“The papers he brings back with him after going out in the morning. As for the yogurt, Umm Amina takes it in during the afternoon.”
“Did she take it in yesterday?”
“Yes, I saw the boy going up to the flat and saw him leaving.”
“When did Umm Amina leave the flat yesterday?”
“At about sunset.”
“And when did she come today?”
“About ten. She rang the bell, and he didn’t answer the door.”
“Did he go out today as usual?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t see him go out. I was sitting at my place by the door until Umm Amina arrived. Then, after a quarter of an hour, she returned to tell me he wasn’t answering, so I went up with her. I rang the bell and knocked on the door, and when he didn’t answer we went off to the police station….”
The officer decided that this concierge was not capable of strangling a chicken, nor was Umm Amina, though they might make it possible for someone else to come in and go out. But why was Mr. Hasan Wahbi murdered? Was there some undiscovered theft? Had the wallet been left untouched for the purpose of putting the police off the scent? And was the presence of the key to the flat in the desk drawer another trick?
Umm Amina said she had been working in the schoolmaster’s house for a quarter of a century — fifteen years during the lifetime of his wife and ten years following her death. The man had decided that she should spend the night at her own home ever since he had become a widower. She herself was a widow, she said, and the mother of six girls, all of whom were now married to workers or craftsmen; and she provided all their addresses.
“Yesterday he was in good health. He read through the newspapers, recited aloud a portion of the Koran, and when I left the flat, he was listening to the radio.”
“What do you know of his family?”
“They are from Damietta, but he’s hardly in touch with them and no one visits him except for his son and daughter at feast times and holidays.”
“Do you know if he had any enemies?”
“None at all.”
“No one used to visit him at home?”
“Never. Very rarely he would sit at the café on a Friday with some of his colleagues or former students.”
The officer wondered how it was possible for the crime to have occurred without any motive or clues.
The necessary formalities were completed and, with the help of his assistant, the living quarters of the concierge were searched, as well as the homes of Umm Amina and her six daughters. Then the few friends of the deceased were summoned for examination, but not one of them gave evidence of any significance. The murder of the man appeared to be a complete and baffling mystery. The news of it spread through the street and later appeared in the papers, then the whole of Abbasiyya learned of it, and many people were saddened. The doctor, the murdered man’s son, confirmed that his father possessed nothing of value and that his bank account had contained no more than the one hundred pounds he had saved in case of emergency and had in the end taken out. He also confirmed that the old man had had no enemies and that his murder might well have been from greed for some imaginary fortune the criminal had supposed him to have at his home. A thorough questioning of the concierge and Umm Amina took place and came to nothing, both of them being released without bail.
The investigating officer found himself in a fog of confusion and suffered from a sense of frustration he had not previously known. He had an honorable history in the fighting of crime, both in the towns and in the countryside, and was in general an officer with a high reputation. This was the first crime to defeat him so utterly and without his being accorded so much as a ray of hope or consolation. He sent off his scouts among the suspicious characters in the Muqattam Hills, on the borders of the district of Waili, and in Arab al-Mohammedi, but they all came back with nothing. The forensic doctor reported that Mr. Hasan Wahbi had died of strangulation, and he examined all his belongings in the hope of coming across a fingerprint or a hair or any clue that the criminal might have left behind him, but his efforts were in vain. Everyone found himself standing before a silent void.
Because of the severe defeat he had suffered, Officer Muhsin Abd al-Bari, who lived not far away, in a street that led to the police station, felt disconcerted, and his peace of mind was disturbed. When his wife noticed his depression, she said gently, “Don’t get yourself into a state about it for nothing.”
He retreated into silence and kept his mind off things by reading. He was fond of the mystical poets, such as Saadi, Ibn al-Farid, and Ibn al-Arabi, a rare enough hobby for a police investigation officer, and he therefore hid it even from his best friends.
The incident continued to be the talk of Abbasiyya, both because of its bewildering mystery and because the deceased had been the teacher of many of the young and middle-aged inhabitants of the district. But with the passing of a week or so the news became lost in the fearsome sea of oblivion, and even Muhsin Abd al-Bari entered it among the crimes committed by “person or persons unknown,” saying to himself as he chewed over his bitter defeat, “Unknown! This one certainly is unknown!”
A month later the officer was called to an old mansion in the main street of Abbasiyya, the scene of a similar crime. It was as though the first crime had been repeated. Muhsin could hardly believe his eyes. The murdered man was a former army major general. He was living with his family, which consisted of a wife of sixty, a widowed sister also of sixty, and his youngest son, who was a twenty-year-old university student. Also living in the mansion were the concierge, the gardener, the chauffeur, the cook, and two other servants.
The major general was found one morning apparently asleep in bed as usual. It was, however, later than was normal, and it was this that had led his wife to come to see if he was all right. But he had not been sleeping, he had been strangled, the mark of the cord scored around his neck, his eyes bulging horribly, and sticky blood around his mouth and nose. As for the room, it was undisturbed, even the bed itself, and no sound had been heard during the night to awaken any of his family, who slept on the same floor. The long and short of it was that the officer found himself once again facing the deadly mystery that had crushed him a month before at the home of the teacher Hasan Wahbi, facing too the person unknown, with his silence, his obscureness, his singular cruelty, his preposterous mockery.
“Was anything stolen?”
“No.”
“Did he have any enemies?”
“None.”
“And the servants, did he have a good relationship with them?”
“Very good.”
“Do you have any suspicions about anyone?”
“None at all.”
The officer went through the formalities without hope. He examined the mansion thoroughly and questioned the family and the servants. He had a sensation of fear of some person unknown, and felt that a plot was being hatched in the dark to do away not only with many victims, but also with his reputation and all the values in his life. He likewise felt that there was some sort of an enigma that was about to suffocate him with the weight of its mystery, and that if once again he were to fail, he would not be able to face up to life, that life itself would not be worthwhile for anyone.
Owing to the status of the murdered man, a number of senior investigation officers came to take charge of the case. “There’s certainly been a crime,” said one of them in astonishment, “but it’s as though it has been committed without a criminal.”
“But the criminal’s there all right, and maybe he’s closer to us than we imagine.”
“How did he do it?”
“He passed a thin cord around the neck, pulling it tight until the man was dead. But how did he reach the site of his crime? How did he get away without leaving a trace?”