The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [101]
“I have been thinking,” I began.
“Rrrrrr,” said Emerson. “She thought at me for two hours last night. Bloody nonsense. Not a sensible idea in the lot.”
“I can only conclude,” I continued, unperturbed by the interruption, “that Ramses knows something the rest of us do not. A fact, perhaps unnoticed by him, that makes him dangerous to our unknown enemy. Something to do with Mrs. Petherick.”
“Or the statuette,” said Emerson, forgetting he had dismissed my conjectures as nonsense.
“I can’t think what it might be,” Ramses said. “I had no conversations with the lady when others were not present. As for the statue, I know no more than the rest of you.”
“Let’s have another look at it,” Sethos suggested. The gleam in his eyes might have been interpreted as greed. Emerson interpreted it that way.
“Later,” he said, with a hard look at his brother.
“Have you seen the newspaper this morning?” David asked.
“Never read the cursed thing,” Emerson said loftily.
Normally I didn’t either. The news was always at least a day late, and little of it was of immediate interest to us. Since the “mystery of the black afrit” I had of course perused the Cairo papers, but I hadn’t had a chance to see them that morning.
“What do they say about Mrs. Petherick?” I asked.
“Nothing new, Aunt Amelia. There’s a rehash of her literary career and her romantic biography, by some gushing female admirer, and a lurid story about Egyptian mummies.”
David did not mention the political news, though the major headline read “New Riots in the Delta.” He was the only one who followed the political situation closely. It did not make for encouraging reading; the country was still in a state of unrest, anticipating that the forthcoming declaration of Egyptian independence would not answer all the demands of the “radicals,” as the British government termed them.
“Howard Carter arrived in Cairo day before yesterday,” David added.
“What?” Emerson bounded up. “How do you know that?”
“It’s in the social column,” David said, smiling. He knew that was one part of the newspaper Emerson would never consider reading. “He’s not planning to leave for Luxor for another week.”
Emerson sat down. “Ah. Making the rounds of the antiquities dealers, I expect. Hmph. A week, eh? Let’s be off. That is…Ramses, are you sure you are fit for this?”
“Fit for translating hieratic?” I inquired. “I should think so. Now, Emerson, no objection, if you please. We agreed, did we not, that that was to be his primary task? Yes. Is it advisable for a person who has taken a head injury to work in the dust and heat? No.” I patted Ramses’s hand. “Have a nice quiet day, my dear. We will be back for tea.”
I have never been a skilled horsewoman, but the smooth gait of our Arabians was a pleasure. It was certainly more pleasurable than the steep climb over the hills, which was the only other way of reaching the Valley.
Needless to say, Reader, my thoughts did not dwell entirely on Egyptology. The welfare of my loved ones would always take precedence over scholarship, and there was good reason to assume that danger still threatened some, if not all. Emerson had scoffed at my conjectures, but that did not prevent me from pursuing them mentally.
Mr. Lidman’s misadventure had been a blow—to Lidman himself, naturally, but also to me, since I had reached the conclusion that he had been responsible for the attempts to break into the house. However, he had the best of all possible alibis for the attack on Ramses, having been incapacitated and guarded at the time. Were there two villains? Three, four? A gang? The statuette was prize enough to inspire the lust of several persons, but as I had cogently pointed out, Ramses’s attacker could not have hoped to gain possession of it by that