The Serpent on the Crown (31 page)

“Isn’t Tomb 25 the one Belzoni found in 1817?” Bertie asked.

Emerson looked at him in surprise, and then clapped him on the back. “Well done, my boy. You’ve been reading up on the area.”

Bertie directed a longing glance at Jumana, hard at work on the fill, and accepted his fate. “I heard it from Lidman, as a matter of fact. He spouted facts and figures by the yard to anybody who’d listen to him. What do you want me to do, sir?”

“I want an accurate plan. The entrance was blocked by a stone wall when Belzoni found it,” Emerson explained, as we walked on. “As was the bastard’s habit, he used a battering ram to destroy the wall, then left the place wide open. There were four coffined mummies inside—”

“Probably later intrusions,” I interrupted.

“Thank you, Peabody,” said Emerson with excessive courtesy. “I am willing to accept your familiarity with the literature.”

“Belzoni was an entertaining writer, even if his methods were questionable,” I said. “He didn’t bother removing the coffins. I doubt there will be much left of them.”

“There may be enough remaining to prove the mummies were not Eighteenth Dynasty,” Emerson retorted. “And that the tomb was never finished or occupied at that period.”

“Which will eliminate it as a possible source of the statue,” I concluded.

“I see,” said Bertie, who didn’t look as if he did.

The unfinished tomb was only a short distance away. The entrance had been cut through the hard-packed gravel at the foot of the cliff—a dark opening that led down into deeper darkness. Bertie was the only one of us who had had sense enough to bring a torch. (I would have done if Emerson had bothered to mention what he had in mind before we left the house.) Its light showed the topmost steps of a flight of stairs, though they were so littered with hardened mud and bits of gravel that they looked more like a steep ramp.

“Let me go first,” Bertie said, with an anxious look at me.

“No, no, my boy.” Emerson took the torch from him and began picking his way down. “Wouldn’t want you to fall. Just follow my steps.”

We got down without incident, though Bertie’s attempts to hold me by the arm were distracting. The dear boy meant well, so I did not object. At the bottom of the stairs a square-cut doorway, typical of tombs of the period, debouched into a narrow room half filled with rubble.

“This is all there is,” said Emerson, waving the torch. “It was meant to be a passageway, I believe, with a burial chamber beyond, but they never got that far along.”

Belzoni had said there were eight coffins, neatly arranged in two rows. The industrious modern thieves had been there since his time, looking for ornaments buried with the dead; only fragments of car-tonnage from the coffins and bits of mummy remained.

“Twenty-second Dynasty,” said Emerson, shining his torch on one of the fragments. It was only six inches long by three wide and most of the paint had flaked off, but neither of us questioned Emerson’s analysis.

“If you will permit me to say so,” I said, “this little expedition was a waste of time. Clearing the tomb out will take days, and for what purpose? It is the most unlikely place to find something like…hmmm.”

“Hmmm what?” Emerson inquired.

“Nothing.” I had remembered Abdullah’s cryptic statement: “The last place you would think of,” he had said.

But Emerson had thought of it, and my assessment stood. Several other archaeologists had inspected this tomb. It had undoubtedly been ransacked by modern looters, but an Amarna work of art would not have been owned by a commoner who lived several centuries after that period.

We made our way back to the entrance. “I’m afraid, sir,” Bertie said diffidently, “that I can’t do a proper plan until the place is cleared out. Unless you would like me to—”

“No, no.” Emerson winked at him. “I wanted to give you an excuse to get away from the cursed fill. Boring job.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Emerson strode off with the cocksure pose of a man who has just done a good deed. I took the arm Bertie offered. “How are you and Jumana getting on?” I asked.

“The same. I’ve asked her to marry me six times.”

“Then stop asking her.”

“Ramses said essentially the same thing,” Bertie admitted with a sheepish smile. “He suggested I find another girl. As if all I had to do was spin round and point at the first one I saw.”

“Spin round and look, at any rate. Keep an open mind. And leave off pressing Jumana. That often has a negative effect, especially with a strong-minded young person like her.”

“Was that how the Professor wooed you?”

He gave me a sidelong look, as if he feared he had gone too far. I laughed and squeezed his arm. “My dear, the Professor will tell you I did the wooing. One of his little jokes, of course, but until the moment when he asked me to be his he had done nothing but criticize me and shout at me.”

“I could try that, I suppose.”

I studied his friendly, ingenuous face and tried to picture him shouting at Jumana. “I doubt you could be convincing. Just ignore her. Let her sift her own rubble.”

Bertie followed my advice, and I went to help Jumana. She was bored with the job and told me so. “I have had no chance to practice excavation,” she complained. “Or even look for other tombs in the West Valley. Why didn’t the Professor let me go with him instead of Bertie?”

I assured her she hadn’t missed much, but agreed that her abilities were being wasted. Like many of the youngsters of Gurneh, she had spent her childhood scrambling around the cliffs looking for lost tombs. The Gurnawis had a knack—inherited, some might say, from their ancient ancestors—for locating them.

I kept watching for Sethos, but the day wore on without a sign of him. What could he be doing all this time? Our suspicions of Lidman were based on very slight evidence, after all. One couldn’t really say that he had fled; he had left the Castle openly, as he had every right to do.

Thanks to Cyrus’s habit of closing down at a reasonable hour, we got home earlier than was the case when Emerson was in charge. I took advantage of the opportunity to have a leisurely bath and to wash my hair. By the time I had concluded this somewhat delicate operation (the coloring had a tendency to run when wet), Emerson and Nefret were on the veranda waiting for tea. Just outside the door, rolling in the dust, were the children, the dog, and my brother-in-law.

“Come in here at once,” I ordered. “No, not you, Amira. David John and Carla, you will have to wash your hands again. Go to Fatima.”

“It’s only sand,” Sethos said, dusting off his hands. “Not a germ in the lot.”

“There are plenty of germs on the dog.”

“Oh, very well.”

He was back almost at once. “What took you so long?” I asked. “What did you find out?”

“Not a great deal. None of the boatmen recalled having taken Lidman across the river, but I went to Luxor anyhow. He didn’t go back to the Luxor Hotel or to any of the others, nor has he been seen at the railway station. The steamboat offices also denied any knowledge of him. The trouble is,” Sethos added, rising to hold the door for Fatima and the tea tray, “Lidman isn’t a very memorable individual. Medium height; undistinguished features; a tendency toward embonpoint, but that characteristic is shared by most of the male tourists. He may still be on the West Bank, but I’ll be confounded if I can think where.”

Fatima looked up at him. “Is it Mr. Lidman, the gentleman who was sick, of whom you speak? He was here this morning.”

“Here?” Emerson shouted. “When?”

“This morning.” Fatima knew from his tone that something was amiss; she began twisting her hands together. “He was looking for you. He waited for a while and then went away.”

“Hell and damnation!” Emerson jumped to his feet.

“Have I done something wrong?” Fatima asked anxiously. “He had been here before, he works for Mr. Vandergelt—”

“It’s all right, Fatima,” Sethos said.

Emerson had disappeared into the house. We all dashed after him, followed by the children, who had reappeared looking very pink and scrubbed. One look was enough to disclose the ugly truth. The bottom drawer of Emerson’s desk had been broken open. The painted box and the statuette were gone.

“Watch your language, Emerson,” I implored. “The children!”

David John shook his head. “If you will forgive me for saying so, Grandpapa, I told you that was not a secure hiding place.”

FROM MANUSCRIPT H

Ramses enjoyed the relative peace and quiet of Luxor, but there was something about Cairo…Not a breath of fresh air, since it was far from fresh, but a sense of bustle and excitement. They walked along the river, past the museum. There were plenty of tourists and the usual foreign officials and a number of motorcars, but these intrusive modern elements were submerged by the teeming masses and the cacophonous sounds of the real Cairo—men in turbans and galabeeyahs, veiled women, camels moaning, donkeys braying, dogs barking.

“Would you rather be here than in Luxor?” Ramses asked.

“I’d rather be at home with Lia and the children. But there’s something about Cairo…”

Their progress was slowed by encounters with old acquaintances. “Beggars and revolutionaries and policemen,” Ramses remarked, after they had detached themselves from one of the latter. “Don’t we have any respectable friends?”

“Not unless you consider Egyptologists respectable.”

The Pethericks were not known at the Semiramis Hotel. In order to save time they took a cab back into the center of town where most of the other leading hotels were located. They drew a blank at the Savoy, the Hotel d’Angleterre, the Continental, and the Eden Palace. Midday came and went. David finally ventured to suggest that they stop and take stock, and perhaps a little nourishment.

“You can’t go on like this all day, Ramses. We’ve only covered a few of the larger hotels. Are you planning to stop over in Cairo tonight?”

Ramses ducked under a tray of bread carried at shoulder height by a baker making a delivery. “I plan to keep looking until we find them. But if you’re hungry—”

“I’m ravenous. So should you be.”

“Shepheard’s, then.”

It was one place where they could always be sure of getting a table. Emerson had, from the earliest days, made a profound impression, and the whole family profited by the terror in which he was held by the management. David set a deliberately leisurely pace as they skirted the Ezbekieh Gardens; it was his way of telling Ramses to slow down. Ramses knew he was right. Unless they were lucky, their search was going to take some time. David didn’t share his sense of urgency. He would have had a hard time explaining it without referring to premonitions, or to the working of the unconscious mind, neither of which David really believed in.

“We may be in Cairo for a few days,” he said. “Do you want to look up any of your political acquaintances?”

“Getting involved with politics is the last thing I need. The situation is, as they say, volatile.”

“Once the Declaration of Independence is published, things ought to settle down.”

David made a rude noise. “The contents of that precious document have already been leaked. It isn’t independence if Britain reserves the right to protect her own interests—nice ambiguous phrase, isn’t it?—and leaves the question of the Sudan unsettled.”

“Sorry I brought it up.”

David lowered his voice to its normal pitch. “Sorry I got so worked up. You know how I feel. But I promised Lia I’d stay out of politics, and Lord knows we’ve enough to worry about without that.”

They got not only a table on the terrace but a room for the night. According to the desk clerk, there was no reservation in the name of Petherick. “We have been booked solid for months,” he explained. “It is only because of our long acquaintance with your family that we are able to accommodate you. Er—you will mention that favor to Professor Emerson?”

Their table was one of the best, near the balustrade, with a good view of the gardens and the busy street below. After they had ordered—and enjoyed some general gossip with the waiters—Ramses scanned the other diners.

“The usual lot,” David said. “Tourists and local gentry. You aren’t hoping to run across the Pethericks, are you?”

“One never knows. Damn, there’s Sylvia Bennett. The worst gossip in Cairo. I refuse to have her prying into our affairs.”

“Pretend you don’t see her.”

“It would take more than that to put Sylvia off.”

He ignored her coy, beckoning finger, but as he had predicted, she came to them. Sylvia always kept up with the latest fashions; her hair was bobbed, her lips brightly painted, her skirts short. She doesn’t have the legs for it, Ramses thought uncharitably, as he rose to greet her.

After the usual gushing queries about Nefret and the other members of the family—“those dear, sweet, adorable little children”—Sylvia plunged into the subject that really interested her. She wanted to know all about the Pethericks, the Countess Magda, the black afrit, and the statuette. Ramses fended the questions off as best he could; he was damned if he would give Sylvia the satisfaction of being better informed than her equally inquisitive friends.

“We’re here on business,” he said. “Nothing to do with the death of Mrs. Petherick. It’s in the hands of the police. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you, Sylvia. Give my regards to your husband.”

Pouting, Sylvia took herself off. She had acknowledged David with the barest of nods.

“What a dreadful woman,” David said, resuming his seat. “At least she doesn’t seem to have heard of the Pethericks’ leaving Luxor. I didn’t realize she had met them while they were in Cairo.”

“Sylvia knows everyone.”

“Except ‘natives’ like me,” David said.

Ramses called Sylvia a rude name. David laughed. “The opinions of people like that don’t worry me, Ramses.”

“Let’s go before we are accosted by another dear old friend intent on gossip.”

“You won’t be able to avoid all of them,” David predicted. “By evening everyone in Cairo will know we’re here.”

The Bristol, the National, the Metropole…Hotel after hotel denied any knowledge of Harriet and Adrian Petherick. “It’s unaccountable,” Ramses muttered. “We’ve covered most of the first-and second-class hotels. I can’t believe Harriet would settle for anything less. We’ve missed something, but I can’t think what.”