by Simon Brett
But it was a beautiful artefact. The head was leonine in shape and the carved arms, bearing symbolic wands, were crossed against the chest. The whole structure was painted and its colours seemed to glow brighter than any of the surrounding archaeological finds. As soon as she had seen the sarcophagus, Twinks had gone down on her knees and started peering at two bands of markings along the exposed side.
‘What are you looking at, Twinks me old banana sandwich?’ asked her brother, bringing his torch beam to focus with hers.
‘Look . . .’ Twinks’s finger traced along the top line. ‘These are hieroglyphs.’
‘Are they, by Denzil?’ Blotto’s fingers traced along the bottom line. ‘So these must be loweroglyphs?’
‘No,’ said Twinks kindly. ‘It doesn’t quite work like that.’
‘Oh. So what are these hiero . . . wodjermabits when they’ve got their spats on?’
‘A hieroglyph – sometimes mistakenly called a hieroglyphic, which is of course to use the adjectival form of the word – is a component of a written language used by the ancient Egyptians. Hieroglyphs have both phonetic and logographic components.’
‘Toad-in-the-hole!’ said Blotto. ‘Did you hear that, Corky? Phonetic and logographic, eh?’
‘I did hear it certainly, milord, though I cannot claim to have understood it.’
‘Oh really?’ said Blotto, rather loftily. ‘Can you read these hiero . . . flipmadoodles, Twinks me old carpet-beater?’
‘Yes, I made a study of them last summer when I got bored with translating David Copperfield into Japanese.’
‘Oh. Ah. Good ticket.’ Blotto watched as his sister’s torch beam travelled along the rows of symbols. ‘And do those fozzly squiggles tell you what’s inside the box?’
‘I think they’re more likely to tell me who’s inside the box.’
‘Well, I’ll be jugged like a hare! You mean there’s someone in there? Is the stencher likely to jump out and attack us?’
‘That’s unlikely, Blotters. He’s probably been in there over two thousand years.’
‘Well, I’ll be snickered,’ said Blotto. ‘More importantly, though, me old pineapple peeler, is this great jelly baby of any value?’
‘I would say it’s extremely valuable.’
‘What, the whole space crammed to the collar studs with gold bullion?’
‘I think that’s unlikely. Its value will be more as a unique archaeological discovery.’
‘Oh. Well, maybe I should open it,’ suggested Blotto, ‘to reveal the goodies inside?’
‘I don’t think that’s the best idea since the mousetrap,’ Twinks cautioned. ‘Listen . . .’ She ran her finger along the hieroglyphs as she read, ‘“Herein lies the great God King Pharaoh Sinus Nefertop, guarded by the spirits of the living dead. Should anyone unauthorised . . .’ Twinks’s voice grew softer as she struggled with the translation ‘. . . open the sarcophagus . . .’
‘What did she say, milord?’ asked Corky Froggett.
‘“Open the sarcophagus”.’
‘Very well, milord.’
And the chauffeur, leaning forward and focusing his huge strength, got his hands under the stone lid and managed to lift it a couple of inches.
The attic room was filled with a sound like the shriek of a fox being eviscerated in the night time, just as Twinks finished the sentence she was deciphering. ‘. . . “he will be visited by the Curse of Pharaoh Sinus Nefertop!”’
‘Oh,’ said Corky Froggett, looking a little sheepish.
7
A Second Opinion
The rediscovery of Rupert the Egyptologist’s finds was greeted with great celebration in Tawcester Towers. An expert in the period was summoned from the Tawcestershire County Museum in Tawsford to make a preliminary inspection of the haul. (An even more expert expert would later be called from the British Museum.) The man from Tawsford, very impressed by the contents of the attic, was in no doubt that the objects would be of considerable value on the international art market.
‘But,’ he said as he reported his conclusions to the Dowager Duchess in the Blue Morning Room, ‘works of this quality should of course not be allowed to leave the country.’ (Fortunately the rather whimsical notion that such artefacts should be returned to their place of origin had not yet caught on.)
‘Rather,’ he continued, ‘than being put up for auction and then kept under the selfishly beady eye of one American millionaire collector, they should be available to be seen by everyone in the appropriate setting of . . . say . . . Tawcester County Museum. I am sure that someone like you, Your Grace, as one of the Great and Good of the county, who has grown up respecting the values of tradition and antiquity, will have no hesitation in handing over these precious artefacts to the museum as a gift . . . ?’
‘Gift?’ snorted the Dowager Duchess. ‘Don’t talk such bloody balderdash! We will sell the lot at the first opportunity for as much money as we can possibly get for them!’
The expert who arrived from the British Museum was a small peevish Scotsman called Mr McGloam. His features were scrunched up in a permanent expression of scepticism. Blotto and Twinks recognised this because they’d by now seen the same look so often on the face of Mr Snidely, who was still making his painfully slow – and so far unrewarding – inventory of the contents of Tawcester Towers.
They had offered to stay with Mr McGloam while he made his survey of Rupert the Egyptologist’s attic, but the suggestion was dismissed with something approaching brusqueness. The British Museum expert seemed to have as little respect for his betters as Alfred Sprockett; another symptom, in the view of an uncharacteristically morose Twinks, of everything that was currently wrong with the country.
Mr McGloam did, however, assure them that he would report back to the siblings when his investigations were complete. They did not at this stage want the Dowager Duchess involved in the sordid business of valuation – time enough to tell her the good news when it was confirmed – so they didn’t suggest McGloam should tell them of his findings in the Blue Morning Room. Instead, Twinks proposed they should meet in the Yellow Late Afternoon Room.
And the summons came to them surprisingly quickly. Grimshaw, the Tawcester Towers butler, found Blotto in the stables where he was silently but deeply communing with his magnificent hunter Mephistopheles. Twinks was discovered in the Library, reading Kierkegaard in the original Danish. Grimshaw, accompanied by Blotto, told her that Mr McGloam was waiting for them in the Yellow Late Afternoon Room.
The wizened Scotsman looked positively gleeful as they arrived. He rubbed his thin hands together as he asked, ‘So the duke who collected that lot was called Rupert the Egyptologist, was he?’
‘Good ticket,’ Blotto confirmed. ‘Most of the Dukes of Tawcester have sort of nicknames like that.’
‘Well, in his case it wasn’t very apt.’
‘Why?’ demanded Twinks.
‘In fact a better name for him might have been Rupert the Gullible.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I am saying, milady, that while the duke was in Egypt he was taken for a ride.’
‘Would that be on a camel?’ asked Blotto. ‘Or a dromedary?’ he added, pleased to have got the word right.
‘No, milord,’ replied Mr McGloam in a manner that was more unctuous than deferential. ‘I was using the expression “taken for a ride” as a metaphor.’
‘Tickey-tockey,’ said Blotto, as ever confused by the metaphorical.
‘I could have said “cheated”, “diddled”, “deceived”, “swindled”, “bilked” or “given a bum steer”.’
‘Are you telling us,’ asked Twinks, as ever quicker off the mark than her brother, ‘that the Egyptian artefacts in the attic are not genuine?’
‘That is exactly what I’m telling you, milady.’
‘But the expert from the Tawcester County Museum said they were extremely valuable.’
Mr McGloam sniggered that snigger reserved by academics only for rival
academics. ‘I think the word “expert” might be rather overstating things in that context. I cannot imagine that a place like the Tawcester County Museum would attract the highest calibre of applicants for its staff. Anyone who was fooled by those fakes must be one step up from a congenital idiot.’
‘Are you positive about that?’
‘Absolutely, milady. Those dealers out in Egypt certainly saw your ancestor coming. What he bought were not even very good fakes. Mostly made of cheap timber covered with plaster. Their antiquity could be measured in days rather than millennia.’
‘But why was the duke such a voidbrain?’ asked Blotto.
‘Heredity?’ Mr McGloam suggested.
Fortunately Blotto was not bright enough to realise the rudeness of this, but the same didn’t apply to his sister. Sounding dauntingly like the Dowager Duchess, she said, ‘I will ask you to keep a civil tongue in your tooth-box!’
‘Apologies, milady. I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes, you did!’
Mr McGloam looked suitably chastened. Twinks in her full fury was a pretty daunting sight. Under her critical scrutiny amorous swains who went a little too far had been known to shrivel up like ants when small boys focused sunbeams on them with a magnifying glass.
‘So you are telling us, Mr McGloam,’ she continued imperiously, ‘that all of the duke’s collection is completely worthless?’
‘Ah no, I didn’t say that, milady. There is one item in the attic that is of value. Of considerable value.’
‘Hoopee-doopee!’ said Blotto, much cheered.
‘What is it?’ asked Twinks.
‘The sarcophagus,’ replied Mr McGloam. ‘So far as I can tell, from a cursory examination, that is the actual funerary container of the remains of Pharaoh Sinus Nefertop. I will obviously have to take the sarcophagus back to the British Museum to run more detailed tests, but I am optimistic that it will prove to be genuine.’
‘And if it is,’ asked Twinks a little breathlessly, ‘what might it be worth?’
Mr McGloam spread wide his thin hands in a gesture of awestruck ignorance. ‘An object of such rarity is literally priceless.’
‘Grandissimo!’ said Twinks.
‘Beezer!’ said Blotto.
‘And what kind of tests would you have to run on the sarcophagus?’ asked Twinks.
‘Well, obviously I would need to check the contents, which might be very exciting. The mummified body could be in extremely good condition if the sarcophagus has not been opened for two or three thousand years.’
‘Well, actually Corky Froggett did lift the— ’
With a pained expression Blotto looked down at his sister’s shoe digging into his shin. But the assault did have the desired effect of shutting him up.
‘What is important, of course,’ said Mr McGloam, ‘is that an object of this quality should not be allowed to leave the country.
‘Rather,’ he continued, ‘than being auctioned and kept under the selfishly beady eye of one American millionaire collector, it should be available to be seen by everyone in the appropriate setting of . . . say . . . the British Museum. I am sure that someone like you, milady, as one of the Great and Good of the country, who has grown up respecting the values of tradition and antiquity, will have no hesitation in handing over this precious artefact to the museum as a gift . . . ?’
‘Gift?’ snorted Twinks. ‘Don’t talk such toffee! We will sell the thing at the first opportunity for as much money as we can possibly get for it!’
At times she could be unnervingly like her mother.
8
A Surprise for the Lagonda
When it came to women, Blotto’s nature displayed a certain reticence. Though an entirely red-blooded male, he trod warily where the fair sex was concerned. He could appreciate beauty and acknowledged that many of the women he met were real breathsappers, but his instinct was to avoid romantic entanglements – much to the disappointment of the many debutantes who so regularly fell in love with his astonishing good looks, sporting prowess and daredevil heroism (girls of that class were entirely unworried by his minimal intellectual endowments – like called to like).
But Blotto kept his distance. He knew that, as sure as a minor sniffle could lead to full-blown flu, so the smallest expression of interest in a woman could lead to matrimony. And that was a fate he was determined to avoid for as long as he possibly could. One day, he felt gloomily certain, the Dowager Duchess would decree that he’d have to get married, but he was determined to delay that day by any means at his disposal.
But though wary of the opposite sex, Blotto was not a man without strong passions. There were three things for which he had feelings passing by far the love of women (and only one of them was actually alive). The three were: his cricket bat, his hunter Mephistopheles and his Lagonda. In the presence of each of them he felt a deep sense of peace.
The Lagonda had been his companion on many of the adventures he had shared with his sister. It had taken them across Europe to Zling, the capital of Mitteleuropia. In the Lagonda they had driven to Paris and the French Riviera to rescue two paintings stolen from the Tawcester Towers Long Gallery. The car had even crossed the Atlantic when Blotto had been threatened with marriage to the daughter of Luther P. Chapstick III.
It was during its American trip that the Lagonda had undergone certain modifications at the hands of some Chicago Mafiosi. For reasons of their own convenience a secret compartment had been built into the car’s chassis. The space created was large enough to accommodate two men of ample proportions (or two dead bodies of the same size). It had also proved sufficiently large to hold the precious hoard of gold bullion which Blotto and Twinks had brought back in triumph from America and which Mr Crouptickle had so unfortunately sold to buy worthless shares.
The Lagonda’s return from Chicago to Tawcester Towers had been followed by much earnest discussion between Blotto and Corky Froggett as to whether they should remove the Mafia’s additional feature from the car. The purists in both master and chauffeur considered that a vehicle as distinguished as a Lagonda should be kept as close as possible to the condition in which it had left the factory. But at the same time both men recognised the convenience of the hidden space. Who could say when, in the course of one of their adventures, they might need to conceal something?
At the time of the discovery of Rupert the Egyptologist’s haul in the Tawcester Towers attic no decision had yet been taken and the Lagonda retained its secret compartment.
Both Corky Froggett and his master had certain rituals in their lives. A day was not complete for Blotto at his beloved Tawcester Towers if he had not spent time at some point with Mephistopheles in his stable, and if he had not given his cricket bat a loving stroke before he retired to bed.
The third of his rituals brought master and chauffeur together. Corky Froggett was a man of iron discipline and fixed habits. The army training that had turned him into a deadly killing machine had also encouraged in him a mania for cleanliness. Just as his uniform had always been immaculate, so was everything else in his life. His quarters at Tawcester Towers (which of course Blotto had never seen – it didn’t do for family members to go into the servants’ part of the house) was so antiseptically hygienic that even motes of dust did not dare to land on any surface there.
And this attitude – some might say compulsion – was also evident in Corky Froggett’s care of the Lagonda. Though its owner was obviously ‘the young master’ Blotto, the chauffeur’s love of the vehicle went far beyond that which the most sentimental of shepherds felt for his precious ewe-lamb. His care obviously included meticulous tuning of the wonderful engine that lay beneath the monster’s sleek bonnet, but also ensured that the Lagonda’s bodywork always gleamed like a jewel of polished lapis lazuli.
To achieve this effect, every morning at ten o’clock sharp Corky Froggett would begin the laborious process of cleaning the car. This was regardless of whether the car actually needed cleaning. Some chauffeurs might have
just checked the bodywork to see that no impertinent speck of dust had had the temerity to land on their charges overnight, and wipe off the offending blemish, but that was not Corky Froggett’s way. For him doing anything less than the complete cleaning and valeting of the Lagonda would have been a dereliction of duty, on his scale of values a court-martial offence.
So, every morning before he began his task, like a high priest of some ancient cult preparing for a human sacrifice, Corky Froggett would lay out on the floor of the large garage which housed the precious vehicle the sacred accessories of his ritual. There were buckets of water, with which the Lagonda (with its soft-top up and windows closed) would be initially immersed, and into which cleaning cloths would subsequently be squeezed. Of the cloths themselves there was a wide range, from kitchen rags to the highest-quality chamois leathers. There was a variety of brushes of different widths to fit into the narrowest crannies between bodywork and chrome. Dubbin was there to keep the suppleness of the leather straps that held down the Lagonda’s bonnet. Tins of special glass-cleaning fluids for windows and headlights stood alongside upright bottles of chrome polisher. For the thinnest of apertures which might conceal a fleck of errant soil Corky had ready the pull-through of soft rope with which he used to clean out his rifle barrel between the shooting of individual Huns during the most recent international dust-up.
It was a ritual that Blotto loved to witness, and he often organised his day so that he would be passing the garages at ten o’clock in the morning. He would then, having lit a cigarette, watch Corky Froggett go through his unchanging routine, the two men united in an act of love for the car too intense to be expressed in words.
And when the chauffeur had buffed the last piece of chrome and completed his unflinching final scrutiny of the Lagonda, he would once again salute the young master. And Blotto, with a murmur of ‘Nice work, Corky,’ would move on to his next morning destination, which was frequently the stables. There he would indulge in another silent act of love, communing with Mephistopheles.