The Laughter of Dead Kings (6 page)

“So no missing saints’ skulls?”

“He says not.”

“Goodness gracious me, don’t you trust a holy man?”

“The Vatican administration, as distinct from the papacy, is a business organization, Vicky, with all the characteristics of any other such group. They are efficient, secretive and cynical—or, as they prefer to call it, realistic. Luis’s passion for dried-up bits of people has led him once or twice into dubious transactions. I can’t prove it—nor would I bother to do so—but he knows that I know, and that gives me a certain hold over him. I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth when he said nothing has gone missing, and that he’d inform me if anything of interest came on the market.”

“So he hasn’t heard about Tut.”

“Unfortunately,” said John, “the mere fact that I inquired about petrified people aroused his curiosity. It was inevitable but unavoidable. However, I’m hoping that of all the mummies in all the museums in the world he won’t think of that one unless he hears of it from another source. In which case he will get in touch with me, because he will assume, like everyone else, that I’m the thief.”

John claims he is not superstitious, but when you come right down to it, who isn’t? We tend to interpret good luck as a good omen. He cheered up when we managed to get the last two seats on a flight to London leaving in half an hour. They were first-class seats, and I thought I saw him hold his breath when he handed over his credit card.

“Must be nice to be rich,” I remarked.

“I wouldn’t know,” John said. “Setting up shop in London cost a bundle, and that damned white elephant in Cornwall is draining me dry. Oh, well, carpe diem.”

First class, I was sorry to learn, isn’t that classy anymore. The drinks were free, but the food consisted of soggy salad and tasteless sandwiches. By the time we got through customs and passport control at Heathrow, I found myself a bit peckish. Before I could men
tion this, John said, “I’m not taking you out to dinner. Don’t tell me there isn’t something edible in that backpack of yours. I’ve never known you to travel without a stash of food.”

“I want a regular meal,” I whined.

“Vicky,” said John, in the patient voice that makes me want to throw a temper tantrum, “it’s too late to get a reservation at an acceptable restaurant. Every hour that passes before I begin my inquiries is an hour lost.”

“If you are suggesting that one miserable hour may mean the difference between life and death—”

“It’s an uncertain world, my dear. There’s sure to be something in the fridge.”

We took the tube from Heathrow. John offered to carry my backpack. I haughtily refused. I do really dumb things sometimes. The damn thing weighed a ton. I wondered what I’d tossed into it during my last-minute frenzy. There were a few odds and ends of food—a chocolate bar, an apple—but pride forbade that I should search for them.

It wasn’t that late. When we came out of the Marylebone Station there were plenty of people around, and—I noticed—several perfectly acceptable restaurants open for business. John relieved me of my backpack, so the only alternative to trotting docilely after him was to throw a temper tantrum in front of one of the perfectly acceptable restaurants.

The street he graced with his presence was off the Edgware Road, in a residential area without a restaurant in sight, acceptable or otherwise. The lift was working, thank heaven. It doesn’t always. By the time we reached his door I was ready to sink my teeth into moldy cheese, stale bread, or anything else that might lurk in the depths of his pantry.

Old habits die hard; John still enters a room as if he expects an
assassin to be lurking within. Standing well back, he gave the door a shove and reached around for the light switch before peering cautiously into the room.

“Oh my goodness,” I said, looking past him.

Drawers stood open, pillows had been tossed onto the floor, and several books toppled from shelves. Through the door that led to the bedroom I caught a shadowy glimpse of comparable chaos.

“Stay back,” John ordered, barring the door with an outflung arm.

“If anybody was here, he’d be pointing a gun at us by now.”

“I am in no mood for one of your arguments. Do as I say.”

He made sure I would by giving me a shove, and then slid into the room. I heard him moving around, heard the click of light switches, and finally he said, “You can come in. Close the door.”

One of the many reasons why John and I do not cohabit is that he is as neat as a finicky maiden lady and I am not. On closer inspection his living room didn’t look all that bad—no worse than mine on most days, after I have returned from work to find Clara and Caesar had been whiling away the lonely hours by knocking various objects off various surfaces. The sofa cushions had been pulled out and replaced, in a haphazard sort of way. I straightened them and plumped up one of the pillows, which was lying flat instead of being artistically propped up against the arm. (“You don’t sit on them,” John had once raged, “you look at them.”) Like everything John owns, it was beautiful—a fragment of Chinese embroidery in shimmering shades of gold and turquoise and scarlet. I replaced a few other items and made my way to the door of the room John used as an office. In addition to the desk and a few file cabinets, it contained a couple of straight chairs and a narrow sofa bed. Presumably this was where Jen slept when she visited. It had not been designed to inspire a prolonged stay.

John sat at the desk, pecking away at the keyboard of his computer. Images came and went on the screen.

“Did he get into your files?” I asked.

“No.” John closed the file he was inspecting before I could get a look at it. “Not that he could; everything of importance is protected. But it looks as if he didn’t even try. That’s odd.”

“Depends on what he was after.”

John followed me into the bedroom. The drawers of the bureau stood half open. The mattress was half off the bed, sheets and blankets tumbled around it. I studied one of the drawers, sacred to John’s meticulously folded handkerchiefs. They were now in a tumbled heap. I considered refolding them and decided I wouldn’t.

“What are you doing?” John demanded.

I closed the drawer. “I’m about to investigate the kitchen. Who knows what havoc has been wrought there?”

When John joined me I was sitting at the kitchen counter digging into a light repast of Brie and smoked oysters and crackers and a few other odds and ends.

“I threw out the grapes,” I informed him.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. What was wrong with the grapes?”

I swallowed. “They looked tired. The apples are withery and the bananas have gone dark brown. You don’t eat enough fresh fruit and vegetables.”

“I have heard enough about healthy eating habits to last me, thank you.” He dug into the Brie, which was nice and runny. “Anything missing out here?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Not that I could see. He investigated all the cupboards, even the fridge. Spilled a bottle of milk.”

“I don’t suppose you mopped it up,” John said, without hope. “What could he have been looking for in the fridge?”

“The family jewels, maybe?”

“I told you, we don’t have any.” John smeared Brie on a cracker. Not many people can chew and look thoughtful at the same time, but he could. “He dug into every drawer and looked under the mattress and the sofa cushions.”

Not to be outdone in the deductive process, I chimed in. “He was looking for something relatively small and portable, something that would lie flat under a mattress or a pile of hankies.”

“I do not hide stolen antiquities under my sofa cushions or in my bureau drawers, if that’s what you are implying.”

“My, my, aren’t we sensitive.”

He had finished the Brie. I snatched the remains of the smoked oysters. “I agree, you wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“Even if I possessed stolen antiquities.”

“Even if you did. One thing for sure—he wasn’t looking for King Tut.”

John let out a choking sound. “Sorry. I had a sudden insane image. If this were a horror film, there’d have been a withered hand under the handkerchiefs, a leg or two among the sofa cushions and Tut’s head glaring out of the cupboard between tins of baked beans and tuna.”

“He couldn’t glare, his eyes have been poked out.”

John grimaced. “Did you have to say that? And how do you know?”

“I looked him up at the museum. There are dozens of photos and X-rays. Back in 1926, when Howard Carter put him back in his coffin, he still had eyelids and a little skullcap thingie on his head, and lots of beads and gold bits on his chest—part of an ornamental collar that was so stuck in hardened resin, Carter decided not to try
to remove it. In 1968, when a specialist X-rayed him, the skullcap was missing, and so were the pieces of the collar, along with the ribs that had lain under it. And the eyes were just empty sockets.”

The photographs had struck me not as horrible but as pathetic. The shriveled skin was stretched tight over his bones and his teeth were exposed by shrunken lips, not in the menacing grin of filmdom mummies but in a smile that looked almost shy. He had only been eighteen years old when he died.

Damn it, I thought, I refuse to feel sorry for a three-thousand-year-old corpse. And damn Feisal for infecting me with his sentimental nonsense.

John was thinking along more practical lines. “That eliminates one motive for stealing the mummy. There was nothing of value left on it.”

“No. His penis was missing too.”

“Enough about bloody Tutankhamon!” John sprang to his feet.

Men are so touchy about that particular part of their anatomy. Tactfully I changed the subject. “Are you going to call the cops and report a breakin?”

“What would be the point? Nothing seems to be missing, no bodily assault occurred. I hate to trouble the overworked Metropolitan Police with such a petty crime.”

“They could look for fingerprints.”

“Nobody leaves fingerprints these days,” John said gloomily. “Thanks to television and films, even the dullest miscreant knows enough to wear gloves. The hell with it. I’m too tired to think straight. I’ll make the bed if you clear up the remains of the food.”

He did look tired. “I’ll even mop up the spilled milk,” I offered. “Unless your daily is due tomorrow.”

“I don’t have a daily, or even a fortnightly.”

“Are you economizing or just suspicious-minded?”

“Both.”

I had to use a brush to loosen some of the dried-on milk. It had been there for at least twenty-four hours, if I was any judge. I don’t have many long-lasting spills. Caesar takes care of them immediately if they are edible, and sometimes if they aren’t.

T
he sound of low voices woke me from a dream that featured the head of Tutankhamon gibbering at me and demanding to know what I had done with his penis. John was already up and dressed; I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower.

John was alone when I joined him in the kitchen. Accepting a cup of coffee, I asked, “Who was here?”

“The super, as you would call him. He denies having seen any suspicious characters, or of having lent someone a key.”

“Well, he wouldn’t admit it, would he? Someone must have had a key. The lock wasn’t forced.”

“An expert could have picked it,” said John, in the tone of one who knows whereof he speaks.

We breakfasted on coffee and stale bread and headed out. The Closed sign hung at the shop door, but it wasn’t locked, and the lights inside were on. John’s assistant manager was sitting at the desk at the back of the showroom, his head bent over an object in his hands.

“Hi, Alan,” I said.

Alan let out a little shriek and dropped the object he was holding. “Must you creep up on a person like that?” he complained. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

“Too absorbed in your artistry?” John inquired. “I told you not to bring your sewing to work.”

“Hi, Alan,” I said.

“Vicky!” He sprang to his feet. “Do forgive me. John so dominates his surroundings, one fails to notice more attractive objects.”

Superficially he resembled John—fair hair, slim build, and that indefinable air of superiority produced by a public school education. At close range one couldn’t have mistaken one for the other. To put it as nicely as possible, Alan was a watered-down version of John, paler, slighter, less well defined, as if he was trying to imitate his boss and not doing it very successfully.

“What are you making?” I asked.

It was obviously a hat—large, broad-brimmed, with a white plume drooping dispiritedly over one side. Alan was polite enough to avoid making a sarcastic remark about my dumb question. He picked up the hat and pushed the plume up. It fell over again. “It’s for the reenactment,” he explained. “I’m a Cavalier.”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s the Roundheads and the Cavaliers this time? Cromwell and the head of King Charles?”

“Don’t show off,” John snapped. “Or encourage him. Of all the childish occupations in the world, reenacting old battles is the silliest.”

“I’d offer to help,” I said, as Alan pushed the plume up again and watched it slowly subside. “But I can’t sew either. May I suggest superglue?”

Alan pursed his lips. “It isn’t authentic, but it’s a very bright idea. Thanks.”

“I hate to interrupt,” John said, raising both eyebrows, “but might I venture to inquire whether anything of interest has transpired in my absence? Anything in the way of vulgar business, that is?”

“A couple of messages about the Egyptian piece. They’re on your computer.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.” John stalked into the office. Alan made a face at his back. “What’s new in dear old München?”

“Not much.” I followed John into the office. He was already at the computer and into his e-mail.

“Anything from…him?” I asked.

“Mmmm,” said John, staring at the screen.

I leaned over his shoulder. Feisal had written a nice chatty letter, full of irrelevant gossip about what was going on in Luxor. It ended with fondest regards and the hope that we’d be able to pay him a visit in the not too distant future.

“So we can assume that everything is okay so far?” I asked.