The Egyptologist (57 page)

my career, Macy, is the wide variety of fascinating humanity it's been my happy
lot to encounter. Howard Carter was a fellow of about fifty when I met him, and
admirable. You know anything about him? He wasn't a toff, wasn't born into
wealth and privilege like Trilipush and Marlowe, wasn't even rich. No, Carter was
a gamekeeper's grandson who'd worked hard, studied hard, taught himself what
he needed to excel at his field, and through intelligence, persistence, and good
luck had made this quite winning discovery that the whole world knows all
about now, and justifiably so. Now all the mummy voodoo and the broken furni•
ture and the necklaces and whatnot, well that stuff doesn't interest me much, and
the little bit of it that Carter showed me that day was fine, but a little goes a long
way. No, what interested me was Carter himself. He was my sort of man, a self-
made, honest man. And he was an Englishman, but not the type who couldn't
forgive you for not being English. I could see the respect his Gippos had for him.
Not to mention the mobs of journalists and photographers and tourists and
would-be assistants and admirers, although none of it distracted him. As I asked
my questions about his work and about Trilipush, I couldn't help but think:
Here's a poor boy made good, not some toff criminal, and it's a pity that the scan•
dal about to erupt all around here is going to pull the world's attention from Mr.
Carter's work, and place it on mine instead.

Well, Carter had indeed met Trilipush several times, and in fact, Trilipush
was hard at work on something, working on a shoestring budget but just on the
other side of those cliffs, Carter said, pointing to a monstrous wall of this hellish
valley. So even more of Trilipush's story had been true. And, Carter says, about a
week earlier, another bloke, an American, had been looking for Trilipush, and
Carter'd told him where to go as well, and off he'd gone with one of Carter's men
showing him the way. When had Carter himself last seen Trilipush? That same
day, a week earlier. That morning, a letter for Trilipush had inadvertently been in•
cluded in the post one of Carter's boys had fetched, and as he was curious to see
what Trilipush had found, Carter had taken the letter over to Deir el Bahari per•
sonally. And? And Trilipush was filthy, limping from an injury to his leg, a little
unwell perhaps, but "wildly excited about his find." He absolutely wouldn't let
Carter peek inside, and that was that. Carter returned to his own camp and a few
hours later was found by an American, Mr. Finneran, asking for Trilipush. "I
began to feel like the man's social secretary, and I am, after all, rather busy here
with my own work."

I understood the dismissal, took it with grace, shook the great man's hand,

and thanked him sincerely for his time, sorry to have bothered him. I headed
back to town to hire myself a guide to help me find Trilipush site.

Now, Macy, what did we think
at this moment?
I'd been wrong. I admit it now
and I admitted it then: Trilipush had told the honest truth: there definitely was a
treasure, and Trilipush was so close to it, as of a week earlier, that he wouldn't
even let the great Carter see the site. That same day, Finneran must've found him.

I was behind them by exactly a week, and part of me despaired, since I didn't
know where either of them was staying. Now, I didn't really credit O'Toole's idea
that Finneran had come to kill Trilipush and steal the gold, though you can never
be entirely sure with men under pressure. More likely, with the wealth right there
glittering in front of them, the two of them would probably make amends, patch
it all up, with Finneran relieved to forget everything I had so patiently helped him
see, and now the murderer and his serially gullible father-in-law-to-be were al•
ready a week ahead of me on their way back to Boston, where Finneran would
pay off his debts with Egyptian gold and Trilipush, bearing wealth and fame,
would take Margaret's hand as his wife, though a sad sort of marriage it would be,
him using her to disguise his unnatural proclivities. And he'd probably get his
Harvard job back on the strength of his find. I'd probably already missed them,
and now I'd have to go sailing back the way I'd just come, to interrupt family bliss
once more in order to ask my troublesome questions on behalf of poor murdered
Caldwell-Davies and Marlowe. I didn't relish the possibility, Macy. I don't care
much for Boston, and I didn't want to go back. I'd spent enough time sailing the
Atlantic Ocean, and I admit I might even have given up then, closed the case right
there if these two were already on their way back to Boston with Trilipush con•
solidating his lies. I'd've done anything to keep the investigation near the scene of
the murders.

I had to hold on for another night to get answers, and my fears grew stronger
the next morning, when I finally managed to hire a local boy and two donkeys
and we trotted over the rocks, past another archaeological site managed by an
American, past a giant temple cut into the cliff side, past barren, brown boredom,
not too different from certain rough parts of Australia. And then after a silent
spell, for no particular reason I could see, the boy stopped and said, "Here."
"Here? Are you sure?" There was absolutely nothing different about this bit of
cliff-side donkey path than anything we'd seen in the previous hour. We were on
an incline amidst some little hills, around a bend from any other living thing, and
I wondered if I was about to be ambushed by this Egyptian boy. "Here?" I asked

again, and the boy shrugged. I tied up my donkey, took a walk around the area,
and found nothing of interest, no sign of any life at all. "How do you know it's not
farther up?" I asked. The boy was adamant, he knew these hills, and this was
what I had told him Carter had told me. We waited. I searched in the heat for two
hours, walking up and down, finding nothing and no one. No glinting gold, no
fleeing Finneran, no treacherous Trilipush, no corpse of Caldwell, no murdered
Marlowe.

I was worried, and no he. I had no other address for Trilipush, and now it ap•
peared he'd shut down his excavations in the last week, kicked over the traces.
At least I still had the post. Those cables and letters to Margaret had come from
somewhere. I headed back to town and went from post office to post office dis•
tributing O'Toole's money until I heard a correct answer: I paid the Egyptian
behind the counter to open his mouth—"Yes, Mr. Trilipush comes quite regu•
larly to check
the poste restante,
and yes, he sends cables from here, and the last
time he was in was probably two hours ago"—and then in my joy I paid the
Egyptian behind the counter to close his mouth, and to signal my boy there in
the corner the next time Trilipush appeared, and there'd be another payment
coming his way.

I left my little assistant there (one of a rotating team of eight I assembled
that afternoon for their discretion, instructed them in the basics of secret sur•
veillance, and counted on them for their ability to know the streets and blend
in). I stationed the boy discreetly in the post office, waiting for the mouse, De•
cember 28fh, late in the afternoon. I then went to the riverboat office and dis•
bursed more payments, billable to the Davies case, the O'Toole case, the
Marlowe case, one and all of them: but the office had no riverboat reservations
for a Trilipush or a Finneran on their records, and no one had travelled north to
Cairo by that name today. I left my name and some money: any reservations
under those names, please contact me at my hotel. I went to as many other
Luxor hotels as I could find: no Finneran or Trilipush anywhere, and I scattered
my clients' money behind me: should those names appear on a register, I was to
be contacted at my hotel at once. I was busy, all right, but I had nothing: Trili•
push and Finneran hadn't left and they weren't there: what could be clearer than
that? "Patience, Macy," I urged. "Now more than ever." I'd laid the only snares I
had at my disposal. I continued my circuit: to the villa, to the excavation site, to
the post office to check on my local boys. The 28th. The 29th (post office
closed). The 30th.

Thursday, 28 December, 1922

This morning, CCF and I stepped out to take the air and saw a man
some 200 yards down the path. I watched him for hours from behind
the rocks. Orange-haired, even from this distance, with some lazy na•
tive boy. He paced and sat and wandered and sat. Do you know him,
CCF? "Oh, indeed, Ralph, my boy, oh yes. He is hungry to intrude, de•
stroy, confound. He devours what other men build. He is a scavenger
of lives and survives on loose ends."

It is certainly time to hurry along with our work. CCF sends me
into town for food, check the post. No word from you, M. There is no
need to continue pretending, my darling. Our "split" is quite forgotten.

Afternoon spent cleaning and analysing Chambers 8 and 9, copying
illustrations and texts.

Friday, 29 December, 1922

There is in any scholarly effort a certain amount of guesswork, a
clarification of ideas achieved only through the physical act of writing.
By definition, a first draft is both inaccurate and necessary. One uses
one's pen to cut through impossibilities. Now I can throw out much of
what has come before, and prepare the text with more accurate analy•
sis.

To that end, CCF and I work on measuring Chamber 9, under•
standing the items in relation to each other. I must quickly copy down
the last translations, History Chamber Wall Panel L and the walls of
Chambers 8 and 9.

Most extraordinary find of course is the complete copy of the
Admo• nitions of Atum-hadu.
Spend hours reading it.

I realise also that I misunderstood Pillar 12: it is not an ally carrying
the dead Atum-hadu; it is Atum-hadu carrying the dead Master of
Largesse. CCF pointed this out to me. Brilliant insight on his part.

WALL PANEL L: THE LAST HOURS OF EGYPT

Atum-hadu was abandoned. He left Thebes and crossed life-giving
Nile and walked. Alone, he carried his goods, his Admonitions, paint,
reed, ink, brushes, his cat. And he carried the Master of Largesse.

Saturday, 30 December, 1922

Journal:
CCF and I discuss next steps, and we are decided. We
will return to this place of our glory, but later. Now it is time to go
home, gather our forces and our money and our health, file new re•
quests with the proper authorities, et cetera.

I have a few more notes to make in this journal before CCF and I
return home, on Monday. All clear, simplest thing in the world: I will
post these notes to my fiancee, to be sure of their safe publication
should anything happen to CCF and me on our long crossing to
Boston. A terrible risk to the written record of my extraordinary work
otherwise, at the whim of the elements on a boat. Finneran and I will
travel by boat to Cairo, stay the night at the Hotel of the Sphinx
(where CCF is laughingly ready to settle my accounts stretching back
to October), take the train to Alexandria, and board the
Cristoforo
Colombo
for a pleasure cruise home. I will marry Margaret. CCF is 100
percent behind the idea again, will help me to cure her of her troubles.

We will have children. We will be happy. Then I will return to Egypt to
conduct a more complete survey of my great discovery here. My work
will be studied forever.
Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt: The Complete Ad•
monitions of King Atum-hadu
(2nd edition, revised and complete, Yale
University Press, 1923).
The Discovery of the Tomb of Atum-hadu
by Ralph

M. Trilipush (Yale University Press, 1923).

Finneran provides the cash to deal with these last details in Luxor
while he prefers to stay near the tomb. "I find the place too lovely to
leave just yet," he says, dozing on a cot in Chamber 8. I set off to town
to arrange tickets on various boats home, hotel reservations along the
way.