Description
Charming, talkative, and heading to Aden with a great many opinions about the coffee. He is the only person on the caravan who is enjoying the caravan, and he talks to everybody, including Rajan, including Abu Yusef, including the camel drivers, which sets him apart from every other European on the road more sharply than he realises.
Background
Years of trade around the Indian Ocean rim and the Red Sea. Bombay, Aden, Alexandria, wherever the goods are. He knows how the Company machine works from the outside, which is a different and often more accurate view than the one Pelham has from inside it.
Motivations
Aden, and a decent cup of coffee before Aden, and somebody to talk to on the way.
Connections
- Gerald Hewitt — owes him two hundred rupees from a Bombay deal years ago. Trivial.
- Pelham — will drink with him, because Mancini will drink with anybody.
- Mrs Ashby — the caravan’s other reliable conversation.
Appearances
Outcome (Session 6)
He did his job as the caravan’s talker and cast-list. Around the fire he laid out Hewitt’s reputation for Freddy in full: the local wife and children abandoned in Calcutta, and the wadi keeper forced to open his emergency water reserves so Hewitt’s animals could drink, which cost two lives in the caravan that followed. When the murder unravelled he watched the whole business with the contented look of a man handed exactly the entertainment he came for. He travels on toward Aden and his coffee, having enjoyed the crossing more than anyone else on it.
Outcome (Session 7) — Suez
His last useful act was a piece of advice: seek the Frankish waterfront. It was ringing in the party’s ears when they walked into Suez off the caravan road, and it is what routed them to the Company office rather than the merchants’ wakala — which in turn produced the beds, Sam and George, and the evening at The Watering Hole where the party got their ship.
Then he went his own way, on toward Aden and his coffee. He is out of the campaign unless the Keeper wants him back.
Relationships
- Located at Wadi al Tih — Travelling east with the caravan; present at the halt
- Indebted to Gerald Hewitt — A minor debt from Bombay, years ago. Two hundred rupees. Nothing.