The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [130]
“Lia!” David exclaimed.
“It’s true, isn’t it? I don’t know why men find these things so embarrassing! There are only two things that could have brought Maude out of the house that night: an invitation from a man she loved, or a threat from a man who had some hold over her.”
“Good God,” Ramses said helplessly. His face was burning. Perhaps it was his mother who had mentioned poor Maude’s infatuation, but he feared Lia had got the information, along with a plethora of embarrassing commentary, from Nefret. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“Something sensible, I hope,” said his cousin. “You didn’t do anything to encourage her, did you? I thought not. Then why do you feel guilty? Is my syllogism right or not?”
“Was that a syllogism?” He got a grip on himself. “All right, I see where you’re going. You’ve overlooked something, though. What if she received a message purporting to be from me?”
“Unlikely in the extreme,” Lia said, shaking her head so decidedly that her bright curls sparkled in the sunlight. “You saw a good deal of one another during the daytime and evening hours. If you wanted to arrange a rendezvous, you had only to whisper a word in her ear. She’d have to be pretty stupid to respond to a written message. Anyhow,” she went on, before either of the men could object to this dubious generalization, “too many other unpleasant incidents have occurred for this to be unrelated. I think she knew something about those incidents and their perpetrator. Maybe she threatened to expose him. Maybe he realized her loyalty to him had been weakened by her love for another man—a man whom he had already attacked.”
“Loyalty to whom?” David demanded. “You can’t be referring to her brother!”
“Why not?” She turned to Ramses, her eyes narrowed. “You thought of it too, didn’t you?”
He put his cup in the saucer and leaned back.
“Allow me to commend you for having a mind almost as suspicious as mine. I suspect everybody, including Jack. He wouldn’t even have to lure her out of the house. She might have been killed in her own room, or in the courtyard. No one looked for bloodstains. The servants don’t sleep in the house and the aunt wouldn’t notice a full-scale war. He had all night to dispose of the body and return home.”
“That would mean Jack was the one who shot at Aunt Amelia and arranged the other accidents,” David said thoughtfully. “Any idea why?”
“Mr. Vandergelt suggested one possible motive,” Ramses said, “that the accidents were designed to drive us away from Zawaiet el ’Aryan. It was pure luck that none of them resulted in a serious injury. Had one of us been killed or badly hurt, Father might have canceled the excavation.”
“That suggests that there is something at the site this person doesn’t want found. A tomb?”
“Zawaiet isn’t the Valley of the Kings or even Giza, David. It’s one of the most unpromising sites we’ve ever explored; there’s nothing there but an empty collapsing pyramid and cemeteries of poor graves. Evidence of a crime, perhaps? Mother does have a gift for finding corpses. ‘Every year, another dead body,’ as Abdullah used to say.”
Lia’s face softened. “Dear Abdullah. Aunt Amelia is even more determined to clear his name than David’s.”
“We’ve rather lost sight of that issue recently,” Ramses admitted. “I’m still not entirely convinced that the attacks on us are unrelated to the forgeries, but I’ll be damned if I can see how they are related. We were getting absolutely nowhere with our investigation. The point about Zawaiet is that Jack worked there for several months last year. He is one of the most likely persons to have found something, or buried someone, or—or God knows what!”
“He wasn’t the only one,” David pointed out. “Mr. Reisner and his crew were there too.”
“Mr. Reisner isn’t here. Jack is. Only two other members of that crew are presently at Giza, Mr. Fisher and Geoffrey. Nefret’s …” It was the first time he had said it. “Nefret’s husband.”
“I am indebted to you and Cyrus for rallying round this evening,” I said to Katherine. “I am afraid it may