Death Comes as End - Agatha Christie [70]
Esa had weighed the matter carefully before speaking. A false word now–and disaster might result.
Then she had made her answer, stressing it with the force of her indomitable personality. Kameni, she said, was undoubtedly the husband for Renisenb. Their declarations and the necessary attendant festivities–much curtailed owing to the recent bereavements–might take place in a week’s time. That is, if Renisenb was willing. Kameni was a fine young man–together they would raise strong children. Moreover the two of them loved one another.
Well, Esa thought, she had cast her die. The thing would be pegged out now on the gaming board. It was out of her hands. She had done what she thought expedient. If it was hazardous–well, Esa liked a match at the gaming board quite as well as Ipy had done. Life was not a matter of safety–it must be hazarded to win the game.
She looked suspiciously round her room when she returned to it. Particularly she examined the big wine jar. It was covered over and sealed as she had left it. She always sealed it when she left the room and the seal hung safely round her neck.
Yes–she was taking no risks of that kind. Esa chuckled with malicious satisfaction. Not so easy to kill an old woman. Old women knew the value of life–and knew most of the tricks too. Tomorrow–She called her little maid.
‘Where is Hori? Do you know?’
The girl replied that she thought Hori was up at the Tomb in the rock chamber.
Esa nodded satisfaction.
‘Go up to him there. Tell him that tomorrow morning, when Imhotep and Yahmose are out on the cultivation, taking Kameni with them for the counting, and when Kait is at the lake with the children, he is to come to me here. Have you understood that? Repeat it.’
The little maid did so, and Esa sent her off.
Yes, her plan was satisfactory. The consultation with Hori would be quite private since she would send Henet on an errand to the weaving sheds. She would warn Hori of what was to come and they could speak freely together.
When the black girl returned with the message that Hori would do as she said, Esa gave a sigh of relief.
Now, these things settled, her weariness spread over her like a flood. She told the girl to bring the pot of sweet smelling ointment and massage her limbs.
The rhythm soothed her, and the unguent eased the aching of her bones.
She stretched herself out at last, her head on the wooden pillow, and slept–her fears for the moment allayed.
She woke much later with a strange sensation of coldness. Her feet, her hands, were numbed and dead…It was like a constriction stealing all over the body. She could feel it numbing her brain, paralysing her will, slowing down the beat of her heart.
She thought: ‘This is Death…’
A strange death–death unheralded, with no warning signs.
This, she thought, is how the old die…
And then a surer conviction came to her. This was not natural death! This was the Enemy stiking out of the darkness.
Poison…
But how? When? All she had eaten, all she had drunk–tested, secured–there had been no loophole of error.
Then how? When?
With her last feeble flickers of intelligence, Esa sought to penetrate the mystery. She must know–she must–before she died.
She felt the pressure increasing on her heart–the deadly coldness–the slow painful indrawing of her breath.
How had the enemy done this thing?
And suddenly, from the past, a fleeting memory came to aid her understanding. The shaven skin of a lamb–a lump of smelling grease–an experiment of her father’s–to show that some poisons could be absorbed by the skin. Wool fat–unguents made of wool fat. That was how the enemy had reached her. Her pot of sweet smelling unguent, so necessary to an Egyptian woman. The poison had been in that…
And tomorrow–Hori–he would not know–she could not tell him…It was too late.
In the morning a frightened little slave girl went running through the house crying out that her lady had died in her sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SECOND MONTH OF SUMMER 16TH DAY