The Egyptologist

by Arthur Phillips

  But, for the record, here’s what I was thinking, and pretty canny, if you ask me: if indeed there was a hidden fortune in a hole that Marlowe and Trilipush had found, it was looking more and more that Trilipush—impoverished landed gentry with forged academic records—had killed Marlowe for it and then escaped to America while the heat died down. There he made enough of a showy reputation for himself among the local gullibles to manipulate some money to go back and dig up his treasure. And now, 1922, he plainly would never be coming back to Boston from this second expedition. This girl had been used, her family money taken on the strength of his English manner, and now he was done with her. Aside from her money, what else would he want with her? He was certainly an invert, like Marlowe and Quint, I knew that even then, before I’d met him. Then it occurred to me: probably he’d been Marlowe’s high-class fancy man before going off to Egypt; probably Trilipush was Marlowe’s discreetly kept amusement all the way back at Oxford, not a student obviously, just living in Marlowe’s world, taking Marlowe’s money in exchange for illicit affections. That explained witnesses to his presence there but no official record. Then Trilipush joins up for the War with Marlowe in exchange for continued payments, and heads off to Egypt with him, where they gallivant about in the English fashion. But then he gets sent to Turkey without his rich protector, too bad. Back he comes (or runs, more likely) from the Turkish battles to discover to his horror that in his absence poor, young, Egypt-loving digger Paul Caldwell (an Australian of all things, thinks the bankrupt but still snobbish English pansy) has become the innocent object of Marlowe’s amorous obsessions. Take it a step further: maybe Trilipush hadn’t found the treasure map with Marlowe at all: maybe Marlowe and Caldwell had found it while Trilipush was in Turkey. Trilipush, back from Gallipoli, surprises the pair and, motivated by jealousy of his Juliet and greed over their secret find in the desert, kills both Marlowe and Caldwell, hides their bodies, and goes to the USA. Well, I’d some work ahead of me to prove all this, and I still didn’t understand why his military records had been suppressed, but this shows how early I’d already understood the main facts of the matter, Macy, as I explained them to you when I met you that evening at the Parker House Hotel after returning from my newest client’s home.

  The victim of this tragedy, Macy—and this was clear as crystal to me before I’d even finished my first lemonade—was your lovely and hypnotising aunt. A sweet, innocent girl, her head turned by a murderous pervert, used for her family’s money. I wanted to help, and that’s the God’s honest, I saw clearly that she’d been made a fool by a sodomite and was already abandoned, though she didn’t know it yet. If I told her, she’d hate me forever. If I waited for events to unfold at their own pace, she’d be the laughingstock of Boston society. I felt, even that first lemonade, my hands being tied, and none of my choices were good.

  Your aunt Margaret’s second mood, I learnt over the coming weeks, was an early evening specialty. Some days later, I was returning to the hotel, having spoken to more Harvard professors and some students of Trilipush’s, and I found, to my great surprise and pleasure, Margaret in the lobby. She hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I’d met her. It was about seven in the evening, and she was unaccompanied. “Now tonight you’re going to put your notebook away, Harry, and we’re going to have some fun.” She was at her very best like this. She still made you feel like you were the most important person in the world, but she didn’t have any of the affectations of the rich hostess at home. No, now she was exuberant and natural, a young girl whose eyes shone, excited to see the next thing life had to offer. She had her jokes, her little smart remarks at your expense, but you liked it, believe me. She put her arm through mine and walked me through parts of Boston it never would’ve occurred to me to visit. “Don’t you be worried there, Harry, I know my way around, we’ll be just fine.”

  She walked me into alleyways that made me wish I had a weapon on me, but she just glowed under the dim lights, smiled at the shady figures lurking here and there, clearly enjoyed herself by shocking her foreign friend, though I did my best to smile throughout it all. “You know, I’ve never taken Ralphie to this place, and I never would. He wouldn’t fit in like you will, Harry.” I liked the comparison. “Let’s keep all this our little secret, Harry.” Suited me fine—I didn’t want her mentioning me to Trilipush either.

  She pushed a button on an unmarked wall in a dark street, I couldn’t even tell you where we were. A small hatch at eye level slid aside, black eyes examined us, the hatch slid shut, and the wall opened up to let us into a noisy party, a bar and billiards and dancing to jazz music, men and women comfortable on couches, floor cushions, laps. “Welcome to JP’s, Harry,” she said, ushering me in. It was one surprise after another with your aunt. That evening she was all charm, and I rather thought it was all for me, and I remember thinking, that evening, that for whatever reason, she’d found something in me she was drawn to. I thought I could see a natural progression unfolding, can’t say anyone would’ve blamed me. Now, of course, I’d say she was just a bit of a flirt. Played with fire a bit, she did, your aunt, didn’t know when she’d gone too far, pushed things over a line. Girls like that always look surprised when people turn out not to be toys, when people don’t stop what they’re doing at the girl’s instruction, the second her whim changes.

  She brought us cocktails, and we sat on a red velvet couch. I might’ve been pursuing the case or my own interests, hard to say from this distance, but I asked her about Trilipush again, not sure what I was looking for. “Oh, he’s a dream,” she said, but looking at the ceiling, hardly paying attention as she murmured, “English noble, explorer. Quite a man . . .” Not the ceiling: she was peering up at the dark balcony that ran around the perimeter of the room before she brought her attention back down to me. “What was I saying, Harry?”

  She pulled me up, and we danced to the Negro jazz orchestra. We drank. To be more accurate, I drank one or two, she drank quite a bit more. She patted my hand and let me light cigarettes for her. “Ralph never would go for this sort of thing,” she said. “He’s very bookish, you know. But Harry, you’re quite a dancer!” Now that isn’t strictly true, but I didn’t argue. My notes are a little unclear here, I’m afraid, Macy. During this period in Boston, I often didn’t remember to mark down exactly what was said or on what date, and as I sit here, staring at the green concrete bricks of the games room, memories come back in patches, unchronological rushes of events mixed up with things I recall wanting to happen, but which didn’t. I’ll do my best to sort this out for you.

  She and I sit on a couch at JP’s, this private club of hers, and she’s stroking my cheek. This is a different evening. She’s very drowsy, and I can see myself, a little hangdog-looking. This is a bit surprising, you’ll agree, under the circumstances, but I don’t take the cheek stroking to heart. You see, she’d left me on the couch for a bit, went upstairs to that balcony—a gigantic Negro guarding the stairs let her by no problem and she pinched his grinning face as she went up. I watched her open a door without knocking and walk into a room at the far corner, turns out to be the office of the J. P. O’Toole who owns the place, the Negro tells me. I return to the couch. Minutes pass. When she comes back down she’s odd, laughing too loud. I look at her eyes, and I know straightaway where she’s gone. She sat next to me for hours, smiled the whole time, stroked my cheek now and again, but never said a single word. Listen to an old man whinge, Macy: my heart was breaking and healing up again with every beat.

  But another night, same red sofa, she’s just the opposite, bouncing with a sort of nervous, unhappy energy, explaining to me that she’s only marrying Trilipush because her father wants it so much, but she doesn’t care a thing about any of them, all she wants “is to be left alone to have some fun once in a rare while. Priorities, Daddy says, good name, good alliance. But Ralph can be a dreadful bore, that much stuff about Egypt makes you fall asleep, you know, and that’s just the truth. Nobody could listen to stuff about Egyp
t as much as he wants to talk about it. Or any topic. A bore, Harry, but men usually are after a while. Are you going to turn out to be a bore, Harry?”

  “You don’t want to marry Trilipush?” I asked, amazed at the turn of events, the way this lurking suspicion had suddenly emerged into light, and all at once I was ready to tell her everything I knew about her fiancé, to blow up that bomb and take my chances.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said before I could open my mouth. “I didn’t say that, did I? Let’s not talk about this anymore, how’s that sound to you? Just don’t be a bore, Harry. Can you do that for me? Wouldn’t that be the greatest thing if you turned out not to be an unbearable bore? Wouldn’t that be swell? Let’s shoot for that, Harry, okay? Okay? Okay?” Like this, when she started talking, she didn’t stop, she just kept chattering, whatever idea was in her head tumbled out of her mouth, and she’d just repeat herself until she’d something else to say or do or spend her energy on, and sure enough, when she ran out of words, she pulled me up to dance. Maybe this was a week or two later, when she said all this. I don’t know what to tell you, Macy. I think I probably fell in love with her, you see, at least that’s how I’m remembering it now. And her? Well, I know now she was just a sad, sick girl, too much freedom. I wasn’t anything much to her, something, no question, but not much. What could I have been to her? A man from another world, another class, not rich, not posh enough, nothing. That’s not a tragedy, hardly, is it?

  But what I felt then, that’s something else. Maybe completely different. Maybe the “clarity of distance” is nothing at all when compared to what’s been forgotten. Maybe it wasn’t something inexplicable, as it’s beginning to look now, but instead was logical, and I was acting with clarity that should be respected, clarity of feeling, even if I can’t reproduce it here on paper, a whole lifetime later. After all, I’m writing to you from notes and recollections, and who knows what’s slipped free from those? Maybe I wasn’t such a fool as I’m making myself out to be. Maybe I just can’t remember now what I knew then, all the reasons why falling for your aunt wasn’t foolish, all the little ways she made me think it was possible. Let’s just accept that she wanted me to fall in love with her, was thinking about being with me, too, leaving Trilipush for me, but day after day was passing with me unable to bridge some gap between us.

  It seems like a film from this distance. I remember one cold day, I’d stayed on and skipped an Alexandria boat, and the thought was going through my head over and over that there was a terrible crime about to happen in Boston, and only I could stop it. Not just the old crimes I was trying to uncover, but something happening right then and there under my nose: the murder of this girl’s soul, forced to marry for her father’s social position, father and daughter defrauded by this English invert. I was torn in pieces trying to keep straight what I knew, what I suspected, what I should reveal and what I should hide, how to protect her, how to win her, or both.

  That cold day I go to the house to find her, but Finneran’s there, and when he answers the door he thinks I’ve come to see him of course (doesn’t know I’ve been squiring her around), and I can’t figure out how to explain otherwise, and so we go to his study and we talk about Trilipush. I tell him more than I intended, but circumstances are different, because Finneran’s already suspicious about Trilipush before I open my mouth.

  Two days earlier, Finneran says, he’d word that Trilipush was stuck in Cairo, delayed on his trip to the tomb site because of a last-minute bureaucratic snag, and he wanted the Partnership’s money sent to Cairo, rather than to the town closer to the excavation. Fine, thinks Finneran, six of one to him, ready to comply, but then Professor Terbroogan from Harvard has just called on Finneran, that very same cold day, came by special to tell Finneran (with Dutch vengeance) that Oxford had just confirmed by cable that no Trilipush was ever educated there, and for what Terbroogan’s opinion is worth, Trilipush has a “zero percent” chance of finding what he’s promised his backers, the whole expedition is doomed. “He said that, Harry. Doomed.” Finneran’s keeping a brave face, but he’s rolling that cigar back and forth across his mouth pretty speedy-like. He asks if I knew about the Oxford “rumour.” Terbroogan hadn’t revealed that I helped him find this information (though I reminded myself that I could now send him a bill for services rendered), but I wasn’t ashamed of the truth. “Yes, I suspected it,” I tell Finneran. “Well, Jesus Christ dancing on the cross!” he shouts, and the cigar falls onto his desk. “What the hell else do you suspect? What did I hire you for? To hear things from professors?” Finneran was worried, understandably: his money, his daughter, his friends’ money, the possibility that he’d very publicly backed a fraud. I liked how someone else had brought the bad news, as there was too much at stake for me to be the bearer. But it certainly meant that my “all-clear” background investigation on Trilipush (sitting completed in my hotel room since my first night in Boston) would require a few more days’ thought and editing. My position was only getting more complicated. “We’ll see, Finneran,” I said. “Let’s not jump to conclusions yet. Records can be wrong.”

  “And if they’re not? What about poor Margaret’s feelings for this man?” he moans pathetically, after sitting in silence for a bit, fighting off his urge to panic. “She loves him, you know, Ferrell. I can’t stand in the way of that, Oxford or not.” In other words, I still have money riding on this man.

  “Where’s your daughter now?” I ask. And I swear to you, Macy, this great big man looks like he’s going to cry like a girl. He looks away, stands up, turns his back to me, fiddles with a curtain. “Is there something you want to tell me? Confidential enquiries is my line, after all.” And then your great-uncle unburdens himself to me, which people always did. He explains he’s trying desperately hard to do the right thing for his “little girl,” but she drinks and she’s had problems with—he moves his mouth a bit before the word finally falls out—opium, and twice he’s thought she was cured of it. The last time he’d put her in a sanatorium and paid a fortune to hire away one of their nurses (the buxom Swede I saw around the house from time to time) to monitor her at home, and give her the medications that were supposed to reduce her appetite for “the dragon’s breath.” But Margaret’s started sneaking out again, Finneran says, slumping back into his chair. Inge, the nurse, is supposed to keep an eye on her, not let her out of the house unaccompanied, but she’s been slipping free of her guard and is obviously unwell again, and if Trilipush ever found out about it, the engagement would probably be off, and Finneran looks defeated at the thought of it, forgetting for a moment that the blessed fiancé has lied to them about his education and perhaps more.

  This display was grotesque, Macy. The strong, rich businessman was on the verge of sobbing because he was unsuccessful in his attempts to imprison his daughter, who suffered, it was plain to me, from nothing more than youthful high spirits and a nasty engagement to a sodomistic murderer, whom the family had desperately been trying to impress. They had been lying to him, telling him Margaret suffered from a rare but curable disorder causing her sleeping spells, mood swings, and so forth (as if Trilipush would even care, since his interest in her extended no further than her father’s bank account). It was the sheerest, most sickening lunacy. Finneran didn’t want my opinion, which would’ve been simple enough: save your daughter by letting her be. You’re going to kill her in a social-climbing accident. And any pommy idiot who’d refuse to marry her because of a little high-spirited adventure deserved to be shot between the eyes. But I couldn’t quite tip my hand that far, and instead I just said I’d try to keep an eye on Margaret, if he wanted, see if she was really in any kind of trouble. He shook my hand. “That’s a great relief to me, Ferrell. Thank you, thank you. I didn’t know who else to turn to,” he says, as if it’d been his idea. “She’s my little girl, you know, just want what’s best.” Right, course you do. Humans, my dear Macy, are one and all champions at claiming they’re worried about someone else when they’re only w
orried about themselves. “Count on me, Chester. I’ll look after her for you.”

  “Your father’s worried about you,” I told her that evening, sitting on a couch at JP’s, before she’d gone upstairs. I thought she’d laugh with me, find our new situation funny, not without its charms, and maybe that would lead to a gentle discussion of Trilipush’s weaknesses, and that would lead to—

  “Harry,” she said. “We’re having fun, aren’t we? It’s nice to have a pal to escort me out on the town when my beau’s away, right? So now, please, Harry, I’m begging on my hands and knees: don’t be a stinking bore.” She stood up, her first step towards the stairs. “Why don’t you talk to one of those nice girls while I’m gone?” she suggested, pointing to the tarts JP employed to set the male customers at ease. “Do you even like girls, Harry? Don’t they teach you how to talk to girls down there on the bottom of the world? Just don’t bore ’em, Harry, even if these ones here are paid to listen to you.”

  Friday, 20 October, 1922, Hotel of the Sphinx

  Margaret: My love. The first thing this morning, while I was sitting for my portraitist, a boy brought up the oddest cable from your father. Absolutely the oddest thing. I read it without exaggeration a dozen times and then finally, feeling anxiety spread to my gut, I had no choice but to send the painter home. It is a nine-word communication from across an ocean, but apparently across even vaster gulfs of confusion: CLARIFY OXFORD IMMEDIATELY. FERRELL QUESTIONS YOUR ACCURACY. MUCH DEPENDS.