The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [5]
The regret in the last phrase brought a smile to Ramses’s tanned face, and Nefret laughed aloud.
“You cannot,” I said firmly. “We haven’t even begun to discuss the ramifications of this business. I confess that my initial interpretation of Mrs. Petherick’s motives has been shaken. An ordinary amulet would have served the purpose if she wished only to—ah, here are the Vandergelts. Prompt as always! Good evening, Cyrus—Katherine—Bertie, dear boy. But where is Jumana?”
Jumana was a member of our dear departed reis Abdullah’s family, not a Vandergelt, though Katherine’s son Bertie had more than once attempted to persuade her to become one. After completing her training in Egyptology, she had joined our staff but she lived at the Castle, since Cyrus’s palatial home near the Valley of the Kings was more commodious than our humble abode.
Bertie’s amiable countenance darkened. “She said she had to finish a paper. The girl thinks of nothing but work.”
“She bears a heavy burden on those slender shoulders,” I said. “As the first Egyptian woman to practice Egyptology, she feels she must outshine all others. An admirable attitude, in my opinion.”
Having served our guests with their beverage of choice, Emerson flung himself into a chair and took out his pipe. “We had a most interesting visitor this afternoon,” he said. “A Mrs. Pringle Petherick.”
Animation lit Cyrus’s lined countenance. “Petherick’s widow? What’s she doing in Egypt? Pringle said she hates the place.”
Emerson countered with another question. “Were you a friend of his?”
“As good a friend as one die-hard collector can be with a fellow who is after the same artifacts,” Cyrus said. “I saw his collection one time—some of it, anyhow. He frankly admitted he had some pieces he could never display, since he’d got them illegally. He’d do anything, pay anything, to get what he wanted. Say!” He leaned forward, his eyes brightening. “Is his widow putting the collection up for sale? Is that why she called on you, to get your advice? Emerson, old pal, you wouldn’t cut me out, would you?”
“That never occurred to me,” Ramses said thoughtfully. “It makes better sense than her nonsense about a curse, though it’s an extremely roundabout way of capturing your interest, Father.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “If she knows anything about your father, she must realize he would reject a request for assistance in marketing the antiquities. Perhaps the statue could be considered a sample. It certainly succeeded in capturing his interest.”
“What are you talking about?” Cyrus demanded. “Sample? Statue?”
“And what’s this about a curse?” Katherine asked.
I recounted our conversation with Mrs. Petherick. Being in receipt of several grunts and meaningful glances from Emerson, I stopped short of describing the statuette. He wanted to spring it on Cyrus himself.
“How can she believe anything so preposterous?” Katherine exclaimed.
“I don’t know why it should surprise you, Mother,” Bertie said.
The oblique reference to Katherine’s former career as a spiritualist medium brought a frown to that lady’s face. After years of happy marriage and complete respectability, she would have preferred to forget that part of her life—which, I should add in justice to her, she had taken on solely as a means of earning a living for herself and her orphaned children. Generous soul that he was, Cyrus regarded Bertie and his sister Anna as his own, and Bertie had repaid his stepfather’s kindness by becoming his affectionate and skilled assistant in his excavations.
“It isn’t at all surprising,” Cyrus said impatiently. “The world is full of people who can’t think straight. Come on, Emerson, let’s see the thing.”
Emerson removed the statuette from the box and held it up.
The effect was all my husband could have desired. Cyrus actually and literally went white. Bertie leaned forward, his eyes wide. Katherine was not so violently affected, since she had not the expertise to understand