The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [173]
His voice trailed off as a belated realization of the implication of his analysis came to him.
“Made it herself?” Ramses finished the sentence.
“Why didn’t you show me this before?” David demanded.
“My gentlemanly instincts got in my way,” Ramses said in disgust. “It seemed indecent to show the girl’s gift, especially after Nefret ridiculed it so ruthlessly. Besides, the idea never occurred to me. I haven’t your eye. And Maude never said anything about her hobby, or showed us examples of her work …”
“He’d make damned good and sure she didn’t,” David said. “Especially after he learned you were on his trail. Everything points to him, you know. He took alarm when Nefret made that pointed reference to fakes and the London dealer; how else could anyone have known that the Professor had the scarab? He had to kill Maude because she was about to tell you the truth.”
“It fits,” Ramses admitted. “She couldn’t have understood his real motives or the seriousness of selling forgeries; she probably thought of it as a jolly little joke to be played on a group of solemn scholars. We’re still missing something, though. Why did he have to retrieve the scarab?”
David had been turning the figure over and over in his hands. “Because she signed her work,” he said. “Part of the joke. Look here. Are you sure this wasn’t on the scarab?”
They were incised on the flat base of the statue—two small hieroglyphic signs. One was an owl, the ancient Egyptian M; the other, below it, was the alphabetic sign for the letter R. Together they were not only Maude’s initials; they made up an Egyptian word.
Ramses had deliberately cultivated his visual memory, but he didn’t even have to close his eyes and concentrate in order to remember that part of the inscription.
“Of course it was,” he said. “It’s a title—the word that means overseer or superintendent. That was one of the anomalies I noticed—the fact that the inscription began with the titles of the official who composed it. He practically rubbed my nose in it, the bastard, and I flat-out missed it!”
“There you go again, taking yourself to task because you aren’t omniscient. How could you possibly have realized what it meant?” David slipped the galabeeyah over his head. “I think,” he went on, after his head had emerged, “he panicked unnecessarily when he realized you might have the scarab. Breaking into the house was a risk.”
“There was no risk to him. The men he hired knew nothing about him, and he left no trail that could lead back to him.”
“We had better show this to the Professor,” David said. “Are you ready?”
“Mother wouldn’t think so.” Attired only in trousers and boots, Ramses shut the bureau drawer and went back to the wardrobe. “There’s got to be a confounded shirt around here someplace … Ah. They’re on the top shelf.”
His indignant tone made David laugh. “That’s where they are supposed to be.”
“Are they? Why do women button the damned things before they put them away? They only have to be unbuttoned again. David, I don’t want to mention this to Father—or Mother—tonight.”
“This is the most damning evidence we’ve found yet, Ramses. We cannot keep it from them.”
“The last nail in Jack Reynolds’s coffin,” Ramses muttered. “No, David. It’s too easy.”
David pushed a pile of papers off a chair and sat down. “Out with it, then. If it’s not Jack, it must be Geoffrey you suspect. Look here, Ramses—”
“It’s not what you think.” He tucked his shirt in.
“I wasn’t suggesting—”
“Yes, you were. You’re wrong. Do you suppose I want him to be guilty? Think what that would do to Nefret! But it would be even worse to cover up his guilt on her account; if he’s the man we’re after he is totally unprincipled and as dangerous as a snake. He took one of the horses out this afternoon and didn’t get back until just before it started raining—you heard what Mohammed said. He