The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [140]
“I didn’t know you were fond of the classics,” he said.
“There are a number of things you don’t know about me,” said Sethos blandly. He dusted off a boulder with his handkerchief and sat down. “I am a man of many talents.”
“A talent for hard manual labor isn’t among them.”
“Why should I do that when I can get someone else to do it for me? For instance,” said Sethos, with the slightest sideways movement of his head, “that fellow up there—no, don’t turn and stare!—has been watching us for over an hour. Perhaps you would care to wander casually in his direction?”
The direction was straight up, on a ledge that jutted out from the cliff face. There was a path of sorts, winding up from the valley floor. Out of the corner of his eye Ramses caught a flash of light (binoculars?) and what might have been a head looking down.
“Wander and casually don’t apply,” he said caustically. “He’s got a good vantage point. He’ll see me start to climb.”
“I will provide a distraction,” said Sethos. He stood up and dusted off the seat of his trousers. Then he walked back to where Emerson was standing, shouting instructions to the searchers. Ramses didn’t hear what Sethos said, but it galvanized Emerson into a furious retort that was clearly audible, not only to his son but to everyone for some distance.
“You dare criticize my relationship with my wife?”
“You don’t deserve her.” Sethos pointed accusingly at Ramses’s mother, who was working her way along the cliff face just above them. She stopped and stared down. “No man worthy of the name would allow her to take such a risk,” Sethos shouted.
Ramses didn’t see what happened after that; he was too intent on making his way up the cliff with all possible speed. He heard grunts and thumps and several outraged cries from his mother. The outcropping hid him from sight most of the way. When he reached the ledge he hauled himself up and over in a single movement.
The flash of light hadn’t been made by binoculars, but by a camera lens. The photographer had his eyes glued to the camera and was snapping photographs of the melee below. He was too absorbed to notice Ramses until the latter caught hold of the camera with one hand and the man’s collar with the other.
“Don’t drop the camera,” he shrieked, squirming.
Ramses got him down by way of the path, which was negotiable for a man in reasonably fit condition. The others were waiting for them at the bottom. Sethos was dabbing delicately at his nose with a bloody handkerchief. There wasn’t a mark on Emerson, who was crimson with rage.
“A damned journalist!” he shouted, extending a long arm.
“Don’t damage the camera!” the photographer gasped.
Emerson snatched it from him and threw it onto the hard ground. The photographer screamed.
“It’s Mr. Anderson, isn’t it?” Nefret looked more closely at the man’s face. “You fell into the tomb the other day.”
“And tried to get information out of my daughter,” Ramses said.
“Anderson, my eye,” Cyrus exclaimed. “That’s the artist I told you about, the one who came asking for a job and never turned up again. Maillet.”
TEN
I wondered briefly if Mr. Anderson was a relation of Kevin O’Connell’s, a cousin or younger brother. But no, I thought. Kevin’s hair was fiery red and this man’s was brown; instead of the cerulean blue of Kevin’s, his eyes were a muddy green. The resemblance was not physical but one of expression and manner.
“He is a journalist,” I said. “Is he also, I wonder, a thief and a murderer?”
The question got Mr. Anderson’s mind off the camera, whose broken pieces he was collecting with little moans of anguish. He jumped to his feet.
“Now see here, Mrs. Emerson, don’t go round accusing people like that! All I wanted was an exclusive story. Mr. O’Connell is my