The Egyptian Curse (7 page)

Baines

Time and Chance reveal all secrets.

– Mary De La Riviere Manley,
The New Atlantis
, 1709

Linwood Baines lived two doors down from the Egyptian consulate, which was located at 26 South Street. The building had the same external look as the one on either side of it, obviously built as part of a row development. Stone covered the face of the ground floor and the upper levels were red brick. The only thing distinctive about this particular house was the covered porch, which extended out from the face of the building, and a spiked iron railing, which circumscribed the six steps to the door and the concrete yard that lay between the house and the sidewalk. Hale suspected that Baines was trying to ingratiate himself with the neighboring Aziz Pasha Ezzat, Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James.

Virginia Woolf had been the second person to mention Baines as a possible suspect in Alfie's killing, although for different reasons. Two days earlier, Howard Carter had claimed that Baines had been lying about his credentials as an archeologist. It was past time for Hale to check him out.

He had called ahead, so Baines was expecting him. The door opened before Hale could knock. An elderly gentleman emerged and strolled past Hale with a quick nod in his direction as he passed. He was a stout individual, like an athlete past his prime, and wore a thick grey mustache.

Baines, about forty years old with strawberry blond hair and the crooked nose of a boxer or street fighter, stood in the open doorway. Hale sized up his perfectly tailored grey suit as Saville Row.
He spends a lot on clothing
, Hale thought,
but he shows his visitor to the door himself
.
That means he doesn't have a servant. Maybe he's hard up for money. Maybe he owed a lot to Alfie and couldn't pay him back.

Baines watched the guest depart for a few moments before turning his attention to the newcomer. “Mr. Hale?”

“Right.”

The formalities of handshaking accomplished, they entered the house together.

“Looks like you're having a busy morning,” Hale commented.

“Oh, it's just the usual thing. That was a collector of antiquities who just left, a fellow named Burton Hill. Came here to get my advice on a purchase, but couldn't help talking about Alfie's murder. I suppose that's going to be the order of the day. Well, come in, sir.”

He spoke with machine-gun rapidity and an open manner. Hale was going to find it hard not to like him.

With no servants in evidence, just as Hale had expected, Baines offered him tea from a sideboard in the sitting room. As Hale added sugar, Baines said, “I know about you.”

Hale froze for a second, and then stirred his tea. “What is it that you know about me, Mr. Baines?”

Baines sat back, teacup in hand. “You said on the phone that you're a friend of the Bridgewater family and that you're trying to help Lady Sarah. I daresay you are a friend to some in the family and not to others. Lady Sarah has mentioned your name many times in my presence, and always with a great deal of affection. I believe she regrets that... well, let's just say she's certainly quite fond of you.”

Hale sipped tea, using the cup to hide the smile of satisfaction on his face.

“I gather, then, that you know Lady Sarah rather well.”

“One could say that. I've spent a lot of time around her and Mr. Barrington because of my relationship with His Lordship.”

“Are you aware that Scotland Yard suspects she may have had something to do with her husband's death?”

Baines snorted. “Preposterous! Lady Sarah would hesitate to kill a scorpion that was about to strike her. Someone else would have to do it for her. She certainly wouldn't kill anyone.”

Hale sat forward. “Now that's interesting.”

“What?”

“I would have expected you to say that she couldn't have killed Mr. Barrington because she was very devoted to him.”

“Devoted?” Baines appeared to consider the word. “That depends on what one means by the word. Lady Sarah was a dutiful wife to Mr. Barrington, certainly, from what I could observe. I didn't get the sense, however, that theirs was a love match. Forgive me, Mr. Hale, I see that I've shocked you.”
No, you have delighted me, Baines.
“I've overstepped my bounds. You will write me down as a hopeless gossip.”

Hale's heart soared. Although Sarah had essentially told Hale the same thing, Baines's comment was a third-party confirmation of her story. That meant that Sarah hadn't just been telling him what she must certainly know he would want to hear.

“I hope you didn't tell Inspector Rollins that,” Hale said. “It wouldn't do Sarah a bit of good.”

The archeologist's jaw dropped. “Inspector? You mean Scotland Yard? The police haven't talked with me. Do you think they will?”

“Perhaps not. I'm poking into different corners than they are. For example, did you owe Alfie money?”

“Certainly not! What makes you ask that?”

“I understand that a lot of his friends owed him money.”

“Yes, but I wasn't in the category of friend.”

“You didn't get along?”

Baines set down his teacup with a clink. “That's not what I meant. Mr. Barrington was my sponsor's son-in-law. We weren't on the same social level, and thus we didn't quite play bridge together.” He spoke dryly, stating the obvious with a light touch that said he was resigned to his station in life.

Hale believed him. The nature of his relationship with Alfie would be too easily checked to lie about. Besides, the card game that Alfie played with his pals was euchre.

“Why do you ask?”

“A friend of mine has a bee in his bonnet that maybe somebody killed Alfie to avoid paying back a loan.”

“And you think that I-”

“I don't think anything. I'm just asking questions and collecting information. That's what reporters do. The only difference is, I'm not doing this for the Central Press Syndicate - at least, not at this point. As I said on the telephone, I'm just trying to find out something that might help Sarah.”
And myself.

“Well, at any rate, I don't think it's very likely that one of Mr. Barrington's perennially hard-up friends would go so far as to kill him to avoid debt service,” Baines said. “They haven't the energy. Besides, Mr. Barrington would more likely have lent them the money to make the payment! It would be interesting to know how much he ever actually recouped from his loans.” Baines sat back in his chair. His eyes played about the room and he was clearly lost in thought for a moment. Hale left the silence hanging and waited for the next comment. He noticed that Baines's eyes came to rest on some Egyptian curios on the fireplace mantle. “No, Mr. Hale,” Baines finally continued in a voice barely audible, “you ought to take a hard look at Howard Carter.”

Hale braced himself to hear Baines's version of the argument between Alfie and Carter at the Constitutional Club on Sunday night, but that's not what Baines had in mind.

“There was bad blood between Carter and Lord Sedgewood. I've thought for a long time that Carter would kill His Lordship if he had the chance.”

“You mean because of the rivalry between Sedgewood and Carnarvon?”

“No, it was more personal than that.” Baines returned his gaze to Hale. “Back in '08, when Carter was a dealer in antiquities, he sold Lord Sedgewood a highly decorated bracelet from the tomb of Queen Ahhotep - the same tomb he later procured a dagger from. It turned out to be a fake, a copy of one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.”

Hale raised his eyebrows. “A fake! And what does Carter say about that?”

“Oh, he admits it, but he says it was an honest mistake. He refunded the money years ago. But His Lordship just won't let go of the incident. Apparently he showed the bracelet with some pride to an Egyptian lady of his acquaintance, who immediately identified it as a counterfeit. His Lordship was mortified. Every dealer and collector of antiquities in England knows the story. In fact, Mr. Hill was just asking me about it. His Lordship says it doesn't matter whether Carter is a crook or incompetent, he shouldn't have the rights to King Tut's tomb.”

Hale thought it all over. “I can see where that would lead to a bit of unpleasantness between Carter and your patron, but what does it have to do with Alfie?”

“Whenever Mr. Barrington had a few drinks, he was not above bringing up the issue. To Carter it was like picking at a festering wound.”

That fit. According to Carter's account, Alfie had questioned Carter's professionalism. Perhaps his verbal attack involved more than just the well-known fact that Carter was a self-made man.

“As it happens, Alfie was drinking on the evening of his murder,” Hale said. “And he got into an argument with Carter at their club.”

Baines sat back, looking satisfied with himself. “Well, there you have it, then! An enraged Howard Carter bided his time, but not very long, and stabbed Mr. Barrington later that night.”

Hale could almost believe it. But what about the dagger missing from Lord Sedgewood's library, which Rollins apparently believed had been used to kill Alfie? Well, maybe Rollins was wrong about that. And maybe it had been missing for weeks and nobody noticed. If that were the case, it wouldn't be such a coincidence that the dagger was gone. But then there was that call to Scotland Yard about the weapon. How did that fit in? And who made the call, and why? Was Alfie in possession of the weapon and attacked someone who then disarmed him and turned the weapon about? Yes, that would explain the dagger being stolen, used, and unaccounted for. Could Alfie have attacked Carter and Carter merely defended himself?

Hale stood up. “You've certainly given me something to think about.”
Entirely too much, in fact!

“I'm glad to have been of service,” Baines said, rising along with him. “I shouldn't wish any further unpleasantness to befall Lady Sarah.”

The two men chatted meaninglessly as they walked toward the door. Hale paused for a moment to eye a small black bust, obviously Egyptian, sitting on a credenza in the hallway.

“Handsome woman,” he observed.

“That's a small souvenir of my first dig with Lord Sedgewood. I was privileged to be at the discovery of the sepulcher of Thutmose III. It was very interesting. The sepulcher was found among the rocks near Habsepsus, the Great Goat Temple at Deirel-Bahari.”

“When was that?”

“About twenty years ago. Let's see... March of '04, it would have been.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe it's been that long.”

“You must have been quite young, then. Where did you study archeology?”

Hale hadn't forgotten Howard Carter's accusation that Baines was as lacking in a university degree as Carter himself. He had just been waiting for an opportunity to ask about it without seeming to ask about it.

“Oxford,” Baines said. “I was a student of the legendary Professor Courtland. Do you know him, by any chance?”

“I'm afraid not.”

Not yet.

Later that afternoon, Hale returned to his office with the notes from the British Open that had been wired by Willie Gordon. The old pro had found so many quotable observers at the Open that, despite all that was weighing on his mind, Hale could hardly wait to start weaving them into a colorful feature story.

But he had hardly sat down at his typewriter when the telephone at his elbow rang.

“Hale.”

“Oh, thank God, you're finally there.” The high-pitched, frantic voice bordered on panic. “I've been calling every fifteen minutes.”

“Sarah! What's wrong now?”

“It's Father. He's dead - murdered!”

Murder Calls Again

No one ever commits murder with a golden dagger.

– Hindu Proverb

They agreed to meet at the Museum Tavern on Great Russell Street, not far from Sarah's home. The venerable pub, expanded in the middle of the previous century, was actually older than the museum itself, having changed its name after the Museum was built in the 1760s. Karl Marx had been a patron, and Hale had once seen the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle having a pint at the bar.

Sarah was already there when Hale arrived. He gave her a discreet hug and a conventional, “I'm so sorry. What happened?” He sat down at her table.

“The parlor maid, Maisie, found his body crushed beneath one of the statues in the library - the one of the cat-headed Egyptian goddess Bastet. Maisie saw right away it couldn't have been an accident. It would have taken too much force to tip the statue over. She called the police and then she had the presence of mind to call me. I immediately telephoned Charles and then you.”

Hale remembered the big statue well from his many uncomfortable encounters with Lord Sedgewood in that room. The Earl was a hard-driving man of property who didn't like journalists. Hale, for his part, had never been fond of the American aristocracy of which his family was a part, much less the British one. The only thing the two men agreed on was that they both loved Sarah. She was the only soft spot in her widower father's hard shell that Hale knew of.

“I want to go to the house as soon as possible,” Sarah said. “I want you to go with me.”

He shook his head. “We shouldn't be seen together, lest Rollins draw the wrong conclusion. In fact-”

“I wasn't followed here. I checked.”

Hale allowed himself a half-smile. “Good girl. I wasn't either. Look, it's okay if you go to Carlton House Terrace. That would be perfectly normal. But Scotland Yard probably won't let you see the body.”
It's got to be a bloody mess.

“I want to go anyway, but I don't want to go alone.”

“Then see if Charles will take you.”

She licked her lips, as if thinking. “Yes, of course, Charles will take me. He's been such a rock for me through all this.”

Still, Hale noted with satisfaction, she seemed disappointed that he wouldn't be the one at her side.

“I'll call Ned Malone and tell him what happened. He'll rush over to Carlton House Terrace to get the story. When he gets back to the office to write it up, I'll be there. He'll tell me everything.”

“Such as what?”

Hale shrugged. “Whatever Rollins is willing to tell him. But we can't count on Scotland Yard, based on the Inspector's performance so far. It looks like we have to figure out who wanted to kill both Alfie and your father.”

And immediately he had a candidate: Howard Carter. What was it that Baines had said?
“I've thought for a long time that Carter would kill His Lordship if he had the chance.”
But was it credible that Carter had killed Alfie in a rage and then decided to kill the father-in-law because of their long-simmering antagonistic relationship? And wouldn't the butler know if Carter had called on Sedgewood right before his murder? In fact, wouldn't he know if
anybody
had?

Hale suddenly realized that he didn't know how long Sarah had been trying to reach him.

“When did the maid find your father?”

“This afternoon, only about an hour and a half ago. She was the only other person in the house today. Daddy had given Reynolds the day off.”

So the butler wasn't going to be any help after all.

“Rollins will say that's very convenient - the fact that Reynolds wasn't around and only family members were at the townhouse today.”

Sarah's wide green eyes opened still wider. “He can't believe that one of us did it?”

“He already thinks that you and I killed Alfie, or at least that we're the most likely suspects. He doesn't strike me as the sort of man easily swayed from his conviction.”

“But that's ridiculous. I loved Daddy. Why would I kill him?”

Hale noticed that she had slipped back into calling her father by the name that she had used for him when Hale had first met her - undoubtedly a vestige of a childhood that she was no longer so eager to escape.

He cleared his throat. “I don't think it would be hard for Inspector Rollins to find out that your father didn't want me for a son-in-law. And since Rollins thinks that you and I killed Alfie so that we could-”

Sarah jumped into his pause. “All right. I see what you mean.” She swallowed. “It's not such a crazy notion, you know - that I would want to be with you.”

Steady, Hale!

If he didn't block that happy line of thought out of his mind, he would never be able to concentrate on his next moves. He was thankful, therefore, for the Irish waitress who brought Sarah a cup of coffee and asked if he wanted something to drink. Seldom, if ever, had he felt in such need of a good slug of straight Old Forester. Kentucky bourbon being unavailable because of Prohibition, and the Irish and Scotch counterparts unpalatable, Hale ordered a Fuller's.

“There's something I have to tell you.” Sarah looked down at the empty placemat in front of her, and then at Hale. “It's about the knife that killed Alfie.”

This cannot be good.

“Father's dagger from the tomb of Ahhotep really
was
the murder weapon, just like the anonymous call to Inspector Rollins said.”

“How do you know that?” Hale's tone was sharp and he didn't care.

“Please don't be angry with me, Enoch. I had to do it.”

“Do what?”

Her eyes, already red and puffy from crying, held large pools of tears ready to spill over into her coffee cup.

She swallowed. “I - I hid the dagger.”She looked down at the table and the tears that had been in her eyes splashed and made ripples in the coffee.

Hale felt himself redden. “What the-”

“I suppose it was wrong of me, but I didn't know what else to do.” She was looking at him again and trying to dry her eyes with one of those silly lace handkerchiefs woman insist on carrying. Her hand trembled as she wiped her eyes. She breathed deeply before she continued.

“You know I stayed overnight at the townhouse on Monday after Charles and I had dinner with Daddy. But I couldn't sleep - who could, in my situation? I gave up about three in the morning and went into the library for something to read. As I was looking around, I noticed that the case with the Ahhotep dagger was slightly open. I went to close it and I saw that the dagger had dried blood on it. I almost fainted.”

“Because you knew what that meant.”

She nodded. “Of course I thought right away that Daddy must have used the dagger to stab Alfie. I had to protect Daddy. So I took the dagger away in my bag - just like Inspector Rollins thought, but not
when
he thought.”

“Then what?”

“I buried it in my backyard. Nobody will ever find it there.”

Hale leaned forward and lowered his voice. He wanted to shout. “That was a little detail you left out earlier, when you told me the dagger had been taken from the library. Not to put too fine a point on it, you lied to me, Lady Sarah.”

The formal title was a deliberate slap, and Sarah seemed to feel it. She flinched.

“I didn't want to involve you.”

“How could I be any more involved than I already am, you silly girl?”

“Here we are.” The waitress set down Hale's ale. He forced a grateful smile and told the Irish girl they didn't want to order anything else just now.

“I deserved that,” Sarah said when the waitress had left. “It
was
silly to do that. But, don't you see, I was still stunned from Alfie's death and lacking sleep. I wasn't thinking very clearly at all. I should have told you everything and let you take care of it.”

Hale's anger drained out of him. “That would have been equally silly, I'm afraid. I haven't exactly covered myself with glory in this business. Maybe the answer was in front of me the whole time.”

He thought back to Charles saying that even the governor wouldn't have killed Alfie for the company he kept, or something to that effect. Hale remembered thinking then that perhaps that was exactly what had happened - that Sedgewood could have killed his son-in-law during a heated argument. Maybe somebody else reached the same conclusion with more conviction, and killed Sedgewood in retribution. But who loved Alfie that much? Certainly not his wife - Hale felt that in his bones.

“When I could think more clearly,” Sarah said, “I realized that Daddy never would have taken an Egyptian artifact out of the house. He certainly wouldn't have had it with him on the street outside the Constitutional Club. That means he didn't kill Alfie after all.”

Hale wasn't so sure. “Maybe the two of them were in the library at the townhouse. Your father was examining the dagger at the time. They argued, and he thrust the weapon into Alfie before he even knew what he was doing. Then he moved the body later.”

“I actually thought of that.” Triumph shone in Sarah's green eyes. “So I talked to Reynolds. He was home that night - and so was Daddy. Daddy never went out. And Alfie wasn't at the townhouse that night.”

Hale took a long pull on the dark brew, fervently wishing that it were something stronger. His head throbbed.”Let's recap: You found a bloody dagger in the library a little more than a day after somebody stabbed your husband to death. If His Lordship didn't use that dagger on Alfie, then who did?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I've thought a lot about that. I just don't know.”

“It would have had to have been somebody who had access to your father's library both before and after the murder.”

“You mean, like, one of the servants?”

No, that's not what I mean.
Hale took another drink, for courage. He lit a panatela, stalling. “One of Alfie's friends” - it wouldn't help to mention the Woolfs - “suggested to me that maybe Charles was one of the many people who owed Alfie money.”

Two years ago, when Hale had first met Charles without knowing who he really was, Dorothy Sayers had thought there was something fishy about him. Hale had never quite gotten over a negative prejudice against Sarah's brother, although Charles had always been nice enough to Hale. Was he the sort of man who could kill his brother-in-law to cancel out a big debt? Hale couldn't say no.

Sarah just looked at Hale, as though not believing what she had just heard.

“Well,” Hale prodded. “Is it true? Did he owe Alfie?”

To his surprise, she smiled. “Who's being silly now? The situation is quite the reverse, I can assure you. Charles has had a very generous allowance from Daddy ever since their reconciliation. Alfie felt quite free to borrow money from him and lend it to his free-spending friends.”

“Why does he have to borrow money? Isn't his father a duke?”

Her smile broadened. “Only a Yank would assume the two are contradictory.” She sounded almost bemused. Hale wished he could see the humor. He could use a good laugh. “It turns out that the Duke of Somerset is a cash- poor aristocrat with nowhere near the money that Daddy imagined when he thrust Alfie at me. The family has property, but rents are low just now. Apparently the Somersets were not as industrious as the Sedgewoods. What I am saying is, Alfie and I are quite broke. Even Daddy never knew how broke, thanks to Charles helping us to keep up appearances.”

An hour later, Ned Malone welcomed the news of Alfie Barrington's impecunious state as supporting his favorite theory.

“All the more reason that Alfie would have wanted to collect on money owed to him,” he said. “And therefore, all the more likely that somebody unable to pay up settled the debt with a dagger to Alfie's heart.”

They were sitting at Malone's desk at the Central Press Syndicate offices, where Hale had been waiting for him when he returned from the scene of the crime.

“Then why kill Lord Sedgewood?” Hale said. “And what about the fact that an Egyptian dagger of his probably was the murder weapon?” Hale had told Malone off the record, as a friend and not a journalist, everything he'd learned from Sarah. “How do you connect that?”

Malone shrugged. “There you have me. I don't have an answer for that. But Rollins does.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“His theory is that His Lordship knew that Lady Sarah killed Alfie, which made him dangerous to her. If Rollins knew that she'd buried the dagger-”

“I've been trying not to think about that. Say, does Rollins want you to publish that theory?”

Malone nodded.

“Good,” Hale said. “That means he doesn't really have much.”

“How do you figure that? I'd have thought just the opposite.”

“No, he's trying to use you. He's hoping that if you publish that Sarah's the prime suspect, it will rattle her and cause her to make some big mistake - maybe move the hiding place of the missing dagger. I bet he puts her on round-the-clock watch.”

Malone put a sheet of paper in his typewriter, ready to work on his story.”If that's the game Rollins is playing, I'm not the only one he's playing it with. Artie Howell from
The Times
got to the townhouse even before I did.”

“Howell! How did he know about Sedgewood's murder?”

“Somebody tipped him off. I figure it must have been one of the servants.”

Maisie had called Sarah right after she telephoned Scotland Yard. Reynolds, the butler, had worked for the family for decades. They seemed like loyal retainers.

“Why would they do that?” Hale wondered aloud.

But Malone was too busy pounding out his story on the Remington to answer.