Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy's Curse

by Stephanie Osborn

  Out of respect for the dead archaeologist, the workers remained in their tents, except for a small cadre led by Udail; these worked with the quartermaster to have a coffin brought up from Luxor via boat. When it arrived just before luncheon, this same cadre loaded it upon a shoulder-borne catafalque and carried it up by hand from the small village on the Nile, across the camp, and into the vault where Professor Whitesell’s body lay, still under honour guard by the workers. Behind this procession, a trained undertaker followed, prepared to take care of the body.

  * * *

  About the same time, Dr. Nichols-Woodall showed up at the tent which Holmes and Watson shared, with Phillips in tow. Watson emerged, Leighton peeping out over his shoulder from her position on a stool; Holmes sat at the table, still studying the results of his chemical analysis, in a valiant attempt to glean even more information from it.

  “May I help you?” Watson asked, concerned. “Is someone injured or ill?”

  Phillips grew red-faced and opened his mouth to speak, but Nichols-Woodall cut him off.

  “Be silent, Landers. Nothing is wrong, Doctor. We simply came by because young Phillips here was worried as to what had become of the Professor’s daughter.”

  “I’m right here,” Leighton said, coming to the tent flap, but remaining half a pace behind Watson. “I’m fine.”

  “You’ve not been back to your tent since your father was found, Leigh,” a scandalised Phillips pointed out. “Where have you been?”

  “She has been here, where we could keep watch over her and protect her,” Holmes’ voice floated out of the tent. Moments later his dark head appeared in the peak of the tent flap, peering out over the top of Leighton’s golden chignon.

  “Again you besmirch her honour!” Phillips growled. “To spend all this time in the company of two unmarried—”

  As the younger man spoke, the geologist watched as black brows and light brown drew together in extreme annoyance, and a pale feminine face flushed in anger.

  “Phillips, did I not tell you to be silent?” Nichols-Woodall cut him off once more. “There is a murderer running loose in the camp, you young fool. What else did you expect them to do, but to protect the daughter of the murdered man with their very lives, until Holmes can ascertain who did the contemptible deed? Surely you did not think they would let her go back, alone, to her tent, with her father gone and unable to protect her himself?”

  “I am just on the other side of the Professor’s tent,” Phillips protested.

  “And you have already attempted to assault Sherry!” Leighton exclaimed hotly. “And do not think I have not seen the nasty looks you give to John, as well! If Sherry hadn’t given you a proper dressing-down with his fists, and if you didn’t know John had been in the Army, you’d probably try to ‘teach him a lesson,’ too! How do I know YOU didn’t do it, Landers? Tell me that!”

  “Wh-what?” Phillips mumbled, stunned, taking a step back as he paled. “Surely you don’t think… but, but Leigh, I loved your father! You know that! He took me out of, of a less than optimal situation, and opened up the very world to me!”

  “And what if it wasn’t the Professor you were after?” Watson demanded. “What if it was me, or Holmes, that you desired out of the way, to see your way clear to Leigh, and you killed the Professor by mistake? Or what if you only wanted your way clear to the Professor’s inheritance? Killing him, and marrying Leigh, would be a fine way to become rich and respected, wouldn’t it?”

  “You are, after all, attempting to climb out of a… ‘less than optimal situation,’ shall we say?” Holmes pointed out.

  “Oh, dear God! Is… is that what you think of me?!” Phillips whispered in horror, backing up. “You, Leigh… a-all of you?”

  “No,” Holmes spoke succinctly for all of them. “But until we do know who killed Professor Whitesell, everyone is a suspect. Including the both of you.” He met Nichols-Woodall’s gaze. “I am sorry, sir. But I do know of the… disagreement… you had with the Professor, earlier in the year.”

  “No, Holmes, don’t be sorry,” the geologist replied, sincere. “You are being cautious and thorough. And that is the kind of good investigative work that produces results—whether in a scientific investigation, or in solving a crime. The innocent will never have anything to fear from you, for you will find out the truth. I am not worried in the least.” He took Phillips firmly by the shoulder and his voice grew grim. “Now, young man, you have seen her, and you can see she is safe. More, she is well-protected, by two very honourable men. Back to your tent with you, and if I catch you out wandering again—for ANY reason—until Holmes here gives the word, I will personally tie you to the tent pole. And rest assured, I am NOT in jest.”

  The pair left, with a stern Nichols-Woodall steering, and Holmes, Watson, and Leighton returned to their seats within the tent.

  * * *

  Shortly after the end of the luncheon hour, Udail came to Holmes to ask for instruction on whether or not the body might be made ready and placed within the casket.

  Holmes sighed, and turned to Watson and Leighton, a question in his grey eyes. Leighton’s eyes filled with tears, and she dropped her head. Watson responded.

  “Is there any further data you need from him, old chap?”

  “No, Watson. I made a sufficient study last night, when we found him. I even managed a small blood sample, which I had forgotten about until a little while ago; I tested it while the two of you slept, and verified the same substance in his blood as I found in his wineglass, as well as possibly a few metabolites thereof.”

  “So there was quite a bit of it, then.”

  “I suspect it was concentrated, in some fashion,” Holmes offered. Leighton sniffled, and she extracted a little lace-edged handkerchief, dabbing her eyes. “Come, my dear. Watson and I will escort you to see your father properly… seen to.”

  * * *

  The casket was rather attractive, Watson thought. It was resting on the floor of the outer chamber, made of the local sycamore wood, engraved with crosses and inlaid with colourful ceramic tiles. Its highly-polished surface gleamed softly in the lantern light, occasionally twinkling where a tile caught a glint. The lid was open, and it was lined within with red silk and velvet. The coffin was not perfectly rectangular, nor was it an oblong hexagon, but rather was gently curved to the shape of a human form, not unlike the sarcophagi of ancient Egypt.

  “Will it do, sirs, madam?” Udail asked softly. “We had Abraam’s help in acquiring it; you see, it was made by a Coptic carpenter, as we knew that the dear Professor is Christian. We… wished only to honour him. He was ever kind to us, and he shall always be considered friend. As,” he added, looking at Leighton, “shall his daughter.”

  “It-it’s l-lovely,” Leighton murmured, tears overflowing. She turned and buried her face in Watson’s arm.

  “It is… most excellent,” Holmes offered then, voice hoarse. “Entirely appropriate. Was it made especially for the Professor in so short a time?”

  “Not entirely,” Udail admitted. “We chose one which seemed…” The foreman’s voice wobbled and he broke off, himself grieving for an old friend, and finally managed to choke out, “We chose one which the craftsman had already created and which was shaped as if for a pharaoh, then had the decorations added, per Abraam’s instructions. It went faster, so.” He turned to Leighton. “Mistress, I will sorely miss your father. I worked with him for many years.”

  “I know, Udail,” came from Watson’s shirt sleeve. It was a low wail of grief.

  “Does the undertaker know what to expect?” Holmes asked Udail.

  “Yes. I told him the condition of the… of the body.”

  “Then let me remove the, er, embellishments,” Holmes said, gesturing to Udail to open the inner door. “I should like to take them with me and run a few additional tests, in any event. I ought to have got them long since, but I knew I would have all of the tableware when I left here, and I did not wish to leave Leigh or Watson along too lo
ng…”

  Within moments, and upon the detective’s instruction, one of the workers had brought the large basket that had held the Professor’s dinner dishes from the tent. Into this Holmes now placed the dried mistletoe, oak branch, and sword; the others opened the inner door, and the undertaker began work.

  “Sir,” Holmes murmured to the undertaker, as Watson kept Leighton occupied in the outer chamber, “I think he would have liked it, if…” He leaned over and breathed something into the embalmer’s ear. “Is it possible?”

  “Ah, I see,” the mortician noted with a slight smile. “Yes, I like that idea. And it will help with… the other situation. I will see what I can do. If you could have Udail step in…”

  “Certainly.” Holmes bowed, lifted his basket, and exited the inner sanctum, in search of the foreman.

  * * *

  On Udail’s orders, various workers came and went with embalming supplies and other materials, and after a couple of hours, the mortician signalled them to bring in the coffin. With the help of several workers, Professor Whitesell’s body was gently lifted and deposited into the coffin, and the lower part of the lid closed.

  “Mr. Holmes?” the undertaker called softly to the group who still awaited in the antechamber.

  Holmes entered the inner room and looked around.

  The blood and other matter had been carefully and reverently sponged away from the bluestone slab and floor, and the coffin containing Whitesell placed atop it for the time. Holmes stepped up and peered into the casket, then smiled and moved to the door between the rooms.

  “Leigh, come here, dear,” he said, voice gentle.

  “I… I don’t want to, Sherry.” She tucked her head; her eyes were swollen and her cheeks stained from crying.

  “Watson, bring her. Leigh, you need to see this now, my dear.”

  Watson urged her gently, and eventually the pair stood beside Holmes, gazing into the coffin. Leighton gasped, then broke into a strangled mixture of laughing and sobbing.

  Professor Willingham Adelbert Whitesell, lately the Quatermain Chair of Archaeology of the University of Oxbridge, lay quietly within his sycamore sarcophagus, his head once more sitting on his shoulders, held there by the tightly-wrapped linen bandages of an Egyptian pharaoh’s mummy. Only his face was visible through the wrappings, his eyes and mouth now closed; a peaceful expression rested on the lifeless face, and Holmes was more than a little reminded of the death masks which some of the pharaohs had been wont to use.

  Protruding through the bandages over the crossed arms were a whisk and a brush, and a small pack spade, the tools of an archaeologist instead of the shepherd’s crook and flail of Egyptian royalty, placed into the dead man’s hands and held in position by the linen wraps. A necklace of scarab beetles and crosses carved in various semi-precious stones, and by the workmanship from the same lapidarist Watson had patronised, rested around his throat. A sweet, aromatic smell wafted to their nostrils, testament to the spices and resins with which the body had been treated, and Holmes knew that the undertaker had managed a lovely facsimile of an ancient Egyptian entombment.

  They were silent for a long moment. Finally Watson offered, “Well, it looks as if this crypt finally has a mummy of sorts, after all.”

  “Indeed,” Holmes replied, sombre. “But it would appear that the curse rebounded upon our own pharaoh, to do so.” He turned to Leighton. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s perfect,” Leighton choked out between laughing and weeping. She put out a hand and lightly fingered the whisk broom. “And he would love it. Was this your idea, Sherry?”

  “A bit,” Holmes admitted. “Udail and his friends had the initial idea of a sarcophagus-like casket; I merely asked the embalmer if he could wrap the Professor appropriately.”

  “So that’s what all the workers have been coming and going about,” Watson realised.

  “Precisely. They were bringing in the linens, spices and ambers and aloes, the scarabs, and the like, so as to make it just right. And now, if Leigh is quite ready, let us return to the tent so I may see what additional clews may be found from this.” Holmes pointed to the basket, then added, “Udail, perhaps you will see to having the Professor brought back to his tent?”

  “Of course, Mr. Holmes,” Udail replied, bowing, and Holmes, wagging the large basket, escorted his best friend and the daughter of the dead man back to his tent.

  * * *

  There was little more to be gleaned from the items Holmes had brought back with him, or so he initially thought. The mistletoe that had been in Whitesell’s dead mouth was indeed of the European variety; a few quick tests indicated it possessed a chemistry similar enough to make a reasonable assumption that part of it had gone into making the toxin from Whitesell’s wineglass. The sword’s grip was of leather and held no prints; Holmes had already looked for prints of any sort in the dead man’s blood anywhere in the chamber, within moments of the discovery of the murder, and come up empty. He handed the weapon to Watson.

  “Would you be so kind as to clean the blade, Watson? I think… this shall return to Baker Street with us. It would look well over the mantle in the sitting-room, do you think?”

  “After… what happened, Holmes? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, in remembrance, old fellow, for on the first Egyptian expedition in which I accompanied him, we found several of these.”

  “Does it not belong in a museum?”

  “No, for it is not a particularly uncommon relic. But judging by its condition and evidence of maintenance, I should say it belonged to the killer, probably obtained for the express purpose,” Holmes declared. “And I have no intention of returning it to him, when once I find him. Except, just possibly, in his entrails.” He threw a quick glance at Leighton, who sat in the folding camp chair, silent, listening to this exchange. Then he returned his attention to the objects on the table, while Watson began gingerly, if expertly, cleaning the sharp blade of the ancient weapon.

  The oak branch proved more interesting. Holmes had, at first glance after the gruesome discovery, taken it for a holm or holly oak, Quercus ilex, but as he studied it in the light of day and a more composed mind, he realised this was not so. No, he thought, considering, this is a variety of what is called Quercus virginiana. That… is most interesting.

  “Aha,” he said, looking up. “The game is afoot. Now we must—”

  “Doctor Watson!” came Sati’s cry from without. “Come quick! You are needed!”

  “What’s wrong?!” Watson said, starting up, as he discarded the sword on Holmes’ bed.

  “It is Dr. Beaumont, sir! He has got worse, much worse! He is unconscious! Alimah says it is a malaria paroxysm! Hurry, or I fear we shall lose him, too!”

  * * *

  Upon arriving at the hospital tent, Watson found Beaumont prostrated in one of the cots, shivering violently and quite feverish. He was conscious again and able to answer questions with some difficulty, however, and soon Watson obtained additional details from the man himself that he had indeed contracted malaria in the swamps of the Amazon jungle basin some ten years earlier, of a particularly dangerous form known as cerebral malaria, and had had periodic recrudescences ever since.

  “Fetch the quinine, Alimah. Hurry,” Watson ordered. The Muslim woman smiled beatifically.

  “I have it right here, Dr. Watson.”

  “Good. Let’s give him a higher dose than before, and see what happens. I don’t much care for the slight yellowish tint to his sclera. And set up a schedule of doses sufficient to put him right on the edge of chinchonism61 without throwing him over. If this really is cerebral malaria, he will need high doses for it to reach the brain.”

  “Right away.”

  * * *

  “How is poor Dr. Beaumont?” Leighton asked when Watson returned to the tent. Holmes perched on his stool in the corner, puffing his pipe in silence and thoughtfulness, and looking like nothing so much as a giant bird of prey waiting patiently for its quarry.

  �
�He could be better,” Watson said wryly, taking a seat on the edge of his cot. “He is beginning to jaundice. The whites of his eyes were already turning yellow. I hope I got enough quinine into him, soon enough.”

  Holmes looked up.

  “He is quite indisposed, then?”

  “I should say so,” Watson assented. “He was shivering so badly I thought he would fall out of the cot, and his gaze was not well focussed at all. He is also going in and out of fever delusions.”

  “Is he being tended? Is someone with him?”

  “Alimah volunteered to stay the night in the hospital. He will be well cared-for.”

  “Good, then you are free. Come, both of you. The game is afoot,” Holmes declared, setting his spent pipe aside and rising.

  * * *

  They stopped at Phillips’ tent, and Holmes went inside, emerging moments later with the professor’s student assistant.

  “This way,” Holmes said.

  “What’s this all about, Holmes?” a mildly peevish Phillips wanted to know, tagging along reluctantly. “I was just about to retire for the day.”

  “That can wait, Phillips. I have a far more important task for you,” Holmes replied. They paused in front of Dr. Nichols-Woodall’s tent.

  “Doctor?” Holmes called softly. “Dr. Nichols-Woodall? Are you up?”

  “I am,” came the geologist’s voice, and the man himself appeared in the opening seconds later.

  “Would you be so kind as to get your revolver and keep it at the ready? Phillips, you have yours, as I instructed?”

  “I do, though I don’t understand why. We’ve seen no more snakes in camp.”

  “It depends upon the kind of snake,” Holmes said, cryptic. “Watson and I need to look into something. Leighton, do you stay here; you will be safe with them.”

  “But I want to come with you, Sherry,” she protested.

  “No, Leigh, this is serious work for a detective, and I cannot guarantee that there will be no danger. You are the Professor’s sole heiress, and you must remain safe. Stay here, and Watson and I will come back as soon as may be.”