The Serpent on the Crown (13 page)

Emerson gestured with the pipe. “Don’t lecture me, Peabody. I have it all worked out, you will see.”

“Oh, really? Do you also have the Petherick matter all worked out? I was under the obviously erroneous impression that you went to Cairo to pursue our investigation. Are you aware of what has happened here since you left?”

“Certainly,” said Emerson, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “The Cairo newspapers were full of the stories. I am deeply hurt by your criticism, Peabody. If you insist upon a full report of my activities—”

“I do not insist, Emerson. I request. Strongly.”

“Hmph,” said Emerson. “Very well. I called upon the most reputable of the antiquities dealers in Cairo. All denied knowledge of the statuette. Which doesn’t mean a curse in itself, but their avid curiosity was indicative of innocence. I sent cables to a number of people, including Howard Carter, who have been known to handle antiquities for Petherick. I cabled Gargery and told him to go up to London and investigate the status and contents of Petherick’s will—”

“Gargery!” I exclaimed. “Why did you entrust such a delicate task to him? The old fool will go blundering around—”

“Sometimes blundering accomplishes more than tact,” retorted Emerson, who was certainly in a position to know. “I suspect the old fool is getting bored down in Kent. He always enjoys participating in our little adventures.”

“What about Sethos?” Nefret asked.

“What about him?”

“Emerson, don’t be so aggravating,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”

“Yes. At least I know where he is supposed to be.” He looked round the room, as if he expected his brother to materialize out of thin air, and then pointed toward the guardhouse. “Ah.”

In the center of a jostling crowd, almost as if he
had
materialized out of thin air, stood a familiar figure. I would have known him anywhere.

H
e looked very much like his brother—a scant inch shorter, not so heavily muscled as Emerson but trim and well built. Only an observer familiar with his true appearance would have noticed the resemblance, however; he now sported a mane of white hair, worn longer than was fashionable, a narrow mustache, and a goatee. His linen suit and the silver-headed stick he brandished bore out the impression of a well-bred if somewhat foppish gentleman. Pushing through the crowd, he advanced toward the house, followed by two perspiring fellows who carried several large suitcases and a hatbox. He stopped outside the door and smiled upon us all with impartial affability.

“Good morning, my dears. How good it is to see you all again.”

“Who are you supposed to be this time?” I inquired, opening the door.

“A wealthy connoisseur and philanthropist,” said Sethos, running a fingertip along his mustache. “Sir Malcolm Page Henley de Montague, at your service. You may omit the title when addressing me.” He dispensed baksheesh to his bearers, who deposited his luggage and departed.

“Aren’t you taking something of a chance?” I inquired. “Sir Malcolm has supported several excavations in this area. You may encounter someone who knows him.”

“You insult my abilities, my dear, if you suppose I cannot bamboozle such persons” was the airy reply. He gave me a brotherly kiss on the cheek, saluted Nefret on the brow, and shook Ramses’s hand.

“Sit down and stop showing off,” said Emerson irritably. “What took you so long?”

“It wasn’t long at all, considering that my imposing appearance and witty conversation distracted a number of persons who might otherwise have trailed you. Every journalist in Egypt must be here.”

Fatima appeared with fresh coffee, her plain but kindly face shining with pleasure. She had obviously been aware of his arrival, though how she had recognized him I could not imagine. Over the years he had appeared at the house in various guises, ostensibly to prevent people from identifying him as Emerson’s brother. This would have been embarrassing for us and dangerous for him in his role as an agent of British intelligence. However, Sethos was an actor at heart and enjoyed the game for its own sake.

“Did you come down from Cairo on the same train as Emerson?” I inquired.

“Obviously,” said Sethos.

“It is not obvious. You might have been in Luxor all along.”

“Or somewhere else in Egypt,” Sethos suggested helpfully.

“Mother, you are letting him get you off the track again,” said Ramses through his teeth. He found his uncle extremely exasperating—a point of view with which I had some sympathy. “Father, how did you locate—er—Sir Malcolm so quickly, and what have you told him, and why is he here?”

“He knew I was in Cairo,” Sethos replied. “Hasn’t he told you that we have been in regular communication for the past few years?”

“No,” I said—through
my
teeth.

Emerson said, “Hmph,” and avoided my eyes.

Sethos hadn’t missed my response or Emerson’s response to my response, and he appeared highly amused. “Given your propensity for inviting trouble, I deemed it my duty to be readily available in case you needed my help. I was not at all surprised to learn that you’re at it again. However, this is an even more preposterous situation than the ones you usually get into.”

The pronoun could have been singular or plural, but the look he directed at me made his meaning clear. I was about to respond when Nefret came to my defense.

“Mother is entirely guiltless in this case. It was Father who accepted the statuette and promised the confounded woman he would remove the curse.” She leaned forward, blue eyes fixed on his face. “Did you take it from Tomb 55?”

Sethos looked uncomfortable. Nefret was one of the few people who could penetrate his mask of smiling cynicism. He answered with equal bluntness. “No. Most of the objects I removed from the tomb had limited monetary value; my chief interest was in their historical importance.”

“No doubt,” said Ramses, with a skeptical look. “Could you have overlooked something so valuable?”

“Since I haven’t been privileged to see it yet, I can’t be certain,” said Sethos.

Emerson got up, mumbled something, and went into the house. When he came back he was holding the painted box. Silently he handed it to Sethos, who removed the lid. His lips pursed in a whistle and those strangely colored eyes, which could be brown or green or gray, widened. Consummate actor though he was, I felt sure his astonishment was genuine.

“Good God,” he murmured.

“I knew it wasn’t you,” Nefret said, visibly relieved.

“Your confidence touches me, my dear. I assure you that if I had found it I would have snatched it without a second thought. However, if you want additional indication of my innocence, remember my custom of keeping the most beautiful objects for myself.” He ran a reverent finger down the curves of the right arm. “I wouldn’t have sold this for any price.”

Though Sethos did not look at me, Emerson twitched as if at an insect bite. Sethos had once said something of the sort to me, referring, in that case, to my humble self. He had long since got over this attachment, but it still touched my dear spouse on a tender spot.

“Very well,” said that individual. “I accept your word. And your arguments. Nevertheless, I intend to reexcavate Tomb 55.”

“I can’t have missed anything,” Sethos insisted. “I was in the tomb alone, or with my loyal assistant, for several days. I had plenty of time to explore every nook and cranny.”

“It may have been taken before you arrived on the scene,” Ramses said. “There were dozens of visitors in and out of the place, and the workmen made off with several small pieces of jewelry. They turned up shortly afterward in the antiquities market of Luxor, but an object like this would have been handled in greater secrecy.”

“Why?” Nefret asked. “Don’t all antiquities, large and small, have to be passed by the Service des Antiquités before they can be taken from Egypt?”

Sethos steepled his hands and gave a little cough. “Allow me to deliver a brief lecture, my dear. I believe I am in a better position than most to know the ins and outs of the illegal antiquities game.”

“That,” said Emerson emphatically, “is certainly true.”

“Quite,” said Sethos. “In the old days—the good old days, as some of us might say—the Middle East was an open market. No rules, no supervision. That’s how we British acquired the Elgin Marbles, the Khorsobad sculptures, and a number of rare objects from Egypt. When Mariette started the Service des Antiquités, he and his successor, Maspero, established new rules. Foreign excavators had to have permits to dig, and everything they uncovered had to pass inspection. The service decided which pieces they could take and which went to the Cairo Museum.

“Some would say that both Mariette and Maspero were overly generous. There are certainly objects in foreign museums that would never have been passed by our present director.”

“Get to the point,” Emerson said impatiently. “The problem isn’t only legal excavations.”

“Quite true,” Sethos agreed. “The locals have been digging for years and in the good old days they were able to sell their discoveries to tourists who had no difficulty in exporting them. After the 1860s, to their great indignation, the local lads were told they couldn’t do that sort of thing any longer. The Antiquities Department cracked down hard on tomb robbers. You remember what happened to the Abd er Rassul brothers after it was learned that they had been looting the cache of royal mummies.”

“Horrible,” I said energetically. “Torture should not be permitted under any circumstances. It is to the credit of Britain that we have put a stop to that sort of thing.”

“To make a long story short,” Sethos said, with a polite nod at me, “modern tomb robbers have to go about their business in secret. Odds and ends, such as the bits of jewelry taken from KV55, don’t bother the authorities that much; they can’t possibly keep track of all of them. Major discoveries, however, have to be marketed with care so they can’t be traced back to the original perpetrators. Some dealers will sit on important pieces for years, while carrying on secret negotiations with various museums and collectors.”

“Carter,” Emerson growled.

“He and others. Carter is a go-between, a dealer. He buys for his patron, Lord Carnarvon, and for institutions like the Metropolitan Museum. So you see,” Sethos concluded, “the existence of this statuette has probably been known for years. The fact that it escaped my attention causes me, I confess, a certain embarrassment. I can only attribute it to the fact that I have been busy with other matters since1914.”

“Are you suggesting that it wasn’t found until after that time?” Ramses asked.

“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” Sethos said. “Even I have lapses occasionally.”

“If it was ever in KV55,” said Emerson, “some trace of its presence may yet remain. The missing uraeus serpent, for example, or scraps of a pedestal. Many wooden objects were waterlogged and decaying. Davis would have kicked the scraps aside. We must eliminate KV55 before we consider other possibilities.”

I had listened in growing impatience to this discussion, in which, I was sorry to see, Ramses had allowed himself to become interested. “If I may say so,” I remarked, “archaeological fever is distracting you from more important matters. Are you aware that Mrs. Petherick has mysteriously disappeared? And that there have been two attempted robberies here?”

“Bah,” said Emerson. “The intruder was probably a journalist.”

“Who also blew up the guardhouse?”

“Those bastards have no scruples. As for Mrs. Petherick, she’ll turn up before long with a harrowing tale of her escape from the afrit.” He took out his watch, let out an emphatic swearword, and jumped up. “All this time wasted! Ramses, Nefret, Peabody, get your gear together.”

“Where are we going?” Ramses asked. He knew the answer.

“Deir el Medina, of course. I told Wasim to send word to Selim to get the crew together.”

I settled myself more comfortably in my chair. “I must see to our guest, Emerson. Unlike you, he will wish to rest and refresh himself after that long dusty train ride. If you will wait an hour or two—”

“Bah,” said Emerson. “You will follow when you are damned good and ready, I suppose. You two, come with me.”

FROM MANUSCRIPT H

Emerson would have walked out of the house just as he was, had not his wife insisted he change out of his good suit and put on a hat. By the time Ramses and Nefret were ready, he was lying in wait for them. Emerson led the way with long strides, up the cliff behind Deir el Bahri and along the path the ancient workmen had taken, between their homes and the Valley of the Kings where they had excavated and decorated the royal tombs. Though this was the most direct path to the village, it was not as easy as the road that entered the valley from the north, but it was one of Emerson’s favorite “strolls.” Certain other members of the family did not share this viewpoint.

Sun rays seeped down into the narrow valley. At the north end, amid the ruins of earlier shrines, stood the Ptolemaic temple, the only structure that had survived relatively intact. In the village itself, mud-brick foundations and walls outlined the central street and the small houses on either side. It was not an imposing site. The dull gray-brown of the foundations was the same shade as the valley floor, unrelieved by any touch of green, by traces of paint or the glitter of gold. Unlike an ordinary Egyptian town, this one had been built by the state in the fourteenth century B.C. to house the men who worked on the royal tombs, and their families.

Despite its unpromising appearance, the village had yielded one major archaeological treasure—the reburial of the High Priestesses of Amon, containing their rich coffins and collections of jewelry. Bertie and Jumana had been the ones responsible for finding it, and although Lacau had taken most of the artifacts for the Cairo Museum, he had left enough for Cyrus to satisfy that ardent collector. Insofar as Ramses was concerned, Deir el Medina had produced objects that had greater historical value. The inhabitants were skilled craftsmen, and many of them were literate. They had left written documents of all sorts, inscribed on papyrus or scraps of pottery, in the cursive hieratic script or the later, even more cursive, demotic. Having discovered, to their amazement, that Europeans would pay good money for such rubbish, the local fellahin had dug illegally at the site for years and sold the material to collectors and museums. The small private tombs on the hillside, built by the workmen for themselves, had also provided income for industrious diggers—wall paintings, votive stelae, tomb furnishings.

Ramses couldn’t imagine living in such a place; yet the laborers had been well off by ancient Egyptian standards, and the closely packed houses probably suited the inhabitants’ tastes well enough. Three thousand years ago the now silent street had been full of people, bustling about on their daily errands, exchanging greetings—and arguing. Some of the letters that had survived indicated that the inhabitants of Deir el Medina were just as prone to family feuds as any modern village population.

With a certain degree of amusement Ramses realized his father wasn’t going to be able to start work immediately. Down below, gathered near the north end of the excavation, were Daoud and Selim and a number of their crew—and in the center of the gesticulating, chattering crowd a tall figure elegantly garbed in white linen. Cyrus Vandergelt hurried to meet them as they descended into the valley. Bertie and Jumana were with him, and Cyrus’s first words made it clear he wanted to discuss the latest developments.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were back? What did you find out? Who’s the fellow who came with you? Did you see Lacau?”

“Just got in,” Emerson said. “Busy. Lots to do. Selim, Daoud—”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Cyrus said firmly. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, Emerson. You didn’t suppose you could sneak into town without me finding out, did you?”

Emerson glowered at Daoud, who smiled amiably at him. “My son Sabir came at once to tell me, Father of Curses. I told Selim you would wish to begin work at once, and Selim told the others, and—”