The Egyptian Curse

by Dan Andriacco

The woman next to him colored. “Now you’re making fun of me, Mr. Hale.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play the coy American with me.”

  Hale was losing his patience. “Listen, Mrs. Whoever You Are, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you seriously mean you don’t know who I am?”

  Hale rubbed his mustache. “You mean Prudence Beresford isn’t your real name?” Now he was joking.

  “I’m sorry. How silly of me - I had thought I had completely given myself away by my choice of a pseudonym, but I suppose you are not familiar with my work. Why would you be? I write those damned detective novels, Enoch. My name is Agatha Christie.”

  Looking for an Introduction

  Honest, unaffected distrust of the powers of man is the surest sign of intelligence.

  – G.C. Lichtenberg, Reflections, 1799

  “Christie!” Tom Eliot exploded. “I should have known.”

  Hale regarded him skeptically across Eliot’s desk at Lloyds. “How so?”

  “You know how I love detective stories.” Eliot ran his hand through his hair while he shook his head. “I’ve read all of her books - The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Secret Adversary, Murder on the Links, and Poirot Investigates. Her second one, The Secret Adversary, is about a bright young couple named Tommy and Tuppence. But Tuppence’s real name is Prudence, and at the end of the story she marries Tommy, whose last name is Beresford.”

  “So she adopted a name she’d already made up for one of her characters?” Hale said. “That’s not very imaginative.”

  “Fooled you, old boy. Besides, Mrs. Christie has quite an imagination, I assure you - international intrigue and all that. And I think she’s on to something with that little Belgian detective of hers.”

  On this Friday morning, Hale was supposed to be at the last day of the British Open, working on a final feature story. Rathbone would never know that he wasn’t. Yesterday, arriving late in Hoylake after his conversation with Agatha Christie, he had had the good fortune to run into a reporter acquaintance named Willie Gordon.

  “What are you doing here?” Hale had asked. “Golf is a bit out of your line, isn’t it?” Gordon, a round man with a fringe of white hair, covered politics for The Morning Star.

  “I’m on the sick,” Gordon explained in a near whisper.

  “You don’t look sick.”

  Gordon winced. “Be a mate, will you? Forget you saw me. Pillsbury would have my hide.”

  So that was it! Old Gordon was malingering so he could watch some golf and his notoriously foul-tempered editor had better not get wind of it.

  “Willie, how would you like to do me a return favour and earn a few extra pounds in the process?”

  Gordon had quickly accepted Hale’s offer to pay him handsomely for conducting interviews and giving Hale the notes. Thus Hale was able to turn in an acceptable piece of work even though he had arrived very late on the scene. He actually did do the writing, he told his conscience; it was only most of the quotes that the veteran reporter had supplied. The scheme had worked so well that Hale had hired Gordon for an encore the next day, freeing Hale up to pursue some possibilities in Alfie’s murder that he was certain Rollins wouldn’t touch.

  “You told me all about the Woolfs,” he said to Eliot. “Can you introduce me to them? It’s time I asked them some questions.”

  “Nothing simpler. Let’s go round to the 1917 Club.”

  “Will they let us in?”

  “They’ll let anybody in, with the possible exception of a capitalist.”

  Hale had never been to the 1917 Club, but it was just a few doors down from The 43 on Gerrard Street in Soho. The building itself was a rather unimposing four-story on a corner lot. The green door at the entrance was flanked by an old pair of sconces that seemed rather dated. In fact the whole inside of the “club” had more the appearance of a flat ready to let than a meeting place for the socialist elite. Hale looked around to see if he recognized anyone.

  “Isn’t that man with the moustache H.G. Wells?” he asked Eliot.

  “No, I believe his name is Blevins. He’s some sort of minor government functionary.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t see... Oh, there’s Virginia.”

  She was a tall, lean, angular, and rather nervous-looking woman with long hair gathered in back.

  Eliot was just completing his introduction of Hale when her long-faced husband joined them with a “Hello, Eliot” that sounded more lugubrious than jaunty.

  As previously agreed upon, Eliot explained to the literary couple that his old friend Hale was in a bit of a spot.

  “It seems that Scotland Yard is casting a wary eye on him because he was once romantically involved with the lovely Mrs. Barrington, and more power to him for that.”

  “Alas, poor Alfie,” Virginia said. “I knew him, Eliot.”

  “Harmless sort of fellow, one would think,” her husband put in.

  “Then you don’t have any idea who would have wanted to kill him?”

  “Good heavens, no!” Leonard Woolf’s equine face registered shock, or a good imitation of it. “I heard he’d been stabbed to death, but I didn’t catch the details. I assumed it was a robbery or something of that sort.”

  Hale shook his head. “It definitely wasn’t a robbery. His money was still in his pockets and his watch wasn’t touched.”

  “Alfie was pathetically eager to please,” Virginia said. “That tended to annoy one, but surely not to the point of murder.”

  “He spent a lot of time with you and your friends, didn’t he?” Hale asked, knowing the answer from his conversation with Sarah and Charles.

  “I’m afraid so,” Leonard said.

  “I’ve heard that Lord Sedgewood wasn’t happy about that.”

  “The whole bloody clan was a bit nose up in the air about it,” Virginia said, “even that brother-in-law, Charles. He was another stuffed shirt.”

  “And he was quite the heavy partier himself when he came back from the War, or so Alfie said,” her husband added. “Apparently his father cut him off from his allowance until he changed his ways to get back into the old boy’s good graces. Capitalist money will do that.”

  That’s one way of looking at it, Hale thought, although Sedgewood was hardly an old boy - barely a decade older than the Woolfs.

  “This is all rather unpleasant sort of talk,” Eliot said. “Can’t someone say something nice about the poor bastard who’s dead?”

  “Well, he was free with his ill-gotten family funds,” Leonard said, “always willing to loan his friends money, sometimes rather large amounts.”

  Bone had said the same, and Ned Malone had suggested that maybe somebody had decided to shove a knife into Alfie rather than pay him back.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know who the recipients of this largesse were?” Hale asked.

  Leonard appeared to think about it. “I don’t know that I ever heard. It was just common talk that Alfie was an easy touch.”

  Hale was not at all sure that Leonard was being quite honest in his statement. Something in the look he had given Virginia made Hale think he knew something he didn’t want to share. A moment’s uneasy silence followed.

  Virginia looked as if she had made a decision when she turned away from Leonard and spoke again to Hale.

  “I bet Charles hit him up,” Virginia said. “His father probably keeps him on a tight leash financially. And I would suspect that Alfie’s friend Baines, the archaeologist fellow, was into his pockets as well. Alfie brought both of them around now and then. Charles was tedious but quite comfortable with our views on the late war. He was one of the millions who had suffered for the stupidity of the generals.” She took a long breath before she continued. “Baines had even
less to recommend him. He was a name-dropper and quite impressed with himself.”

  Baines

  Time and Chance reveal all secrets.

  – Mary De La Riviere Manley, The New Atlantis, 1709

  Linwood Baines lived two doors down from the Egyptian consulate, which was located at 26 South Street. The building had the same external look as the one on either side of it, obviously built as part of a row development. Stone covered the face of the ground floor and the upper levels were red brick. The only thing distinctive about this particular house was the covered porch, which extended out from the face of the building, and a spiked iron railing, which circumscribed the six steps to the door and the concrete yard that lay between the house and the sidewalk. Hale suspected that Baines was trying to ingratiate himself with the neighboring Aziz Pasha Ezzat, Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James.

  Virginia Woolf had been the second person to mention Baines as a possible suspect in Alfie’s killing, although for different reasons. Two days earlier, Howard Carter had claimed that Baines had been lying about his credentials as an archeologist. It was past time for Hale to check him out.

  He had called ahead, so Baines was expecting him. The door opened before Hale could knock. An elderly gentleman emerged and strolled past Hale with a quick nod in his direction as he passed. He was a stout individual, like an athlete past his prime, and wore a thick grey mustache.

  Baines, about forty years old with strawberry blond hair and the crooked nose of a boxer or street fighter, stood in the open doorway. Hale sized up his perfectly tailored grey suit as Saville Row. He spends a lot on clothing, Hale thought, but he shows his visitor to the door himself. That means he doesn’t have a servant. Maybe he’s hard up for money. Maybe he owed a lot to Alfie and couldn’t pay him back.

  Baines watched the guest depart for a few moments before turning his attention to the newcomer. “Mr. Hale?”

  “Right.”

  The formalities of handshaking accomplished, they entered the house together.

  “Looks like you’re having a busy morning,” Hale commented.

  “Oh, it’s just the usual thing. That was a collector of antiquities who just left, a fellow named Burton Hill. Came here to get my advice on a purchase, but couldn’t help talking about Alfie’s murder. I suppose that’s going to be the order of the day. Well, come in, sir.”

  He spoke with machine-gun rapidity and an open manner. Hale was going to find it hard not to like him.

  With no servants in evidence, just as Hale had expected, Baines offered him tea from a sideboard in the sitting room. As Hale added sugar, Baines said, “I know about you.”

  Hale froze for a second, and then stirred his tea. “What is it that you know about me, Mr. Baines?”

  Baines sat back, teacup in hand. “You said on the phone that you’re a friend of the Bridgewater family and that you’re trying to help Lady Sarah. I daresay you are a friend to some in the family and not to others. Lady Sarah has mentioned your name many times in my presence, and always with a great deal of affection. I believe she regrets that... well, let’s just say she’s certainly quite fond of you.”

  Hale sipped tea, using the cup to hide the smile of satisfaction on his face.

  “I gather, then, that you know Lady Sarah rather well.”

  “One could say that. I’ve spent a lot of time around her and Mr. Barrington because of my relationship with His Lordship.”

  “Are you aware that Scotland Yard suspects she may have had something to do with her husband’s death?”

  Baines snorted. “Preposterous! Lady Sarah would hesitate to kill a scorpion that was about to strike her. Someone else would have to do it for her. She certainly wouldn’t kill anyone.”

  Hale sat forward. “Now that’s interesting.”

  “What?”

  “I would have expected you to say that she couldn’t have killed Mr. Barrington because she was very devoted to him.”

  “Devoted?” Baines appeared to consider the word. “That depends on what one means by the word. Lady Sarah was a dutiful wife to Mr. Barrington, certainly, from what I could observe. I didn’t get the sense, however, that theirs was a love match. Forgive me, Mr. Hale, I see that I’ve shocked you.” No, you have delighted me, Baines. “I’ve overstepped my bounds. You will write me down as a hopeless gossip.”

  Hale’s heart soared. Although Sarah had essentially told Hale the same thing, Baines’s comment was a third-party confirmation of her story. That meant that Sarah hadn’t just been telling him what she must certainly know he would want to hear.

  “I hope you didn’t tell Inspector Rollins that,” Hale said. “It wouldn’t do Sarah a bit of good.”

  The archeologist’s jaw dropped. “Inspector? You mean Scotland Yard? The police haven’t talked with me. Do you think they will?”

  “Perhaps not. I’m poking into different corners than they are. For example, did you owe Alfie money?”

  “Certainly not! What makes you ask that?”

  “I understand that a lot of his friends owed him money.”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t in the category of friend.”

  “You didn’t get along?”

  Baines set down his teacup with a clink. “That’s not what I meant. Mr. Barrington was my sponsor’s son-in-law. We weren’t on the same social level, and thus we didn’t quite play bridge together.” He spoke dryly, stating the obvious with a light touch that said he was resigned to his station in life.

  Hale believed him. The nature of his relationship with Alfie would be too easily checked to lie about. Besides, the card game that Alfie played with his pals was euchre.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “A friend of mine has a bee in his bonnet that maybe somebody killed Alfie to avoid paying back a loan.”

  “And you think that I-”

  “I don’t think anything. I’m just asking questions and collecting information. That’s what reporters do. The only difference is, I’m not doing this for the Central Press Syndicate - at least, not at this point. As I said on the telephone, I’m just trying to find out something that might help Sarah.”And myself.

  “Well, at any rate, I don’t think it’s very likely that one of Mr. Barrington’s perennially hard-up friends would go so far as to kill him to avoid debt service,” Baines said. “They haven’t the energy. Besides, Mr. Barrington would more likely have lent them the money to make the payment! It would be interesting to know how much he ever actually recouped from his loans.” Baines sat back in his chair. His eyes played about the room and he was clearly lost in thought for a moment. Hale left the silence hanging and waited for the next comment. He noticed that Baines’s eyes came to rest on some Egyptian curios on the fireplace mantle. “No, Mr. Hale,” Baines finally continued in a voice barely audible, “you ought to take a hard look at Howard Carter.”

  Hale braced himself to hear Baines’s version of the argument between Alfie and Carter at the Constitutional Club on Sunday night, but that’s not what Baines had in mind.

  “There was bad blood between Carter and Lord Sedgewood. I’ve thought for a long time that Carter would kill His Lordship if he had the chance.”

  “You mean because of the rivalry between Sedgewood and Carnarvon?”

  “No, it was more personal than that.” Baines returned his gaze to Hale. “Back in ’08, when Carter was a dealer in antiquities, he sold Lord Sedgewood a highly decorated bracelet from the tomb of Queen Ahhotep - the same tomb he later procured a dagger from. It turned out to be a fake, a copy of one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.”

  Hale raised his eyebrows. “A fake! And what does Carter say about that?”

  “Oh, he admits it, but he says it was an honest mistake. He refunded the money years ago. But His Lordship just won’t let go of the incident. Apparently
he showed the bracelet with some pride to an Egyptian lady of his acquaintance, who immediately identified it as a counterfeit. His Lordship was mortified. Every dealer and collector of antiquities in England knows the story. In fact, Mr. Hill was just asking me about it. His Lordship says it doesn’t matter whether Carter is a crook or incompetent, he shouldn’t have the rights to King Tut’s tomb.”

  Hale thought it all over. “I can see where that would lead to a bit of unpleasantness between Carter and your patron, but what does it have to do with Alfie?”

  “Whenever Mr. Barrington had a few drinks, he was not above bringing up the issue. To Carter it was like picking at a festering wound.”

  That fit. According to Carter’s account, Alfie had questioned Carter’s professionalism. Perhaps his verbal attack involved more than just the well-known fact that Carter was a self-made man.

  “As it happens, Alfie was drinking on the evening of his murder,” Hale said. “And he got into an argument with Carter at their club.”

  Baines sat back, looking satisfied with himself. “Well, there you have it, then! An enraged Howard Carter bided his time, but not very long, and stabbed Mr. Barrington later that night.”

  Hale could almost believe it. But what about the dagger missing from Lord Sedgewood’s library, which Rollins apparently believed had been used to kill Alfie? Well, maybe Rollins was wrong about that. And maybe it had been missing for weeks and nobody noticed. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be such a coincidence that the dagger was gone. But then there was that call to Scotland Yard about the weapon. How did that fit in? And who made the call, and why? Was Alfie in possession of the weapon and attacked someone who then disarmed him and turned the weapon about? Yes, that would explain the dagger being stolen, used, and unaccounted for. Could Alfie have attacked Carter and Carter merely defended himself?

  Hale stood up. “You’ve certainly given me something to think about.”Entirely too much, in fact!

  “I’m glad to have been of service,” Baines said, rising along with him. “I shouldn’t wish any further unpleasantness to befall Lady Sarah.”