The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [92]
‘We have made less progress than I had hoped,’ he admitted. ‘I have had to spend time fending off cursed newspaper reporters and curious tourists, and we have been bedevilled by accidents. Two rockfalls –’
‘Two?’ Walter exclaimed, with an involuntary glance at his wife. ‘Are you certain they were accidents?’
‘What else could they have been?’ It was an evasive answer, but we had been unable to discover how the collapse of the rock could have been engineered; the tomb had been guarded night and day.
The smile that illumined Walter’s thin face was the first genuine expression of amusement I had seen on his countenance for months. ‘My dear Radcliffe, I have never known you and Amelia to suffer from ordinary accidents. I took it for granted that as usual you had a gang of criminals after you.’
‘Yet you came,’ I exclaimed, much moved.
‘All the more reason to come,’ said Evelyn firmly.
‘In point of fact –’ Ramses began.
Emerson and I said in unison, ‘Be quiet, Ramses.’
‘I intend to confide fully in you both,’ Emerson went on, taking a pencil from his pocket. ‘But first let me finish my description of the tomb. The access to it is difficult . . .’
Since there was not a sheet of paper handy, I let him draw on the tablecloth. He sketched a rough plan of the fissure and the tomb entrance, and finished, ‘After the second rockfall I decided to follow Ramses’ suggestion that we clear the lower part of the fissure entirely. I don’t want to risk rumours that there is a curse on the tomb.’
‘Not to mention the risk of one of the men or one of us being crippled or killed by falling rock,’ I interrupted. ‘There is no danger of that now, Walter, I assure you. The lower section of the crevice is open and the men are constructing stairs.’
‘But the tomb,’ Walter persisted. ‘Are there inscriptions? Has the burial been disturbed?’
‘Now, Walter, don’t get ahead of me,’ Emerson replied, infuriatingly cool. ‘Thus far we have not penetrated beyond the first chamber. Here is the entrance passage . . .’
His pencil dashed across the white cloth, and with a smile at me Evelyn moved a teacup out of his way. ‘The passage and at least part of the chamber beyond had been filled with rock chips,’ Emerson continued.
‘Deliberately filled? How do you know the debris was not washed into the tomb by floodwater?’
‘Curse it, Walter, are you questioning my expertise?’ Emerson demanded.
Walter returned his scowl with an amiable smile, and Emerson said grudgingly, ‘It is a reasonable question. Though rain is infrequent here, severe storms are not unknown, and many tombs have been damaged by flash floods or seepage. For some reason, possibly because rainwater was funnelled straight down the crevice, this tomb appears to have suffered very little. It was deliberately filled in order to protect it.
‘The thieves dug a tunnel through the passage and removed some, at least, of the fill in the first chamber – I don’t know how much, since I don’t know how much there was to begin with, but there was a considerable accumulation of chips of that sort at the bottom of the crevice.
‘At the far end of this room is a doorway’ – he sketched it in – ‘blocked with slabs of stone. Our friends managed to remove one of the stones and began a tunnel through the filling of the passage beyond – for it too was closed by rocks and chips. I don’t know what lies beyond that opening.’
The abrupt conclusion left Walter gaping. ‘But my dear fellow, what inhuman lack of curiosity! Why haven’t you investigated?’
‘Because the tunnel is so narrow only a child could pass through, and of unknown length. Even if I were willing to allow Ramses to attempt something so perilous, he has not been in fit shape for such an exercise these past days.’
‘And you wouldn’t trust one of the local lads to explore the place,’ Walter said thoughtfully.
‘Not unless I searched him to the skin after he had come out,’ Emerson replied with a snap of his teeth. ‘And there are other hiding places . . . No, I won’t chance it, or take the risk of an untrained boy