The Sultan's Seal Read Online Free PDF

the minister of gendarmes—the man who had replaced his father—because he had failed to find the murderer. Kamil had perused the file on the murder when new at his job, but decided not to reopen the case. Too many years had gone by and it was not politically expedient to try to solve an unsolvable crime, especially one that involved members of the powerful foreign community and the sultan’s palace. Now here is another young foreign woman dead, this time on his watch. He stiffens his posture to hide his anxiety and his excitement.
    “That was the body found on the scholar’s property above Chamyeri. It made for a lot of gossip at the time,” Michel remembers.
    “That’s right. Ismail Hodja’s house.” The lesser details in Hannah Simmons’s file had been shouldered aside by the continual press of new cases.
    He ponders the young woman on the platform. “Just a coincidence, probably. She could be Circassian or from the Balkans. They’re often yellow-haired with light-colored eyes. Anyway, Chamyeri is quite a ways north of Middle Village.”
    “Not that far by water. The current is powerful there. A corpse thrown in at Chamyeri would end up at Middle Village in no time at all. If the killer is the same person, then either he lives in that area or is a frequent visitor. One has to know the Bosphorus to navigate it or to wander its shores at night. The wild dogs alone would keep people away.”
    “I can’t imagine it has anything to do with Ismail Hodja,” Kamil responds firmly, his eyes following the cones of light as they descend from the dome and pierce the body on the belly stone. He is distressed by how quickly the surgeon accepted a link between the two murders. “The hodja’s reputation is impeccable.”
    And there was no one else at his house who would come into question. The details in Hannah Simmons’s file were jostling at the gates of Kamil’s memory. The hodja’s sister was a recluse, his niece a mere child at the time. There were only a few servants; not a large household.
    “Anyway, the body was found in the forest behind his house, near the road, I believe. So it could have been anyone. Still,” he muses aloud, “I wonder whether it would be worthwhile to talk to the hodja or his niece.”
    Michel doesn’t answer. Kamil turns to find him still holding the pendant and staring intently at the body.
    Michel turns and asks in a carefully neutral voice, “Do you want me to wrap this up?” He indicates the pendant in his hand.
    “The cross and bracelet too. I’ll take them with me.” Pointing his chin at the body, “We don’t even know who the woman is. She appears to be foreign, so I’ll begin with the embassies.”
    Michel hands him the small bundle. He lays his cloak over the cold belly stone, sits on it, and takes out his sketching materials.
    “But first I’ll go home to change,” Kamil adds companiably.
    Michel doesn’t look up, but begins drawing the body.
    Kamil watches Michel’s head bowed over the paper, fascinated by the creation emerging from beneath his stick of charcoal. He reflects about how little he knows of Michel’s personal life, other than that he is unmarried and lives with his widowed mother in the Jewish quarter of Galata, and the story of their shared history. They spend time together in coffeehouses and clubs discussing everything under the sun, but Michel never opens to Kamil the private book of his life.
    He and Michel attended the same school and knew each other by sight, but belonged to different circles. Michel, whose father had been a dealer in semiprecious stones, won a scholarship to attend the prestigious imperial school at Galata Saray. Children of wealthy Muslims, Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and other sons of the far-flung empire bowed their heads together over texts in history, logic, science, economy, international law, Greek, Latin, and, of course, Ottoman, that convolution of Persian, Arabic, and Turkish. It was not social class, religion, or