The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, page 12
But dinner began shortly, driving away any thought of political turmoil. The dishes were tiny, but there was such a multitude of them! I remember ta’meyah, labeh, ful nabed, and hummus—though I have no idea what the ingredients were, I wrote them all down and intended to find them out once back in London. I was well satisfied. That is, until I realized that they were only meant as appetizers and there was still a whole army of entrées to follow. I groaned. Luckily, I was not overheard. Thank heavens for capacity.
I was seated next to Colonel Campbell (with the phlegmatic Zaghlul on my other hand), so I began asking him about his campaigns. Once started, he did not stop. I’m sure he was fascinating, but a native band began playing, so I never understood a word he said. They were not so awfully loud, but terribly distracting. They played authentic native instruments, but the music they played was American jazz, which was disconcerting to say the least. The drone of the oud dragged at the tempo. Jazz always seems to me to be just skirting toppling into chaos, and I thought certain it would collapse like the tower of Babel this time. But they struggled on manfully. The Beauchamps actually got up at one point and danced the Charleston, which I put down to a surfeit of martinis. And yes, I did sample a martini. I shall never do so again.
It was over coffee, with the musicians dismissed, that the talk became general again.
“How goes the Gezira Scheme?” asked Lady Evelyn of Sir Lee.
“The Sennar Dam will finally be completed next year. The Sudanese will be able to cultivate cotton.”
“Which should be quite a boon for the British textile industry,” said the earl.
“The Sudanese will sell only to the British?” asked Holmes.
“We built the irrigation canals. We built the dam. If they even try to sell to anyone else, we’ll shut down the Suez,” proclaimed the earl.
“And what if the Egyptians lay claim to the Suez?” I asked.
I was greeted by a general look of amusement. “Britain will never give up control of the canal,” said the earl with finality.
“Ha, no,” agreed the baronet. “Can you imagine the canal in the hands of the natives?”
Zaghlul Pasha’s onyx eyes seemed almost closed in sleep. Apparently the conversation troubled him not in the slightest, which was worrisome in itself.
“I’m sure some Little Englanders would be more than willing to give up the Canal,” Holmes remarked. “What if a Lawrence of Egypt arose in the vein of Lawrence of Arabia?”
“Best not to mention Lawrence in polite company,” Captain Campbell advised with a wink.
“But Lawrence is a hero!” Lady Evelyn burned with sudden vehemence.
“Lord Allenby, what say you to that?” Holmes asked.
“He was useful, but he went right off the reservation. We had Arabia nicely carved up between ourselves and the French until he started making all kinds of promises to Sharif Hussein and his progeny.”
“But surely that was only to secure their cooperation,” said Lady Evelyn, still defending the man.
“You should have seen him at the Paris talks, all wrapped up in his white robes, following Emir Hussein around like a puppy dog. He so badly wants to be an Arab prince himself,” Allenby answered with asperity.
Well, you’d think T. E. Lawrence was a personal friend of theirs, so stricken were they. The Beauchamps both put on glum faces, and conversation dwindled to perfunctory talk about the weather back in England. The earl seemed to think the cold weather was a plot devised by the Russians to bring us to our knees.
Miss van V. had elected to stay at the hotel and keep an eye on Mrs. Roberts. We found them both asleep, the girl in a chair next to the bed. She awoke when we came in.
“How is she?” I inquired.
“She is fretting all night. Say someone is in gevaar, in danger,” pronounced the girl somberly.
“Danger? Who?” asked Holmes.
“Sir Lee. She say he is in terrible danger.”
Holmes raised an eyebrow. “When she said these things, was she asleep or awake?”
“How is one supposed to know the difference with her?”
“You should go to bed yourself, my dear,” I counseled.
“I ben comfortabel here.”
She would not be gainsaid. We soon came away. I could see that Holmes’s brow was knotted with concern. I turned to him. “Do you intend to warn the sirdar?”
“As long as he has Zaghlul Pasha at his elbow, he has all the warning he requires. But I suspect the elementals are restive.”
“Sir Lee seems a reasonable fellow. I’m sure he takes reasonable precautions,” I said.
“Reasonable, yes. That may be his downfall.”
The following morning, we set sail for our final destination: Luxor and the Valley of the Kings.
The dahabeah was an ungainly looking creature on first sight, sort of a Pushmi-Pullyu, with tall lateen sails fore and aft. I had to wonder which was the prow and which the stern. There were four cabins only, meaning Holmes and I would have to double up. Mrs. Roberts was showing signs of improvement but would undoubtedly need a cabin to herself, what with my constant coming and going, changing her mustard plaster and lemon socks at all hours of the night. Miss van V. offered to sleep in a cot at her feet, but I vetoed that idea. The girl had obviously contracted a bad case of hero worship. I did not intend it to go any further.
It was on the first night of our voyage that I made a singular discovery. I was stretched out on my bed, fatigued with all the preparations. Holmes should have been worn to a nub himself, but he was pacing the tiny cabin, a well of nervous energy. I noticed then the absence of a familiar odor.
“Holmes, where’s your pipe?”
“Oh, I haven’t smoked in ages. Had to give it up. Emphysema.”
Well, I was glad to hear that he had heeded medical advice, for so it must have been, but I did wonder what he would do if faced with any three-pipe problems. I wrapped myself in my mosquito netting and fell asleep to the splashing of night creatures on the Nile.
Holmes had been in a tremendous hurry to get to Egypt. Now that we were nearing our destination, however, he seemed to feel that we (meaning Mrs. Roberts) needed some time to acclimatize ourselves. He withdrew into himself, taking his cue from the constant river.
Whatever the cause, I was glad for the change—Holmes may have visited Egypt before (another adventure he had never told me about), but it was all new to me. The occasional splash of a waterfowl diving for its dinner made a soothing sound, and the vegetation was sweet and greenly fragrant on either side, reeds high enough to hide the infant Moses—though just beyond it one could glimpse the ragged teeth of hard-packed red earth, ancient beyond weariness.
It was truly a different world on the river. The mornings seemed to unfurl and grow taut with the swiftness of sails, while the night was one long, vast purple twilight, unable to close its eyes and sleep. Steamers passed daily, and small boats of every description flitted in and out of sight like dragonflies. We even met a dahabeah or two, which we greeted with great excitement and much hallooing, as if they were cousins.
The third day out, we were all seated on the deck, as tranquil and shiftless as if we were on holiday with old friends. The conversation was desultory. I might have dozed, I don’t recall, when I noticed both the tone and the import of the conversation had shifted.
“Lady Evelyn, you met George Gould when he visited the tomb?” I recognized the inquisitorial tone in Holmes’s voice.
“Actually, I met him first in Cairo. You remember, darling. The newlywed dinner?”
Beauchamp was distracted, watching the pilot trim the sails.
“Newlywed dinner? I don’t understand. You were married just this month,” said Holmes.
“It was an idea of my uncle Aubrey’s. We were going to be married in March, but Father’s death made that impossible. And Uncle Aubrey wouldn’t have been able to make it—well, in the end he didn’t make it, any more than poor Father did—” I could hear the catch in her throat. She stopped, gathering herself.
“And he invited Gould?” prompted Holmes.
“And his wife Guinevere. They had been married less than a year. Prince Ali Fahmy Bey—he wasn’t really a prince, you know—and his wife, Marguerite. We were all, more or less, on honeymoon. Well, there were some marriages that didn’t last.”
“Wait,” I interrupted, “you knew Ali Fahmy Bey?”
“Didn’t I mention that before? Well, that was the only time I met him. Or his wife—I suppose I should say his widow. Does one address a gentleman’s murderess as his widow? They seemed very much in love at the time. Uncle Aubrey loved to rub shoulders with the rich and powerful, no matter their reputations. Of course, half the time it was merely a device to pump someone for information. The rich and powerful do know things, sometimes things they are not even aware they know. He was always deep into ferreting out nuggets of information for Intelligence. He loved storing up secrets.”
“Wasn’t he a member of the Egyptian intelligence unit?” asked Holmes. “Along with T. E. Lawrence?”
“Mr. Holmes, you know your intelligence better than I. Yes, Lawrence and my uncle, Stewart Newcombe, and Lloyd, all under the command of Clayton. A group of wild men, my father called them.”
“Was he trying to gather information from someone at your dinner?”
“I really couldn’t say. His methods were often so convoluted. There were always wheels within wheels. I certainly wouldn’t doubt it.”
“Was Mr. Shaw there that night . . . or Mr. Lawrence?”
Lady Evelyn blanched. I stared at her witlessly. Only Beauchamp was calm, though I noticed a tightness in his jaw.
“I see now why you hired Mr. Holmes,” he remarked.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t been entirely forthcoming,” she said, her eyes darting everywhere.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
I had missed something while I was drowsing. What had I missed? It seemed of some importance.
“No, there were just the seven of us at dinner that night. Three men are now dead. All visited the tomb shortly after it opened. I don’t want to lose Brograve.”
“You won’t get rid of me that easily, my dear.”
I went to check on Mrs. Roberts, still musing over the conversation, though I could not make heads or tails of it. The nap is the enemy of the mind in age, shrouding the most salient of facts in the clothes of a dream.
She seemed somewhat revived, although she was fretful again. Perhaps she had begun to worry over how she would convince the group of the presence of elementals when the tomb came up empty. Even Holmes was bound to expect some sort of proof. Wasn’t he?
On the fourth day, when I was changing her plaster, she asked me a question that brought me up short.
“Doctor, what is the Reichenbach?”
“The falls? Have you never heard the story of his struggle with Moriarty over the abyss? It was in all the papers. I myself—”
“I never had time to read in the old days. My first husband died and left me with the three girls to raise.”
“Ah. Of course. Well, then, Moriarty was the Napoleon of crime, as Holmes christened him. A mathematician, a genius, and the tortuous mind behind half the crimes in London. Holmes fell afoul of him, and we were forced to flee to the continent. He caught up with us in Switzerland, in a little resort town near the falls. There Holmes and Moriarty came to blows, and there both fell into the abyss and perished, or so I—and the world—believed.
“But I learned—the world learned—three years later that only Moriarty had perished that day. Holmes had gone into hiding.”
“Sir Sherlock killed a man?”
“It was kill or be killed.”
“Of that I have no doubt. But it must have left its mark on him.”
“It did, although he concealed it, of course. But I think in part that was why he disappeared. He visited the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, the Mahdi in Khartoum, and I believe the bishop of Rome. Rather amazing for a man who barely knew the Buddha from a baptistery. I think he sought answers to questions that had never before occurred to him. I’m not sure he found answers that satisfied him. His mien had changed. He softened, became less remote. More fallible, more human. As if he were Pygmalion and Galatea both.”
“It sounds an improvement.”
“It would seem so, I suppose. Unless it’s the result of being burdened by guilt.”
Lady Evelyn had somehow got hold of a bath chair, so Holmes and I wheeled Mrs. Roberts out into the sun the next morning and lifted her up the steps to the upper deck, which stretched the length of the vessel, and we sat down on either side of her for another conference. (I had finally talked Miss van V. into taking a nap in her own bed. Otherwise, I warned her, I might have two patients on my hands.) Beau-champ and the lady Evelyn were no doubt sleeping late after spending the night counting stars. It was difficult to remember that they were essentially newlyweds, since neither seemed comfortable with open displays of affection. The landed class has always been fastidious about that.
“And now—how are you feeling, Mrs. Roberts? Your color has improved remarkably,” observed Holmes.
“It was difficult at first, like a swarm of . . . You don’t know how many wanted to tell me their tales, how many want to pass on messages to loved ones who themselves died thousands of years ago, but I’ve made peace with them now. I think I have them under rein. Of course, many thanks must go Dr. Watson’s ministrations. And Anna.”
I may have colored at this praise. “Not much I could do in this backward place. Had to fall back on old-fashioned remedies. But I think it’s these cool river breezes that have helped most of all.” I did not entertain talk of nagging voices from the dead.
“You know, you are liable to face some powerful emanations once you enter the tomb,” Holmes warned, studying her intently.
Mrs. Roberts nodded slowly, even dreamily, but did not speak. Her lips were pressed tightly together. If she was an actress, by George, she missed her chance on the boards.
“Dr. Watson and I will be with you every step of the way. If you feel danger drawing near, you must tell us at once.”
“Er . . .” I asked, “how exactly do we deal with these elementals? Can they be seen or felt . . . or harmed?”
“Reserve yourself for the more mundane threats, my friend. There may be those who would rather we not discover certain secrets,” Holmes counseled.
“You mean those already in the thrall of the elementals. Yes, they are powerful. I can already feel their tendrils reaching out to me from the tomb.” Mrs. Roberts’s eyes grew eerily bright, a habit of hers when she pretended to communicate with the dead.
We might have been telling Christmas ghost stories, for the delicious thrill that went up the spine when such tales were well told, but I’m afraid all I could think was “Bah! Humbug!” Not that I discounted the danger posed by human hands. There was enough gold in that tomb to whet a man’s mind to murder many times over.
As the days went by, the landscape changed around us as the banks rose and became stony behind tall palms. Pitted caves dotted the shoreline—whether natural erosion or ruined fortresses, I could not guess. The silence grew around us; no bird sang. I could not conjure fogs ever shrouding these banks in their forgiving blankets, nor swallowing voices so that shouts became whispers. Everything had always been just as it was, solid and immovable. No stones were simply rolled away from tombs in this country. No wonder the ancients’ dreams conjured up lions with men’s faces, and dogs with men’s bodies, or crowned serpents. The starkness was enough to make men dream open-eyed.
We were coming to the Valley of the Kings. I began to be curious about the original discovery of Tutankhamun. Obviously the papers had been full of accounts, but I knew well the mishmash of exaggerations and errors the papers were liable to. I sought out Lady Evelyn. She and Beauchamp had taken shelter from the noonday sun in the cool of the lounge below deck, where the only idols were gin and tonics.
“We always knew we would find the tomb, given enough time,” she said. “But we never thought we would find it intact. I suppose that’s what gave rise to the talk of a curse. What else could hold the tomb inviolable those thousands of years, when so many surrounding it were looted?”
“Perhaps they were simply fortunate in its hiding place?”
“Oh, no, the tomb was found. It was definitely disturbed. Why it was not looted is the great mystery of Tutankhamun.”
For the first time on our journey, I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck. I thought of going down, down into the darkness of the tomb, sealing my fate by greed and folly. Would it be like the pyramid at Giza? I took my leave and went up on the deck to try and wipe the spell from my mind. Yet there was the brown murk of the Nile, the banks sliding by, the foliage screening any prying eyes from my sight. Foolishness, foolishness, I repeated to myself.
At last the day came. Ten days for a dahabeah was record time, I was told. Mrs. Roberts and I were standing companionably side by side at the prow. I watched her eyes for any telltale signs of apprehension, but there was only the same deep mask she habitually displayed. The others must have been below packing, or perhaps toasting to the end of our voyage.
I asked her, “Excited about the mysteries we’re about to take on?”
“I confess I was not thinking about the tomb at all. I was thinking of my children. I miss them so.”
Since she had broached the subject, I asked her plainly why she had left them to make this voyage.
“We needed the money so desperately.”
I raised an eyebrow at this. I wanted at first to ask her just how much money she was expecting. Holmes had mentioned an honorarium, but I wasn’t expecting a remuneration of any size. But I sheared off from this sensitive subject and lighted on another one, probably just as sensitive. “Is your work lucrative?”
“I don’t charge for my work. Or at least I didn’t. Before the fire.”
