The Egyptian Curse (8 page)

The Curse Revisited

Curses come home to roost.

–King Alfred the Great,
Proverbs of Alfred
, 1275

Rathbone dropped around to Hale's desk on Saturday morning.

“Did you see this?” He held up the front section of
The Times
. Hale was sure he meant Artemis Howell's account of Lord Sedgewood's murder across the top of the front page, not the story on the side of the page about the American Walter Hagan's victory in the British Open the day before.(One old Scotsman, Hale knew, was going to be upset.)

“I read every word.”

“More interesting than Malone's yarn, isn't it?”

“Maybe so,” Hale acknowledged, “but Ned's isn't fiction.” He nodded at the screaming headline:
THE CURSE OF AHHOTEP?

The story, which Hale had consumed over breakfast at his flat before coming into the office, lived up to its breathless billing:

For the second time in less than a week, violent death has struck down a member of a noble family deeply involved in archeological excavations in the Valley of the Kings.

Edward Henry Bridgewater, 57, the fifth Earl of Sedgewood, was found Friday morning in the library of his Carlton House Terrace townhouse, crushed beneath a statue of the Egyptian goddess Bastet. The library housed much of his extensive collection of Egyptian artifacts.

Lord Sedgewood was the father-in-law of Alfred James Barrington, 29, who was stabbed to death Sunday evening near his club, the Constitutional. Sources say the Metropolitan Police, acting on information received, are investigating the possibility that he was stabbed with a dagger from the tomb of the ancient Egyptian Queen Ahhotep.

“We are pursuing several promising lines of inquiry,” said Inspector Dennis Rollins. “Mummy's curses, witchcraft, and mumbo-jumbo are not among them.”

But both dead men took part in a trip to Egypt in the summer of 1922 to negotiate a concession in the Valley of the Kings for the winter season. Sources close to the family say it was during that visit that Lord Sedgewood acquired by “less than legal means” the Queen Ahhotep dagger that may have been used to kill his son-in-law.

“I wonder who his sources ‘close to the family' are?” Rathbone mused.

“This piece is mostly nonsense and the rest is pure speculation. And yet-” Hale frowned. “There does seem to be a definite Egyptian tinge to these doings. What worries me is that Sarah was on that voyage with Alfie and her father two years ago. She got married on the way back. If these killings are somehow related to that, then Sarah might be in danger.”

“Danger from whom? Or what? A stone statue with a cat's head?”

“I don't have any idea.” Hale shook his head. “But not from a curse.”

“Conan Doyle isn't so sure.”

Howell's story had pulled out all the stops, from evoking the supposed “curse of the pharaohs” to interviewing Arthur Conan Doyle, one of Great Britain's most popular writers.

Although skeptics may laugh, folklore says that anyone who opens the tomb of a pharaoh, whether grave-robber or archaeologist, will be repaid with illness, bad luck, or death. The best known example in modern times is the famous “King Tut's curse.”

Herbert George, Lord Carnarvon, died just four months after the opening of the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun. Four other men in some way associated with him have died in mysterious circumstances, including Lord Carnarvon's half-brother, the radiologist who x-rayed King Tut's mummy, and a visitor to the tomb.

“I have long suspected that Lord Carnarvon's death was caused by elementals placed in Tutankhamun's tomb by his priests,” opined the noted author and Spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in an exclusive interview.

Among hundreds of other works in a long and distinguished literary career, Conan Doyle is the author of “Lot 249,” about the reanimation of an Egyptian mummy.

“As my fellow American, Henry Ford, might say: bunk!” Hale cried. “Conan Doyle's ‘elementals,' whatever they are, are about as real as his mummy coming back from the dead. It all sounds like motion picture material to me.”

“Bunk it may be, Hale, but it will sell newspapers for
The Times
.” Rathbone's sharp features looked worried. “Our client newspapers are going to wonder why we aren't turning out copy like that.”

“Well, don't look at me, Boss. You took me off the story, remember? If you want me back on it, just say-”

“There you are, Hale!”

Hale turned and saw, to his surprise, Howard Carter bearing down on him.

Carter stopped. “Oh, I see you're busy. I didn't mean to interrupt.”

“Not at all,” Hale said. “In fact, your timing is impeccable. I was just discussing King Tut's curse with my editor here, Mr. Nigel Rathbone.”

Carter, turning purple, gave the South African a perfunctory handshake, and then burst out: “There is no curse! You saw that
Times
story? All stuff and nonsense! Lord Carnarvon was bitten on his cheek by a mosquito. He nicked the area while he was shaving and infection set in. That's what killed him - perfectly natural! But nobody listens to me. Look at me. I'm hale and hearty. If there was a curse, shouldn't I at least be wasting away?”

“What about the other four who died?” Rathbone said.

“Everybody has to die sometime! It was sheer coincidence of timing that their time came after the opening of the tomb. Aubrey Herbert, Lord Carnarvon's half-brother, died of blood poisoning after having his teeth extracted because some idiot told him it would restore his eyesight. That was a tragedy, but hardly a curse. Colonel Herbert didn't even have anything to do with Tutankhamun.”

Hale couldn't resist the impulse to play devil's advocate. “If there were a curse, it would work through natural means, wouldn't it?”

“There is no curse.” Carter wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “I came here to presume on our acquaintance, Hale. I was hoping to get your assurance that the Central Press Syndicate won't follow
The Times
down this rabbit hole of curse rubbish. I'd like to see the contagion contained to one paper.”

Not much chance of that
, Hale thought. “Why do you care so much?”

Carter seemed to hesitate. Hale suspected that he was trying to figure out how frank to be. “Every time that sort of talk gets revived it makes it harder for me to find sponsors for new expeditions. What wealthy patron wants to be the latest victim of a so-called curse? Having a lot of money and a good family doesn't necessarily translate to having a lot of sense.”

“I can't say I believe in King Tut's curse myself,” Rathbone said, “but it's not journalism's business to sort out spiritual claims. There's still a significant reader interest in the boy-king. I can't promise that the CPS won't find a story in Lord Sedgewood's well-known rivalry with the late Lord Carnarvon.” He fingered his bent pipe. “Of course, we would like to approach it from a different angle than the
Times
story, give our subscribers something fresh.”

Carter's mustache twitched. “Like what?”

“Oh, I don't know-”

“I heard there was bad blood between you and Sedgewood long before his rivalry with Carnarvon or Alfie Barrington's efforts to get control of Tut's tomb for Baines,” Hale said. “I was told it involved something you sold Sedgewood years ago.”

To Hale's surprise, the archeologist seemed unconcerned. “Yes, that's true. It happened well over fifteen years ago, when I was still quite young. I was taken in by a counterfeit of a bracelet belonging to Ahhotep. Sedgewood was always fascinated by that particular queen, for some reason, so I offered it to him and he bought it. When he found out that it wasn't genuine, I apologized, returned his money, and wrote an article about my mistake so that others might profit by it. I imagine that just about everyone in the field knows the story as a sort of footnote to my otherwise successful career, but the only one it matters to is -
was -
Sedgewood. He could always be relied on to bring it up in some snide way when we chanced across each other. I was beyond even being annoyed by it at this point.”

Rathbone gave Hale a look that said:
No story there. And no motive for murder, either.
If the episode was as widely known as Carter professed, then he certainly wouldn't have killed Sedgewood to shut him up.

“I say, Hale, did you talk to Baines as I suggested?” Carter asked.

“I've been too busy with work,” Hale lied. “Mr. Rathbone runs a tight ship.”

And at the same time he thought: Talking to Baines wasn't enough. He was too eager to point the finger at Carter. His credentials deserve further investigation.

Looking for Answers

A scholar knows nothing of boredom.

– Jean Paul Richter,
Hesperus
, 1795

Hale went downstairs to the Syndicate's morgue, which contained files of clippings from every major British and European newspaper.

“I need anything you can find on an Oxford don named Courtland,” he told the librarian, a great bear of a man with bushy eyebrows named Trosley.

Trosley smiled through his salt and pepper beard. “Victim of a crime or the perpetrator?”

“Neither, so far as I know. But I don't know much yet.”

Trosley brought back a file so thick it took Hale an hour to read it. Although Hale had never heard of the man, the Press had spilled quite a bit of ink on him over the years. He spoke seven languages, including Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, and had used them for more than writing in academic journals. There were as many stories of him riding camels with T.E. Lawrence in Arabia and finding lost cities in Jordan as there were of him delivering lectures at international conferences. He must be in his seventies by now, but showed few signs of slowing down. He'd just returned to England from a year at Harvard University as a visiting professor in Egyptology.

Hale walked into Rathbone's office with Courtland's file in his hand. “I have an idea for a new angle on the Egyptian business.”

Rathbone put down his pen and picked up his pipe. “Good. Tell me.”

Hale sat. “There's a fellow at Oxford named Walter Courtland who's the final word on all things Egyptian. He's not only stuck his nose in musty old books translating demotic and hieroglyphics, but also been in some tight places doing field work. Apparently Linwood Baines, Lord Sedgewood's counterpart to Carter, studied under him. I bet he's seen some strange things. He probably won't buy into the idea of a curse, unless he's gone round the bend like Conan Doyle. But if his past interviews are any indication, he'll have something quotable to say.”

Rathbone offered a rare smile. “You'll do anything to get a piece of this story, won't you, Hale? Well, I admire your initiative. Enjoy Oxford!”

The train from Paddington Station to Oxford took sixty-one minutes, passing from city blight to suburban sprawl to the relatively open areas of Oxford.

Hale was surrounded by stately old buildings every day in London, but somehow it was only in towns like Winchester and Oxford that he felt the weight of history. Oxford had had a University Chancellor seven hundred years ago. The first universities in the American colonies, by contrast, hadn't set up shop until the seventeenth century. His own alma mater, Yale, was even later at 1701.

As Hale walked from the train station, he could well imagine his friend Dorothy Sayers making her way by foot or bicycle through these venerable streets in her college years. She'd been one of the first women to officially graduate from Oxford University. His favorite poem of hers was one that she'd written about her last morning as a student. How did it end?

The thing that I remember most of all

Is the white hemlock by the garden wall.

Hale found Professor Walter Courtland ensconced in his office in a fifteenth-century building on High Street. It was part of Magdalen College. Oscar Wilde had been an undergraduate at Magdalen, and Bertie Wooster more recently.

Courtland was bent over an ancient oak desk, writing in a notebook, when Hale stuck his head in. “Professor Courtland?”

He peered at Hale over half-moon glasses, a barrel-chested man whose tie was too short to travel the length of his stomach. Despite his short gray hair, he looked a decade younger than his age.

“That's what they call me. You must be Enoch Hale. Have a seat right there.” He pointed at a chair that was already occupied. “Just stack the books on the floor.”

His affable manner immediately shot down Hale's expectation that the Egyptologist would be an old curmudgeon like Ned Malone's friend Professor Challenger.

“You were a bit vague on the phone, Hale. On purpose, I expect. What do you want to talk to me about? I'm guessing mummies, mumbo-jumbo, something like that. Am I right?”

Hale smiled. “Something like that. How did you guess?”

Courtland snorted. “I didn't guess. I expected the Press to come calling as soon as I saw that pharaoh's curse story in this morning's
Times
. The many Press interviews that I have endured over the years have done my career no harm at all, I must admit.”
That's why Trosley's file on you is so thick
, Hale thought. “So, ask away, young man. What do you want to know?”

Hale pulled out his Moleskine notebook. “Well, let's get basic. As an Egyptologist, what do you think of the curse of King Tut?”

“Nonsense.”

Hale appreciated Courtland's concise clarity, but he needed more than a one-word answer. “You mean because Lord Carnarvon died of an infection?”

Courtland shook his head. “No, no, that's not what I mean. Of course, as an Egyptologist who has also done field work in archeology, I consider myself a scientist. Therefore, I see no reason not to believe the medical experts who determined infection to be the physical cause of Carnarvon's death. But that says nothing about any possible spiritual cause.”

Hale scribbled like mad. “Please go on, Professor.”

“I'll give you an example. Suppose I was deathly ill and I asked you to pray for my recovery. And suppose I recovered. My doctor would say that happy outcome was the result of his expert treatment and perhaps the administration of a new drug. You would say it was because of prayer.” He shrugged. “Who really knows? But I would venture to say that you're both right. Aren't prayers usually answered by natural means? Science and religion are just two different ways of understanding the world, and not always mutually contradictory.”

“You're a religious man, then?”

Courtland grinned. “So were Roger Bacon and Gregor Mendel. They were both friars, you know, and also rather good scientists. Some of the greatest scientists of the last century drew big headlines by embracing the Spiritualist faith, including Sir William Crookes, Alfred Russell Wallace, and Oliver Lodge.”

Hale had known that. “But didn't that just prove they'd gone dotty near the end of their lives?”

“By no means, my boy! Crookes was at the height of his powers when he became a Spiritualist. He was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult society, years before he was knighted for his considerable scientific achievements. I don't myself believe in Spiritualism, you understand. I find it hard enough in this country to be a Roman Catholic.”

Hale decided it was time to back up. “So when you called the curse idea ‘nonsense,' you were giving a personal opinion and not speaking as a scientist?”

Courtland glanced around at the books that lined three of the four walls of his office, as if in thought. “I spoke as an Egyptologist highly familiar with the tomb of Tutankhamun. I can assure that the Carnarvon expedition didn't activate a curse upon anyone who opened the tomb because
there was no such curse inscribed on the tomb
. Pharaohs depended on secret locations and hidden rooms to protect their bodies, not curses. The notion of the pharaoh's curse seems to be largely a nineteenth-century phenomenon.”

Hale, stunned, couldn't write fast enough. Professor Courtland served up one great quote after another, bless him.

“Are you saying that no pharaoh ever put a curse on anyone who disturbed his tomb?”

Courtland smiled. “Well, certainly Tutankhamun didn't. In the few instances where there are curses on tombs, they appear to be directed at the
ka
priests as a warning to do their job properly.”

“Then where did this idea of the curse of King Tut come from?”

“Journalism is your business, not mine, Mr. Hale, but I suspect that headlines containing the word ‘curse' sold quite a few newspapers after Carnarvon died.”

Hale remembered all the stories about Tut that Reggie Lestrange of his own syndicate had cranked out. But even Reggie had to have something to work with. “Reporters didn't make up all those deaths that followed the opening of Tut's tomb.”

“No, but they
connected
them, they provided a link and a narrative that turned several isolated tragedies into a curse. I'll give you another example to illustrate what I mean. Suppose that the Duke of Marlborough died tomorrow. You might barely note the fact, unless he was a friend of yours. Now, suppose that in the middle of next week the motion picture actor Rudolph Valentino died. You might be shocked because he is so young. But you wouldn't connect his death to the Duke's demise -
unless someone told you that famous persons died in threes
. In that case, I assure you, you would find a third death before long.”

Courtland's point scored with Hale in a way that the professor could never know. In Hale's two years with Sarah, she had often insisted that the death of notable personages came in threes. They had on more than one occasion quarreled playfully as to whether a certain deceased was sufficiently famous to qualify as the third in a series.

Hale asked a few more questions, then closed his notebook and stood up. Sometimes the most important questions in interviews came after he did that, when the subject was relaxed and off-guard.

“Curse or not,” he said, “you must have had a strong interest in the activities of Lord Sedgewood. I understand that his man Linwood Baines was a student of yours.”

Courtland shook his head. “Not so.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Maybe you just don't remember him.”

The professor assumed a self-satisfied look that Hale hadn't seen him display until now. “I remember all my students, Mr. Hale. I have a bit of a reputation for that. Still, when I heard that Baines was saying that he studied under me, I worried that perhaps my memory is slipping. And in forty-one years at Oxford, I've had a lot of students. So I looked up the records just to be certain. I can assure you that Linwood Baines never attended Magdalen College - or, I venture to say, any other college.”

Hale almost smiled.
Now I'm getting somewhere
, he thought. He'd caught Baines in a provable lie, no ambiguity. But almost immediately he wondered about something.

“How did you know that Baines is telling people you were his teacher?”

“That's an odd thing, Mr. Hale. I just had a visit a couple of days ago from another gentleman asking me about Mr. Baines.”

Hale's eyebrows shot up. “You mean another reporter? Or was it a Scotland Yard detective?”

“Neither. It was a man named Mr. Burton Hill. He professed to be a collector of Egyptian antiquities, which - based on his obvious ignorance of the subject - he most certainly is not.”