The Vandemark Mummy

  “That’s a depressing thought,” Mr. Hall said. He slipped a stack of four pancakes onto Phineas’s plate. “No more, the cook is retiring.”

  Phineas set to work buttering. “I don’t think it was gloating. If it was me, if I’d been him—I think I’d have wanted to make sure we weren’t suspicious of me. We weren’t suspicious, were we, Dad?”

  “Not a bit. Trusting babes, that’s what we were.”

  “But what would he have done if you had been suspicious?” Althea asked.

  Phineas poured syrup over the pancakes. He wasn’t hungry, but they tasted so good he didn’t want to stop eating. “What I’d have done in that case is gone back and turned you loose. That way, there was only the question of breaking and entering, and the damage to the mummy. That all could have been”—he took a bite, chewed, remembering to keep his mouth closed, and swallowed—“like, a plea of temporary insanity. A lighter sentence, or maybe even everything could have been hushed up.”

  “And if you weren’t suspicious?” Althea asked. “Which you weren’t.”

  “Then I’d have figured that I would get away with it,” Phineas explained. “And felt pretty smart.”

  “But Fin, how could he think that when he still had to explain about the poem. Or the fragment, or whatever it is. People would ask where it came from, otherwise it could be a fake. How was he going to explain that?”

  Phineas had no idea what Ken had in mind. “If it was me, I’d have hoped I’d figure out something, when I needed to. Ken looked like he thought he could do anything, didn’t he, Dad? You didn’t see him, Althea, he looked like he’d just tricked everyone into electing him president of the world. So he must have thought he could get together a good enough story. As long as you didn’t turn up to expose him.”

  Phineas heard his own voice go stiff at the last sentence. So, apparently, did his father, because Mr. Hall’s next question was, “You’re not thinking of a career in crime, are you, Phineas? You seem to be revealing an aptitude for it, in the last twenty-four hours.”

  Phineas grinned. It was a sort of compliment. Besides, they were all three sitting around their kitchen table, all freshly showered and ready to go together down to the police station, all well fed, and they’d been talking together about something they were all three interested in. Everything felt fine, everything was okay.

  “What I have trouble understanding is how he thought he could get away with it,” Mr. Hall said.

  “I can’t understand what he wanted to do it for, in the first place,” Phineas said. “Except,” he added, before anyone else had a chance to say anything, “he’s a bad person.”

  “Doesn’t that depend what you think bad or good is?” his father asked. “If you define good as what benefits you—”

  “Come off it, Dad,” Phineas said. “Nothing that lets you tie somebody up, and gag them so they can’t yell for help, and leave her where you hope she can’t be found, can be good.”

  “Not found until I was dead,” Althea corrected, quietly.

  Phineas hadn’t wanted to actually say that.

  “Listen, kids, I agree with you. I think you’re absolutely right, Phineas. I’m just taking it from another angle, just thinking. In a way, it’s survival of the fittest. The fittest survive, so if you survive you know you’re fittest, so you do anything you can to survive.”

  “That depends on what fittest means,” Phineas argued. “I know about Darwin, but fittest is different for human beings. At least, in terms of what they ought to do.”

  “We hope so,” his father said.

  “My trouble is,” Althea said, “that I can sympathize with him. No, I really can. I wouldn’t do it, myself—I couldn’t, at least I hope I couldn’t, I can’t imagine that I could, but—if Ken was the one to discover a Sappho poem, he’d be famous. His career would be made. Harvard might even call him up and offer him a job. You didn’t see his house, Fin—it was expensive, and the kitchen had everything in it, huge stove and microwave, a little TV built into the wall, processor and blender, everything expensive, and—he must have felt like nothing next to his wife.”

  Phineas wasn’t sure about either one of them. There was his father turning it into some philosophical question, and his sister looking at it as if it was part of the equal rights problem. As far as he was concerned, it was a bad thing to do and he was glad Ken had been caught. “I hope he rots in jail,” Phineas said.

  “Oh, so do I,” his father agreed.

  “Me too,” Althea said.

  “Then why are you justifying him?” Phineas asked.

  “I’m not,” Mr. Hall said, surprised. “There’s no justification for what he did to Althea.”

  “Or the mummy,” Althea added.

  “Change of subject,” Mr. Hall announced. “When we talk to your mother tonight, I want you two to go gently with her. One of the things she knew, without knowing how it would feel, is that we’d be able to get along fine without her.”

  “We almost didn’t,” Phineas pointed out.

  “Yes, well, be sure she knows you think that,” his father said. “Are you two ready? Put your plate in the sink, Fin, and we’ll go pick up O’Meara. Your date.”

  “She’s not my date,” Phineas said. “She was just hinting so badly, and she was here last night trying to help, and—it’s not a date. Or,” he turned the tables on his father, “if she’s anyone’s date it has to be yours, because you’re the right age.”

  “I’m much too old for her,” his father protested.

  Phineas and Althea exchanged a look.

  “And I’m not eligible,” he said. “I’m married,” he reminded them.

  “There is that,” Althea agreed, with mock solemnity.

  CHAPTER 20

  At the police station, the Halls were taken into a room with glass walls and a glass door; in the center of the room was a long table. They sat around one end of the table, Althea between her father and Phineas, and O’Meara at Phineas’s other side. “Wait here,” they’d been told.

  O’Meara took her pad and pen out of her big purse. She took a breath. “I didn’t know that was your wife,” she said. “If I had, I’d have said more, but how could I know? She could have been anyone. I don’t know anything about your private life—well, not much anyway, I did know she lives in Oregon. Your wife. You aren’t angry, are you? I can see why you might be and I do apologize. I can see she might have misunderstood. What I was doing at your house at that hour. I can see that I should have told her more. But do you mind if she’s a little jealous? Or, wasn’t she jealous? I don’t want to assume anything, but she obviously misunderstood—and anyway, I don’t think a woman should have children unless she’s planning to stick around to take care of them as long as they need her. Although,” she said, turning to Phineas and Althea, “I guess you didn’t need her. Did you. I guess you did take care of yourselves. Wrong again, O’Meara,” she said, and laughed a short laugh. “And to think that Dr. Simard is really a crook. And to think that I have the exclusive.”

  “You have it as long as you sit quiet,” Mr. Hall said to her.

  O’Meara nodded her head and pressed her lips together. She held her pen poised over the notebook. Her eyes shone.

  Detective Arsenault came into the room, but he didn’t greet them like a friend. He didn’t sit with them, either. He sat at the center of one side of the table. Phineas decided that the detective had the kind of face, with bags under the eyes, that always looked tired, whether he was or not. “They’re bringing him in now,” the detective said.

  Suddenly, Phineas wanted to go home. It was one thing to talk about Ken in the abstract, about what he’d done and why; it was another to think about having Ken actually there, facing them. Phineas squirmed in his chair. Althea sat quietly beside him.

  Ken came through the door angry. He wore the same suit he’d worn the day before, only it was rumpled. Mr. Fletcher was right behind him, and one look at the stern lawyer, with his three-piece suit and his bri
efcase, made Phineas uneasy. If Mr. Fletcher was defending Ken . . . Phineas had the sudden uneasy sense that things might not be as simple as he’d thought.

  Ken sat down at the opposite end of the table, with Mr. Fletcher next to him. It was like boxers in a ring, with the detective as referee, but Phineas wasn’t sure who it was who was supposed to fight with Ken. As soon as he had sat down, Ken had something to say.

  “What’s this all about, Sam?” he demanded. “I’m glad to see that you decided to turn up, Althea. You had us all worried. But what’s she doing here?” he asked, pointing at O’Meara. “Since when is the press present at what I take is a routine questioning?”

  He turned, as if he expected Mr. Fletcher to say something, but the man was taking a long yellow legal pad out of his briefcase, uncapping a thick black fountain pen. Mr. Fletcher didn’t say anything.

  Nobody said anything.

  “Forgive me for being so dense,” Ken said sarcastically. “You have to remember that I’ve crossed the Atlantic twice, in twenty-four hours. And not, mind you, on the Concorde.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Have it your way.” Ken leaned back in his chair. He didn’t look worried. He looked like someone who was about to play the winning card.

  It made Phineas nervous. It wasn’t the way the guilty person was supposed to look.

  Detective Arsenault cleared his throat. “There is a charge of kidnapping.”

  “Who is it that I’m supposed to have kidnapped?” Ken asked. Then he looked at Althea. “Oh, Althea,” he said, sounding as if she was a favorite student he’d just caught cheating on a test.

  Althea studied her hands and didn’t say anything.

  “With what purpose am I supposed to have kidnapped her? I hope she isn’t crying rape. I know she’s attractive—”

  Althea’s head jerked up.

  “—and intelligent, which can’t help but appeal to me—”

  Althea’s cheeks were pink.

  “—but she’s just a girl. I’m a grown man, I wouldn’t ever think of a schoolgirl as a—an object of passion.”

  He spoke with conviction and sincerity. Even Phineas believed him. But rape wasn’t the question. Ken had taken the conversation and turned it into an accusation of something he was innocent of. In another minute, Ken would walk out, walk away, get away with it.

  “You tried to murder her,” Phineas said, since nobody else seemed about to say anything. He spat the words out of his mouth as if they were pieces of liver that he’d somehow bitten into. “Nobody would have gone into that storeroom for weeks, and you know that. You knew it.”

  “Is that what she said I did?” Ken asked. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear, Althea. I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell the truth about what happened. I didn’t intend to, but now I have to. The truth is—I wasn’t going to say anything to you, Sam, I was going to spare you this—that Althea came to my house. She came on to me, Detective, isn’t that the phrase? Propositioned me. Of course, I told her no. She took it badly. I don’t know where she went after that, or what happened to her, although I gather it was unfortunate. I am sorry, Althea,” he said. “I never meant to tell anyone about the shameful scene.”

  “You’re lying!” Althea cried. “He is, Dad. I did go to his house—and I told him what I knew—and he asked did I want a cup of tea—and did I want to see the darkroom—and he didn’t deny anything. I don’t even like him, why would I want to—” Her voice choked up. “Then he twisted my arm—and tied me up—and I didn’t even know how to fight.”

  “Why should I lie?” Ken asked.

  “Because of the poem!” Althea said. “Because you wanted to be the one to find the Sappho poem!”

  Ken raised his eyebrows and looked at Detective Arsenault, as if he was too confused to make any sense out of all this. “I’m afraid I have no idea . . . ,” he said, holding his hands out in a helpless gesture.

  “Well,” the detective answered, “we’re searching your luggage, so there should be proof one way or another.”

  “And you think you’ll find a three thousand-year-old manuscript there? I do hope that if that’s what you think, you’ll handle my things delicately.”

  “It was on the mummy wrappings!” Althea was practically shrieking. “And you know perfectly well it was! On the feet! Where you told me there weren’t any Greek letters!”

  “Ah,” Ken said, super calm, super patient, hatefully grown up. “Now I begin to understand. So I’m supposed to have unwrapped the feet—and done what? Tucked the scraps into a plastic bag, to reassemble like a jigsaw puzzle? Give me a break, Althea. Nobody likes to be shown wrong about things, but this is carrying a grudge too far, isn’t it? I can understand your desire to make yourself important, and I do feel sorry for you. I do understand the stress you’re under, since your mother left home, left your father, left you—”

  O’Meara put a hand onto Phineas’s arm. He didn’t know if that was supposed to soothe him or to make sure he didn’t climb up to crawl down the table before anyone could stop him and slam his fist into Ken’s lying mouth. But he didn’t try to shake her hand off. He was pretty sure his father wouldn’t let Ken get away with it, and he was pretty sure his father knew what was going on. His father sat quiet, thoughtful. Phineas tried to relax in his chair.

  A patrolman in a blue uniform, but without the hat, knocked on the door. He came in, put a file folder down in front of Detective Arsenault, and left without saying anything. The detective opened the folder and took out two eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs.

  Phineas strained to see. It looked like pictures of maggots, squirming in a pile, or a pile of bandages with dirt marks on them.

  The detective passed the photographs to Mr. Fletcher, who looked at them and passed them to Ken. Ken didn’t even bother to look at them. He smiled, with white teeth and bright blue eyes. “Am I to assume that all of you know the difference between glyphs and Greek?”

  The detective leaned forward. He didn’t lean on his elbows, he just leaned his head forward, like a bear on its hind legs taking a closer look at a barking dog. “Don’t assume anything about what I do or don’t know, Dr. Simard. I’m sure Mr. Hall, and Althea too, can tell us if this is Greek.”

  “Of course it is,” Mr. Fletcher said impatiently. He faced Ken. “Is there an explanation for this, young man?”

  Ken looked at the pictures. “Oh, you mean these? I’d entirely forgotten them. Is this what all the brouhaha is about? If I’d known that, I’d have explained at Heathrow and saved myself a lot of time, and inconvenience too. You might have asked me there, instead of dragging me back, Detective.”

  Detective Arsenault didn’t say anything.

  “I had these in my attaché case,” Ken said.

  “We know,” the detective said.

  “Or you could have asked Sam. Sam knew I had them. He told me I could take the photographs.”

  Phineas saw his father out of the corner of his eye, his face growing red, and his eyes bulging a little. For a second, Phineas thought his father was going to blow up. But instead, Mr. Hall started to laugh. When he could speak, he said, “Outrageous. It’s an outright lie. How can you hope to get away with this, Ken?”

  Ken looked angry, and flustered too. “Because it’s true. You knew I was taking pictures. I asked permission and you gave it. What are you trying to do to me, Sam?”

  “But they’re not feet,” Mr. Hall pointed out. “Those are photographs of the wrappings. These pictures show the wrappings after they’ve been taken off of the mummy’s feet.”

  “Lies,” Ken said, his voice rounding like a bell. “All lies. I don’t know what you’re after, Sam, but if you think they’re going to believe a newcomer over the word of someone they’ve known for years—It’s your word against mine, and I think I’ve earned the right to be trusted. Whereas you—who knows anything about you? Except that nothing like this ever happened at the college until you arrived. I have my reputation to speak for me.” Ken’s v
oice rang out.

  “But Dr. Simard,” O’Meara said, looking up from the pad she was writing on. “You’re a liar. You’re famous for it. Everyone knows. You do it whenever anyone stands up to you in an argument. Why do you think you only have lecture courses? The students complained because you lie like a rug when you’re backed into a corner. You can ask anyone,” she said to Detective Arsenault. “He’s the Rugman, that’s what we called him.”

  Phineas almost laughed out loud—and then he thought he could kick himself. Hard. He could have known that all along. He’d known all along about Ken.

  Ken stared at O’Meara for a minute and then deflated like a balloon. He looked to the detective. “You’re going to take their word over mine? It’s only their word.”

  “I’m inclined to,” Detective Arsenault answered. “But I suspect that if we look, we’ll find proof. These pictures. The kind of tape that was used on Althea’s mouth, the rope, a search of your darkroom—”

  Ken hunched in his chair, glaring at all of them. Mr. Hall had his arm around Althea, who had covered her eyes with her hand.

  “How could you do that to Althea?” Phineas demanded.

  “She gave me no choice. The Sappho poem would make my career,” Ken told him.

  “It’s just an old poem,” Phineas said. He wished there was some way to tell Ken how—some words that, when he said them, Ken would just crumple up, destroyed.

  “No, Phineas,” Ken corrected him. “It’s a treasure. A treasure for all the ages.”

  Althea took her hand down and moved back from her father’s arm. “So was the mummy.”

  “It wasn’t even a first-rank mummy. Fourth-rank, maybe, and we all know that. She was just some pretty girl of the Roman era, with terrific eyes—”

  “How could you risk killing someone,” Phineas demanded. “And she might have died.” He saw the expression in Ken’s eyes, which was anger, as if Ken was angry because he’d failed. They weren’t even on the same planet, he and Ken. “Over a poem? Over words?”

  “Art, Phineas. Art supersedes the individual.”