The Egyptologist (14 page)

BOOK: The Egyptologist

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Captain Hugo St. John Marlowe left base camp at Cairo on 12 No•
vember, 1918, on four-day pass. Did not return on 16 November. Searches
initiated 18 November revealed nothing. Interviews with officers, men,
revealed nothing of significance. March 1919, natives appeared asking for
reward, having found Capt. Marlowe's identity disks and those of Corpo•
ral P. B. Caldwell (AIF), as well as an AIF Lee-Enfield 303 rifle. Natives re•
ported finding these objects near Deir el Bahari. Renewed interviews
revealed no knowledge of any relationship between Captain Marlowe and
Corporal Caldwell, though AIF records show Capt. Marlowe twice took
unusual step of recommending promotions for Caldwell to Capt. T. J.
Leahy (AIF), Caldwell's company commander.

"What do you make of that, Macy?" I asked as we sat in the plush offices of
Tailor Enquiries Worldwide. (And welcome to the action, Macy!)

"Can't figure it, can't make heads or tails of it, Mr. Ferrell," said my young
American assistant. "Most peculiar."

"And so it shall remain, until all at once the truth in its crystal purity will be
made manifest to us, Macy, and vile fraud will melt away."

Here's all we had for certain: our Caldwell had some relationship with a
British captain who'd poked his nose in Australian affairs enough to get Caldwell
promoted twice. And they'd gone on leave together. And disappeared together.
And likely died together.

I set off for Kent, and the grim residence of the uneasy, tweedy parents of Cap•
tain Marlowe. They sent someone to fetch me at the station, and I was driven to the
servants' entrance of their country home and led up the back stairs to a small li•
brary, where the Marlowes sat in silence. The thickly moustached but unusually
short father did not speak. Having limply shaken my hand without a word of wel•
come, he sat in front of a writing desk and kept his hands crossed on his lap. He
looked only at the floor, but from time to time, as I explained that I was leading a
private enquiry to determine events including those surrounding their son's disap•
pearance, he would lift his eyes, as if he was at last prepared to look straight at me,
but then his gaze would just continue right past, and he would peer instead at the
ceiling. When I asked a question of them, his wife would look to him first, and when
his silence was unbroken, she'd turn to me and answer, as fast as possible, address•
ing only my shins. Certain types of English do this with Aussies, I was learning fast.

The Marlowes had received official correspondence from the British Army, of
course, but having no body to bury or story to tell, they'd attempted to learn

more; there was another son in the Army still, and a daughter married to a mili•
tary family, but the Marlowes had found nothing more than I had. Quite a bit
less, in fact. Had Captain Marlowe corresponded with them during his time in
Egypt? Yes. Had he mentioned a friendship with an Australian soldier, a Corpo•
ral Caldwell? The mother looked confused, and the father actually laughed
briefly, a short bark, before looking at the ceiling, reminding me of my own ac•
cent and the unlikely social allure of Aussie Other Ranks. Had they known that
Corporal Caldwell's weapon and identification were found with Captain Mar•
lowe's? Dumbfounded silence and headshakes. Did Deir el Bahari mean anything
to them? Nothing. Any idea why Captain Marlowe would have taken a four-day
leave so far from base after the Armistice? Well, of course: for the archaeology.

Now that's intriguing, isn't it, Macy? Captain Marlowe had studied archaeol•
ogy and Egypt at Oxford, I learnt. He'd been quite an advanced student, and had
been intending to return to his studies after the War. He'd been quite pleased to be
posted to Egypt. Did Captain Marlowe have friends from Oxford who I could
speak to? Yes: Beverly Quint, who'd shared rooms with him one or two terms.
"And then there was also this rather odd..." The mother trailed off and looked at
the father. The senior Marlowe shrugged, turned in his seat, and drew a large,
brown, opened envelope from the top drawer of the writing desk. He handed it to
me with disgust. It was addressed to the Marlowes with a return address care of

Harvard University in America, and inside it was a small book:
Desire and Deceit in
Ancient Egypt.
It was a dedication copy, and inside the front cover I found this in•
scription in a blue ink, a fountain pen of eastern American origin, if my lifelong
study of inks and nibs did not betray me: "13 August, 1920. To Priapus and Sap•

pho Marlowe, who know well the importance Hugo held for me, my treasured
Friend in University and in War, an Inspiration in Life and Death. With fond rec•
ollections of happier times in your warm and welcoming home, from your 'other
son,' R. M. Trilipush." (Congratulations and thank you, Mr. Macy, for your pa•
tience. My promiscuous brewer has led us, as promised, to your aunt's first fiance.)

"Very kind, I'm sure," I said, solemnly, to the mute Marlowes. "And have you
spoken to your friend Mr. Trilipush since Captain Marlowe's disappearance?"
The father looked at his hands, the mother shook her head. I stumbled on: "Per•
haps he could shed light on your son's life and passing."

"We do not know him," she said.

"Would you like me to speak to him in your place?"

"You misunderstand me, Mr. Ferrell. I mean to say that we have never met
him, though Hugo spoke often of him at Oxford."

"I'm confused, madam. What does he mean by 'other son' then?"
"We have no idea," she said.

"Hugo never introduced him to you?"
"Never."

"He hasn't spent happy times 'in your warm and welcoming home'?"
"Certainly not."

"And this book?"

There was a long silence before Mrs. Marlowe spoke in a very subdued voice:
"Filth."
She swallowed. "And in its foreword he asserts that Hugo assisted him."
"Also"—the noise was unfamiliar and surprising this first time that little Pri¬
apus Marlowe spoke. "Also,
those
are
not
our Christian names." The wife nodded

in silent agreement.

"I'm inclined to think that perhaps I can be of use to you," I said, and the
father chewed slightly on the tapered end of his moustache.

Mysteries upon mysteries, Macy. The Davies Case begins to sprawl all over the
globe, and we must ask the crucial question, common at such moments, when the
wise detective attempts to frame and limit his field of vision: are we being led
astray into unrelated territory? Or are we wise to keep our minds open, perhaps all
of this will lead us to a clearer picture of the late Paul Caldwell? And we must find
answers, also, for our newest and potentially most lucrative, if dreadfully embar•
rassed, clients—the mourning parents of Hugo Marlowe, who wish to understand
what has become of their dear boy. We've much to do, Macy, so rouse yourself from
your pleasure-hunting antics in London, put down the cocktail, say good-bye to
the lovelies, and come assist me; the game is afoot! (How old shall you be in this
chronicle, given that you weren't actually born yet? I rather like the idea of you
being a young pup, a twenty-year-old with no particular expertise but an admira•
tion for my deductions and a weakness for low glamour and Negro jazz.)

So I sober you up, and off you go on my orders to Oxford while I track down
and question a few London men who served under arms with Captain Marlowe.
What do the good blokes say, as we enjoy our Davies Ale in their locals? Never
heard of Trilipush, never heard of Caldwell, Marlowe was a desk wallah interro•
gating prisoners.

Still waiting for your return from Oxford with the good oil, Macy, I pay a visit
on Beverly Quint, and oh yes, despite the name, that's
Mr.
Beverly Quint. What
did his parents
think
was going to become of him?

I find Beverly Quint, our Captain Marlowe's Oxford friend, now living in
London, by no means gainfully employed but living quite well nonetheless as a

gentleman at large. Here's a suggestion, Macy: in your rewriting, perhaps some
drama can be added if you're doing crucial research at Oxford (taking my histor•
ical place with your more literary presence), at the precise moment I'm in the
queer Oriental reception room of Beverly Quint's flat in The Albany. You're ask•
ing the ancient, fur-eared keeper of records at Balliol, "Are you quite certain?" at
precisely the same moment
I'm
asking the lascivious and supercilious Mr. Quint,
"And you're quite certain you knew him?"

"Quite certain, sir, though, it is not impossible that records are lost or re•
moved," says the record keeper under gathering Oxford storm clouds and your
mounting excitement. "There is no record of a Ralph Trilipush resident at Balliol
in any term between 1909 and 1916."

"Certain? Am I certain? Of course I'm certain, Mr. Ferrell," says queer Mr.
Quint at that same instant, leering at me in the lurid sunshine and dust of his
rooms, and examining wistfully the Marlowes' inscribed book I showed him.
"Ralph Trilipush, Hugo Marlowe, and I were an inseparable trio at Balliol," remi•
nisces squinting Quint. "Though those two were Egypt men and I read Greek, of
course, ducks. The closest of friends, we three, shared absolutely everything,
quite the three musketeers, or three little maids from school were we, as your
tastes dictate." There could be no question what Mr. Quint was implying in this
room that dared not speak its name. "Do I make you uneasy, my alluring colo•
nial?" he asked, flipping through Trilipush's book.

"I've seen rather enough of the world, thank you, Mr. Quint, to find nothing
takes me unawares."

"Of course, ducks, very man of action of you. Would you happen to have an
address for dear old Ralph, you clever man? I've lost all track of him since the
War, and I have so much to tell him. Are you going to see him soon? You must tell
him that Bevvy sends his very best love."

At my request for photographs of his friends, Quint produced a painting of
Hugo Marlowe, a large-scale bust portrait of a very ugly youth, though some•
one had spilt heaps of pigment to get him on canvas. He was positively reptil•
ian, to my admittedly undiscerning eye. From the base of his neck to the tip of
what must have been his chin, there was a nearly straight line, and his curly
black hair was stuck at random to his head, here in unstable piles, there just
thick enough to cover the scalp. His translucent elephant ears joined his tem•
ples at right angles. He had bags and circles under his eyes, and his colouring
was as floury as Mr. Quint's manner was flowery. "Handsome devil," I man•
aged.

"Quite, but only the most refined can see it," purred my host with evident
pride of ownership.

The odd thing, Macy, is that Quint himself was undeniably handsome, the
way we'd all like to be and quite precisely how every pom imagines himself:
square jaw, clear eye, cocked eyebrow, and that smirk to make women swoon. If
Hugo Marlowe had been Quint's fancy man, it was a lopsided match, beauty and
the beast.

And did Quint have a picture of Trilipush? "I think so, I should do." But all he
could find was a photograph of some childish theatricals from Oxford, Quint
front and center, periwigged and powdered as Marie Antoinette, a very clear (and
even uglier) Marlowe as a dour revolutionary, and in the very back, in a crowd of
identical blurs, under Quint's manicured fingertip, the blurry peasant third from
the left. "There's our Ralph. Just look at that smug expression!" exulted Quint.
"Who else could be such an unbearably self-assured French revolutionary peas•
ant? That's just
poetry.
That suited Ralph down to his toes."

"Did Trilipush ever meet your parents? Or Marlowe's?"

"But of course, dear boy. One did introduce one's dearest chums to the old
folks. Holidays, dinners, the usual. How do
you
people express friendship down
there on the bottom of the earth?"

Meanwhile, Macy, you're reading all the documents you can get from Ox•
ford's old man of records, and while there's absolutely no trace of Ralph Trili•
push, there's an extensive trail of the capers of Marlowe and Quint. Marlowe was
a student of Egypt under a don, now deceased, named Clement Wexler. Quint
read French literature, so his reference to Greek seems to have been a lie, which
should cast all his testimony in a certain light. Further interviews that day at the
Bodleian and Ashmolean libraries, where they keep the Egyptian stuff, reveal the
regular presence of Marlowe but not a whisper of Trilipush, until you're inter•
viewing a librarian in one of these hushed temples of unnecessary education as
you're growing convinced that Trilipush was never at Oxford, and an excessively
delicate young man behind you says, "Excuse me for interrupting. I couldn't help
hearing, did you say
Trilipush?
Are you a friend of Trilipush's? I wouldn't have
thought—"