Death Comes as End - Agatha Christie [38]
Renisenb reached the body of her sister-in-law and bent over it. Satipy’s eyes were open, the eyelids fluttering. Her lips were moving, trying to speak. Renisenb bent closer over her. She was appalled by the glazed terror in Satipy’s eyes.
Then the dying woman’s voice came. It was just a hoarse croak.
‘Nofret…’
Satipy’s head fell back. Her jaw dropped.
Hori had turned to meet Yahmose. The two men came up together.
Renisenb turned to her brother.
‘What did she call out, up there, before she fell?’
Yahmose’s breath was coming in short jerks–he could hardly speak…
‘She looked past me–over my shoulder–as though she saw someone coming along the path–but there was no one–there was no one there.’
Hori assented:
‘There was no one…’
Yahmose’s voice dropped to a low, terrified whisper:
‘And then she called out–’
‘What did she say?’ Renisenb demanded, impatiently.
‘She said–she said…’ His voice trembled…‘Nofret…’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FIRST MONTH OF SUMMER 12TH DAY
‘So that is what you meant?’
Renisenb flung the words at Hori more as an affirmation than as a question.
She added softly under her breath with growing comprehension and horror:
‘It was Satipy who killed Nofret…’
Sitting with her chin supported by her hands in the entrance to Hori’s little rock chamber next to the Tomb, Renisenb stared down at the valley below.
She thought dreamily how true the words were she had uttered yesterday–(was it really only such a short time ago?–) From up here the house below and the busy hurrying figures had no more significance nor meaning than an ants’ nest.
Only the sun, majestic in power, shining overhead–only the slim streak of pale silver that was the Nile in this morning light–only these were eternal and enduring. Khay had died, and Nofret and Satipy–and some day she and Hori would die. But Ra would still rule the heavens and travel by night in his barque through the Underworld to the dawning of the next day. And the River would still flow, flow from beyond Elephantine and down past Thebes and past the village and to lower Egypt where Nofret had lived and been gay and light of heart, and on to the great waters and so away from Egypt altogether.
Satipy and Nofret…
Renisenb pursued her thoughts aloud since Hori had not answered her.
‘You see, I was so sure that Sobek–’
She broke off.
Hori said thoughtfully: ‘The preconceived idea.’
‘And yet it was stupid of me,’ Renisenb went on. ‘Henet told me, or more or less told me, that Satipy had gone walking this way and she said that Nofret had come up here. I ought to have seen how obvious it was that Satipy had followed Nofret–that they had met on the path–and that Satipy had thrown her down. She had said, only a short while before, that she was a better man than any of my brothers.’
Renisenb broke off and shivered.
‘And when I met her–’ she resumed, ‘I should have known then. She was quite different–she was frightened. She tried to persuade me to turn back with her. She didn’t want me to find Nofret’s body. I must have been blind not to realize the truth. But I was so full of fear about Sobek…’
‘I know. It was seeing him kill that snake.’
Renisenb agreed eagerly.
‘Yes, that was it. And then I had a dream…Poor Sobek–how I have misjudged him. As you say, threatening is not doing. Sobek has always been full of boastful talk. It was Satipy who was always bold and ruthless and not afraid of action. And then ever since–the way she has gone about like a ghost–it has puzzled us all–why did we not think of the true explanation?’
She added, with a quick upward glance:
‘But you did?’
‘For some time,’ said Hori, ‘I have felt convinced that the clue to the truth of Nofret’s death was in Satipy’s extraordinary change of character. It was so remarkable that there had to be something to account for it.’
‘And yet you said nothing?’
‘How could I, Renisenb? What could I ever prove?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Proofs must be solid brick walls of fact.’
‘Yet once you said,’ Renisenb argued, ‘that people didn’t