The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [188]
I blamed myself then for some of this, and I still do. If I hadn’t let Trilipush go his way two days earlier, he would’ve been alive and facing a more appropriate justice than murder at the hands of his ex-employee. If I could’ve relied on my army of watchers, if I’d been able to find Finneran at the excavation site, I could’ve—well, I don’t rightly know what I could’ve done. Trilipush was a murderer, after all, and knew he was nearly caught, so he didn’t see me as his protector, though he should’ve done. Justice protects us as well as punishes us, Macy. Trilipush could’ve yet saved himself from his rough and unnecessary end, if he’d turned himself in to me, but the proud ones never do, and often they’d rather die than be caught.
The police interrogations of the Egyptian (I can’t find his name in my notes—frustrating to me as a historian and an embarrassing lapse on my part as detective, I admit) were as harsh as they could legally be, and I participated to the extent my expertise in the case and in criminal psychology could be of assistance. The suspect denied any knowledge of the murders, no surprise, claimed Trilipush’d given him the cigars and the gramophone as gifts back in November. Not impossible, said one of the police inspectors, but then as questioning proceeded, the Arab’s story changed, and at one point he admitted to assaulting Trilipush violently (more than once, he added later) and stealing the gramophone, as if these half-truths were going to bring his predicament to an easy end. All he accomplished with them, though, was losing the support of those few listeners who still generously hoped he might be innocent of the crimes. Later, he retracted even that limited confession of violence, until his compiled stories had become a stew of incompatible nonsense. Even though he nearly admitted to the killings (and if you knew how to listen, the confession was clear), he never did reveal where he’d hidden the bodies. Also, he insisted on one point with unshakable tenacity, no matter how harsh the interrogation: he maintained there’d never been any trea-sure at all, that Trilipush had never found a single thing. Now this claim was so far distant from the facts that it cast as unbelievable every single word of the desperate man. But he clung to this one lie so insanely that it became apparent that he was simply never going to reveal which cousin or cache he’d delivered the treasure to.
The police wanted that treasure, and you can be sure they pressed him hard on this point. But the Gippo just kept saying to me, “You have been there? Then you know it is empty.” Well, of course it’s empty, Abdul: you emptied it. In the end, he stubbornly refused a signed confession for any of it, which I’m certain resulted in an even harsher sentence than if he’d seen fit to cooperate.
The local authorities didn’t need much convincing from me. The murder of two Westerners at the hands of a native, in this period of huge touristic interest in Egypt (thanks to Carter’s good work)—shilly-shallying wouldn’t be tolerated, and the Egyptian Government as well as the American and English consuls were most gratified with the fair and speedy trial and appropriate sentence.
As for me, if I was unable to answer with unshakable certainty all of my clients’ questions, if I did not find any of the four bodies it had become my business to find, at least in this one case I was instrumental in identifying, apprehending, and escorting the malefactor to his punishment. The English and Australian consuls were also grateful for my accountings of the events of 1918.
How tidy it would be if we’d found Caldwell’s and Marlowe’s remains, if we had Trilipush’s and Finneran’s bodies, and had been present to witness this Egyptian walking away from them, his hands dripping blood! Fairy tales, Macy. Oh, no, my colleague, rare is the criminal who doesn’t demand a little thought from the detective to complete the story. But there could be no doubt what had happened, the history detailed at trial and in the enclosed Press clipping: