Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy's Curse (7 page)

“No, no, it is fine,” Watson demurred. “I have no objection.”

“And nor do I,” Holmes added.

“…As Holmes says,” Watson continued, thoughtful, “it is a well thought out plan. I should prefer to be closer to my patients by my natural inclinations, and this will do nicely.”

“Excellent. And so here is your tent,” Whitesell said, stopping before a large canvas structure. “It is one of the larger ones, as large as my own, actually. I wanted the pair of you to be quite comfortable, and to have the room to spread out your equipment—though I hadn’t an idea at the time that it would also be a makeshift hospital, so I suppose it is fortunate. Holmes, while you are ‘only’ the translator, I fully expected you to be interested in the other matters as well. All of your work on the expedition will be most welcome, regardless of its nature, and I am very glad to hear that you brought some of your equipment.”

“Oh, entirely,” Holmes vouched, smiling. “Even had the tent been too small for the lot of it—and it may still be, once Watson and I both settle in and spread out—I would have sponged a corner of a tent somewhere, to work with it.”

“Excellent, my dear boy,” Whitesell said, returning the sleuth’s smile. “I have no doubt but that Nichols-Woodall will quickly come to appreciate your skills as a research chemist, and you can assist Beaumont and myself in extracting any relics, into the bargain.”

“Precisely what I had hoped, Professor.” Holmes’ own smile grew wider.

“Oh, my dear boy,” Whitesell murmured, sobering, then he grabbed Holmes’ arm in gruff affection and clapped his shoulder. “It is so very good to see you again, Holmes.”

“And you, Professor.”

“Now, your baggage should be inside already, with the camp cots, tables, chairs and the like having been set up previously, and awaiting your arrival,” Whitesell continued, stepping back. “Do you both go on in, do what unpacking you feel needful for the night, and perhaps retire a bit early, if you feel like it. You have had a long journey, with one or two… unfortunate impediments… along the way. You have earned it, and that merely by arriving here. Breakfast is at six, which is sunrise; this enables us to reach the dig pits and begin work before the region becomes very hot. Lunch is at noon, and is followed by a siesta, as Beaumont calls it, during the heat of the day. Tea is set out on the sideboard, and is what Leighton calls ‘catch as catch can,’ and dinner is at sundown, or thereabouts.”

“Very good. Thank you, Professor,” Watson said. Holmes nodded concurrence, and the two men entered the tent for the evening as Whitesell walked away.

CHAPTER 3

The Work Commences

—::—

The next morning after breakfast—during which rancour once more erupted between Beaumont and Nichols-Woodall, though this time, it was Nichols-Woodall who provoked it, and both Phillips and Leighton unsuccessfully attempted distractions to interrupt the argument at the far end of the table—Nichols-Woodall took Watson off to introduce him to his nursing assistants. Lord Trenthume nodded at Whitesell before rising and leaving the tent as well. Udail came by to see if Professor Whitesell had any specific instructions, then left to begin the day’s dig. Whitesell turned to Holmes, Phillips, and Beaumont.

“Come, gentlemen,” he said. “Parker will be along later, and Cortland has volunteered to take on the task of trying to locate that damnably wandering hospital tent.”

“I expect that means he’ll just be chivvying the poor quartermaster,” Phillips opined. “He’s a good enough bloke, I suppose, but I don’t think the man has ever had a unique thought in his head. He just waits for someone else to come up with an idea, and then pursues it with relentless determination. He makes a nice clothes rack, though.”

“Hush, Landers,” the Professor rebuked. “It does not do to speak ill of one’s patron.”

“Even if it is true,” Beaumont added. The Professor bit his lip.

“And we?” Holmes wondered, conveniently—and deliberately—offering Whitesell an escape.

“We will go over to the artefact tent, and try to organise what we have discovered thus far,” Whitesell explained. “With any luck, someone will discern a pattern in the various relics, and it will lead us to the specific place where the tomb is located.”

So they all trooped across the camp to the artefact tent, located on the border between the camp and the dig proper, a curious Leighton tagging along behind.

* * *

Within the artefact tent, a plethora of wooden boxes and trays sitting on rows of tables met Holmes’ eyes. Fascinated, the sleuth stepped forward, moving among the tables; as with one mind, the others stood back by the tent opening, letting him explore, and curious regarding his reaction. Even Leighton remained beside her father, watching. A few minutes later, Nichols-Woodall arrived, and joined the group watching Holmes.

* * *

Holmes let his hands float through the air over the boxes, studying their contents without touching them. He quickly discovered that many, indeed most, of them were empty as yet, but there were still quite a few relics: small pots and potsherds; a necklace here, a bracelet there, several mismatched earrings; two different bronze mirrors, polish gone, a dull greenish patina encroaching over the entire surface; several plates and cups; the bones of small animals, each showing the classic knife marks of having been butchered. In addition to this collection, there were two stone-carving chisels, one broken, one not; an engraved tablet; two badly damaged tablet fragments; and a mallet.

“Mm,” Holmes hummed, thoughtful. “I presume you have a log of the locations where these were all found?”

“We do, Holmes,” Whitesell said, moving into the tent. “Over on the table in the far corner. What do you make of it all?”

“That you have obviously found the workers’ camp, but not the work site,” Holmes decided.

“Why do you think that, Sherry?” a curious Leigh asked, coming to his side and peering into one of the trays; it happened to contain what Holmes adjudged to be charred chicken bones, surrounded by bits and pieces of charcoal. She wrinkled her nose in distaste as she, too, recognised the contents, then looked up at him.

“Because I see much to do with day-to-day living, Leigh, and little in the way of the sorts of tools that would be required to carve out a tomb from solid rock,” Holmes replied. “Professor, are these laid out in more or less a representation of where they were found?”

“Good man,” Whitesell remarked. “They are, indeed. At least as closely as we could make it, given the tent is not quite the same shape as the dig field. But each tray represents one grid square, so it is reasonably close.”

“Capital. Then look here, Leigh: in this tray we have the remains of a fire, into which has been cast the carcase of a chicken. Next to it are a couple of cook-pots, and the remnants of at least one more that has broken. These two squares, and probably several more, would denote the camp kitchen, as it were, likely similar in many respects to our own, saving we have cast-iron stoves versus their open fires, or perhaps some form of rudimentary clay stove,” Holmes pointed out, then strode to the next table. “Here we have a small pot of perfumed unguent; can you smell it, Leigh?”

“Yes! Ooo, it still smells good!” Leighton exclaimed, bending over the tray and inhaling. “Um… sandalwood?”

“Most likely,” Holmes agreed. “Yes, the ambers, resins, spices and what-not will have helped to preserve the fats into which they were mixed, which is why you can still sometimes recognise the fragrance, even after millennia. And here next to it we have some tiny brushes, a pot of ground charcoal, a bronze mirror, and a comb made of water buffalo horn. What do you suppose was here?”

“Someone’s vanity table?” Leighton wondered; the other men stood back with slight smiles, watching silently with pleased approbation as the detective taught the professor’s daughter. “They used charcoal and things to line their eyes, didn’t they? And so maybe the little pot of charcoal is the liner, and the brushes are for applying it, like actors do. The mirror is to see what they were doing. And of course the comb is for the hair…”

“Very good,” Holmes concurred. “Which means that the vanity table was inside what?”

“Well, if it had been a village, it would be someone’s home, I suppose,” Leighton considered. “But this was a work site, was it not?”

Holmes glanced at Whitesell for confirmation.

“That’s correct,” the archaeologist averred. “We have not seen any sign of permanent structures. No foundations or the like have been found.”

“And there are some broken tent pegs in the corner tray,” Beaumont added.

“So it was in someone’s tent,” Holmes noted. “And in all these adjacent trays, we find various items of jewellery, clothing fasteners, sandal straps, and the like. Which means this all comprised what?”

Leighton gnawed her thumb for a moment, thinking as she looked over the array of items, then finally offered a tentative, “The campsite?”

“Very good!” Whitesell exclaimed, intensely pleased. “You have reasoned through it all very well, Leighton! And Holmes, my boy, that was a lovely example, not just of reasoning, but of teaching!”

“Thank you, sir,” Holmes responded, sketching a slight bow, as a delighted Leighton flushed.

“Thank you, Da, Sherry,” she murmured.

“So we know where the camp is, and where the kitchens and living quarters were,” Holmes determined.

“And the, er, the facilities,” Phillips added, flushing in embarrassment.

“The latrines,” Nichols-Woodall elaborated bluntly, with a dry grin. “For obvious reasons, we do not have any of, ah, THOSE ‘relics’ in the tent.”

“Eww,” Leighton exclaimed, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Uncle Parker, please!”

“After all this time, surely the ordure does not still… smell?” Holmes asked somewhat delicately. “It has been many millennia!”

“No, no,” Whitesell chuckled. “Not in the desert. By now it is all quite desiccated. But we felt it might still be… unsanitary. So we chose not to risk it.”

“The workers were not especially happy about finding it, especially those that are Muslims,” Phillips noted. “But the Professor explained that it was little more than regular dirt and soil at this point, and it took an expert to even be able to tell…”

“And Udail backed me, Lord bless him,” Whitesell added. “So we managed well enough. Everyone understood, and no one was offended.”

“Good.” Holmes nodded knowingly.

“Yes. So we have the living areas well defined,” Beaumont noted, “but the work areas—where the tomb or tombs may be—seem still to be lost to us.”

“There are only a few places where tombs can be,” Nichols-Woodall pointed out. “The layout of the valley is not unlike that at the Wadi al Muluk
26
, or for that matter at Ta-Set-Neferu
27
. There is a large mountain ridge backing the valley, which is what my American colleagues would term a box
cañon
,
28
with outlying spurs defining the sides. It is only along these that the tombs could possibly have been built; the sediments in the cañon floor would have been far too thick, even in Ka’s time, for a vertical shaft approach.”

“Yes,
mon ami
, but that is still a very long base line over which to search,” Beaumont observed. “We can reasonably assume that the current surface level is considerably above what it was in Sekhen’s day, which means we must dig a trench of unknown depth along the bases of the mountains. And that is a great deal of digging to do, through sand and scree. There is much talus accumulated at the foot of the mountains.”

“Granted, but chances are, we only need worry about the vertical faces,” Nichols-Woodall argued. “The scarps of the mountains are, traditionally, where the tombs were built, because of the greater stability of the ceilings due to uniform thicknesses.”

“That is still a great deal of expanse,” Beaumont replied.

“True…” Nichols-Woodall admitted, quirking his mouth in frustration. “We desperately need a way to narrow down the search.”

“Professor, I have not thought to ask,” Holmes interjected then, “but how exactly did you settle upon this site to begin with, if you had not yet discovered relics here?”

“Oh, well, as you know, I have been searching for Sekhen for a long time,” Whitesell explained, and the others paid close attention. “I was re-reading a translation of one of the ancient histories, when I suddenly realised that a particular passage about Ka-Sekhen’s funeral seemed more awkward than was warranted. It seemed poorly translated to me. I accessed transcriptions of the original hieroglyphics, compared them to the common translation, and recognised that the translator had missed some complex idioms and metaphors. Once those had been properly inserted, the passage became a kind of riddle, all about ‘backbones and ribs,’ and ‘stones of the sky,’ and treaties, and the like. I did a bit of leg work, and found that the little puzzle could only be solved—at least in part—by assuming it described this area. I checked with Parker, and ascertained that the mountains could not possibly have changed to such an extent in the intervening time as to be unrecognisable. So I filed a request to conduct an archaeological exploration. And here we are.”

“Do we have a topological map of the area?” Holmes asked.

“We do,” Nichols-Woodall confirmed, going to a stash of large, heavy-weight pasteboard tubes in the corner. “Topographic, geological outcroppings, and more. Some of which I had to make myself; I have been here since the latter part of summer, working.” He fetched several tubes and carried them to an empty table, beginning to remove the rolled maps inside. “Perhaps if we all put our heads together over this, we may determine some probable target sites for test pits.”

“Capital idea, Parker,” Whitesell agreed. Leighton tugged at Holmes’ arm.

“Come, Sherry,” she murmured. “Let’s leave them to their stuffy old maps, and go for a walk.”

The men all froze, staring at the pair. Holmes, in his turn, stared at Leighton, who blinked back in confusion.

“My dear Leigh,” he informed her, “while I am gratified to see you and your father again after all this time, I am here to work, not to reminisce or to ‘catch us up.’ I am a part of this expedition team, and I am expected to—and shall—participate in solving the problem of locating Pharaoh Ka-Sekhen’s tomb. This is why I came.”