The Egyptian Curse (2 page)

Old Lovers

How miserable is the man who loves.

– Plautus,
Asinaria
, 200 B.C.

“You've got to be kidding.”

“I am not noted for making jokes during murder investigations,” Rollins said dryly. “But I presume that is an Americanism.”

Why did I not see this coming?
Of course Scotland Yard would suspect the wife, and of course they would look for a boyfriend - especially in the light of the argument overheard by the parlor maid. And Hale so conveniently fit the role, although he no longer played it. It was hardly unknown for a woman to continue a romantic relationship with a former lover after marrying another man, especially among the upper classes. That must have been why Rollins had been so forthcoming with news about the investigation: He'd been carefully watching Hale's every reaction to the information he laid out as bait. Well, there was nothing for it but to tell the truth. Hale had nothing to hide.

“It's true that I was once very close to Lady Sarah Bridgewater,” he said, “but I haven't seen her since 1922.”

“Not since the wedding?”

“She got married on a ship on her way back from Egypt. I saw her the day she returned, when she informed me that she was now Mrs. Barrington. That was the last time was spoke.”

“Then you won't mind telling me where you were last evening.”

“Early in the evening I was at Covent Garden watching
Aida
. Afterwards, I went out to supper at Simpson's.”

“Were you alone?” He said it as if he expected Hale to answer in the affirmative.

Hale hesitated. Was it fair to drag Prudence into this? What if she was married, as he suspected? He didn't want to get the woman in trouble with her husband. On the other hand, there is trouble and then there is big trouble. Being questioned in a murder investigation struck Hale as big trouble.

“I was with a woman named Prudence Beresford. We were together from about seven o'clock to just after midnight.”

Rollins adopted an ironic smile. “That's very convenient. I'm sure you know that Mr. Barrington's body was found about eleven forty-five.”

“Yes, I know. I read that in the newspaper.”

“What do you mean by ‘together' with this woman?”

“Not what you think I mean. She went home from Simpson's.”

“Where does she live?”

“That I don't know. Somewhere in the country, I gather.”

Rollins managed to infuse the arching of an eyebrow with cynicism. “You don't know?”

“She never told me.” Hale squirmed in his chair, knowing that this was going to be hard for the inspector to swallow. “Look, I only know this woman from seeing her at the opera. She's no more than a casual acquaintance. I've never been to her house or flat and she's never been to mine. We met up at Covent Garden and walked together to Simpson's after the opera. That's the extent of it. I may or may not see her again next opera season.”

Rollins didn't say anything, just looked at him. Hale knew that trick because he had often used it himself as a reporter. Most people are so uncomfortable with silence that they tend to fill it with words, often saying more than they should. But Hale didn't do that. Silence hung in the air like an unwelcome guest at a party.

After perhaps a minute, the inspector said, “You do realize that's not a very believable story, don't you?”

“Of course I do. If I were making it up, I'd have done a better job.”

Rollins grunted, giving the impression that he didn't think much of Hale's argument. “We shall see if we can find Miss Beresford. In the meanwhile” - he held out his hand - “I should like to hold on to your passport until this matter is resolved.”

At about the same time that mid-morning, the widow Barrington emerged from a fitful sleep for the second time that morning - this time alone in the room. She sat up in bed. Disoriented, fragmented memories returned to her... Mary shaking her awake and then-

Alfie is dead. Everything has changed.

The usually attractive Lady Sarah looked much older than her twenty-five years, with her short blond hair in disarray and the fair skin of her face sagging. Her wide green eyes would have seemed dead, had there been anyone to observe them. She had once performed on the stage under another name and had even found a dead body, but this...

What a nightmare! That horrible man from Scotland Yard - not at all like dear Wiggins - seemed to have an endless supply of impertinent questions.

“Was it common for your husband to stay overnight at his club, Lady Sarah?”

“Is it true that you two had a violent quarrel last night that resulted in him storming out of the house?”

“And in this quarrel was something said about you loving another man?”

“Didn't you have a strong attachment to Mr. Enoch Hale before your unexpected marriage to Mr. Barrington?”

Question, questions, questions!
She had wanted to scream.

Rollins had seemed to imply that she arranged for Alfie to be killed by Enoch. How absurd! Enoch surely would come to hate her for that, if he didn't hate her already. She had to find some way to get him out of this mess. But how? The only thing she could think of was to tell the truth.

And that was unthinkable.

Leading Suspect

“Great is journalism. Is not every able editor a ruler of the world, being the persuader of it?”

– Thomas Carlyle,
The French Revolution
, 1837

Hale stood waiting nervously as Rathbone finished reading his story. It could have been his imagination, but he thought he saw the managing director's eyes widen as he read the first sentence:

“Enoch Hale, a reporter for the Central Press Syndicate, has emerged as the leading suspect in the stabbing Sunday night of Alfred Barrington.”

But Rathbone kept reading, puffing energetically on his pipe. Finally, he looked up and sat back in his chair. “You really have balls, Hale. I suppose you know that.”

“I've been told so before, sir, although not always so colorfully.”

But he didn't feel very ballsy as Rathbone took his pen to the manuscript and started writing on it. “What are you doing?”

“I'm turning this into a first-person account by a murder suspect, Hale. Your involvement in the story is what makes it unique. We need to run with that angle, not bury it: ‘This reporter has emerged as,' etc. The byline will tell the readers who you are and who you work for. Half the newspapers in the United Kingdom will carry this story, and the other half will carry stories
about
it. Well done, Hale, well done!” That was about the most Rathbone ever gave by way of approval, and any of his reporters would have fought a duel to earn it. “Too bad it will be your last story on this case.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm going to turn it all over to Malone from this point, as planned. He can handle it.”

“So can I!”

“But Malone isn't a suspect in the case.”

Hale felt his ears get red. “Surely you don't think I killed Alfie Barrington!”

“Of course not.” Rathbone's eyes wandered to his pipe, to Hale's manuscript, to the typewriter on his desk. “However, er, just for the record-”

“No, I didn't. I was at the opera when he was killed.” Hale forced himself to slow down and stop shouting. “That's in my story. And I was telling you the truth this morning when I said that Sarah and I were finished long ago.”

“Right. I have every confidence in you, Hale. That isn't really the issue, though, is it? You can't be reporting on a murder in which you're Scotland Yard's chief suspect, can you? Think about it, man!”

Hale thought about it. Rathbone's point made perfect sense; he had to admit that. His name on stories about the murder, even those that didn't involve the Scotland Yard investigation, would put the Central Press Syndicate in a position that was far beyond merely awkward.

“I understand, sir. But when Scotland Yard finds Miss Beresford” - was she really a miss? - “and verifies my alibi, I won't be a suspect anymore.”

“And when that happens, I'll put you back on the story to help Malone. Meanwhile, I want you to work on a follow-up feature story on Leigh Mallory.

“The Everest fellow?”

George Herbert Leigh Mallory, a 37-year-old mountaineer, and his climbing partner had disappeared on the northeast ridge of Mount Everest a little more than two weeks earlier, on June 7.

“That's right. By this time he's certainly dead and we've never told the whole story - aging mountain climber, last chance to scale the world's largest mountain, all that. I want the story on my desk by Wednesday morning. That gives you the rest of today and tomorrow, plenty of time to do it right.”

Hale's alibi, the woman who had given her name to him as Prudence Beresford, read that morning's
Times
story about the murder of Alfred James Barrington with great interest. It combined two of her favorite subjects: murder and Egypt. In fact, it reminded her a bit of one of her own short stories. The article had been written by a man named Artemis Howell. She had paid a lot of attention to bylines since first meeting Enoch Hale a few weeks earlier.

Alfred Barrington, the son-in-law and close associate of Edward Bridgewater, the Earl of Sedgewood, was found stabbed to death near his club on Sunday night.

Lord Sedgewood and the late Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the expedition that found the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun two years ago, were long-time rivals in the field of Egyptology. The victim shared his father-in-law's passion and traveled with him to Egypt several months before their competitor's fabulous discovery.

The death of Lord Carnarvon in Egypt on 23 April 1923 has been attributed by some to a mummy's curse, although doctors blamed an infection from a bug bite. It is said that as the peer died, lights throughout the city of Cairo...

Curse or not, she didn't like knives and guns. Death by poison was so much neater. Besides, she knew a lot about poisons. It was just possible the stabbing could add an exotic touch, though, if the weapon turned out to be a jewelled scimitar or some such. That would lift this story above the typical sordid accounts of robbery and murder that one found in the unimaginative daily Press. There was promise here. She picked up her scissors and clipped the article.

Bedford Place

The less we know the more we suspect.

–H.W. Shaw,
Josh Billings' Encyclopedia of Wit and Wisdom
, 1874

Rathbone could take Hale off of the story, but he couldn't stop him from visiting Sarah. Hale had been asking himself since that early-morning phone call how he felt about her. He had slowly come to admit that the hurt was still there - and so was the love.

After lunch, Hale headed for Bloomsbury. Sarah and Alfie had setup housekeeping at 12 Bedford Place, just two blocks over from the British Museum. It was a short street in a modest neighborhood of artists and academics, a little more than a tenth of a mile running between Russell Street and Bloomsbury Square Gardens.

“Yes?” The servant who answered the door, a tall man with an abundant mop of thick gray hair and a stoop, regarded him skeptically.

“I'm here to see Lady Sarah.”

“I am afraid that Madam is not receiving visitors.” He started to close the door, but Hale prevented that with a quick foot.

“I'm not a visitor, I'm an old friend.”

“Nevertheless, sir-”

Hale handed the man his business card. “Just give her this.”

“As you wish, sir.”

As the door closed in his face, Hale worried that the “Central Press Syndicate” beneath his name on the card might cause the butler to throw it away rather than take it to Sarah. Or maybe Sarah would throw it away herself. That fear grew as the minutes ticked by. Hale began to feel foolish standing on the stoop, hat in hand.

Finally, the door opened.

“Lady Sarah will see you, sir.” The stiff upper lip failed to conceal the butler's surprise.

Hale had never understood the reference to one's heart skipping a beat until he entered the parlor and saw Sarah. Sitting on a divan, flanked by her brother on one side and a willowy, red-haired woman Hale didn't know on the other, Sarah seemed at least a decade older than her true age in the mid-twenties.

“Hello, Sarah. I'm so sorry about Alfie.”

“Enoch!”

She ran to him. The hug didn't last long; just long enough to tear Hale's heart apart. “That dreadful policeman asked me about you. How I wish you hadn't been dragged into this!”

“Tempest in a teapot. Don't worry about it. Rollins will be singing a different tune as soon as he confirms my alibi.”

Charles Bridgewater stood up, and the other woman on the divan immediately followed suit.

“It's been a long time, Hale,” Sarah's brother said as he presented his hand. “Good to see you again.” Charles was still thin and still spoke as if he'd just arrived from Oxford, although he no longer wore a pince-nez on his aristocratic nose. Hale had first met him while Sarah was in Egypt
[1]
. Estranged from his father because of his dissolute living after returning from the War, he had been working under another name. Later, Hale had heard that father and son had reconciled. But Charles had always remained close to his sister, even when that required meeting her secretly during the estrangement from his father.

“May I present my fiancé, Portia Lyme?”

She smiled and offered her hand. Bright young things always did that. And she was certainly young, perhaps twenty or so. Hale suspected she was the spoiled, thoroughly modern daughter of a minor nobleman.

“I saw the story in
The Times
-lot of rubbish about Carnarvon and the supposed Tutankhamun curse.” Charles held up Hale's card. “I suppose you're here for more of the same?”

“Charles!” Sarah said.

“I'm here as a friend, not as a journalist,” Hale said. “I'd like to help Sarah. But I think the best way I can do that is to act a bit like a journalist - ask a lot of obnoxious questions until I find something that might be helpful. At some point in the process I might want to pass something along to a colleague for publication, but I won't do that without your approval.”

“What kind of questions?” Sarah asked.

Hesitating, Hale glanced toward Portia Lyme. She didn't look away.

“Portia's going to be part of our family,” Sarah said. “Whatever you want to ask, you can do it in front of her.”

Hale nodded. “All right, then. Inspector Rollins said you had an argument with Alfie last night. Was your marriage in trouble?”

“Now see here, Hale!” Charles sputtered.

Sarah cast her green eyes down. “No, it's all right. The inspector asked about that, and I'm sure he'll be asking the servants and all of Alfie's friends. The fact is, we didn't quarrel a lot. But neither were we in love. I think I told you once, Enoch, that he was like a brother to me. That turned out to be all too true. We were more like brother and sister than husband and wife.”

If Charles and his girl hadn't been in the room, Hale would have taken her into his arms. He had to force himself to pay attention as Sarah continued.

“I suppose it's only natural that he should look elsewhere for... female companionship.”

“He had a girlfriend?”

“I'm not really sure.” She sat back down on the divan, hesitating as she apparently collected her thoughts. “He'd been hanging around with what they call the Bloomsbury Group, the writers and artists that populate this district. I suspect he was rather too fond of that Virginia Woolf woman.”

“Suspect or know?”

“It's just a feeling I have, and not a strong one. What difference does it make whether they were intimate or not? That's where he spent his time, that's where his heart was - with that crowd and at his club.”

Hale had heard of Woolf as a writer, and a wild woman, although he'd never read anything by her.

“Isn't Virginia Woolf quite a bit older than Alfie?” he asked.

“Oh, yes - early forties, I think. Doesn't say much for me, does it?”Her cheeks flushed as she inspected her hands nervously held in her lap.

“And isn't she married to some sort of literary type - an editor or something of the kind?”

Sarah nodded. “Yes, Leonard Woolf. He was a friend of Alfie's, too. It was all very
civilized
.”The last word was spit out with a heavy note of bitterness.

“Father was quite upset about Alfie's choice of friends,” Charles said.

Was it almost as bad as your sister seeing a journalist?
Lord Sedgewood's contempt for his profession still rankled Hale. He had chosen it in part to irritate his father, and was dismayed when it proved a stumbling block to his potential father-in-law as well.

Hale could think of all sorts of love-triangle murder motives that wouldn't make Sarah the murderer. Perhaps Alfie wanted to break off whatever he had going with Virginia Woolf - if anything. Or perhaps Leonard Woolf wasn't as “civilized” as he liked to let on.

“Do you think Alfie's involvement with these people may have had anything to do with his murder, Sarah?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then whom do you suspect?”

“No one! I can't imagine anyone wanting to kill Alfie. He was so... inoffensive. I shall miss him terribly.”

Sarah turned slightly, as though to hide the catch in her throat and the tear in her eye. Were they the products of emotion or acting? Given that she had once been a music hall performer, Hale couldn't be sure which it was. And he was even less sure which he wanted it to be.

“Even the governor wouldn't kill a man just because he didn't like the company he was keeping,” Charles said.

“Don't even talk like that!” Sarah snapped, her voice trembling. Portia Lyme's air of youthful sophistication dissipated into a look of embarrassment. She looked like she'd rather be somewhere else.

Maybe Sedgewood
would
do that, Hale thought - not out of calculation, certainly, but out of rage. And maybe that's why Sarah reacted so strongly.

He thought back to the first time he had met the fifth Earl of Sedgewood, almost four years earlier during his reporting of the Hangman murders
[2]
. Hale had managed to talk his way into His Lordship's oak-paneled library, where they sat and talked next to a black statue of the Egyptian cat-goddess Bastet. Convinced that Hale was in the pay of the Bolsheviks or his rival Carnarvon, the Earl had answered few questions before ordering him out of the town house. Their relationship had later taken several interesting turns - after Sedgewood found out that Hale was involved with his daughter and before he convinced her to go with him to Egypt. A widower, he was very protective of Sarah.

Hale made a mental note to check on where Sedgewood was last night. Then he changed the subject without warning, always a good interview technique.

“I didn't ask you about the quarrel you and Alfie had last night. According to Rollins, Alfie was overheard to say something like ‘you love him, don't you?' I know what you told Rollins about that, but if I'm going to help you I need to know the truth. I'm also kind of curious since it's the reason I have to prove where I was during the murder. So let's have it: Is there another man in the picture?”

Sarah opened her mouth to answer. Hale would later wonder what she would have said if the door hadn't opened behind him.

“Daddy! What did he say?”

The peer, a short man with a bit of a paunch and prematurely thinning blond hair above a high forehead, had changed little over the past two years. The expression on his face was somewhere between grim and determined. “You are in good hands, my dear. Sir Edmund has agreed to act as your solicitor in this matter, whatever may be involved. You are to meet with him tomorrow. Until then you are to say nothing further to Scotland Yard. He believes they may attempt to prove that you were not, in fact, asleep during Alfie's murder if their other suspect falls through.”

Sedgewood scowled, apparently noticing Hale for the first time. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“He wants to help,” Sarah said.

“How - with more of his stories for the trash papers?”

It was a measure of the man that he regarded
The Morning Telegraph
and the dozens of other respectable clients of the Central Press Syndicate as “trash papers.” They weren't
The Times
.

“I'm not writing anything about the case, Your Lordship. But that won't stop me from putting a bug in the ear of the man who is. Sometimes the Press can point the police in the right direction if they've gone off the rails, which I'm very much afraid they've done in this case.”

The Earl regarded Hale shrewdly. “Perhaps so, perhaps not. I understand that Scotland Yard suspects that you may have had some hand in this. That hardly seems beyond imagining. You wanted to marry Sarah. I would never have permitted that, of course, but that reality did not seem to disturb your fantasies. Sarah's marriage to a thoroughly suitable partner did, however. Now that obstacle to your delusional hopes has been removed.”

Charming as ever
, Hale thought. Still, Hale couldn't deny his logic. It made perfect sense, objectively speaking, that Hale could have killed Alfie on his own initiative in hopes of winning Sarah back. “Fortunately, I have a witness as to my whereabouts at the time of the murder - another woman.”

What was that look that Sarah gave him? Surely it couldn't be hurt or disappointment.
She
had left
him
. She must have understood that he would go on with his life without her.

“Well, that's that, then,” Sedgewood said. “It's not likely that another woman would lie to protect you, given the circumstances.”

“Who do you think killed Alfie?” Hale said.

The Earl shrugged. “I will leave that to the police to find out. That is what they are paid for.”

“And they usually do a good job of it, more than readers of detective stories think, but not always. I believe they could use a little help on this one. Who might have wanted Alfie dead?”

“I cannot imagine unless... perhaps someone at the Constitutional Club, near where he died. I suppose he might have caught someone cheating at cards.”