Murder Never Forgets

“O’Hehir sketches out characters in swift strokes, and the old people in this book are fully realized characters, both quirky and dignified. Best of all, the narrator’s acerbic, funny, insightful voice makes what might have been just another cozy unforgettable.”
—The Boston Globe

“A story that will move and captivate all who read it.”

—Booklist
(starred review)

“When memory and fantasy collide, truth is up for grabs . . . O’Hehir scores big with her wry heroine . . . and intriguing snippets of Egyptian poetry.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The narrating voice is a pleasure from beginning to end.”

—Vivian Gornick, author of
Fierce Attachments

“A quirky outlook . . . delightful prose will draw readers right in.”
—Library Journal

“Combines an intriguing amateur sleuth tale with some Egyptologist elements inside a deep family drama . . . a fine contemporary thriller.”
—Midwest Book Review

“Sparkling prose enlivens every scene and gives the story the heft and luminescence of narrative art at its most energized level. Ms. O’Hehir’s mastery of her subject is effortless and engaging . . . A fun and funny book, but one with heart and unfailing insight into matters achingly human.”

—James W. Hall, author of
Forests of the Night

“O’Hehir spices up her elegantly plotted novel of... skullduggery with keen, sympathetic, and often amusing insights . . . with a gift for spot-on metaphors . . . and with laugh-out-loud wit.”—Aaron Elkins, author of
Unnatural Selection

“Introduces us to a delightfully unconventional pair of sleuths . . . O’Hehir is at the top of her form here . . . I couldn’t put it down!”

—Sandra M. Gilbert, author of
Belongings

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Diana O’Hehir

MURDER NEVER FORGETS
ERASED FROM MEMORY

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

MURDER NEVER FORGETS

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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eISBN : 978-0-425-20903-5

BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
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The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design
are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

http://us.penguingroup.com

Thanks

To my friend and agent, Ellen Levine, who got me to write and rewrite.

To Carol, Cyra, B. K., and Allison, who read the manuscript, some of you more than once.

To the rest of you who listened and responded, month after month: Whitney, Carol, Mary, Annegret, Diana.

Special love to Mel for help on this project and many others.

Disclaimer

Many books about Egypt and Egyptology and several translations of Egyptian poetry and of
The Book of the Dead
have supplied background knowledge for this tale.

Among these are translations by E. A. Wallis Budge, Miriam Lichtheim, and R. O. Faulkner, and accounts of ancient Egyptian life, language, and culture by Miriam Stead, Maria Carmelo Betro, Bridget McDermott, and George Hart.

These very interesting sources do not always agree. Nevertheless, mistakes in this book should be ascribed to my own inadequate transcription and not to any fault of these helpful scholars.

Prologue

It was difficult from the cliff above to tell what the people on the beach were doing, although they were very clearly presented, as if on a stage lit by the last rays of a low-lying sun that shone flat out across the water. Orange sun-glare highlighted their figures and threw exaggerated shadows across the sand, until finally, just before sunset, just before the people finished whatever they were doing and the tableau below ended, the shadows grew and stretched, active finally, merging with each other, to spread halfway up the cliff.

At first there was just the woman and her companion; then those two were joined by two others.

They talked, but what they said wasn’t audible to the person who watched from the cliff. At one point the woman gestured and looked up. The other person, a man probably, it was hard to be sure from this distance, also gestured and looked up. Perhaps they were worrying about whether someone was up there.

The person who waited above and watched didn’t care. These days the things he cared about came and went quite fast. And furthermore he knew, with an inner physical knowledge he’d picked up in some other existence, that he was safe. There was no path here from his place, only a route down a drainage pipe which he had squeezed through with pleasure because it seemed like an adventure from his earlier life. The cliff was like that, too. He knew that the beach cliff projected out far enough to hide the outline of a head.

The people moved back and forth; they leaned forward and back; they gestured. The woman gestured more than the others; her arms came up, her head went back; he could see that she had short white hair; she looked in some way familiar. Finally someone took her elbow and they started walking.

It was a tiny beach, bounded north and south by rock outcrop-pings and by three conical rocks, east and west by ocean and cliff. The pair below proceeded arm in arm, slowly, steps coordinated; it seemed almost as if she were being marched by him, left, right, left, right.

The watcher was interested. Also troubled. But the troubled feeling, the sense that something wasn’t quite right, this meant nothing new to him; he had that feeling often lately.

When the walkers reached the south cliff they turned abruptly and began retracing their steps. The two extra people were there by now and fell into step behind; it made a curious four-person parade.

Their observer was an old gentleman in a tweed suit who lay on his stomach on the cliff-grass above. During the quieter portions of the beach tableau he hummed softly to himself. Apparently he liked country and western tunes.

The woman now, he said to himself, perhaps she looks familiar. But then, many things, many people these days look familiar. This beach below reminded him of another beach, the one at Sharm el Naga in Egypt. He had been younger at Sharm el Naga and the climb had been easier, but the people were surely the same people. That was it, he understood it perfectly now; they were the ones from
The Book of the Dead
; the woman was on trial; the others were judges; she was being tried for her sins in this life.

All of us have committed sins in this life.

I will say a prayer for her:
Oh, you judges who gather around me, I will become perfect, perfect . . .

He felt sorry for her with her familiar straight carriage: the soul and her three judges. This must be one of the Trials further along in the Journey, perhaps a trial of the soul’s ability to cross water.

He tried again for the right spell:
Oh, you who bring the ferry boat of the Abyss to this difficult bank
. . .

Sometimes he knew he was forgetting and didn’t care because it was all part of the Process. And other times, like now, when he couldn’t remember a spell, those times a heavy, gray helplessness welled up in him. He put his face down on the grass, which prickled, wiry and damp.

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