The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [148]
The first time I made this announcement at a dinner party Emerson had choked on a morsel of food and I had had to trot quickly round the table and pound him on the back. When he complained later that I ought to have warned him, I replied that I would have done so had I known in advance what I was going to do. In fact the idea came to me all of a sudden, as clever ideas often do, and I had seized the moment, so to speak.
David’s decision to bring the matter of the forgeries out into the open had cut the Gordian knot: how to pursue our inquiries without admitting what we were inquiring about. It would be some time before he could expect to receive replies to the letters he had written, but now there was no reason for us to maintain reticence with our professional acquaintances. Some of them might be able to contribute useful information; one, caught off guard by my unexpected candor, might betray himself by a start of surprise or a look of guilt.
Thus far no one had. On this occasion there was a good deal of surprise, but nothing I could view as guilt. The surprise stemmed in part from my assertion that Abdullah had not collected antiquities. The truth is, some of them were sorry he had not. A good many of our acquaintances were enthusiastic collectors, for themselves or for various institutions. They agreed in theory that illegal excavations ought to be stopped, but took a pessimistic view of the chances of doing it.
Mr. Lawrence, continuing his exercise in tactlessness, was the first to voice aloud a view held by many. “The chap can’t have been English! He must be an Egyptian—educated abroad, perhaps, with some superficial knowledge of the antiquities business. There aren’t that many such persons. He should be easy to identify!”
“He might be if your assumptions were correct,” I replied. “They are not. You must learn not to leap to conclusions, Mr. Lawrence, if you wish to succeed in your profession.”
Work on our cemeteries continued. The tombs were small and poor in grave goods, but even they had been robbed and the bones of their occupants scattered. It was extremely boring. Cyrus grew bored too; eventually he announced that since nothing untoward had occurred for some time, he and Katherine thought they could risk leaving us long enough to make a quick trip to Luxor. Emerson encouraged this decision, since he had not believed he needed Cyrus’s protection anyhow. So we saw them off and went back to our rubbish heaps.
One afternoon as we were packing the scraps for removal to the house, I allowed myself to express my increasing frustration.
“Emerson, if I have to put together one more early dynastic beer jar I will scream. Why can’t we investigate the substructure of the pyramid?”
Geoffrey looked up from the box in which he was packing potsherds. His fair hair was wet with perspiration. Pushing it back under his pith helmet, he said, with a smile, “Your penchant for the interiors of pyramids is well known, Mrs. Emerson, but exploring this one would certainly be a waste of time.”
“I will determine what is a waste of time,” Emerson grunted. He sat down on a rock and took out his pipe. As usual he had misplaced his hat, and the sun beat down on his bare black head.
“Come back to the shelter and have something to drink,” I said. “The rest of you had better do the same; you are looking very warm.”
We withdrew to the shade, therefore, leaving Seim to finish packing the objects, and I made everyone take a glass of tea.
Nefret removed her hat and wiped her wet forehead. “I agree,” she declared.
“What with?” Emerson’s mind was already on something else.
“That we ought to shift to another location. Haven’t you taught us that we must leave something to be excavated by future archaeologists, who may have developed more advanced techniques? We’ve done enough to know that this cemetery is purely early dynastic. There are later graves elsewhere; they might give us a clue as to the identity of the builder of the pyramid.