Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [138]
Half the village followed them to the scene of the crash. Nothing had been touched. Emerson had left orders.
In bright sunlight the wrecked motorcar looked even worse than it had the night before. It had gone off the path to the left, fallen onto its side, and slid down before it turned over, leaving a wide swath of disturbed soil littered with broken glass and bits of metal before crashing into the ridge. If that outcrop had not been there, it would have rolled on down to the bottom of the path—and if Selim had not been thrown out before it fell he would almost certainly have been crushed in the wreckage.
Almost all the structural damage was on the left side of the vehicle: the door ripped off its hinges, the windscreen bent and shattered. One wheel was missing; the wooden spokes of the other were splintered and the tire was flat. The radiator had burst and the petrol tank had been ruptured. By now the petrol had evaporated, though the smell lingered.
“Here’s the wheel,” David called from farther up the hill. They scrambled to join him. Emerson swept the area with an eagle eye, measuring distance and trajectory.
“If it came off as a result of the impact, it would be under the car, or lower down,” he muttered.
“The lug nuts are missing,” Ramses said. “All six of them.” Even though he had expected this, he felt slightly sick. “They must have been deliberately loosened. The car toppled over when the wheel came off.”
“It wasn’t an accident?” Bertie looked as sick as Ramses felt.
“Not a chance of it,” Emerson replied grimly. “Selim is a first-rate mechanic, and he kept the cursed thing in top condition.”
A murmur arose from the watching audience. Some of them understood English; they were passing the news on to the rest. A slender black-robed woman picked up the child playing at her feet and hushed it. One of the squatting men lit a cigarette. Otherwise no one stirred. Intent dark eyes followed their every movement as they went over the vehicle inch by inch. Emerson insisted that it would have taken a man’s strength to loosen the bolts. Ramses wasn’t so sure of that; a long-handled wrench might have done the job if it were in the hands of a determined woman who knew something about motorcars.
“When was it done?” he asked.
Emerson fingered the cleft in his chin. “We put the wheel back on day before yesterday. It was the wheel on the front right—not this one. The job must have been done that night. If I had put the damned car in the stableyard, as your mother kept telling me to do . . .”
The lines around his mouth deepened. “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Ramses said. “The stableyard is easily accessible and Ali sleeps like the dead. Loosening the lug nuts would take only a few minutes.”
“He, whoever he was, counted on the wheel coming off when Selim hit a steep stretch,” Sethos said musingly.
“The car was bound to turn over once it lost a wheel,” Ramses argued. “Wherever that happened. He had to keep up a fair speed, that’s the only way to drive over rough terrain.”
“Agreed. But the damage, to Selim and the vehicle, would have been considerably less if it had happened on a level stretch. It was a gamble—supposing that murder was the intent.”
“Just like all the other cases,” Ramses muttered.
Emerson looked round. “Daoud. I want the motorcar brought back to the house. Collect every scrap.”
“It’s a total wreck, sir,” Bertie exclaimed. “You’ll never repair it.”
“Do you suppose I give a curse about that?” Emerson demanded.
Daoud flexed big brown hands and nodded vigorously. “It shall be as you say, Father of Curses. Selim can repair the motorcar. You will see.”
Emerson’s features twisted into a painful grimace. His voice was hoarser than usual when he replied. “You are right, Daoud. He can and he will.”
“And,” said Daoud placidly, “you will find the man who did this and give him to me.”
“Inshallah,” said Sethos under his breath.
Daoud repeated the word and, after a moment, so did Emerson.
I HAD SENT WORD TO Katherine and Cyrus that morning, for I knew they