‘Give me a list, Professor,’ I said. ‘Of descriptions and locations, and I’ll see if anything’s missing.’
‘They’re scattered all over the house,’ said Rose. ‘I shall have to come with you to point them out.’
‘Damn your precious bits and pieces!’ Susan said loudly. She was the only one in the room who still seemed on the edge of tears. ‘My son is dead! All that matters is finding his killer.’
‘With the interior cameras down, we have no way of tracking him,’ said Stuart. ‘He could be anywhere.’
‘Can’t Security turn the cameras back on,’ said Penny, ‘now they know what’s happened?’
‘Apparently not,’ said Stuart. ‘Or at least not without the proper reactivation password. Someone is sticking to the letter of the agreement after falling down on the job once.’ He looked at Marjorie. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you know?’
‘Haven’t a clue,’ said Marjorie. ‘George always took care of everything like that.’
‘Didn’t he trust you?’ said Penny.
‘George didn’t trust anyone,’ said Marjorie. ‘And yet somebody was still able to get to him.’
She didn’t appear too upset about that, more thoughtful. Stuart looked round the room, but if anyone knew the password they were keeping it to themselves.
I took Stuart to one side, so we could talk quietly together. ‘I’m going to have to search every room in the house. For the thief, and the mummy. I also have to look for bloodstained clothing, a possible murder weapon, and missing items from the collection. That could take a while.’
‘It might be quicker if I went with you,’ said Stuart. ‘Someone needs to guard your back.’
‘Thanks for the thought,’ I said. ‘But I work better with Penny. And I need you here, to talk to these people. Because you’re family, they might open up to you where they wouldn’t to me. Talk to them, listen to them. But don’t let any of them leave this room. The last thing we need is them scattering in all directions.’
‘Very well,’ said Stuart. ‘You tear the house apart, I’ll keep the family together.’ He glanced covertly round the room. ‘Given that the killer could be in this room, I’m not sure which of us is going to be in the most danger.’
‘It’s usually me,’ I said. ‘But I’m used to it.’
I went back to Penny. ‘Fancy a little excursion round the house, and a chance to poke your nose into other people’s private business?’
She grinned broadly, and bounced on to her feet. ‘You know me so well! Let’s go make a mess, strip people’s secrets bare, and see what there is to see.’
‘You’re still hoping it’s the mummy, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘Of course! If only to see the look on your face.’
‘Not going to happen,’ I said.
I raised my voice, and everyone turned to look at me. I told them what Penny and I were going to do. It didn’t go down well, but apparently none of them felt in a position to object.
‘I take it we can rely on your discretion where private things are concerned?’ said Caroline.
‘Almost certainly,’ I said.
‘This is just an excuse for you to snoop,’ said Chloe.
‘I don’t need excuses,’ I said.
‘Do what you have to, boy,’ said Bernard, and Susan nodded.
‘Please don’t break anything,’ said Rose.
Marjorie just looked at me.
Chloe turned to Stuart. ‘Why aren’t you going with him? Who put him in charge?’
‘I did,’ said Stuart. ‘I trust him to get the job done, and so should you.’
‘When all this is over, we are going to have a long talk,’ said Chloe.
‘Looking forward to it immensely, my dear,’ said Stuart.
Penny bounced out of the door and into the hall, humming a merry tune, while I gave the room one last ‘Behave yourselves!’ look before going after her. The moment I shut the door behind me, I heard the sound of heavy furniture being dragged into place to form a barricade. Penny smiled sweetly.
‘Déjà vu all over again. So many of our cases seem to involve people barricading themselves inside rooms against unknown enemies. Even though it rarely works out as well as you’d expect. So, how are we going to start this search?’
‘Room by room,’ I said. ‘And then floor by floor.’
‘This is going to take a while,’ said Penny.
There were lots of rooms and lots of potential hiding places, and we had to look in all of them. I didn’t even try to be neat, just tossed things around as necessary and moved on. I didn’t see or hear anything to suggest we weren’t alone, but it still felt like someone or something was watching us. I spent the most time in George’s study, because I’d promised Stuart. The locks on the door and George’s old-fashioned desk drawers were no match for my strength. I leafed quickly through piles of paperwork, but couldn’t find anything useful. The wall safe, hidden behind a particularly obnoxious piece of modern art, opened easily to my experienced hands. But all it held was valuables.
No household keys, no written-down passwords, and absolutely nothing about the mummy. And no computers, not even the most basic laptop. I had to wonder whether someone might have got there before me.
I searched every room on the ground floor, with Penny’s gleeful help, and turned up nothing of any use. I ran a quick eye over the various shelves and display cases, but nothing seemed to be missing. At least, I didn’t spot any gaps. And still no sight or sound of a thief or the mummy. The house was full of a heavy, suffocating silence, along with the constant fog of ancient and modern stinks. But what bothered me most was the silence. Cardavan House didn’t seem like somewhere people lived. It was a place for dead things. And for people more interested in death than life.
Upstairs on the second floor we encountered more of the same. Everywhere we went something from the collection would catch my eye, as though it was keeping watch on us. I was already tired of gold and silver, cat faces and jackal heads, and endless bits of pottery; remnants of a time so long past we couldn’t really be sure what they were remnants of. Room after room, with never any trace to show the living had left their mark.
And yet I kept stopping suddenly to glare at the unmoving shadows. Not because I saw or heard anything, but because a strange new inner alarm kept going off, as though it was desperately trying to warn me of some real and imminent danger. Like some last-ditch defence mechanism that I’d never needed before. Penny waited patiently every time we stopped, but it was clear from the expression on her face that she had no idea what was bothering me. And I couldn’t explain, because I didn’t understand either.
We made it to the third floor – the family’s living quarters – and Cardavan House finally felt like someone’s home. No more shelves or display cases, no sarcophagi or unrolled papyrus; just a deep-pile carpet, pleasant wallpaper and flowers in vases. The scents on the air were fainter and far easier to take, but silence still hung over everything like a shroud. I stopped at the top of the stairs to peer down the long landing.
‘You know,’ said Penny. ‘We should really have brought our suitcases up from the hall.’
‘I am not going back down for them,’ I said. ‘You can, if you want.’
We made our way down the corridor, kicking in doors and rooting through each room’s contents. The first few were empty. The beds were made up and there were fresh flowers in vases, but the air had a flat dusty smell that suggested only occasional use. The first occupied room turned out to be Nicholas and Caroline’s. Easy enough to tell: their earlier clothing was still lying strewn across the bed and the floor from when they’d changed in a hurry for dinner. I checked it all carefully, but couldn’t find a single blood spot.
Two suitcases stood below the window, both securely locked. I broke the locks and rummaged cheerfully through the contents, with Penny peering over my shoulder. More clothes, and the usual travelling odds and ends. Most of it surprisingly cheap and basic
… not quite what you’d expect from someone who claimed to be a success in the city.
‘If they’re seriously short of money,’ I said, ‘and if George made it clear he had no intention of changing his will back in their favour …’
‘Whoever beat George’s head in was really mad at him,’ said Penny. ‘Hello! What’s that?’
‘That’ was a pair of padded handcuffs, a ball gag, and something that made me wince just to look at it.
‘Nicholas said his wife had a dominant personality,’ Penny said solemnly.
‘No wonder she wanted reassurances about our discretion,’ I said.
The next room was Stuart and Chloe’s. The tuxedo he’d started out in was still hanging on the front of the wardrobe. Not a speck of blood on it. There were signs the two of them stayed there on a regular basis: toiletries set out on the dressing-table, family photos showing familiar faces grouped together, all of them smiling gamely. I checked the wardrobe. Chloe had almost as many changes of clothes as Penny. But there were no bloodstains.
The door to the next room was locked. I put my shoulder to the heavy wood and the door jumped open. The room appeared to be unoccupied, until I noticed the single suitcase standing at the foot of the bed. It wasn’t locked. Books, papers and learned journals filled the case. Professor Rose had brought his own library with him. But although he had to have been staying in this room for some time, he’d made no impression on it. When I opened the wardrobe, it contained four sets of exactly the same clothes. Just like the ones he was wearing earlier. No bloodstains on any of them.
‘Why are they all the same?’ said Penny.
‘Old scientist’s trick,’ I said. ‘Einstein’s idea. So you don’t have to waste time every day deciding what to wear.’
‘Scientists are weird,’ said Penny. ‘However …’
I knew what she meant. If there were four similar suits, why not five? The fifth having been carefully disposed of because it was covered in blood.
We finally reached two sets of connecting rooms facing each other at the end of the corridor, both large enough to form comfortable suites. George and Marjorie’s suite was extremely comfortable, with every conceivable luxury. It was all very neat and tidy, and when I checked the wardrobe the clothes were entirely free of incriminating bloodstains. Again, lots of family photos. But no photos anywhere of George with his previous wife.
Bernard and Susan’s rooms were large, comfortable and well furnished. But to be restricted to just a few rooms after so many years of having the run of the house … Everywhere I looked there were old-fashioned items, reminders of times past. Lots of photos in silver frames, showing the family at different times. And one photo of Bernard and Susan on their wedding day. They looked so young, so full of hope; with no notion of how their lives were going to turn out. Everything about their rooms had the feeling of old people living in the past, because that was where they felt most at home.
Penny and I went back on to the landing. There was nowhere else to go, we’d run out of rooms. No bloodstained clothes, no murder weapon, and no sign anywhere of a thief or a perambulating mummy.
‘What now?’ said Penny. ‘Check the walls for sliding panels or hidden doors?’
‘Someone would have said something if there were any,’ I said. ‘I’ve been keeping my eyes open, but there’s none of the usual signs. All that’s left is to go back down and start the interrogation. Because if there is no thief and no wandering mummy …’
‘Then one of them must be the killer,’ said Penny. ‘That was always going to be the most likely bet.’
‘It’s sad, when a girl has to give up her illusions,’ I said.
‘I will slap you, and it will hurt.’
‘Save it for Nicholas.’
Back down three flights of stairs, back through the corridors, and nothing broke the silence of the house apart from the heavy slap of our shoes on the wooden floors. But I still kept a careful watch on our surroundings. Eventually I knocked politely on the drawing room door. There was a pause, and then a cautious voice made itself known.
‘Who is it?’
‘Who do you think?’ I said. ‘A thief wouldn’t knock, and a mummy wouldn’t need to. Let us in and we’ll tell you what we found.’
‘You mean what we didn’t find,’ said Penny.
‘Let’s not confuse the issue,’ I said.
There was the sound of furniture being dragged back. Then the door opened just wide enough for me and Penny to squeeze through, before it was shut again. Everyone in the room stared at us expectantly, apart from Stuart, who was pushing a heavy table back against the door.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘you could simply wedge a chair under the door handle. That would do the job just as well.’
Stuart straightened up and gave me a cold look. ‘You might have mentioned that before you left.’
‘What did you find?’ said Chloe, cutting across him.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘No sign of any intruder, no evidence, and nothing unusual.’
I carefully didn’t look at Nicholas or Caroline as I said that last bit.
‘But the mummy must be somewhere!’ said Rose. ‘And did you find there were any other items missing from the collection?’
‘The mummy appears to have been very carefully hidden,’ I said. ‘I didn’t spot anything else missing.’
Rose sniffed loudly. ‘Knew I should have gone with you.’
‘You can’t have looked properly,’ said Bernard, thumping the arm of his chair with his fist. ‘The thief must be somewhere. He has to be found! No one steals from the Cardavans and gets away with it!’ He stopped, as he realized we were all looking at him. ‘What?’
Susan looked at him disbelievingly. ‘Our son is dead, Bernard!’
He looked confused for a moment, as though he’d lost track of the conversation, and then shook his head. ‘Yes, yes, I know that. Of course I know that, I’m just saying …’
His voice trailed away. He looked lost. Susan patted his arm. She looked like she’d like to grieve but couldn’t find the time.
Stuart jammed a chair under the door handle, with rather more emphasis than was called for, and came back to join the rest of us. He stood at parade rest, with his hands tucked behind his back, and gave everyone the same hard look.
‘If there is no thief, then the killer has to be one of us. Someone in this room killed George.’
They all looked at each other, while I looked at them. No one liked the idea, but none of them spoke out against it. There was even a sense of relief in the room that someone had said what they were all thinking. Professor Rose raised one hand tentatively, like a child at school.
‘I do have an alternative explanation as to what may be happening here …’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Do tell, Professor.’
‘We have to consider the curse,’ Rose said carefully. ‘I don’t normally give credence to such ideas, but there is a long tradition of Ancient Egyptian curses striking down those who fail to treat Egypt and its treasures with proper respect.’
‘George respected the hell out of that mummy!’ said Marjorie. ‘He couldn’t keep away from it!’
‘But the manner of the tomb’s discovery and the way in which Cleopatra was brought here show anything but respect,’ said Rose. ‘Let us not forget all those people who died in Egypt for daring to disturb Cleopatra’s rest …’
‘What about the dreams that led the local people to the tomb?’ I said, just to be contrary. ‘Doesn’t that argue someone wanted the tomb found?’
‘But who sent those dreams?’ said Rose.
‘I don’t believe in curses,’ I said flatly. ‘Or mummies who walk.’
‘Then why couldn’t you find the mummy?’ said Rose.
‘Excuse me,’ said Penny. ‘But if this mummy was powerful enough to come out of her coffin and kill George, why would she feel the need to hide?’
‘Who knows why the dead do what they do?’ said Rose.
&nb
sp; ‘You really believe this?’ said Chloe.
The professor suddenly looked old and tired. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more. But I think … we have to face up to the possibility that this could be the Cardavan family’s past catching up with it. All those years of looting and pillaging for their own satisfaction. All the precious things smuggled out of Egypt and brought here, so the Cardavans could gloat over them in private …’
‘I have to ask, Marjorie,’ said Stuart. ‘How was George able to raise enough money to pay for such an expensive prize?’
And finally, there it was. The big question out in the open at last. Marjorie just shrugged.
‘I know he acquired the mummy illegally. That’s hardly a shock to anyone here, is it? But I never knew any of the details, I just knew it was very expensive. He wouldn’t tell me how much because he knew I wouldn’t approve. Not when that kind of money would have been better spent maintaining this crumbling old house. But he couldn’t resist dropping hints. He said the mummy was the most important item his family had ever acquired. A personal triumph, he said. But you all saw what was in that box. A nasty smelly thing …’
She glared at Rose. ‘Well, the collection’s mine now. And I don’t want any of it! It’s all going. Your stinking collection killed my husband!’
‘Did you know the mummy was brought here illegally, Professor?’ I said.
‘I suspected as much,’ said Rose. ‘All the paperwork I saw was perfectly in order, but I never really believed it. Because there was no way the Egyptian Government would ever have agreed to such an important find leaving their country. I knew it was wrong but I never challenged George, because if I had he might have cut off my access to the collection. But now I have to wonder … If I had said something, if I had made a fuss and insisted the mummy be turned over to a reputable museum, would George be alive now?’
‘It had to catch up with us eventually …’ said Chloe. ‘I still won’t accept the idea of a living mummy, but once they found out what had happened could the Egyptian Government have sent special agents to seize Cleopatra and make an example out of the man who’d finally gone too far?’