Shadows on the Nile Read online

  Kate Furnivall was born in Wales, has worked in publishing and TV advertising and now lives by the sea in Devon with her husband, with whom she has two sons. This is her sixth novel.

  Visit Kate’s website at www.katefurnivall.com

  Also by Kate Furnivall

  The Russian Concubine

  Under a Blood Red Sky

  The Concubine’s Secret

  The Jewel of St Petersburg

  The White Pearl

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-74811-916-5

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Kate Furnivall 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  To Lilli

  with all my love

  Acknowledgements

  A huge thank you to Catherine Burke and all at Little, Brown for their brilliance and for their enthusiasm for this book at every stage. They are a dazzling team. Particular thanks to Thalia Proctor for her sharp eyes on the copyedit.

  To Teresa Chris for skilfully being my agent, a force of nature and my friend all at the same time – thank you.

  Research trips are always fascinating, but I owe very special thanks to Richard and Anne Sharam for making my research journey through Egypt not only immensely valuable, but unforgettable fun.

  My gratitude to Aml Demos for showing me her country and to Wendy Clark for delving into 1932.

  Many thanks to Marian Churchward for deciphering my scribble and for lending me her name.

  Warm thanks also to Anneli and Horst Menke for providing their beautiful garden for me to write in when I needed it.

  Finally, my love and thanks to Norman for his help and support every sandy step of the way.

  Contents

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also by Kate Furnivall

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Kate Furnivall on Her Research Process

  Why Sherlock Holmes?

  1

  England 1912

  Night noises are the worst. They are the ones that come at you out of the darkness and seize you by the throat. They are the ones that slither under the door of your bedroom.

  Stop it. Don’t do that. Jessica rapped her knuckles against her forehead.

  Don’t. You’re too old to be frightened by nothing. Too grown up. Seven years and eight months. Not like little Georgie, her younger brother, who was tucked away by her parents in a tiny bedroom at the far end of the corridor. Like something dirty.

  Still the noises came at her. Voices soft and secretive. A whisper cut short. Her mother’s quick and urgent footsteps on the landing. Other sounds that didn’t belong, that crept like thieves in the shadows. Jessica didn’t like the dark, and she could never understand how the air could become so solid at night or why its weight was sometimes so heavy on her chest that she had to pummel her lungs to make them work. She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins, hugging her winceyette nightdress – the one with blue ribbons – tight against her skin. Even under her eiderdown she was cold.

  Suddenly it came again, the sound that had woken her, a whimpering that made the blonde hairs rise on the back of her neck. She threw off the eiderdown and leapt out of bed. Her heart was juddering against her bony ribs as she pushed her way through the darkness, parting it with her hands like a curtain until she reached her bedroom door. She gripped its brass knob and quickly turned it. Nothing happened. Her fingers tried again. Nothing. It was locked. Jessica’s skin crawled, the way it did when a spider dropped on her arm.

  Why would her father lock her in?

  Why would her mother agree?

  Fear, sharp and brittle, poked at her chest. She crouched on the floor and wriggled onto her side on the cold linoleum until her eye was pressed to the ribbon of light between door and floor, but she could make out nothing except a blur of carpet on the other side. Again the whimper fluttered along the landing, followed by a high-pitched frightened squeal. Rage seized her and she leapt to her feet, pounding her fist on the door, shaking it on its hinges.

  ‘Georgie!’ she screamed.

  Abruptly the light on the landing flicked off. Silence, thick and oily, flooded the house.

  ‘Georgie!’ Jessica shrieked. ‘Georgie!’

  She banged on the wooden panels of the door.

  ‘Let me out!’

  Nothing but silence.

  ‘Mummy!’

  Nothing but darkness.

  She held her breath, listening so hard her ears hurt. Suddenly she heard a distant click. It was the front door closing.

  Georgie liked the park. He liked to stand next to the big round pond, the one with the fountain and the stone lion in the centre. Around it the railing was a frill of knee-high metal loops to keep children and dogs from falling in. Water lily pads spread out like green stepping stones and, if they were lucky, a dragonfly would dart in and out of them, bright as a rainbow.

  Georgie would gaze silently for hours at the big slippery shapes of the goldfish that moved like ghosts through the water. His favourite was Watson, the one with the silver stripe down its back, but there were Watson’s friends as well: Farintosh, Armitage and Hatherley. The smallest one with the bite out of its dorsal fin was Mrs Hudson. Jessica had let Georgie name them all.

  When he watched them, he calmed down. That’s what had happened today. She had stood beside him, not holding his hand exactly, but her fingers close to his at his side, and he had started humming. She knew then that he was happy. Happy in a way he couldn’t be in the house with people too close to him. But then Mummy had spoilt it.

  ‘Come along, children, time to play ball.’

  ‘Not today, thank you, Mummy,’ Jessica said politely.


  Her mother frowned and sat down on the bench to read her magazine but her lips were tight and her ankles kept crossing and uncrossing. When she could stand no more, she said, ‘It’s getting late, time to go home.’

  Georgie shook his head, his blond curls defiant.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, George,’ his mother snapped, exasperated. ‘Enough staring like an idiot at fish all day. You’re five years old and should know better.’

  Jessica grew nervous. She murmured to Georgie that Watson wanted to be alone now. She tried to coax her brother away, gently, one step at a time, but as always Mummy lost patience and seized his wrist to drag him from the railing.

  Don’t touch him. He doesn’t like to be t—

  Georgie had started to scream. Not like other children scream. He screamed as if he was dying, as if someone had taken an axe to him and sliced him right down the middle.

  Jessica thought about it now, as she lay jammed against the door, clutching the blue ribbon of her nightdress. She blinked fiercely on the floor in the darkness of her room, remembering her mother’s white lips. It was Georgie’s scream in the park that had slithered under her door and was now writhing inside her head.

  The morning sun prodded her awake. She lifted her head from the hard floor and regarded the door with hostility. She scrambled to her feet, cold and shaky, and there was a greyness inside her head, like dust behind her eyes. It was without much hope that she grasped the knob and turned it. To her surprise the door opened easily, just as the grandfather clock in the hall downstairs struck eight. For a moment she panicked, because every morning she always got to Georgie first, to wake him and persuade him to wash and dress. Before Mummy.

  She ran on tiptoe down the corridor to the door at the end and held her breath as she gently eased it open. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but her young mind was certain it would be something bad, something chaotic, something that would hurt her for the rest of her life. But a huge smile of relief nudged the fear from her face because everything was absolutely normal.

  Her blue eyes grew round with pleasure as she inspected the small bedroom with its dark green curtains, its chest of drawers stacked high with books, the never-used cricket bat leaning against the wall. It was a gift from their father to push Georgie into a sport he hated. To be honest, Georgie hated all sports without exception, but to please her father Jessica had taught him to catch and throw a ball. It had taken infinite patience.

  Nothing had changed. In the narrow bed lay Georgie. He was still asleep, his face buried in his pillow, but his glorious golden curls shone with life and one leg was thrown out from under his quilt. Jessica noticed he was wearing his red tartan pyjamas and she felt a tiny thorn of alarm prick at her throat. She knew that last night she had put him in his favourite blue ones. Georgie adored blue. Whenever he wore blue, he was better. Jessica had tried to explain this to her mother but she had said, ‘What nonsense!’ and bought him a red coat. Red was the worst, the very worst colour. He was impossible in red.

  ‘Georgie,’ she said softly. ‘It’s me.’

  He murmured into the pillow.

  She approached the bed. With a laugh she tugged at his quilt but was careful not to touch him. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’

  He turned to her and smiled.

  It wasn’t Georgie.

  ‘Who are you?’ Jessica demanded.

  ‘I’m Timothy.’

  ‘You’re not Georgie! Get out! Get out of his bed.’

  She took hold of the front of his pyjamas – of Georgie’s pyjamas – and yanked this impostor out of her brother’s bed. She shook him hard, her face furious. What did she care if this small boy cried? Or if his stupid shoulders trembled? Still gripping the pyjamas in her fists, she thrust her face right down to his.

  ‘Where …’

  She shook him.

  ‘Is …’

  She almost lifted him off his bare feet.

  ‘… Georgie? What have you done with my brother? Where have you come from?’

  His blue eyes were swimming with tears but they glared at her defiantly. ‘I am Timothy.’ His small hand pointed at the bed. ‘That’s my bed. I live here.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Jessica shouted in his face.

  Her own hands were shaking, her mouth so dry that words stuck to her tongue. But he nodded, his teeth clamped on his trembling lip. He nodded and nodded at her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she yelled at him.

  ‘I am your new brother.’

  His words were merciless. They reverberated in Jessica’s ears as she flew downstairs and burst into the kitchen. Her mother was seated at the table with a cup of tea in front of her, spooning sugar into it. She never took sugar in tea. Her face looked grey and slack, and she was wearing the same fawn dress as yesterday. Usually her appearance was elegant and crisp and she was always nagging her daughter to be tidier or to brush her hair more, but today she had the unkempt appearance of Mrs Rushton – their cleaning lady who came on Mondays – and it dawned on Jessica that maybe her mother hadn’t been to bed.

  She recalled the footsteps on the landing, the furtive whispers, and suddenly she knew what they’d done. The thought swelled, terrifying, in her head and she sucked in her breath.

  ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’ she demanded.

  Her mother looked at her oddly. There was anger around her mouth and Jessica felt the weight of her scrutiny.

  ‘Jessica, don’t make trouble.’

  ‘Where have you sent him?’

  Don’t shout, don’t shout at Mummy or … She didn’t let herself think of what came after the or.

  She made her voice small. ‘Where is Georgie?’

  ‘He’s gone. You have a new brother now called Timothy. I want you to love him just as much as …’ A pause. Her mother’s slender fingers wrapped around the cup for warmth. ‘… as much as your father and I will.’

  No, Jessica wanted to shout across the kitchen but she hid the word behind her lips. ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘We didn’t find him. We chose Timothy from among many other children in an orphanage.’

  ‘Where is my Georgie?’

  ‘He’s not your Georgie. He’s gone. We will never speak of him again.’

  ‘No!’ This time the word escaped. Jessica gripped the back of the wooden chair in front of her to stop her hands clawing at her mother’s face. ‘No, Mummy, please, please. Bring him back.’ Tears were flowing down her cheeks and she was ashamed of them because she knew her mother despised what she called histrionics. ‘I’ll look after him better, Mummy. I’ll teach him to behave, please, please, please …’ Her voice was beseeching.

  She saw her mother look away.

  ‘Mummy, I promise I can make Georgie stop annoying you so much and—’

  ‘Stop it, Jessica.’

  ‘But I love him. And he loves me. He needs me to …’

  Her mother’s beautiful blue eyes turned on her, flat and weary, dulled by sadness. ‘Don’t fool yourself, Jessica.’ She shook her head. ‘That boy is incapable of love.’

  ‘No, no, when I read him stories, he loves me, I know he does.’

  ‘He’s sick. Sick in the head.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. He’s gone to a place where he will be properly cared for by people who know what’s best for him. He will be happier there, I assure you, and will forget about us before the week is over.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. He’s selfish like that.’ For a brief moment she leaned forward across the table, her gaze fixed on her daughter’s face, and her tone became unexpectedly gentle. ‘In your heart you know it’s true. I’m sorry, very sorry, because I know you care for him even though he is impossible to live with, but now we must accept that he has gone from our lives for ever.’ She sat upright once more, pulling back her shoulders and printing a smile on her mouth. ‘From now on we will all love your new little brother.’

  ‘Can I visit him?’

  �
��Who?’

  ‘Georgie.’

  Her mother rose to her feet. ‘No.’ She expelled the word in a harsh gust. ‘Forget that boy. He doesn’t want you. He no longer exists for us.’

  The silence stretched for ever. Jessica’s breath was racing in and out of her throat. She wanted to howl Georgie’s name but instead she stood rigid, fists clenched tight at her sides, in bleak isolation.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whispered, ‘if I am good and love my new brother, will you let Georgie come home?’

  Her mother sighed. ‘Oh, Jessica, you’re so stubborn. You’re not listening to me.’

  *

  Jessica hid behind the door. The moment her father’s key pushed into the lock she swung it open and stood in front of him.

  ‘Papa, I must talk to you.’

  He had not even stepped over the threshold. He took one look at her and his expression seemed to retreat from her, though his body didn’t move. He was an average-looking man, of average build in an average grey suit, with light brown hair parted neatly on one side. He wore spectacles which he hated because he saw them as a weakness, and her father was not a man to tolerate weakness. Only his intense blue eyes gave any sign of the fierce intelligence that drove him to seek out perfection – in himself and in others. Jessica always found him daunting.

  She moved back into the hall, took his hat and placed it carefully on the hall table. He shut the door behind him but didn’t hurry to remove his overcoat.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How is your mother?’

  ‘She’s in the drawing room. With my new brother.’

  ‘How is Timothy?’

  ‘Playing with Georgie’s train set.’

  Her father’s eyes lit up. ‘Is he, indeed?’

  Georgie never played with it. He just took the engines apart.

  ‘Papa, I have written a letter.’ She pulled a small blue envelope from her skirt pocket. ‘To say goodbye to Georgie.’

  Her father jabbed his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose and quickly hung his coat on the coat-stand. She could tell he wanted to move away from her, but she placed herself between him and the drawing room door and smiled.

  ‘I like my new brother.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say his name.