The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [72]
It seems like a film from this distance. I remember one cold day, I’d stayed on and skipped an Alexandria boat, and the thought was going through my head over and over that there was a terrible crime about to happen in Boston, and only I could stop it. Not just the old crimes I was trying to uncover, but something happening right then and there under my nose: the murder of this girl’s soul, forced to marry for her father’s social position, father and daughter defrauded by this English invert. I was torn in pieces trying to keep straight what I knew, what I suspected, what I should reveal and what I should hide, how to protect her, how to win her, or both.
That cold day I go to the house to find her, but Finneran’s there, and when he answers the door he thinks I’ve come to see him of course (doesn’t know I’ve been squiring her around), and I can’t figure out how to explain otherwise, and so we go to his study and we talk about Trilipush. I tell him more than I intended, but circumstances are different, because Finneran’s already suspicious about Trilipush before I open my mouth.
Two days earlier, Finneran says, he’d word that Trilipush was stuck in Cairo, delayed on his trip to the tomb site because of a last-minute bureaucratic snag, and he wanted the Partnership’s money sent to Cairo, rather than to the town closer to the excavation. Fine, thinks Finneran, six of one to him, ready to comply, but then Professor Terbroogan from Harvard has just called on Finneran, that very same cold day, came by special to tell Finneran (with Dutch vengeance) that Oxford had just confirmed by cable that no Trilipush was ever educated there, and for what Terbroogan’s opinion is worth, Trilipush has a “zero percent” chance of finding what he’s promised his backers, the whole expedition is doomed. “He said that, Harry. Doomed.” Finneran’s keeping a brave face, but he’s rolling that cigar back and forth across his mouth pretty speedy-like. He asks if I knew about the Oxford “rumour.” Terbroogan hadn’t revealed that I helped him find this information (though I reminded myself that I could now send him a bill for services rendered), but I wasn’t ashamed of the truth. “Yes, I suspected it,” I tell Finneran. “Well, Jesus Christ dancing on the cross!” he shouts, and the cigar falls onto his desk. “What the hell else do you suspect? What did I hire you for? To hear things from professors?” Finneran was worried, understandably: his money, his daughter, his friends’ money, the possibility that he’d very publicly backed a fraud. I liked how someone else had brought the bad news, as there was too much at stake for me to be the bearer. But it certainly meant that my “all-clear” background investigation on Trilipush (sitting completed in my hotel room since my first night in Boston) would require a few more days’ thought and editing. My position was only getting more complicated. “We’ll see, Finneran,” I said. “Let’s not jump to conclusions yet. Records can be wrong.”
“And if they’re not? What about poor Margaret’s feelings for this man?” he moans pathetically, after sitting in silence for a bit, fighting off his urge to panic. “She loves him, you know, Ferrell. I can’t stand in the way of that, Oxford or not.” In other words, I still have money riding on this man.
“Where’s your daughter now?” I ask. And I swear to you, Macy, this great big man looks like he’s going to cry like a girl. He looks away, stands up, turns his back to me, fiddles