The Vandemark Mummy

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Now that’s the kind of thinking I like to hear,” Mr. Fletcher said.

  “Nobody is blaming you,” Mrs. Blight assured Mr. Hall.

  “I blame Felix,” Mrs. Prynn announced. “And I plan to talk with the family about proper placement of the collection,” she told Mr. Fletcher.

  “You can tell them they aren’t going to get their hands on it,” Mr. Fletcher answered. “I drew up that will. It’s safe.”

  She sniffed.

  “Although I’ll enjoy watching you vultures try to disqualify it. That’ll cost you a pretty penny.”

  Phineas tried to catch Althea’s eye.

  “Dear Olivia would have done it properly,” Mrs. Prynn said, “and not by hiring some unqualified young man as curator—nothing personal,” she said to Mr. Hall, “I’m sure you’re quite good in your own field.”

  “In the meantime,” Mrs. Blight said, in a peacemaker’s voice, the kind that suggested cups of tea, before Phineas’s father could say anything.

  But she never finished her sentence. They heard voices in the corridor, a deep, woman’s voice and the nasal voice of a man. Sound traveled faster than feet along the corridors. The voices sounded clear, but far away. Everybody in the room listened.

  “What is it?” O’Meara whispered. “It sounds almost ghostly.”

  “Undead creatures called forth by the mummy’s curse,” Mr. Hall told her.

  “What curse?” Mrs. Prynn demanded.

  “I like it,” O’Meara laughed.

  Mrs. Prynn went on. “There is no curse. There was never the hint of a curse. If that’s the college’s attitude, I don’t think the family will have any difficulty removing the collection from Vandemark.”

  “Of course there isn’t a curse,” Ken said.

  The voices floating down the corridor grew fainter.

  “But I heard what he said, you heard him—”

  “He was joking,” Ken explained.

  Mrs. Prynn turned to study Phineas’s father, and clearly did not like what she saw.

  Phineas bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

  The voices grew louder, clear and unghostlike, and then Mrs. Batchelor entered the room, followed by her husband. She strode right up to Mrs. Blight to say, “The president kindly invited my husband to the unveiling. You remember Mark, of course,” she added, as if, Phineas thought, nobody could forget him. “I hope we’re not too late?”

  Mr. Batchelor looked more like a New Yorker than anybody else in the room, and acted it too, as he introduced himself to those he’d never met, “Mark Batchelor, Lucille’s husband, I’m employed at the museum,” and said hello to those he already knew, “Ken, how’s Michelle? Mrs. Prynn, I always enjoy seeing you.” But he was impatient to look at the collection, and it was the mummy he stood over first. Everybody waited for what he would say, as he bent over the mummy. But he said nothing. He just turned to the shelves, and moved slowly along them, his face without expression. Still, the room awaited whatever words he would choose to speak.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of about this,” Mr. Batchelor finally said. “You’re right to be concerned, Lucille.”

  “I thought so. I knew it. What do you think the library should do?”

  “The mummy isn’t a bad one either.”

  Not bad? The mummy? The mummy was miles better than not bad. Even Phineas could see that.

  “You know of course what the gemstone is?” Mr. Batchelor didn’t sound as if he thought they knew anything. “The wreath.”

  “Gemstone?” O’Meara asked, moving over to point her camera at the wreath. “Are the berries rubies?”

  “I spoke metaphorically,” Mr. Batchelor said.

  O’Meara nodded her head and clicked her camera.

  “Only if it’s proved genuine,” Mrs. Prynn pointed out at the same time that Mr. Fletcher asked, “What kind of value would you put on it?”

  Mr. Batchelor talked on, dropping hints about all the important museums he’d been in, not exactly saying he’d worked there but implying that he might have. “At the Met, they maintain a temperature of . . . The Egyptology section of the Reading Room at the British . . . When I was preparing a monograph in Cairo . . .” He offered his help in arranging to have the mummy X-rayed: “You plan to do that, of course, it’s standard practice”; he offered transportation in one of the museum’s vans; he offered to send the official museum photographer over, for insurance records; he said he didn’t know if he could promise but he’d be glad to inquire about the possibility of transferring the wreath—“We wouldn’t want to give room to the entire collection, of course”—to one of the museum’s storage rooms. “You’ve done well by way of security, with your limited resources,” Mr. Batchelor said, making it sound like Mr. Hall hadn’t done well enough. “If I can be of help, you’ll be sure to let me know? Any advice—since I gather from my wife you have no experience, have had no training—”

  Mrs. Batchelor seconded her husband’s opinion. “I’m not happy having something like that in the library, especially now that I know it’s valuable.”

  “Anything at all I can help you with, I’d be glad to. Do think over my offer to take the wreath. If anything were to happen to it . . .” He let them imagine all the things that might happen, and what would be the consequences of that. He left the room, his wife following behind asking, “You don’t think anything will happen, do you?”

  For a few minutes, everybody had to stare at the wreath, which nobody had paid much attention to before, and then finally they began to leave. And about time, Phineas thought. O’Meara was the last to go, and she lingered at the doorway.

  “I for one wish there was some kind of curse,” she said.

  “I’m sure there is none. And you can quote me,” Ken answered.

  “It would make such a good story,” O’Meara said, and left the room.

  Ken looked at his watch. “I have to go,” he said, sounding surprised. “I’m sorry, Sam, I had no idea how long—The thing is, one of Michelle’s clients has invited us for a supper sail, I promised I’d be home and ready to go at three-thirty—”

  “Go ahead. We’re just going to close up in here and be right behind you. You don’t want to be late.”

  When they were alone, however, they spent a few minutes looking down at the mummy. “I don’t care what that man says,” Mr. Hall told his children, “I don’t care if he’s right either, although I never take experts on faith—she’s the gemstone. Show me your Greek, Althea, what you thought was.”

  Althea shook her head. “Never mind. Ken’s probably right—I was just—you know how it is, Dad.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  His father wasn’t curious, but Phineas was. He went around to look at the mummy’s feet. The markings looked like chicken scratches to him. They didn’t look like anything. He didn’t say that. What he said was, “Do we know her name?”

  “I wish we did. I’d like to have a name for her,” Mr. Hall said. “She looks so . . .”

  “As if she had a name,” Althea finished.

  “Yeah,” Phineas said. “Maybe it’ll be somewhere in the papers?” he suggested. “The ones Mr. Vandemark gave you?”

  They went out into the corridor. Mr. Hall locked the door with a big key, then flipped a light switch just under the room number painted on the wall.

  Nothing happened.

  Mr. Hall acted as if nothing happening was what was supposed to happen.

  “What’s that, Dad?” Phineas asked. “That switch,” he said, when it looked like his father was going to try a bluff.

  “Oh, that? That’s just—Dan Lewis, who’s in charge of security, recommended a little something extra. We’ve put in an electric circuit that’s completed when the door is closed. If it’s broken, without the power being turned off, an alarm sounds in the guard’s office at the main gate. Nobody knows about it, except Dan Lewis, and me, and now you two. So don’t tell anyone.”

  “Who would we tell?” Althea asked.r />
  “Who would want to know?” Phineas reassured him.

  CHAPTER 7

  The mummy’s dark eyes stared out from the front page of Monday’s newspaper. The portrait was identified in the caption as a “Roman Mummy, circa first to fourth century, now at Vandemark College.”

  Phineas figured he must have gotten something wrong. “I didn’t realize she was a Roman,” he said.

  “Don’t be dumb, Phineas,” Althea advised him. She was standing behind his left shoulder, to read over it. His father stood at his right shoulder for the same purpose. “The Romans didn’t mummify their dead.”

  When Phineas pointed to the caption, Althea laughed.

  “You believe everything you read? In the newspaper? In an article by O’Meara? When you know she has the mind of a chicken?”

  “How do you know what kind of a mind a chicken has?” Phineas demanded. He got tired of being put down, just because he wasn’t a bookworm, just because he wasn’t as old as she was, just because he was a boy. He didn’t know why, exactly, she kept putting him down, but he didn’t like her doing it. Who said she knew everything anyway? “Chickens might be really smart, for all you know, like those mice in the Hitchhiker’s Guide books.” Phineas grinned. Althea refused to read those books because they were so popular. Anything everybody can like has to be inferior: that was her opinion. So she couldn’t beat his argument this time. “Isn’t that right, Dad?”

  “Don’t try to drag me into it,” his father said, without looking up from his reading.

  “O’Meara should have said Roman era,” Althea explained to him. “When Egypt was part of the Roman Empire—like Greece was, and France, and England too.”

  The trouble with Althea was, once she got started showing off how much she knew about something, she could go on forever. “I’m trying to read,” Phineas said. He didn’t blame her for wanting to talk about how much she knew. He just didn’t want to have to listen to her. “I can’t read when you talk,” he pointed out.

  He read. They read over his shoulders.

  TREASURES GO TO COLLEGE was the headline. As a joke, Phineas thought, it was seriously pitiful.

  Egyptian Antiquities Left to Vandemark College by Son of Founder, was the first subheading. First a lie, to catch your eye, then the truth . . . he tried to find a rhyming line for the poem he’d stumbled upon in his own head. Truth-Ruth-Duluth. Uncouth, youth, but not mouth. His mind finished the poem despite his advice: First a lie to catch your eye, then the truth to shut your mouth. But that didn’t make sense. All of this happened within Phineas’s head in a millisecond, and was done and gone before he really noticed anything.

  He read on:

  President Ernest S. Blight of Vandemark College has announced the gift of his Egyptian Collection by the late Felix K. C. Vandemark II to the college his father founded in 1897. The bequest includes not only the antiquities themselves but also a fund earmarked for the construction of a room to display the collection. Samuel Hall of the Classical Languages Department will oversee the collection. “When the addition to the library is built,” President Blight says, “we hope the people of Portland will be frequent visitors.”

  The antiquities were acquired by Felix K. C. Vandemark II during his time in Egypt, 1915–1919, and had been privately stored until their unveiling, last Saturday, at the college. Felix K. C. Vandemark IV accompanied the treasures on their journey to their new home. “Grandfather bought whatever caught his eye, or caught his fancy,” Mr. Vandemark said. “The exact value of the collection, monetary or historical, cannot be established at this time.”

  Professor Can’t Swear That Treasures Are Genuine

  The showpiece of the collection, which also includes scarabs, canopic jars, and a wreath of leaves and berries that has been offered room at the Portland Museum, is a mummy of the Roman era (A.D. 1–4 century) of the kind known as a portrait mummy, because its face is covered by a portrait of the deceased. The portrait depicts a young woman wearing a necklace of uncut emeralds set in heavy gold. “Until we’ve studied the provenance papers and had some fairly simple tests run,” a member of the college community remarked, “we can’t be certain just what we have here, of what quality or value.”

  “The collection will first be cataloged, while the wing to house it is being designed and built,” he added. “At first glance, I can say only that it seems to have no single historical focus. Of course, Mr. Vandemark was an amateur. On the other hand, we must remember that many of the great 19th-century Egyptologists were also amateurs.”

  Professor Denies Mummy’s Curse

  The mummy presently lies on a table in a room deep in the cellars of the college library. This is the first time it has been uncrated since the late Mr. Vandemark brought it back from Egypt, 70 years ago. It was stored in a specially built wooden crate, packed around with straw to prevent damage.

  When, where, from whom, and for how much, the mummy was purchased will not be known until the credentials that accompanied the collection to Portland have been thoroughly gone over. Until then, the mummy remains shrouded in mystery.

  Security Is Adequate, Spokesman Says

  Representatives of the college and the Portland Museum were all present for the unveiling of the antiquities. Mark Batchelor, assistant director of the museum, inquired about the security arrangements and Mr. Hall, curator of the collection, assured him that they were adequate.

  The collection is presently being kept in a windowless room in the cellar of the college library. Climate and temperature control systems have been installed. The building is locked at all times when it is not in use. The college also maintains a 24-hour security watch over the campus. “The whole city will benefit from this gift,” President Blight said. “I’m sure that was in Mr. Vandemark’s mind when he decided to honor the college with the collection.”

  The front page picture was the mummy, her face turned into grainy black and white. One picture on the back pages, accompanying the continuation of O’Meara’s article, showed the storage room seen from the corridor, the open doorway framing a picture within, with vague shapes on shelves, and the mummy lying on its table. Another was a photograph of the group standing around the table (“Those present include Samuel Hall, far right, and Mark Batchelor, of the Portland Museum, second from left.”). The third was of the artifacts on the shelves, with the wreath at its center (“Artifacts that accompanied the mummy on her long journey. The funeral wreath was described by Mr. Batchelor as priceless.”).

  Phineas’s father groaned aloud as he read the article. He swore aloud when he’d finished.

  “She didn’t quote you at all,” Althea said to her father.

  “Maybe I’m not quotable.”

  “She quoted Ken.”

  “What upsets me is that the woman has as good as given a map. The room number is the clearest thing in any of these misbegotten photographs.”

  “You actually think somebody would want to steal the stuff?” Phineas asked.

  “I can’t imagine it, not seriously,” his father answered. “Who’d want a mummy? I mean, what would you do with it? It’s not as if you could hang it over the fireplace like a Picasso. There’s not much of a market for stolen mummies, not like cameras, VCRs, cars. But I don’t like it.”

  “What about the wreath?” Althea asked. “They keep saying how valuable it is.”

  Phineas was more interested in who would want to steal a mummy. “What about devil worshipers? I bet they’d love to get their hands on a body. Or a grave robber? Schools use bodies for science don’t they? Or, aren’t there people who just like dead bodies? There are, like people who have a thing about shoes, body fetishists.” Now he started to think of it, he could think of a hundred reasons for someone to steal the mummy.

  “I don’t like it,” Mr. Hall repeated.

  “I don’t like Ken,” Althea offered.

  “I don’t mind him,” Phineas said. “But then,” he needled, “he didn’t put me down like he did you.” The
truth was, sometimes Althea needed a little squashing.

  “I’m glad we didn’t tell O’Meara about the alarm,” Mr. Hall said. “If we had, she would probably have made that her headline, with a diagram and instructions for how to turn it off.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Dad. Anyone who didn’t know his way around down there couldn’t even find the room. The room numbers don’t follow any pattern,” Althea offered.

  “But the number is there, by the door.” Mr. Hall couldn’t be comforted.

  “We could guard it if you want,” Phineas offered. “We could camp out there, taking watches, in our sleeping bags.” He thought that might be fun, and scary down there in the dark, mazelike corridors.

  “Speak for yourself, Phineas. You wouldn’t catch me doing that,” Althea said.

  “We’re being irrational,” their father announced. “Only an expert would be interested in the collection, and an expert would know it’s not worth stealing. We’ve got locks, we’ve got an alarm system, we don’t need to worry.”

  Phineas was a little disappointed to hear that.

  CHAPTER 8

  The sound slammed up against the darkness.

  Phineas was out of bed, out of the room, halfway down the stairs before it came again. Blatt-blatt.

  It was the phone. Up in Maine, phones didn’t ring. Instead, they blatted, like a double raspberry, blatt-blatt. It was the middle of the night, it was dark, who would call in the middle of the night? Bad news. Seriously bad news.

  Phineas stopped where he was, halfway down the stairs. His heart pounded but his feet stayed put. He wasn’t about to go down there and pick up the phone and hear what the bad news was.

  Blatt-blatt.

  He didn’t know where his mother was. He didn’t even know what time it was where she was.

  His father thudded past him, down the stairs. Blatt— “Hello . . . Dan, yes.”

  A light came on in the upstairs hallway, and Phineas could see the railing, his father’s naked back and rumpled boxers, the black telephone hunched on its table.