Mr Impossible (6 page)

“
Mistress?”
Leena called behind her.

Daphne turned her
head to answer.

And collided with
something big, hard, and warm. Very big. Very hard. Very warm.
Physical sensation knocked out thought, and she tottered, unbalanced.

A large hand
clamped on her upper arm and steadied her.

“
What a
dervish you are, always hurrying this way and that,” Mr.
Carsington said. “Pray consider the heat and the possibility of
a brain fever.” He released her arm.

The warmth
lingered, and she still felt the impression of long, strong fingers
on her skin.

She retreated a
pace.

“
I came
looking for you,” she said, her voice strained, as though she’d
labored up a pyramid to find him. “I thought you were…
lost.”

“
Oh, I never
get lost,” he said. “Not for long, at any rate. I only
went looking for coffee. Turkish coffee is a wondrous beverage, and I
thought we all needed a stimulant.”

“
Coffee,”
she repeated stupidly.

“
Yes. And see
what I found.” He moved aside. Behind him the twelve-year-old
Udail carried the coffee service. “Lucky thing I was in front,
eh, Tom, else she might have bowled you over.”

“
His name is
Udail,” Daphne said.

“
Tom,”
said the boy, gazing worshipfully up at Mr. Carsington. “
Esmi
Tom.”

My name is Tom.

In mere minutes,
the man had frightened one servant into submission and cajoled
another into idolatry.

And he was tying
her mind in knots.

Daphne did not
believe in genü. At that moment, however, she had no doubt that
her trip to the Citadel dungeon had released a dangerous force.

HER MOUTH, RUPERT
noticed, was not only soft and full but mobile: forbiddingly grim at
one moment and adorably bewildered in the next. He watched it change
from bewildered to grim in the instant it took her to recover from
their lovely collision.

He’d seen it
coming. He’d also seen no reason to prevent it. Quite the
contrary.

Her grim look did
not trouble him in the least; neither did her telling him he was not
to rechristen her servants.

“
How would
you like it,” she demanded, “if I were to rename you Omar
or Muhammad?”

“
A pet name,
do you mean?” he said. “I shouldn’t object.”

After a visible
struggle to rein in her temper she said, “What you do or do not
object to is not the point. He is an
Egyptian
boy, not English.”

“
Tom doesn’t
mind,” Rupert said. “In any event, I couldn’t tell
which part of the earful he gave me was his name.”

“
He was
probably trying to tell you what happened,” she said. “I
have no idea how you occupied yourself on the voyage toEgyptor during
your stay inAlexandria. It is clear, however, that you employed not a
minute of the time learning the language.”

She turned sharply
away and started back into the room she’d just exited:Cairo’s
version of a salon or drawing room, with the usual unpronounceable
name.

“
I thought
you were to do all the brain work, and I was in charge of the
physical side,” he said. “Surely you weren’t
expecting me to interrogate the lad? I had the devil’s own time
getting him to understand I wanted coffee.”

They entered the
large room. Wadid had left. Leena was there, though. After Tom set
down the coffee service—on top of Mrs. Pembroke’s
precious papers—Leena grabbed the boy by the shoulders, shook
him, then hugged him, talking great guns all the while.

Once Tom had
recovered from near suffocation against Leena’s ample bosom, he
launched into a very long recital.

Several tiny cups
of coffee later, Mrs. Pembroke gave Rupert the shorter English
version. Apparently, persons calling themselves police had come,
saying they must search the house. When Akmed heard their voices, he
ran away.

When the lady came
to this point of her narration, Tom attracted Rupert’s
attention. Saying, “Akmed” and something else, the boy
did a comical imitation of a man limping.

A green glare from
Mrs. Pembroke brought the performance to a halt.

Because Akmed ran
away, the widow continued, all the other servants did, too. Tom, who
was cautiously sneaking back into the house when Rupert entered the
cooking area, had ducked into the nearest hiding place.

Mrs. Pembroke
returned her cup to the tray. “Since it’s obvious we’ll
learn nothing more from the other servants, I see no reason to await
their return,” she said. “The only logical course of
action is to retrace my brother’s footsteps.”

“
We ought to
check the guardhouses first,” Rupert said, recalling Beechey’s
advice.

“
Miles is not
in a guardhouse.” She rose abruptly from the divan, all
impatience and rustling silk. “The men who came here were no
more police than I am. And my brother is not in a brothel or an opium
den, so you needn’t get your hopes up about visiting any of
those establishments. We shall talk to those with whom Miles most
recently associated. We shall start with his friend Lord Noxley.”

“
Garnet,”
Rupert said as she picked up her hat and veil.

She turned and
looked at him, her expression wary. “I beg your pardon?”

“
Garnet. If
someone asked me what color your hair was, I’d say, ‘Garnet.’”

She clamped the hat
onto her head. “Did you hear a single word I said?”

“
My mind
wandered,” he said. “You’re on the tallish side for
a woman, I think?” Something over five and a half feet, he
estimated.

“
I do not see
the relevance of my height or hair color,” she said.

“
That’s
because you’re not a man,” he said.

Very much not. The
dress seemed designed to play down her assets rather than enhance
them. She couldn’t disguise her walk, though. She walked like a
queen or a goddess, chin high, back straight. But the arrogant sway
of her hips bespoke a Cleopatra kind of queen, an Aphrodite kind of
goddess. The walk was an invitation. The attire was a Keep Off sign.
The combination was fascinating.

“
To a man,
you see,” he continued, “these facts are immensely
important.”

“
Oh, yes, of
course,” she said. “A woman’s looks are
all-important. Her mental capabilities don’t signify in the
least.”

“
That would
depend,” he said, “on what she was thinking.”

DAPHNE WAS THINKING
it was very hard to think with Mr. Carsington in the vicinity.

She was good at
solving puzzles, usually. But the only idea she had about recent
events was a ridiculous one, and no more ideas were forthcoming.

She was not easily
distracted. One must possess tremendous powers of concentration, not
to mention an obstinate and tenacious character, to contend with
ancient Egyptian writing.

She might have
easily ignored an earthquake or a barrage of artillery fire.

She could not
ignore him.

She was aware of
his abstracted expression while he calculated her height and decided
what color her hair was.

Now, as she sent
Udail out to order the donkeys, she was aware of Mr. Carsington’s
attention drifting away from her person to the table containing her
materials.

She recalled her
agitated reaction when she first spied the disorder. What had she
said? Had she given herself away? But no, she couldn’t have.
The ruse was a habit by now, practically instinctive. It was Miles
who had the more difficult task, pretending to be the brilliant
scholar. Luckily, very few people in the world understood enough
about decipherment to suspect him—and he took care not to meet
those people face-to-face.

Mr. Carsington was
frowning down at the copy of the Rosetta Stone. “That papyrus,”
he said. “I collect it was something out of the ordinary.”

She, too, stared at
the lithograph, wondering what he saw there. A fragment of
hieroglyphic text. Below that another nearly complete section written
in the script some scholars called demotic. Then the battered Greek
text with its all-important final lines, announcing that all three
texts were identical in content.

“
Like the
Rosetta Stone?” she said. “I wish it had contained some
hints in Greek. But it was all in hieroglyphs.;..” She looked
up at him. “Are you asking whether it was valuable?”

He nodded.

“
I daresay it
was,” she said slowly, the truth dawning as she spoke it.

She hadn’t
thought of the papyrus in that way. She knew it had cost more than
most, but then, it was a superior specimen. But that’s all it
was to her. Perhaps Miles was right, to an extent: She was rather
unworldly. It hadn’t occurred to her to lock it up, any more
than it would occur to her to lock up a book.

“
I suppose
one could call it valuable,” she said. “It was
expensive.” She related the merchant’s tale of the
mysterious pharaoh and his presumably untouched tomb.

“
I told Miles
he encouraged such tall tales and probably set a bad precedent by
paying so much,” she went on. “Yet it was remarkable.
Written entirely in beautifully drawn hieroglyphs. Exquisite
illustrations. The others I’ve seen are not works of art, and
most were written in the script form. None was in such good
condition. It isn’t hard to understand why Miles couldn’t
resist it.”

Mr. Carsington’s
dark gaze shifted from her study materials to her face. He wore a
perplexed expression. “And it didn’t occur to you why
robbers might want it?” he said. “A guide to buried
treasure?”

“
No, it
didn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine anyone
could be so foolish as to believe that story.”

“
Yet it might
seem to others that your brother—a scholar—believed it.”

Miles certainly had
seemed to believe it—perhaps because he was a little boy in
some ways. And he had a romantic streak.

Her romantic streak
had shriveled and died years ago. Her marriage had mummified it.

“
No educated
person could believe that Vanni Anaz or anyone else knew exactly what
was written on that papyrus,” she said. “No one—I
repeat—
no one
can read hieroglyphic writing. But the
papyrus did contain symbols associated with royalty. Naturally Miles
planned to look for those symbols inThebes. A number of tombs have
been discovered there. More will certainly be discovered. Whether any
remain filled with treasure is impossible to know.”

“
Someone
believes it,” Mr. Garsington said. “Someone went to a
deal of trouble to steal that papyrus.”

“
But what
good will it do them?” she said impatiently. “They
can’t
read it
.”

“
My eldest
brother Benedict takes an interest in criminal proceedings,”
Mr. Carsington said. “He says the average felon is a person of
low cunning, not high intelligence.”

At that moment the
absurd idea she’d kept pushing away stomped to the forefront of
her brain.

Miles kidnapped.
Papyrus stolen.

“
They believe
Miles can read it,” she said. “Good grief. They must be
completely illiterate—or desperately gullible—or—”

“
French,”
said Mr. Carsington.

“
French?”
she said. She gazed at him in plain incomprehension.

“
I hope
they’re French,” he said. “My brother Alistair was
atWaterloo.”

“
Killed?”
she said.

“
No, though
they did their best.” He clenched his hands. “He’ll
be lame for the rest of his life. I’ve been waiting for a
chance to repay the favor.”

NOT VERY FAR away,
in another corner ofCairo, an elegant middle-aged man stood by one of
the windows overlooking his house’s courtyard. He did not gaze
out of the latticed window but down, reverently, at the object in his
hands.