McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [174]
I took her picture that afternoon, but two days passed before I developed it.
Another American, a girl from Rapid City, had come to visit us at the expedition house. Her name was Emily Whitfield and she was a cousin of Mallick’s wife or a second cousin or some such thing, some relative Mallick found impossible to send away. She was twenty-nine years old, which is two years younger than I, unremarkable looking, with short black hair and blue eyes. Because of our similar ages there’d been some mild teasing before she arrived. “High time you met the right girl,” Mallick had said, but the minute I saw Miss Whitfield I knew she wasn’t that. I’ve never known if I believe in love at first sight, but I’ve had a fair amount of experience with the opposite.
Patwin had not looked forward to Miss Whitfield’s visit, despite the obvious appeal of a new face in a confined set. “She will need to be taken everywhere and her feelings will often be hurt by one thing or another,” Patwin had predicted. Patwin prided himself on knowing women, although when that would have happened I really could not say. “She’ll find it all very dirty and our facilities insupportable. She’ll never have stood before.” And then Patwin had a coughing fit; it was such a rude thing to have said in Miss Jackson’s presence.
But Miss Whitfield was proving entirely game. Davis took her to see the baby skeletons and he said she made no comment, lit an unmoved cigarette. She was actually an authoress and quite successful, according to Mallick, who learned it from his wife. Five books so far, books in which people are killed in clever and unusual ways, murderers unmasked by people even cleverer. She was about to set a book at a dig such as ours; it’s why she’d come. Mallick told me to take her along and show her the tomb, so she was there when I took my picture. I pointed out an arresting detail or two—the way the workmen chant as they haul the rubble out of the chamber, the rags they tie around their heads, their seeping eyes. She didn’t seem terribly interested.
We brought the smell of sweat and flesh with us into the tomb. Most people would have instinctively known to whisper. Not Miss Whitfield. “I thought it would be grander,” she said when we were inside the second chamber. “I didn’t picture mud.” She lifted a hand to her hair and when she lowered it again there was a streak of dust running from the hairline down her temple. It gave her a friendlier, franker look, but like Mallick’s eyes, this proved deceiving. What she really wanted to know was whether there were tensions in the expedition house. “You all live so cheek-to-jowl. It must drive you crazy sometimes. There must be little, annoying habits that send you right around the bend.”
“Actually things go very smoothly,” I told her. “Sorry to disappoint.” I set up for the picture. I dragged a stool over and stood on it. Miss Whitfield was at my elbow. Davis was in a corner of the chamber on his knees, pouring wax and covering it with cloth. Bits of shell and stone had been found there in a pattern; when the wax dried he would lift them out without disturbing their placement.
Miss Whitfield softened her voice so he wouldn’t hear her. She was so close I could smell the cigarette smoke lingering on her skin. “But if you did murder someone,” she said, “would it more likely be Mr. Patwin or Mr. Davis?” She might have been asking this at the exact moment I got my shot. Afterward she looked closely at the priestess’s skull. “I hear Tut-ankh-Amen’s skull was bashed in at the back,” she said.
Later that night Patwin complained that I was blocking his light while he tried to read. I told him it was interesting that he thought the light belonged to him. I said, That’s an interesting