The Vandemark Mummy

by Cynthia Voigt

  “I need a shower,” Althea said, sounding like a little girl.

  “Then go take one,” her father advised.

  “But I don’t want—”

  “We won’t. Cross my heart and hope to die, and stick a million needles in my eye, there’ll be no talking until you get down,” Mr. Hall promised. “Or,” he corrected himself with an eye on Phineas, “nothing you’ll want to be in on. I have something to say to you, young man.”

  Phineas couldn’t think why he should be in trouble.

  Althea turned at the doorway to ask Phineas, “You too.”

  “Promise,” Phineas promised. The skin around her mouth looked raw, where he’d ripped the tape off. He could feel himself getting angry again, the seesaw balance sinking into anger as glad relief floated up, getting lighter. He was more angry than glad, seeing his sister’s face, and he didn’t much care if he was in trouble.

  Phineas followed his father into the house, into the kitchen, where Detective Arsenault sat hunched over a mug. He looked big, even sitting down. He looked tired. He looked relieved. “Both of them,” he said. “Thank God.”

  Mr. Hall turned around to face Phineas. He wasn’t much taller than his son, but he was a lot angrier. Phineas had his own anger, as shield and weapon. His father ought to be grateful. Hadn’t Phineas brought Althea back safe? He watched while his father’s mouth tried to find words to get out. He knew what he’d done and he wasn’t going to be bullied into thinking he hadn’t done something terrific.

  “You didn’t even leave a note,” Mr. Hall said.

  Phineas’s mouth fell open, but before he could get out an explanation or apology, his father was speaking again.

  “How could you? Just take off like that? And not leave any word? And just let me come home to an empty house? And—”

  “I’m sorry,” Phineas said. “I didn’t think of that. I should have, Dad, and I won’t make the mistake again.” He meant it, every word, including the sorry. He knew what it was like to have someone just disappear, and to have no idea where someone was. “I’m really sorry, Dad.”

  “I was so worried—” But that was the end of it for Mr. Hall. “Okay,” he said, “Okay. You’re back. You’re both back.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and then yanked at it, as if he needed to make sure he was awake, as if he was so glad he needed to do something physical to show it. Like, yanking at his hair.

  “Don’t pull it out,” Phineas said, and felt like laughing. “Okay if I get myself a glass of milk?”

  “Get me a beer, for celebration,” his father said. “And a glass too please. Lou, do you want a beer?”

  “I’m on duty,” the detective said.

  When they were all sitting and waiting, with the sound of a shower running upstairs, Mr. Hall asked Phineas, “Where did you find her?”

  “In the library. In the cellar. But didn’t you promise her we wouldn’t talk about it until she gets down?”

  His father ignored him. “In the cellar? Where?”

  “We never even thought of looking there,” Detective Arsenault said.

  “There’s a kind of equipment storeroom, behind the Sports Department office. I almost missed it,” Phineas told them. “She was tied up, and taped over the mouth.”

  “Maybe we would have gotten around to it, room by room,” the detective said. He didn’t sound too sure of that.

  The water stopped gurgling down through the pipes.

  “She might never have been found,” Mr. Hall said.

  Phineas shook his head. His father wasn’t thinking clearly. “No, as soon as they needed any equip—”

  Which wouldn’t have been until the start of the school semester, seven weeks. Unless there was an early start for varsity fall sports, say, the middle of August, say four weeks. Phineas had the feeling that four weeks was long enough to die in. He had the feeling that without water—and with your mouth taped you wouldn’t be getting any water—it was more like seven days.

  Gently, his father took the glass out of his hand.

  If Phineas hadn’t promised Althea not to say anything, he’d have set them off after Ken right away. With their guns. If it was too late, because he waited, kept his word—

  “Phineas?” Althea was back in the room, in her bathrobe. Except for the skin around her mouth, she looked like nothing had ever happened to her. “You didn’t tell, did you?”

  He shook his head. He watched Althea take the milk carton and sit down. She took his glass for herself. “I’m thirsty,” she said, and drank off a glass. She poured herself another. “Do you want to tell them?”

  Phineas shook his head.

  “Excuse me, Althea,” Detective Arsenault said, “but we need to be sure. You are all right, aren’t you?”

  Phineas didn’t know why he had to ask.

  Althea did. “You mean, was I raped, or anything?” Althea asked, and she shook her head. “No, this wasn’t about sex, it was about ambition. Ken’s much more interested in his career than sex, I bet.”

  “Ken?” their father said.

  Phineas looked at Althea and felt himself smiling back at her. It felt good to surprise people.

  “Ken Simard?” their father said.

  “Where is he now?” Detective Arsenault asked.

  “England,” Phineas said. “He’s gotten away.”

  “But why would Ken do that?” Mr. Hall asked.

  “We’ll have him brought back,” the detective said, and stood up to leave the room. Phineas was glad he wasn’t the one Detective Arsenault was after in that tone of voice.

  “Why, Althea?” Mr. Hall asked.

  “For the poem.”

  “The poem? What poem?” Mr. Hall pushed his half-empty glass of beer away. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Do you remember when I said there were Greek letters on the mummy’s feet?” Althea asked. “And Ken put me down, as if I was an idiot?”

  They didn’t remember.

  “Well, I was right,” Althea said. “It was Greek. A Sappho poem, and I should have known right away, because the letters were the beginning of her daughter’s name—Kleis. Anybody who’s heard of Sappho knows about Kleis. But Ken sounded so sure of himself, I let him tell me something I didn’t think.”

  Detective Arsenault returned to the table, looking satisfied.

  “It was Ken who broke into the library?” Mr. Hall asked. Althea nodded. “And stole the mummy?” Althea nodded. “Because there’s a Sappho poem on the wrappings?”

  “Or a fragment. I didn’t get a chance to look at the photographs he took. He took pictures, before he smashed her feet.”

  “I don’t get it,” the detective said.

  “Late mummies, like in the Roman era, were sometimes wrapped in strips taken from papyrus sheets that were being thrown out,” Mr. Hall explained. “According to Althea, our mummy’s feet had the text of a poem by Sappho, who was—”

  “I took a good ancient history course once, I know who you mean.”

  “But why would he care so much about an old poem?” Phineas wondered. “It’s not as if it could be in her own handwriting.”

  “Unless it was a previously undiscovered one. One of the lost poems that we only know existed because other classical writers refer to them.”

  “See, Fin,” Althea explained, “if Ken could discover it, and translate it, his reputation would be made. Like, do you remember the man who said he’d discovered a Shakespearean sonnet? He made the front page of the Times.”

  “So then Ken would get his job at Harvard.” Phineas thought Ken Simard was dumb, dumb and disgusting. “I hope he gets sent to jail. I hope he gets sent to jail for life.”

  “Your mother!” Mr. Hall said, slamming his hand against his forehead. “You’ve got to call her, Althea, right now. She called earlier, said there was some woman here—?”

  “Go call her, let her know you’re both back safe. I had to tell her, Althea,” Mr. Hall said.

  “But don’t talk any more abou
t it until I get back,” Althea said.

  Phineas didn’t know about the other two, but he felt like doing whatever Althea wanted, anything to make her happy. She didn’t know how close she had come to dying, and he didn’t see any reason to tell her. None of them said anything. They just listened to one side of a phone conversation.

  Althea had barely finished dialing when she started talking. “Hi, Mom. Dad said I should call. No, I’m fine, really. I’ll write you about it, okay? But I can’t talk now, I just wanted you to know everything’s okay, everybody’s okay. I know you were, but it’s over now. And I really do have to go, because there’s a detective here and he needs the information. Okay, I’ll call this evening, but now—I love you too.”

  Sitting down, Althea said, “I think I hurt her feelings. She wanted to talk.”

  “That’s okay, she owes you some hurt feelings,” Phineas said.

  His father stared at him. Althea stared at him.

  “Well, she does,” Phineas said. Why were they staring at him?

  Detective Arsenault had more questions for Althea. “How did you figure out that it was Professor Simard who was responsible?”

  “When I thought about it, he was the only real choice. He was the only one who would have wanted to do all those things. Once I started to really think about it—Phineas, remember when we wondered if there was some backward reason? If the attempted break-in had been not to take anything, but to make Dad look bad?”

  Phineas remembered.

  “I started thinking like that,” Althea said. “I started wondering if everything wasn’t meant to deceive and misdirect us. The more I thought about that, and matched it up with what had actually happened—because what actually happened is the mummy’s feet were destroyed. So the mummy’s feet must have been what it was all about.”

  Detective Arsenault nodded his head as he listened. “I see that. I must admit, I never thought of Simard. Not seriously, that is, because I thought of all of you as possibilities, but—like you, Sam, he seemed just a professor, all wrapped up in academics, and not ambitious. Certainly not a criminal.”

  “That’s because you were thinking about it like a criminal case,” Althea said. “I was thinking about it like a scholar.” She seemed to feel that that explained everything.

  “Obviously, yours was the right way,” the detective said.

  “So I went to ask him about it,” Althea said. Her voice slowed down, and she looked at her hands, the wrists coming out of the heavy terry cloth sleeves. “That was dumb. Because it was a criminal case. I thought it out, but I wasn’t thinking. When I got there, he was home alone—his wife’s in Boston on business. He was packing, and he told me to come on in. He looked different—I thought, because he’d shaved his beard. He looked sort of dangerous? Exciting? I was so dumb—I just blurted it out. And then—he’s bigger than I am,” she apologized, “and I don’t know how to fight. He’s not so strong, but if someone’s smaller, and doesn’t have any idea how to fight—anyway, he tied me up and put tape over my mouth so I couldn’t yell. I couldn’t do anything to stop him, I was helpless, useless. Then, he just finished packing, as if I wasn’t there. It’s a big house, Dad—and expensive. I guess his wife must make pots of money. They’ve got a water view, and there must be four bedrooms, the whole thing has been restored—like the Tunneys’ house, remember that one? Almost a mansion, it was like that. He dumped me in the car. He told me, if I tried to show my head, or did anything to attract attention, he’d kill me. I believed him. Because I was so scared.”

  Phineas looked at his father. His father looked at the detective. Detective Arsenault shook his head, just slightly.

  But Althea was thinking, and worked it out. “I was right to believe him, wasn’t I? That’s what he was doing, wasn’t it? He didn’t mean me to be found. If he’d meant me to be found he’d have just dumped me in the hallway. Or in the collection room. Or the bathroom.”

  “So after you left the hospital you came back here, and worked it out.” The detective’s voice was low and calm, and calming. “Then you went over to his house to accuse him. At about what time was this?”

  “Afternoon, early—I’m not sure. I can’t believe I actually did that. Something so stupid.”

  “You should have left a note,” Mr. Hall said.

  “But I did. I left Phineas a message. Telling him who I thought was guilty.”

  “You did not,” Phineas said.

  “I did too.”

  “I never saw it. Where’d you leave it?”

  “On my desk.”

  “All that was on your desk was some dumb doodling.”

  “That wasn’t dumb doodling. It was in code. I shone my light onto it, Fin, so you couldn’t miss it.”

  “Well, I missed it. Not the paper, just the message. Maybe there wasn’t any reason to put it in code?” Phineas knew he sounded sarcastic.

  “Anybody else would have figured it out. It didn’t make any sense unless it was in code. Anybody except you would have known what it was.”

  “Oh, yeah? O’Meara didn’t.”

  “O’Meara?” Mr. Hall interrupted their quarrel.

  “She came by because she thought I might like the company, which I think was pretty nice of her. After she heard about Althea, on the police radio. I told you, she’s the one that answered Mom’s call.”

  “Hey, I think it’s nice of her too,” Mr. Hall said. “I’m not criticizing her. I’m just figuring things out. No wonder your mother called back.”

  Althea was not to be distracted. “Where’s the paper now, Phineas? Go get it. You’ll see. Jerk.”

  Phineas brought it in from the phone table. He studied it. So If Mom Asks Request Divorce. Okay, he saw it. “It only makes sense if you already know what it means,” he said, and passed the paper to his father. “Kill every noodle,” he muttered. “I mean, that’s so complicated, Althea. It’s too complicated to communicate.”

  “But it worked,” she said. “If it didn’t work, how did you know it was Ken?”

  Phineas had no idea. “Just the same way I knew you were in the library, the way I know what time it is.” He wasn’t quarreling any longer. He didn’t care much about understanding how, as long as things turned out all right. “Dad,” he remembered. “I broke a window in the library, when I broke in. And I took keys from Mrs. Batchelor’s desk.” He pulled them out of his pocket and put them on the table, a show-and-tell. “I’ll call in the morning, to tell her. It’s not your fault, and I’ll pay for it, I’ll make sure she doesn’t blame you.”

  “She can blame me as much as she wants to,” his father said. “I don’t even care much if I get fired. Just as long as you two are safe.”

  The detective pushed back his chair and got up. “That’s all for now, I think. You must be exhausted, all of you.”

  Phineas discovered that he was. Fear and anger had flowed out of him, and he was as tired as if he’d just played a four-set match.

  “I know I’m exhausted and I’ve just been doing my job, plus some vicarious anxiety. Sam, can the three of you come to the station at—say three-thirty this afternoon? We should have him back by then.”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t get up, I’ll let myself out.”

  “How will you get back?” Phineas asked.

  “I left my car out of sight, behind the first house in the row,” Detective Arsenault said. “I didn’t want it to be seen, in case . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  They didn’t even bother rinsing off the dirty dishes. It was all Phineas could do to make himself put the milk back in the refrigerator before he went upstairs and fell onto his bed.

  The house was dark, downstairs and upstairs. Phineas sat up, alarmed and awake. “Althea?” he called. The little house had its bedrooms so close around the hallway that they could all hear one another without raising their voices. None of them had their doors closed.

  “What’s the matter, Fin?”

  “Are you all right?”


  “Of course.”

  “But your light,” he reminded her.

  “I thought—” Her voice came out of the darkness.

  “The light doesn’t bother me,” their father said, another voice floating on dark air.

  “I know, but—I want to try it. I think, there’s a difference between being scared and not knowing how you’ll do, and being scared but knowing you’ll do okay. I can always turn the light on, later.”

  “Yeah, well, if you do, close your door, okay? It might not bother Dad, but it bothers me.” Phineas would have been happy to continue the argument all night, but he was too tired to figure out how to do that.

  CHAPTER 19

  “But why did Ken stop by here, on his way to the airport?” Phineas asked. He swished the last bite of pancake around in the pool of maple syrup on his plate and popped it into his mouth. He loved maple syrup. If he’d been alone, he’d have leaned his face over to lick what was left on the plate.

  “With your mouth closed, please,” Althea said, for about the sixteenth time. Phineas closed his mouth and chewed on. “You’re revolting,” she said, just as he’d known she would.

  “A few more?” Mr. Hall asked. Phineas nodded his head. Pancakes for lunch—but could it be lunch if it was the first meal you ate in a day?

  “Anyway, why did he?” Phineas asked again. “The rest of it makes sense, trying to convince us that the crown was what the thief was after, and then calling up so the mummy would be returned safely. Even destroying her feet makes sense. But what’s the sense in stopping by our house, when he—?”

  Mr. Hall stood by the stove, watching over the pancakes on the griddle. They’d been up for a couple of hours, just talking about Ken, and what had happened, making sense out of all the pieces now that they knew how to fit them together.

  “To gloat?” Althea suggested.