Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [112]
“Do not apologize, madam. No doubt you have made an examination of the remains?”
“Only a superficial examination. I didn’t want to disturb the scene. He was beyond help, and there can be no question as to what killed him. The explosion struck him in the chest and face.”
“So he was holding it or bending over it. Unusual, to say the least,” Aziz said dryly. “These people know how to use dynamite. He wouldn’t stand by after he had lit the fuse.”
“It wasn’t dynamite,” Ramses said. He directed the beam of his torch to one side. A spark flared. “That’s glass. Part of a small glass bottle. And there, and there…Scraps of a pipe.”
“A pipe?” Aziz exclaimed. “A bomb? I have heard of such things…”
“A very primitive bomb,” Ramses said. “And horribly easy to make. You start with a piece of iron piping with screw end-caps. Inside, there’s a metal container filled with picric acid. You suspend a small glass bottle from one end of the pipe. It holds nitric acid and is closed with a loose plug of cotton wool. The device is completely harmless as long as the pipe is held upright; but when it is tipped, the nitric acid oozes through the cotton wool and mixes with the picric acid and…”
“And detonates it,” Aziz finished. “How do you know of this device?”
He sounded suspicious, but then Aziz always did. “Explosives aren’t one of my major interests,” Ramses said dryly, “but I heard of it a few weeks ago from Thomas Russell, the Cairo Commandant of Police.”
Aziz’s tight lips relaxed. Thomas Russell Pasha was admired, if not liked, by every dedicated police officer in Egypt. It was no disgrace to him, Aziz, to learn from Russell.
“Where did Farhat hear of it?” Nefret asked. “Easy to make, you say, and the materials wouldn’t be hard to come by, but how would a man like that, illiterate and uninformed, know how to put them together?”
“You underestimate the criminal mind, madam,” Aziz said. “These villains communicate with one another, passing on information by word of mouth or by example, from Cairo to the remotest villages. Unlike his brothers, who are as cowardly as they are unscrupulous, Farhat was a hardened criminal. But not a very intelligent one. Either he did not heed the warning about how to handle the device, or in his arrogance he disregarded it. He is no loss,” Aziz finished, with a ceremonial dusting of his hands.
“Except, perhaps, to his mother,” Nefret said.
Aziz’s stern face softened. “You are a mother, madam, and good of heart. Do not distress yourself. You may safely leave this to me.”
It was a dismissal, however kindly meant. As they walked along the path toward the entrance of the Valley and their waiting horses, Ramses wondered why Aziz hadn’t asked the obvious question. What had Farhat intended to do with his homemade bomb?
“So Carter never bothered to come round?” Emerson asked, handing Ramses a whiskey and soda.
“Not while we were there.” Ramses shoved the Great Cat of Re aside and joined his wife on the settee. “He knew the tomb was safe. Girigar and the others are on the job and Aziz is there with several of his men.”
“I know, my dear Emerson,” I said, in response to Emerson’s wordless grumbles. “You would have marched up and down before the tomb all night. However, there is no reason to suppose that Farhat meant to use his handy little bomb in an assault on the tomb. A most useful device, I must say. Amazingly easy to construct…”
“Don’t get any ideas, Peabody.” Emerson’s grumbles took on speech.
“Why on earth would I want to make a bomb, Emerson?”
“God only knows,” said Emerson with feeling.
The Vandergelt gang, as Cyrus had taken to calling it, had declined my invitation to tea. Even Jumana had appeared upset, and I myself was in no proper state of mind to entertain. We got the children off to bed and persuaded Sennia to spend the evening with Gargery, so that by the time Ramses and Nefret arrived we were able to talk freely.
“What did he mean to do with it?” asked Sethos.
“Who?” Emerson roused himself from