The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [100]
In the past I had had occasion to try several methods of organizing my ideas, but had not found them useful, probably because my brain works too swiftly to be easily organized. I decided to attempt a new technique, writing down first the questions that remained unanswered and next to each a possible means of approach. I therefore ruled a sheet of paper into two neat columns and headed one QUESTIONS and the other WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM.
The first question, in chronological order, concerned the death of the night watchman, so I wrote:
I. ‘Who is Ayesha, and where and how did Emerson know her? Question Ayesha . . .’
The words were not the ones I had meant to write. I scratched them out.
Emerson looked up from his work. ‘Your pen needs mending, my dear.’
‘Thank you for mentioning it, Emerson.’
I began again.
I. ‘Was the death of the night watchman the result of natural causes?’ Next to it I wrote, ‘Request the Home Secretary to exhume the body?’
I put a question mark after it because I doubted the Home Secretary, who was, after all, only a man, would respond to such a sensible suggestion without more evidence of foul play than I was able to offer.
2. ‘What is the meaning, if any, of the peculiar scraps of odds and ends found near the body?’
The obvious course of action to pursue here was to ask Mr Budge when the room had last been swept. The debris might have been the meaningless accumulation of days or weeks (or months, to judge by what I had seen of Budge’s housekeeping).
3. ‘Were the splashes of dark liquid human blood?’
Inquire of Inspector Cuff? I meant to do so, though I did not expect significant results. The inept police might not have noticed the dried liquid, and Inspector Cuff might not tell me the truth.
That seemed to take care of questions relating to the night watchman. I proceeded, therefore, to the next incident, the murder of Mr Oldacre.
4. ‘Was he a user of drugs? And, if the answer was in the affirmative, was he an habitué of the opium den we had visited?’
Ask Inspector Cuff. And hope that for once he would give over smiling and bowing and answer a simple question.
Or – a useful thought! – ask Mr Wilson. He had been acquainted with the dead man. Miss Minton, who seemed to know everything Mr Wilson knew, was another possible source of information. In fact, since she was a woman, it behooved me to try her first, since I was more likely to get a sensible answer from her.
5. ‘Was he a blackmailer? Whom was he blackmailing, and for what offence?’
It was unlikely in the extreme that Inspector Cuff would answer those questions, even if he knew the answers. Again, Mr Wilson and Miss Minton might respond to interrogation.
Now inspired and feeling the intellectual juices flowing freely, I dashed off question after question.
6. ‘Who is the lunatic in the leopard skin?’ The obvious solution was to catch the scoundrel in the act, but that was not as easy as it seemed. Emerson had already tried and failed; after the riot at the Museum, the fellow might not show his face in public again. Lure him out into the open, then, and set an ambush. But how? Nothing useful occurred to me at the moment, so I put that aside for the time being and went on to the next question.
7. ‘Who sent the shawabtys to Emerson and the rest? Was it the same lunatic?’ There seemed no action I could take to learn the answer, but I was inclined to believe the answer was yes. Thus far the lunatic had committed no act of violence. The warning of the shawabtys had the same hallmark as his activities in the Museum – sinister in appearance and harmless in actuality. Like Ramses, I was more and more inclined to think the fellow was not a lunatic at all, but a man with a distorted sense of humour and the means to indulge it. As Ramses had said (curse the child) royal shawabtys were not easily procured.
The weight of the evidence, such as it was, seemed to point to Lord Liverpool or Lord St John or one of their ‘set.’ Yet there are, thanks to the lawless looting of ancient Near