He Shall Thunder in the Sky taps-12

by Elizabeth Peters

  “You’ll have to ask him. He was late meeting me and in a hurry, and in no mood to answer questions.” The glint in David’s dark eyes reminded me that, for all his admirable qualities, David was, after all, a man.

  “Hmmm,” I said. “It is probable then, that he reached the rendezvous unscathed. Dear me, this is confusing! Did the individual who shot him believe he was shooting at Wardani or at Ramses?”

  David pushed his hat back and wiped his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand—a good touch, that, I thought approvingly. Ramses never has a handkerchief.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Apparently Ramses fears the latter may be the case, or rather, that the fellow suspected Wardani was… shall we say, not himself? The truth about Wardani’s present whereabouts is a closely guarded secret, but no secret is one hundred percent secure. If word got out that Wardani was interned in India , people wouldn’t wonder for long who had taken his place. Ramses’s talents are too well known. That’s why I have appeared in public as Ramses on several occasions when Wardani was conspicuously elsewhere.”

  “And on at least one occasion you appeared as Wardani while Ramses was conspicuously elsewhere. Really,” I said, in considerable chagrin, “I cannot imagine how I could have been so easily fooled!”

  “You had never met Wardani,” David said consolingly.

  “That is true. I did sense something out of the way—something oddly familiar about him. My instincts were correct, as usual, but I was misled by—er—well, that is now irrelevant. One of these days I will give myself the pleasure of a little conversation with Thomas Russell. He has been laughing up his sleeve at me the whole time!”

  “I assure you, Aunt Amelia, he’s not laughing now. I was supposed to have reported to him early this morning, after I had heard from Ramses. He must be badly worried.”

  “You must have been worried too, when Ramses failed to meet you.”

  “I was beginning to be when the Professor turned up—scaring me half out of my wits, I might add! Ramses and I always try to meet after these exchanges, if only to bring one another up-to-date; there was one time, I remember, when I had to pretend to be drunk and incoherent in order to avoid a conversation with Mr. Woolley. Lawrence was with him, and I was afraid one of them would demand an explanation next time they saw him.”

  “By the time this is over, no respectable person in Cairo will be speaking to Ramses,” I said with a heartfelt sigh. “Do not mistake me, David; if nothing worse than that happens I will be heartily grateful. So he was supposed to have gone to you last night before returning to the house?”

  David nodded. His arms rested on his raised knees and his lashes, long and thick like those of my son, veiled his eyes. “I doubt he was in condition to think very clearly. He must have headed blindly for home.”

  “Yes.” I took out my handkerchief and dabbed at my eyes. “Good gracious, there is a great deal of sand blowing about today. Well, David, it looks as if we must play this same game again tomorrow. The following day is Christmas Eve; Ramses should be on the mend by then, and we can have a quiet few days at home. All of us except you, my dear. Oh, I wish…”

  “So do I.”

  “Don’t kiss me, Ramses never does,” I said, sniffing.

  He kissed me anyhow. “Now,” he said, “have you given any thought as to how I am going to put on a show for the general populace this afternoon without Nefret getting a close look at me?”

  “It is going to be horribly difficult, but that isn’t the only reason I wish Nefret could be told. David, he won’t see a doctor, and I did the best I could, but I am not qualified to treat injuries like those, and she is, and she would never—”

  “Aunt Amelia.” He took my hand. “I knew this was going to come up. In fact, I had meant to raise the subject myself if you didn’t. Ramses told me he was afraid he had failed to convince you that she mustn’t know the truth. There are two excellent reasons why that is impossible. One is a simple matter of arithmetic: the more people who know a secret, the greater the chance that someone will inadvertently let it slip. The other reason is a little more complicated. I don’t know that I can make you understand, but I have to try.

  “You see, there’s a bizarre sort of gentleman’s code in this strange business of espionage. It applies only to gentlemen, of course.” His finely cut lips tightened. “The poor devils who take most of the risks aren’t included in the bargain. But the men who run the show keep hands off the families and friends of their counterparts on the other side. They have to, or risk retaliation in kind. If Ramses and I were suspected, they wouldn’t use you to get at us, but if it were known that you, or the Professor, or Nefret, or anyone else, were taking an active part in the business, you’d be fair game. That’s why he didn’t want you to find out, and that is why Nefret mustn’t find out. Good God, Aunt Amelia, you know how she is! Do you suppose she wouldn’t insist on taking a hand if she thought we were in danger?”

  “She would, of course,” I murmured.

  “I know you’re worried about him,” David said gently. “So am I. And he’s worried about you. He’d never have brought you into it if he’d had a choice, and he’s feeling horribly guilty for endangering you and the Professor. Don’t make it harder for him.”

  * * *

  I have always said that timing is all-important in these matters. When we returned to Giza the sun was low enough to cast useful shadows; the tourists had begun to disperse, but there were still a number of people ready to turn and stare. As well they might! Draped dramatically across the saddle and supported by David’s arms, my loosened hair streaming out in the wind, I rested my head against his shoulder and said, under my breath, “This is a cursed uncomfortable position, David. Let us not linger any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

  “Sssh!” He was trying not to laugh.

  Trailed by a curious throng, Risha picked his way through the tumbled sand and debris till we were close to our tomb. David pulled him up in a flamboyant and completely unnecessary rearing stop, and Emerson came running toward us.

  “What has happened?” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Peabody, my dear—”

  “I am perfectly all right, Emerson,” I shouted back. “A little fall, that is all, but you know how Ramses is, he insisted on carrying me back. Let me down, Ramses.”

  I wriggled a bit. Risha turned his aristocratic head and gave me a critical look, and David gripped me more firmly. Unfortunately the movement resulted in my parasol, slung beside the saddle, jabbing painfully into my anatomy. I let out a shriek.

  “Take her straight on home,” Emerson cried loudly. “We will follow.”

  “Just in time,” I muttered, while we withdrew as fast as safety permitted. “Nefret had just come out of the tomb; she got only a glimpse of us. David, did you happen to notice the woman to whom Emerson was talking when we arrived?”

  David shifted me into a less uncomfortable position. “Mrs. Fortescue,” he said. “Had she been invited to visit the dig?”

  “We had spoken of it, but I had not got round to issuing a particular invitation. An odd coincidence, is it not, that she happened to drop by today?”

  As soon as I entered the house I told Fatima to prepare a very extensive tea, which got her out of the way. David and I then hurried to Ramses’s room. When I saw that the bed was unoccupied, my heart sank down into my boots. Then Ramses stepped out from behind the door. He was fully dressed, straight as a lance, and several shades paler than usual.

  “Goodness, what a fright you gave me!” I exclaimed. “Get back into bed at once. And take off your shirt, I want to dress the wounds. You had no business—”

  “I wanted to be certain it was you. How did it go?”

  “All right, I think.” David examined him critically. “You’re a trifle off-color.”

  “Am I?” He went to the mirror.

  I watched as he uncorked a bottle and applied a thin layer of liquid to his face. He must have been in and out of b
ed several times; not only was he clean-shaven but he had set up a peculiar-looking apparatus on his desk—tubes and coils and glass vessels of various sizes. From it wafted a horrible smell.

  “Where is Seshat?” I inquired. “I told her to make sure you stayed in bed.”

  Ramses returned the little bottle to the cupboard and closed the door. “What did you expect her to do, knock me down and sit on me? She went out the window when she heard you coming. She’d been here all day.”

  “What went wrong last night?” David asked.

  “Later.” Ramses sat down, rather heavily, on the side of the bed. “Where are the others?”

  “On their way,” I said. “Ramses, I insist you allow me—”

  “Get on with it, then, while David tells me what I did today.”

  So I got on with it, and David summarized the events of the day. The account served to distract Ramses from the unpleasant things I was doing to him. He was rather white around the mouth by the time I finished, but he laughed when David described our arrival at Giza .

  “I wish I could have seen you. Your idea, Mother?”

  “Yes. I would have preferred to do something more flamboyant, but I was afraid to risk it. You may be sure Nefret would have been first on the spot, burning to tend to me, and then she would have got a close look at David.”

  Ramses nodded approval. “Good thinking. And you say Mrs. Fortescue just happened to be there?”

  “Do you suspect her?” I asked.

  “It did occur to me,” said my son, glancing at David, “that her—uh—affability the evening we dined together might have been prompted by something other than—er…”

  “So, she was affable, was she?” I remarked.

  “So David told you about that, did he?” remarked Ramses, in the same tone. “I thought so. I don’t know how you do it, but he babbles like a brook whenever you get him to yourself. I would not have referred to it had I not felt it necessary to clear up certain misapprehensions you both seem to harbor. I do not suspect the lady any more than I suspect all other newcomers without official credentials, but the fact remains that she did her best to detain me when I was on my way to an important meeting. Difficult as it may be for you and David to believe, she may not have been swept off her feet by—er…”

  “Now, now, don’t get excited,” I said soothingly. “Without wishing in any way to contradict your appraisal of your personal attractions, I believe it is entirely possible that her motives for calling on us had nothing to do with you. Perhaps it is your father she’s after.”

  David and Ramses exchanged glances. “If you don’t mind, Mother,” said my son, “I would rather not continue this line of speculation. David, you’ll probably have to take my place again tomorrow, so you had better stay here tonight. Lock the door after we leave.”

  David nodded. “We need to talk.”

  “That, too.”

  “Ramses,” I said. “You—”

  “Please, Mother, don’t argue! There’s no time now. David can’t take my place at dinner, not with Nefret and Fatima there. We’ll talk later. A council of war, as you used to say.”

  I told Fatima we would take tea in the sitting room that evening. It was not a room we often used for informal family gatherings, since it was too spacious to be cozy and somewhat gloomy because of the small, high windows. However, it would spare Ramses the stairs to the roof; not much help, but the best I could do.

  I made haste in bathing and changing, but the others were already there when I entered the parlor.

  “Where is Mrs. Fortescue?” I asked. “Didn’t you ask her to come to tea?”

  “If that inquiry is addressed to me,” said Emerson, with great emphasis, “the answer is, no, why the devil should I have done? She turned up this afternoon without warning and without an invitation, and expected me to drop what I was doing and show her every cursed pyramid at Giza . I was trying to think of a way to get rid of her when you saved me the trouble.”

  “She asked where Ramses was,” Nefret said.

  He had taken a chair some little distance from the sofa where she was sitting, and I observed he was now wearing a light tweed coat, which served to conceal the rather lumpy bandages. “How nice,” he murmured. “Which of her admirers was with her, the Count or the Major?”

  “Neither,” Emerson said. “It was that young Pinkerton.”

  “Pinckney,” Nefret corrected.

  “Ah,” said Ramses. “I didn’t see him.”

  “He was inside the tomb, with me. I was showing him the reliefs.”

  “Hmmm,” said Ramses.

  Nefret glared at him, or tried to; her prettily arched brows were incapable of looking menacing. “If you are implying—”

  “I’m not implying anything,” Ramses said.

  He was, of course. I had had the same thought. Mr. Pinckney might have brought the lady along as camouflage for his romantic designs on Nefret. Or she might have brought him along as camouflage for her designs on Emerson. Or…

  Good Gad, I thought, this is even more complicated than our usual encounters with crime. The only thing of which I was certain was that neither Pinckney nor Mrs. Fortescue was Sethos.

  Nefret subjected Ramses to another glare, and then turned to me. “The Professor assured me you were not seriously injured, Aunt Amelia, but I would like to have a look at you. What happened?”

  “It was all a great fuss about nothing, my dear,” I replied, seating myself next to her on the sofa. “I took a little tumble into a tomb and twisted my arm.”

  “This arm?” Before I could stop her she grasped my hand and pushed my sleeve up. “I don’t see anything. Does it hurt when I do this?”

  “No,” I said truthfully.

  “Or this? Hmmm. Well, it appears there is no break or sprain.”

  “The greatest damage was to another portion of her anatomy,” said Ramses. “She landed on her… that is, in a sitting position.”

  As he had no doubt expected, my look of chagrin put an end to Nefret’s questions.

  “Never mind,” I said, with a little cough. “Have you asked Fatima to serve tea, Nefret?”

  “Yes, it should be here shortly. I wanted to get an early start, since I am dining out this evening.”

  “Dining out,” I repeated. “Have you told Fatima ?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look very nice. Is that a new frock?”

  “I haven’t worn it before. Do you like it?”

  “Not very much,” said Ramses, before I could reply. “Is that the latest in evening dress? You look like a lamp shade.”

  She did, rather. The long overtunic had been stiffened at the bottom so that it stood out around the slim black skirt in a perfect circle. I could tell by Emerson’s expression that he was of the same opinion, but he was wise enough to remain silent.

  “It’s a Poiret,” Nefret said indignantly. “Really, men have no sense of fashion, have they, Aunt Amelia?”

  “A very pretty lamp shade,” Ramses amended.

  “I refuse to discuss fashions,” Emerson grumbled. “ Peabody , what did you think of the situation at Zawaiet? Ramses has just informed me that the local bandits have been wreaking havoc with the place.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

  “Nor would I,” said Ramses. “However, I think—with your permission, Father—I will spend at least one more day there, if for no other reason than to establish the presumption that we are keeping an eye on the place. Also, the pit tomb the men uncovered today should be cleared. I doubt there’s much there, but I want to make certain nothing has been overlooked.”

  Fatima came in with the tea tray and I busied myself preparing the genial beverage—lemon for Nefret, milk and three teaspoons of sugar for Emerson. Ramses declined in favor of whiskey, which he mixed himself.

  Nefret’s announcement had come as a considerable relief. If she was out of the house we could retire early, to Ramses’s room. I wanted to get him back into bed and I was
determined to hold that council of war. There were so many unanswered questions boiling round in my head, I felt as if it would burst. Nor were Ramses and David the only ones I intended to interrogate. My own husband, my devoted spouse, had obviously kept me in the dark about certain of his own activities.

  As for Nefret, I could only hope she was not dining with Percy or some other individual of whom I would not approve. There wasn’t much I could do about it; a direct inquiry might or might not produce a truthful answer.

  She had entered with seeming interest into the discussion about Zawaiet el ’Aryan. “You won’t be needing me to take photographs, then?” she asked.

  “I see no reason for it,” Emerson answered. “In fact, I hope Ramses can finish at Zawaiet tomorrow or the next day. The cursed place isn’t our responsibility, after all; it is still part of Reisner’s concession.”

  “Perhaps I ought to notify him of what has been going on,” Ramses suggested.

  “He is in the Sudan ,” Emerson said. “It can wait.”

  “Very well.” Ramses got up and went to the table, where he poured another whiskey. Nefret’s eyes followed him, but she made no comment.

  “I suppose, Peabody ,” said my husband, “you will insist we leave off work Christmas and Boxing Day.”

  “Now my dear, you know I never insist. However, respect for the traditions of the faith that is our common heritage—”

  “Confounded religion,” said Emerson predictably.

  “We haven’t even done anything about a Christmas tree,” Nefret said. “Perhaps, Aunt Amelia, you would rather not go to the trouble this year.”

  “It is difficult to get in the proper frame of mind,” I admitted. “But for that very reason it is all the more important, in my opinion, that we should make an effort.”

  “Whatever you say.” Nefret returned her cup to its saucer and stood up. “I’ll help you with the decorations, of course. Palm branches and poinsettias—”

  “Mistletoe?” Ramses inquired softly.