Amelia Peabody Omnibus 1-4 (116 page)

The moment he released his hold, David scuttled away. The door of the church opened and banged shut. A pale face peered out from one of the windows.

‘Leave him be, Emerson,’ I said in disgust. ‘If you were mistaken about the creature, so was I. He will only be in our way. Let us smoke the murderer from his lair. I only hope we are not too late.’

The advantage of surprise now being lost, we proceeded without further ado to the house. The front door stood open as David had left it. There was no one in the parlour; it was as barren and cheerless as before. The Greek Testament was no longer on the table.

‘Which do you suppose is his study?’ Emerson asked, contemplating the pair of doors at the back of the room.

‘There is only one way to find out.’ Carefully I turned the knob of the right-hand door. The small chamber within was obviously Charity’s bedroom. The bonnet, and a gown of the familiar dark calico, hung from pegs on the wall. There was nothing else in the room except a cot as narrow and probably as hard as a plank. A single thin coverlet was thrown back, as if the sleeper had risen in haste.

I closed the door. ‘That one,’ I said, indicating the other door.

We had spoken softly, but some sound of our presence ought, by then, have reached the ears of a listener. I began to wonder if the house were inhabited after all. Or were the occupants of that silent room lying dead in their gore?

I drew my pistol. ‘Stand back, Emerson.’

‘Certainly not, Peabody. You are going about it the wrong way.’ He knocked gently at the door.

To my astonishment a voice promptly replied. ‘I told you, Brother David, to leave me be. I am speaking with my Father.’

Emerson rolled his eyes expressively. ‘It is not Brother David. It is I – Emerson.’

‘Professor?’ There was a pause. ‘Come in.’

Emerson opened the door.

Prepared as I was for any ghastly sight – priding myself as I do on my aplomb under all circumstances – even I was struck dumb by the sight that confronted me. My eyes went first to John, who sat on the edge of the bed. A bloody bandage encircled his brow, but his eyes were open – staring wildly, in fact – and he did not appear seriously injured. I breathed a sincere but necessarily brief prayer of thanksgiving.

One of the two chairs was occupied by Charity. She appeared to be in a trance; her white face was utterly expressionless and she did not look up when the door opened. Brother Ezekiel sat at the table, an open book before him and a pistol in his hand. It was pointed at John.

‘Come in, brother and sister,’ he said calmly. ‘You are just in time. I have been wrestling with the demons that possess this unfortunate young man. There wasn’t any swine to cast ’em into, you see. I figure the only way to get rid of ’em is to shoot him, but first he must acknowledge his Saviour. I wouldn’t want his soul to burn in hell.’

‘That is most considerate of you,’ said Emerson, with equal coolness. ‘Why don’t I fetch a goat – or a dog? You can cast the demons into it.’

‘Afraid that won’t do,’ said Ezekiel, shaking his head. ‘See, Professor, you have got a few demons in you too. I’ll have to deal with ’em before I let you out of here or they might lead you astray.’

‘Mr Jones – ’

‘That’s not the way to talk to me, my son. Call me by my right name. For I am the Anointed One, whose coming to redeem Israel was foretold by the prophets.’

‘Good Gad,’ I said involuntarily.

Emerson grimaced at me, and Ezekiel said, ‘She’s got more demons than any of ’em. Come in, sister, and acknowledge your Lord and Saviour.’

My pistol was in my hand, hidden by the voluminous folds of my trousers, but I never thought of using it. How long had the madness been festering in his poor warped brain? He had maintained a semblance of normalcy till now.

Emerson edged into the room. ‘That’s far enough,’ said Ezekiel. ‘Now you, sister. Come in.’

I could not think what to do. The room was so small the madman was bound to hit someone if he pulled the trigger, and he might pull it if he were physically attacked. It seemed equally dangerous and fruitless to reason with him. Then something moved at the open window. Was it rescue – reinforcements? No. It was David, wild-eyed and pale with fright. We could not count on assistance from him.

Emerson saw him too, and with the brilliance that always marks his actions, seized the only possible advantage from his presence. ‘Look there, at the window,’ he cried. As Ezekiel turned, Emerson leaped.

The gun went off. The bullet struck harmlessly into the ceiling. David shrieked and vanished. John jumped to his feet and promptly sat down again as his knees gave way. Charity slid fainting from her chair. Emerson tossed me the gun and enveloped Brother Ezekiel in a tight embrace. Footsteps sounded in the outer room.
‘Nom du nom du nom,’
de Morgan ejaculated. ‘What has transpired here?’

Behind the Frenchman was my son Ramses.

‘It was de Coptic manuscript after all,’ Ramses said, some time later. Ezekiel was under guard and his victims had been attended to; we were once more in our own home and John, though pale and shaken, had insisted on making tea.

‘Quel manuscrit coptique?’
de Morgan demanded. ‘I understand nothing of this – nothing! It is of a madness unexampled. Master Criminals, manuscripts, raving missionaries…’

I explained about the Coptic manuscript. ‘I knew all along it must be involved,’ I said. ‘But I could not think what to make of it. The trouble was – ’

‘That two different groups of criminals were at work,’ said Emerson. ‘The first was the gang of antiquities thieves. They had discovered a cache of royal jewellery at Dahshoor and were searching for more. Their leader took the place of the village priest at Dronkeh in order to supervise their illicit digging – ’

‘But the thieves fell out, as such persons are wont to do,’ I went on. ‘Hamid, who was a minor member of the gang, was not content with his share of the profits. He saw an opportunity to rob the thieves and sell some of his finds himself. He persuaded his father to market them. And among these objects – ’

‘Was the mummy case purchased by the baroness,’ Emerson interrupted.

‘No, no, my dear. There were
two
mummy cases. From that fact arose much of the confusion. Both are now destroyed, but I fancy they were twin coffins, made at the same time by the same craftsman. Belonging, I do not doubt, to a husband and wife who wished to express their mutual affection by eventually occupying identical – ’

‘Never mind that, Amelia,’ Emerson growled. ‘The point is that they were made of the same materials – waste linen and old papyrus, dampened and moulded into shape before being painted. Such cartonnage coffins are common; fragments of Greek manuscripts have been found in some. We should have realized that our papyrus scraps came from such a source.’

‘My dear Emerson, you do yourself an injustice,’ I said. ‘Our papyrus was Coptic, not Greek; Christian, not pagan. The baroness’s mummy case obviously belonged to a worshipper of the old gods. It was early Roman in date, and Christianity did not become the official religion of the Empire until 330
A.D
., under Constantine the Great. Yet the Coptic Church was established in the first century, and Egyptian Christians survived, though subjected to cruel persecution, until – ’

‘Until they got the chance to persecute everyone else,’ said Emerson.

‘I beg you will refrain from expressing your unorthodox religious opinions just now, Emerson. I am endeavouring to explain that Christian writings of the first and second centuries did exist, and that it would be natural for a pagan to consider them waste paper, fit to be used in the construction of a coffin.’

‘Granted, granted,’ de Morgan said, before Emerson could pursue his argument. ‘I will grant anything you like, madame, if you will only get on with your story. This business of the twin coffins – ’

‘It is really very simple,’ I said, with a kindly smile. ‘Abd el Atti gained possession of the two mummy cases; they came, of course, from the same tomb. One, belonging to the wife, may have been damaged to begin with. Abd el Atti realized the papyrus used in its construction contained Coptic writing. Being a shrewd old rascal, he understood the nature of his find – ’

‘And looked for a customer who would appreciate its value,’ Emerson broke in. ‘Unluckily for him, the clergyman he approached was a religious fanatic. Ezekiel Jones was no mean scholar. His crude manners and speech caused us to underestimate him, but there were, in fact, a number of indications of his intellectual ability, including his knowledge of Greek. He translated the manuscript Abd el Atti sold him, and the startling revelations in the text drove him over the brink into madness. He determined to destroy the blasphemous manuscript. But it was incomplete. He visited Abd el Atti on the night of the murder…’

Emerson’s breath gave out, and I took up the story. ‘He went there in search of the rest of the manuscript. No doubt he had harassed and threatened Abd el Atti; the old man was in deadly fear – not, as I had supposed, of his criminal associates, but of the unbeliever who was behaving so strangely. On that last night Abd el Atti admitted to Ezekiel that there had been two coffins, one of which had been sold to the baroness. He also told Ezekiel I had a fragment from the first coffin. Ezekiel went berserk. He strangled the old man then and there – ’

‘And hanged him from the roofbeam,’ Emerson said grimly. ‘There was always a suggestion of ritual murder in that, for why go to the trouble of hanging a man who is already dead? I took it for some ceremony of the gang Abd el Atti had betrayed; but did not Judas, the greatest of traitors, hang himself, and was not David’s treacherous and beloved son Absalom found hanging from a tree? In Ezekiel’s darkening mind it was the proper treatment for a blasphemer.’

‘Ezekiel broke into our room at Shepheard’s hoping to retrieve the fragment,’ I went on. ‘He had removed the remaining pieces of the first mummy case from Abd el Atti’s shop the night of the murder. He was not interested in the mummy; along with other items it was knocked over and the painted panel fastened to it was dislodged from the wrappings. That was the painting Emerson – ’

‘Ahem,’ said Emerson loudly. ‘So much for the first coffin and mummy. The second, that of Thermoutharin, was in the salon of the baroness’s dahabeeyah Ezekiel knew his holy mission would not be complete until he had obtained and destroyed it. There was a strong possibility that it contained the remainder of the blasphemous manuscript.’

‘That clumsy fellow broke into the baroness’s cabin and single-handedly carried off the mummy case?’ de Morgan asked incredulously.

Emerson beat me to the draw, as the American idiom has it. ‘No, that was Hamid, with the help of a few confederates. He knew how desperately Ezekiel wanted the mummy case. He discarded the mummy itself, since it was worthless – and heavy – but he removed the painted portrait in an effort to render the mummy anonymous. I don’t know what has become of that painting. Perhaps Hamid sold it to a passing tourist. The portrait we had, that of – er – Mrs Thermoutharin, appeared to fit the mummy of her husband, because they were the same size.’

It was my turn to speak. ‘Hamid probably took the other objects he had stolen from the baroness directly to his leader as proof of his loyalty; but the leader, who is no fool, was bound to wonder what he had done with the mummy case and why he had stolen it in the first place. Hamid could invent some lie to explain the latter question – he had been mistaken about its value, he had believed it contained valuable jewels – that sort of thing. But he had to account for its disappearance. His tricks with the mummy cases coming and going were designed to confuse his leader as well as us.’

‘It was clever of him to conceal his prize among others of the same sort,’ Emerson said grudgingly. ‘The old “Purloined Letter” device. He put it in our storeroom and carried one of our coffins into the desert. Later, after Ezekiel had agreed to buy it, he removed it from the storeroom. Ezekiel had no intention of paying him; he had no more money, but he had his murderous hands. The rope around Hamid’s neck was a symbolic gesture. Ezekiel could hardly hang the man from the roofbeam of his own house.’

‘He was still clinging to the rags of sanity then,’ I remarked.

‘You are mixing your metaphors, Peabody, I believe. His hold on reality was weakening every day. But he had sense enough to know he could not hide the mummy case indefinitely. He destroyed it by fire a few days later. That was his real aim, after all – to destroy the manuscript. That,’ Emerson added nonchalantly, ‘was one of the vital clues. The Master Criminal – curse it, I mean the leader of the gang – would have no reason to steal an antiquity only to destroy it.’

De Morgan could contain himself no longer. ‘But what was it?’ he cried. ‘What was this terrible manuscript that drove a man to murder?’

There was a brief pause, fraught with drama. Then Emerson turned to Ramses, who had been an interested spectator. ‘Very well, my boy; not even your mama can deny that you have a right to speak. What was in the manuscript?’

Ramses cleared his throat. ‘You understand dat I can only t’eorize, since de fragments remaining are only a small fraction of de whole. However – ’

‘Ramses,’ I said gently.

‘Yes, Mama, I will be brief. I t’ink dat de manuscript is a copy of a lost gospel, written by Didymus Thomas, one of de apostles. Dat much could be surmised from de first fragment. It is de second fragment, found by Mama later, dat may provide an explanation for de madness of Brudder Ezekiel.’

‘Ramses,’ said Emerson.

‘Yes, Papa. It contained t’ree words. Dey are: “de son of Jesus.”’

‘Nom de Dieu,’
de Morgan gasped.

‘You are quick, monsieur,’ I said. ‘You see the significance of those words.’

‘They may not mean what we think,’ de Morgan muttered, passing a trembling hand across his brow. ‘They cannot mean what we think.’

‘But we may reasonably conclude from the actions of Brother Ezekiel that the lost gospel contained matter he would consider blasphemous and heretical – matter that must never come to light. It is not unheard of even for supposedly sane scholars to suppress data that does not agree with their pet theories. Imagine the effect of such information on a man whose brain was already reeling; who suffered from incipient megalomania.’