The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters [129]
I reached for Arthur’s wrist. “You are flushed,” I said. “You are becoming overexcited. We had better adjourn.”
“No, no.” The sick man took hold of my hand. His golden beard had been neatly trimmed and his hair arranged. His pallor and emaciation made him handsomer than ever, like a young Keats (except, of course, that the poet was dark).
“You can’t leave the story unfinished,” Arthur went on. “Why did she attack me?”
“Yes, why?” Emerson said, catching me off guard this time. “I’ll warrant even my omniscient wife does not know that.”
“Do you?” I inquired.
“No. It makes no sense. Arthur never saw her; she entered his room while he was asleep, and why she did not use the handy hat pin on him—”
“She had to render him unconscious first,” I explained. “The insertion of the needle into the pertinent spot requires some dexterity; it cannot be done while the victim is awake and capable of resistance. Once she had struck him, she believed him to be dead. Perhaps, also, she was afraid of being interrupted. In Arthur’s case she had to act during the daylight hours. Something may have startled her, and she had only time to hide him under the bed. The question is, why did she feel it necessary to silence you, Arthur? If someone had become suspicious of how Lord Baskerville died, you were the obvious suspect. Your naive folly in telling no one of your identity—”
“But I did tell someone,” Arthur said innocently. “I told Lady Baskerville, barely a week after I came here.”
I exchanged glances with Emerson. He nodded. “So that was it,” he said. “You did not mention that to my wife, when you bared your soul to her.”
The young man flushed. “It hardly seemed cricket. Mrs. Emerson had told me in no uncertain terms what she thought of my stupidity. To admit that Lady Baskerville had encouraged me to retain my anonymity would be to accuse her…” He broke off, looking startled. Handsome Arthur Baskerville might be; wealthy and endowed with all the good things of this world. Oustandingly intelligent he was not.
“Hold on now.” O’Connell’s pencil had been racing across the page. He now looked up. “This is all good stuff, but you are not following the right order. Let’s go back to the murder of Armadale. I presume that she persuaded the poor booby to flee after Baskerville collapsed and then did his lordship in with her hat pin. Hey—wait a minute. No one mentioned a bruise on Baskerville’s face—”
“Dr. Dubois would not notice if the man’s throat had been cut,” I said. “But, to do him justice, he was looking for the cause of death, not a slight swelling on the jaw or chin. Lord Baskerville seems to have been astonishingly prone to self-mutilation. He probably had many bruises, cuts, and scrapes.”
“Good.” O’Connell wrote this down. “So Armadale ran away—disguised himself as a native, I suppose, and hid in the hills. I am surprised he didn’t flee the country.”
“And leave his mistress behind?” I countered. “I doubt that the young man’s mental state was quite normal. The horror of what he thought he had done was enough to turn his brain and render him incapable of decisive action of any kind. If he had wanted to confess, he would have been deterred by the knowledge that by doing so he must incriminate the woman he loved, as an accessory after the fact. But when Lady Baskerville returned he could bear it no longer. He came to her window at night and was seen by Hassan. That foolish man tried to blackmail Lady Baskerville—for of course he had seen which window Armadale approached. She disposed of both of them the next night, Armadale at the cave, where he had told her to meet him, and Hassan on the way back, when he intercepted her. I am not surprised that she appeared so exhausted next day.”
“But what about—”
“No more at the present time,” I said, rising. “Arthur has had all the excitement he ought to have. Mary, will you stay with him and make sure he rests? As soon as the good Sister finishes her well-deserved nap, I will send her to relieve you.”
As we left the room, I saw Arthur reach for Mary’s hand. Mary blushed