Murder Most Egyptological (A Mrs. Xavier Stayton Mystery Book 3) (5 page)

   Martha raised her cup of tea from the small plate she held in her other hand, as if toasting me. “Mrs. Stayton,” she said in a flat tone. Her accent was supremely posh.

   There was something unpleasant about Martha Kinkaid. Her black hair wasn’t the glistening shade of a raven’s feather, but rather the unreflective color of a well-used locomotive engine. The woman’s features were hard, and she wore heavy makeup that accentuated the sharp angles of her face. Wearing a black shirt with a high waist and black-and-white striped blouse with a man’s crimson tie, she reminded me of a German cabaret dancer. I was curious about her choice of attire. She seemed to be making a rather deliberate first impression.

   Professor Kinkaid turned to another fellow still standing and said, “This is Jacob Saunders; we call him my protégé, but I assure you, he’s every bit my equal.”

   Mr. Saunders was a tall, lean fellow of perhaps thirty years. Light brown hair, suntanned skin—he was a very handsome chap. As he reached out to take my hand, I noticed that the cuffs of his white shirt, under his threadbare brown suit, were worn and stained. So it seemed he was earning his keep. 

   “Mrs. Stayton, it is just such a pleasure to meet you. Yes, a true honor. You don’t know what your generosity has meant to us.” The man’s voice was without accent, and I guessed that he came from the Midwest, like myself.

   The next introduction was to Arthur Fox, the journalist. He was a small man with delicate features. His red hair was oiled and parted down the middle, and he wore thick-rimmed glasses that made his eyes appear misshapen and insect-like. Arthur’s voice surprised me. I had read many of his magazine articles, and found his choice of written words to be smooth and flowing. However, his speech was choppy; he had a harsh Boston accent, and nasally pitch that made him a chore to listen to.

  I grasped his palm firmly and Mr. Fox gave me an odd look, as I shook his hand in the style of a man rather to the woman’s gentle shake he was expecting.

   Xavier had taught me this. My dear husband had a commanding presence, and when he shook someone’s hand, they knew it had been shaken. He had encouraged me to follow his example, as he said, “Take ’em off guard, my sweet little cinnamon stick. Don’t let them just give your tiny fingers a soft embrace; grab their palm and squeeze until they grimace while you shake them about like a greyhound thrashing a rabbit.”

   With a bit more enthusiasm than he had the other two gentlemen, Kinkaid next introduced me to the last fellow of the party. “And this is my old friend, Dr. William Smith.”

   A large and very genuine smile appeared on the doctor’s round face. He wasn’t overweight, yet he looked very puffy. Tipping his fedora, I could see that he was balding, and the top of his head was sunburned.

   Dr. Smith spoke with a pleasant, rural, English accent. “Mrs. Stayton, my benefactor, so nice to meet you.” He turned toward a plump woman with a beaming face, who leapt up from her chair to take my hand. “This is my wife, Wilma Smith.”

   She too was English, and speaking rather loudly, she said, “Wilma Smith, always been a Smith, even before I married Will; the village mocked us for being related, but we aren’t.” Her face then rested into a sort of paranoid smile, and her small, dark eyes went some time without blinking.

   It was my turn to introduce them to Lucy. “My dearest friend, Ms. Lucy Wallace.”

   Once more, a round of handshakes and pleasant greetings were said; Mrs. Kinkaid was just as aloof with Lucy as with me, and Mrs. Smith was just as awkward.

   Afterward, I asked, “What of the foreman, Hat Tem?”

  The group all looked to each other in surprise of my question before Sandy stepped in and said, “Other than the few locals who work as maids, in the laundry, or the grounds, you won’t see any people here who aren’t … well-to-do.”

   “Of course, he was here for the party,” remarked Wilma, her beady eyes twinkling, until her husband’s hand clamped down on her shoulder.

   The professor quickly said, “The locals are welcome; it is just a matter of …” He let his voice trail off.

   This seemed rather elitist, but I kept my response to myself. Instead, I took the seat offered to me, removed my hat, and said, “It is my fault that Lucy and I look rather foolish, I had thought we would be meeting you at Kamose’s tomb.”

   A polite chuckle was shared by the group. Professor Kinkaid spoke for the collective. “Oh, we didn’t want to subject you to that on your first day.”

   Sandy sat down, and as he poured me a cup of tea, he remarked, “Entirely my fault. I should have explained the situation better.”

   Arthur ran a finger along the brim of my helmet, which was now sitting on the table, and said, “What a fine pith helmet, Mrs. Stayton.”

    After a sip of my tea, I responded, “Thank you; it belonged to my husband.”

   There was a moment of silence. I had asked Mr. Jack to wire a message to Professor Kinkaid, requesting that he let it be known that questions regarding my husband’s death were unwelcome. I had vacillated about sending such a high-handed message, yet it seemed better to do so than spinning lie after lie when asked. Truth be told, I had run out of believable stories, and each fictional version was becoming more preposterous.

   Lucy, accustomed to redirecting conversation when need be, said, “This must be nice for you all, a break here at this lovely hotel, rather than spending all your time in the desert.”

   Several eyebrows knitted together, and a frown or two appeared before Professor Kinkaid said, “Actually, we all reside here.”

   Mrs. Smith added, “Not every night. Professor, there was many a night you spent in the tomb when the sarcophagus was found.”

   I noticed that as Mrs. Smith spoke, her eyes fell on Martha, who glared back at her.

   “I see,” was the only response I could muster as my eyes looked about the opulence of the sitting room.

   Professor Kinkaid gave me an awkward smile and said, “We take the boats moored just across the street from the hotel over to the West Bank every morning. We chose this hotel because it is the closest to the Valley of Kings. Mr. Farber saw to all the arrangements.”

   I replied, “Yes, I see.” After a sip of tea, I decided it was time to pounce. “And was Percy Huston also residing in this hotel?”

   Martha’s eyes dropped to her china cup, Jacob and Arthur looked to each other, and the professor, the doctor, and the doctor’s wife all spoke at once, “He was.”

   Yielding to the professor, the Smiths fell silent.

   “It’s the damnedest thing. Huston’s room was right next door to Arthur’s. The morning after the party, he was gone.”

   Mrs. Smith blurted out, “Well, he really wasn’t gone. His belongings were in the room until that evening, so he must have come back to get them.”

   “Did he?” I asked, dryly, like an unconvinced sleuth.

   Mrs. Smith stole a quick glance at her husband and said, “Well, who else would have?”

   “An excellent question,” I remarked.

   Arthur Fox leaned forward from his seat and asked, “Is that why you are here, Mrs. Stayton, to find out what has happened to Huston?”

   “That and to see what became of King Kamose’s mummy,” I answered.  

   Kinkaid’s protégé remarked, “I very much doubt that there is a correlation. Huston was on odd sort, a bit of a troublemaker. This time, he got himself in a pickle he couldn’t get out of and took the train to anywhere.”

   It struck me that Jacob Saunders’s words were rather rehearsed.

   Martha Kinkaid raised a petite sandwich to her lips, but before taking a bite, she said, “Mrs. Stayton, it’s such a shame to spoil our repast; come now, I’ve read a whodunit or two, you need to get us all alone and question us individually before you find out the dirty truth of the matter.” She smiled and then popped the morsel of food between her red-painted lips.

   A nervous chuckle was shared by the group, and I nodded my chin.

Chapter Five

Lucy and I slept like logs, exhausted by our journey. Still, we rose early and had a light breakfast.

   Gazing around the opulent café, Lucy remarked, “I am still surprised that the expedition team resides here. They are certainly living high on the hog.”

   Though her statement was true, it pained me that the only American expressions Lucy had learned from me seemed to all mention farm animals.

   “It does strike me as peculiar. In that novel with the little brainy detective, the archeologists all lived in tents near the dig site,” I said agreeably.

   Lucy tapped her notebook at her side. “We have some colorful characters to work from.”

   I nodded my chin and replied, “Perhaps too colorful.”     

Once through with breakfast, we returned to our rooms to change. Afterward, all kitted out for a desert trek, we found Sandy sitting in the hotel lobby, reading a newspaper.

   Clad in rugged khaki attire, he jumped up and greeted us. “Mrs. Stayton, Ms. Wallace, may the goddesses of Egypt bless you on this fine morning.”

   Lucy tittered, and I remarked, “I prefer the blessings of our own Lord and Savior, but thank you all the same.”

   Sandy stifled a queer laugh and said, “Well, it is Sunday morning, isn’t it? Don’t worry, you’ll be receiving a blessing or two.”

   I might have asked what he meant, but we were following him as he quickly crossed the lobby, and then we started down the curved staircase to the street level.

   The morning sun was ever so bright, and I was momentarily blinded after gazing at the dazzling Nile River just a short distance away.

   Locals in fine suits and crimson fez caps mingled with all manner of Europeans about the many kiosks on the street. Lucy and I spied the items for sale: fans made from feathers, flywhisks made from what looked to be horse tails, many trinkets that resembled Egyptian artifacts.

   Sandy was just far enough ahead of us that, without warning, Lucy and I were swarmed by a group of young Egyptian children. Dressed in rags and with grubby hands held open, they started shouting out to us, “Baksheesh, baksheesh, baksheesh!”

  
Sandy rounded on them and started yelling and flinging his hands about. Several of the urchins scattered, but the braver remained.

   Even without interpretation, I knew what they wanted. As I reached into the sturdy handbag I’d had made for the journey, the remaining children called out again, “Baksheesh, baksheesh, baksheesh.” And those Sandy had frightened off returned.

   Our guide cleared his throat and said, somewhat condescendingly, “My dear Mrs. Stayton, if you give these ragamuffins money, you’ll never be rid of them.”

   I nodded my chin at the fellow and proceeded to hand each child an American penny, from a little coin purse. Each child delightfully inspected the copper coin and then ran off satisfied.  

   Sandy chuckled after the last child scampered along, and he said, “American money, ah. I think I’d rather be paid in your pennies than by the Egyptian pound.”

   “I’ll keep that in mind,” I remarked as we walked alongside the man toward the Nile’s bank.

   Sandy gave a great laugh and shook his head.

   Upon our approach toward a number of little skiffs along the river’s edge, a chorus of shouts began. I understood very little, other than some broken English insisting the other boats to be unsafe. Sandy ignored them all, and we went straightaway to a nice-sized river boat, whose owner had remained silent and rather smug.

   I tapped Sandy’s shoulder and said, “This man wasn’t eager for our business, why not another?”

   Sandy’s perpetual smile wavered, and he replied, “Professor Kinkaid keeps this boat on a sort of retainer, you might say; it is always available for the expedition’s use.”

   So it seemed, my money was being well spent by Professor Kinkaid on a great many things beyond unearthing Pharaoh Kamose’s tomb.

   “I see,” was my only reply.

   Unlike the Mighty Mississippi River that flows to the south alongside my native Saint Louis, the Nile flows north. Our boatman, therefore, had to paddle against the steady current as we crossed the great river at an angle.

   This was done quickly, and we were deposited on the West Bank with great ease. Here, I thought we would instantly be surrounded by desert sand, but instead, there was a long span of lush green crops of some sort. However, above the patch of green rose a series of lifeless, parched mountains. Sandy had pointed them out before— the Theban Hills, but they seemed far taller than hills to me.

   My assumption that camels would be waiting to carry us toward the desert valley was incorrect. Another large black sedan, which was perfectly spotless, awaited us.

   Sandy said some greeting to the driver, and then Lucy and I were politely ushered into the spacious backseat.

   “Does Professor Kinkaid keep this automobile handy as well?”

   Settling himself in the front seat beside the driver, Sandy replied in such a chipper tone that it was obvious he had not registered my displeasure. “Oh no, the expedition has an automobile of their own, but it is such a dinky thing. I arranged for this.”

   “I thought we would have made the journey by camel, perhaps even donkey…” I started to say.

   Sandy chuckled. “I suppose we could, but why?”

   I could not bring myself to reply,
Because that is how I imagined we would.

   As the sedan motored westward, the stark mountain range grew more ominous. Sandy saw the expression of awe that had registered both on mine and Lucy’s faces, and earning his keep, he began, “There, see the largest of the hills, the one shaped like a pyramid? That’s called al-Qurn, the ancients called it,
The Peak.
During the Eighteenth Dynasty, when the Egyptians took back control of the north from invaders, Thebes became the seat of their government, which meant no more pyramids in Cairo! The new kings wanted to hide their magnificent tombs, after seeing how the long-dead rulers’ tombs had been robbed, and even defaced.

    “It was normal for a pharaoh to start the construction of his tomb when he became the ruler. This gave him, or so he hoped, enough time to build a magnificent tomb. Some of these tombs will have a long shaft and then an open chamber, then another long shaft and another chamber; you see, they did that because the tomb wasn’t finished until the old king was dead and ready to be sealed in.”

   “How decadent,” said Lucy.

   “How decadent indeed,” I remarked.

   “A pharaoh’s life!” Sandy exclaimed. “Ah, but the purpose for these had nothing to do with his life, no, his concern was his afterlife. You see, they believed that their souls, or as they called it, their
ka,
would have to travel to the next world and be judged by forty-two gods before Osiris welcomed them to the afterlife …”

   “Did Osiris have the head of a jackal?”

   “Oh no, that is Anubis. Now this fellow, Anubis, he saw to it that the heart was weighed, and if it was in balance, you went on your journey; if you were wicked, then you’d be eaten by Ammit, a god with the head of a crocodile, the front legs of a lion, and the back quarter of a hippo!”

   I gave a gasp and said, “Mr. Warner, you are going to give us nightmares.” I patted Lucy’s hand and said, “We prefer to hear more about the Valley of Kings rather than the bizarre beliefs of the ancients.”

   Sandy couldn’t repress his chuckle, but he went on to say, “So sorry, ladies. Well, the workers cut these long shafts down into the limestone …”

   As we listened to what turned out to be a rather dull lecture on rock cutting, punishment for forcing Sandy to abbreviate his tale of the Egyptian Afterlife, we crossed out of the lush flatland and onto the parched earth along the base of the Theban Hills.

   The air grew warmer, and I wished we had bought two of the fans sold at the kiosks outside of the Winter Castle. We could only roll down the windows so far, because a gritty dust was kicked up by the sedan.

   The road ended in a large car park atop a plain. All manner of vehicles were scattered about. While there were no camels, a great number of donkeys were led about. I patted down the pleats of my skirt, eager to see if our design was as functional as we hoped.

   We had no sooner stepped out of the sedan before a flurry of movement took me off guard. When the dust settled, I saw that three men stood before us, each with a rickshaw behind him.

   Pointing at the donkeys, I remarked, “I thought we’d be riding one of them?”

   Sandy’s smile was growing less charming to me, as he replied, “Oh, blast to that. No, this is far more comfortable.”

   Lucy did not share in my disappointment. “I thought they only had rickshaws in the Orient.”

   “Oh no, now you find them everywhere,” Sandy replied as he ushered us each inside a small open carriage. A second later, I was tipped backward for an instant, and then we took off.

   Sandy, in the lead contraption, called back, “Of course, these chaps can’t get us there the whole way; we will have to do a spot of climbing ourselves.”

  I was pleased to hear that; luckily, Professor Kinkaid hadn’t used my funding to build his team an escalator.

   Pointing to our right, Sandy said, “That’s where they are working on the remains of a very large temple; of all things, they think it was built by an Egyptian queen. The next king was none too pleased, seems he had her name and image chiseled off of the place.”

   I called out, “The fate of Queen Hatshepsut is proof that chauvinism isn’t a new invention.”

   Sandy had no chipper reply to my statement.

   Up we went, and as our altitude increased, the air grew dry and warm. The path upward was bumpy, and I suspect we would have been more comfortable on a four-legged creature than atop large wheels that found the stray jagged stone unyielding.

   Reaching the summit of the path, between a narrow crease in the hills, we had a moment to gaze across the golden brown labyrinth of narrow chasms below.

  After a second spent in awe of God’s beautiful world, I was jerked forward and nearly tumbled out of the little carriage. 

   “Well, ladies, we aren’t far now. Of course, there is an easier way to get to Kamose’s tomb, but this is the quickest.” He reached an arm out, keeping Lucy and me a step behind him. “Now, mind you, there is a cliff just up ahead.”

   Indeed, just a few feet ahead, the stony ledge we stood upon came to a dramatic end. A series of crude steps had been carved into the face of the ridge; they led down to a landing and then to another set of steps. Below these was just a small and narrow gully.

   “I thought the Valley of Kings was larger,” said Lucy.

   Sandy gave a chuckle and retorted, “Think of this as the Valley of Kings
adjacent
. You see, there isn’t just one valley; the tombs really dot all of the Theban Hillside. Thus far, only Kamose’s crypt has been discovered in this area, but there might be more.” 

   Sandy walked before us, setting a very slow pace as we made our way downward. I took two missteps, causing butterflies in my stomach. When we reached the bottom of the valley, I took a deep breath of warm, dry air.  

   The magazine photos that I had studied captured the images of a large rectangular opening cut into the ground, with the earth cleared away, and a fine stone proscenium marked the entrance to the long lost tomb. Tents and tables holding rare and valuable objects were scattered before the tomb, and a throng of natives worked, while archeologists posed beside some grand find.

   Well, we found a dig site very much like this; however, along the narrow way of the small, isolated valley, we came across a church service.

   A dozen or so locals sat in little mismatched folding chairs and looked on toward a wooden pulpit, where Mrs. Smith stood, waving a leather-bound Bible in the air.      

   Dr. Smith sat on a little chair behind his wife; otherwise, I didn’t see any of the expedition members.

  “What is taking place?” I asked Sandy.

  “Mrs. Smith’s church service; as I said, it is Sunday.”

  “All of the workmen are Christian?” asked Lucy, as surprised as I was.

   Sandy gave a guttural laugh. “Hardly. They are all Muslims. They don’t care, really; none of them understand a word of what she is saying, and it’s an hour they don’t have to work.”

   We stood some distance away and listened to much talk of fire and brimstone. Honestly, the god that Mrs. Smith spoke of was as fearsome as the animal-headed gods of Egypt.

   The fiery sermon was concluded with the singing of a hymn. Mrs. Smith sang loudly, her voice echoing in the valley. The workmen warbled the words that they had been taught with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

   Once the peculiar rendition of “Gabriel’s Message” came to an end, Mrs. Smith’s blissful smile turned into a frown. She pointed at the members of her ragged congregation and started warning them of the dangers of sin.

   The typical offenses were well defined: lying, stealing, blasphemes and all, and then she went on a colorful tangent listing unsightly behavior and bad manners as lesser sins. Her husband came to his feet and placed a hand on her round shoulder when she described the practice of using one’s sleeve as a handkerchief as an affront to the Lord.