The Serpent on the Crown, page 33
‘You can imagine her consternation when her husband – her legal husband – came back from the grave and confronted her. I am sorry to say that his was not a forgiving nature, and he certainly had grounds for bitterness. She was now rich and successful, in part because of his help; he was poor and unknown. To make a long story short, he demanded payment in return for his silence. She sold many of her jewels to satisfy him; when her resources began to run out, Petherick conveniently passed away.’
Emerson had maintained his silence; now he could control himself no longer. ‘She killed Petherick?’
‘We will never know for certain,’ I replied. ‘What we do know is that Daffinger increased his demands. One of the men who had served in his unit during the War was a young archaeologist named Lidman. They became friends and talked about their various interests. In the final bloody weeks, Lidman was killed – blown to bits, as Daffinger put it.
‘Daffinger had learned a great deal from Lidman, including the value of antiquities. He wanted half of Petherick’s estate. Magda fled, taking with her the most valuable object in the collection. Furious at what he considered her betrayal, he pursued her.’
I turned over another page. ‘By the time he tracked her down, Mrs Petherick had got her nerve back. She pointed out that if he spoke she stood to lose her inheritance, but he stood to lose everything, and might have to face a charge of blackmail. They entered into negotiations; fearing he might attempt to steal the statuette from her room, she presented it to us. She had already concocted her story about the curse and taken another room in the name of Mrs Johnson, in order to set up her scheme.’
Emerson had heard most of this before, and was waxing restless. ‘She took us in completely,’ he growled. He does not like to be taken in. ‘With all that talk of curses and black afrits.’
‘I didn’t believe it, and neither did you,’ I retorted. ‘But I admit we might have been more sceptical about her motives. At any rate, Daffinger was furious when he found out what she had done. He made several attempts to break into the house; being unsuccessful, he tried another trick, representing himself as his deceased friend in order to be hired by Cyrus, which would, he hoped, gain him entry to this house. He was an intelligent man with an excellent memory, and he had spent hours listening to Lidman expound on Amarna. I suppose there wasn’t much else to talk about in the trenches.’
‘It was he who killed her, then?’ David asked. ‘Why? It’s usually the blackmailer who is murdered, not the victim.’
‘She tried to kill him,’ I said. ‘That night when they went walking along the river. She had offered to meet him to discuss his demands. She was a large, strong woman, and he wasn’t expecting danger. It was pure bad luck for her that he survived. Naturally that angered him even more, and when they met next, in the Winter Palace garden, he was in no mood for trifling. Seeing her sumptuously attired, bewigged and bejewelled, with no sign of remorse, was bad enough; then she made the fatal mistake of offering him a trumpery pair of diamond earrings and told him this was her last payment. She had learned that he had a criminal record in Germany; now he was the one who stood to lose most. In a fit of rage he attacked her, and in the process of stifling her cries for help, caused her heart to stop. He claimed he didn’t intend to kill her. Perhaps he didn’t; but once the deed was done he had no choice, as he explained, but to conceal the body. He took the earrings, though, and stripped her of her jewels, in order to give the impression that robbery had been the motive. The strangest thing of all was what he did after he had placed her under the coral vine. Daoud’s informant was right; there were white petals strewn over the body. Ayyid, who is not interested in horticulture, did not observe them; but white roses were her favourites.’
Nefret shivered. ‘Why do I find that horrifying?’
‘Ambivalence,’ I said. ‘Love and hate intertwined and inseparable. To those of us who never feel such conflict it is horrifying.’
‘What about the wig?’ Nefret asked. Her mouth was tight with distaste. ‘Did he keep that as a – a memento?’
‘Nothing so bizarre,’ I said. ‘It fell off during their struggle, and he couldn’t get it back on. One can imagine how difficult that would have been, with his hands shaking and her head –’
‘Quite,’ said Ramses, glancing at his wife. ‘So he took it away with him?’
‘And discarded it. He didn’t say precisely how.’
‘Well done, Mother,’ said Ramses. ‘You got all that from Lidman’s – Daffinger’s – confession, did you?’
‘Most of it.’ I stacked my papers neatly. ‘That concludes my lec – the discussion. And the case.’
‘Not quite,’ Ramses said. His eyebrows were tilted and his eyes were intent on me. ‘We still haven’t found the statue.’
From Manuscript H
Not that they hadn’t tried. No one except his mother and Nefret had bothered to attend Lidman-Daffinger’s hastily arranged funeral; the others had spent the day searching the areas in and around the West Valley tomb where he had been hiding.
‘It isn’t in the tomb,’ Emerson said flatly. ‘I’d stake my reputation on that. We couldn’t do a complete excavation, not in such a short time, but we shifted everything that could be shifted –’
‘And put it back in the original place, of course,’ Ramses suggested.
‘Of course. Took a cursed long time.’
They were on their way back to the West Valley. It was early afternoon and the sun was merciless, but Ramses shared his father’s desire to get on with the job. There could be no question now about the legal ownership of the statuette; since Magda Ormond’s marriage to Petherick had been illegal, Petherick’s children would inherit. They could use the money – and they would get it, one way or another. Emerson would see to that. It was not only the prospect of losing a great sum of money that bothered him, though. His reputation was at stake, and he would spend the next ten years looking if he had to.
Emerson spoke forcibly to his horse and forged ahead to join Sethos, who had taken his place at the head of the procession. The whole family had come, including Selim and Daoud and a full crew of workmen. Those magnificent, soaring cliffs were full of hundreds of crevices large enough to conceal something the size of the small golden statue.
Ramses waited for his mother and Nefret and fell in beside them. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to his mother in private since her performance that morning.
‘All right, are you, Mother?’ he asked.
‘Certainly.’ She wiped her wet face with a neat white handkerchief.
‘Cyrus has had the men bring plenty of water,’ Ramses said. ‘Enough for the horses too.’
‘I appreciate your concern, my dear, but it is unnecessary. You have something else on your mind, don’t you?’
‘That was an impressive summary you gave us this morning,’ Ramses said. ‘Are you completely satisfied about the solution to the case?’
A little murmur of amusement escaped her lips. ‘You noticed a few unexplained items? The others will, eventually, but I threw so much information at them they haven’t had time to absorb it.’
‘Why?’ Ramses asked bluntly.
Her smile faded. ‘For one thing, I hadn’t heard your story when I arranged my notes. Obviously it cannot have been Daffinger who was responsible for the attacks on you in Cairo. You don’t believe it was Adrian, do you?’
‘I don’t see how he could have managed them. The man – the person – who shot at us outside Bassam’s used a pistol. Adrian had only a rifle. I searched him and his luggage before we went back to Cairo that night.’
‘He might have disposed of the pistol.’
‘Possibly. But why would he?’
Emerson, now well ahead, turned and shouted at them to hurry up.
They joined the others, who were gathered in an attentive group around Emerson. ‘We’ve been over some of this ground before,’ said Emerson, his jaw set. ‘We will do it again, painstakingly and methodically, leaving not a square inch of ground unexplored.’
Under his direction they fanned out in three directions, right, left and up, starting at the mouth of the unfinished Tomb 25, probing into every opening in the rock. It was going to take forever, Ramses thought. He looked at his uncle, who was strolling slowly along, hands clasped behind his back and whistling, in perfect tune and metre, a complicated air Ramses recognized as the opening theme from a Mozart horn concerto. Sethos’ ostentatious nonchalance provoked him into speech.
‘I didn’t know you were fond of the classics,’ he said.
‘There are a number of things you don’t know about me,’ said Sethos blandly. He dusted off a boulder with his handkerchief and sat down. ‘I am a man of many talents.’
‘A talent for hard manual labour isn’t among them.’
‘Why should I do that when I can get someone else to do it for me? For instance,’ said Sethos, with the slightest sideways movement of his head, ‘that fellow up there – no, don’t turn and stare! – has been watching us for over an hour. Perhaps you would care to wander casually in his direction?’
The direction was straight up, on a ledge that jutted out from the cliff face. There was a path of sorts, winding up from the valley floor. Out of the corner of his eye Ramses caught a flash of light (binoculars?) and what might have been a head looking down.
‘Wander and casually don’t apply,’ he said caustically. ‘He’s got a good vantage point. He’ll see me start to climb.’
‘I will provide a distraction,’ said Sethos. He stood up and dusted off the seat of his trousers. Then he walked back to where Emerson was standing, shouting instructions to the searchers. Ramses didn’t hear what Sethos said, but it galvanized Emerson into a furious retort that was clearly audible, not only to his son but to everyone for some distance.
‘You dare criticize my relationship with my wife?’
‘You don’t deserve her.’ Sethos pointed accusingly at Ramses’ mother, who was working her way along the cliff face just above them. She stopped and stared down. ‘No man worthy of the name would allow her to take such a risk,’ Sethos shouted.
Ramses didn’t see what happened after that; he was too intent on making his way up the cliff with all possible speed. He heard grunts and thumps and several outraged cries from his mother. The outcropping hid him from sight most of the way. When he reached the ledge he hauled himself up and over in a single movement.
The flash of light hadn’t been made by binoculars, but by a camera lens. The photographer had his eyes glued to the camera and was snapping photographs of the melee below. He was too absorbed to notice Ramses until the latter caught hold of the camera with one hand and the man’s collar with the other.
‘Don’t drop the camera,’ he shrieked, squirming.
Ramses got him down by way of the path, which was negotiable for a man in reasonably fit condition. The others were waiting for them at the bottom. Sethos was dabbing delicately at his nose with a bloody handkerchief. There wasn’t a mark on Emerson, who was crimson with rage.
‘A damned journalist!’ he shouted, extending a long arm.
‘Don’t damage the camera!’ the photographer gasped.
Emerson snatched it from him and threw it on to the hard ground. The photographer screamed.
‘It’s Mr Anderson, isn’t it?’ Nefret looked more closely at the man’s face. ‘You fell into the tomb the other day.’
‘And tried to get information out of my daughter,’ Ramses said.
‘Anderson, my eye,’ Cyrus exclaimed. ‘That’s the artist I told you about, the one who came asking for a job and never turned up again. Maillet.’
Chapter Ten
I wondered briefly if Mr Anderson was a relation of Kevin O’Connell’s, a cousin or younger brother. But no, I thought. Kevin’s hair was fiery red and this man’s was brown; instead of the cerulean blue of Kevin’s, his eyes were a muddy green. The resemblance was not physical but one of expression and manner.
‘He is a journalist,’ I said. ‘Is he also, I wonder, a thief and a murderer?’
The question got Mr Anderson’s mind off the camera, whose broken pieces he was collecting with little moans of anguish. He jumped to his feet.
‘Now see here, Mrs Emerson, don’t go round accusing people like that! All I wanted was an exclusive story. Mr O’Connell is my mentor, my idol; he taught me everything I know and challenged me to equal his success in – um –’
‘Worming his way into our confidence,’ I said grimly. ‘You represented yourself as an archaeological artist in order to get a position with Mr Vandergelt. A scheme worthy of Kevin himself.’
‘Not so clever,’ Anderson admitted. ‘I can sketch a bit, and thought I could carry out the deception for a few days, but when Mr Vandergelt refused to hire me without seeing my portfolio, I knew I’d have to try some other method.’
‘Ha,’ Emerson exclaimed. ‘I was right, you see. I said those bastards would stop at nothing, even blowing up the guardhouse.’
Anderson’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘No, sir, I never did that! Look here, let’s call it square. You’ve smashed my camera and ruined some first-rate pictures, so I’ll just be on my way.’
‘How did you get here?’ I asked.
Anderson grimaced. ‘Walked. All the way from the East Valley. Me and a dozen Egyptians. They said you were here yesterday, looking for something, so they figured they would have a look too.’
‘Damnation,’ said Emerson. ‘Did they find anything?’
‘I don’t think so, but they’re sneaky rascals. They ran off when you came along.’
‘Hell and damnation,’ said Emerson. ‘I have a few questions to ask you, Mr Anderson, and this is not the time or the place for an interrogation. Hassan, escort this person back to our house and keep him there until we return.’
Anderson had perked up as the discussion became more civilized. His face fell. ‘But, sir, I haven’t any transport. Not even a confounded donkey.’
‘You got here on foot, you can return the same way.’ Emerson bared his large white teeth. ‘Off you go. And don’t try to bribe Hassan, he is incorruptible.’
Hassan glanced at his father, Daoud, who stood with arms folded. ‘He is,’ said Daoud. ‘Whatever it means.’
We watched them walk off together. Anderson was limping.
Sethos removed the handkerchief from his nose. ‘Thank you, Nefret. It’s stopped bleeding.’
‘I’m an expert at nosebleeds,’ said Nefret.
‘Er,’ said Emerson.
‘Apology accepted,’ said Sethos with a grin. ‘Accept mine as well. I didn’t mean what I said.’
‘It was well done,’ Ramses conceded. ‘Anderson was so fascinated he didn’t spot me until I was on top of him.’
Emerson, who had gone as far as he was capable of going in the way of apology, uttered the familiar litany. ‘Back to work. We have to find the statuette today or risk one of those energetic rascals stealing a march on us.’
‘It’s over there,’ said Sethos. ‘About eight feet to the left of the entrance, buried in the scree.’
No one so much as questioned that arrogant assertion. In an unruly scamper the whole lot us of went pelting back towards the spot he had described. It took a few minutes to retrieve the wrapped bundle, since we had to proceed with care, but the disturbance of the scree was so obvious I could only wonder why none of us had observed it. Because it was too obvious! We had assumed Daffinger would take greater pains to conceal his prize.
Emerson unwrapped enough of the bundle to make certain we had found what we sought. Cradling it as tenderly as if it were an infant, he hurried back to where his brother had seated himself nonchalantly on a rock. ‘How did you know?’
Sethos ruefully examined his stained handkerchief. ‘I asked myself where I would have hidden it. Like Daffinger, I am averse to strenuous exercise.’
Cyrus burst out laughing. ‘Like the old saw about where to look for the lost horse, eh?’
‘As Amelia would say, there is often profound truth in such aphorisms.’
I had been just about to say that.
We passed Mr Anderson and Hassan on our way back to the East Valley. Anderson raised a face of piteous appeal; he looked so miserable, hobbling and dripping with perspiration, that Nefret pleaded with Emerson to let him ride for a while. Emerson, who could have walked the whole distance without breaking into a glow, shook his head and gave Mr Anderson an evil smile. He hates journalists even more than he hates tourists.
However, he is not a cruel or vindictive man, and Nefret’s good opinion means a great deal to him. When we reached the donkey park he sent one of the men back with a mount.
Again I found myself side by side with Ramses. ‘Another suspect,’ he remarked.
‘I hardly think so,’ I replied.
‘Daffinger’s confession doesn’t explain everything, Mother.’
I gave him an affectionate smile, thinking with some complacency how well he had turned out. Except for his father, there was not a finer-looking man in Egypt – or anywhere else. He sat his horse with the ease of an athlete, and his features were as finely shaped as those of a Greek statue (except for his nose, which was a trifle large, and in my opinion all the better for it). I did not doubt that Harriet Petherick had been motivated by more than concern for her brother when she made that clumsy attempt to win Ramses over.
‘Well?’ Ramses demanded. My intent regard had made him self-conscious.
‘My, but you are persistent. We will discuss it later.’
‘Vandergelt has asked us to stop at the Castle for a spot of luncheon.’ Emerson turned to address me. ‘I presume that is agreeable to you, Peabody.’
‘Yes, Katherine will be anxious to know that we have found the statue.’
Emerson’s smile was particularly smug.
‘You agreed to the delay because you want to keep Mr Anderson sweating awhile longer,’ I said accusingly.
‘How can you think that of me, Peabody? We need to discuss our future plans. Our work has come to a complete standstill these past days.’
