The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [15]
The press surrounded the house, demanding interviews. I was determined to have a little chat with Kevin O’Connell, but it would have been impossible to admit him without arousing the competitive spirit of his fellow villains, so Ramses and Emerson smuggled him into the house after dark, through the coalhole. He was still rather smudgy when Emerson brought him to the library and offered him a whiskey and soda.
I was at a loss to understand Emerson’s remarkable forbearance with regard to Kevin, whom he had always regarded as an infernal nuisance, but I had come round to his point of view; if Kevin had withheld the letter, Sethos would have sent copies to other newspapers. I therefore accepted Kevin’s effusive apologies with only a touch of hauteur.
“Indeed, Mrs. Emerson, me dear, I’d never have allowed the letter to be published if I had known you would take it badly,” he protested. “It seemed to me a gentlemanly and graceful—”
“Oh, bah,” I exclaimed. “Never mind the excuses, Kevin, I admit that you had little choice in the matter. However, the least you can do to make amends is to tell us everything you know about that impertinent missive.”
“I can do better than that.” Kevin took an envelope from his breast pocket. “I brought the original.”
“How did you manage to get it back from Scotland Yard?” I asked.
“By bribery and corruption,” said Kevin with a cheeky grin. “It is only on loan, Mrs. E., so make the most of your time. I assured my—er—friend that I would return it to him before morning.”
After perusing the letter I passed it on to Emerson. “We might have known Sethos would leave no useful clue,” I said in disgust. “The paper is of the sort that can be purchased at any stationer’s. The message is not even written by hand, but on a typewriting machine.”
“A Royal,” said Ramses, looking over his father’s shoulder. “It is one of the latest models, with a ball-bearing one-track rail—”
“That is a safe pronouncement, since none of us can prove you wrong,” I remarked with a certain degree of sarcasm.
“I believe I am not wrong, though,” said my son calmly. “I have made a study of typewriting machines, since they are already in common use and will eventually, I daresay, entirely replace—”
“The signature is handwritten,” David said, in an attempt, no doubt, to change the subject. Ramses does have a habit of running on and on.
“In hieroglyphs,” Emerson growled. “What an incredible ego the man has! He has even enclosed his name in a cartouche, a privilege reserved for royalty.”
Kevin was beginning to show signs of impatience. “Forgive me, Mrs. E., but I promised my confederate I would get this back to him by midnight tonight. He would be the first to be suspected if it were missing and then I might lose a valuable source of information.”
There were still a few confounded reporters hanging about the following day, when we expected Evelyn and Walter. Having dispatched the carriage to the railroad station in order to meet the train, we waited for an appropriate interval; Emerson then emerged, picked up a reporter at random, carried him across the street into the park, and threw him into the pond. This served to distract the rest of the wretches, so that Evelyn, Walter, and Lia, as I must call her, were able to enter the house unassaulted.
Walter declined tea in favor of whiskey and soda, but his reaction to the affair was less outraged than I had feared it would be. As he remarked to his wife, “We ought to be accustomed to it, Evelyn; our dear Amelia makes a habit of such things.”
“You cannot blame this on Amelia,” Evelyn said firmly.
“I can,