The Egyptologist (64 page)

and had flown secretly, Finneran to Boston with his gold, Trilipush as far away as
possible from my investigation of the Marlowe-Caldwell murders, OR (b) they
had been set upon by someone who knew of their golden find, and foul play was
afoot. I had to chase both possibilities, but I needn't've bothered with Hypothesis
A, as it turned out. Still, I had someone watching the railways already, and I
telegraphed the hotel in Cairo to alert me should my suspects appear up there
somehow. Further, upon our return to the police station, the inspector put the
word out to his men to keep their eyes open for anyone of Trilipush's and
Finneran's descriptions, likely to be moving with a vast amount of luggage, which
they would be very unwilling to open to an enquiring policeman. If they were
seen, they were to be considered very dangerous indeed.

But, as I said, such steps were quite unnecessary, for having taken them, the
police inspector then discovered in his files that this same black at Carter's site
who'd worked for Trilipush had been involved in a violent incident in his previ•
ous employment on the Cairo-Luxor steamer line! For this brawl, he'd been ar•
rested and then released, and he'd also been fired from his post on the riverboat.
This had been at the end of October, after which he must have gone to work for
Trilipush, who apparently was happy to hire a known thug—interesting, that.
The copper and I left immediately from the station to investigate the native's
home. And, behold! We arrived just a few minutes before the man himself: he'd
left Carter's site in the middle of the workday, directly after we'd spoken to him.
Very suspicious. We arrived just in time, for in the din of this native's arguments
and fumbled explanations and wife's wailing and children's crying, I found under
his bed another of Trilipush's inscribed gramophones and, right in the open on a
table, a plate containing easily a dozen cigars with black-and-silver bands bearing
the monogram
CCE
That settled that. We had our suspect in custody by the af•
ternoon of Monday, January 1st, 1923. The murders had taken place at some
point between the time Trilipush left our interview and that morning. It will not
surprise you to hear that our native's alibis were quite, quite feeble.

I blamed myself then for some of this, and I still do. If I hadn't let Trilipush go
his way two days earlier, he would've been alive and facing a more appropriate
justice than murder at the hands of his ex-employee. If I could've relied on my
army of watchers, if I'd been able to find Finneran at the excavation site, I
could've—well, I don't rightly know what I could've done. Trilipush was a mur•
derer, after all, and knew he was nearly caught, so he didn't see me as his protec•
tor, though he should've done. Justice protects us as well as punishes us, Macy.
Trilipush could've yet saved himself from his rough and unnecessary end, if he'd

turned himself in to me, but the proud ones never do, and often they'd rather die
than be caught.

The police interrogations of the Egyptian (I can't find his name in my notes—
frustrating to me as a historian and an embarrassing lapse on my part as detec•
tive, I admit) were as harsh as they could legally be, and I participated to the
extent my expertise in the case and in criminal psychology could be of assistance.
The suspect denied any knowledge of the murders, no surprise, claimed Trili-
push'd given him the cigars and the gramophone as gifts back in November. Not
impossible, said one of the police inspectors, but then as questioning proceeded,
the Arab's story changed, and at one point he admitted to
assaultng
Trilipush vi•
olently (more than once, he added later) and stealing the gramophone, as if these
half-truths were going to bring his predicament to an easy end. All he accom•
plished with them, though, was losing the support of those few listeners who still
generously hoped he might be innocent of the crimes. Later, he retracted even
that limited confession of violence, until his compiled stories had become a stew
of incompatible nonsense. Even though he nearly admitted to the killings (and if
you knew how to listen, the confession was clear), he never did reveal where he'd
hidden the bodies. Also, he insisted on one point with unshakable tenacity, no
matter how harsh the interrogation: he maintained there'd never been any trea•
sure at all, that Trilipush had never found a single thing. Now this claim was so
far distant from the facts that it cast as unbelievable every single word of the des•
perate man. But he clung to this one lie so insanely that it became apparent that
he was simply never going to reveal which cousin or cache he'd delivered the
treasure to.

The police wanted that treasure, and you can be sure they pressed him hard
on this point. But the Gippo just kept saying to me, "You have been there? Then
you know it is empty." Well, of course it's empty, Abdul: you emptied it. In the
end, he stubbornly refused a signed confession for any of it, which I'm certain re•
sulted in an even harsher sentence than if he'd seen fit to cooperate.

The local authorities didn't need much convincing from me. The murder of
two Westerners at the hands of a native, in this period of huge touristic interest in
Egypt (thanks to Carter's good work)—shilly-shallying wouldn't be tolerated,
and the Egyptian Government as well as the American and English consuls were
most gratified with the fair and speedy trial and appropriate sentence.

As for me, if I was unable to answer with unshakable certainty
all
of my
clients' questions, if I did not find any of the four bodies it had become my busi•
ness to find, at least in this one case I was instrumental in identifying, appre-

hending, and escorting the malefactor to his punishment. The English and Aus•
tralian consuls were also grateful for my accountings of the events of 1918.

How tidy it would be if we'd found Caldwell's and Marlowe's remains, if we
had Trilipush's and Finneran's bodies, and had been present to witness this Egypt•
ian walking away from them, his hands dripping blood! Fairy tales, Macy. Oh, no,
my colleague, rare is the criminal who doesn't demand a little thought from the de•
tective to complete the story. But there could be no doubt what had happened, the
history detailed at trial and in the enclosed Press clipping: a notoriously violent
and vengeful native (and not rich, to be fair), fired by his employers at the river-
boat line for brawling, latched on to a Western archaeologist, in the hopes of being
present when something worth stealing was found. When the expedition faltered,
he left to join a different one. When he later learnt, perhaps from gossip in Carter's
camp following Carter's visit to Trilipush's site, that the failed expedition he'd
abandoned had suddenly turned wildly successful, the murderer returned and
spied the loot guarded by two men, one of whom was injured no less. At some
point between my interview with Trilipush on the 30th and the morning of the
1st, when they were due to take the riverboat north, this Egyptian had ambushed
Finneran and Trilipush, murdered them, burnt their clothes, dispatched the bod•
ies, and hidden the treasure. Had he not been so foolish as to hold on to a gramo•
phone and the cigars, mere knickknacks compared to his hidden loot, he might've
escaped justice. That he'd required confederates for his crimes—especially the
transport and stashing of vast treasures—cannot be denied. But deny it he did.

But why would the killer deny it to the very end, even when a lengthy prison
term was facing him? Well, the history of Egyptology, I learnt from a fellow in a
club back in Cairo, is filled with stories like this: the modern Egyptian, with no
real interest in the historical aspect of this underground gold, only cares about it
as money. Native families often clandestinely dug up and slowly sold (sometimes
over generations) these archaeological treasures, which they viewed (considering
what they saw as the Western mania for them) as underground bank accounts to
be disbursed as necessary. Trilipush's killer willingly went to prison to protect
friends and family planning to support themselves over years by slowly dribbling
out through trusted fences the vast funereal treasures of King Atum-hadu.

And, on the train from Cairo to Alexandria, my assistant Macy and I discussed
another question: just who
should
have had the treasure of Atum-hadu? Did it be•
long to Trilipush, who killed Paul Caldwell and Hugo Marlowe for it? Or Chester
Crawford Finneran, who paid for Trilipush's discovery? Or Julius Padraig O'Toole,
who had loaned Finneran that money? Or the next of kin of Paul Davies-Caldwell

and Hugo Marlowe? Hector Marlowe and Emma Hoyt? I suppose the heirs of this
Egyptian killer had as much claim to it as anyone else in this dirty business, and I
wasn't much interested in spurring the authorities to pursue them, trying to shake
the tree until the confederates fell to the ground. Yet again, mere money had driven
men mad, as it always does, and in the end, the cost was four dead bodies, one
abandoned young woman, a man in prison, and heartbreak stretching from Syd•
ney to Luxor to London to Boston. Money's an accelerating motivator, Macy, and
when it begins to drive men, it tends to drive them right over a cliff.

I collected my fees and expenses, of course, from my clients—the Davies Es•
tate, Tommy Caldwell, Ronald Barry, Emma Hoyt, the Marlowes, O'Toole—
reported to them as much as I could of what they needed to know, and I was back
home in Sydney by late July 1923, a little more than a year after I'd left. There
wasn't, in the end, much coverage of the case, just the
Luxor Times.
I can't say I
wasn't disappointed at this curious indifference of the World Press.

Justice was served, though, the truth was laid bare, those who'd sinned were
punished. For me, of course, it'd been the adventure of a lifetime, one of the most
remarkable cases of my career, the fruit of all my powers of deduction and detec•
tion at their prime. I'd travelled the globe, entered the homes of the wealthy and
powerful, seen men and women in all walks of life motivated by those universal
impulses that guide every last one of us, and I was never, when I reflected on what
I saw, truly surprised, not truly. When you understand them, people can't sur•
prise you, you see. Their motives are sometimes hidden, but they're not numer•
ous. People are open books, once you've learnt how to read. That's both a curse
and a delight, but it's an unavoidable result of being a dedicated student of
human nature, which every good detective most certainly is.

I hope I've filled in the outlines and logic of the case with enough justice to
complete your "family history" and also to let you expand it for our readers.

I look back now on this, though, and I'm a little troubled by the amount of time
I've spent telling you this story. You see, I've already selected our next case from my
files, my friend, and were I equipped with a recorder and microphone, I could sim•
ply dictate the tale. I shouldn't think the expense would be too prohibitive. It would,
of course, be figured into our partnership agreement, if you can spare the sum in ad•
vance. I look forward to your thoughts on this matter. I await your word. I'm ready
to begin as soon as I hear from you. Our readers await. Time is of the essence.

Yours in limbo,
Ferrell

Miss Margaret Finneran

2 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston

January 25, 1923

My dear Miss Finneran,

As Mr. Trilipush's employment with Harvard
concluded at the end of the autumn term, I am
taking the liberty of forwarding you the post
that has accumulated in his office during his
continued wanderings in Egypt, to wit: six jour•
nals of Egyptology and archaeology; a personal
package from England} two letters from museums;
and a few notes from students (not sealed). If
you would be good enough to forward these to Mr.
Trilipush when he returns from Egypt, that would
save us all a good deal of trouble and embar•
rassment.

With every good wish for your approaching nup•
tials to the great man,

C. ter Breuggen
Chair, Egyptology