Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy's Curse (27 page)

“What, Holmes?” Watson asked, keeping Leighton’s hand tightly in the crook of his elbow, partly to reassure her and partly to keep her from rushing off.

“…He was indeed unwell, Watson. We may be glad of having you along.”

“How do you know that?”

“His footsteps are very uneven. He is dragging his feet, and even staggering. Come; let us see where this leads, for at the end, we are certain to find him. Leigh, be prepared to run fetch Watson’s hospital staff, for we may well need them. Heat stroke appears to be a distinct possibility.”

Holding the lantern aloft, Holmes hurried on ahead of the pair, tracing the sandy indentations of Whitesell’s footprints. The erratic prints led them out of the camp and across the periphery of the dig field, hard by the northern spur. Glancing up, Holmes saw a faint light shining from the opening of the grotto, and let out an exclamation: the lanterns within should have been extinguished at sundown.

They ran forward, Holmes in the lead.

* * *

Holmes sprinted down the earthen ramp and through the outer door, holding up the lantern; Professor Whitesell was not there. The light he had seen from without, however, came from the interior chamber, and he hurried across to the inner door just as Leighton and Watson entered the outer door. Holmes abruptly blanched.

“Oh, dear God! Watson, grab Leigh, quickly! Keep her back there!” Holmes cried from his position just within the inner door, spinning and waving a hand in warning. Without question or pause, Watson swiftly caught the young woman as she sought to run past him, wrapping his arms firmly about her waist and holding her against him as she fought to get to her father’s side.

“Ah! Let me go! John, it’s Da! He’s sick! He needs me!” Leighton cried, struggling against his gentle but firm hold. “Let me GO!”

“Hush, Leigh. Wait a moment. What’s wrong, Holmes?” Watson asked then. When Holmes finally responded, it was in a tone Watson had never before heard his friend use: low, hoarse, and horrified.

“No woman should have to see her father in this condition, Watson.”

“What condition?! What’s wrong with him, Sherry??” Leighton called. “Let me help!”

“Hush, Leigh,” Watson murmured. “Let Holmes take care of him. If he needs help, I am far more able to provide medical assistance—”

“NO!” Leighton abruptly and unexpectedly twisted in Watson’s arms, head-butting him in the face just hard enough to startle him and cause him to release her. As he briefly saw stars, she darted out of his reach, and leaped across the inner threshold.

* * *

Holmes, who had already set down the lantern, lunged for her. But Leighton was just as nimble and swift as she had been as a child: she dodged Holmes’ long arms, and only stopped when she caught sight of her father’s body. Then she screamed.

For, illumined by the flickering light of a single torch—not a lantern—Professor Whitesell’s body rested on the bluestone in perfectly arranged repose, save for the fact that his head had been removed from his neck; it sat next to his right shoulder, blank, empty gaze staring across his own chest. Two pools of slowly congealing blood collected below the head and the open neck wound, respectively; a single scarlet rivulet trickled over the edge of the stone slab and down its side, like some macabre offering to the gods—whether Egyptian, Celt, or other, Holmes could not say.

Hanging from the open mouth was a sprig of foliage that looked like some varietal of mistletoe; across his chest lay a small, dried oak branch. A sickly-sweet stench filled the air; its source apparently came from the puddle of regurgitated matter near the base of the stone. An archaic Egyptian sword, the bronze blade sickle-shaped, honed to a fine edge, and heavily inlaid with gleaming gold, stained and smeared with fresh blood, rested across the bluestone at his feet. The overall effect was of some strange ritual burial of the old North peoples, rendered all the more macabre by the ancient Egyptian chamber around them.

Just then, the rest of the scientific team and several husky workers, led by Phillips, thrust through the outer door of the antechamber.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Holmes shouted, and one and all stopped dead at the command.

“I thought I heard Leigh scream,” a truculent Phillips demanded, jaw thrust out. “What have you lot done? Have you dared to hurt her? What’s going on?”

“It is murder,” a stern Holmes declared, succinct, just before Leighton Whitesell fainted, collapsing into his arms.

* * *

“Oh, for heaven’s—” Holmes grumbled under his breath, then turned. “Watson, come here and get her! I haven’t time for this! I must examine the scene and try to ascertain what happened!”

“I—” Phillips began, then subsided, as Watson carefully relieved Holmes of his feminine burden.

“You what?” Holmes barked then, out of patience as he spun on the younger man. The physician scooped up the young woman into his arms and bore her into the outer chamber, where he gently laid her on the floor in the corner, then reached for the carotid pulse.

“I… would have taken Leigh,” Phillips finished his aborted sentence with a sigh, watching Watson tend her. “But… she’s probably happier where she is, I guess.”

“Such are women, young Landers,” a still-pale Beaumont remarked, dry wit verging on cool. He leaned up against the wall near the outer door, and shivered noticeably. “They can be cruelly fickle. You will learn, soon enough.”

Holmes raised an eyebrow.

“Will someone tell me what the deuce is going on?” Lord Trenthume demanded. “You said it is murder, Holmes. Who is dead?”

“Look around you, Cortland. Who is missing?” Dr. Nichols-Woodall pointed out, sombre and a bit short with the Earl. “Will isn’t here. And Leigh’s passed out cold on the floor.”

“Good Lord,” Phillips expostulated fervently, horrified. “You cannot mean to say it is Professor Whitesell who is dead?!”

“He does, and it is,” Holmes snapped from the other room. “Do you all please remain where you are, try not to move, be quiet, and whatever you do, do NOT touch ANYthing! I am attempting to investigate the matter.”

* * *

It only took a few minutes for Holmes to survey the crime scene with his characteristic thoroughness. Then he turned, removed the torch from its sconce, and went into the anteroom, closing the inner door behind him.

“He will rest there, well enough, until we are done with this,” he declared in a milder tone. “The bluestone makes a decent enough bier, I should think. Where is Udail?”

“Here, Mr. Holmes,” Udail said, sticking his head in through the entrance. “We heard the lady scream, and came running, thinking it was another cobra.”

“Good. Pick three or four of your most trusted men. Station one of them just in here, and the rest right outside the main entrance, within easy conversing distance. Under no circumstances is anyone to go into the inner chamber, and absolutely no one is to be let into even the outer chamber except myself or Dr. Watson, here… on pain of death. Is that understood?” Holmes’ grey, drawn visage was grim.

“Yes sir,” Udail nodded, accepting the torch from Holmes. “Professor Whitesell was a kind man. But you say he is dead?”

“He is, I am very sorry to say,” Holmes admitted, melancholy despite himself. “His body lies inside.” He waved a hand at the inner door.

“Is it… was it… the mummy?” Udail whispered. “The curses you said were on the door… did the mummy of the old pharaoh come back for him?”

“Nonsense,” Holmes responded, steadfast. “Even if it were a curse, there is no mummy here to begin with. There never was. Stay here, stand guard, and do not fear such superstition. Watson, fetch Leigh and let us go back to the tent. I have work to do. The rest of you… go back to your tents, and do not go far.”

“What? Why not?” Trenthume blustered.

“He means that one of us did it,” a pensive Nichols-Woodall explained, “and he wants us where he can reach us when he figures out who.”

“Precisely,” Holmes replied.

“Then he will have to find me in my bed,” a blanched and haggard Beaumont declared, “for I am returning there at once. I do not feel at all well. I only roused from it when I heard the clamour, and feared something dreadful had happened… as it appears to have done.”

“I will send Sati to see to you,” Watson offered, watching the others go, and Holmes turned to him as Udail and his men took up stations around the vault to maintain their vigil.

“Come along, Watson. Get Leigh, and let us begone from this Godforsaken place.”

* * *

“Take Leigh to our tent, Watson, and stand guard over her until she awakens,” Holmes ordered as they left the erstwhile tomb and climbed the earthworks incline. “Keep your revolver in your hand. I have somewhat to accomplish before I return thence. And it may be that whoever killed Professor Whitesell will not stop with Papa Whitesell. Or with us. So watch your back, old boy. And if you have a few moments, and can divide your attention between guardian, physician, and errand-boy for me, do you please set up the rest of my chemical apparatus on the camp table in the back of the tent. It is all in the mahogany trunk.”

“What? Why?”

“I must go quickly and ascertain if the remains of the professor’s dinner have yet been disposed-of,” Holmes explained. “At the least, perhaps some residue of food or drink may tell me what we need, so desperately, to know.”

“You think…” Watson stopped dead, the unconscious Leigh still in his arms, “you think Professor Whitesell was… poisoned?”

“Almost certainly.”

“But why on earth would you think such a thing? He was beheaded!”

“Several reasons, Watson,” Holmes responded, gesturing him to follow, as he urged them farther away from the underground crypt. “It is highly improbable that the decapitation was what killed him, for there was insufficient blood drained from the corpse for that, implying that he was already dead when beheaded. Had he been still alive, that chamber would have been a veritable charnel-house of gore. And if you will recall, he left the dinner table somewhat early, complaining of dyspepsy…”

“True…”

“Then there is the fact that his footprints, left in the sand leading up to the vault’s entrance, showed most decided evidence of a severe lack of co-ordination and possibly blurred vision into the bargain, though the latter can be somewhat difficult to tell from the former…”

“You discerned his footprints in all that sand?”

“You did not? Tch, Watson,” Holmes tsked, “you see, but you do not observe.”

“Well, but what else?”

“The eyes were open; it was patently obvious that the pupils were severely dilated, and mildly uneven as well.”

“Mm, yes. I recollect that.”

“There is also the puddle of stomach contents which was beside the stone slab, where he vomited, as well as evidence that he then fell, alongside the slab; and… did you happen to get close enough to notice the smell, Watson?”

“Yes, but I took it to be the vom— ah. There was more, then? Soiled trousers, perhaps?”

“Rather. It appeared his bowels had released. All taken together, I think we may proceed on the likelihood that he was poisoned.”

“Well, well. As a medical man, presented with those symptoms, I must agree.”

“More: his footprints were not alone, at least not along the ramp into the crypt.”

“They weren’t?!”

“No; he was followed, without doubt. And whoever followed him was undoubtedly the murderer, for no one but the murderer could have known what was happening. Only after Whitesell had expired of the toxin was he lifted to the top of the slab, his head removed from his shoulders, and the, ah, vegetable ‘adornments’ added, in the form of the various sprigs of foliage. And perhaps you remember one of the curses I translated from the outer lintel?”

“I remember you did, and that they were horrid. I don’t recall them precisely, no.”

“Then think about this and consider Professor Whitesell’s state, and who was first into both chambers,” Holmes said, then quoted, “‘…
First bit by the haje-snake, to whom was given your head after it had been cut off. Even so shall you be if you breach what lies within.’”

“Damnation! It is the curse, fulfilled! Poison, then decapitation!”

“Precisely.”

“But surely… I mean, the curse…”

“Was enacted by a very human agency, Watson. So it should be no surprise that said human agency took the curse as inspiration… and subterfuge. What we must now determine are how, and with what,” Holmes explained. “Which will, in turn, lead us to who.”

“I’ll have everything ready when you return, then,” Watson agreed. “Good hunting.”

“Hurry back to the tent. Do not dawdle, and under no circumstances permit Leigh to leave. Stay safe.”

And they parted ways.

* * *

Holmes was in luck: As Professor Whitesell had been the first to leave the table, his dishes and utensils had been the first collected, therefore were on the very bottom of the stack to be cleaned. He appropriated a large wicker basket and loaded everything in it that he could ascertain had held Whitesell’s food, including his wine goblet with a few dribbles of wine still in the bottom, and carted it all away.

* * *

Watson had just set up the last of Holmes’ chemical apparatus, and Leighton, lying on Watson’s camp cot, was only beginning to stir, showing evidence of coming around at last, when Holmes fairly staggered into the tent with the huge basket laden with soiled eating utensils.

“For the first time,” Holmes panted, setting the basket down on his own cot, “I believe I may regret the good Professor’s preference for multi-course meals! I thought I should drop something before I got it here.”

“Mmh. What’s all that?” Leighton wondered, sitting up despite Watson’s mild protestations.

“The… remains of your father’s dinner, Leigh,” Holmes admitted. “I am sorry, my dear. I had hoped you might still be… sleeping.” The girl studied Holmes’ face, seeing the paleness that still lingered, as well as the lines of strain and grief the detective was still exerting effort to control. Then she seemed to slump inward on herself.

“Oh,” Leighton replied, very subdued; she sighed, a weary, disconsolate sound, and her eyes filled with tears. “I… hoped, for a moment… I thought it might… all have been a, a nightmare.”