Cairo

The window of Fiona Fairweather’s suite at Shepheard’s Hotel looked down onto the crowded streets of Cairo. Stately palms overhung dusty boulevards full of shouting camel drivers, veiled women, white-robed men toting enormous baskets full of heaven knew what. She certainly was a long way from home!

She reclined on her bed, in a state of nature, the silk sheets blissfully soft on her nude body. Naturally, Shepheard’s had been her first port of call in Egypt. The eminently respectable hotel was a Cairo landmark, where all the most important people came to stay, and well within Fiona’s budget range. (She was independently wealthy, though not as rich as Lady Evelyn.)

She heard a knock.

She had checked into the hotel only that morning, and asked the concierge to send an errand girl to the souk for two new suits of decently modest European-style travelling clothes while she took a long, hot bath. That must be the errand girl now, with her clothes! About time! If there was one thing Fiona absolutely hated, as a very proper and sensible Englishwoman, it was finding herself unsuitably dressed for a public occasion.

She rose gracefully from the bed, picked up a neatly folded Egyptian cotton towel from a nearby table, and wrapped it around herself, concealing her nudity for the brief moment she assumed it would take to retrieve her clothes from the errand girl. It was slightly naughty, answering the door in just a towel, even to another woman. But Fiona had only just slid out of the bath, and she just couldn’t be bothered putting a whole dress on.

She opened the door of the hotel room, and looked into the corridor outside.

Strange. No errand girl. Only a simple gilt-edged white calling card, sitting on the floor in the middle of the carpeted hotel corridor. Fiona couldn’t make out the writing on it. Perhaps it was from the management, explaining what had been done with her new clothes?

She looked left, then right. The corridor was empty.

Acting on impulse, Fiona stepped out into the corridor in just her towel. She took two quick steps forward, picked up the calling card, and studied it carefully. On it was written, in neat cursive, “Attention au Filou Rouge!”

It only raised further questions. Who was the Red Rogue? And why should she beware of him? Fiona was still puzzling over the mystery, when a hand from behind took hold of her towel, and snatched it clean off her body, leaving her standing stark naked in the hotel corridor. “Eek!” she squealed, taken very much by surprise, and spun around just in time to see the door of her hotel room slamming very definitely shut.