Death Comes as End - Agatha Christie [79]
‘But Yahmose–Yahmose seemed always the same.’
‘Yes, and that is one reason, Renisenb, why I came to suspect. For the others, by reason of their temperaments, could get relief. But Yahmose has always been timid, easily ruled, and with never enough courage to rebel. He loved Imhotep and worked hard to please him, and Imhotep found him well-meaning but stupid and slow. He despised him. Satipy, too, treated Yahmose with all of the scorn of a bullying nature. Slowly his burden of resentment, concealed but deeply felt, grew heavier. The meeker he seemed, the more his inward anger grew.
‘And then, just when Yahmose was hoping at last to reap the reward of his industry and diligence, to be recognized and associated with his father, Nofret came. It was Nofret, and perhaps Nofret’s beauty, that kindled the final spark. She attacked the manhood of all three brothers. She touched Sobek on the raw by her scorn of him as a fool, she infuriated Ipy by treating him as a truculent child without any claim to manhood, and she showed Yahmose that he was something less than a man in her eyes. It was after Nofret came that Satipy’s tongue finally goaded Yahmose beyond endurance. It was her jeers, her taunt that she was a better man than he, that finally sapped his self-control. He met Nofret on this path and–driven beyond endurance–he threw her down.’
‘But it was Satipy–’
‘No, no, Renisenb. That is where you were all wrong. From down below Satipy saw it happen. Now do you understand?’
‘But Yahmose was with you on the cultivation.’
‘Yes, for the last hour. But do you not realize, Renisenb, that Nofret’s body was cold. You felt her cheek yourself. You thought she had fallen a few moments before–but that was impossible. She had been dead at least two hours, otherwise, in that hot sun, her face could never have felt cold to your touch. Satipy saw it happen. Satipy hung around, fearful, uncertain what to do; then she saw you coming and tried to head you off.’
‘Hori, when did you know all this?’
‘I guessed fairly soon. It was Satipy’s behaviour that told me. She was obviously going about in deadly fear of someone or something–and I was fairly soon convinced that the person she feared was Yahmose. She stopped bullying him and instead was eager to obey him in every way. It had been, you see, a terrible shock to her. Yahmose, whom she despised as the meekest of men, had actually been the one to kill Nofret. It turned Satipy’s world upside down. Like most bullying women, she was a coward. This new Yahmose terrified her. In her fear she began to talk in her sleep. Yahmose soon realized that she was a danger to him…
‘And now, Renisenb, you can realize the truth of what you saw that day with your own eyes. It was not a spirit Satipy saw that caused her to fall. She saw what you saw today. She saw in the face of the man following her–her own husband–the intention to throw her down as he had thrown that other woman. In her fear she backed away from him and fell. And when, with her dying lips, she shaped the word Nofret, she was trying to tell you that Yahmose killed Nofret.’
Hori paused and then went on:
‘Esa came on the truth because of an entirely irrelevant remark made by Henet. Henet complained that I did not look at her, but as though I saw something behind her that was not there. She went on to speak of Satipy. In a flash Esa saw how much simpler the whole thing was than we had thought. Satipy did not look at something behind Yahmose–it was Yahmose himself she saw. To test her idea, Esa introduced the subject in a rambling way which could mean nothing to anyone except Yahmose himself–and only to him if what she suspected was true. Her words surprised him and he