The Hammer Horror Omnibus (36 page)

It caught Adam’s attention at once. He put his hands on her arms and drew her close to him.

“This is new?”

“Or very old,” she said.

Then he kissed her bare shoulder so that she was not sure whether he was really interested in the medallion or had merely been using it as an excuse.

At dinner he mentioned it again, and she told him that her father had given it to her. It was a long time since she had spoken of her father. But now it all came out in a rush. The appearance of the grave treasures in their new setting, the dress, and the medallion—all brought back memories, and she found that in Adam’s company she was able to face up to them. He seemed to draw confidences from her by a gentle form of hypnotism. She found it easy to talk and easy to put everything that had happened into its true proportions.

She told Adam about her childhood and of how she had adored her father.

“But when my mother died, he went to Paris to lecture at the Museum of Egyptology. It was six years before I saw him again.”

“Why didn’t he take you with him?”

“I was a great disappointment to him.”

Adam paused with his fork in mid-air. It stabbed an incredulous question at her.

“Why was that?”

“He always wanted a son.”

“What a very foolish man.”

Annette remembered the bitterness, the shame of rejection by the father she so longed to be near. She had been young and easily wounded. She could not understand; but she had tried to understand. And of one thing she had been determined: she would meet her father on his own ground and show herself worthy of him.

“I studied twice as hard as any son would have done,” she recalled. “I read everything he wrote and anything relating to his studies that I could get my hands on. In my circle it was regarded as being very unfeminine, but I persevered. By the time I went to Paris I could converse with him on his level.”

“He was surprised?”

At this point memory became a joy. This she would never forget. “He was delighted,” she said. “He insisted I should join him as his assistant.”

“So the story has a happy ending.”

“Until that night in the desert,” said Annette soberly.

Adam nodded. He did not speak again until coffee was served. Again he had fallen in with an uncanny responsiveness to her mood. She had wanted to talk of her father, to break the spell as it were; and now she wanted to think for a little while rather than talk, giving herself time to readjust. And Adam understood. Adam was as sensitive to the subtlest change as though he had been reading her mind.

When they were drinking a glass of brandy he looked across at her and said lightly, to free her from her reverie:

“A perfect distillation of the most admirable ingredients. Like the blend of beauty and intelligence in a woman.”

They moved away from the table and Annette sat down while Adam stood thoughtfully above her.

“But it often disturbs me,” he went on abruptly, “when women use their intelligence only for academic pursuits.”

She felt a stab of disappointment. It was unthinkable that he should be numbered among those who shook their heads over her and said that a woman’s place was in the home. Sadly she prompted him:

“You think we should sit in seclusion with our embroidery?”

Adam smiled. “You mistake me. I mean only that intelligence can be as gainfully employed in the home as in the academy. A man should ask not merely the obvious marital duties from his wife: he should be able to expect wit and intellect. She should have a grasp of his work, and at the same time keep her mind fresh by interests of her own. And, of course, the husband must respect these interests. They will be better companions that way—happier, more rewarding . . . and well rewarded.”

To hear her ideals put into words in this way was too much for Annette. She put her glass down on the low table beside her chair. There had been no hint of superiority in Adam’s voice: he had been talking, she realized, to an equal, and talking about a relationship that must be based on equality.

Sharply, as though seized by a desire to wreck what he had just done, he said:

“John understands this, I’m sure.”

“Not . . . not completely.”

“You must have talked this over. You work in the same field. It must mean a lot to you.”

“He’s prepared to allow me to continue my career when we are married.”

“You make it sound like a concession rather than a positive encouragement,” said Adam. He cupped the brandy glass in his hand and swirled the amber liquid gently. “But you will marry him?”

Annette heard herself say: “I’m not sure.” This was treachery and she was appalled by it, yet nothing could have held the words back. It was settled that she and John would marry. She had been sure until . . . until when? It was impossible now to look back and decide at what point she had become aware of the first doubts, the tentative sidestep which had led to this admission.

“Not sure?” said Adam. “Then I implore you to be certain before you go any farther. A wasted life is tragedy enough, but for someone like you to throw away the years on a compromise would be doubly tragic.”

“You’re very . . . disturbing, Adam.”

He said: “And you’re very beautiful, Annette.”

She waited for him to come towards her. When he did she knew she would be unable to resist him. Her world was spinning insanely, but she didn’t want it to stop.

6

J
ohn Bray crossed the hall and Jessop opened the sitting-room door for him. Adam and Annette turned to face him. They looked strangely frozen, like two actors interrupted in mid-sentence and waiting for a cue to set them off again. He paused, feeling that he did not belong here. Strictly speaking, neither he nor Annette belonged; yet she had the air of one who was settling down, accepting and being accepted.

He was too tired to sort this out. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, and thankfully accepted the glass which Adam put in his hand.

“Are you very tired?” asked his host solicitously. “Would you like to eat in your room? I’ll get Jessop to—”

“Thank you, I’ve eaten.” He remembered with distaste the sandwiches sent in to the tent while he and King added the finishing touches to the exhibition. They had not exactly satisfied his hunger but they had certainly taken away his appetite. “I’m afraid Mr. King’s New World charm is beginning to wear thin. If he continues to work me as hard as he is doing now, I’ll soon be as . . . well, as moribund as the mummy.”

He moved towards a chair facing Annette. On the way he stooped to kiss her. She sat quite rigid. Even through his weariness he began to feel the gnawing of suspicion. Adam Beauchamp was just too smooth; and was contriving to spend too much time with Annette; and was just too inexplicably lavish with his hospitality. John sensed that he was being edged out.

He looked accusingly at Annette. She lowered her eyes. The movement drew his attention to the small medallion which she wore around her neck.

He said: “What’s that? I don’t believe I’ve seen it before.”

Reluctantly Annette lifted it for him to see. John blinked. He had been concentrating so intently for the entire day that his vision was blurred. On the small surface of the medallion it was difficult to make out the design, which might be purely ornamental or an extremely fine-etched form of cuneiform writing. One thing was certain: this was an example of very ancient craftsmanship.

John looked past Annette to Adam. “Did he give it to you?”

“My father did,” she said, “the day before he died.”

Adam came closer and held out his hand. As though there were some rapport between them which did away with the need for words, Annette took the chain from round her neck and passed the medallion to him.

“Is it from the tomb?” asked John.

“Of course not.”

Her indignation was immediate and unforced. But he wondered how she could be so sure. It was strange that she should be in possession of something so unusual, passed to her by her father of all people.

He said: “It’s very odd. All discoveries made on the expedition should have been verified by—”

“John, you’re not suggesting my father would have—”

“It can’t be from the tomb,” Adam interrupted, turning the medallion over in his hand. “Both the stone and the hieroglyphs are at least two thousand years older than that. These are Early Old Kingdom.”

John bristled. He had had about enough of this languidly self-assured fellow, and now that they were on his own territory he proposed to put a stop to these pretensions.

“How would you know that?” he demanded.

“My interest in your work is not an entirely amateur one.”

“It’s the first time you’ve mentioned this.” John glanced scornfully at Annette, inviting her to share his scepticism. But she would not look up.

“I did not wish to be too brash on subjects which are so much more your province than mine,” said Adam. The tone was courteous and even deferential, but John would have sworn that there was an edge of irony to it. “My studies,” he added with a disparaging shrug, “were of an earlier period.” He held out the medallion to John.

There was certainly little in this rather dull little piece to suggest kinship with the richly decorated funerary splendors of Ra Antef. Yet John felt sure that somehow this was a keystone. Somewhere it fitted into the scheme of things, and its very insignificance was relevant.

He said stubbornly: “I still believe it could be from the tomb.”

Adam’s eyes hardened. John was glad that he had been able to sting the usually imperturbable host into a display of open hostility. “Let me assure you, Mr. Bray, it is Old Kingdom.”

“Nobody could be as certain as you are, Mr. Beauchamp, without extensive examination.”

“Then why don’t you reserve judgement until you have made an extensive examination?”

“Very well,” said John. Adam was making an untypically fidgety movement with his right hand, as though wanting to reach out and reclaim the medallion. John held on to it and said to Annette: “With your permission . . . ?”

“What is it?” She was as uncertain as Adam. Before either of them could gain control of the situation, John said quickly:

“There’s only one person I know who has the full references to this period, and that’s Sir Giles. He knows more about the subject than any of us. I’d like to see him now.”

“Now?” Adam did his best to be the courteous host again. “John, it’s getting late. Another drink, and then tomorrow—”

“Now,” John insisted. “He won’t be in bed yet. If you’ll both excuse me, I’ll start right away.”

Again they turned to watch him. As he left the room he had the satisfaction of knowing that they were both disturbed and that the pleasure they might derive from each other’s company would not be as unruffled as it might have been earlier in the evening.

Sir Giles was, as he had predicted, still awake. If one could call it that. As soon as he entered the library John knew that the archaeologist had been drinking. Even in the few days since they last met there had been a deterioration. Sir Giles’s military crispness was crumbling, his voice slurring into plaintive incoherence.

John, without preamble, gave him the medallion and waited for a verdict. Sir Giles shook his head muzzily over it and then began to recite his woes. His old friend Dubois was dead, King had cheated him, he would never be able to work again . . . the self-pitying stream flowed without cease.

“I want you,” said John at last, brutally emphasizing the words and driving them home through Sir Giles’s mutterings, “to identify that medallion for me. Its period. Its significance.”

Sir Giles pouted reproachfully at him. He tried to focus on the medallion. Then he waved a hand towards the bookshelves.

“Try over there. Third shelf. No, fourth. Try Belzoni. And de Morgan.” As John began to explore the shelves, Sir Giles poured himself another drink, splashing a fair quantity down the side of his glass, and rambled on: “If money is to be the yardstick by which the value of education is to be ass’d . . . assessed . . . then I fear for the future. The past isn’t inviolable—we’ve discovered that, haven’t we, hey, my boy?—but the future . . . oh, think of the future! Let’s make the redoubtable Mr. King headmaster of Eton and be done with it. Huh. In six months he’d turn the playing fields into a fairground, with each boy a barker on a percentage share of the profits.”

John, turning over the yellowing pages of a musty book, commented: “Well, at least their arithmetic would have to be good, if only to make sure of them getting their fair share.”

This appealed to Sir Giles. He chuckled. He couldn’t stop chuckling. He began to rock to and fro in his chair. Then the noise changed in a split second to lamentation again.

“Think of me! Whoever heard of an Egyptologist who wasn’t allowed into Egypt? Forbidden. Undesirable—that’s what I am. And there’s no court of appeal, you know.”

“What page will it be—what section, anyway?” asked John, picking his way through a complicated index.

“Oh, that damned Hashmi! Why couldn’t he have told the authorities it was King who was responsible for removing the relics, not I?”

“What page, Sir Giles?”

“Mm? Oh, that book. Yes, there ought to be something. Somewhere in the three hundreds, I think. A couple of sketches. Might help.”

“I was wondering . . .”

John let the question die. It was no use. Whatever knowledge Sir Giles might have stored away in that podgy head of his, he would be incapable of extracting any of it now. Or perhaps ever again. When a man drank himself into this kind of stupor and wilfully kept himself there, it meant that he had abandoned all his previous values.

Sir Giles became aware of John’s gaze. He produced a feebly ingratiating smile. To show how willing he was to offer his advice, he groped for the medallion on the table at his elbow. His glass went flying and the table rocked perilously.

To see one of his old idols crumbling like this was too much for John’s self-control. He burst out: “Oh, you clumsy, drunken old . . .”

He checked himself. But it was too late. An incongruous, shameful tear welled in Sir Giles’s left eye. “I see I’ve lost your respect now, too.” He forced himself up, wavered, and steadied himself. “You are undoubtedly better left alone to your studies,” he said with a pathetic attempt at dignity.