Mama and Baba hate them. They come to Cairo every year and it’s worse each time. They stand on street corners, giving speeches about how they’re the pharaohs, brought back to life, and we all ought to join their society and worship them. Of course, they can’t explain why the pharaohs would come back as English people instead of Egyptians, and so we all ignore them, but quite a lot of Europeans living in Cairo have joined up. Europeans think that ancient Egypt is theirs, after all, so they like what the Breath of Life says.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Daisy put in. ‘They’ve pots of money. The more you donate, the more likely the Breath of Life is to say that you were a king or queen in a previous life, and that’s what everyone wants.’

  ‘Everyone?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I was a queen in a previous life,’ said Daisy. ‘That’s quite obvious. But, if I wanted the Breath of Life to tell me so, I’d have to pay them thousands and thousands of pounds. Those people there are the most important members of the society, and so of course they’re all reincarnations of Tutankhamun and Cleopatra and so on. The society’s led by a lady called Mrs Theodora Miller and, according to her, she’s the reincarnation of Hatshepsut, and the most powerful person in the universe.’

  ‘Which is a lie!’ put in Amina. Her face was flushed with annoyance – I saw how it upset her. ‘They’ve got everything wrong – that isn’t what the ancient Egyptians believed at all.’

  ‘Which one is Theodora Miller?’ I asked curiously, staring at the Breath of Life members. They each looked like any English lady I might pass on the streets of Deepdean.

  ‘That little dumpy one,’ said Daisy, nodding with her chin at a small, round, middle-aged woman with sandy hair who was standing next to the tall, bony lady. I blinked at her. She did not look much like the queen of anything.

  But then the porter said something, ducking his head nervously, and Theodora Miller suddenly drew herself up, bosom heaving with rage.

  ‘That is NOT good enough! Don’t you know who I am, man?’ she bellowed, her voice carrying through the lobby – and I saw that appearances might be deceiving. This woman, small as she was, was fierce and frightening. I was fascinated.

  And at that moment, just as I had finally fo
rgotten all about my family, the doors to the hotel lobby were pulled open by the doormen and my littlest sister, May, dashed inside, skidding on the polished marble floor and wheeling her arms with excitement.

  The Breath of Life would have to wait.

  ‘BIG SISTER!’ May screamed, and she skittered round several alarmed hotel guests in evening dress to throw herself at me and cling ecstatically to my waist. I leaned down to hug her – she smelled of travelling and dirt and May, which is bright, a little like oranges – and she turned her face up to mine and yelled, ‘I’m SIX now, Big Sister! SIX!’

  ‘You’re so big, Monkey,’ I said to her, smiling.

  ‘Rose and Father and Pik An are coming, only they’re SLOW,’ said May. ‘The ship took so long, Hazel. Rose was bored, but then Rose is boring and only wants to read books so she would be. I wasn’t because I pretended to be a pirate and rushed the bridge to take it over – only the captain laughed at me and we had tea together and then he let me steer the ship for a bit.’

  I looked up then and there was my middle sister, Rose, looking eager and graceful in a floral travelling dress, her hair in a careful plait, her maid, Pik An, puffing behind her with a heap of bags. She nodded at me, and I waved back at her, delighted to see her.

  ‘Hazel, you look so old, like a grown-up. It’s true, you do—’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, Monkey,’ I said, jostling May goodnaturedly, and then Rose was hugging me too, slightly stiffly – or perhaps it was me who was shy. She had one of her favourite school storybooks in her hand, and it dug into me as I squeezed her.

  ‘Hello, Wong Fung Ying,’ said my father, and I looked up to see him reaching out to me, his familiar square hands with their heavy knuckles, pinstriped suit and shining golden cufflinks.

  ‘Hello, Father,’ I said, as shy as Rose.

  ‘It’s good to see you, my Hazel,’ said my father – and I realized then that he was not upset with me, not in the slightest. I found myself crushed against his chest, clinging to him as tightly as May had clung to me.