第 77 页

“Mithat Pasha was part of the group that removed your father from the throne and replaced him with your uncle. Do you have any concrete evidence to indicate that Abdul Hamid ordered his assassination?”

“My uncle would never leave enough evidence behind to satisfy Sherlock Holmes. That is why he reads Sherlock Holmes novels in the first place. I believe my uncle, just like the rest of the world, reads murder mysteries so that he can learn how to commit murder without leaving any trace and learn about all the latest European methods in this regard. So although I do not have any proof of the many murders my uncle has committed, I have more than enough suspicions.”

“Your uncle regarded Mithat Pasha’s popularity with the public and the considerable force of his personality as a threat to his own political position.”

“I must correct you there, for Mithat Pasha was certainly not as loved as you seem to think he was by this public which you speak of.”

“But Bonkowski Pasha, whom your uncle was so fond of, and who served him loyally for so many years, posed no threat to the Sultan—unlike Mithat Pasha.”

“Bonkowski Pasha was an expert on poisons. That alone was threat enough. You yourself reminded me of the treatise he prepared for my uncle twenty years ago on the toxic plants growing in the gardens of the Yıldız Palace, and on poisons that kill without leaving a trace. All it would take would be for some informant somewhere to send Abdul Hamid a false report claiming ‘Bonkowski Pasha plans to poison His Supreme Highness.’”

“In other words you have no proof that your uncle sent Bonkowski Pasha to Mingheria so that he could have him killed, but you have suspicions.”

“We have been arguing about this for days now!” Princess Pakize patiently replied. “The single most reasonable explanation we have been able to arrive at is this: for some reason we are not privy to, my uncle decided he needed to be rid of Bonkowski Pasha—to destroy him, even. His clerks at the palace must have concluded that the best way to do this would be through Pharmacist Nikiforos. Someone in the palace, perhaps Tahsin Pasha, must have remembered and reminded the Sultan about Nikiforos and Bonkowski’s long-standing friendship and the campaign they had run through the Pharmacists’ Guild, and pointed out that the royal concession the Sultan issued all those years ago had left Nikiforos feeling embarrassed and guilty before Bonkowski. It is these palace clerks’ job to remind my uncle about everyone’s weaknesses and fears. We have both seen in Sami Pasha’s file the encrypted telegrams Nikiforos got from Istanbul, and that Bonkowski too received from Istanbul and Smyrna. Perhaps Nikiforos thought, after the revolution, that he could use the discussions on the Mingherian vernacular and on Mingherian names for plants, herbs, and medicines as an excuse to befriend the Commander and draw him into Abdul Hamid’s sphere of influence too.”

“I am not quite convinced, though that does seem to have been Mazhar Effendi’s theory.”

“Everything in this file is Mazhar Effendi’s theory.”

While reading through the file, the Princess and Prince Consort had grown increasingly impressed with Mazhar Effendi’s fastidious reports, his meticulously categorized and carefully cross-referenced incident logs, and the delicate, lacelike handwriting with which he had noted everything down. The industrious Mazhar Effendi had also penned a series of reports on several other matters that bore no relation to the murders, but were nevertheless of interest to the new Mingherian state. Why had Sami Pasha decided to put those in the file too?

One incident that Mazhar Effendi had investigated and detailed at great length concerned a matter neither the Princess nor the Prince Consort had previously been aware of. During the Telegraph Raid, why had Major Kâmil, future commander of the state of Mingheria, ordered Hamdi Baba to fire at the Theta clock on the Post Office wall? Was there any significance to the fact that the brand of the clock was Theta? Had he targeted the Theta symbol (Ɵ) because it was a Greek letter, or had there been some meaningful word in his mind that began with the same letter? Another document in the file discussed how the Major behaved when he came to drop Princess Pakize’s letters off at the Post Office, noting that he would always read the signs on the walls, and that he seemed particularly interested in the Theta clock.

As the Princess and Prince Consort discussed the various questions raised by the documents in Sami Pasha’s file, around forty people were dying in the city every day. These were, without a doubt, the most painful, harrowing days ever experienced in the whole history of the island and of the nation of Mingheria. Any remaining trust in the authority of the state had vanished, and people had even lost their usual instinct to look for a savior they could follow and thus forget about their tribulations. Princess Pakize and Doctor Nuri understood just how far out of joint everything had fallen when they learned that Sami Pasha had been caught and executed. The image of Sami Pasha hanging from the gallows did not leave their minds for a long time. They lost the ability to laugh for a while, and experienced a long spell of despair during which they hardly spoke to each other and didn’t eat any food. The Prince Consort was desperate to go out and see what was going on, and what people were doing now that quarantine had been lifted. When the same demonic, inauspicious crow came to tap at their window again two days later, they were horrified to realize that this time Nimetullah Effendi with the felt hat must have had Pharmacist Nikiforos hanged.

“We need to go back to Istanbul now, whatever the cost!” Princess Pakize told her husband. Then she wept for a while, clinging to his embrace. “I do not know if you realize it, but I believe it may be our turn next.”

“On the contrary, after all the savage acts they have committed so far, they will be too worried about how the rest of the world might react …,” Doctor Nuri confidently replied. “Your trepidations are for naught. They will do the very opposite of what you fear: they will treat us even better than before! For soon they will have no choice but to bring quarantine measures back.” There was a casual ease in the Prince Consort’s tone now, as if he were lying to his wife to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I will ask the clerks and find out why Pharmacist Nikiforos was hanged,” he added.

The late Sami Pasha’s file also told them that the island’s secret police had found answers to questions the Princess and the Prince Consort had either never thought to ask, or thought about but quickly forgotten. For example, according to a number of different reports the Chief Scrutineer had received, the mythical gang of Greek and Turkish children who had lost their families and fled their homes during the plague, and survived on the mountains by picking fruit, eating plants, and catching fish in the creeks, was actually real. But nobody knew which particular cave they might be sheltering in, or which abandoned farm they might have taken over.

The amulet necklace that Bonkowski Pasha had taken from Zeynep’s father Bayram Effendi’s corpse, meanwhile, had been found during a raid on a residence in Upper Turunçlar, where several of Ramiz’s unmarried henchmen had been living. This was incontrovertible proof of their guilt and would have been enough to condemn the killers of the Chief Inspector of Public Health to the gallows. (We know that during the Sheikh Hamdullah Era, the members of this gang were either released or quietly allowed to escape.)

The file also indicated that Pharmacist Nikiforos had been sending information back to Abdul Hamid. The Sultan had issued Nikiforos with a codebook (just as he had done with the Chief Scrutineer), and Nikiforos had consequently been accused of taking orders from the Sultan’s men in Istanbul. Under Abdul Hamid’s reign, this would have been something of an honor. But after the declaration of freedom and independence, it was a fact that could be twisted and used against a person, if not quite something to be ashamed of. The Princess and Prince Consort were also able to conclude that although Nikiforos had not supplied the kitchen boy with poison from his own shop, he had secretly “coached” the young man on how to procure ratsbane from other shops and herbalists’ stores, all while keeping his own identity hidden. Princess Pakize was convinced that it must have been Abdul Hamid who had given Nikiforos this idea. (Neither they nor we know what Nikiforos might have confessed under torture before his execution.)

In a completely unexpected turn of events, Pharmacist Nikiforos had also been accused of insulting the Mingherian flag, an offense which seemed to magnify his other crimes too. The pharmacist was elated to have played some role in the creation of the flag that Commander Kâmil had waved from the State Hall balcony when he announced the Mingherian Revolution to the world. After the revolution, Nikiforos had used his shopwindow to proudly exhibit some of the other flaglike advertising banners he had made. Needless to say, his intention had never been—as several informants wrongly alleged—to ridicule the flag he himself had come up with, and if anything, he had meant to do the opposite, for he had wholeheartedly supported the island’s independence and gloried in the Mingherian flag. But with forty-five to fifty deaths being counted every day, the only people who even bothered to protest at how cruel, groundless, and unjust it had been to sentence him to death on this basis were a few members of the island’s Greek community. Yet again, they regretted their decision not to flee the island before the first quarantine measures were announced. They felt thoroughly disheartened now and locked their doors more firmly than ever.

Just as the Chief Scrutineer had finally figured out the pattern and the thinking behind the killings, the Commander had died, and before any further action could be taken, the Sheikh Hamdullah Era had begun and Mazhar Effendi too had been arrested. According to the Chief Scrutineer, the rabble-rousers who opposed quarantine measures and Governor Sami Pasha’s rule—in other words, Ramiz and his men—had planned to assassinate the Governor, the garrison Commander, the quarantine doctors, and the island’s other notables all at once by feeding them poisoned biscuits when they came to the garrison. (They had briefly considered poisoning the coffee instead.) There was no evidence to prove that Abdul Hamid had known or approved of this daring plan, nor would it have been plausible to argue as much, but it was a fact that the Sultan had occasionally sent telegrams to Pharmacist Nikiforos, who knew better than anyone else on the island where to go and which shops to visit if you were looking for ratsbane.

The incident that changed the course of events and swung the country’s political direction toward the path to independence was Bonkowski Pasha’s impulsive decision to walk out of the back door of the Post Office that day and thus unwittingly disrupt everyone’s plans, slipping away from the municipal guards and plainclothes policemen who had been following him, and falling shortly thereafter into the hands of a group of agitators who were hostile to quarantine and to the Greek community, and who had come to Arkaz to take revenge on the Governor. If it really had been Abdul Hamid’s aim to dispatch his Royal Chemist without the act being traced back to him, then this had been achieved. There was no reason to bother with the poisoned-biscuit scheme anymore when the Governor came to the garrison! Yet even though Bonkowski Pasha was already dead, the biscuits were still poisoned, the bold and even-somewhat-brazen plot was carried out regardless, and Doctor Ilias too was killed.

The week before the start of the Mingherian Revolution, the Chief Scrutineer and the public prosecutors decided that it was time to resume their interrogation of the baby-faced kitchen apprentice who had put the poison in the biscuits, for the scabs on the soles of his feet had finally fallen off, and all his wounds had completely healed. The kitchen boy soon realized he would not be able to endure the same pain again, and resolved to tell them everything he knew. No one had given him the big bag of rat poison he had poured into the biscuit flour; he had bought it all with his own money, procuring small amounts at a time from different shops all over Arkaz. How much money did he have, and which shops had he bought the poison from? All kinds of shops—from traditional herbalists and from the new pharmacies! If they were to take him to some of those shops now, would the shopkeepers he’d bought the poison from be able to recognize him? Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t, for he had only bought a little poison from each, so the shopkeepers might not have taken notice of the transaction or of the buyer, and could easily have forgotten. It had been clever of him to buy the poison in small amounts and from many different shops instead of just the single one, and thus ensure he wasn’t recognized. Whose idea had that been?

“Do you think that young kitchen boy might have been reading the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or any of those French novels?”

“Perhaps there was somebody else on the island who was doing so, and could give him suggestions accordingly. For instance, it is perfectly possible that Pharmacist Nikiforos had been reading them!”

“My uncle is the first person in Istanbul and in the whole of the Ottoman Empire who reads those books!” said Princess Pakize with a firmness and a strange dash of Ottoman pride that put an end to the conversation.

The government’s investigative team had decided to subject the kitchen boy to another round of foot whipping until he told them exactly how he had got ahold of the poison. But in the wake of the island’s independence, the clerks’ and investigators’ time had soon been taken up by other matters, such as the raid on the State Hall, Ramiz’s trial, and later the inquiry into the attempted assassination of the Commander, which had resulted in the death of Majid instead. The attempt on the Commander’s life and the killing of Majid had bolstered Sami Pasha’s determination to hang Ramiz, and encouraged the state’s investigators and torturers to redouble their efforts, but as the youth who had shot the Commander had refused to speak until he had been left maimed by his injuries, a lot of time had gone by before it could be established that his father had been one of the men from Nebiler who had died during the events of the Pilgrim Ship Mutiny, and that the boy nurtured an immeasurable rage against all Christians and quarantine measures.

By the time Princess Pakize and the Prince Consort had exhausted the topics in Sami Pasha’s file, the atmosphere of lawlessness known as “plague anarchy” had become so ubiquitous, and the death rate had increased so quickly, that even though there were now four carts in the city dedicated to the retrieval of corpses, they still couldn’t finish their rounds at night, and would often have to keep working until after the early morning prayers. Every day, and especially in the evenings, the gardens of all the lodges, including those of the Halifiye, the Rifai, and the Kadiri sects, would fill up with rows of corpses like those lined up in the courtyard of the Castle prison.