The Egyptian Coffin (A Lord Ambrose Mystery)

by Jane Jakeman

  “Oh, indeed, it was most dramatic. We were all seated in the coach at Alexandria, with the one vacant space — we understood a gentleman was to arrive at any minute to travel with us. And then, just as it was time to leave and the coachman was fretting to be off — you could hear the bridles of the horses clinking as they chaffed their heads with the delay — there came a man riding up on a mount — Oh, I assure you it was a fine animal — was it not, sister? I rode often in my youth, you know, Miss Lilian — now where was I?”

  “Lord Ambrose came riding up and Jane, I think, will never get over it!” said Miss Harvey tartly.

  “Yes, that animal was as fine, compared with the coach horses, as is my best muslin compared with the coarse cotton on that beggars back. And Lord Ambrose called up to the coachman and said that he would not be accompanying us — that he had been lent that horse by a friend with whom he had met unexpectedly. And Mr. Wilkinson — that was one of the gentlemen in the coach — Mr. Wilkinson said that he would warrant the friend ...”

  Here I withdrew into the back of the premises, from which I sent a messenger desiring that my luggage should be sent on to the Zubeida, so I cannot vouch for the details of Mr. Wilkinson’s warranties, but you will gather the general gist, and why I so desire my presence in Cairo to remain unknown to ladies such as the Misses Harvey.

  But, I confess, I love this country! In spite of all the trials presented by my fellow countrymen and women, nothing can prevent me from the delight of a gallop at dawn across these vast sands, once teeming with life and activity, that surround the city at so short a distance, nor from explorations among the caves and rocks, the ruined coffins, and the bones of the dead. The heat of Egypt is a delight to me; I love even the dust of this city flying in my face as I ride through the streets. More and more, I seek out Arab society and study their language, and draw further and further away from the West in spirit as well as in body.

  But, in two respects, there are ties which I cannot sever.

  One is that of offering some protection to Miss Westmorland. The other is that I cannot forget a pale English face, long flowing hair, eyes filled with intelligent fire, last seen upon the steps of Malfine. Will you go to see Elisabeth Anstruther for me, Sholto, if this reaches you, and tell her how you found me? I am, of course, far too proud to beg that you should do so.

  I shall write again as soon as there is anything to report affecting Miss Westmorland’s well-being. There are many ways of meeting death in this city and I hope that she will never come to any of them.

  ELEVEN- The Further Narrative of Miss Lilian Westmorland

  There were, I believe, no long-term residents at Hill’s Hotel. The whole place seemed in a constant state of turmoil, for travellers were arriving and departing (and some contrived to do both operations at once) at every hour of the day and night. As well as those who were setting off for overland journeys, and preparing to cross the desert to Suez, to take ship for India, there were travellers journeying further up the Nile. These were engaged in fitting out boats and filling them with supplies, and included the Misses Harvey, who intended to travel to Luxor, where the climate would be especially beneficial for the consumption from which the elder lady suffered, and which was the reason why they, escorted by Mr. Wilkinson, had travelled to Egypt.

  “We are going to spend the winter in southern Egypt, where the air is so dry and still that the doctors say my sister’s lungs will stand a chance of healing,” said Miss Jane to Lilian. “Why do you not consider coming to Luxor — it is said to be a far healthier place than Cairo?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Wilkinson, who had joined us one day on the terrace for tea. “I do not wish to alarm you, Miss Lilian, but there are sometimes infections in Cairo. The place is so populous and the streets so close and narrow that it cannot well be otherwise. Whereas at Luxor there is very little danger and everything to be gained from the climate.”

  My cough, and the feebleness from which I suffered as a result of my accident, had already undergone a dramatic improvement. The rise to good health which had commenced on the Great London seemed to be continuing here, for I did not appear to suffer from the fevers that assailed so many of my travelling companions. The weakness of my lungs that had so troubled Dr. Sandys seemed very nearly to have disappeared. So I saw no great reason to remove to Luxor.

  But I did mention to Mr. Casterman the advice which I had been given by Mr. Wilkinson.

  Casterman’s answer came very quickly and smoothly.

  “Well, Miss Lilian, I would not suggest that we quit Cairo now,” he said. “For one thing, it would be desirable to rent a house here even if we wish to travel about the country, for nothing is as tiresome as having all one’s luggage transported everywhere, as if we were so many snails having to carry our homes upon our backs! And then, besides that, I have some business to perform on behalf of your uncle. There are merchants here in Cairo whom he wishes me to see, and bankers’ drafts he will send to settle our expenses, which will be addressed to me here in Cairo. So you see, there are good reasons why we should not quit the city. But perhaps if you should wish to make a visit to Luxor later on, to look at the temple and so forth, I am sure there need be no difficulty about that.”

  This did sound reasonable enough and I decided to raise the subject again with him later, when we were more settled from the upheavals of the voyage. The opportunity arose sooner than I expected.

  Two days later the Misses Harvey invited me, with Jennet and Mrs. Cornwallis, to join their party in the dahabeeyah, that is, a kind of houseboat, in which they intended to travel to Aswan. It was all ready for the journey sooner that had been expected.

  When this invitation was reported to Mr. Casterman, he was adamantly against it.

  “No indeed, Miss Lilian, I cannot think your uncle would wish you to travel in the company of perfect strangers! Why, we know nothing of such people. I could not countenance such a step."

  It was on the tip of my tongue to reply that Casterman was after all but a servant; he had no right to decide whether I should accompany the Harveys or not. But I bit it back! It was in any case impractical to go without my uncle’s man of business, for, whatever Casterman’s social status, he was irreplaceable here in Egypt; he knew the ways of the Orient, he spoke fluent Arabic, he had been entrusted with our financial arrangements. I was powerless to argue with him.

  Besides, there was a deeper reason. Once before, when a servant entrusted with my safety had begged me to show discretion, I had refused. Poor Adams, the groom, had counselled caution, and I had ignored him. The result had been the death of my beloved Selene. I was much sadder and wiser than I had been at Westmorland Park, and I think I had been partly helped and comforted by Lord Ambrose, for OUR conversation on the ship had given me much cause for reflection.

  So I accepted Casterman’s insistence that we should stay in Cairo. What else, in truth, could I have done?

  The first few days in Cairo passed agreeably enough, however, after our friends had left for Luxor. There was a trip out to see the Pyramids, when our small group of Europeans stood in the tides of sand, brown like the fur of an animal, that drifted round those almost-fabulous structures. Clothes clinging with sweat and dust, we even ventured some way into the Great Pyramid, where we crept along in stifling darkness lit by the candle of our guide. Flickering shadows jumped from wall to wall of the narrow passage-way. I wanted to continue to the centre of the great tomb, but Jennet was gasping and fainting and we had to take her outside.

  But we just stood there in the desert and gazed for a while.

  I felt so tiny; we were so out of place, upright dolls in our stiff Western dress as we walked a little way down and stared at the massive head of the Sphinx protruding in the sand. Casterman remained with us (he had not entered the pyramid, having done so in the company of Mr. Belzoni the great explorer, or so he informed us), looking upwards at the Sphinx and beating off the small boys who ran round offering us necklets or drinks of sherbet.
I wished the man would go away, but told myself it was because his face perturbed me. I wished to think only of the tremendous prospect before us and not to be agitated by thoughts of petty human wrongs.

  So there we stood, unsuitably dark-clad, uncomfortable, dwarfed by the grandeur around us. I had brought my sketching-pad and, seated on some fragment of an ancient building, tried to record that moment. Casterman’s black stovepipe hat and tight trousers and Jennet’s swathed heavy skirts were outlined sharply against the desert sands. I had again discarded my bonnet; my hair was blowing in the dry wind, in trailing curls, for it was not yet long enough to pin up and it flew in front of my eyes as I tried to sketch. This desert was far from being empty, as I had imagined it; it was full of the relics of human existence, of carved and chiselled stones, and ancient rubbish silted up here and there in the sand.

  Back in the hotel I recalled that scene. I fancied that I could still smell on my clothes that curious acrid ancient odour, carried from drifting heaps of dried-up waste, of twigs and shreds of ancient cloth, coarse and brown and torn like paper, of bones in fragments, of a nest of dead baby hats, blind and hairless, that a thin yellow dog was nosing from the debris. I felt the smell of it had penetrated my clothing and sunk into my skin; that it was in my lungs and in my hair, that it had seeped down through my very pores. In the marble-floored bathroom at Hill’s Hotel I took off my heavy dress and clinging petticoats with relief. The layers of fine cotton were soaked into a heavy wadding by the running sweat and fine sandy dust that had sifted through all my clothing. The great marble tub had been filled by the servants with cool water and it was with relief that I stepped in and took up my sponge.

  By this time, I was wishing that Casterman would make faster progress with his search for a house. Jennet was already loud in complaints; she could not unpack, there was not enough space for our things, the hotel laundry regularly lost buttons and handkerchiefs. The privy, in the inmost depths of our suite of rooms at the hotel, though it was emptied daily, was perfumed with some flowery jasmine scent that Jennet complained of bitterly, saying that it was quite indecent (though I secretly thought it was delicious). And as for me, there was a limit to the entertainment I could derive from taking tea with the crew of comparatively elderly ladies who were my usual companions at the hotel tea-table, for the Misses Harvey had been followed by quite a succession of similar travellers who came, hired their houseboats, and departed along the Nile.

  Mr. Casterman regularly set off from the hotel and was gone long hours on business affairs, he told me. He promised that he was negotiating for a suitable lease on a dwelling in the Prankish quarter, a house that had until recently been occupied by a French merchant and thus was adapted to Western tastes, but that it was still not ready. He could not tell me when the time would come when we might move thereto from Hills Hotel.

  *

  I think it was on the third or fourth day of our stay at Hill’s Hotel that Mr. Casterman took us on a visit to the Khan el-Khalili, the great souk or bazaar of Cairo. We (that is, Mrs. Cornwallis and myself — Jennet was not so anxious) had been begging him to take us on a shopping expedition, where we might have an opportunity to make some purchases of the goods for which the city is famous — the fine silks, the damasks brought from Syria, the muslins of India, the riches of all corners of the east which are heaped up in the souks by the merchants of Cairo.

  Mr. Wilkinson had said that there were sometimes infections raging in the city, and Mr. Casterman himself attributed our delay to his concern for our safety. He wished to make quite certain, he said, that rumours of an outbreak of that terrible disease, the smallpox, were false. He finally pronounced that he was satisfied there was no cause for alarm.

  And here I must explain that the Khan el-Khalili is not an open market such is usually found in English cities, but a great covered hall, or rather, series of halls, roofed over, swept and cleanly, so that one may roam free from the incursions of sand and dust. Mr. Casterman told us that it was very old indeed, having been founded some five centuries previously, and some of the old buildings still lay at the very heart of the souk, but that it would take a long time to penetrate that far!

  He spoke the truth in that regard, for there were not just a few stalls but whole areas given over to some particular merchandise — to sweetmeats, to jewels, to shawls, to ribbons — every kind of luxury for which one might desire.

  The scents of musk and jasmine floated out from the perfumery shops, mingling with the odours of coffee and mint tea, which we were offered everywhere, to try and persuade us to linger and to buy. I never saw nor imagined such fine things. The most delicate organdie you can imagine, almost transparent, violet-tinted, and smelling of violets as well! Cashmere shawls from India, the furs of strange creatures, long and silky, pantaloons of scarlet satin for women — one could never imagine such things, even in dreams, as were for sale in that great bazaar!

  We plunged in deeper and deeper. Casterman had aided us in purchasing some lengths of silk and muslin (Jennet turned her head aside from the scarlet trousers, with many exclamations of shocked modesty, but I confess I rather longed for a pair!) and our party was now rather weary; Casterman himself seemed rather bored, as well he might be by all this female flim-flammery.

  But we reached another part of the souk, one where there was furniture for sale — all kinds of little brass tables and inlaid cupboards — and then came upon a section where the vitrines were full of curios. Some were quite ordinary, such as cameos or wooden statuettes, but some were exotic things, like little figurines of bright blue that Mrs. Cornwallis said she believed had come out of tombs, or necklaces of gold and beads of blue and red, which she thought had been taken from mummies, which was a very disagreeable thought, for I had read about this way the ancient Egyptians had of preserving their dead forever, embalming them and wrapping them in bandages so that they could be taken even now from the sands and one could see here a bony hand, there a jaw with all the teeth still in it, gaping at a person from between the wrappings. I hoped we were not going to see any mummies on this expedition, and we did not, so I was fortunate. But we saw something else.

  We saw an Egyptian coffin.

  *

  It was right at the back of the shop, which stretched much farther back from the street than one might have thought. We entered because the window had a pretty display of antique necklaces, and saw a sign in English, “Antiquities and curios — consignments expedited anywhere in the world,” and as Mrs. Cornwallis claimed, “Well, at least if they speak English, that gives one some confidence!”

  Mr. Casterman entered first and I followed. I brushed past all kinds of dusty relics, crowded together. I remember such things as a small stuffed crocodile, a tall lamp supported by the carved figure of a turbaned servant, a gilded Chinese screen. The general effect was of the lumber room of the world.

  I did not understand at first what the long, low object at the back might be, for as I began to see better in the dim light I beheld that one end of it was carved into the shape of a human head with a great gold and blue wig, and there was a human face painted upon it. Wings enfolded the shoulders, and painted necklets and jewels adorned the breast. It seemed more a strange kind of human-shaped statue that was lying upon its back.

  Mrs. Cornwallis and Jennet were some way behind me, still at the entrance, and I desired very suddenly to leave the shop altogether and return to the sunlight and crowds outside. In fact, I turned about and hastened towards my companions, trying to avoid numerous little tables crammed with dusty glass decanters, china statuettes, and the like.

  But it was too late! A shopkeeper had emerged, not, as we expected, an Egyptian in traditional garb, but a man wearing European dress topped by a fez, who bowed courteously and indicated some little gilt chairs. As if by magic, a small boy bearing a brass tray with tiny tea-glasses appeared, and Mrs. Cornwallis and Jennet sunk irresistibly on to the velvet seats of the chairs and gave little sighs of relief. Another moment, a
nd tea-glasses, to which even Jennet had now become grudgingly accustomed, were placed in their hands.

  After a hard day’s shopping, it requires a superhuman effort to resist tea and a comfortable chair. It was very plain that Jennet and Mrs. Cornwallis would not budge for some while, so I, who was not feeling quite yet in such a state of exhaustion, began again to cast about the shop out of idle curiosity, and found myself wandering back again, ending up confronting the strange object at the rear of the shop.

  To my surprise, Mr. Casterman seemed interested in it. He was peering down at it, and paced its length a couple of times.

  The proprietor of the shop hurried back towards us.

  They seemed to know each other. “Ah, Mr. Casterman!” exclaimed the shop owner. “It is good to see you again!” He turned to me enquiringly.

  “This is Miss Lilian Westmorland, and Miss Lilian, this is Signor Morino, an Italian acquaintance who has helped me occasionally on business matters. Miss Westmorland is the niece of Mr. Micah Overbury.”

  “Oh yes, of course, the name of Mr. Overbury is well known to me! He has many business affairs here!”

  “But I had not thought Uncle Micah had any interest in antiquities!” I exclaimed. “He has never mentioned any such thing.”

  “No, I do not mean in connection with the business I carry on here,” said Mr. Morino. “Mr. Overbury deals with letters of credit, business loans, and so forth.”

  There was a slight pause. Then the Italian resumed the conversation very smoothly, as if there had been no little hiccup, if I may so call it.

  “This is a fine specimen of the antique we have before us — I was most fortunate to secure it. It is a coffin, from the Pharaonic age, a rarity now, for these things rarely appear complete on the market.”