The Egyptologist (24 page)

Turkey without his rich protector, too bad. Back he comes (or runs, more likely)
from the Turkish battles to discover to his horror that in his absence poor, young,
Egypt-loving digger Paul Caldwell (an
Australian of all things,
thinks the bank•
rupt but still snobbish English pansy) has become the innocent object of Mar•
lowe's amorous obsessions. Take it a step further: maybe Trilipush hadn't found
the treasure map with Marlowe at all: maybe Marlowe and
Caldwell
had found it
while Trilipush was in Turkey. Trilipush, back from Galhpoli, surprises the pair
and, motivated by jealousy of his Juliet and greed over their secret find in the
desert, kills both Marlowe and Caldwell, hides their bodies, and goes to the USA.
Well, I'd some work ahead of me to prove all this, and I still didn't understand
why his military records had been suppressed, but this shows how early I'd al•
ready understood the main facts of the matter, Macy, as I explained them to you
when I met you that evening at the Parker House Hotel after returning from my
newest client's home.

The victim of this tragedy, Macy—and this was clear as crystal to me before
I'd even finished my first lemonade—was your lovely and hypnotising aunt. A
sweet, innocent girl, her head turned by a murderous pervert, used for her fam•
ily's money. I wanted to help, and that's the God's honest, I saw clearly that she'd
been made a fool by a sodomite and was already abandoned, though she didn't
know it yet. If I told her, she'd hate me forever. If I waited for events to unfold at
their own pace, she'd be the laughingstock of Boston society. I felt, even that first
lemonade, my hands being tied, and none of my choices were good.

Your aunt Margaret's second mood, I learnt over the coming weeks, was an
early evening specialty. Some days later, I was returning to the hotel, having spo•
ken to more Harvard professors and some students of Trilipush's, and I found, to
my great surprise and pleasure, Margaret in the lobby. She hadn't been far from
my thoughts since I'd met her. It was about seven in the evening, and she was un•
accompanied. "Now tonight you're going to put your notebook away, Harry, and
we're going to have some
fun."
She was at her very best like this. She still made
you feel like you were the most important person in the world, but she didn't
have any of the affectations of the rich hostess at home. No, now she was exuber•
ant and natural, a young girl whose eyes shone, excited to see the next thing life
had to offer. She had her jokes, her little smart remarks at your expense, but you
liked it, believe me. She put her arm through mine and walked me through parts
of Boston it never would've occurred to me to visit. "Don't you be worried there,
Harry, I know my way around, we'll be just fine."

She walked me into alleyways that made me wish I had a weapon on me, but
she just glowed under the dim lights, smiled at the shady figures lurking here and
there, clearly enjoyed herself by shocking her foreign friend, though I did my best
to smile throughout it all. "You know, I've
never
taken Ralphie to this place, and I
never would. He wouldn't fit in like you will, Harry." I liked the comparison.
"Let's keep all this our little secret, Harry." Suited me fine—I didn't want her
mentioning me to Trilipush either.

She pushed a button on an unmarked wall in a dark street, I couldn't even tell
you where we were. A small hatch at eye level slid aside, black eyes examined us,
the hatch slid shut, and the wall opened up to let us into a noisy party, a bar and
billiards and dancing to jazz music, men and women comfortable on couches,
floor cushions, laps. "Welcome to JP's, Harry," she said, ushering me in. It was one
surprise after another with your aunt. That evening she was all charm, and I
rather thought it was all for me, and I remember thinking, that evening, that for
whatever reason, she'd found something in me she was drawn to. I thought I
could see a natural progression unfolding, can't say anyone would've blamed me.
Now, of course, I'd say she was just a bit of a flirt. Played with fire a bit, she did,
your aunt, didn't know when she'd gone too far, pushed things over a line. Girls
like that always look surprised when people turn out not to be toys, when people
don't stop what they're doing at the girl's instruction, the second her whim
changes.

She brought us cocktails, and we sat on a red velvet couch. I might've been
pursuing the case or my own interests, hard to say from this distance, but I asked
her about Trilipush again, not sure what I was looking for. "Oh, he's a dream," she
said, but looking at the ceiling, hardly paying attention as she murmured, "En•
glish noble, explorer. Quite a man..." Not the ceiling: she was peering up at the
dark balcony that ran around the perimeter of the room before she brought her
attention back down to me. "What was I saying, Harry?"

She pulled me up, and we danced to the Negro jazz orchestra. We drank. To
be more accurate, I drank one or two, she drank quite a bit more. She patted my
hand and let me light cigarettes for her. "Ralph never would go for this sort of
thing," she said. "He's very bookish, you know. But Harry, you're quite a dancer!"
Now that isn't strictly true, but I didn't argue. My notes are a little unclear here,
I'm afraid, Macy. During this period in Boston, I often didn't remember to mark
down exactly what was said or on what date, and as I sit here, staring at the green
concrete bricks of the games room, memories come back in patches, unchrono-

logical rushes of events mixed up with things I recall wanting to happen, but
which didn't. I'll do my best to sort this out for you.

She and I sit on a couch at JP's, this private club of hers, and she's stroking my
cheek. This is a different evening. She's very drowsy, and I can see myself, a little
hangdog-looking. This is a bit surprising, you'll agree, under the circumstances,
but I don't take the cheek stroking to heart. You see, she'd left me on the couch for
a bit, went upstairs to that balcony—a gigantic Negro guarding the stairs let her
by no problem and she pinched his grinning face as she went up. I watched her
open a door without knocking and walk into a room at the far corner, turns out

to be the office of the J. P. O'Toole who owns the place, the Negro tells me. I return
to the couch. Minutes pass. When she comes back down she's odd, laughing too
loud. I look at her eyes, and I know straightaway where she's gone. She sat next to
me for hours, smiled the whole time, stroked my cheek now and again, but never
said a single word. Listen to an old man whinge, Macy: my heart was breaking
and healing up again with every beat.

But another night, same red sofa, she's just the opposite, bouncing with a sort
of nervous, unhappy energy, explaining to me that she's only marrying Trilipush
because her father wants it so much, but she doesn't care a thing about any of
them, all she wants "is to be left alone to have some fun once in a rare while. Pri•
orities, Daddy says, good name, good alliance. But Ralph can be a dreadful bore,
that much stuff about Egypt makes you fall asleep, you know, and that's just the
truth. Nobody could listen to stuff about Egypt as much as he wants to talk about
it. Or any topic. A
bore,
Harry, but men usually are after a while. Are you going to
turn out to be a
bore,
Harry?"

"You don't want to marry Trilipush?" I asked, amazed at the turn of events,
the way this lurking suspicion had suddenly emerged into light, and all at once I
was ready to tell her everything I knew about her fiance, to blow up that bomb
and take my chances.

"Oh, I don't know," she said before I could open my mouth. "I didn't say that,
did I? Let's not talk about this anymore, how's that sound to you? Just don't be a
bore,
Harry. Can you do that for me? Wouldn't that be the greatest thing if you
turned out not to be an unbearable bore? Wouldn't that be swell? Let's shoot for
that, Harry, okay? Okay? Okay?" Like this, when she started talking, she didn't
stop, she just kept chattering, whatever idea was in her head tumbled out of her
mouth, and she'd just repeat herself until she'd something else to say or do or
spend her energy on, and sure enough, when she ran out of words, she pulled me
up to dance. Maybe this was a week or two later, when she said all this. I don't

know what to tell you, Macy. I think I probably fell in love with her, you see, at
least that's how I'm remembering it now. And her? Well, I know now she was just
a sad, sick girl, too much freedom. I wasn't anything much to her, something, no
question, but not much. What could I have been to her? A man from another
world, another class, not rich, not posh enough, nothing. That's not a tragedy,
hardly, is it?

But what I felt
then,
that's something else. Maybe completely different.
Maybe the "clarity of distance" is nothing at all when compared to what's been
forgotten. Maybe it wasn't something inexplicable, as it's beginning to look now,
but instead was
logical,
and I was acting with clarity that should be respected,
clarity of
feeling,
even if I can't reproduce it here on paper, a whole lifetime later.
After all, I'm writing to you from notes and recollections, and who knows what's
slipped free from those? Maybe I wasn't such a fool as I'm making myself out to
be. Maybe I just can't
remember
now what I
knew
then, all the reasons why falling
for your aunt wasn't foolish, all the little ways she made me think it was possible.

Let's just accept that she wanted me to fall in love with her, was thinking about
being with me, too, leaving Trilipush for me, but day after day was passing with
me unable to bridge some gap between us.

It seems like a film from this distance. I remember one cold day, I'd stayed on
and skipped an Alexandria boat, and the thought was going through my head
over and over that there was a terrible crime about to happen in Boston, and only
I could stop it. Not just the old crimes I was trying to uncover, but something
happening right then and there under my nose: the murder of this girl's soul,
forced to marry for her father's social position, father and daughter defrauded by
this English invert. I was torn in pieces trying to keep straight what I knew, what
I suspected, what I should reveal and what I should hide, how to protect her, how
to win her, or both.

That cold day I go to the house to find her, but Finneran's there, and when he
answers the door he thinks I've come to see him of course (doesn't know I've been
squiring her around), and I can't figure out how to explain otherwise, and so we
go to his study and we talk about Trilipush. I tell him more than I intended, but
circumstances are different, because Finneran's already suspicious about Trili•
push before I open my mouth.

Two days earlier, Finneran says, he'd word that Trilipush was stuck in Cairo,
delayed on his trip to the tomb site because of a last-minute bureaucratic snag,
and he wanted the Partnership's money sent to Cairo, rather than to the town
closer to the excavation. Fine, thinks Finneran, six of one to him, ready to comply,

but then Professor Terbroogan from Harvard has just called on Finneran, that
very same cold day, came by special to tell Finneran (with Dutch vengeance) that
Oxford had just confirmed by cable that no Trilipush was ever educated there,
and for what Terbroogan's opinion is worth, Trilipush has a "zero percent"
chance of finding what he's promised his backers, the whole expedition is
doomed. "He said that, Harry. Doomed." Finneran's keeping a brave face, but he's
rolling that cigar back and forth across his mouth pretty speedy-like. He asks if I
knew about the Oxford "rumour." Terbroogan hadn't revealed that I helped him
find this information (though I reminded myself that I could now send him a bill
for services rendered), but I wasn't ashamed of the truth. "Yes, I suspected it," I
tell Finneran. "Well, Jesus Christ dancing on the cross!" he shouts, and the cigar
falls onto his desk. "What the hell else do you suspect? What did I hire you for?
To hear things from professors?" Finneran was worried, understandably: his
money, his daughter, his friends' money, the possibility that he'd very publicly
backed a fraud. I liked how someone else had brought the bad news, as there was
too much at stake for me to be the bearer. But it certainly meant that my "all-
clear" background investigation on Trilipush (sitting completed in my hotel
room since my first night in Boston) would require a few more days' thought and
editing. My position was only getting more complicated. "We'll see, Finneran," I
said. "Let's not jump to conclusions yet. Records can be wrong."

"And if they're not? What about poor Margaret's feelings for this man?" he
moans pathetically, after sitting in silence for a bit, fighting off his urge to panic.
"She loves him, you know, Ferrell. I can't stand in the way of that, Oxford or not."
In other words, I still have money riding on this man.

"Where's your daughter now?" I ask. And I swear to you, Macy, this great big
man looks like he's going to cry like a girl. He looks away, stands up, turns his
back to me, fiddles with a curtain. "Is there something you want to tell me? Con•
fidential enquiries is my line, after all." And then your great-uncle unburdens
himself to me, which people always did. He explains he's trying desperately hard
to do the right thing for his "little girl," but she drinks and she's had problems
with—he moves his mouth a bit before the word finally falls out—opium, and
twice he's thought she was cured of it. The last time he'd put her in a sanatorium
and paid a fortune to hire away one of their nurses (the buxom Swede I saw
around the house from time to time) to monitor her at home, and give her the
medications that were supposed to reduce her appetite for "the dragon's breath."
But Margaret's started sneaking out again, Finneran says, slumping back into his
chair. Inge, the nurse, is supposed to keep an eye on her, not let her out of the