The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters [83]
“No, no, my dear Emerson, I need no such verification; your memory is always accurate. But I am equally certain that this”—again I pointed—“is the mummy case brought to us last night.”
“De conclusion is obvious, surely,” piped Ramses. “De mummy case brought here last night, purportedly de one stolen from de lady, was not in fact de one stolen from—”
“I assure you, Ramses, that possibility had not escaped either of us,” I replied with some asperity.
“De inevitable corollary,” Ramses went on, “is dat—”
“Pray be silent for a moment, Ramses,” Emerson begged, clutching his ambrosial locks with both hands. “Let me think. What with mummy cases whizzing in and out of my life like express trains…There were originally seven mummy cases in this room.”
I murmured an encouraging “Quite right, Emerson,” and fixed Ramses with a look that stilled the words hovering on his lips.
“Seven,” Emerson repeated painfully. “Last night another mummy case was placed in this room. Eight. You didn’t happen to notice, Peabody, how many—”
“I am afraid not, Emerson. It was dark and we were in a hurry.”
“The baroness’s mummy case was stolen,” Emerson continued. “A mummy case believed to be that mummy case was handed over to us. You are certain that this”—he pointed—“was the mummy case in question. We must assume, then, that the mummy case we received was not the mummy case belonging to the baroness, but another mummy case, derived God knows whence.”
“But we know whence,” cried Ramses, unable to contain himself any longer. “Papa is correct; we have here de original mummy case discovered by our men. De one returned to us was our own. A t’ief must have removed it from dis room earlier.”
“A what?” I asked.
“A robber,” said Ramses.
“Who replaced the bricks after he had stolen the mummy case from us. Yes,” Emerson agreed. “It could have been done. The thief then carried the stolen mummy case out into the desert, where he abandoned it. That incompetent idiot de Morgan, who would not recognize his own mummy case if it walked up and bade him ‘Bonjour,’ assumed that the one found by his men was the one belonging to the baroness. Apparently that is what the thief did—but why the devil should he do it?”
This time I was determined that Ramses should not get ahead of me. “In the hope, which proved justified, that the search for the baroness’s mummy case would be abandoned.”
“Humph,” said Emerson. “My question was purely rhetorical, Peabody. Had you not interrupted, I would have proposed that very solution. May I request that you all remain silent and allow me to work out this problem step by step in logical fashion?”
“Certainly, my dear Emerson.”
“Certainly, Papa.”
“Certainly, sir.” John added in a bewildered voice, “I don’t ’ave the faintest notion of what anyone is talking about, sir.”
Emerson cleared his throat pontifically. “Very well. We will begin with the hypothesis that the thief stole one of our mummy cases in order to substitute it for the one belonging to the baroness. He went to the considerable trouble of replacing the bricks in the wall so the theft would not be noticed. Why then did he demolish the wall last night?”
He fixed Ramses with such an awful look that the child closed his mouth with an audible snap. Emerson continued, “Not to return the stolen mummy case. There are only seven here, the same number we had originally. Two possibilities suggest themselves. Either the thief wished to recover some object he had concealed in the storeroom on the occasion when he removed our mummy case, or he wished to draw our attention to his activities.”
He paused. Those of us in the audience remained respectfully silent. A look of childish pleasure spread over Emerson’s face. “If any of you have alternative hypotheses to suggest, you may speak,” he said graciously.
My abominable child beat me to the punch again. “Perhaps some second party, oder dan de original t’ief, wished to expose de villain’s act of pilferage.”
Emerson shook his head vehemently. “I refuse to introduce another unknown villain, Ramses. One