The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [177]
“No, no, not at all. You are confused.”
“She told me to throw this in your face.” Ferrell showed me the last cable I sent you, urging you to remain calm, telling you I did not believe the break between us was your will. He had several letters I had written you. Why did you give them to him, Margaret?
CABLE. LUXOR TO MARGARET FINNERAN,
BOSTON, 30 NOV. 1922, 9.33 A.M. RECEIVED YOUR LETTER OF 15 NOV. WILL DISREGARD FALSE CABLE OF 29 NOV. FERRELL LIAR. ALL WILL BE WELL. ETERNALLY YOURS IN ANY AND ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, NO MATTER.
YOUR RMT.
“She is a marvellous woman,” he mused, leered, implied personal knowledge of you. “Tragic, though, her sickness.”
“Curable,” I said, disgusted at his intrusion into our life.
“Curable? I don’t know. Opium’s a difficult burden to shake, and when I saw her last, she—”
“Opium?” I admit he startled me with the vast enormity of some of his lies, and so he stuck to this one. “Don’t make me laugh, Trilipush. I know men like you. I’m surprised to hear you’re going back, going through with the wedding. Why bother? You have your treasure, you got Finneran and his friends to pay your way here, you’re done. Why marry her now? Or is that something you need? You like her fuzzed up with opium, I’m sure, easy camouflage for your depravity. A pity. She’s a beautiful woman. I left her sighing my name in her bed, you know, and I can tell you it’s a waste to drug her and turn her into camouflage for you and your boys. I say, Trilipush, you look jealous. Now why’s that, I wonder? Did you think the drugs alone would keep her satisfied? How little you know of women, of course.”
Margaret, he described you as lovers, embracing in your room on Commonwealth Avenue, described you in great detail, your moan and sigh, your shape, the colour of your limbs. I choose not to believe this tale—how could I do otherwise? It makes no sense to me, even if, as he insisted, you have been taken prisoner by narcotics. That, too, makes no sense to me. No, I know enough about policemen and their ways. If they think you are hiding something, they will buffet you with painful lies until you dislodge what they seek. “Harry,” you cried out, he said, leaning back in his seat and pressing his fingertips together, rolling his eyes and licking his dry lips at me. “Harry, you are my one and only handsome man.”
I kept my dignity, though in better health I would have thrashed him for you. I could have shot him, I suppose, but we were in public, and I have not fired my Webley in years. Still, the prospect of my return to Boston—to you—brought out the devil in him: “I can have you killed, Trilipush. If I tell O’Toole you stole his money, your life is through. Stay away from her, and I’ll let you live.” And he tried bribery: “Pity, Trilipush. Caldwell is owed a great deal of money. If you tell me how to find his remains, we could share that money.”
And so we must leave Ferrell behind. He is threatening to turn up at my work site with policemen and dogs, for reasons beyond any logic. It does not matter. I am sorry that he has bothered you, has tried to pollute the limpid truth of our lives. I will not think another moment of what he said of you. I beg of you to dispel him with a wave of your lovely hand.
But why did he have that cable? Did you really give it to him, rejecting it with a laugh, as he claims? Did you give him my letters? It hardly matters now. Once it would have. Forget it, love. Forget Ferrell’s muddy footprints. This journal is the only letter you need from me.
For, observe: after all his fuss, what did this grimy archaeologist of divorce and insurance fraud want from me? My confirmation of fairy tales of murdered men and your father fleeing debts. All madness, the fantasies of fabulist Ferrell. He must be ignored, dearest, or everything will be blurred, the truth, the tomb, my immortal accomplishment.
At the end of it all, my little tête-à-tête with the detective almost made me happy. Having waited so long for his arrival in some anxiety, and then to find at the end that one is pursued for