The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [142]
“You are rather a dear little thing,” he said with a smile.
She put out her tongue at him. “And you are rather a dear yourself. For a man,” she added, in his mother’s very tone.
David beamed at both of them. “It’s good to be back, and at work. You were right, though, Ramses; that is one confounded boring site! I felt as if I were photographing the same grave over and over—a few bones, a few broken pots, a few scraps of wood or stone. Only the Professor would insist on recording such rubbish.”
“Geoffrey was a great help today,” Lia said. “His Arabic isn’t very good, but he’s a first-rate excavator, even by the Professor’s standards. Slow and meticulous. Ramses—what are you going to do about his idea that you should change places?”
“I wanted to consult both of you about that.” She handed him a cup of tea and he took it with a nod of thanks. “It was a rather outrageous suggestion, and rather out of character for him. Not so much in itself, but that he should propose it without bothering to ask Father and Mr. Reisner—or me, come to that.”
“Yes, but that’s how one has to treat the Professor,” David said, his eyes twinkling. “He is one of the most intimidating people I’ve ever met. If you don’t stand up to him at the start, you’re doomed to perpetual silence and servitude.”
“Like you,” his wife said with a fond look.
“Well, it took me a while,” David admitted. “Quite a while. I agree, Ramses, that Geoffrey may have been a bit out of line, but it was a logical suggestion. One can’t blame him for wanting to be with Nefret.”
“Or wanting me out of the way?”
He hoped he wouldn’t have to explain. Unless they saw it too, he’d have to admit, if only to himself, that he had lost his sense of proportion. There was a long, nerve-racking pause before Lia spoke.
“He’s still a suspect, isn’t he? That hasn’t changed. And—yes—if he’s the one, and he’s not given up his vendetta, he’d have a freer hand if you weren’t there. You are a force to be reckoned with!”
“Only one of several, but the fewer the better, from the point of view of a potential enemy.”
“The two of you make my blood run cold!” David exclaimed. “You’ll be suspecting Nefret next! Look here, hasn’t Geoffrey an alibi for one of the incidents? According to Aunt Amelia, he was with her when the shots were fired.”
“That’s true,” Ramses said. “I’m only looking at the worst-possible scenario, as my dear mother taught me to do. Mr. Reisner won’t be back from the Sudan until the end of the month, but Fisher is starting work shortly. I think I’ll drop by Harvard Camp tomorrow and ask him if he’d like to take me on.”
“Why did I know you were going to say that?” David demanded, running his hand through his hair. “And why did you bother asking our opinion if you’d already made up your mind?”
“I’m opposed,” Lia said decidedly. “That would mean you’d be working with Jack Reynolds. For goodness’ sake, Ramses, he threatened to shoot you!”
“That’s one of the reasons,” Ramses said, and laughed at her indignant look. “Not because he threatened to shoot me, dear—he was very drunk at the time and he seems to have settled down. But because he’s also a suspect, and if I’m working with him I can play Sherlock Holmes, in my famous insinuating and clever fashion. There’s another man working at Giza who is an even more logical suspect. Karl von Bork.”
“Yes, Aunt Amelia mentioned him,” David said. “But aside from the fact that his wife is an artist—”
“That’s just one of Mother’s little notions,” Ramses said. “I can’t imagine that he would involve Mary. The case against him is strong, though. He’s been in Egypt a long time—not continually, but often enough to have struck up an acquaintance with a handy forger of antiquities. He’s a good philologist. He’s poor, and devoted to his extensive