The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters [82]
“What kind of housekeeping do you call this, Peabody?”
I pointed out the injustice of the charge in a few brisk but well-chosen words. Emerson mopped his brow. “Pardon my language, Peabody. It has been a trying morning. And now this!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is a hole, Peabody. A hole in the wall of one of our storage rooms.”
“Oh, Emerson, I can see that! How did it come there?”
“I do not know, Peabody. Perhaps Ramses has stolen an elephant and attempted to confine it in the room.”
I ignored this misplaced attempt at humor. “The wall is old, and some of the mortar has fallen out. Perhaps it simply collapsed.”
“Don’t talk like an idiot, Peabody!” Emerson shouted.
“Don’t shout at me, Emerson!”
Abdullah’s head had been moving back and forth like someone watching a tennis match. Now he remarked, not quite sotto voce, “It is good to see them so friendly together. But of course it was the spirit of the old priest, trying to get back into his house from which the Father of Curses expelled him.”
“Abdullah, you know that is nonsense,” I said.
“Quite right,” Emerson agreed. “When I expel a spirit, he stays expelled.”
Abdullah grinned. Emerson wiped his forehead with his sleeve and said in a resigned voice, “Let’s see what the damage is. Which of the storerooms is this, Amelia? I cannot quite get my bearings.”
I counted windows. “This is the room where I keep the mummy cases, Emerson. The ones from the Roman cemetery.”
Emerson struck himself heavily on the brow. “There is some strange fatality in this,” he muttered. “Abdullah, go to the dig and get the men started. Come around to the door, Peabody, and we will see what is—or is not—inside.”
We did as he suggested. The coffins had been jumbled about, but I noticed that none of the bricks had fallen inside—which cast a doubt on my theory of a spontaneous fall. I had not really believed it, of course. The bricks had been removed one by one until a sufficiently large opening was made. It would not have been difficult to do. The mortar was old and crumbling.
“…five, six, seven,” Emerson counted. “They are all here, Amelia.”
I cleared my throat. “Emerson…”
“Oh, curse it,” Emerson exclaimed. “Don’t tell me—you put the baroness’s mummy case in this room.”
“It seemed the logical place, Emerson.”
“Then there ought to be eight mummy cases here.”
“My reckoning agrees with yours, Emerson.”
“One is missing.”
“It seems a reasonable conclusion.”
Emerson’s fingers clawed at his chin. “Fetch John,” he said.
I turned to obey; this was not the time to cavil at an unnecessarily peremptory tone. From one of the doors along the line of cells a head protruded. “May I come out, Mama?” Ramses inquired.
“You may as well. Find John.”
“He is here, Mama.”
The pair soon joined us and Emerson, with John’s help, began removing the mummy cases from the storeroom. When they were lined up in a grisly row, Emerson looked them over.
“These are the coffins we found, Peabody,” he announced. “It must be the one belonging to the baroness that has been stolen—again.”
“Wrong, Emerson. That”—I pointed—“is the mummy case John and I put in this room last night. I remember the patch of missing varnish on the foot, and also the relative location, which I noted when you removed them.”
“Wrong, Peabody. I know each and every one of these mummy cases. I could as easily be mistaken as to the identity of my own mother.”
“Since you haven’t seen the dear old lady for fifteen years, you might easily make such a mistake.”
“Never mind my mother,” Emerson retorted. “I can’t imagine why we brought her into this. If you don’t believe me, Peabody, we will check my notes. I made careful descriptions