Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [108]
“There is a bump,” Nefret announced, probing a spot on the left side of Barton’s head. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Barton’s glazed stare was suggestive of concussion but Ramses felt sure it wasn’t the bump on the head that had addled his brains. He finally got the word out. “Uh—three.”
“Good. Why don’t you come back to the boat with us and let me give you a proper examination. Those cuts ought to be disinfected.”
The house the Metropolitan people had built was closer, but by then Barton would have agreed to accompany Nefret into the fires of hell. He made only a feeble protest. “It’s too much trouble . . .”
“It’s the least we can do,” Ramses said. “You saved my wife from serious injury. Can you make it back to Deir el Bahri?”
“Sure.”
“Good. I’ll meet you there.”
Nefret bit off a particularly ripe swearword as he turned toward the cliff face. Barton’s eyes widened. “Are you going up there? What for? It was an accident, wasn’t it? I mean, the fellow must have been drunk or . . . no, Moslems don’t drink, do they? Sick, maybe or . . . He was leaning against that rock, and it fell, and then he . . . It must have been an accident!”
Ramses did not reply. The climb was easier this time, and before long he had reached the place from which he was sure the missile had come—the path leading along the side of the cliff from Deir el Medina to the Valley of the Kings. It had been used by the men who lived in the village and worked in the royal tombs almost four thousand years ago. There was no one in sight in either direction when he climbed onto the level. He looked down. Nefret and Barton were still there; he’d known she wouldn’t leave the spot until she was sure he was safe. She raised her arm in salute, and he waved back, gesturing them to proceed on their way.
The surface of the path was disturbed by the passage of feet, shod and unshod, animal and human. There were no distinctive prints. At one spot a fresh break showed pale and clean, where a section of rock had been levered away. It wouldn’t have required much time or effort to do the job, nor would there have been any reason to suspect foul play unless one was looking for evidence of it. Bits of the time-weathered rock were always crumbling and falling. But the man had used a lever of some sort. The marks were there. And there were other marks, scuffed and rubbed, but not entirely obliterated.
Ramses met only one person as he wended his way toward Deir el Bahri—a jovial villain from Gurneh, who greeted him without surprise, gave him a knowing grin, and asked if he was looking for lost tombs.
He went the long way round, scrambling down the steep but safe path behind the north side of the temple. Nefret and Barton were waiting, with Jamil and the horses, when he reached the level of the second terrace.
“Find anything?” the American asked.
“No.”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that I’ve heard so many stories about you folks . . . It was an accident?”
“No doubt.” Ramses turned to Jamil. Nefret must have told him what had happened; he looked more alert than Ramses had ever seen him. “Someone will have to go to Luxor, Jamil. The—er—accident must be reported to the police.”
“They will do nothing,” Jamil said indifferently.
He was probably right. Ramses thought guiltily of the dead man, abandoned and prey to predators, but the idea of retrieving the battered remains was too much even for him.
“Nevertheless, they must be told,” he said. “And at once.”
At Nefret’s suggestion, he sent one of the gaffirs, motivating him with a generous tip. Jamil would stop off in every coffee shop in Luxor before he went to the taftish, if he bothered to go there at all.
They had drinks in the saloon while Nefret worked on Barton. He had turned bright pink, like a schoolboy, when she insisted he remove his shirt. His injuries were superficial—cuts and abrasions and bruises, almost all of them on his back. Nursing his own whiskey, Ramses made courteous conversation and thought inhospitable thoughts.
But it was hard