The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [139]
“What about the wig?” Nefret asked. Her mouth was tight with distaste. “Did he keep that as a—a memento?”
“Nothing so bizarre,” I said. “It fell off during their struggle, and he couldn’t get it back on. One can imagine how difficult that would have been, with his hands shaking and her head—”
“Quite,” said Ramses, glancing at his wife. “So he took it away with him?”
“And discarded it. He didn’t say precisely how.”
“Well done, Mother,” said Ramses. “You got all that from Lidman’s—Daffinger’s—confession, did you?”
“Most of it.” I stacked my papers neatly. “That concludes my lec——the discussion. And the case.”
“Not quite,” Ramses said. His eyebrows were tilted and his eyes were intent on me. “We still haven’t found the statue.”
FROM MANUSCRIPT H
* * *
Not that they hadn’t tried. No one except his mother and Nefret had bothered to attend Lidman-Daffinger’s hastily arranged funeral; the others had spent the day searching the areas in and around the West Valley tomb where he had been hiding.
“It isn’t in the tomb,” Emerson said flatly. “I’d stake my reputation on that. We couldn’t do a complete excavation, not in such a short time, but we shifted everything that could be shifted—”
“And put it back in the original place, of course,” Ramses suggested.
“Of course. Took a cursed long time.”
They were on their way back to the West Valley. It was early afternoon and the sun was merciless, but Ramses shared his father’s desire to get on with the job. There could be no question now about the legal ownership of the statuette; since Magda Ormond’s marriage to Petherick had been illegal, Petherick’s children would inherit. They could use the money—and they would get it, one way or another. Emerson would see to that. It was not only the prospect of losing a great sum of money that bothered him, though. His reputation was at stake, and he would spend the next ten years looking if he had to.
Emerson spoke forcibly to his horse and forged ahead to join Sethos, who had taken his place at the head of the procession. The whole family had come, including Selim and Daoud and a full crew of workmen. Those magnificent, soaring cliffs were full of hundreds of crevices large enough to conceal something the size of the small golden statue.
Ramses waited for his mother and Nefret and fell in beside them. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to his mother in private since her performance that morning.
“All right, are you, Mother?” he asked.
“Certainly.” She wiped her wet face with a neat white handkerchief.
“Cyrus has had the men bring plenty of water,” Ramses said. “Enough for the horses too.”
“I appreciate your concern, my dear, but it is unnecessary. You have something else on your mind, don’t you?”
“That was an impressive summary you gave us this morning,” Ramses said. “Are you completely satisfied about the solution to the case?”
A little murmur of amusement escaped her lips. “You noticed a few unexplained items? The others will, eventually, but I threw so much information at them they haven’t had time to absorb it.”
“Why?” Ramses asked bluntly.
Her smile faded. “For one thing, I hadn’t heard your story when I arranged my notes. Obviously it cannot have been Daffinger who was responsible for the attacks on you in Cairo. You don’t believe it was Adrian, do you?”
“I don’t see how he could have managed them. The man—the person—who shot at us outside Bassam’s used a pistol. Adrian had only a rifle. I searched him and his luggage before we went back to Cairo that night.”
“He might have disposed of the pistol.”
“Possibly. But why would he?”
Emerson, now well ahead, turned and shouted at them to hurry up.
They joined the others, who were gathered in an attentive group around Emerson. “We’ve been over some of this ground before,” said Emerson, his jaw set. “We will do it again, painstakingly and methodically, leaving not a square inch of ground unexplored.”
Under his direction they fanned out in three directions, right, left, and up, starting at the mouth of the unfinished Tomb 25, probing into every opening