The Egyptian Curse

Title Page

THE EGYPTIAN CURSE

Another Adventure of Enoch Hale with Sherlock Holmes

Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen

Publisher Information

Published in 2015 by

MX Publishing

335 Princess Park Manor,

Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX

www.mxpublishing.co.uk

Digital edition converted and distributed by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

© Copyright 2015 Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen

The right of Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.

Cover design by
www.staunch.com

Dedication

Dan Andriacco dedicates this book to

Roger Johnson

Kieran McMullen dedicates this book to

Eileen McMullen

Death at the Opera

“To die! So pure and lovely!”

– Radamès,
Aida

Enoch Hale watched the beautiful young woman die in her lover's arms, sealed up in a dark vault of an Egyptian temple.

For a few moments he sat in awed silence. Then, as the curtain closed, he jumped up and joined in the thunderous applause.

Hale had always loved the sweet romantic tragedy of the opera
Aida
, but it had a special meaning for him now that he had - in a sense - lost his own true love in Egypt. Ever since that day he had thought of himself, no doubt over-dramatically, as the victim of a kind of Egyptian curse.

“Marvelous,” said the woman next to him, his companion, over the sound of hundreds of hands clapping.

Hale knew little about Prudence Beresford except that she had once been a nurse of sorts and that she liked opera. He'd shared an umbrella with her here at Covent Garden a few weeks before after another British National Opera Company performance,
Madame Butterfly
.

“Oh, an American,” she had said then when he'd thanked her in his Boston accent for offering to let him share her protection from the pelting June rain. “My father was an American. I met a lot of Americans during the Great War. I was a nurse and then a dispenser with the VAD - learned ever so much about poisons.”

“Fancy that.” After almost five years in London, Hale talked like a Brit at times. “I was a volunteer ambulance driver in France.”

“That was very brave of you.”

Hale shrugged. “Hardly. But it was more exciting than selling stocks and bonds, and it had the added advantage of annoying my family.”

“What do you do now?”

“I'm a reporter for the Central Press Syndicate. That annoys them even more. My name is Enoch Hale, by the way. Perhaps you've seen my byline.”

She hesitated shyly, and then put out a gloved hand. “Prudence Beresford. I'm something of a writer myself. Not a professional, of course. I dabble in fiction.”

Hale couldn't help but think of his friend Dorothy Sayers. She had written a detective novel. It had even been published last year and she was working on another. Like Dorothy, Prudence wasn't a pretty woman, but she was almost handsome - heavy eyebrows, a thin but athletic body, golden reddish hair cut in a bob. She seemed to be about his age, thirty-four.

“May I buy you coffee or tea?” he said. “I really do owe you for keeping me dry.”

“Tea sounds lovely.”

They ducked into Frascati's at 32 Oxford Street. Hale had often lunched or dined there on the balcony, where the Belgian head chef Jules Matagne produced a modestly priced
table d'hote
with a Continental flair.

Now what? Hale was a bit out of practice at small talk with women. He hadn't been serious about a girl in two years. Dorothy didn't count; besides, she did most of the talking. Opera - that was a safe place to start.

“Do you go to the opera often?” he asked.

Prudence Beresford nodded and set down her teacup. “Oh, yes. I saw
La Boh
è
me
and
Der Rosenkavalier
earlier this year. I come up to London quite frequently in my dear Morris Cowley.”Hale gathered that she lived somewhere in the country and quite enjoyed the drive in her automobile.

“This is my first opera at Covent Garden,” he said. “But I've already bought a ticket for
Aida
.”

“So have I!”

“It's one of my favorite operas.”

“Mine, too!”

At the time it had seemed only natural to make plans to meet at the upcoming performance of Verdi's Egyptian masterpiece. “And perhaps supper afterward at Simpson's in the Strand?” Simpson's was less than half a mile from Covent Garden.

“Yes, that would be lovely,” Prudence had said.

Now, after the final aria of
Aida
, Hale wondered what he had gotten himself into as they walked toward the legendary restaurant. The woman was hiding something. Every time he tried to ask her a personal question, she turned it back on him without answering. “Where do you live?” “In my house. Where do you live?” He'd been down that road before, and it wasn't a journey he enjoyed.

Well, no matter. This was nothing serious - just meeting a friend at the opera, and supper afterward. She might as well be his banker friend Tom Eliot or Ned Malone from the office. With that relaxing thought he smiled. Prudence smiled back. Not a bad smile, actually. Hale hadn't seen it often.

“It's more than just the music I love, though that's glorious,” Prudence said earnestly, slicing off a bite of Simpson's legendary beef. She wore a two-tiered pink, mid-calf length crepe georgette dress with tiers of fringe, and a purple and lilac cape over her shoulders. Her cloche hat was made of the same purple material as the cape.”I'm fascinated with Egypt. I even wrote a dreadful novel about it once,
Snow Upon the Desert
. Almost every Thursday I go to the North Wing of the British Museum and look at mummies and the Rosetta Stone. Needless to say, I'd rather be back in Egypt.”

“Back?”

She nodded. “My mother took me to Cairo on holiday fourteen years ago, in 1910.It was a wonderful three months. We picnicked and saw the sights every day and I danced every night. But I didn't find a husband there, despite my mother's best efforts.”

Hale almost choked on his beef. Didn't find a husband! That was too much. It had been a mistake to come here, he thought. He could never eat at Simpson's without thinking of the night that Sarah told him she was going to Egypt with Alfie Barrington - the man she later married. They had been sitting just two tables over from where Hale and Prudence were now. And Prudence's story had only rubbed the raw spot.

“What's her name?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The woman you've been thinking about while I've been talking to you for the past five minutes.”

“Must there be a woman?”

Prudence sighed. “Mr. Hale, you are tall, handsome, expensively dressed, and gentlemanly. Yes, there must be a woman.”

“You should be a detective.”

“That's an unsuitable job for a woman, I'm afraid.” She paused, chewing slowly. “But perhaps an amateur could perform the role - one of those elderly village gossips who know everything.”

“Lady Sarah Bridgewater,” Hale said, finally answering Prudence's question. “Or, at least, she was. Now she's Mrs. Alfred Barrington.”

“Oh, I see. Married.”

Hale didn't know what to make of her tone of voice. He shook his head. “No, you don't see. I wanted to marry her but her stuffy old father, Lord Sedgewood, wouldn't hear of it - never mind that the Hales of Boston and New York are richer than half the Lords of London. I wasn't good enough for the nobility. The Earl tolerated me as long as he thought it was just fun and games for Lady Sarah, but marriage was out of the question.

“Then she told me one night, right here at Simpson's, that she was going to Egypt for a few months with her father, and that her friend Alfred Barrington was going along. They were both into the Egyptology craze, the old man and Alfie - still are, I guess.”

“You must have been very jealous.”

“That might have been a man's natural reaction. But Sarah told me she'd known Alfie since she was a little girl. He was the scion of another noble family - the younger son of a duke, I think. She said he was just like a brother to her after her father temporarily disowned her real brother.”

Hale took a healthy gulp cabernet. “Some brother! When I met her at the ship, planning to propose, she told me to meet her at the Criterion Restaurant. And that's where she told me over tea and crumpets that she'd married Alfie on the ship coming home. I haven't talked to her since.”

The devil of it was that he could never figure out what made her prefer Alfie Barrington to him. Hale stood almost six feet tall, with light brown hair combed straight back, blue eyes, and a pencil mustache reminiscent of Douglas Fairbanks. Alfie looked more like a straw-haired vaudeville comic, barely taller than Sarah. Perhaps he had charms unknown to Hale. But Sarah had never actually said that she loved the man, had she? Maybe her father forced her into it, Hale thought for the hundredth time.

“You're a very romantic figure, Mr. Hale,” Prudence said. “No one will ever replace your lost love in your heart. It would be useless for anyone to try. And yet you haven't approached her in two years, thus keeping temptation at bay, so you are an honorable man as well.”

It annoyed Hale that she had sized him up so quickly and, in his estimation, so accurately. She was like a female Sherlock Holmes!

“You don't-”

“I only wish that someone loved me that much. Preferably someone quite as honorable as you.”

And yet, Hale wondered whether she was married. She wasn't wearing a wedding ring, but her ring finger looked as though she once had. Divorced or stepping out? If she had a husband at home, or somewhere, that might explain her reluctance to say much about her current life.

Prudence picked up her purse. “It's been a lovely time, Mr. Hale.”

“Enoch.” Why hadn't he made the routine correction earlier? Had he been afraid to?

“All right, then.” She smiled as she stood up. “I do hope that we shall see each other again at the opera next season - Enoch.” She sounded like she meant it, but only that and nothing more.

“Don't you want dessert?” Pudding, the British called it.

“I'm afraid I really must go.” She rushed off.

Was it something that I said?
Of course it was. Hale smiled in relief as he contemplated having an after-dinner drink. He rather liked Prudence Beresford, but he knew now that he didn't want to get too close to her. He wasn't ready for that yet, especially not when there might be a husband in the wings.

Within an hour, Hale was at his flat on Claverton Street, near St. George Square. Later, he would tell Sarah that he'd been dreaming of her when the persistent ringing of the telephone woke him out of a sound sleep at three o'clock in the morning. He often dreamed of Sarah.

“Yeah?”

“Hale? It's Malone.”

He woke up fast. Ned Malone was one of the top reporters at the Central Press Syndicate. Hiring him away from
The Daily Gazette
a couple of years earlier had been a major coup for the Syndicate. Best known for his news stories about Professor George Challenger, he was also an excellent crime reporter and a good friend of Hale. He wouldn't bother Hale at this hour unless it was important.

“What's happened?”

“I'm at Scotland Yard. There was a murder tonight outside the Constitutional Club. I think you know the victim - it's Alfred Barrington.”

No Good News

Ill news hath wings, and with the wind doth go.

– Michael Drayton,
The Barons' Wars
, 1603

“I'm sorry, Hale, but I'm afraid I can't help you this time.” Chief Inspector Henry Wiggins nodded toward the newspaper on his desk. “It isn't my case.”

The front page of
The Morning Telegraph
, one of the Central Press Syndicate's major clients in London, carried the headline
DUKE'S SON MURDERED OUTSIDE CLUB
across the top. Hale had devoured the story with his eggs and sausage before leaving his flat.

By Edward Malone

Central Press Syndicate

The body of Alfred James Barrington, 29, was found shortly before midnight in an alley off of Northumberland Street, just a few yards from the Constitutional Club. He had been stabbed in the heart by a knife, according to Scotland Yard officials.

Robbery has been ruled out as a motive, they say, as the victim had
£
67 in his wallet, as well as an expensive watch. Several persons are being questioned in connection with the murder, but no arrests have been made.

Mr. Barrington, the youngest son of the Duke of Somerset, was a long-time member of the

Constitutional Club and had spent the night there, according to another Club member. His wife, the former Lady Sarah Bridgewater, was unavailable...

Far down in the story, Malone reported that the knife looked as though it were an Egyptian artifact or a replica of one. Hale would have put that higher in the story as Artemis Howell, a rival reporter at
The Times
, had done.

“Inspector Rollins has been assigned to investigate,” Wiggins continued with a look of distaste on his normally impassive features. “That wasn't my idea.”

Hale had formed a good working relationship with the wiry chief inspector over the years. They had frequently shared information on an off-the-record basis to their mutual benefit. Not many Scotland Yarders would go that far with a member of the Press.

“I don't know Rollins, but the name is familiar,” Hale said. “Young, ambitious, and politically connected is what I've heard.”

“Well, you didn't hear that from me,” Wiggins said with a rare wink, although in fact Hale had been quoting the chief inspector himself. “But I'm surprised that Rathbone would let you cover this story, given your personal interest in the victim's widow.”

That rankled, but Hale attempted to look surprised. “I'm a professional. My former personal relationship with Sarah is irrelevant. Rathbone knows that.”

The truth was more complicated. Nigel Rathbone, the hard-driving South African who ran the Central Press Syndicate as managing director, had taken some convincing. He had wanted to assign the second-day story of the murder to Malone.

“Families like the Barringtons and the Bridgewaters don't talk to the Press, but they'll talk to me because they know me,” Hale had argued.

“Perhaps too well?”

Hale shook his head. “I can be objective. Sarah got over me, and I've finally gotten over her.”
Not exactly, but close enough.
“I haven't even talked to her in a long time.”

“All right,” Rathbone had said finally, tapping tobacco into his curved pipe. “You can get a head start on tomorrow's coverage and hand it off to Malone when he comes in this afternoon. Share the byline. You still have the best Scotland Yard connections in the Press.”

Or so Rathbone and Hale had both thought.

“At any rate,” Wiggins said, “good luck with Dennis Rollins, but don't expect any favors from him.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

“He's in his office. Been working the case all night. I don't think he ever sleeps anyway.”

Rollins turned out to be a muscular man with a walrus mustache. His dark hair and swarthy complexion gave him a somewhat exotic and faintly foreign appearance. A rapid rise at the Yard - to the rank of inspector while not yet thirty - had inspired much speculation about his origins. The most common gossip had him the natural son of anybody from Winston Churchill, the pugnacious politician, to Stanley Hopkins, Commissioner of Scotland Yard.

Surprisingly, he greeted Hale with a smile that reminded the American of Teddy Roosevelt.

“So you're Hale.” Rollins held out his hand. “I've been looking forward to having a chat with you.” During the shake he squeezed Hale's hand harder and held it longer than necessary.

“I've heard a lot about you,” Hale said.

“Doubtless. Have a seat.” The official kept talking while Hale did so. “I know that you're cozy with Chief Inspector Wiggins. He's a good man.” It sounded like a concession.

“Indeed. But I hope that you and I can work together as well.” Hale pulled out his notebook. “I just want to get up to speed on the Alfred Barrington murder. I really only know what I read this morning in Ned Malone's story.” Malone had called him before going to the murder scene, and before getting many details about the crime. Only with great effort had Hale resisted the impulse to fly to Sarah's side. That left him dependent on Malone's story for information. “Is it accurate that you questioned several suspects in connection with the murder?”

“Questioned, yes. Suspects, no.”

“Then you don't have any suspects?”

“I didn't say that, did I?”

“Then you do have suspects?”

“I didn't say that either.”

Rollins's expression was blank, but Hale couldn't help but believe that he was enjoying himself with all this wordplay to show how clever he was.

“Then which is it?”

“Neither, Mr. Hale. We have one suspect, and a damned good one.”

“Do you mind telling me the name?”The question was a perfunctory one, asked without a hope of getting a positive answer. But Rollins surprised him.

“I should be happy to do so. You may quote me as saying that Scotland Yard is taking a strong interest in the victim's wife, Lady Sarah.”

Hale's head jerked up from the notebook on his lap. Rollins's deep brown eyes were fixed on him, like a butterfly collector studying a specimen under a magnifying glass. Hale's mind was numb with shock at the totally foreign notion. “Sarah?” he repeated stupidly.

“Ah, yes, she is an
acquaintance
of yours, is she not?” The way Rollins stressed the word he might as well have said “paramour.”

“How do you know that?”

“I've been learning a great deal about the Barringtons in the hours since I was called in on this case.”

Resisting the strong desire to slug the smug Scotland Yarder, Hale forced himself back into journalist mode. He put his pen to notebook again.

“What makes Lady Sarah a suspect?”

Rollins sat back, totally at ease. “Come, come, Mr. Hale. One of the things I've learned about you is that you've reported on more than your share of murders. Surely you must know that the wife or husband is always the most likely killer.”
But not Sarah!
“That's the first reason.” He held up his index finger. “Reason number two” - the second finger - “the parlor maid, Mary Pritchard, stated that Mr. and Mrs. Barrington quarreled earlier in the evening and the mister left in a huff. Apparently that is why he spent the evening at his club.” Another finger. “And reason number three, during this argument Mr. Barrington accused his wife of having a lover.”

Hale felt an unexpected pang of jealousy, which made him feel foolish. What was Sarah to him now, really?

“Perhaps Miss Pritchard misunderstood her mistress,” he said. That sort of thing happened all the time in detective stories.

“How does one misinterpret ‘You love him, don't you?'”

Hale found it hard to believe that the Sarah he knew would kill someone, but she was no longer the Sarah he knew. Perhaps being married to Alfie had caused her to crack. “What does Lady Sarah say about all this?”

“She confirms that there was an argument - she called it ‘a bit of a tiff' - but she said her husband was in error with his suspicions. After Mr. Barrington left, she had Miss Pritchard prepare a sleeping draught for her. Miss Pritchard stated that she watched her drink it. Lady Sarah was apparently still asleep when we called on her early this morning with the news of her husband's death.”

Now Hale was confused.”Wait a minute, Inspector. You're saying that she has an alibi? That she was in her home sleeping when her husband was killed?”

Rollins nodded. “We believe that to be the case.”

“Then how could she have killed her husband?”

“She didn't have to, Mr. Hale. Isn't that what lovers are for?”He straightened up in his chair and eyed Hale as he lit a cigar. “As I said, I've been looking forward to having a chat with you. Where were you last evening?”