Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2) (17 page)

Flinders was out at some appointment at the museum, so Lazarus had a drink in the bar with Katarina.

“It would be callous of me to say ‘I told you so’ at a time like this,” she said after he told her what had happened.

“But you’re going to say it anyway,” he replied, sipping his gin.

“No. Only that I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Sorry that you couldn’t see straight. That you couldn’t see her for what she was.”

“And what was that?”

“She used you, Lazarus. Used her sex to lure you to do her bidding. Then, once you had helped her get her antiquities out of Cairo, she cast you aside.”

“There has to be more to it than that.”

Katarina sighed. “Lazarus, don’t start shining your lamp in corners and jumping at shadows. It’s not that hard to see...”

“There are too many things left unexplained. Why did she want me to go after Lindholm, her ex-partner in crime? What is she planning to do with her fiancé, Henry Thackeray? He won’t give her up, even if I do. He won’t accept my failure to bring her home as an ending to the matter. That is why I must continue.”

“What?”

“I’m going to Paris. I’m going to confront Eleanor and get some answers from her.”

“Lazarus, for God’s sake, take your lumps and let it drop! You’ve nothing to gain by chasing her all around the world. It’s clear that she used you for her own ends. Don’t waste any more time or love on her.”

“Who said anything about love?” Lazarus demanded. “Your mission may be at an end, but mine is still incomplete. Would you let the matter drop if acquiring your quarry was still within your grasp?”

Katarina said nothing, but drank of the rest of her gin and gave him her ‘you’re not fooling anybody, least of all me’ look.

Chapter Seventeen

In which developments in Paris prove that the adventure is not yet over

The trains from Marseille were notoriously slow. Lazarus arrived in the appropriately named
Gare St. Lazare
in Paris amidst billowing clouds of steam much later than he had intended. By the time he had booked himself into the Hôtel de France, it was well after dark. He did not eat but immediately set out towards
Avenue de l’Opéra,
which led to the Louvre.

The Parisian skyline was grim and black against the boiling, charcoal sky. Carriages clattered by, carrying pale faces and black evening fashion to the opera, or more seedy destinations. The heaven and hell nightclubs springing up in Montmartre heralded the decadent end of days wits were coining the
Fin de siècle—
the end of the century. In a dark alley lit by a hissing gas lamp, Lazarus glimpsed a half torn-off poster promoting ‘The Fantastic Madame Babineaux, Woman of a Thousand Faces!’ at some establishment further downriver where the seedy gin houses and freak shows squatted on the muddy banks of the Seine.

The
Musée du Louvre
had already closed to visitors for the night, but the attendant was still in the foyer. Lazarus questioned him in the best French he could muster about Mademoiselle Rousseau and where she might be reached.

“
Monsieur
, you understand that I cannot simply give out Mademoiselle Rousseau’s address to anybody who asks for it,” the attendant said.

“I appreciate that,” Lazarus began, “but I have come from England on very important business concerning her fiancé and I...”

“I am not bound, of course, to conceal her being in this building at present,” said the Frenchman, clearly enjoying cutting him off with this revelation.

“Is she?” Lazarus demanded impatiently.

“Assuredly. She has not left the Louvre since her return from Egypt. Her newly acquired artifacts were taken up to the
Département des Antiquités Egyptiennes
several days ago. Although she occasionally sends for coffee and food, her work keeps her thoroughly occupied.”

“What work?” Lazarus asked.

“Cataloguing the museum’s newest acquisitions, I imagine,” replied the attendant in a surprised voice. “Perhaps some restoration also, for her cases included a large quantity of scientific equipment, the manner of which I could not ascertain at a glance.”

“Would you object to my going up and visiting her?” Lazarus asked, but this was far beyond the humble attendant’s area of responsibility and his question was answered by a non-committal shrug.

After borrowing a lantern from the attendant, Lazarus lit it and ascended the stairs. The moonlight shone through the high windows on the second floor and cast its silvery wash on paintings, sculptures, vases and urns from every corner of the globe. Nearly every ancient civilization known to man was represented by the relics that peered out at him like ghosts; Persia, Athens, Rome, Carthage, Sumer and Babylon. He passed paintings done by the great European artists such as Murillo, Le Sueur, Watteau and Poussin. The sculptures of Michelangelo and Bernini, among others, seemed to come to life in the silver light.

It was in the
Département des Antiquités Egyptiennes
that the shadows were the deepest. Here, shrouded in gloom as if sulking, were the relics of that great civilization torn from the burning sands by Napoleon, gathered like dead leaves by Drovetti and mustered by Mariette, dragged across the Mediterranean to the French capital for all the world to see. Gigantic stone pillars loomed like frozen deities, hulking sarcophagi glowered from the darkness and golden statues of forgotten gods and pharaohs glinted in the light from the gas lamp.

Lazarus shivered as he passed the decayed forms of the mummies that peered from behind panes of glass, their rotten bandages and browned, wrinkled bodies frighteningly animated in the dim light, stirring memories within him of just how animated these things could become.

The glow of a light was up ahead. Lazarus saw a woman’s form bent over a table, examining something. It was Eleanor. As he approached, he saw that the object of her examination was a mummy. He set down his lamp. She might have heard him coming or she might have expected him. Either way she showed no surprise.

“Why did you run from me, Eleanor?” he asked her.

She sighed and set down the instrument she was holding. “Did you follow me all the way to Paris to ask me that? Are you a foolish schoolboy with a crushed heart?”

Lazarus gritted his teeth in the face of her frostiness. “So it was all an act designed to trap me. None of it was real. You used me.”

“Yes, I used you,” she said in irritation. “Good lord, I would have thought that you could have worked that out for yourself without coming all the way to Paris to disturb me.”

“Why? Just so you could get these items out of Egypt? I don’t believe that even you would go to such lengths for a museum’s wish list.”

“Of course not. I lied to you about most things, my feelings for you above all. But one thing I was honest about was my devotion to Kiya and her memory. I needed to bring her here to be reunited with the things she called her own in her lifetime. The things that were stolen from her, defaced, smashed and left in the sand for millennia.”

“Then it was you behind the murder of Petrie’s friend in Cairo. And it was you who stole the relief fragment from the Bulaq Museum.”

“Yes. Not directly, of course.”

“No. But you were the one who was in control of the mummies, not Dr. Lindholm.”

“He allowed me to play with his toys. He didn’t share my interest in restoring Kiya’s name to her of course. It was all ‘the Confederacy this’ and ‘the defeat of the Union that’, but he was an easy man to control, as are all men. They’ll do anything for the scent of the forbidden flower. It wasn’t hard to use him as I used you.”

“Used me to kill him, you mean. Yes, he’s dead. You used your two lapdogs against each other.”

She smiled. “You understand at last. I thought I was killing two birds with one stone in sending you after him. I thought perhaps you might kill each other, more probably that you would survive, but by which time I would be long gone.”

“And yet here I am.”

“Yes, here you are.”

He glanced down at the table. “What’s with the mummy? That’s not Kiya.”

“No. When I said I meant to reunite Kiya with all of her possessions I really meant
all
of them. Including her husband.”

“Then that’s…”

“Amenhotep the Third, known as Akhenaten. When I found him in tomb KV55, I saw that they had used Kiya’s own coffin, stolen and defaced after her disgrace, and altered the hieroglyphics to show his name.” She indicated a coffin in an open glass case in the corner of the room. It sported a strange combination of a female Nubian wig and a long beard, clearly added on afterwards. The right eye and part of the gold forehead was visible, but the rest of the metal had been hacked away, revealing the brown wood beneath.

Lazarus looked down at the shriveled mummy and the scientific apparatus scattered around it. “My God, you’re trying to bring him back to life!”

“Kiya and her husband will be reunited at last; their love triumphant long after those who tried to keep them apart have rotted in their tombs!”

It was now clear to Lazarus that he was dealing with a woman far madder than Dr. Lindholm had ever been. “But for God’s sake, Eleanor!” he exclaimed. “You won’t bring them back, not really! They won’t be like they were before, star-crossed lovers mooning all over each other! They’ll be monsters! Just like the hideous creatures Dr. Lindholm made! Unable to even walk without a ton of mechanical attachments!”

Eleanor rolled her eyes at him. “You still don’t understand, do you?” She was suddenly startled by a light moving in the dim recesses of the rooms from whence Lazarus had come. She quickly turned down her lamp. “Who did you bring with you?” she demanded.

“Nobody,” he replied, turning to see the glow of another lamp coming towards them like the headlight on a train.

She barreled into him, knocking the lamp from his hands to smash on the floor. The room was plunged into darkness. He felt her flee from him and steadied himself, feeling suddenly alone in the blackness.

He made for the distant light, hearing voices. Three figures had made their way to the landing. One was dressed in the uniform of a Parisian police officer. The other was Katarina. His surprise at this was quickly overshadowed by his shock at recognizing the third.

“By God,” he mumbled as the light of the police officer’s lamp fell on his face.

“And there you are,” said Henry Thackeray. “Still poking about in dark corners while others shoulder the burden?”

“What are you doing here, Henry?” Lazarus asked. “And you, Katarina? What’s going on?”

“I brought these men here,” said Katarina. “At first I intended to come alone. I followed you from Cairo on the next steamer and have kept a night behind you every step of the way.”

“Why?”

“That’s not important right now. I ran into Mr. Thackeray upon my arrival.”

“I’ve been in Paris for some days now,” Thackeray said. “I received word that my fiancé had returned, having somehow slipped out of your grasp in Cairo. It wasn’t until I met Miss Mikolavna here that I learned the truth—that you and my Eleanor are romantically involved and that you had even been persuaded to abandon your duty for this illicit affair. Inspector Devaney is here to arrest you as a foreign spy. I, of course, know your real business and may be persuaded to have you deported to England where you will stand accused of deserting your post. Or I could just leave you to rot here in a Parisian cell. I haven’t quite decided.”

Lazarus said nothing but made eyes at Katarina that would have burned her alive had that been physically possible.

“I’m sorry, Lazarus,” she said. “But I am still convinced that Rousseau played a far greater part in Dr. Lindholm’s designs than she lets on.”

“And her personal betrayal of me only adds to her treachery,” said Thackeray. “But I will still make her mine, by force if necessary.”

Lazarus ignored him. “You were right, Katarina, and it is I who am sorry. She did use me. It was her who sent that mummy after you in Cairo. She admitted that she used Lindholm’s creatures to steal the fragment from the museum and to murder that Egyptologist. Her mind is unhinged. She’s done it all for this Kiya woman. She’s mad.”

“What Kiya woman?” Thackeray asked. “What nonsense have you got into your head this time? My fiancé’s only madness was in carrying on with you!”

“Shut up!” said Lazarus. “You’re welcome to the bitch, but she’s a mad dog, I tell you! And dangerous! Her work here must be stopped else we’ll have another Dr. Lindholm on our hands right here in Paris.”

“You sir, will answer for your offences!” Thackeray bellowed, drawing a Derringer from his pocket.

Inspector Devaney, who was clearly struggling to keep up with the rapid exchange between the two old enemies, finally lost his patience and bellowed for them to halt. “I am in charge here, gentlemen!
Monsieur
Longman, I must ask you to come with me.” He jangled a pair of manacles in one hand.

“Wait a minute, I beg you,” said Lazarus. “There is a deranged woman on this floor who is trying to reanimate a mummy. I believe, based on my previous experiences, which Miss Mikolavna here can attest to, that she will succeed.”

“A mummy?” the inspector asked, his eyebrows raised.

“Come off it, Lazarus!” said Henry. “You can’t buy your way out of this by spouting ridiculous fantasies!”

“I’m afraid he is quite right,” said Katarina. “And these are no fantasies. You fiancé does indeed hold the power of life over death.”

“What nonsense is this?” Henry demanded.

“I find this all very hard to believe,” added Inspector Devaney.

“Look,” said Lazarus. “When we were in Egypt we encountered an American scientist who had somehow engineered the technology to bring mummies back to life, after a fashion—they require a great deal of mechanical tinkering and fortifying—but they walk and move as you or I. Why mummies, I don’t know—perhaps it has something to do with the way they were preserved by the ancient Egyptians, or maybe there is something supernatural about the whole business; I honestly don’t know all the hocus pocus behind it. Anyway, Eleanor Rousseau has been in on it and is obsessed with reviving two mummies in particular; that of Kiya and her husband, Akhenaten, whom she discovered last year and has been kept in this museum. It’s all a bit complicated but we must hurry to stop her. Believe me, you don’t want to see these things wandering around. They’re not pretty.”

The French inspector harrumphed at this and rubbed his side whiskers. “I don’t know what all this is about, I’m sure, but I am convinced that somebody here is a lunatic; either you or Miss Mikolavna or Miss Rousseau or perhaps all three. But I’m going to get to the bottom of it. I can’t have all you English fellows causing such a hullaballoo in our capital’s esteemed museum!”

He made to advance into the murky shadows but Lazarus grabbed his shoulder. “Draw your gun, I implore you,” he said gravely.