• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1031 0

the tomb together the next chance they could, but then Ralph got sent off to fight in Turkey, which was just awful, while Marlowe had to stay in Egypt and wait, which he did, of course, because they were best chums from Oxford, and blood brothers, but for a while in Turkey, Ralph was separated from his men, and back in Egypt they actually thought he was dead, and Ralph had to make it home practically alone, and when he finally made his way back to Egypt, well just a few days before that, poor Marlowe had gone missing, but had left this Fragment C in his tent, and Ralph took it for safekeeping, not knowing if Marlowe was alive or not, and then when he had to accept that Marlowe was dead, Ralph just wanted to put all the pain of the War behind him, so he brought Fragment C with him to Boston, and that’s what made his scholarly reputation and got him a job at Harvard, and— oh, just listen to me go on. You can imagine the effect of all these adventure stories on a naïve young Boston girl, Harry.”

Indeed I could, but Margaret was simply not a naïve young girl, and so I actually had a bit of trouble imagining the effect they had on her. Did she know she was repeating something absolutely ludicrous? Did it not occur to her that the story was filled with lies and impossibilities and probably hid two corpses in its forged folds? People conveniently missing in Turkey and Egypt? Loyal friends waiting for each other before trying to dig up and share pots of gold? Treasure maps readily available in missing men’s tents? Did she think I believed it? And, Macy, I must stress that I didn’t tell her anything of my suspicions. I was honourable to my clients and to the innocent. Judge me from this: I could’ve sold out Trilipush a thousand times to your aunt, but I didn’t.

But, for the record, here’s what I was thinking, and pretty canny, if you ask me: if indeed there was a hidden fortune in a hole that Marlowe and Trilipush had found, it was looking more and more that Trilipush—impoverished landed gentry with forged academic records—had killed Marlowe for it and then escaped to America while the heat died down. There he made enough of a showy reputation for himself among the local gullibles to manipulate some money to go back and dig up his treasure. And now, 1922, he plainly would never be coming back to Boston from this second expedition. This girl had been used, her family money taken on the strength of his English manner, and now he was done with her. Aside from her money, what else would he want with her? He was certainly an invert, like Marlowe and Quint, I knew that even then, before I’d met him. Then it occurred to me: probably he’d been Marlowe’s high-class fancy man before going off to Egypt; probably Trilipush was Marlowe’s discreetly kept amusement all the way back at Oxford, not a student obviously, just living in Marlowe’s world, taking Marlowe’s money in exchange for illicit affections. That explained witnesses to his presence there but no official record. Then Trilipush joins up for the War with Marlowe in exchange for continued payments, and heads off to Egypt with him, where they gallivant about in the English fashion. But then he gets sent to Turkey without his rich protector, too bad. Back he comes (or runs, more likely) from the Turkish battles to discover to his horror that in his absence poor, young, Egypt-loving digger Paul Caldwell (an Australian of all things, thinks the bankrupt but still snobbish English pansy) has become the innocent object of Marlowe’s amorous obsessions. Take it a step further: maybe Trilipush hadn’t found the treasure map with Marlowe at all: maybe Marlowe and Caldwell had found it while Trilipush was in Turkey. Trilipush, back from Gallipoli, surprises the pair and, motivated by jealousy of his Juliet and greed over their secret find in the desert, kills both Marlowe and Caldwell, hides their bodies, and goes to the USA. Well, I’d some work ahead of me to prove all this, and I still didn’t understand why his military records had been suppressed, but this shows how early I’d already understood