The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [67]
Do I wish your family’s story ended there, Macy? Part of me does, that’s the truth. But it’s hard. If I hadn’t taken him on as a client, if I’d just walked out the door, read the prospectus at my hotel, had a bellboy return it for me, set off for New York the next day and Egypt five days later, what would’ve ended different? It’s a hard score to tally up for certain, no matter what everyone’s recollections say, and I’d sure like to read anything else you might’ve found after your aunt’s death, any letters or journals that’d help me understand what else you know about all this. But one thing is certain: if your aunt had married Ralph Trilipush, a lot of lives were going to be built on lies in that household, and that’s worse than anything. My actions prevented that. I’m proud of that. The fellow lucky enough to marry your aunt Margaret certainly owes me some gratitude. And I’m sure, after a while, she recalled my services fondly as well. I saved her, at a steep cost to myself.
As it was, I was walking down the main hall, picking up my coat, when Margaret interrupts us at the door, those little dogs weaving in between our ankles, and she says she wants to offer me a lemonade, it’s rude of Daddy to shove me out the door without one, so she’ll entertain me now and see me out after that. Her father laughs, indulges her as easy as breathing, shakes my hand, and retreats to his study, but leaves the door open.
Now, your aunt had three moods, if I may be honest. I grew to know her pretty well over the nearly two months I stayed in Boston, conducting my investigations. I don’t know what she might’ve told you over the years. I don’t compliment myself that I made a permanent impression on her, but at the time, I won’t say she was indifferent to me.
Three moods: afternoons, like the day I met her, she was a sharp one. She could make you laugh, she could charm you, she could treat you like you were someone fascinating, and of course, she was a rich young woman (or so it appeared, I didn’t yet see the plastered-over cracks in her father’s world), and the attentions of rich young women do feel nice; I know enough of human psychology to know that’s a pretty unbreakable law. That afternoon, she sat in front of the fire with her little dogs, the three of them all curled up together on a sort of long sofa across from me, and she says, “Now let’s have a lemonade, and you can tell me all about Australia, where everyone eats kangaroos, right?” And she gave me such a little look, well, no one could’ve resisted that invitation. And while you wouldn’t’ve taken her pretended ignorance seriously, you would’ve taken her very seriously as a woman, even though she was probably only twenty or a bit more. How much could she’ve known of the world at twenty? Nothing, you’d think. But then how’d she have such charm? The rich, the rich, the rich, even the new ones. They have their ways. Of course, I’m singing to the choir, aren’t I, Macy?
She questioned me with a sly look in her eye, that afternoon, about my business in the USA, and I told her very little, just asked if her beloved ever mentioned an Australian soldier named Paul Caldwell. No, she’d never heard the name. I did tell her a bit about poor old Paul the Egypt lover, what life’s like when you’re not born with every advantage, as she and Trilipush’d been. “Oh, Mr. Ferrell, you are shaming me terribly,” she said, pretending to look ashamed. “But Daddy, you know, came over here with almost nothing, so it’s not how you think at all. We’re really very simple