by Anna Lord
Miss Lee was obviously not as fragile as she looked. She began to give her tangled locks a vigorous rake.
“He went to the mainland. He is going to speak to the British surgeon at the construction site about performing a post mortem.”
“Post mortem? Won’t the surgeon need my permission for that?”
“No, the Acting High Commissioner can give permission where the cause of death may be uncertain.”
“Uncertain? I thought Daddy and Max died from the windstorm. I thought they must have choked to death on all that sand.” She paused in her raking and looked directly at the Countess.
“I don’t think it was sand. That’s why a post mortem is necessary.”
“Do my eyes look puffy?”
“No, well, perhaps just a little, but I’m sure they will look fine in no time at all.”
“Would you mind passing me my fan. It’s next to that statuette of Ma’at. I begged them not to leave me. Daddy and Max, that is. Pass me the French perfume too.”
The Countess could see why the maid was quick to disappear. She waited for Miss Lee to dab on some perfume then returned the bottle to its exact position and noticed some opium twists sitting in a Limoges porcelain candy dish shaped like a seashell. “You heard voices – that’s why your father and the professor left you last night, is that right?”
She began fanning her face to reduce the heat and hopefully reduce the puffiness around her eyes. “Yes, well, not quite. I didn’t hear any voices. The wind was so loud and I was crying. Max said he heard someone calling for help. He said he would go and check. He didn’t come back. Then Daddy said he heard someone calling for help. He poked his head out of the temple and called out: Is anyone there? Or something to that effect. I begged him not to leave me. He said he’d be back in a minute. He said he wasn’t going far. But he disappeared too.”
“It must have been frightening for you?”
“Frightening? You have no idea how terrified I was! Especially after all those crocodiles!” She gave a shudder and the fan became jerky. “It was like a nightmare! Who would do such a wicked thing! And on my birthday!” She gave another jerky shudder. “When Dr Watson appeared suddenly and offered to escort me back to the Sekhmet, I sensed then that something terrible had happened to Daddy and Max.”
“You didn’t hear any strange sounds while you waited?”
She took a moment to think while she stopped to check her reflection in the mirror and pat her puffy face with her fingertips. “Perhaps I did, but I might have just imagined it.”
“Do you think your father and the professor might have imagined the cries for help?”
“No,” she said firmly, without hesitation.
The Countess decided to press the point. “But the wind was roaring and whistling. It could have sounded like a cry for help.”
She shook her head and began fanning her face again. “But they both heard it, you see. They looked at each other. They both looked out into the darkness and the swirling sand and talked about who it could be. If they imagined it, they both imagined the same thing. If someone imagines they hear a voice calling out to them, then it is unlikely the person who is with them would hear a voice too unless it were actually true. What I mean is - if Max imagined it then Daddy wouldn’t imagine the same thing. He might imagine something but it wouldn’t be the same something. It would be a different something. Will Mr Longshanks be returning in time for dinner, do you think?”
“Yes, I believe he will. At least, he didn’t say he wouldn’t be back. Do you have any idea if anyone had a reason to murder your father?”
“Murder?” Miss Lee dropped the fan and fell back on the pillow. “But I thought Daddy and Max died of natural causes. Are you saying…?”
The Countess kicked herself. It was too late to backtrack. Miss Lee began to sob.
“It’s just awful,” said Daisy. “Poor Hypatia. Such a tragedy and on her birthday too. Is there anything I can do to help?”
The Countess found Daisy Clooney in her cabin. She was stretched out on her bed, reading the Book of the Dead. It seemed morbidly appropriate in some macabre way, not that she was about to start reading too much into it. Reading a book about the afterlife did not indicate a murderous personality. Otherwise everyone who believed in heaven could be accused of being Jack the Ripper.
“I think she will just have to cry herself out. I’m afraid it’s my fault. I didn’t realize she didn’t know her father and Professor Mallisham had been murdered.”
Daisy bookmarked her page. “How did they actually die? No one seems to know.”
“Yes, it’s a mystery. There will most likely be a post mortem.”
“Post mortem – that will be just like what happened in ancient times in Egypt. Ironic that we are doing the same sort of thing thousands of years later; removing all the organs from a dead body and that sort of thing. What did they call it? Evisceration?”
“Yes, I never thought of it like that.”
“I suppose the task will fall to Dr Watson?”
“No, there’s a British surgeon at the construction site. He will perform the task if the three engineers agree to it.”
“Is that why Mr Longshanks went off in the felucca?”
“Yes.”
“Hypatia fancies him. He’s rather good-looking. But I think he fancies Ursula. What do you think?”
“I haven’t really noticed,” she lied shamelessly, although after that last exchange he may very well turn his fancies to the multi-lingual fraulein. What did he say? She looked ‘fetching’ in a Morocaine kaftan. “I came to speak to you about last night.”
“Do you mean about the crocodiles? They were hideous! I can still see them. I checked under my bed when I got back to my room last night. It sounds ridiculous but I couldn’t get them out of my head. Ursula was so frightened she refused to go into her cabin and was going to sleep in the saloon. She was worried about her uncle too. Ali Pasha was in there so I convinced her to sleep in my bed. He’s creepy. Quite frankly, I was terrified of being left on my own. I pretended to be braver than I felt.”
The Countess could empathise with that sentiment. She had taken comfort from Jim, and Lorna Baxter had expressed a similar sentiment about being left alone. What did she say? If Moran had gone anywhere, she would have gone with him. No doubt, everyone was acting braver than they felt, even the men.
“What about later, after the crocodiles, when you set off from the Kiosk, can you remember what happened?”
Daisy considered the question thoughtfully. “It’s really all a blur. I remember I set off with Ursula and Herr Graf. Ursula was worried about her uncle. I could tell just by looking at her that she didn’t think he would get very far on his own. She took one arm and I took the other to help him steady. We were buffeted by the wind. It was so strong we could barely stay on our feet. We couldn’t see anyone else. He started to vomit again. I thought it was fear that was making him sick but I think now he’d had too much to eat and drink. Some people just don’t know when to stop. Anyway, he was sick. It was revolting. I tried not to dry retch from the smell. He told us to keep walking and he would catch up. We only went a couple of yards and waited but he never came.”
“Did you stop at the Temple of Hathor?”
“I don’t even know if we were anywhere near it. We just trudged and trudged, clinging to each other, heads down, trying to protect our faces from the stinging sand. We might have walked right past it without even noticing. I think we were going round in circles because the distance wasn’t far but it seemed to take forever. At one stage we both sank to our knees, exhausted. There were fallen stones nearby. I don’t know which ruin it was. It might have been the Temple of Hathor or it might have been the Temple of Augustus or it might have been anything. We stayed like that for ages, huddled together, trying to muster the energy to get up and go on. Finally, we dragged each other up. When we saw the lights of the ship we both burst into tears.”
“Do you know if anyone
returned ahead of you?”
“We didn’t see anyone on the deck. There were some servants on the jetty. They looked like windblown ghosts. I didn’t pay much attention. Ursula wanted to check if her uncle was in his cabin but I talked her out of it. I didn’t want her to get upset. She said she was going sleep in the saloon because she was too scared to go to her room in case it was full of death adders or scorpions. She was talking nonsense. I sensed she was on the verge of hysteria. I talked her into staying with me. We went straight to my cabin and collapsed on the bed in our costumes. I think it was not far off first light. I don’t think I slept much. When I woke up, it was morning and she had returned to her own cabin.”
“Do you know if anyone had a reason to murder Mr Lee?”
“Well, I suppose I did. He inherited everything which should have gone to my father. I nurse a permanent grudge, but that’s a far cry from murder. There’s Mrs Baxter too. Uncle Jefferson could be a bit free with his hands. I saw him touch her once on the breast. They were in his study, working late, and the door was ajar. There was a summer storm and I was going to the stable to check on the horses. It gave me a shock. She looked uncomfortable with it. I don’t think she was encouraging him.”
“There’s Ali Pasha too.”
They both turned their heads sharply. Ursula was standing in the doorway of the cabin. She came in and closed the door then leaned her slender frame against it.
“I heard you talking about who had reason to murder Mr Lee. Ali Pasha did. My uncle and I were in his shop browsing one day. Ali Pasha didn’t know I was in the room at the back. He thought I’d gone out with my uncle, who went to buy some tobacco, but I was studying a couple of papyrus scrolls, comparing the hieroglyphs. One of them rolled on the floor. I was bending down behind the stone sarcophagus when Ali Pasha’s lover came in.”
“Lover?” interjected the Countess.
“The Nubian.”
“Japhet?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know he was Ali Pasha’s lover?”
“My uncle told me. I thought Ali Pasha might try to take advantage of me if I stayed in the shop on my own. But my uncle said not to worry. Ali Pasha was a man-lover. You used the past tense just now. I notice grammar because I’m interested in languages. You should have used the present tense.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Countess. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You said was but you meant is.”
“Is what?”
“Japhet is his lover.”
The Countess could hardly admit that she knew Japhet was dead. “Oh, I see, yes you are quite right. What about Ali Pasha? Why would he want to murder Mr Lee?”
“Mr Lee owes Ali Pasha quite a lot of money, not just for the antiquities he has purchased, but an entire tomb.”
“An entire tomb!” The Countess’s skepticism sky-rocketed along with her pitch, but Fraulein Graf remained unaffected.
“Yes, it was discovered by a goatherd who is a friend of Ali Pasha’s cousin’s wife. Mr Lee promised to pay the goatherd to keep it quiet so that Hypatia could ‘discover’ it in her own good time. It will make her famous. Mallisham will be by her side, of course, but the honour will be hers. Oh, I meant he would have been by her side.
I overheard Ali Pasha talking to Japhet about whether they could trust Mr Lee to pay up. Ali Pasha said if Mr Lee didn’t pay up he would tell Professor Mallisham about it and the honour would go to the professor and the goatherd and they would split the treasure three ways if there was anything inside. It’s a risk because the tomb may be empty. That’s why it’s better to sell the location of a tomb before it is opened. Many amateur archaeologists may not be aware that most tombs fall prey to tomb robbers within days of being sealed. And let’s not forget that huge excavations are hugely expensive. That’s why Ali Pasha prefers Mr Lee’s money up-front.”
No wonder Ali Pasha insisted on coming to Philae to get his money. He couldn’t risk Lee cutting a deal with Mallisham. This was certainly a startling piece of news and a good motive for murder. Moreover, it was the missing link between Lee and Mallisham.
“Does your uncle know what you overheard?”
“Yes, I discussed it with him. We talk frankly about everything.”
The Countess immediately suspected Ali Pasha of having a falling out with Lee and Mallisham and killing them, but as she hurried to find Dr Watson, her mind went another way.
Her imagination began wondering if Herr Graf would be interested in making the so-called discovery for himself. It would be a feather in his archaeological cap and he could finally outshine his younger brother. He would no longer be limited to middle-man, sourcing antiquities from arrogant men like Ali Pasha and Mallisham and selling them to rich men he probably despised who wanted merely to ‘show-off’ their Egyptian room to their rich friends.
Fraulein Graf might want to make an early name for herself as well. It would take some of the tarnish off her father’s dishonour and perhaps go some way to restoring the Graf name in the Egyptology firmament.
Uncle and niece might have decided to negotiate with Ali Pasha in secret, and to make negotiations go more smoothly, they might have decided to eliminate Lee and Mallisham.
As the Countess hurried to tell Dr Watson about her latest theory she wondered how Herr Graf might have achieved such a feat. He could easily have prepared the two chambers in advance, and he was out all night somewhere on the island. No one spotted him until Dr Watson came across him mid-morning.
As for Fraulein Graf, she owned a burqa. And the two ladies did not return to the Sekhmet until almost dawn. But there was always the inevitable stumbling block. The two ladies had been together all night. Daisy Clooney was Ursula’s alibi.
Oh, hang on! Could Daisy Clooney have assisted Ursula? She had admitted to holding a grudge against her rich uncle and the two demoiselles appeared to have formed a firm friendship. They had shared the same bed. Was it possible that the two ladies supplied the helpless voices that lured Lee and Mallisham out of the Hathor Temple?
Herr Graf could have knocked the men unconscious and the three of them could have dragged the victims to the small chambers and tied them up. They had all night in which to work. They would have had lanterns at the ready so that they could see where they were going, and lanterns that acted as beacons so that they could navigate the sandstorm. While everyone was staggering blindly, they might have gone backwards and forwards without difficulty.
Countess V stopped dead. It was as if she had suddenly crashed into a brick wall.
Why would Ursula Graf reveal information about a secret tomb if she was involved in the murder of Lee and Mallisham? No killer would willingly turn the spotlight on themselves.
She decided to think about this conundrum before sharing the news with her counterpart.
There was one last person she wanted to speak to and she found him in the saloon replenishing the drinks trolley.
“Bonjour Azrafel, may I have a quick word?”
“Mais oui, la comtesse.” A tightness of tone belied the friendly and polite smile.
“When the Khamsin arrived last night, you posted men on the jetty to assist those who returned to the ship?”
“That is correct.”
“You did not send out a search party?”
“No, la comtesse, it is not wise to fight against the Khamsin. I believed Mr Lee and his guests would all remain inside Trajan’s Kiosk. I was not expecting anyone to return, it was merely – how do you say? - a courtesy.”
“You stayed up all night?”
“No, la comtesse, I went to bed just after midnight. I did not sleep much. The Khamsin was loud and I was concerned for the ship’s engine.”
“You therefore did not see when various individual’s returned to the Sekhmet?”
“That is correct, but as I said, I was not expecting anyone. The servants put out tea and coffee in the saloon but it was merely another courtesy. ”
“What about the men on
the jetty – could they confirm when anyone returned?”
“I have spoken to them already in anticipation of any questions. The men covered their faces with their ammamas to keep out the sand. They saw some figures pass by like ghosts in the night, but they did not know who was who because of the costumes, except for Miss Lee who was crying. It was impossible for the men to know the time because the moon and stars were hidden from view. You may speak to them if you wish.”
“No, it’s all right, Azrafel. I was just wondering if there was any way to ascertain who returned at what hour but as you say, it was impossible to tell the time and visibility was reduced to almost nothing.”
Azrafel gave a gracious bow of his head and left the saloon. The Countess was about to follow him out when she realized someone was seated in the wing chair angled behind the potted palm. It was the man-who-was-all-used-up. Dr Watson had coined the perfect description for his old comrade-in-arms. Although the eyes were closed, he could hardly pretend to be asleep. He was nursing a gin and tonic. It came as no surprise when he spoke.
“I suppose you will eventually get around to interrogating me?”
“Hardly an interrogation, Colonel Hayter.”
“You want to know when I returned to the Sekhmet?”
“If you can recall,” she said dryly.
He cracked a crooked smile, simultaneously wry and rueful. “I got in just before Dr Watson and Miss Lee and just after Ali Pasha. I cannot say what time it was because I wasn’t wearing a fob watch for obvious reasons but I can be certain about the rest. Ali Pasha was already in the saloon when I cleared a path to the gin bottle. Dr Watson and Miss Lee came later because I could hear her wailing like a banshee. One of the crew ran to fetch her lady’s maid and Dr Watson made a brief appearance to help himself to a generous measure of whiskey. He didn’t see me, just as you didn’t see me. I don’t think he saw Ali Pasha either. The man’s green and black jacket tended to lose itself in the upholstery of the wing chair and the fronds of the palm. When Ali Pasha started to pass wind, I toodled off to bed. A clock on the bedside table told me it had just gone half past one o’clock. You are assisting Dr Watson with his detective work now?”