The Egyptian Curse (5 page)

An Old Friend

The perfect friendship is that between good men, alike in their virtue.

– Aristotle,
The Nicomachean Ethics
, 340 B.C.

“I can't believe that Hale would have done it,” Chief Inspector Wiggins said, putting down his pint of Guinness with an emphatic thump. “He couldn't have.”

Sherlock Holmes, sitting across the table at the Northumberland Arms, raised a grey eyebrow. “Couldn't have killed the man who married the woman he loved?” Holmes sipped his whiskey and soda. “Men have murdered for far less reason. Most men are not the thinking creatures that we like to believe them to be. You, of all people, should know that. How many homicides have you investigated over the years? They are as common in the drawing room as in the gutter.”

“Oh, he might have killed the blighter, but he would have owned up to it. He's a man and no mistake about it. But Rollins won't see that. All Rollins will see is a chance for a clever headline and his name on the promotion list.” Wiggins leaned his chair back on two legs and waived his arm out in front of him punctuating each word he said with a thrust of his hand, “Reporter Writes Own Death Warrant.” The chair dropped back to the floor with a crack. “Or some such catchy phrase. Rollins, bother!”

Holmes smiled. “You remind me of the way Lestrade and Gregson treated my ‘clever theories,' as they liked to say.” Wiggins would remember them well, two stalwarts of the Yard back when he had been the leader of Holmes's irregular force of street Arabs.

“Rollins is no Sherlock Holmes. He's hard working, ambitious, and not at all short on brains. I'll give him all that. But” - Wiggins put a finger to his nose - “he can't smell the truth. He isn't able to sort, if you know what I mean. He can't tell the difference between the significant and the trivial. He confuses them all the time and I have a feeling we have more than one innocent man in jail 'cause he can't tell the difference. He's a bit low on street smarts.”

There was no lacking that in Wiggins, Holmes thought. He had grown up on the streets, picking up coins from Sherlock Holmes for directing his little band of urchins to find a taxicab or a steam launch. And the lad Wiggins had been smart enough to know that there was no future in the streets picking up those coins. The future was in working hard and taking opportunities as they came.

“Why are you telling me this, Wiggins?”

“I was hoping you'd want to help Hale, seeing as how you worked together on that Hangman business and the Pike murder.”

Holmes thought for a moment as he gently rotated the glass on the tablecloth. “I'm afraid he hasn't asked for my help, Wiggins.”

“That's a matter of pride I suppose. Or, maybe he's waiting for you to offer.”

Or maybe he just forgot about me,
Holmes thought.
Maybe everyone has forgotten about me. I'm seventy years old and I look it. I've been officially retired more than twenty years - not that Mycroft didn't put me to work anyway, especially during the Great War. It's even been seven years since Watson has published one of his highly romanticized accounts. My gait is slower now and I don't remember things as well as I used to. If Hale asked me to help, could I even do it?

Holmes stood up. As he did, Wiggins realized that his old mentor now looked the part of an older man. His clothes were somewhat dated and they hung a little loosely. His eyes were still bright, his wit still quick, but yes, the hair was grey and the movements not as spry as he remembered.

Wiggins smiled to himself and looked at his own attire - not quite as loose at it should be - and he knew the hairline was staring to recede. The sedentary life behind the desk of a chief-inspector was taking its own toll.

“It's always good to see you, Wiggins,” Holmes said. “Thank you for calling. But I think that I had best get back to my bees.”

“Then you won't help, Mr. Holmes?” The look of disappointment on Wiggins's face was plain.

Holmes hesitated a moment, then placed a hand on his old friend's shoulder.

“Should Hale call for assistance I will do what I can, but perhaps my time has passed. Good day, old friend.”

An Awkward Surprise

In matters of love a woman's oath is no more to be minded than a man's.

– John Vanbrugh,
The Relapse
, 1696

Within a few hours at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hale had talked to a dozen duffers, hangers-on, and golfers' wives - quite enough for the light feature that Rathbone was looking for. The American who was playing, Walter Hagen, had won the 1922 Open. And one Scot by the name of MacIver was having none of that as a possible repeat. The old gentleman had literally followed Hale around for the better part of an hour giving his personal discourse on the game and the inherent right of a Britisher to win it (preferably a Scot). Hale allowed as how Hagen was three strokes back today and the Empire should have nothing to worry about.
A
£
75 prize seems hardly worth crossing the Atlantic for,
thought Hale as he made his escape from McIver. He was glad he was only a Saturday duffer.

The return trip to London by the 9.04 into Euston Station gave him the chance to organize his notes for writing, with plenty of time left over for pondering what Howard Carter had said. He sat back in the carriage and tried to think about it logically, as Sherlock Holmes would.

He even thought of calling Holmes, but that didn't seem right. Didn't the old man deserve his peace? Besides, Hale should have learned a thing or two from the world's greatest consulting detective. He just needed to put his mind to it. All right, then.

If Linwood Baines was a poseur who had lied about his background in order to get Lord Sedgewood to fund his expeditions - and to line his pockets - that might be a secret worth killing for. But in that case, why not also kill Carter - and whoever told him? They all knew the secret. But perhaps killing Alfie wasn't a rational act. Suppose Alfie confronted Baines and he reacted like a cornered animal. But Alfie was killed right outside the Constitutional Club just hours after his encounter with Carter. What were the chances that he would have had the opportunity to challenge Baines so soon after Carter suggested that something was amiss? Well, maybe Alfie just happened to have had an appointment with Baines that night, to talk about a loan or something. Stranger things had happened.

Hale was still bouncing ideas around like that - raising objections to Baines's guilt and then knocking them down - when he returned to the headquarters of the Central Press Syndicate on Fleet Street. A familiar form, heart-achingly familiar, stood in the shadow of the doorway. Her hair was covered by a dark blue draped crown hat and her dress by a mid-calf length coat in what the latest fashion magazines called a grackle head blue. She looked even more tired than when he had seen her on Monday. Hale wondered when she had last slept.

“Sadie-”
Damn it, where did that come from?
Sadie was the name under which he had first known her - not as the daughter of a peer, but as a music hall singer. “I mean, Lady Sarah, what are you doing here?”
Keep it polite, formal, unemotional.

“Can we talk? In private, I mean.”

Hale looked around, half afraid to see Rollins watching from across the street. “Come inside.”

Hale didn't have an office of his own. He took Sarah past the mass of desks in the pit to the conference room near the back door, followed by the appreciative gaze of Ned Malone. This was totally inappropriate, being behind a closed door with a recently widowed woman, but Hale didn't give a damn.

“What's happened?” he asked as he closed the door and took a seat opposite Sarah.

“I saw Father today for the first time since I left his townhouse yesterday morning. Charles and I had dined with him on Monday, and I stayed overnight because I didn't want to go back to Bedford Place. Father told me this afternoon that policeman, Inspector Rollins, showed up after I left yesterday and interrogated him about the murder weapon.”

“I don't understand. Why would Rollins ask the Earl about that?”

Sarah leaned over and grabbed Hale's hand as if she were clutching a lifeline. “Rollins said an informer called and told him that a dagger from the funerary equipment of Queen Ahhotep, mother of Ahmosis I of the 18
th
Dynasty, was used to kill Alfie - a dagger from Father's collection. He demanded to see it.”

Hale didn't know what to make of that. It was coming at him too fast. “What did your father say?”

“He denied owning such an item. Oh, Enoch, what if Inspector Rollins can prove that he was lying?”

“How can he do that? Unless... do you mean he
was
lying?”

She sighed. “Father couldn't admit to owning the dagger because he acquired it by, let's say, less than legal means. Queen Ahhotep's tomb had two similar daggers - one of solid gold, both dagger and sheath, which was reported to the Egyptian authorities, and the one that Father managed to get, which has a copper blade with gold handle and gold sheath. Father kept it with the rest of his collection in the library.”

“Who told Rollins about it?”

“He said the call was anonymous, although he made it clear he wouldn't have told me if he'd known.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“One of the servants, I suppose.”

“Does Rollins suspect your father?”

Sarah shook her head. “Oh, no. He still suspects me” - there was the slightest hesitation - “and you. He thinks the dagger does exist, and that I took it while I was visiting Father, and that Father is covering up for me.” Her voice trembled, on the verge of tears. “He said I could have taken it out of the library in my handbag, and there is no denying that is true. It's my favorite room in the house and I always spend a lot of time there. If it were the murder weapon, could Scotland Yard prove it?”

“I should think they could match the wounds to the weapon, but it would be difficult to say it was an exact match.”Hale scooted his chair over and put his arm around her in a brotherly way. “Buck up. If worse comes to worse, your father can produce the dagger and prove that it didn't kill Alfie. I'm sure he'd do that to save you from the dock.”

“But he can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because Father doesn't have the dagger, Enoch.” She hesitated. “It's... it's... been stolen. Oh, this is all such a mess!”

Hale unconsciously tightened his grip on Sarah. “The theft of the dagger - it just happened recently?”

“Yes.” Again she hesitated. “When Father looked for it after Rollins left, it wasn't there.”

That couldn't be a coincidence - but it could be a cover-up, a story that Sedgewood told his daughter to hide the fact that he had gotten rid of the weapon used to kill her husband. Having been illegally taken out of Egypt, there would be no record of it being in his possession. If Sedgewood hadn't shown it around, then the only people in England who could testify to the dagger's existence were Sarah, who would lie to defend her father; her brother, Charles; and perhaps some servants who wouldn't dare to accuse a peer - or would they? Hale still didn't get the whole British class thing.

All this was too much to spell out to Sarah. He simply said, “Maybe Rollins
should
suspect your father.”

She moved away from Hale. “How could you! I thought you wanted to help.”

“I do want to help... you. I know you didn't kill Alfie. Your father I'm not so sure about.”

“You're being terribly unfair just because you and Father never got along.”

“I got along fine.
He
was the problem.”

She ignored that. “Father always liked Alfie very much; you know that. Our marriage pleased him - more than it pleased me, if the truth be told. He had no reason in the world to kill Alfie.”

“Your brother said the Earl was upset about Alfie's relationship with the Woolfs and their Bloomsbury Group.”

“Upset, yes. Homicidal, no.”

But Hale saw something in her wide green eyes that made him wonder whether she believed what she was saying.

“Did your father send you to talk to me?”

“Good heavens, no! He'd be horrified and furious if he knew that I was asking your help!”

“How much help can I be when Rollins thinks that you and I were in it together?”

“Oh, Enoch!” Her eyes filled with tears. He held her close again.

“I'm not completely out of it,” he said, hoping to encourage her. “I've been asking some questions. I have a few for you, too. Will you promise to answer me honestly, even if my questions are uncomfortable?”

“Of course. I know that you are my friend and want only the best for me.”

That hurt, though he tried not to show it. What man who wants to be a woman's husband is happy to be called her friend? He steeled himself to be hurt much more.

“That argument you had with Alfie the night that he died - was it about another man?”

She paused. “Yes and no. I guess I'd better start by saying that I realized before the ship had even docked that I'd been a fool to marry Alfie. It was all wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“You didn't love him?”

“Oh, but I did! I loved him exactly like I love Charles, as a sister loves a brother. Marrying him was the biggest mistake of my life. But I knew it was a mistake I had to live with. Divorce was unthinkable. I couldn't do that to Alfie. He was such a dear - and such a bore. I actually rather liked it that he hung around with people much more interesting than he was, those Bloomsbury people.”

“Did Alfie know how you felt?”

“He never said so, and I tried hard to be a good wife. But a woman can't hide her feelings. I think that's why he spent so much time away from home. Charles was the only one who knew how unhappy I had been. I had to confide in someone. He, at least, understood both wanting to please Daddy and fearing the loss of his love and help at the same time. After all,” she smiled sideways at Enoch, “he had been through much the same thing.”

“And what happened the night of the argument? What was it about?” That's what he had been building up to.

“Alfie was jealous of a photograph that he found in my bag. I don't know how he came to be looking in there. Maybe he guessed that there was such a photograph. At any rate, that's what he found - a picture of the man I realize now is the only man I have ever loved.”

She reached into the silk-lined depths of her black dress bag and pulled out the photo. With a shy look on her pretty face, she handed it to Hale.

Hale recognized it right away. The picture was in a cellulite envelope, like those used by stamp collectors. It showed no wear and had been carefully taken care of, probably only recently added back to her purse. The image showed Sarah at Murray's Night Club. The man next to her, with his hand on hers, was a slightly younger Enoch Hale.