Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [169]
“An assumption we dare not make,” said Sethos. “We believed the immediate family had not been targeted. That is what we were meant to believe. Now they have taken Nefret. They didn’t plan on Emerson, but now they’ve got him they aren’t likely to let him go. We know the motive now. It applies equally strongly to the rest of you—and to me.”
He went to the sideboard again and splashed whiskey into his glass. I could have used another myself. We had skirted round the subject, but it could no longer be avoided.
“I am sorry,” I said haltingly. “I had hoped she was innocent.”
Sethos swung round to face me. “She looks so innocent, doesn’t she? Those childish freckles and wide hazel eyes . . . She took me in, too, Amelia, if that is any consolation.”
I saw the pain his controlled countenance endeavored to conceal, and so did my dear Evelyn. Going to him, she embraced him like a sister. “She may be a prisoner, dear—er—”
The tenderness of her manner, and the stumble over his name, were too much for him. Affection and laughter choked his voice. “Dear Evelyn. Would you like me to tell you my real name?”
“You need not tell me if you would rather not.”
“Seth.”
“What?” I cried. “Not Gawaine, or George, or Milton, or—”
Visibly amused, Sethos lifted his glass to me. “What an imagination you have, Amelia. Where do you suppose I got my nom de guerre? My parents gave me a perfectly respectable biblical name, but when I realized how close it was to that of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh I couldn’t resist. And how appropriate! Sethos, the follower of Set, god of storm and chaos, deadly enemy of his noble brother—” He broke off with a snap of his teeth. “Ramses, will you for God’s sake have a drink, or say something, or at least sit down? You make me nervous planted there like a bloody granite statue. We’ll get her back.”
It might have been the thought of the other young woman, the loving daughter Sethos would never get back, that broke Ramses’s stony control.
“I’m sorry,” he began.
Sethos snarled at him. “I don’t want your pity. I want information. There is nothing we can do for several more hours, so we may as well talk. I don’t suppose anyone intends to sleep. Is there any longer the slightest doubt as to what has motivated this string of extraordinary occurrences?”
“No,” I said. “Once I realized that revenge for Bertha’s death was the motive, every incident fit snugly into the pattern. The first, which I flat-out missed until recently, was the death of Hassan—or rather, his sudden turn to religion. What had he done that he should feel the need of forgiveness?”
Ramses nodded. “That’s what Selim said, in almost those precise words. I missed it too. Hassan was one of the men who was with us that day at Gurneh, when Abdullah died and Bertha . . . Are you suggesting that it was Hassan who struck the blow that killed her?”
“I think that if he did not, he believed he had, or claimed the credit—for creditable it would have seemed to those who revered Abdullah and held the old tribal beliefs—an eye for an eye, a death for a death. Do you remember the letter Ramses read us, from a man to his deceased wife? I would not be surprised if Hassan did not hold the same view about ill fortune—that it must be due to a malevolent spirit. Hassan had lost his own wife, and he had begun to suffer the effects of old age. Guilt and the hope of forgiveness made him seek the protection of a holy man—even if he had to invent one himself! Most of the other men are dead, except for—”
“Selim and Daoud,” David breathed. “Good God. She would have no trouble murdering Hassan—poison in one of the dishes of food he was brought—but I can’t believe—”
“Selim and Daoud,” Sethos said, in a hard flat voice, “were next. She played with them like a cat with a mouse. None of the incidents proved to be fatal, but any one of them might have been.