The Egyptian Curse

by Dan Andriacco

  The two men chatted meaninglessly as they walked toward the door. Hale paused for a moment to eye a small black bust, obviously Egyptian, sitting on a credenza in the hallway.

  “Handsome woman,” he observed.

  “That’s a small souvenir of my first dig with Lord Sedgewood. I was privileged to be at the discovery of the sepulcher of Thutmose III. It was very interesting. The sepulcher was found among the rocks near Habsepsus, the Great Goat Temple at Deirel-Bahari.”

  “When was that?”

  “About twenty years ago. Let’s see... March of ’04, it would have been.” He shook his head. “Hard to believe it’s been that long.”

  “You must have been quite young, then. Where did you study archeology?”

  Hale hadn’t forgotten Howard Carter’s accusation that Baines was as lacking in a university degree as Carter himself. He had just been waiting for an opportunity to ask about it without seeming to ask about it.

  “Oxford,” Baines said. “I was a student of the legendary Professor Courtland. Do you know him, by any chance?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Not yet.

  Later that afternoon, Hale returned to his office with the notes from the British Open that had been wired by Willie Gordon. The old pro had found so many quotable observers at the Open that, despite all that was weighing on his mind, Hale could hardly wait to start weaving them into a colorful feature story.

  But he had hardly sat down at his typewriter when the telephone at his elbow rang.

  “Hale.”

  “Oh, thank God, you’re finally there.” The high-pitched, frantic voice bordered on panic. “I’ve been calling every fifteen minutes.”

  “Sarah! What’s wrong now?”

  “It’s Father. He’s dead - murdered!”

  Murder Calls Again

  No one ever commits murder with a golden dagger.

  – Hindu Proverb

  They agreed to meet at the Museum Tavern on Great Russell Street, not far from Sarah’s home. The venerable pub, expanded in the middle of the previous century, was actually older than the museum itself, having changed its name after the Museum was built in the 1760s. Karl Marx had been a patron, and Hale had once seen the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle having a pint at the bar.

  Sarah was already there when Hale arrived. He gave her a discreet hug and a conventional, “I’m so sorry. What happened?” He sat down at her table.

  “The parlor maid, Maisie, found his body crushed beneath one of the statues in the library - the one of the cat-headed Egyptian goddess Bastet. Maisie saw right away it couldn’t have been an accident. It would have taken too much force to tip the statue over. She called the police and then she had the presence of mind to call me. I immediately telephoned Charles and then you.”

  Hale remembered the big statue well from his many uncomfortable encounters with Lord Sedgewood in that room. The Earl was a hard-driving man of property who didn’t like journalists. Hale, for his part, had never been fond of the American aristocracy of which his family was a part, much less the British one. The only thing the two men agreed on was that they both loved Sarah. She was the only soft spot in her widower father’s hard shell that Hale knew of.

  “I want to go to the house as soon as possible,” Sarah said. “I want you to go with me.”

  He shook his head. “We shouldn’t be seen together, lest Rollins draw the wrong conclusion. In fact-”

  “I wasn’t followed here. I checked.”

  Hale allowed himself a half-smile. “Good girl. I wasn’t either. Look, it’s okay if you go to Carlton House Terrace. That would be perfectly normal. But Scotland Yard probably won’t let you see the body.” It’s got to be a bloody mess.

  “I want to go anyway, but I don’t want to go alone.”

  “Then see if Charles will take you.”

  She licked her lips, as if thinking. “Yes, of course, Charles will take me. He’s been such a rock for me through all this.”

  Still, Hale noted with satisfaction, she seemed disappointed that he wouldn’t be the one at her side.

  “I’ll call Ned Malone and tell him what happened. He’ll rush over to Carlton House Terrace to get the story. When he gets back to the office to write it up, I’ll be there. He’ll tell me everything.”

  “Such as what?”

  Hale shrugged. “Whatever Rollins is willing to tell him. But we can’t count on Scotland Yard, based on the Inspector’s performance so far. It looks like we have to figure out who wanted to kill both Alfie and your father.”

  And immediately he had a candidate: Howard Carter. What was it that Baines had said? “I’ve thought for a long time that Carter would kill His Lordship if he had the chance.” But was it credible that Carter had killed Alfie in a rage and then decided to kill the father-in-law because of their long-simmering antagonistic relationship? And wouldn’t the butler know if Carter had called on Sedgewood right before his murder? In fact, wouldn’t he know if anybody had?

  Hale suddenly realized that he didn’t know how long Sarah had been trying to reach him.

  “When did the maid find your father?”

  “This afternoon, only about an hour and a half ago. She was the only other person in the house today. Daddy had given Reynolds the day off.”

  So the butler wasn’t going to be any help after all.

  “Rollins will say that’s very convenient - the fact that Reynolds wasn’t around and only family members were at the townhouse today.”

  Sarah’s wide green eyes opened still wider. “He can’t believe that one of us did it?”

  “He already thinks that you and I killed Alfie, or at least that we’re the most likely suspects. He doesn’t strike me as the sort of man easily swayed from his conviction.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. I loved Daddy. Why would I kill him?”

  Hale noticed that she had slipped back into calling her father by the name that she had used for him when Hale had first met her - undoubtedly a vestige of a childhood that she was no longer so eager to escape.

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t think it would be hard for Inspector Rollins to find out that your father didn’t want me for a son-in-law. And since Rollins thinks that you and I killed Alfie so that we could-”

  Sarah jumped into his pause. “All right. I see what you mean.” She swallowed. “It’s not such a crazy notion, you know - that I would want to be with you.”

  Steady, Hale!

  If he didn’t block that happy line of thought out of his mind, he would never be able to concentrate on his next moves. He was thankful, therefore, for the Irish waitress who brought Sarah a cup of coffee and asked if he wanted something to drink. Seldom, if ever, had he felt in such need of a good slug of straight Old Forester. Kentucky bourbon being unavailable because of Prohibition, and the Irish and Scotch counterparts unpalatable, Hale ordered a Fuller’s.

  “There’s something I have to tell you.” Sarah looked down at the empty placemat in front of her, and then at Hale. “It’s about the knife that killed Alfie.”

  This cannot be good.

  “Father’s dagger from the tomb of Ahhotep really was the murder weapon, just like the anonymous call to Inspector Rollins said.”

  “How do you know that?” Hale’s tone was sharp and he didn’t care.

  “Please don’t be angry with me, Enoch. I had to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  Her eyes, already red and puffy from crying, held large pools of tears ready to spill over into her coffee cup.

  She swallowed. “I - I hid the dagger.”She looked down at the table and the tears that had been in her eyes splashed and made ripples in the coffee.

  Hale felt himself redden. “What the-”

  “I suppose it was wrong of me, but I didn�
��t know what else to do.” She was looking at him again and trying to dry her eyes with one of those silly lace handkerchiefs woman insist on carrying. Her hand trembled as she wiped her eyes. She breathed deeply before she continued.

  “You know I stayed overnight at the townhouse on Monday after Charles and I had dinner with Daddy. But I couldn’t sleep - who could, in my situation? I gave up about three in the morning and went into the library for something to read. As I was looking around, I noticed that the case with the Ahhotep dagger was slightly open. I went to close it and I saw that the dagger had dried blood on it. I almost fainted.”

  “Because you knew what that meant.”

  She nodded. “Of course I thought right away that Daddy must have used the dagger to stab Alfie. I had to protect Daddy. So I took the dagger away in my bag - just like Inspector Rollins thought, but not when he thought.”

  “Then what?”

  “I buried it in my backyard. Nobody will ever find it there.”

  Hale leaned forward and lowered his voice. He wanted to shout. “That was a little detail you left out earlier, when you told me the dagger had been taken from the library. Not to put too fine a point on it, you lied to me, Lady Sarah.”

  The formal title was a deliberate slap, and Sarah seemed to feel it. She flinched.

  “I didn’t want to involve you.”

  “How could I be any more involved than I already am, you silly girl?”

  “Here we are.” The waitress set down Hale’s ale. He forced a grateful smile and told the Irish girl they didn’t want to order anything else just now.

  “I deserved that,” Sarah said when the waitress had left. “It was silly to do that. But, don’t you see, I was still stunned from Alfie’s death and lacking sleep. I wasn’t thinking very clearly at all. I should have told you everything and let you take care of it.”

  Hale’s anger drained out of him. “That would have been equally silly, I’m afraid. I haven’t exactly covered myself with glory in this business. Maybe the answer was in front of me the whole time.”

  He thought back to Charles saying that even the governor wouldn’t have killed Alfie for the company he kept, or something to that effect. Hale remembered thinking then that perhaps that was exactly what had happened - that Sedgewood could have killed his son-in-law during a heated argument. Maybe somebody else reached the same conclusion with more conviction, and killed Sedgewood in retribution. But who loved Alfie that much? Certainly not his wife - Hale felt that in his bones.

  “When I could think more clearly,” Sarah said, “I realized that Daddy never would have taken an Egyptian artifact out of the house. He certainly wouldn’t have had it with him on the street outside the Constitutional Club. That means he didn’t kill Alfie after all.”

  Hale wasn’t so sure. “Maybe the two of them were in the library at the townhouse. Your father was examining the dagger at the time. They argued, and he thrust the weapon into Alfie before he even knew what he was doing. Then he moved the body later.”

  “I actually thought of that.” Triumph shone in Sarah’s green eyes. “So I talked to Reynolds. He was home that night - and so was Daddy. Daddy never went out. And Alfie wasn’t at the townhouse that night.”

  Hale took a long pull on the dark brew, fervently wishing that it were something stronger. His head throbbed.”Let’s recap: You found a bloody dagger in the library a little more than a day after somebody stabbed your husband to death. If His Lordship didn’t use that dagger on Alfie, then who did?”

  She was quiet for a moment. “I’ve thought a lot about that. I just don’t know.”

  “It would have had to have been somebody who had access to your father’s library both before and after the murder.”

  “You mean, like, one of the servants?”

  No, that’s not what I mean. Hale took another drink, for courage. He lit a panatela, stalling. “One of Alfie’s friends” - it wouldn’t help to mention the Woolfs - “suggested to me that maybe Charles was one of the many people who owed Alfie money.”

  Two years ago, when Hale had first met Charles without knowing who he really was, Dorothy Sayers had thought there was something fishy about him. Hale had never quite gotten over a negative prejudice against Sarah’s brother, although Charles had always been nice enough to Hale. Was he the sort of man who could kill his brother-in-law to cancel out a big debt? Hale couldn’t say no.

  Sarah just looked at Hale, as though not believing what she had just heard.

  “Well,” Hale prodded. “Is it true? Did he owe Alfie?”

  To his surprise, she smiled. “Who’s being silly now? The situation is quite the reverse, I can assure you. Charles has had a very generous allowance from Daddy ever since their reconciliation. Alfie felt quite free to borrow money from him and lend it to his free-spending friends.”

  “Why does he have to borrow money? Isn’t his father a duke?”

  Her smile broadened. “Only a Yank would assume the two are contradictory.” She sounded almost bemused. Hale wished he could see the humor. He could use a good laugh. “It turns out that the Duke of Somerset is a cash- poor aristocrat with nowhere near the money that Daddy imagined when he thrust Alfie at me. The family has property, but rents are low just now. Apparently the Somersets were not as industrious as the Sedgewoods. What I am saying is, Alfie and I are quite broke. Even Daddy never knew how broke, thanks to Charles helping us to keep up appearances.”

  An hour later, Ned Malone welcomed the news of Alfie Barrington’s impecunious state as supporting his favorite theory.

  “All the more reason that Alfie would have wanted to collect on money owed to him,” he said. “And therefore, all the more likely that somebody unable to pay up settled the debt with a dagger to Alfie’s heart.”

  They were sitting at Malone’s desk at the Central Press Syndicate offices, where Hale had been waiting for him when he returned from the scene of the crime.

  “Then why kill Lord Sedgewood?” Hale said. “And what about the fact that an Egyptian dagger of his probably was the murder weapon?” Hale had told Malone off the record, as a friend and not a journalist, everything he’d learned from Sarah. “How do you connect that?”

  Malone shrugged. “There you have me. I don’t have an answer for that. But Rollins does.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “His theory is that His Lordship knew that Lady Sarah killed Alfie, which made him dangerous to her. If Rollins knew that she’d buried the dagger-”

  “I’ve been trying not to think about that. Say, does Rollins want you to publish that theory?”

  Malone nodded.

  “Good,” Hale said. “That means he doesn’t really have much.”

  “How do you figure that? I’d have thought just the opposite.”

  “No, he’s trying to use you. He’s hoping that if you publish that Sarah’s the prime suspect, it will rattle her and cause her to make some big mistake - maybe move the hiding place of the missing dagger. I bet he puts her on round-the-clock watch.”

  Malone put a sheet of paper in his typewriter, ready to work on his story.”If that’s the game Rollins is playing, I’m not the only one he’s playing it with. Artie Howell from The Times got to the townhouse even before I did.”

  “Howell! How did he know about Sedgewood’s murder?”

  “Somebody tipped him off. I figure it must have been one of the servants.”

  Maisie had called Sarah right after she telephoned Scotland Yard. Reynolds, the butler, had worked for the family for decades. They seemed like loyal retainers.

  “Why would they do that?” Hale wondered aloud.

  But Malone was too busy pounding out his story on the Remington to answer.

  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.