A Treacherous Curse

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  The suicide of the baronet and the murder of his expedition philologist only heightened the allure of the mummy’s curse. Far from explaining away the tragic events as rational actions by a cruel conspiracy, The Daily Harbinger maintained that only the malign influence of a vengeful mummy could have driven Sir Leicester and Fairbrother to such desperate acts. It was nonsense, of course, but J. J. Butterworth’s lurid prose did its work. Even knowing many of the artifacts to be fake, the public flocked to the Tiverton Exhibition at Karnak Hall in astonishing numbers.

  A few days after our desperate flight into Surrey, we met Lady Tiverton at the Curiosity Club at her invitation. She was dressed in black now, and she seemed to have aged as she came forward to greet us. She was heavily veiled to avoid attracting attention, but she needn’t have bothered. The members of the club took care of their own.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” she began.

  We started in her direction, but Hetty, the portress, came out from behind her desk, stopping in front of Stoker with a firm step.

  “I am sorry, sir, but the Hippolyta Club does not permit gentlemen to enter.”

  Stoker cocked his head and Lady Tiverton threw back her veil. “It is my fault, Hetty. I forgot the rules against gentlemen guests. I do not suppose you might bend them just this once?”

  Hetty surveyed Stoker from head to toe and gave a grudging nod. “Gentlemen may be admitted in extraordinary circumstances, but only to the Parley Room on the ground floor and only for twenty-nine minutes.”

  Stoker grinned. “That is terribly specific.”

  “That, sir, is the rule. Stay a second longer, and I will come myself to escort you out,” she told him sternly.

  He inclined his head and trotted meekly behind as she showed us to the Parley Room. She pointedly turned an hourglass on the mantel and left it, sands slipping downwards as she took her leave, shutting the door firmly behind.

  “I am surprised that you want to see us,” I told Lady Tiverton. “We failed in our endeavor.”

  Her lips curved, but I would not have called it a smile. No smile was ever so sad. “You tried, Miss Speedwell. You tried to save him, and so did I. But he involved himself in the plot, and in the end the responsibility for its dreadful conclusion must lie with him.” Her grave dark eyes looked from me to Stoker and back again. “I know Figgy believed I betrayed her father with Patrick, but it is not true. I loved my husband very much, and I take my vows seriously. Including the vow I made to the first Lady Tiverton to take care of Sir Leicester to the end of his life.”

  “She saw you coming out of Fairbrother’s room and misconstrued it. That was the first time you went looking for evidence against him, wasn’t it?” Stoker asked with a gentleness I had seldom heard him use.

  She nodded. “That was when I found the letter from his sister confirming that John de Morgan had been dealt with.” She gave a little shudder and collected herself with a visible effort. “Forgive me. I want to talk about this. I want to hear it all said aloud. Just this once, and then I never want to speak of it again.” She took a deep breath and began to speak. “I knew from the beginning of the season that something was amiss, but I could not say who was the author of the mischief. At first it seemed like nothing more than silly tricks—de Morgan’s camera plates damaged, the sightings of Anubis. Destructive and demoralizing, but not malevolent. And then Jonas Fowler died, and I did not know what to think. He was ill. He had been for several years, and the demands of excavation life are strenuous. I did not want to believe that anyone might have hastened his death.”

  “Do you believe it now?” he asked.

  She spread her hands. Her wedding ring caught the light. She would wear it always, I was certain. “The chemist’s envelope I found in Patrick’s room. There was only a trace of powder left in it, and no way to tell what it might have been. I do not want to believe he might have—even now—” She broke off, covering her mouth.

  “It was arsenic,” I told her gently. “He admitted it just before his death. But he would not confess to using it on Jonas Fowler. In fact, he was prepared to swear the packet belonged to you and that you had a hand in Mr. Fowler’s death. But with no post-mortem . . .” I let the sentence trail off.

  She was silent, clearly struggling with strong emotion. After a moment she composed herself.

  “So we will never know if poor Jonas was the first of his victims. Perhaps it is best. I like to think Jonas died as he lived, giving all of himself to the adopted country he loved. Let him rest in peace.” I had my own thoughts upon the subject. The fact that Fairbrother had been so willing to arrange John de Morgan’s death when it suited him made it clear he would not have balked at easing Jonas Fowler’s passage into the next world. But if he had, Fairbrother had paid for his crimes, and Lady Tiverton needed no fresh horrors.

  She paused again, and when she began to speak, she sounded older, resigned to the burden of grief she would carry to the end of her days. “I have seen evil, and it wears a smiling face. I liked him when he first came to us,” she said, her expression soft with reminiscence. “I realized soon after our marriage that Sir Leicester and I were not to be blessed with children. But he liked young people. It made him feel youthful to have them around. I encouraged Patrick. I thought he showed great promise, and over time they became close. So close that when Sir Leicester discovered the cave last year, it was to Patrick that he confided his find, and not to me.”

  “And Patrick who suggested the use to which it might profitably be put?” I suggested.

  She nodded. “I think so. It is not the sort of plot Sir Leicester would have contrived on his own. It took planning, audacity. Certainly my husband was audacious, but methodical he was not. Someone had to arrange for the faked antiquities to be made and shipped out of Egypt, and someone had to arrange for them to be received in Dover and sent on to the house in Surrey.”

  “Fairbrother’s sister,” Stoker said. “We made her acquaintance.”

  “She was the one who murdered John de Morgan,” Lady Tiverton said. “On his orders. Her letter revealed that he had sent very specific instructions as to how the deed was to be done. She complied. She was his willing accomplice in every way, and I can only imagine the hold he must have had over her to force her to do such terrible things.”

  I remembered Mrs. Giddons and her cold-blooded treatment of Stoker and of me, and I smiled thinly. “I do not think Mrs. Giddons requires much persuasion. She and her brother are two of a kind.” He had spoken to me of her once and with real affection—the self-sacrificing sister who had done everything to make certain her beloved brother was given every opportunity. She had not even scrupled at murder to ensure his success.

  Lady Tiverton nodded. “Her letter indicated that he was the one who schemed to spirit away the body in the sarcophagus, knowing the authorities would never look inside. Mrs. Giddons had only to store the corpse in her washhouse for a few days until we arrived from Egypt. Patrick did the rest. He put John’s remains in the sarcophagus and we brought it with us, never knowing.”

  “All that talk of a mummy and it never existed,” I murmured. “Princess Ankheset was a fiction from start to finish, just a few faked hieroglyphs on a mummy case and a diadem.”

  “It was an audacious plan,” Lady Tiverton said, her voice tight. “It might have worked.”

  We were silent a moment before I raised the subject of Patrick Fairbrother again. “It was his idea to redecorate the room, was it not? In order to confuse and terrify Caroline de Morgan. No one would believe her story because she would sound mad, and with de Morgan gone under mysterious circumstances, the easiest explanation was that he had stolen the diadem for his own gain.”

  She nodded. “It was monstrous. The police say that Mrs. Giddons has disappeared from Dover. They have no idea of where she has gone, but they are quite certain she has quitted the country.”

  “A wanted mur
deress? No doubt she has put as much distance between England and herself as possible,” Stoker agreed. “And her brother has paid for his crimes.”

  I thought of Patrick Fairbrother, the clever, grasping young scholar with the charming smile and the winsome ways. I was not often slow to suspect evil in a man who was capable of it; my life had, upon occasion, depended upon my ability to tell villainy from virtue. I should not soon forget my failure here.

  “Yes, he has paid—as has my husband,” Lady Tiverton said with some bitterness. “Poor, foolish Leicester.”

  “What drove him to it?” I asked. “He was a man who had every advantage.”

  “Money,” she said simply. “The first Lady Tiverton divided her fortune evenly between her husband and her child. Sir Leicester ran through his half. Egyptology is a messy and expensive business,” she added with a rueful smile. “He thought that one great find would make his name, and he was right. If he had discovered a tomb of note, he would have made a fortune. As it was, he intended to sell worthless trinkets for enormous sums to amateurs who would not know the difference.”

  “But you did,” I observed. “What raised your suspicions?”

  “The sarcophagus,” she said promptly. “It was the one thing he could not afford to fake. With a genuine mummy case, the rest of the find would have received far less scrutiny. He took a sarcophagus that he had purchased some years ago and, with Patrick’s help, contrived to make it appear authentic to the Princess Ankheset. I did not recognize it at first because of the alterations, but something troubled me about it. Eventually I thought to compare the Princess Ankheset’s sarcophagus to a photograph the first Lady Tiverton had in her collection of the pieces Sir Leicester had bought. The parts that were not altered or damaged in the fire were a perfect match.”

  “And the fire was a deliberate attempt to damage the sarcophagus and make it untraceable,” I deduced.

  She nodded. “A bit of bitumen and the fire damage covered up the places where they were unable to change the previous inscriptions. They thought it would be enough, but I suspect I would not have been the only one to realize the fraud in time.”

  “What of the beautiful pectoral piece you wore to the reception? The one Sir Leicester claimed to have excavated?”

  “Worthless,” she said briskly. “Except as a conversation piece.”

  “And the diadem of the princess?” Stoker asked.

  “A modern forgery. Not worth anything more than the weight of the gold and the gems.”

  “About the diadem,” I began. She held up a hand.

  “Mr. Stihl has kindly returned it. I have sent it back to him to keep in trust for Figgy. It is not worth a tremendous amount, but it is something.”

  I blinked at her in surprise. “In trust for Figgy?”

  Her smile was thin. “My husband was superstitious about things like wills. He only ever made one, during his first marriage. As the previous Lady Tiverton was wealthy in her own right, he provided only a token amount for his widow. The provisions for Figgy remain unchanged. In the event of his death, Figgy is to be given into the care of Horace Stihl, along with the management of her inheritance. I could possibly make a case in court, but such a thing would be doubtful at best and terribly expensive. I am content to accept the situation as it is.”

  “But you are her stepmother,” Stoker argued. “You ought to have charge of the girl.”

  She shook her head. “Figgy blames me for too much of what has happened.”

  “That is unjust,” he told her.

  “The young are often unjust. But in time I hope she will come to see that I am not the villainess she believed. I did everything in my power to save my husband from ruin. Instead I caused it.”

  “How?” Stoker asked.

  “I gave my husband the steamship ticket I found in Patrick’s room. That was what drove him to rise from his sickbed and go to confront him. He found Patrick in the action of preparing to flee.”

  “It was his own choice to take matters into his own hands,” Stoker reminded her gently. “He might have turned Fairbrother over to the authorities.”

  “For murder, yes. And confessed himself as a fraud, dragging his family name through the mud, condemning his daughter to a lifetime of whispers. No, bless him. He tried to spare her that. But, as I said, my husband was not much of a thinker.”

  She rose and extended her hand to each of us in turn. “I am leaving for Egypt just as soon as I can make the arrangements. I do not believe we will meet again.”

  We emerged from the Parley Room with six minutes to spare. Hetty gave Stoker a close look as we walked past, and he tipped his hat to her.

  “Miss Speedwell,” she called. “A moment.” She emerged from behind the desk holding a vellum portfolio. “We received your acceptance. You will be inducted at the next formal meeting, in a fortnight’s time. Here is the information for new members. It is confidential.”

  I took the heavy vellum portfolio. I glanced at the wall where the photographs of the members were hung. Past and present they were arranged, a gallery of women of accomplishment, women of stalwart spirit and indomitable courage. And in spite of my misgivings, I knew I had found a home.

  Just at the end there was a small empty spot, not prominent, tucked just beneath the stairs.

  “Right there,” I told Hetty.

  “Pardon, Miss Speedwell?”

  “That is where I want my photograph to hang.”

  She grinned. “Welcome to the Curiosity Club, Miss Speedwell.”

  • • •

  The next afternoon Lady Wellie invited us to tea to hear the final report of what she insisted upon calling the Tiverton Case.

  “Poor Messy Lessy,” she said as she added a hefty measure of whisky to her tea. Stoker had cried off on the grounds that he was attempting repairs to the Aérostat Réveillon, but I suspected it would be futile. His lordship had taken one look at the wagonload of splintered wicker and torn taffeta and turned away in despair. Still, Stoker felt obligated to try, and so he was busy stitching and gluing and weaving under the earl’s watchful eye.

  “What is to become of Figgy?” Lady Wellie asked.

  “School,” I told her promptly. We had spent the previous evening dining at the Allerdale Hotel in Mr. Stihl’s suite, discussing the situation. At my urging, Mr. Stihl enrolled Figgy in the Laidlaw-Upton Academy for Young Ladies, a unique establishment in Colorado founded to nurture the “gumption” of unusual young women. It was no secret that he harbored a hope that one day she would make up her mind to marry young Henry, but I encouraged her to give it ten years and travel the world at least twice before taking such a drastic step. She thanked me for my advice with a reluctant handshake. To Stoker she entrusted Nut, the hound, explaining that she could not take him to America and that the animal could ask for no better place than at Stoker’s side. It took a concerted effort and all my strength to pry Figgy off Stoker when she went to hug him good-bye, but at last she was removed from his person and we were allowed to get on with our evening.

  Lady Wellie nodded as I related the story. “It will be the making of her. She might look like a Tiverton, but she’s a Ward, and if she’s anything like her mother, she will show it now. Adversity builds character,” she finished briskly. “Speaking of one’s parents, this arrived today.”

  She handed over a small box of black kid stamped on the top with a trio of distinctive feathers.

  “Are those—”

  “Yes. His feathers. Open it.”

  I did as she bade me. Inside, nestled on a bed of oyster satin, was the slender strand of beads from the Tiverton Exhibition. The blue lapis butterfly dangled from the bottom, poised as if to fly away. I did not touch it.

  Lady Wellie spoke first. “It is one of the few pieces that are genuine. Don’t worry—he paid for it, the going rate.”

  “Why?” I asked
in a voice unlike my own.

  “Who can say?” she replied with a shrug. “There was no note with it, only the instruction to see it delivered into your hands. Take whatever meaning you like from it.”

  I closed the box. “And if I do not take it at all?”

  “That is also your choice,” she acknowledged. “But do not close the door entirely, Veronica.”

  “He has closed it upon me often enough,” I countered quickly. Too quickly. She gave me a pitying smile.

  “Do not ever let your pride dictate your principles, child.”

  I put the box into my pocket and took up the teapot. “I think you need a fresh cup,” I said. And when I poured, my hand was steady.

  • • •

  I left Lady Wellie and made my way to the Belvedere, lost in thought, and had reached my desk before I realized I was not alone.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. de Morgan. I am afraid Stoker is busy with his work, but I can send someone to find him for you, if you like.”

  She gave me a coolly appraising look. “I do not want to speak to him. I came to see you.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because you are the one who found John.” Her voice broke on his name. “I can bury him decently, and that is worth something at least.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” I told her.

  “My loss?” Her eyes were bleak. “What do you know of loss? Have you ever been in love? Not calf love, Miss Speedwell. I mean proper love, the kind that is not sweet or tender but burns in your bones and tears you in two. That is what I felt for John. We fought like devils, but that was our way. No one understood that when we quarreled we felt alive. God, how I shall miss the savagery of our life together. He was not a good man, but he was good to me.” I thought then of all they had destroyed between them, and my blood ran hot through my temples.

  “Perhaps you should use that as an epitaph,” I suggested.

  “You despise me, Miss Speedwell, but you do not even know me,” she said, curling a scornful lip.

  “But I do know you. I have always known you. You belong to that contemptible breed of female who will forever look at what she has been denied rather than what she has been given. What gift has Nature refused you? You were born under a faery star! Beauty, breeding, good health, native intelligence—these were yours from birth, but what gratitude have you ever expressed for them? None. You rise from your bed every day on two strong legs and can think only to complain that someone once spoke harshly to you. You had parents who reared you gently, but you scorn them for being poor—you who have lived abroad and seen real want. Tell me, Mrs. de Morgan, when you were in Egypt, did you ever look at a woman laboring in the fields and understand that it was the merest accident of a kind Providence that you were not born to toil your life away? Have you ever looked a starving beggar in the eye and thought that the privileges you enjoy are nothing more than a whim of the cosmos? You are Fortune’s darling, beloved of the gods, blessed with every advantage, but you are blind and deaf to your endowments. You have ease and comfort, but you do not live. You merely exist because you appreciate nothing. Waken, Mrs. de Morgan, or else you will slumber your life away.”