The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [132]
When they reached the house Sir Edward was there, bland and smiling as usual. The discussion that followed was typical of their family talks—full of sound and fury (most of it from his father) but surprisingly productive in the end. Two days of uninterrupted sight-seeing and entertainment would have to suffice, and if Lia didn’t like it (he was fairly sure she wouldn’t) she would have to lump it.
Ramses knew why his father was willing to take the time. He would sacrifice two days in order to have them out of the way when he went after the murderers. The girl’s death had been the last straw for Emerson. Ramses had seen that look on his father’s face before, and he knew what it portended.
Once they had agreed, his mother ordered them all off to bed. Ramses, putting the papyrus into its container, was the last to leave the room, or so he believed until he saw his father standing in the doorway.
“Yes, sir?” he inquired, wondering if he would ever be old enough to abandon that form of address.
“I thought you might need a bit of help with that,” his father said. “How is your hand?”
“It’s all right, sir. I could leave off the cursed bandage anytime if Nefret would allow me.”
“She takes good care of you boys. And you of her.”
“We try. It is damned difficult. You know how she is.”
“I have had years of experience dealing with determined females,” his father said with a faint smile. “But we wouldn’t—er—care so much for them if they were not like that, would we?”
“Love” was the word he meant. Why couldn’t he say it? Ramses wondered. Presumably he said it to his wife.
“No,” he agreed.
“Er—you managed to spare her a most distressing scene tonight. It was—er—distressing for you too. And for David. Well done, both of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Good night, my boy.”
“Good night, sir.”
David had refused to wait outside the dirty little room where the girl’s body lay. He had stood at Ramses’s side when the worn sheet was pulled back and he had waited, swallowing down the bile that kept rising in his throat, until Ramses was ready to go.
But when Ramses went later to Nefret’s door, he heard David’s voice, low-pitched and intense, and he left without knocking. That night he killed David again, digging his fingers deep into his friend’s throat and smashing his head against the stone floor. He woke with a strangled cry and lay sleepless until dawn, with his murderer’s hands covering his face.
:
Breakfast was not a pleasant occasion, despite my efforts to be cheery. Walter kept shooting apologetic glances at his daughter, Ramses looked like a ghost and David like a man with some guilty secret on his conscience—though I could not imagine what it might be, since the poor boy was one of the most harmless individuals I had ever known. From time to time a spasm of rage distorted Emerson’s handsome face, and I knew he was picturing endless processions of Mr. Davis’s clumsy-footed friends bumbling into the burial chamber of the new tomb. At least our plan would keep Emerson away from the Valley, which was all to the good.
Lia had been informed of that plan by her parents in the privacy of their room. According to Evelyn—who was looking worn and unhappy—she had taken it more quietly than they had expected. I had my forebodings, however. Lia did not in the least resemble her uncle, but that morning there was something strangely familiar about the set of her chin.
Sir Edward put himself out to be charming, however, and between his efforts and mine the atmosphere gradually improved. We were to spend the whole day away, starting at the temples of the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu and working our way back to Gurneh, where we had been invited to lunch with Abdullah and his family.
I will not bore the Reader with descriptions of the sights of Luxor. They can be found, not only in my earlier volumes, but in Baedeker. To say we had become blasé about them would not be entirely accurate, for I will never tire of any monument in Egypt; but I believe our pleasure