The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters [92]
“Whom are you expecting?”
“Jones—whom else? He will have heard the news by now. I dismissed the men, since it is almost sunset, and there was no getting any work out of them once they learned what had happened.”
Sure enough, it was not long before a familiar procession appeared in the distance. The two men rode side by side. It was not until they had drawn closer that I saw the third donkey and its rider. “Good heavens,” I exclaimed. “He has brought Miss Charity. Emerson, you don’t suppose that dreadful man expects her to—to—”
“Lay out the remains? Even Brother Ezekiel would hardly go so far as that, I fancy. He likes to have the girl tagging at his heels like an obedient hound.”
Brother David urged his mount to a gallop and was soon before us. “Is it true?” he asked in agitated tones. “Is Brother Hamid…”
“Dead,” Emerson said cheerfully. “Quite dead. Very dead indeed. Unquestionably dead and…” The others had come up by then and he broke off. Charity had heard, however; her small calloused hands gripped the reins so tightly, her knuckles whitened. No other sign of emotion was apparent, for her face, as usual, was shadowed by the brim of her bonnet.
Ezekiel dismounted. “We have come to take our poor brother back for burial,” he announced. “And to call down the wrath of the Lord on his murderer.”
“I suppose you could fancy a cup of tea,” I said.
Ezekiel hesitated. “It will lubricate your vocal cords,” Emerson said hospitably. “And strengthen the volume of your anathemas.”
Smiling to myself, I led the way into the parlor. Emerson might complain all he liked about my detective interests, but he was not immune to the fever. Here was a chance to find out from the missionaries what they knew about their “convert.”
I had intended to spare John the embarrassment of appearing, after his unorthodox behavior following the fire, but the presence of Charity sent out invisible tentacles that wrapped round his heart and drew him inexorably to her. Shortly he appeared, wreathed in blushes, to ask if he might serve us. To send him away would have been to wound him, so I acquiesced and resigned myself to watching him fall over the furniture and spill the tea, for he never took his eyes off the object of his affections.
The discussion turned at once to Hamid’s death. “Poor fellow,” David said mournfully. “You did him an injustice, Brother, when you said he had run away.”
“I did,” Ezekiel acknowledged. Then he looked around at the rest of us as if expecting admiration for his admission of fallibility. Presumably he got enough of it from Brother David to satisfy him, for he went on in the same rotund, self-satisfied voice. “He was a true vessel of grace.”
“A fine man,” Brother David said.
“He will be greatly missed.”
“One of the elect.”
“I never liked him.”
The interruption of the litany by this critical remark was almost as surprising as its source; the words issued from under Charity’s black bonnet. Her brother turned a look of outraged astonishment upon her and she went on defiantly. “He was too obsequious, too fawning. And sometimes, when you were not looking at him, he would smile to himself in a sneering way.”
“Charity, Charity,” Brother David said gently. “You are forgetting your name.”
The girl’s slight, dark-robed form turned toward him as a flower seeks the sun. She clasped her hands. “You are right, Brother David. Forgive me.”
“Only God can do that, my dear.”
Emerson, who had been watching the exchange with undisguised amusement, now tired of the diversion. “When did you see the fellow last?” he asked.
All agreed that Hamid had not been seen since the night of the fire. He had taken his evening meal with the other converts before retiring to his humble pallet. Brother David claimed to have caught a glimpse of him during the confusion later, but Brother Ezekiel insisted Hamid had been conspicuous by his absence