The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [151]
“More important,” said Emerson, “Daoud’s discovery proves beyond the shadow of a doubt, had there been a doubt, that the statuette was found at Deir el Medina. You will be glad to hear, Peabody, that we’ve closed down there. No more sifting rubble for you.”
“Even sifting rubble will be a pleasant change from my recent inaction,” I declared. “I am ready to take up the reins again. We must finish with KV55, if only for the sake of thoroughness.”
“There’s no ‘we’ about it,” Emerson declared. “You won’t be dashing round the Valley for a while yet, Peabody. I have been waiting with breathless anticipation for your analysis of the problem that was our first concern, before we became distracted by other events. Where, specifically, did the ancient thief find the statuette?”
“Where in the Valley of the Kings, you mean?” Emerson nodded, smiling, and I said, “You have a theory, do you not?”
“I always have a theory,” said Emerson. “You, my dear, have your little lists. Don’t tell me you haven’t made another.”
“Well,” I said modestly, “since you ask…”
A little ripple of amusement accompanied the removal of the paper from my pocket. I did not mind, since I knew it was prompted by affection. I returned Sethos’s smile and unfolded the paper.
“I have set it out in the form of a syllogism,” I explained. “The statue is from the Amarna time. The thief took it from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings—the Great Place. There are no tombs of that period known in the Valley. So—”
“There must be another tomb, an unknown tomb,” David exclaimed.
“I see one flaw in your syllogism,” said Emerson, taking out his pipe. “There is an Amarna period tomb in the Valley—KV55.”
“That has always seemed to me an unlikely possibility,” I declared. “The tomb was stripped of its valuables by people who ripped off the gold face of the coffin and tried to remove the shrine. They also erased the cartouches of Akhenaton, which indicates that they were not random thieves, but officials of the government that had assumed power after his death and wished to obliterate his heresy. They would have reused or melted down any gold they found.”
“Well done, Peabody,” said Emerson, his sapphirine eyes shining with the familiar pleasure of debate. “I agree. While we are on the subject of syllogisms and lists, would you care to explain why you suspected Katchenovsky ‘from the first,’ as you claimed?”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes,” Ramses said. He reached for my hand. “But you weren’t—you weren’t entirely yourself, Mother.”
“Oh, yes, I remember now.” I gave his hand a little squeeze. “I did suspect him, though perhaps not from the very first. Shall I tell you why?”
“Please,” said Emerson, grinning broadly.
“It was after the first attack on Ramses that I began to wonder about Katchenovsky,” I explained. “What, I asked myself, was the one factor that distinguished Ramses from the rest of us? Nothing to do with Mrs. Petherick—er—with Magda. It was his work with the papyri from Deir el Medina, was it not? I concluded that there might be something in those texts that inspired the murderous interest of the only other person here who could translate them. Though I will not claim I anticipated anything as remarkable as a confession,” I added modestly.
A round of applause broke out, led by Emerson. “Peabody,” he declared, “you really are the most…”
“Thank you, my dear.”
“You really are, Aunt Amelia,” David said. “But to return to KV55—if you believed nothing was to be found there, why did we spend all that time reclearing the confounded tomb?”
“Yes,” Nefret said. “Why, Father?”
“For the sake of thoroughness,” Emerson replied. “We found nothing. And now we know”—he gave his son a respectful nod—“that the theft of the statuette dates from the Eighteenth Dynasty, some years before the traditionalists began destroying Akhenaton’s monuments and memory.”
Ramses cleared his throat.
“Now, Emerson,” I said sternly, “you see how important Ramses’s little scraps of papyrus, which you scorned—”
“How many times must I apologize, Peabody?”
“Father,” Ramses began. “You