Death Comes as End - Agatha Christie [72]
‘Today is enough to live through–and I swear to you you are not in danger today.’
Renisenb looked at him and frowned.
‘But we are in danger? Yahmose, my father, myself? It is not I who am threatened first…is that what you think?’
‘Try not to think about it, Renisenb. I am doing all I can, though it may appear to you that I am doing nothing.’
‘I see–’ Renisenb looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I see. It is to be Yahmose first. The enemy has tried twice with poison and failed. There is to be a third attempt. That is why you will be close beside him–to protect him. And after that it will be the turn of my father and myself. Who is there who hates our family so much that–’
‘Hush. You would do well not to talk of these things. Trust me, Renisenb. Try and banish fear from your mind.’
Renisenb threw her head back. She faced him proudly.
‘I do trust you, Hori. You will not let me die…I love life very much and I do not want to leave it.’
‘You shall not leave it, Renisenb.’
‘Nor you either, Hori.’
‘Nor I either.’
They smiled at each other and then Hori went away to find Yahmose.
III
Renisenb sat back on her haunches watching Kait.
Kait was helping the children to model toys out of clay, using the water of the lake. Her fingers were busy kneading and shaping and her voice encouraged the two small serious boys at their task. Kait’s face was the same as usual, affectionate, plain, expressionless. The surrounding atmosphere of violent death and constant fear seemed to affect her not at all…
Hori had bidden Renisenb not to think, but with the best will in the world Renisenb could not obey. If Hori knew the enemy, if Esa had known the enemy, then there was no reason why she should not know the enemy too. She might be safer unknowing, but no human creature could be content to have it that way. She wanted to know.
And it must be very easy–very easy indeed. Her father, clearly, could not desire to kill his own children. So that left–who did it leave? It left, starkly and uncompromisingly, two people, Kait and Henet.
Women, both of them…
And surely with no reason for killing…
Yet Henet hated them all…Yes, undoubtedly Henet hated them. She had admitted hating Renisenb. So why should she not hate the others equally?
Renisenb tried to project herself into the dim, tortured recesses of Henet’s brain. Living here, all these years, working, protesting her devotion, lying, spying, making mischief…Coming here, long ago, as the poor relative of a great and beautiful lady. Seeing that lovely lady happy with husband and children. Repudiated by her own husband, her only child dead…Yes, that might be the way of it. Like a wound from a spear thrust that Renisenb had once seen. It had healed quickly over the surface, but beneath evil matters had festered and raged and the arm had swollen and had gone hard to the touch. And then the physician had come and, with a suitable incantation, had plunged a small knife into the hard, swollen, distorted limb. It had been like the breaking down of an irrigation dyke. A great stream of evil smelling stuff had come welling out…
That, perhaps, was like Henet’s mind. Sorrow and injury smoothed over too quickly–and festering poison beneath, ever swelling in a great tide of hate and venom.
But did Henet hate Imhotep too? Surely not. For years she had fluttered round him, fawning on him, flattering him…He believed in her implicitly. Surely that devotion could not be wholly feigned?
And if she were devoted to him, could she deliberately inflict all this sorrow and loss upon him?
Ah, but suppose she hated him too–had always hated him. Had flattered him deliberately with a view to bringing out his weakness? Supposing Imhotep was the one she hated most? Then to a distorted, evil-ridden mind, what better pleasure could there be than this? To let him see his children die off one by one…
‘What is the matter, Renisenb?’ Kait was staring at her. ‘You look so strange.’
Renisenb stood up.
‘I feel as though I were going to vomit,’ she said.
In a sense it was true enough. The picture she had been conjuring