‘Indeed.’
‘She put the carpet in a wooden box to preserve it from harm, which is how Granddad knew what it was when he saw it in the shop in İstanbul back in the eighties. He was shocked to see it. He had, you see, entertained some hope of trying to revisit the lady when he got to İstanbul with my dad. But he knew that if the carpet was for sale, she was in all probability dead. She would never have parted with it willingly, it meant too much to her. And when the man who sold it to him told him that the previous owner of the piece, who was indeed a lady, had died leaving no descendants, Granddad knew he really had to buy it. To him it was the only way to stop it falling into the hands of those who wouldn’t appreciate its meaning.’ He sighed. ‘And then my stupid father went and told the world and his wife about Granddad’s famous carpet . . .’
‘When it was stolen?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’ Süleyman nodded his head while looking at the pale man in front of him. ‘Mr Roberts, forgive me, but if this lady had no descendants . . . I mean, where did she come from in the city? Do you know?’
‘A place I understand has completely changed character,’ Lee Roberts replied. ‘Nişantaşı . . .’
‘Ah!’ Süleyman smiled. ‘Yes, there were many old mansions of the rich and aristocratic in that area.’ He didn’t add that several of them had been owned by his family. ‘But they burned or fell down a long time ago. Now it is a very smart shopping area.’
‘Yes, Granddad told me that when he did go there after he’d bought the carpet he didn’t recognise anything. It made him feel very sad. The carpet dealer told him that the lady, a princess, she was, had died back in the fifties. Poor Granddad, he’d left his return journey far too long. I think that in his own way he mourned the Princess Gözde for the rest of his life. I think he may have been a little in love with her.’
For a moment, a now frowning Süleyman didn’t say a word. When he did, however, Lee Roberts noticed that the policeman’s face had become very pale.
‘The Princess
Gözde
, you say?’ Süleyman said with a slight tremble in his voice. ‘Are you sure about that name, Mr Roberts?’
When İkmen and İskender eventually joined Matilda Melly and her lawyer, Mr Aksoy, in Interview Room 2 they noticed that the Englishwoman was looking far more relaxed than she had before. The last sighting they’d had of her had been of a very distressed and agitated woman. The woman had obviously spoken to her lawyer, whom the two policemen had seen talking to her husband, but what had been said they didn’t know.
‘So, Mrs Melly, where were we?’ İkmen said as he sat down, looking as he did so at a piece of paper in his hands.
It wasn’t Matilda Melly who answered, but her lawyer. ‘Çetin Bey,’ he said in English with a smile, ‘the husband of Mrs Melly would like to put right a wrong that he has done to his wife.’
İkmen looked up from the paper sharply. ‘Oh?’
Shrugging his thick, meaty shoulders Aksoy said, ‘When Mr Peter Melly said that he did not see his wife on the night that the carpet dealer died, he was wrong.’
Raising a very sceptical eyebrow at Metin İskender, İkmen said, ‘Oh? And how was he “wrong”?’
‘It was, as you say . . .’ He looked towards his client for assistance.
‘It was spite, Inspector,’ Matilda Melly said. ‘I will be completely open with you and admit that Yaşar Uzun and myself were lovers. Peter knew . . .’
‘So both you and your husband lied to us.’
‘Yes, we did. But then what would you do?’ she said. ‘Yaşar was dead, murdered. Peter and I, as lover and lover’s husband, were bound to have been in the frame. We didn’t want that! But then when I left, well, Peter became spiteful. He said that he hadn’t seen me at home on the night that Yaşar died.’
‘You sleep apart from your husband, Mrs Melly. Under the circumstances it is not strange that he should not see you when he came home from the carpet show.’
‘Yes, but I always sleep with the bedroom door open. He saw me as he walked past my room. Ask him yourself.’
‘I will,’ İkmen said and then with a smile he went back to looking down at the piece of paper in his hands.
Seconds, then a minute, passed during which İkmen continued to look down at the paper and İskender just sat back in his chair with a neutral and calm expression on his face. At length Mr Aksoy leaned across the table towards İkmen and was about to speak when Metin İskender said, ‘Mrs Melly, the paper Inspector İkmen is holding has on it a list of numbers. They are the numbers of the banknotes that were supplied by the HSBC to your husband to give to Yaşar Uzun. The notes found in your suitcase correspond to them. Fifty-seven thousand pounds is the total. Nothing to do with any savings at all.’
İkmen, watching Matilda Melly over the top of his list, noticed that her expression didn’t change. ‘Mrs Melly,’ he said, ‘did you know that your husband was giving Yaşar Uzun one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the Kerman carpet?’
‘Not at the time, no,’ she said. ‘I was furious when Yaşar told me. I think he thought I’d be pleased, knowing what I felt or rather didn’t feel about Peter.’
‘And yet you pretended to your husband that you didn’t know of such a deal, did you not, Mrs Melly?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why was that, please?’
She looked at Aksoy before replying. ‘Because his playing fast and loose with our money was going to give me the excuse I needed to leave’, she said and then added, ‘with, as you know, almost half of the money that Peter had given Yaşar. All without having to go to court.’
‘Did Mr Uzun give you the money or did you take it from his dead body?’
A look of utter outrage settled on her face. ‘I didn’t kill Yaşar!’ she said.
‘I didn’t say that you did,’ İkmen replied. ‘I said only that you might have taken the money from his dead body.’
‘But I didn’t! Yaşar gave me that money. I intended to leave Peter anyway . . .’
‘For Mr Uzun?’
‘God no! Not my type at all!’ she laughed. Then she leaned forwards across the table. ‘Yaşar gave me half the money to shut me up,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want me protesting and spoiling his little deal with Peter and he’d still get a hundred and eighty thousand pounds at the end of it all which is no small amount. I was still unsure as to when was going to be the best time to leave Peter when, as you know, Yaşar suddenly died.’
‘Mmm.’
‘But the point, Çetin Bey,’ Mr Aksoy the lawyer said in Turkish, ‘is that Mrs Melly could not possibly have killed the carpet dealer because her husband saw her asleep in her bed on the night of the killing.’
‘Provided he is telling the truth, that is so,’ İkmen replied in English. ‘But is he, Mr Aksoy? Or is Mr Melly saying what he is saying because he wishes to protect his wife?’
‘But she has left him . . .’
‘Or maybe he is protecting himself,’ İkmen said. ‘Maybe Mr Melly killed Yaşar Uzun.’
‘Oh, I do not think that is possible,’ Aksoy said in English. ‘Unless you have any forensic evidence that might point towards Mr Melly as the murderer.’
‘No,’ İkmen replied. ‘No I don’t.’ He looked at Matilda Melly and then said, ‘In fact, I actually know that Mr Melly did not kill Yaşar Uzun.’
The Englishwoman smiled. ‘How?’
‘Because I know who did kill him,’ İkmen said. ‘It was you, Mrs Melly.’
Chapter 18
Mehmet Süleyman had left Mr Roberts with Ayşe Farsakoğlu in order to go out into the corridor to speak on his mobile to his father. Without telling the old man any details about Mr Roberts, he had quizzed Muhammed Süleyman Efendi first about relatives in general who had lived in Nişantaşı and then more pointedly about his aunt the Princess Gözde. Received wisdom in the family was that she had lost her fiancé in the Great War. Totally reclusive and permanently veiled, the Princess Gözde, whose mansion had been situated on Teşvikiye Caddesi, had died at the end of the 1950s. She seemed to fit the description that Lee Roberts had given him of Victor’s ‘princess’ very well.
‘Your grandfather inherited all of her effects,’ Muhammed Süleyman told his son. ‘Including that carpet Raşit Bey is being so very obtuse about.’
‘So did you inherit any other effects from the Princess Gözde’s house, Father?’ Mehmet said in what he hoped was not too loud a voice. Mr Roberts was, after all, only just a corridor and one door’s thickness away from him.
‘Who can say?’ the old man replied. ‘When your grandfather died all of his remaining possessions were divided up equally between your Uncle Beyazıt, your Aunt Esma and myself. There wasn’t that much. My father sold many things in his lifetime.’
Mehmet thought briefly about this similarity between his father and his grandfather, but then Muhammed said, ‘Why do you want to know?’
Thinking as quickly as he could, he said, ‘Well, I don’t have a great deal to do until İzzet contacts me and we see what he has discovered in the east about one of our cases. It’s a long story. But while I haven’t had too much to do I have been thinking about your carpet and you know how we talked of its provenance? And also about how maybe if people knew Princess Gözde’s story they might be more interested in it and . . .’
‘Oh, well, then you will need to speak to your Aunt Esma about that,’ Muhammed Süleyman said. ‘She was the only one who ever visited the Princess Gözde on a regular basis. They got on for some reason. Go and see her. She’d be delighted to see you.’
After a few standard niceties, Mehmet ended the call. He leaned against the corridor wall and thought. Aunt Esma. He hadn’t seen her for over a year – not, in fact, since the Feast of the Sacrifice. For once the entire family had been together to savour the sheep that his religious and strong-stomached Uncle Beyazıt had slaughtered in honour of the prophet İbrahim’s near sacrifice of his son. The Feast of the Sacrifice was a very important Muslim festival. Not that one could have deduced this from Aunt Esma. She, as usual, had been far more interested in talking about her health than in joining in the general festivities. Tall, thin and the epitome of the unmarried and unmarriageable woman so many wealthy families used to number in their ranks, Esma lived in a tiny damp apartment down by the Golden Horn in Fener. After a few moments during which he attempted to gather his thoughts, Süleyman went back into his office.
‘I apologise, Mr Roberts,’ he said as he sat down behind his desk once again. ‘It was necessary for me to check some facts. Now, if I am correct, I take it you would like us to try to find what remains of the family of this Princess Gözde.’
‘Yes,’ Lee Roberts replied. ‘Whether they know it or not, the carpet will have some meaning for them. I mean, I understand that no one, not even my grandfather, could be certain that the blood on the carpet was that of the princess’s fiancé. But that she believed it to be so makes it important and valid.’
Süleyman frowned. The way this man was speaking was very familiar. ‘Mr Roberts,’ he said, ‘what do you do for a living?’
Lee Roberts laughed. ‘Oh, God, was I talking psycho-babble? I’m a clinical psychologist.’
‘Ah.’ Süleyman smiled. ‘My wife is a psychiatrist.’
‘So you understood the psycho—’
‘Somewhat. But Mr Roberts, we must proceed. How long do you stay in İstanbul?’
‘A week.’
‘I see.’ Süleyman offered Lee Roberts a cigarette, which he declined, and then lit one up for himself. ‘Mr Roberts, I will try to find out what I can. There is a lady I have just found out about who may be able to help. If you give me your contact details here in İstanbul I will keep you informed.’
The Englishman took the printout of his hotel details out of his pocket and then wrote his own mobile telephone number on the bottom. When he’d finished he said, ‘Inspector, could I please see the carpet now? I’ve only this old photograph of it which Victor said was taken in the garden of the mansion in Nişantaşı.’ He put the photograph down on to Süleyman’s desk. ‘But I’ve never seen it in the flesh, as it were.’
Süleyman leaned forward the better to see the faded sepia print in front of him. It showed what looked to him very like the carpet that was currently locked up in İkmen’s office. It was laid out on some dry and scrub-like grass, and behind the carpet a large, dark building of vaguely gothic design could be seen.
‘Mr Roberts,’ he said once he had finished studying the photograph, ‘can I take a scan of this picture?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Good.’ He stood up, and looking across at Ayşe Farsakoğlu, he said, ‘If you would please go with the sergeant here, she will show you the carpet. Inspector İkmen has also, I believe, the remains of the box the carpet was once kept in.’
‘Why would I kill Yaşar Uzun?’ Matilda Melly said as she watched both İkmen and İskender light up yet more cigarettes. ‘Why?’
‘Because he betrayed you,’ İkmen said. ‘He was having affairs with . . .’
‘He was always having affairs with other women!’ Matilda said. ‘Bloody hell, he was a carpet dealer! It’s what they do, isn’t it?’
‘Some would say that, yes,’ İkmen replied. ‘But not all carpet dealers are the same and I believe few would agree to buy a property in a foreign country to share with one of his conquests. You must have been very hurt when you discovered that the romantic house he had bought in Balchik was not all that he owned in Bulgaria. He didn’t tell you about the apartment in Sofia, did he, Mrs Melly?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Mr Melly has told me that you always wanted to live by the sea. Yaşar Uzun and you, once you had both defrauded your husband, were going to go and live in Balchik, by the sea, where Queen Marie of Romania had once lived with her young Turkish lover. But then you discovered the existence of the Sofia apartment and you asked him about it. He denied it even existed which led you to the conclusion that he must have bought it for a purpose he didn’t want you to know about. A romantic purpose . . .’
She laughed. ‘This is nonsense,’ she said. ‘Utterly. I don’t know anything about any house in Bulgaria, let alone a flat.’