The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, page 15
It was my voice screaming.
Chapter Ten: Mrs. Estelle Roberts
When he came round, I breathed a sigh of relief, though he
was still babbling about flames. His face was white as a ghost’s in the light of Mr. Carter’s torch.
Sir Sherlock turned to me. “Were there flames?”
“None that I saw, though there were plenty of sparks.”
Dr. Watson’s eyelids fluttered open.
“I knew I’d need someone as stouthearted as you,” I said, leaning over him.
“Holmes isn’t stouthearted enough?” he croaked.
Sir Sherlock broke out in a smile upon hearing his old friend’s gibe.
“Sir Sherlock would have insisted on taking action. You have a talent for stillness.”
He seemed to chew this over, not knowing what to make of it.
“On the other hand, I’ve never heard a man scream quite that loud before,” jeered the baronet.
“Perhaps Mr. Holmes would not have been such a bumbling boob,” Mr. Carter added unfeelingly. “I can’t leave you people alone for five minutes.” He had come galloping into the chamber ranting after the lights had gone.
“This will make the headline of the year,” said Mr. Merton, all excited.
“Not if you ever want another headline out of me,” answered Mr. Carter, crushing him.
“What happened?” Dr. Watson gingerly raised himself into a sitting position.
“You pulled the lights down around you. Looks as if you’ve broken a few. May have gotten a little shock. And of course you took out the power for the entire valley. Work has ground to a halt,” said Carter.
“Yes, I’m all right, thank you,” said Dr. Watson.
“You’re the fortunate one. I’ll have to write the reports explaining it all,” scolded Mr. Carter.
At that, Sir Sherlock took a torch from his own pocket and flicked it on. Where were all these torches when we were groping our way down in the dark? He took the doctor’s wrist and trained his light on it. “There is a burn mark on his cuff—indeed, the celluloid is nearly melted— but no cuts on his hands.”
He turned his attention to the light cord. There were a number of smashed lightbulbs. He took no interest in them.
“Ah, you see?” There it was, a bare patch of copper. If Dr. Watson touched that—!
“Must be rats!” judged the baronet. It did look gnawed on.
Mr. Carter’s face was a warring of emotions. For a moment I thought he was going to apologize. That moment passed in a hurry.
Sir Sherlock gave me a signal look, and I caught his meaning. What were the chances that Dr. Watson would reach out and make random contact with a live wire? No, it was a message from the elementals. Not a welcome mat, either.
Sir Sherlock tugged the doctor to his feet.
“I heard Louise—I mean, Mrs. Roberts, except it wasn’t Mrs. Roberts—say my name,” said Dr. Watson.
“Louise?” asked Sir Sherlock sharply.
“Well, I don’t really have the foggiest idea what she sounds like—”
“It was she,” I confirmed. “And then another woman. I don’t know who.”
Dr. Watson tottered over to the mummy. He stared down at it, his face bathed in golden light, as if he had lost something there. He turned back, mopping the moisture from his brow. “She said—the second woman—I think she said, ‘He stole the true name.’”
I nodded.
“Exactly as Mynheer Gould says,” Anna pointed out.
“What the blue blazes does it mean?” asked the baronet.
“It means we’ve just begun our investigation, I’m afraid,” said Sir Sherlock.
“And it means something was stolen from this chamber. What?” I looked around at the dark emptiness. We had come to the tomb too late. Whose fault was that? Mine. My illness had delayed us too long.
“A cartouche box, perhaps?” suggested Lady Evelyn. “That would have the name of the pharaoh on it.”
“The real question is, when? It could have been tomb robbers a thousand years ago,” said Dr. Watson, muddying the waters further.
It occurred to me that there was something wrong in what Anna had said. Something wrong with everything said so far. I could not think what it was. My mind was such a muddle. My strength was at low ebb.
“Where has Carter got off to?” asked Sir Sherlock.
Everyone turned around. Carter had indeed disappeared. Perhaps he had had enough of our “shenanigans” for one day.
“I’d like to get out of this damned tomb myself, pardon my language,” complained Dr. Watson.
“Yes, I think we’ve taken in enough sights for today,” agreed Sir Sherlock. “Tomorrow I would like to see the laboratory, if possible, and ask Mr. Carter a few questions. If you can persuade him to sit down, my lady.”
“I’ll speak to him tonight. He’ll come round.”
“No one can refuse Eve in the long run,” puffed the baronet proudly.
“Especially since my mother is still providing his funding. We’re invited to dinner with him tonight. I don’t think he’ll need to be reminded.”
“Does he stay at the Winter Palace?” I asked.
“No, he has a rest house just a stone’s throw from the Valley itself,” said Lady Evelyn.
“KV63, eh?” sniggered the baronet.
“Really, Brograve!” admonished his wife. But you could tell he felt he had scored. Perhaps he had. The other men laughed.
We were all staying at the Winter Palace in Luxor, right on the water on the east bank. The hotel was nearly as iconic as the ancient temple it stood shoulder to shoulder with. Our luggage had already been transported thither, and a good thing, as our dahabeah had virtually winked out of existence the minute we set foot on land. There was the barge instead, already heavy laden with crates of artifacts. The workers were still loading, standing in the shallows, passing parcels along. They did not chatter or even smile as they went about their work. Their silence was oppressive. Perhaps they were keeping their ears open for crocodiles.
There was a small felucca as well, its towering sail stretched out to capture any hint of a breeze. I boarded, as carefully as possible, and took a seat in the stern (the seats being nothing but rough slats). Here, with the hull low in the water, I felt truly baptized in the Nile. We had seen much larger feluccas on our journey, of course, but the little ones flew much faster. A gust of wind, like the blowing out of a candle, and we were across.
I would like to have explored the Temple of Luxor, and even Karnak, which stood so close by, so very inviting, but the truth was that every bone in my body ached. I was perhaps not quite as well as I had let on. I know nothing of the dinner that ensued nor who attended it. We definitely were not invited to Mr. Carter’s little soiree, that much I do know. My bed was truly luxurious and called my name as surely as any spirit. I had some broth sent to my room and made an early night of it.
Yet when I sought release in sleep, none came. I kept reliving in my mind the strange happenings at the tomb. I had not expected Louise. Was she determined to follow her son everywhere? Could she find no peace? I felt certain she had not anticipated the advent of the other spirit, so powerful that she blotted out both Louise and Red Cloud. Why had it been a woman? If I had expected anyone, it was Tutankhamun himself. Whose spirit guarded him? Could it be his wife, or his mother? Had she that much solicitude in common with Louise? What was her name? Where did she lie? Too many questions. I had to shut them out if I were to get any rest at all.
It wasn’t until I was finally drifting off to sleep that I realized what had really been bothering me. I sat bolt upright. The spirit had accused him of stealing the “true name.” But surely Gould had said that she stole the true name. Which was it? I almost rose from my bed to tell Sir Sherlock of my conundrum, but a buffeting wave of sleep took me and I was carried away.
I woke the next day with the same thought still uppermost in my mind and relayed it to Sir Sherlock at breakfast. Dr. Watson, who appeared recovered from yesterday’s brush with the elemental, admitted, rather reluctantly I thought, that he had heard the same thing. He seemed quite reserved this morning. Perhaps because he had come across something so uncanny he could not rationalize it away?
“So are we saying now that two items were stolen?” asked Dr. Watson, speaking with his mouth full.
“Perhaps, by Occam’s beard. More likely it was one treasure stolen twice,” Sir Sherlock clarified.
“But how are we to find out what that thing was when there are thousands of treasures to choose from?” I asked. “And most of them gone to Cairo.”
“Carter assured us nothing had been stolen from the tomb,” Dr. Watson reminded.
“I wouldn’t put too much faith in Carter’s word,” said Sir Sherlock. “He has a well-documented history of dealing in stolen antiquities.”
Dr. Watson was taken aback. “Well, there’s news that never made the papers.”
“You think Mr. Carter is the thief?” I asked, breathless.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps he never knew of the thing’s existence; therefore, he could never be aware that it was stolen. After all, Lady Evelyn was the first to enter the tomb, and alone. Only she was small enough to fit through the robber’s hole.”
Dr. Watson looked positively offended. “Surely you don’t suspect Lady Evelyn of stealing anything from the tomb.”
“Watson, as you are well aware, at this point in our proceedings I suspect everyone.”
On that note we were joined by the Beauchamps, who had risen early to see sunrise from the temple. They had dined with Mr. Carter at his home the night before (along with Anna, whom the archaeologist seemed to have taken a fancy to). With some arm-twisting, he had agreed to an interview and a tour of the laboratory. We would have to wait till lunchtime, though; he couldn’t accommodate us any earlier. So I did have time to explore Luxor Temple. I was delighted. And even more delighted when I discovered that Sir Sherlock was the only one who proposed to accompany me. It was wearying at times to have his shadow always with us, always questioning, always doubting, always suspecting, though I had high hopes Dr. Watson’s shell had cracked after yesterday’s events. But when I asked Sir Sherlock his opinion on the matter, he laughed. “Not such an easy shell to crack is John Watson. Last night he wanted to know all I could tell him about posthypnotic suggestion. He thinks you’ve been fiddling with his mind. ‘How does she do it?’ he asked over and over, dumbfounded. He’s a man who stands on his dignity, and you made him look a fool, so he imagines. He thinks he’s your pigeon, plucked from the audience because of his gullibility.”
“You mean the visions he experienced he has decided I somehow lodged in his skull? That would truly be nothing short of sorcery.” I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Ah, but it falls under the rubric of science, therefore he prefers it.”
I had wanted to see the temples of both Luxor and Karnak to the north, but Sir Sherlock assured me that Luxor alone was enough for several days’ exploration, and he was right. I don’t know what I had expected, perhaps something like Canterbury Cathedral, but the size of the thing, the sheer volume of it, was dizzying. It looked as if it had been built by giants, who had then deserted it, as a child does a sand-castle at the shore. It was a whole complex, begun by one pharaoh, then added on to by a whole list of names that fled my mind as soon as Sir Sherlock named them—except for Tutankhamun, of course—oh! and Alexander the Great, who had erected a chapel in the middle of it all.
It was not dedicated to any god but to the pharaohs themselves, though I suppose they considered themselves gods. There were statues of kings some seventy feet tall. There was a Roman fort housed within, and frescoes of Christian saints by early believers. You could have fit St. Paul’s inside, and the Houses of Parliament, with room left over for Hyde Park.
We came to a mosque. Not the ruins of a mosque, but a living, breathing place of worship. It had once been a church, and a Roman temple before that, and even before that an Egyptian temple, where Tutankhamun had probably worshipped Amon-Ra and his gang. It was perhaps the oldest place of worship on God’s good earth. I stared in wonder, trying to absorb it.
“Will you go in with me and pray?” Sir Sherlock asked earnestly.
I was honored to do so. We took off our shoes and entered. It was a mixture of classical Islamic and ancient Egyptian architecture, yet not inharmonious. There were a few others in the empty, echoing place, worshipping. We knelt and prayed: to God and Allah and Jupiter and Zeus, to Isis and Osiris and Horus.
“Estelle, do you feel anything?” he whispered.
Strangely enough, I did not. Though the place we knelt in was over three thousand years old, there were no presences, no voices. My mind was quiet and clear. I felt only a great peace. Then I realized why:
“All those who would speak with me wait across the river.”
Along with the elementals, those deep resentments and jealousies and petty calumnies that had taken root, and something like form, like consciousness, like hatred, like desire. I could sense them, but they slept. I prayed they would go on sleeping.
Except one elemental. Stolen. Awakened. Unleashed upon the unsuspecting world. To revenge. To murder. What form had it taken? How had it hidden itself?
In the end, I suppose we saw half of the temple complex before we gave it up and went back to the hotel for lunch. Anna finally joined us there, still suffering from the effects of too much wine the night before. She kept referring to Mr. Carter as a varken, which I guessed was not a complimentary term. Then we turned around and crossed the river once more.
When we entered the laboratory (I shall glide over the obligatory six-mile mule tide, which I found no more comfortable than the day before), I was sure we were in the wrong place, that we had stumbled into a tomb completely unexplored. As opposed to Tutankhamun’s tomb, every inch was decorated, first with richly carved reliefs of kings and queens, gods and monsters, giving way to painted columns detailing the legend of Seti II and the pharaoh’s journey through the netherworld, and the night sky painted on the high ceilings above. But we were in a laboratory for all that. The passage was lined with small trestle tables loaded down with King Tut’s knickknacks, as Mr. Mace had called them, in various states of repair and disrepair, from timeless alabaster cups to sandals that looked ready to fall apart if breathed on.
There were three long corridors of this, and then the chamber of four columns. The chamber’s effect was somewhat marred by the two large trestle desks, one on either side, sandwiched between the columns and the wall, covered with more detritus, where Mr. Mace and another fellow sat, hard at work—or asleep, it was difficult to tell, they were so still, concentrating on their work. Yet it made me realize how poor was the tomb of Tutankhamun by comparison. Mr. Mace looked up briefly from his work and gave us a nod.
And there was litter all over the floor, making every step awkward. Or treasure, I don’t know which to call it. There was a golden goose, and a woman carrying a boy on her head, and a lovely black dog, his ears akimbo. There were wooden oars and a model boat that could have been a Christmas present for Tut when he was a boy. Mr. Mace’s table was covered with jewelry, amulets, and other regalia. The other fellow seemed to be working on baskets and textiles, all ruined, with hundreds of beads literally hanging by their threads.
We found Mr. Carter at the very back of the tomb, down a set of steps, where the coffin must have once stood, but there was no coffin. Carter and a second fellow, heavyset, balding, carelessly dressed, were sitting at another cluttered trestle table in Thonet bentwood chairs, wolfing down something like Cornish pasties (they called them shawarma) and washing them down with hot coffee, which made me break out in perspiration just to see. I had grown fond of iced tea over the last few days, which I had always thought before was an American blasphemy.
Mr. Carter did not seem as savage as the day before. I sensed that he had come to some significant decision. I didn’t think his decision had anything to do with us, though.
He said, “So you have had the tour,” but a wry look from Her Ladyship brought him to his feet. His companion remained seated, dedicating himself to his lunch.
Carter began by explaining the pictures on the walls, Seti’s journey though the afterlife in body, and spirit, and shadow, each protected by spells and counterspells, his encounters with Osiris and Anubis, his passages through gates and caves, his battles with foul creatures of the netherworld. Once he got started, Mr. Carter was a born storyteller. He led us back up the steps. Seti had only ruled for six years, he told us. Years marred by the rebellion of his half brother Amenmesse, who gained control of Upper Egypt and had Seti’s tomb vandalized. Seti eventually defeated him and had his tomb restored. So we were standing in a literal battleground, in which the future of a pharaoh was decided for all eternity.
Mr. Carter began naming some of the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb that littered the place.
“Were any of these treasures Seti’s?” asked Dr. Watson.
“Oh, no, tomb robbers plundered this place thousands of years ago.” He pointed out graffiti on the walls made by ancient Greeks and Romans who had ransacked the tomb. I wondered if any of them had met the same fate as Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Gould. He told us about the treasures we saw, most of which had been removed from the burial chamber. The antechamber’s contents had all been floated to Cairo on barges. The annex, as the smaller room was called, and the beguilingly named treasury had barely been touched. There was still plenty of work to do of analysis, preservation, and restoration. This was the work that kept Mr. Mace and Mr. Lucas busy, he said.
His own table was loaded down with weapons, daggers and swords, and with writing implements, as if he were trying to discover whether the pen had always been mightier than the sword. There were life-size golden chariots, being assembled or disassembled, I’m not sure which. There was a collection of scarabs, lovely enough to make you forget that they were idealized beetles. There were the smells of paraffin and beeswax everywhere. Used as preservatives, Mr. Carter explained.
