The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [47]
The pronoun could have been singular or plural, but the look he directed at me made his meaning clear. I was about to respond when Nefret came to my defense.
“Mother is entirely guiltless in this case. It was Father who accepted the statuette and promised the confounded woman he would remove the curse.” She leaned forward, blue eyes fixed on his face. “Did you take it from Tomb 55?”
Sethos looked uncomfortable. Nefret was one of the few people who could penetrate his mask of smiling cynicism. He answered with equal bluntness. “No. Most of the objects I removed from the tomb had limited monetary value; my chief interest was in their historical importance.”
“No doubt,” said Ramses, with a skeptical look. “Could you have overlooked something so valuable?”
“Since I haven’t been privileged to see it yet, I can’t be certain,” said Sethos.
Emerson got up, mumbled something, and went into the house. When he came back he was holding the painted box. Silently he handed it to Sethos, who removed the lid. His lips pursed in a whistle and those strangely colored eyes, which could be brown or green or gray, widened. Consummate actor though he was, I felt sure his astonishment was genuine.
“Good God,” he murmured.
“I knew it wasn’t you,” Nefret said, visibly relieved.
“Your confidence touches me, my dear. I assure you that if I had found it I would have snatched it without a second thought. However, if you want additional indication of my innocence, remember my custom of keeping the most beautiful objects for myself.” He ran a reverent finger down the curves of the right arm. “I wouldn’t have sold this for any price.”
Though Sethos did not look at me, Emerson twitched as if at an insect bite. Sethos had once said something of the sort to me, referring, in that case, to my humble self. He had long since got over this attachment, but it still touched my dear spouse on a tender spot.
“Very well,” said that individual. “I accept your word. And your arguments. Nevertheless, I intend to reexcavate Tomb 55.”
“I can’t have missed anything,” Sethos insisted. “I was in the tomb alone, or with my loyal assistant, for several days. I had plenty of time to explore every nook and cranny.”
“It may have been taken before you arrived on the scene,” Ramses said. “There were dozens of visitors in and out of the place, and the workmen made off with several small pieces of jewelry. They turned up shortly afterward in the antiquities market of Luxor, but an object like this would have been handled in greater secrecy.”
“Why?” Nefret asked. “Don’t all antiquities, large and small, have to be passed by the Service des Antiquités before they can be taken from Egypt?”
Sethos steepled his hands and gave a little cough. “Allow me to deliver a brief lecture, my dear. I believe I am in a better position than most to know the ins and outs of the illegal antiquities game.”
“That,” said Emerson emphatically, “is certainly true.”
“Quite,” said Sethos. “In the old days—the good old days, as some of us might say—the Middle East was an open market. No rules, no supervision. That’s how we British acquired the Elgin Marbles, the Khorsobad sculptures, and a number of rare objects from Egypt. When Mariette started the Service des Antiquités, he and his successor, Maspero, established new rules. Foreign excavators had to have permits to dig, and everything they uncovered had to pass inspection. The service decided which pieces they could take and which went to the Cairo Museum.
“Some would say that both Mariette and Maspero were overly generous. There are certainly objects in foreign museums that would never have been passed by our present director.”
“Get to the point,” Emerson said impatiently. “The problem isn’t only legal excavations.”
“Quite true,” Sethos agreed. “The locals have been digging for years and in the good old days they were able to sell their discoveries to tourists who had no difficulty in exporting them. After the 1860s, to their great indignation, the local lads were told they couldn’t do that sort of thing any longer. The Antiquities Department