by C J Turner
They were left with the inescapable, wholly repugnant, but logical possibility that it was Amunet herself who was the intended victim. As the bride, she was the only person who the murderer would have expected to find in that specific bed on that particular night, apart from Blake of course. The thought that it might have been Amunet’s body lying cold in the morgue and Blake arrested for her murder, made Max feel physically ill.
Eventually the Inspector decided that his team had done all they could and gave orders for the body to be removed.
No one noticed the tiny sycamore bract that had been caught in the sheets under the body, whirl away to be trodden underfoot by the white coated medics.
Blake and Amunet’s luggage had already been transferred to a different suite in the hotel and they were now given permission to retire. Perhaps it was only to be expected, but it was dawn before Blake fell asleep in an armchair with his exhausted wife, finally quiet, huddled on his lap. The nightmares were back.
‘But where is it? What on earth did you do with it?’
It was late the following morning, nearly lunchtime in fact and the three of them were gathered on a secluded part of the terrace. There was no one remotely near them, but still Max had voiced his enquiry in a hoarse whisper. The thought of the bloodstained dagger, with Blake’s fingerprints on the hilt where he had pulled it from the corpse, had kept him a cold sweat throughout the night.
They were sitting on a ticking time bomb, he edgily told Blake, but the Professor, typically, had shrugged Max’s anxieties away.
‘It’s safe, I tell you! Right now it’s probably better for your distressing honesty that you don’t know where and can answer truthfully if the question ever comes up,’ Blake held up one hand to forestall the inevitable explosion. ‘Which it won’t - why should it? No one is going to ask you about a dagger no one knows exists, apart from ourselves, of course. And you don’t need to worry so much, I’m not stupid, obviously I used the sheet – my finger prints won’t be on the blasted thing.’
‘Forensics have moved on since that would be sufficient’, Max reminded him tartly. ‘And you’re forgetting the murderer, of course, he most certainly knows that the dagger exists!’
‘Yes, that’s true – I’ve been wondering about that and I think it was probably Lalage who took the dagger from my room. She must have brought it with her last night as a pretext for getting in the room, and the murderer used it to kill her. I have a theory…’
‘You’re not the only one who can think, dear boy – I have a positive conviction, and one thing I am sure about is that we need to remove Amunet from this hotel as soon as possible!’ Max interrupted impatiently. He was far more concerned about getting Amunet out of danger, than in the bizarre circumstances leading to Lalage’s death.
‘I agree – we were talking about it this morning and I’m taking her to Hameeda’s house immediately, today if the police will let us go.’ Blake concurred, covering Amunet’s hand with his own and gripping it reassuringly.
While the two men had been talking, she had been sitting slumped in her chair, deep in thought, her arms wrapped protectively around her body. Amunet was deeply troubled.
The nightmares in which she relived those last dreadful moments of another woman’s death time after time haunted her. Each time they seemed more real to her, the details sickeningly clearer than the last time. Indeed, she felt she was being drawn in ever more deeply to that place and time and she dreaded the thought that one day she would never return to the real world, to her world. Alice had been sure that there was some sort of synergy at work between Amunet and the scarab necklace and she had felt something of this herself, but that the link should extend to the hateful dagger filled her with loathing.
Amunet remembered the hatred she had felt for Lalage when she had thrown the fruit knife at her shadow and now her enemy was dead, stabbed to death with the dagger in her breast! Yet if Lalage had not played this cruel trick on her, it might have been Amunet herself lying in the morgue last night instead of in her husband’s arms!
She hardly appeared to hear what the men were saying, but at Blake’s touch, she pushed her tumultuous thoughts away for the present and smiled wanly across the table at Max.
‘You too must come, Max if you will – please, we need you, and my Aunt would be hurt if you did not join us.’
Max would willingly have joined her in hell if she had asked him to; the overnight change that had brought the laughing, carefree bride of yesterday to this pale shadow of the girl he loved, wrung his heart.
The haunted, beautiful eyes held another element that Max did not care for. For the first time since he had known her, he saw fear there - but not fear for herself. On the contrary, her eyes turned constantly to Blake, as if she needed to continually reassure herself that he was still there and alive. All too soon, Amunet had learnt how easily her newfound happiness could be snatched away.
If suddenly Lalage had miraculously risen from the grave in front of Max there and then, he could have killed her himself for what she had tried to do to his dear friends. Yet for Lalage’s cruel intervention, Amunet would have been the victim and Max could not help thinking that Lalage had only got what she deserved.
He wondered what Lalage had really intended. Had she hoped that, at the very least, her action would create recrimination and unpleasantness enough to ruin the newly married couple’s first night as man and wife. Knowing her utter arrogance, she may have had higher expectations. Did she think Blake would turn to her for consolation? Max shivered. He was not a vindictive man by nature but he would have sacrificed Lalage fifty times over to spare Amunet such pain.
A few hours later they had crossed the Nile and were in a hired jeep taking them to Hameeda’s village. Amunet was laying down in the back seat fast asleep at last, and Blake confessed he had given her a mild sedative to help her relax and get some rest. The two men were therefore free to talk in low voices frankly, and without fear of being overheard for the first time since the catastrophe of the previous night. Max had propounded his theory and Blake had been amazingly unimpressed by his friend’s estimation of his character.
‘Thanks a lot! If you think that I could ever mistake Lalage for Amunet – drunk or sober – you’re an even bigger fool than I took you for!’ he protested heatedly, viciously jerking at the steering wheel in order to miss another pothole in the dusty road ahead.
Blake was seriously ruffled and Max forbore to point out that some people might have thought that Lalage could not possibly have contemplated such a foolhardy course of action, if she had not imagined that she had grounds to assume there was a good chance of a successful outcome. He hoped very much that this had not occurred to Amunet.
God, what a mess! He looked out at the arid desert terrain and the desolation matched his mood admirably.
Hameeda put a stop to all this gloomy introspection as soon as they were welcomed into her house. Her warm exclamations of gladness at seeing them there in her home, so like old times, (as she said) drew an answering response of pleasure from them all. Amunet immediately perked up, the lines of strain eased from Blake’s face and even Max started to take a more cheerful view of things.
They had told her what had happened, of course, and while her initial reaction was of horror at the mischief Lalage had tried to make, the outcome was received with a fatalistic shrug and a murmured prayer. Blake had the strong feeling that this was just lip service and that Hameeda secretly felt that justice had been done.
Now it was the future they should be looking to, she scolded them, the past was done – put it behind them and move on. Coming from one who was herself no stranger to tragedy and grief, they all started to feel more positive and the dark, fearful atmosphere that they had brought with them gradually dispersed.
They should go back to England now, Hameeda told them; she herself had never been there and promised that she would surely come over and visit them, as apart from any other consideration, she would very much enjoy
seeing Alice again. Amunet stirred uneasily at the mention of Alice but then put the thought away, she would deal with that tomorrow.
In describing some of the things Hameeda would see in England - to her delight, astonishment and often freely expressed disapproval - there was a great deal of hilarity and the party eventually broke up and went to bed in a far happier state of mind than Max would have believed possible only a few hours before.
The next morning, Blake led Max and Amunet up into the hills behind the village and showed them where he and old Naa’ill had contrived to bring down a small rock-fall to cover the site of the secret chamber. He took them further up into the stony heights so that they could look down at the spot where the chamber lay hidden, and then he showed them where they had camouflaged another entrance, skillfully obscured in the jumble of fallen rocks. This, when cleared, would drop into a secondary passage and eventually lead back to the chamber.
The hot dry air, and the all invading dust made the going extremely hard, but all three had worked in similar conditions many times in the past and before too long, they were scrambling down a rope into the inky, stifling darkness below them.
Only Blake had any knowledge of what they would find down there, and it took them a little while to clear the debris-strewn antechamber. Finally, he could stoop through the low opening and as he held up the lantern to light the entrance, the little chamber sprung suddenly to life. The glowing colours, gleaming like a box of jewels in the reflected light, astounded them.
Everything was just as Blake remembered it, even down to the pathetic heap of collapsed bones on a raised stone slab in the centre of the tiny room, and the desiccated remains of what had once been a garland of flowers.
Amunet had stared with wonder at the depiction of the scarab talisman, her hand clenched around its counterpart that hung around her neck. She winced slightly when Blake pointed out the painting of the dagger, but it was the remains of the original occupant of the tomb that appeared to fascinate her. Max was drawn immediately to the hieroglyphics, but Blake noticed that Amunet’s eyes strayed back to the skeleton repeatedly and once he saw her gently stroke the smooth white skull. There was much tenderness in the gesture and when she looked up and met his eyes, he saw that her own were filled with tears.
Max made a few notes and rough drawings of the various cartouches and hieroglyphics depicted on the walls that provided the date and titles of the ruler at that time, the Pharaoh Horemheb, together with those of the other participants in the story. Blake also took some photographs but the heat and atmosphere was such that they could not stay down too long, and reluctantly, they left the chamber to clamber back into the open air.
On their return to Hameeda’s house, Max studied his notes and looked up one or two references in the few books that he and Blake had brought with them. Later that evening, as they sat on the roof terrace under a vine-hung loggia, he told Amunet and her Aunt what he and Blake had pieced together.
The night was warm and dark and the perfumed air filled with the scent of roses. They spilled in profusion from big earthenware pots and up the trellised screens in a kaleidoscope of colours from cream and apricot to yellow, pink and deepest crimson. Silver stars teamed in the heavens, seeming so bright and close that Amunet felt she had only to stretch out a hand to pluck one from its black velvet setting. The lonely call of a jackal in the far distance only served to emphasise their intimate circle of cosy lamplight; a tiny flicker of humanity set against the vast and awesome backdrop of the Theban hills.
It was a night for lovers. Moved by a sudden romantic impulse he had certainly never known before, Blake broke off a single rose of such a deep, velvety red that it appeared almost black, and presented it to Amunet. Max watched with satisfaction as she smiled and leant back against her husband’s broad chest, his arms protectively hugging her closer to him.
Max cleared his throat and looked away as he prepared to tell them of another pair of lovers, who had no doubt, had planned and dreamed and hoped together, more than three thousand years ago.
‘Blake had already pieced most of the story together but in the light of our present knowledge, we can take it a step further, I think. Forgive me if I appear to be repeating facts that you are probably already aware of but I, personally, feel the need for clarification and the logical placing of the data we have discovered up to the present time, and I would ask you to bear with me.’
Unconsciously, Max had fallen into his lecture mode, but he was a good speaker who could hold an audience and even Blake listened with absorbed interest.
‘First of all, oddly enough, the hieroglyphics tell us very little, they appear to have been done in some haste and really only give us the names of the people portrayed in the paintings and a record of the year these events took place. The ancient Egyptians artists, although highly skilled, did not usually go in for free expression. Not in their tomb decoration, at least. Their paintings followed a distinct, formal and highly stylised discipline and were put there usually for one main purpose, to provide documentary evidence that the proper rituals had been carried out establishing the Godhead of the Pharaoh, or for lesser mortals, the importance, standing and achievements of the person in question.
That is a matter of historical fact. Now we come to a less easily defined area of conjecture only. In the light of what I have just said, you will understand how extraordinary these particular paintings are, for they seem to be trying to depict a story without actually committing it to words, and the usual constraints must have been ignored for extremely strong reasons. Trying to follow the clues, ie, the obvious need for secrecy and speed, as indicated by the fact that the chamber was obviously never originally intended to be tomb, and the lack of any mummification process, the body appears to have been just laid on the slab in its natural state, you come inevitably to two over-riding objectives. Firstly, haste and the fear of human discovery, and secondly, the intention to leave a record, documentary evidence if you like, of an event, or crime that could have consequences beyond the control of those living at that time. ’
Max paused to take a drink from his wine glass and Hameeda looked anxiously towards Amunet, alarm written plainly on her face. Her niece smiled comfortingly back and seemed in no way discomposed by Max’s revelation. Refreshed, he continued.
‘The first wall painting depicts Kenna and Tameri together in happiness and clearly Tameri is wearing the scarab necklace. Kenna appears to have been an artisan, a tomb painter and sculptor who worked in the ‘Great Place’ (the ancient Egyptians own name for the Valley of the Kings). They lived in the village created to provide a convenient home for the skilled workmen who excavated, built and decorated the tombs of the Pharaohs. Because of their isolation, they were also allowed to build tombs for themselves, usually in family groups, in areas granted to them for that purpose.
Then there is another charming panel showing the pair rejoicing at the birth of a girl child and making offerings to the Goddess Hathor,
In the next panel, Kenna is seen mourning Tameri gathered to Osiris, although there is no depiction of her mummy or record of her funeral. Then he is seen supplicating a priest or magician called Menkheperne, who seems to be refusing his request, though what Kenna wanted is not clear.’
There was a sudden gasp from Amunet and startled, Max broke off in dismay. ‘I’m so sorry Max, please go on.’ She was very pale and Blake looked down at her searchingly, but she nodded and smiled encouragingly at Max and he took up the tale again.
‘The next painting portrays Menkheperne himself being laid to rest in his tomb, along with a great treasure he had amassed and planned to take with him in the afterlife. Then, Kenna is shown holding the scarab talisman in one hand whilst he appears to be actually stabbing the embalmed body of the dead priest – a quite extraordinary depiction and absolutely unique, I have never seen anything like that before! Blood is shown coming from the mummy but obviously this is artistic license, as the corpse would have been completely dried out by th
e time it was put in the sarcophagus. The weapon Kenna is using is remarkably similar to the one which we have in our possession and indeed could be the identical dagger, as the scarab talisman that Tameri is wearing could be Amunet’s necklace. We believe the period is right and that they are authentic.
This then is where the two artifacts came from but what they actually represent in the story is a different matter altogether. Or indeed, how the scarab came into the possession of your family in the first place. Na’ill obviously was terrified of the link between the paintings in Kenna’s grave chamber and his wife’s necklace which is why he went to some trouble to hide the chamber again but that doesn’t explain why he took the dagger in the first place.’
‘He cursed the day he had found it,’ Hameeda murmured, ‘But when I asked him why he had taken it from the chamber, he said that he seemed to have no choice in the matter. He felt compelled to pick it up and keep it safe. That is why he always kept it hidden under the family shrine, where its evil powers could do no harm.’
Hameeda crossed herself, at the same time surreptitiously making the sign against evil behind a fold of her skirt. She gave a small, strained laugh and added self-consciously, ‘Of course, my husband was very weak and rambling at the time. He did not really know what he was saying.’ Her eyes were cast down, so she did not see the look exchanged between Max and Blake as she said this, but Amunet did and her own eyes narrowed in perplexity.
Max thoughtfully nodded his head slightly, as if acknowledging confirmation of some internal debate.
‘Mmm, well the only thing we know for certain is that ever since it was removed from the chamber, the dagger has left a trail of death and danger behind it. Forgive the melodramatic statement but it is true. Amunet is still very much against us returning it to Kenna’s chamber so what shall we do the dratted thing? The obvious place is a museum but the dagger has been the instrument of a great deal of grief and unhappiness and, of course, is now a material piece of evidence in a murder investigation …’