“Sadie-” Damn it, where did that come from? Sadie was the name under which he had first known her - not as the daughter of a peer, but as a music hall singer. “I mean, Lady Sarah, what are you doing here?” Keep it polite, formal, unemotional.
“Can we talk? In private, I mean.”
Hale looked around, half afraid to see Rollins watching from across the street. “Come inside.”
Hale didn’t have an office of his own. He took Sarah past the mass of desks in the pit to the conference room near the back door, followed by the appreciative gaze of Ned Malone. This was totally inappropriate, being behind a closed door with a recently widowed woman, but Hale didn’t give a damn.
“What’s happened?” he asked as he closed the door and took a seat opposite Sarah.
“I saw Father today for the first time since I left his townhouse yesterday morning. Charles and I had dined with him on Monday, and I stayed overnight because I didn’t want to go back to Bedford Place. Father told me this afternoon that policeman, Inspector Rollins, showed up after I left yesterday and interrogated him about the murder weapon.”
“I don’t understand. Why would Rollins ask the Earl about that?”
Sarah leaned over and grabbed Hale’s hand as if she were clutching a lifeline. “Rollins said an informer called and told him that a dagger from the funerary equipment of Queen Ahhotep, mother of Ahmosis I of the 18th Dynasty, was used to kill Alfie - a dagger from Father’s collection. He demanded to see it.”
Hale didn’t know what to make of that. It was coming at him too fast. “What did your father say?”
“He denied owning such an item. Oh, Enoch, what if Inspector Rollins can prove that he was lying?”
“How can he do that? Unless... do you mean he was lying?”
She sighed. “Father couldn’t admit to owning the dagger because he acquired it by, let’s say, less than legal means. Queen Ahhotep’s tomb had two similar daggers - one of solid gold, both dagger and sheath, which was reported to the Egyptian authorities, and the one that Father managed to get, which has a copper blade with gold handle and gold sheath. Father kept it with the rest of his collection in the library.”
“Who told Rollins about it?”
“He said the call was anonymous, although he made it clear he wouldn’t have told me if he’d known.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“One of the servants, I suppose.”
“Does Rollins suspect your father?”
Sarah shook her head. “Oh, no. He still suspects me” - there was the slightest hesitation - “and you. He thinks the dagger does exist, and that I took it while I was visiting Father, and that Father is covering up for me.” Her voice trembled, on the verge of tears. “He said I could have taken it out of the library in my handbag, and there is no denying that is true. It’s my favorite room in the house and I always spend a lot of time there. If it were the murder weapon, could Scotland Yard prove it?”
“I should think they could match the wounds to the weapon, but it would be difficult to say it was an exact match.”Hale scooted his chair over and put his arm around her in a brotherly way. “Buck up. If worse comes to worse, your father can produce the dagger and prove that it didn’t kill Alfie. I’m sure he’d do that to save you from the dock.”
“But he can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because Father doesn’t have the dagger, Enoch.” She hesitated. “It’s... it’s... been stolen. Oh, this is all such a mess!”
Hale unconsciously tightened his grip on Sarah. “The theft of the dagger - it just happened recently?”
“Yes.” Again she hesitated. “When Father looked for it after Rollins left, it wasn’t there.”
That couldn’t be a coincidence - but it could be a cover-up, a story that Sedgewood told his daughter to hide the fact that he had gotten rid of the weapon used to kill her husband. Having been illegally taken out of Egypt, there would be no record of it being in his possession. If Sedgewood hadn’t shown it around, then the only people in England who could testify to the dagger’s existence were Sarah, who would lie to defend her father; her brother, Charles; and perhaps some servants who wouldn’t dare to accuse a peer - or would they? Hale still didn’t get the whole British class thing.
All this was too much to spell out to Sarah. He simply said, “Maybe Rollins should suspect your father.”
She moved away from Hale. “How could you! I thought you wanted to help.”
“I do want to help... you. I know you didn’t kill Alfie. Your father I’m not so sure about.”
“You’re being terribly unfair just because you and Father never got along.”
“I got along fine. He was the problem.”
She ignored that. “Father always liked Alfie very much; you know that. Our marriage pleased him - more than it pleased me, if the truth be told. He had no reason in the world to kill Alfie.”
“Your brother said the Earl was upset about Alfie’s relationship with the Woolfs and their Bloomsbury Group.”
“Upset, yes. Homicidal, no.”
But Hale saw something in her wide green eyes that made him wonder whether she believed what she was saying.
“Did your father send you to talk to me?”
“Good heavens, no! He’d be horrified and furious if he knew that I was asking your help!”
“How much help can I be when Rollins thinks that you and I were in it together?”
“Oh, Enoch!” Her eyes filled with tears. He held her close again.
“I’m not completely out of it,” he said, hoping to encourage her. “I’ve been asking some questions. I have a few for you, too. Will you promise to answer me honestly, even if my questions are uncomfortable?”
“Of course. I know that you are my friend and want only the best for me.”
That hurt, though he tried not to show it. What man who wants to be a woman’s husband is happy to be called her friend? He steeled himself to be hurt much more.
“That argument you had with Alfie the night that he died - was it about another man?”
She paused. “Yes and no. I guess I’d better start by saying that I realized before the ship had even docked that I’d been a fool to marry Alfie. It was all wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“You didn’t love him?”
“Oh, but I did! I loved him exactly like I love Charles, as a sister loves a brother. Marrying him was the biggest mistake of my life. But I knew it was a mistake I had to live with. Divorce was unthinkable. I couldn’t do that to Alfie. He was such a dear - and such a bore. I actually rather liked it that he hung around with people much more interesting than he was, those Bloomsbury people.”
“Did Alfie know how you felt?”
“He never said so, and I tried hard to be a good wife. But a woman can’t hide her feelings. I think that’s why he spent so much time away from home. Charles was the only one who knew how unhappy I had been. I had to confide in someone. He, at least, understood both wanting to please Daddy and fearing the loss of his love and help at the same time. After all,” she smiled sideways at Enoch, “he had been through much the same thing.”
“And what happened the night of the argument? What was it about?” That’s what he had been building up to.
“Alfie was jealous of a photograph that he found in my bag. I don’t know how he came to be looking in there. Maybe he guessed that there was such a photograph. At any rate, that’s what he found - a picture of the man I realize now is the only man I have ever loved.”
She reached into the silk-lined depths of her black dress bag and pulled out the photo. With a shy look on her pretty face, she handed it to Hale.
Hale recognized it right away. The picture was in a cellulite envelope, like those used by stamp collectors. It showed no wear and had been ca
refully taken care of, probably only recently added back to her purse. The image showed Sarah at Murray’s Night Club. The man next to her, with his hand on hers, was a slightly younger Enoch Hale.
Finding the Alibi
“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”
– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, 1601
Hale remembered when the photo had been taken, one night when they were out with Tom Eliot shortly after the Hangman Murders were solved.
He could feel his neck turning red.
“You sure had a unique way of showing your love,”
he said. “You married another guy.”
Sarah winced. “I was worse than a fool, Enoch; I was a romantic fool. We were in Egypt. Alfie seemed every bit the intrepid amateur archeologist. The excavation season hadn’t even begun yet and Alfie had never picked up a trowel in his life, but somehow that didn’t matter. When he proposed under the stars in the Valley of the Kings, it seemed so romantic that I just didn’t know how to say no.”
“If you’d sent me a wire, I could have told you how.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Hale wished that he could take them back. Sarah flinched as though he’d slapped her, and he hadn’t intended that. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and moved on.
“Rollins said you told him the maid must have heard wrong. Why did you lie?”
“Don’t you see, Enoch?” Her voice was pleading. “I didn’t want you brought into this. I didn’t realize that you would be anyway, just because of what we once were to each other.”
And could be again? Was that what she was trying to imply?
Hale stood and walked around the conference table trying to gather his thoughts. He needed to concentrate on the issue at hand. On balance, he didn’t like it that she lied to Rollins. Her reason sounded good, but if she lied to Scotland Yard she could lie to a Yankee reporter who had been head over heels in love with her. And still was? Hale wasn’t sure, and this was no time to try to work it out. However he felt about Sarah, she could be lying about the argument with Alfie. Maybe it was about another man and she didn’t want Hale to know about him anymore than she wanted Rollins to.
“I’m so thankful you have an alibi,” Sarah added.
“Yes, I was at a performance of Aida at Covent Garden. The woman I was with can attest to that.” Sarah looked hurt, as though he had betrayed her - which was ridiculous. She was the one who had married before he’d had a chance to propose. What did she care how he spent his Sunday evening? But then, she had once been an actress of a sort. If she wanted to gain his sympathy, it would come naturally to her to appear hurt that he’d been with another woman that day.
“Unfortunately,” he added, “I don’t know who the woman is.”
The next day, the day the Open began, found Hale at the British Museum when he was supposed to be back at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club for another feature story. Since Rollins and his men still hadn’t found her, he was convinced that “Prudence Beresford” had been a false name dreamed up by a bored wife in search of adventure and romance. And yet... her flirting - and there was some flirting - had been quite tentative, which didn’t seem to fit. But that mystery could wait. First he had to find her. He had just one hope. If it didn’t work out, he would be forced to place an advert in the newspaper agony columns.
Unless she had been lying to him, Thursday was the day she often went to the world-famous museum, just two blocks from Sarah’s home on Bedford Place. Sherlock Holmes had also once lived near the British Museum, in rooms on Montague Street, in his early days as a consulting detective with few clients. Holmes! Hale should have called the old man days ago, retirement and those infernal bees of his be damned.
Based on the collections of Sir Hans Sloan, the vast, temple-shaped Museum was like the attic of the Empire in terms of the depth and diversity of what was to be found there. But “Prudence” had mentioned the Rosetta Stone, that ancient Egyptian stele inscribed with the same message in hieroglyphs, Demotic, and ancient Greek. It had been on display at the Museum since 1802, just three years after its discovery by a soldier with Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt.
Hale stood in front of it, wishing that it held the key to Alfie Barrington’s murder as it had held the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics. He went back to his wild idea that “Prudence” had been part of a plot to frame Sarah - and him. Who would do such a thing? Cui bono? The real killer, obviously, would benefit by throwing the suspicion on someone else, but why them? There had to be a reason to frame them in particular. If Sarah were convicted of Alfie’s murder, she couldn’t inherit his money. Where would it go then?
It’s always startling, and at first almost unbelievable, to see in the flesh a person you’ve been thinking of. So that was Hale’s first reaction when he realized, after half an hour or so in front of the granite-like rock, that the woman standing a few feet to the right of him, with a few other gawkers in between them, was “Prudence Beresford.”
Moving slowly, he stepped back from the Rosetta Stone and approached her from her left.
“Hello, Prudence,” he whispered in her ear, dripping sarcasm on the name.
Curiously, she didn’t seem surprised.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come today,” she said, resignation in her voice. “I was fairly sure I mentioned my Thursday habit to you, and of course you would remember that. You’re no Captain Hastings, Mr. Hale. You’re no fool.”
He didn’t know who she was talking about, and he didn’t care. “That remains to be seen. Listen, I’m in a spot of trouble and I need your help.”
“I know. I read about it in The Times. Scotland Yard is looking for me.” She started walking slowly away, with a nod to indicate that he should follow. Walking through the vast halls of the museum, they could avoid other people and make sure they weren’t overheard.
“If you know that, why didn’t you come forward?” Unless that was part of the plan.
“I’m afraid that doing so would put me in an embarrassing position that I wish to avoid. That’s very selfish of me, no doubt, but there it is.”
Hale felt his pulse rising. “My situation is a little more serious. A Scotland Yard inspector gives every indication of wanting to measure me for a hangman’s noose. As I happen to be fond of my own neck, this makes me uncomfortable. Look, I need an alibi, and you’re it. All you would have to do is tell the truth. Surely even Rollins wouldn’t believe that a woman would lie to protect a man who killed another man to be with his wife.”
She looked at him strangely.
“Don’t ask me to say that again,” he said, “because I’m not sure that I could.”
“I understand your point. Complex plots are nothing new to me.” She paused in front of a black statue of the Egyptian god Horus. “Let me tell you about my circumstances. First of all, I am married.”
“That is not exactly a news flash,” Hale said dryly. “As you said, I’m no fool.”
“You surprise me. I didn’t think you were the sort of man who would keep company with a married woman.”
She sounded disappointed in him. How did that figure? She was the one who was married, she had asked him to meet her at the opera, and now she was moralizing. Women!
“I’m willing to stipulate that if Rollins put me in the dock on charges of not being a saint, he could probably get a conviction,” Hale said. “But I never thought about you being married until the second time, at Aida. It just never occurred to me. When I looked for a wedding ring, you weren’t wearing one, although it looked like you had. Now, I don’t know a lot about marriage, having never been married, but I’m going to guess that when a woman takes off her wedding ring and meets a man she barely knows for a night at the opera, her relationship with her husband is not the best.”
She nodded. “I sup
pose it’s an old story. We married on Christmas Eve, 1914. He was home on leave from the war. By then it was clear that this wasn’t going to be the short war we had all expected at the beginning, home by Christmas and all that. But he had a ‘good war’ - no injuries - and I made myself useful here at home as a volunteer nurse and dispenser.
“Archie left the army in 1919 and went into finance. Things were all right for awhile. Last year we had a marvelous adventure traveling the world for months to promote the British Empire Exhibition. But I missed our daughter terribly, and when we came home last October Archie had no job. I don’t think he liked it that we got by on my inheritance from my father and the money I make from writing. Earlier this year Archie got a job and I made enough from selling serial rights to buy my dear bottle-nosed Morris Cowley.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“If only I knew! It seems that nothing I say or do is right. I’m too cheerful! I’m too gloomy! That’s why I came alone to the opera, but it was nice to have an intelligent person to talk to before and after. You see, I’ve had to find ways to amuse myself that don’t involve Archie. He spends all of his weekends on golf. We used to golf together but now he won’t let me play with him because he says I’m not good enough. Do you play golf?”
“I know how to hold a club.” And I’m supposed to be at the British Open right now, earning my paycheck.”What you’re telling me is that things aren’t good with your husband, but you don’t want to make it worse.”
“I still have hopes, Mr. Hale. And a daughter.”
This woman’s marriage was hanging by a thread. Hale couldn’t bring himself to cut it off. He sighed. “Without you swearing to Scotland Yard that I was with you on Sunday night, I have no alibi. I’ll just have to find another way out of this pickle.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll solve the murder myself, like an amateur sleuth in one of those damned detective novels. I’ve been involved in something of the sort before.”
The Egyptian Curse Page 6