The Egyptologist (4 page)

shaking, but no tears are coming. "Oh, Paul," she says, and you can't even imag•
ine how angry Tommy looks—not at me, but at the drunk hag sitting in front of
him who only now has managed to put two words together. "Shut your mouth,
why don't you? Get off your date and clean something, you bloody bitch," and
the crying woman manages to shuffle out of the room, with the youngest girl
following her out, calling Tommy nasty names.

Back to the raging, wheezing little man's tale: Paul Barnabas Caldwell was a
"year or two older" than Tommy, so that meant born in 1892 or 1893, which fit my
bill. Tommy hated Paul. He grew up loving him, of course—he's your older
brother, you love him, and you feel sorry for him when he gets smacked by Mum
or by the man of the house (a rotating title, apparently) or by Bowlex (Dowlex? I
think I'm reading that right)—but Paul grew up fast and started throwing his
weight around too: he started to hit Eulalie back, before he ran away for the last
time. And Paul was good at school, surprising thing, even when he was a little fel•
low. Tommy don't like that, though: Paul was the only one who'd had a chance at
school, a real chance, since Eulalie could still work a bit back then, could make a
little money, and so Paul got to go to school "regular, not just now and again,"
while the others were in and out, helping their mum with work, quitting the books
as soon as the state said they were through. Worse though, Eulalie always told
Tommy and the other kids that Paul was special because Paul's dad was something
special, and she'd throw that at Tommy's dad too: "You aren't Barnabas Davies."
Tommy told me with a quiet, angry amazement, "But Paul wasn't even grateful for
that," he used to call Eulalie a whore and a disgrace, would say she wasn't his
mother, wasn't a proper woman at all, and he'd be off out the door to visit his other
friends, "and he never took me," says Tommy, "never once took me, never showed
me his books and pictures, looked at me like I was dirt because my dad wasn't your
Mr. Davies, but was just poor old Tom from down the pub. But I got him once"—

Tommy laughs, showing his few teeth—"I got him good. I once snatched one of his
library books, a real nasty one, took it and showed it to Rowler (Bowlex?). Paul had
the devil whipped out of him that day. That was something to see."

Well, Mr. Macy, you can imagine that this was quite a tiresome spectacle—
vengeful lies, self-pitying misunderstood memories—but it was something I
could understand and put up with as long as I got my job done. Had to listen to
a heap of this before I could get young Tom calm enough to answer me: where

was Paul Davies
now?
My mistake triggered another storm: "He isn't Paul
Davies,
he's Paul
Caldwell,
you hear? The Caldwell name is good enough for him, he's
lucky to have it." "Fine, Paul Caldwell then, Tom—where is he?" Turns out Paul's

been gone since Tommy was thirteen or fourteen. Not one word when he left.
"That broke Eulalie," says Tommy. "She needed him. He was going to be the man
of this house, and now I still have to bloody well hear how I'm not Barnabas
Daviess son."

"And since then, since, let's say, 1907?"

"Yeah, that Bolshie, what's her name, the crazy library lady, she came by one
day, in 18 or 19, prim and proper and disgusted by us, and shows us the letter
from the Army saying Paul was missing, a corporal he was, and 'no further infor•
mation' known. We didn't even know he went off to the War. Him missing and
Mick dead on that Turkish beach, God damn, Eulalie cried for a bleeding month.
Now what in Christ's name do you
want
with us?"

My notes say, "Two and a half hours with those animals. Bill London for ten
hours." No crime that, Macy, since London turns around and bills the solicitors
for twenty and they bill Davies for forty, and that's about right for this bastard,
leaving women in distress like he did. Can you imagine, Macy? All over the
world, detectives like me were prying around in the open sores of unhappy fami•
lies and abandoned women. There must have been a whole city's worth of pa•
thetic, screaming scenes like this one going on all over the world right then, at
that very moment, because old Mr. Davies had been a wolf as a young man and
wanted to be loved for it as an old man.

My notes also say, "Engaged by Tommy Caldwell to bring back any word of
Paul Caldwell's address or grave, payable on contingency." I had my second client
on what was now the Paul Davies/Paul Caldwell case, though I highly doubted
his intention to pay.

Mr. Macy, I slept like a baby last night, not the old nightmare, nor a toss or a turn.
For this alone I thank you. Just knowing that you and I are working together on
this memoir, opening up the old case, explaining its logic and structure, letting
the world know what I achieved. I feel a new man. I even ate a full breakfast this
morning, choked down all this poison and it tasted just fine. Last night, before I
nodded off, I pulled out my other boxes of files from under the iron bed, and I
read through a couple of the finest, though the rotter next to me whinged about
the light and even called in one of the toughs to force me to douse the glim—it
hardly matters. After you and I do this one, I think the one I call
The Beautiful
Dead Girl
would do well with our readers. ("Don't miss another Ferrell and Macy
adventure, coming next month!")

So, the Barnabas Davies case was closed, eh? We had the name of Daviess
Sydney child: Paul Caldwell, born 1893. We had a personality sketch of him up to
the age of fourteen: possibly above-average intelligence, but with the anger of the
abandoned child trapped in poverty. Beyond that, we don't know what kind of
son Mr. Davies left behind when he tripped onto his boat and buttoned up his
trousers. We know the boy went off to fight in the War and he didn't come home.
Missing,
Mr. Macy, meant they couldn't sort out the pulped-up bodies in the
French mud or on the Turkish beach or in the Suez Canal. And Melbourne just
called you dead after a while being missing. I think it was in 19 or '20 they said

no one
was missing anymore—all the
missing
files got relabelled as
killed.
So as far
as official records had it, Paul was dead, though for some reason no one had got
around to telling Eulalie and Tommy yet. Either way, case closed, I reckoned.

But then, I reckoned again, Mr. Macy, and a canny and dramatic moment it
was, as you and our readers shall see.
Why
close this case? I could spin away heaps
of hours trying to get details of Paul Caldwell's life and military service to send
back to his proud papa. True, no heir to give money to, probably, but "missing"
isn't
quite
"dead," so why not see what I could find? And if he was dead, maybe he
was a war hero, and he could be renamed posthumously, become brave Paul
Davies,
gallant martyr of the Ardennes, so the fat, dying brewer would buy him•
self a nice dead hero-son, and what was
that
worth on his chart, and who picked
up the cash legacy for it? My mind was moving fast, the old game was afoot, and
the final tab in London was going to pay for a nice holiday.

Now I had to pull strings to get a squiz at Caldwell's military dossier. It was
locked up tight in Melbourne, not even families were allowed to see the files. Still
can't today. Even Davies in London as next of kin would be allowed only a short
letter declaring death and final rank. But if it's detection you want, Mr. Macy, you
need a network of helpful individuals. With that, simplest thing in the world:
bloke owes me a favour, knows another bloke who manages some girls in Mel•
bourne, and one of them worked for a man who knew a bloke working in the of•
fice of the historian at Defence and that bloke owed the first man a favour, or the
first man would mention to Defence that the second bloke had been spending in•
timate time with this or that inappropriate (not to say outright Aboriginal) girl,
and a little money (billable as a Barnabas Davies expense, no question) moved
(shrinking as it went) down along this long line of nameless but helpful individ•
uals, and some scribbled notes made their way back along it, and now it's the 7th
of July, when I copy the notes neatly into my file and add my own first questions,
all of which reads, verbatim:

Paul Caldwell. Born 1890 (Tommy said 1893). Volunteered for in•
fantry (why?) October 1916, with determination made (by whom?) that
his service be limited entirely to Egypt for as long as AIF has presence
there, due to special knowledge and circumstances (which?). Entered as
private (if he had special knowledge, why only private?). Dispatched to
infantry at Tel el Kebir, Egypt. Promoted twice and cited for distinctive
service twice with commendatory letter included in file from Brit. Capt.

H. S. Marlowe. (Why a British captain bothering with an Aussie digger?)
Missing while on leave, 12 November 1918. Natives far south at Deir el
Bahari (500 miles away from his camp), subsequently discover Cald•
well's rifle, identity disks of Caldwell and aforementioned Marlowe. (A
pommy officer and a digger on leave together?) Rank at end of service:
corporal. Missing status changed to Dead in final records closing, June
29,1919.

Because he was a British officer, Captain Marlowe's file was conveniently lo•
cated in London, so we have to be satisfied with this for now, my good Watson.
Now, the questions I jotted down in my notes that day are only a few of what
should occur to a clear-eyed investigator presented with this synopsis. I'll leave it
to you to try to count up the puzzles hidden in those hundred and eight words,
because they breed fast, the little rabbits. Here's a gift, though, in case your his•

tory's not too strong: the War ended on the 11th of November, 1918, the day
before

Paul vanished.

One more item from the boy's file: "Next of kin: Mrs. Emma Hoyt, in care of
Flipping Hoyt Brothers Entertainment, Ltd., Sydney." So much for Eulalie Cald•
well and brother Tommy; no wonder they'd had to hear the news from a third
party: they weren't mentioned when Paul enlisted. Kin seems to have been a com•
plicated question for our boy. I'd have to ask the lawyers: might his Davies inher•
itance belong to this new next of kin, if Paul Caldwell was dead and somehow
retroactively rechristened Paul Davies?

Good morning, Mr. Macy! Shall we continue? Good.

Of course I remembered the Flipping Hoyt Brothers Circus—but first, I hear
impatient Mr. Macy whingeing, "What's this ripping yarn got to do with my poor
mistreated auntie and vanished great-uncle?" Everything, Mr. Macy, everything.
Patience. Have some faith in your storyteller, eh?

Now then, of course I remembered the Flipping Hoyt Brothers Circus, but I
was surprised to find it still in existence when I went enquiring after Emma Hoyt
at the circus's ticket booth, the 8th of July, 1922.

"She's about to go on," says the bald, shirtless, moustached man at the booth.
"She's available for admirers after the performance, but here's a tip, mate: she'll be
more likely to talk to you if she knows you saw her show."

"It's on
now?"
I asked, looking around the field surrounding us and the sag•
ging yellow tent, three or four people milling about some caravans.

"Starts in five minutes. You're a lucky man." I paid for a front-row seat, and
the bald man emerged to tear the ticket he'd just sold me, then showed me to my
place, pulling the canvas shut behind us. I counted the audience: I was one of
eight, though there were empty benches and risers and a row of large divans with
tables, seats for 300 or some. My usher sat me, then continued down the empty
aisle, stepped over the flaking red wooden wall in front of me, opened a gate in
the high metal fence circling the sandy pit, locked the gate behind him, and
picked up a megaphone. His red velvet trousers were white at the seat. "Ladies
and gentlemen," he yelled, walking in circles, looking high over my head at long-
ago crowds.

His opening remarks finished, he unwound his whip and lifted a hatch at the
back of the cage. Three monstrous tigers slunk in. Our bald man lazily attended
to making them leap over each other, roll on their backs, spring through a metal
ring, all of which they performed sluggishly but with sudden bursts of snarling
rebellion, which the whip didn't shut up too quickly. For his finale, he had the
tigers lie down, not without resistance, and he opened the hatch at the back of the
cage again. There, dramatically lit from behind, was a strange little profile, and
then in waddled a penguin. The bird circled the prone tigers once, promenaded
up and down their backs, and then "logrolled" them, walking in place on their
bellies as the tigers rolled underneath him. Finally, the penguin stepped off, took
a turn of the ring for applause, and approached the three tigers to kiss each of
them on the nose (previously sprayed with herring scent, no doubt). The children
gasped and laughed. It was a neat display, I'd imagine. When it worked.

Today, though, the third cat had had enough: as the fish-stinking kiss
brushed his twitching, whiskered muzzle, there was a blur of orange-and-black
paw and the penguin looked down at the three red stripes on his white breast
with the surprise of a rich man who's spilled claret on his evening shirt. He raised
his beaked head, astonished. He looked to the lazy tiger keeper who'd trained