Dead Men's Hearts (13 page)

“The nub of the matter is this,” Haddon said. “The other night, when a skeleton appeared so unexpectedly in our storage enclosure—you do know about that amusing little contretemps, Mrs. Gustafson?”

“Yes,” Bea said patiently, “I know about that.”

“Very good. As it happened, I also observed, half-hidden by a rusting bed frame, a small Amarna head. Strangely enough, although there were four other people in the enclosure with me, no one else seemed to take notice of it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gideon saw TJ muttering into her sherry.

“The fragment, as I say, is from our own collection,” Haddon went smoothly on. “To be more precise, from the 1924 Western Valley excavations of Cordell Lambert. Apparently—”

“How do you know that?” TJ blurted. “Do you mean you’ve
found
it?”

“Oh, yes, I found it.” Haddon finished his Manhattan and smiled at her.

“But we looked all over the enclosure,” TJ said. “It wasn’t there.”

“No, Tiffany, it was not there. Why was it not there? It was not there because by then it was back where it belonged, back from whence it had been removed—presumably at the same time as our friend F4360 was so cruelly torn from his own humble abode.”

Gideon shifted his legs restlessly. He was starting to see what it was about Haddon that got on people’s nerves.

TJ put her sherry on a cocktail table and leaned forward over bony knees and gigantic sneakers. “You’re telling us you found it back inside—in the annex?”

“Exactly. The possibility of its being there occurred to me yesterday, belatedly, to be sure, and I went in search of it. And, lo, I did find it, reposing comfortably in a drawer, precisely where it belonged among its fellow sculptural oddments of the Amarna Period.”

It was sad, really. Haddon’s manner, his scholarship, his interests, were all relics of another age. He was a man who had overstayed his welcome, who hadn’t been perceptive enough or brave enough to get out when it was time, when his reputation was still intact. Don’t let it happen to me, Gideon thought. When the handwriting’s on the wall, let me recognize it.

TJ sank back in her chair, patently doubtful. “That I’d like to see,” she said under her breath, but in an otherwise silent moment it dropped into the void and Haddon picked it up.

“And so you shall,” he told her without apparent offense. “You and anyone else who cares to.” He raised his arms. “All are invited.”

Gideon was starting to get uncomfortable. Haddon was tight. TJ was getting there. The evening was unlikely to improve and it was only 6:30.

“Clifford,” said Bea, who wasn’t the least bit tight, “I’m still not sure I’m following you. Are you telling us that this fragment you saw outside with the bones the other night wasn’t there the next morning because someone took it away and put it back in a drawer? During the night? Secretly?”

“In a word,” said Haddon, “yes.”

Julie leaned toward Gideon. “The plot thickens.”

“Thickens?” he said. “It’s practically coagulated.”

“But—but who?” a frowning Arlo asked Haddon. “To what end?”

Haddon smiled brilliantly at him. “And there, my dear Arlo, with your usual ready acumen—”

Arlo’s vague mustache twitched. His expression turned opaque. He looked at the floor.

“—you have put your metaphorical finger on those
resgestae
of the case that are so extraordinarily intriguing.” He swirled his glass absently and drank down melted ice. “In fact, I do have some thoughts on the matter, some rather obvious thoughts, really, but I suspect it would be a bit premature to discuss them.”

At which convenient point one of the staff entered, smilingly raised a miniature xylophone to shoulder height, and beat a tattoo that made up in enthusiasm for what it lacked in musicality.

Dinner was served.

Bruno and Bea caught up with them on the way to the dining room. “Are things getting interesting or what?” Bruno asked. “What do you think is going on? I know the way I figure it—” He glanced around. Behind them, TJ and Jerry were deep in their own conversation, but he lowered his voice anyway.

“The way I figure it, only four people besides Haddon could have known that head was sitting there, right? Arlo, Jerry, TJ, and the Arab guy. So one of them must have snuck back and put it in the drawer. It has to be. The question is, why?”

“No, I don’t think that’s necessarily right,” Julie said. “Any of them could have told other people about it. So could Dr. Haddon, for that matter.”

Bruno considered this briefly. “True. But the question still remains: why? I mean, I could see if somebody came back and stole it, but what’s the point of putting it back in the drawer? That’s where it would have wound up the next morning anyway, right?”

“Actually—” said Gideon.

“Wrong,” Bea said. “Bruno, I will never in my life figure out how a meathead like you ever managed to make three separate fortunes.”

The way he beamed at her, it might have been a compliment. “Don’t forget, I managed to blow two of ‘em too.”

The small, tidy Nefertiti Restaurant had been set with places for four at each table: three glasses, multitudinous silverware, thick, spotless linen. They went to a table near a window. Outside, here and there in the growing dusk, the neon signs atop minarets began to flicker on in red and green.

“Now,” Bea said to Bruno once they’d sat down, “how many years have we been coming to Horizon House? Don’t you know Clifford Haddon yet? He thinks all we’ve been doing for the last three days is wondering if he’s cuckoo or not, and it’s been driving him bonkers.”

Julie smiled. “You don’t like him very much.”

Bea seemed surprised. “I don’t dislike him. I admire him very much. But I also know the way the man’s mind works. He can’t stand to look foolish, and the fact that he saw something that wasn’t there, and that everybody knows it— or so he thought—has been preying on his mind. So, being Clifford, he has to make up this fairy story that’s supposed to prove it was really there, only some tricky devil came skulking back in the dead of night and put it back where it belongs. It’s ridiculous, but how can anyone prove it didn’t happen?”

Bruno looked doubtful. “I don’t know, hon…”

“Gideon agrees with me. I can tell from that pensive, furrowed brow. That’s what I like about Gideon. The man’s an open book.”

“Well, I’m not sure about it.” Gideon looked up from the water goblet he’d been turning in slow circles. “What doesn’t quite ring true to me is his recognizing the head when he saw it in the drawer. As I understand it, he only got a glimpse of it the night before, in the dark, with all that commotion over the bones. And he said himself it wasn’t that distinctive—”

“So how can he be so positive it was the very same one he saw the night before in the enclosure?” Bea finished for him. “You’re absolutely right.”

Gideon himself was less sure. “Maybe.”

The waiter approached to pour glasses of red wine for them, then set the bottle on the table: Omar Khayyam Grand Vin Rouge. “Most good wine of Egypt,” he told them. “Very tasty.”

Julie pointed out that they now had a chance to fulfill the promise they’d made to themselves to share a bottle of wine while watching the sun set over the Nile, and wouldn’t it be nice to find a more pleasant subject?

This idea was endorsed by all parties, and they spent a congenial hour and a half over several more glasses of Egypt’s finest and a praiseworthy meal of
chiche kabab a la broche
and
riz au sauce de tomates.

While Bruno related to them the startling experience of G. Patrick Flanagan of California, whose dog converted permanently to vegetarianism after exposure to the healthful rays of pyramid power.

It was, said Bruno, a known fact.

Chapter Twelve

“
Gideon!”‘

He started, deep in some queer, muddled dream about working on an assembly line, trying to nail something together to the beat of tom-toms. The tom-toms were keeping time, like drums on a slave galley, but he couldn’t quite find the beat and his hammer kept going soft on him. And somewhere in the distance someone was calling his name—

“
Gideon!”‘

His eyes opened. The room was black and silent. Beneath him the bed vibrated with the steady throbbing of the ship’s engines. The tom-toms started again.

“Someone’s at the door,” Julie murmured beside him.

“Right,” Gideon said, more or less coming awake. “Door.”

“Gideon, wake up, will you?” It was Phil. “There’s been an accident. It’s Haddon.”

God. Not the kind of words to bring one gently from sleep. Gideon pressed his fingers to his eyes, rolled out of bed, and stumbled to the door, barking his shin on a corner of the refrigerator in the unfamiliar room. He edged the door open and squinted into the bright light of the corridor.

“Phil—what happened? What time is it?”

“It’s five-thirty. He fell overboard. Last night. He must have been wandering around by himself—”

“Last
night!
You don’t mean he’s—”

“As a doornail. They found his body half an hour ago, and Wahab’s tearing his hair out.”

“Wahab.”

“The boat manager. Come
on,
wake up. We’ve already called the police, but Wahab’s screaming for a doctor at the scene and you’re the closest thing we’ve got, so let’s get going.” He pushed the door open further. Oh, Lord, you don’t even have any clothes on. Get dressed, will you?“

“Okay, all right, I’ll be right out.” He closed the door, leaving Phil in the hallway, and flicked on the lights.

“You heard?” he said to Julie as he slipped quickly into a shirt and trousers.

She nodded thoughtfully, sitting up in bed under the covering sheet, her arms around her knees. “Gideon, you don’t suppose…” She stopped, looking hard at him.

He glanced up from tying the laces on his deck moccasins. “Suppose what?”

“You don’t suppose that… that someone…”

But he did suppose. Haddon had tracked down the “missing” head, or so he’d said. He’d made a public fuss about it, he’d offered to show it to one and all, he’d brayed about having “thoughts” on who had done it and why. That had all been less than twelve hours ago, and now he was dead. As a result of falling overboard. In the middle of the night. With no witnesses.

Wasn’t it just a little too convenient, too timely, too… tidy? Wasn’t it possible that he’d touched on something that someone wanted to keep secret so badly that—

No, this wasn’t even conjecture, not even surmise. It was no more than a mechanical reaction, a kind of conditioned paranoia. There were a thousand other possible explanations, why leap to this one? Damn it, this was what came of taking on more forensic cases than were good for him. He was starting to see murder behind every door, under every freshly spaded garden plot.

And now he even had Julie doing it. “No, I don’t suppose,” he said gruffly. “You know what? You think about murder too much.”

Her lips curved in the palest of smiles. “Gee, why do you suppose that is?”

Apparently, Haddon had fallen from a rear corner of the upper deck, Phil told him as they hurried down the corridor and went below by way of a musty, enclosed stairway that was ordinarily used only by the crew. He had not, as Gideon had supposed, fallen directly into the water, but had struck a one-by-two-foot wooden platform, or step, that projected from the side of the lower deck near the stern to make boarding easier for the men who delivered food and supplies in heavy sacks and boxes. He had evidently landed on his head, then toppled into the water, but one of the epaulets from his jacket had caught on a metal rod that was part of the platform’s support, and he had been dragged along beside the ship since a little after midnight.

“How do you know the time?” Gideon asked.

“One of the crewmen was taking soundings and he heard a thump in the rear, and then a splash. He had a look but didn’t see anything. But then he didn’t think to look straight down almost under the platform; he was looking behind the ship, in the wake. Then this morning one of the cooks saw him while he was dumping garbage overboard. They came and got me. I went and had a look and turned right around and came and got you.”

He pushed open a dented metal door. “Here we are, ground floor.”

The
Menshiya
was a sort of floating “Upstairs, Downstairs.” Above, on the passenger deck, all was comfortable chairs, lounges, picture-windowed staterooms, and sparkling cleanliness. It was like a roomy, floating palace, seemingly self-maintaining except for the pleasant, cordial Mr. Wahab, and an occasional silent, smartly groomed waiter to bring drinks or serve food. But here at water level, it was a different world, dingy, scuffed, smelly, and cramped. Passengers did not come down here. Crew members, except for the waiters and stewards, never left.

The space into which they emerged from the stairwell had sacks of rice, or beans, or flour stacked in one corner, clean towels and linens in open boxes in another, and some hammocks and bedclothes thrown carelessly into yet another. Other hammocks, still strung on hooks attached to walls and posts, were being pulled down by excited crew members. It was only with an effort that Gideon recognized one of the young men, in jeans and age-grayed white undershirt, as the smiling, white-jacketed boy who had played the xylophone at dinner.

Phil led him quickly from this dormitory-storage room with its single naked light bulb through a galley that stank of cooking oil and engine exhaust. There was a chef’s sink, two big food lockers on opposite walls, and an enormous 1930s cooking range in the center with all four legs in kerosene-filled tuna cans to keep the roaches at bay. An aproned old man sitting on a stool, apparently annoyed at having his work schedule disrupted, grumbled at them as they went by, a half-inch cigarette stub jiggling on his lip.

The back door of the galley led to a small deck at the stern, where there was a deeply worn butcher-block table at which the kitchen staff chopped everything from sides of beef to bunches of scallions. Here too was where food deliveries were made from shore, and where the crew came for their breaks, to sit on the deck, and talk, and smoke, their backs against the gunwale.