The Serpent on the Crown (32 page)

“What if they’ve changed their appearances?” David asked.

“Then we’re sunk, since we’ve no idea
how
they may have disguised themselves. All we can do is proceed on the assumption that they look the same.”

“So we stay over tonight?”

“Yes, dammit. Let’s clean up and then have dinner at Bassam’s in the Khan. He knows everything that goes on in Cairo.”

They paused on the corner of the Shari Kasr el Aini and the Shari el Munira, waiting for a chance to cross the former. The traffic was horrendous; nobody yielded the right of way to carriages or carts or pedestrians. People pushed and shoved along the pavement and into the street. It was a wonder there weren’t more accidents, Ramses thought, as a camel lumbered past, cutting off a cab whose driver shrieked curses at the camel and its rider. A motorcar, driven at reckless speed, wove in and out among the slower vehicles.

It was almost even with them when a hard shove sent Ramses staggering forward. The driver couldn’t have stopped if he had wanted to.

Fatima would not be consoled. “It is my fault. I should not have left him alone. I should have watched him.”

Sethos offered her an impeccable handkerchief. “If it’s anyone’s fault, Fatima, it is mine. I didn’t think to warn you.”

“None of us thought to warn you.” I added my words of consolation. “In fact, to do all of us justice, there was no reason why we should have done.”

“Yes, there was,” Emerson muttered. “Here now, Fatima, nobody blames you. Please don’t cry. You’ve set the twins off too.”

“You do not blame me, Father of Curses?” She mopped her wet face and gave him an appealing look.

“Good Gad, no. David John—Carla—I am not angry with Fatima. Do you hear me?”

They were clinging to her skirts and sobbing in sympathy. The noise level was quite high.

“That will be quite enough from you two,” I said. “Have a biscuit.”

Their infantile distress reminded Fatima of the need to recover herself. She gave a final swipe to her face and used the handkerchief to wipe their faces and noses. “It is all right, do you see? I am not unhappy. The Father of Curses is not angry. Come, have a biscuit. Have two!”

“He’s had five hours or more to make his getaway,” I said. “At what time did you interrogate the boatmen?”

Sethos knew what I was getting at. “I left instructions, along with promises of extravagant baksheesh, that they were to report immediately if he turned up.”

“We can’t just sit here and let the bastard get away with it,” Emerson groaned. “She trusted me to take care of the bloody thing. I’m going back to the landing.”

“Language, my dear, language,” I said gently, touched by his self-reproach.

“Waste of time,” said Sethos, holding out his cup. “I suggest we consult Selim. And notify the police.”

“The police?” Emerson’s eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t think of that.”

“You never do,” said his brother. “If Lidman is still in Luxor, East or West Bank, we’ll catch up with him eventually, but we will be in trouble if he succeeds in getting out of town. We need guards at the railway station. Dependable guards.”

“I wouldn’t trust any of Ayyid’s fellows,” I said. “Not that I doubt their loyalty, but none of them know Lidman. They can’t ask for identification from every passenger, that would take too long and some pompous idiot would be bound to register a complaint.”

“Obviously I am the right man for the job,” Sethos said with a martyred sigh.

“Then what do we need the police for?” Emerson demanded.

“Because,” said Sethos, slowly and patiently, “I do not have the authority to detain Lidman. I can identify him but only the police can hold him for questioning.”

“Hmph,” said Emerson. He shifted uneasily in his chair. “Er—do we have to tell them he’s stolen a statuette worth a hundred thousand pounds? Good Gad, if that news gets out he’ll have a pack of vigilantes on his trail, baying for his blood.”

“You are mixing your metaphors, Emerson,” I said. “They won’t be after his blood, they will be after the statue, and not for the purpose of restoring it to its proper owner. However, I doubt they would be averse to spilling his blood if they had to. Supposing he is innocent after all? He could come to serious harm.”

“He is guilty as Cain,” Emerson growled. “And personally I wouldn’t care if he were torn limb from limb so long as I were the one doing it.”

He didn’t really mean it. Emerson is the mildest of men, unless provoked—though I must admit it is not difficult to provoke him. His honor and his pride had been sorely damaged, and he held himself personally responsible for the loss. A hundred thousand pounds would make quite a dent in our investments.

“I have it,” I cried. “We will accuse Mr. Lidman of making off with some of Ramses’s bits of papyrus. The police know we care about such things, but no one else does.”

“Well done, Peabody,” said Emerson. “Do you think Ayyid will take that loss seriously enough to stay on the hunt?”

“My dear,” I said, returning his smile, “I feel certain that if he is not inclined to do so, you can convince him.”

“Let’s go, then,” Emerson said. “You and I, eh, Peabody?”

“And I,” said Sethos.

Nefret wanted to come too, but I persuaded her to stay with the children, who had set up an outcry at the prospect of losing both grandparents and a particularly entertaining guest. “Console yourself with one cheering thought, my dear,” I told her. “If Lidman is our villain, which seems more than likely, Adrian Petherick is innocent. Ramses and David are in no danger.”

FROM MANUSCRIPT H

“Another pair of trousers ruined,” Ramses said, inspecting the stained, ripped knees of that article of clothing.

“They can be mended.” David’s face was pale and his voice unsteady. “I’ll tell Aunt Amelia it was my fault.”

“It was your fault I didn’t fall flat on the road under the motorcar.”

He got to his feet. The onlookers who had gathered to offer assistance and advice dispersed. It was a common enough occurrence, and one that often ended more dramatically.

“Somebody shoved me,” Ramses said.

“I thought so. You aren’t that clumsy. You didn’t see who it was?”

“I was too busy trying to stay on my feet. And you—”

“I was too busy trying to keep you from falling forward.”

“People were jostling one another. It might have been an accident.” Ramses brushed grit and scraps of cabbage leaves off his palms. He had landed on hands and knees after David swung him back onto the pavement.

“Another accident?” David raised his eyebrows. “It looks as if you were right about Adrian Petherick and I was wrong. We know he’s in Cairo—”

“We don’t, not for certain.”

“How many people are there in the city who have it in for you?”

“Quite a few, I should think.”

“You did cut rather a wide swath during the War,” David admitted.

“So did you.”

“That was a long time ago. Most of them have got over their grudges by now. No, my brother, it looks more and more like Adrian.”

Ramses’s disheveled appearance raised a few eyebrows as they crossed Shepheard’s terrace, and one stylishly dressed woman was heard to say, “I’m surprised they allow riffraff like that in the hotel. And isn’t the other man…”

When they asked for their keys, the clerk handed them several messages. Ramses looked through them as the lift took them up to the second floor.

“Fancy that,” he said. “This is from M. Lacau, summoning us rather peremptorily to his office tomorrow morning. I hope he hasn’t changed his mind about allowing Father in the Valley.”

“The Professor will ignore him anyhow,” David said with a grin. “Who’s that one from?”

“Sylvia. The woman couldn’t take a hint if you hit her over the head with it. And this one is from Annabelle, Sylvia’s chief rival in the gossip game.”

He crumpled the letters and shoved them in his pocket. “One of your former lady friends, wasn’t she?” David asked.

“Good God, no. I spent hours hiding behind various objects in order to avoid her.”

The suffragi on duty in the corridor hissed in surprise at the sight of Ramses. “What happened to you, Brother of Demons?”

“I fell.” Ramses inserted his key in the door. “Was anyone looking for me while I was out, Ahmed?”

“No, Brother of Demons. Shall I take your clothes to be cleaned and mended?”

A look in the shaving mirror told Ramses the man’s concern and the criticism of the people on the terrace had been justified. There was a rip at the shoulder of his coat, where the sleeve had been pulled loose by David’s desperate grip, and since he had been in too much of a hurry to shave that morning, his beard darkened his cheeks. He took the letters from his pocket and realized there was one he hadn’t read.

“Carter,” he said, after perusing it. “You were right. Our presence is known. Here, hand these clothes out the door to Ahmed, will you?”

A quick bath and a shave and the only other suit he had brought with him restored him to respectability. When David was ready they walked down the stairs, between the statues of the voluptuous Nubian maidens that were among the famed sights of Shepheard’s. The maidens had been photographed, fondled, and even carried off by visitors.

“What did Carter have to say?” David asked.

“Wants to see us. Anytime. Didn’t say why.”

“He must want to see you very badly,” David said. Sitting in the lobby, a cigarette in his mouth and his nose in a book, was Howard Carter.

“They told me you’d come in a short time ago,” he explained, after shaking hands with both of them. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

Ramses had known Carter since his early days, when he was working as an artist and draftsman, and later, when he was appointed inspector for Upper Egypt, and later than that, after he had lost the post and had been reduced to dealing in antiquities and selling his paintings to tourists. Now that Lord Carnarvon was his patron, he looked more prosperous. His face was fuller and his mustache less exuberant. There were new lines around his mouth, though. Carnarvon was said to be a generous employer and amiable man, but having one’s livelihood depend on the whim of a dilettante must not be conducive to peace of mind. Carter had no private means and not much formal education. Many of his peers considered him brash and ill-mannered. Emerson despised him for continuing to deal in antiquities, but Ramses couldn’t blame the man for hanging on to a sure source of income.

“We’re on our way to the Khan and Bassam’s,” he explained. “Care to join us?”

“ ’Fraid I can’t this evening. I have an engagement with Lord and Lady Dinwhistle. I’ve time for a drink or two, if that would suit you.”

They made their way to the Long Bar. Since the War the rules about admitting women had been relaxed—Nefret had been one of the first to ignore them—and the tables were all taken. They found a relatively quiet corner where they could stand and talk. Ramses waited for Carter to start the conversation. He thought he knew where it would end.

“We’ve been hearing some tall tales about you people,” Carter began. “Murder, robbery, assault—”

“Same old thing,” David said.

Carter gave a bark of laughter. “Quite. Quite. Any discoveries in KV55?”

“Not so far. We didn’t expect anything, really. It was good of you to allow us to excavate the place.”

Carter inserted a cigarette into an ornate holder. “I couldn’t refuse Professor Emerson such a small favor, I owe him too much. Good to me—very—your parents—in past years. Not that I was really worried about illegal excavations in the Valley,” he added.

In other words, Ramses thought to himself, your father can get away with more than most people, so long as he doesn’t push me too far. The young man who had been so humbly grateful for encouragement and support from those he considered his social superiors had gained confidence.

And he was after something—a return favor. It didn’t take him long to get round to it.

“So what about the famous statue?” he asked. “The Professor wired me asking if I knew anything about it. Had to tell him I didn’t.”

“And you would have known if it had been on the market before last year?” Ramses kept his voice neutral. He wasn’t criticizing, he was only asking for information.

“Obviously I didn’t,” Carter said somewhat defensively. “I—er—assist many of the major museums, you know, in addition to private collectors like Lord Carnarvon. If I’d known of anything so remarkable I’d have—er—entered into negotiations.”

“Such negotiations are often conducted in secret, though,” Ramses said.

“That’s the devil of it,” Carter said, finishing his whiskey and beckoning the waiter. “I believe I may claim I am noted for my discretion, but”—another bark of laughter—“so are some of my competitors. Describe it for me, will you? The newspaper accounts can’t be trusted.”

Ramses glanced at David, who shrugged. There was no reason why they shouldn’t be candid with Carter, since so many other people had seen the object. He described the statuette in detail and watched Carter’s eyes take on a hard glitter.

“It’s absolutely unique,” Ramses finished. “And in superb condition.”

“I suppose you’ve already had offers for it,” Carter said, trying to sound casual. “I know Cyrus Vandergelt is a friend of yours.”

“It isn’t ours to dispose of,” Ramses said.

“I thought Mrs. Petherick had—”

“Given it to Father? He wouldn’t accept a gift so valuable, even if he had the right to do so. We don’t know who the legal owner is, now that Mrs. Petherick is dead.”

“I see. You’re sure…But you couldn’t be mistaken about its authenticity. You’d be willing to testify to that?”

“Father would probably give his expert opinion if he were asked.”

“I see,” Carter repeated. “Well, I must go now. Don’t want to keep his lordship waiting. I expect I’ll be seeing you all shortly—and the statue.”

“When are you coming to Luxor?” David asked.

“Oh…” Carter gestured with his cigarette holder. “Shortly. Another week or so, I expect. Give my regards to the family.”

“He’ll be busy for another week ‘negotiating’ with dealers,” David said, after Carter had gone. “Would you care to wager a small sum that Lord Dinwhistle is not in the market for unique antiquities?”