The Egyptologist

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The Egyptologist Page 37

by Arthur Phillips


  We left for the south on a boat the next day, reaching Luxor on the 27th. By the way, Macy, feel free to add any local colour you think helps: hot weather, camels, natives, all that. No feeling for it myself, but I think it does draw a certain class of readership, and film people eat it right up.

  On the 27th, I made my way to the suburban address Trilipush had given his Cairo hotel for forwarding messages. Instead of Trilipush, two American journalists were sharing the rent on this villa, their headquarters for sending dispatches on the King Tut dig. They’d taken it on the 10th of December. And had they ever heard of an archaeologist named Trilipush? One of them laughed, sarcastic: “Popular fellow.” Another gentleman had come last week asking the same question. What did they tell him? “We said that if he’s an archaeologist, then Howard Carter would know him, but I’ve never heard of your boy, chief.” They told me how to find Carter’s site and were happy enough to take some money: if they caught wind of Trilipush or Finneran again, they’d contact me at once at my hotel in Luxor. “Yes, boss, we sho’nuff will!”

  Off I went to the big show: the mob of workmen and tourists that marked the excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Now, one of the great benefits of my career, Macy, is the wide variety of fascinating humanity it’s been my happy lot to encounter. Howard Carter was a fellow of about fifty when I met him, and admirable. You know anything about him? He wasn’t a toff, wasn’t born into wealth and privilege like Trilipush and Marlowe, wasn’t even rich. No, Carter was a gamekeeper’s grandson who’d worked hard, studied hard, taught himself what he needed to excel at his field, and through intelligence, persistence, and good luck had made this quite winning discovery that the whole world knows all about now, and justifiably so. Now all the mummy voodoo and the broken furniture and the necklaces and whatnot, well that stuff doesn’t interest me much, and the little bit of it that Carter showed me that day was fine, but a little goes a long way. No, what interested me was Carter himself. He was my sort of man, a self-made, honest man. And he was an Englishman, but not the type who couldn’t forgive you for not being English. I could see the respect his Gippos had for him. Not to mention the mobs of journalists and photographers and tourists and would-be assistants and admirers, although none of it distracted him. As I asked my questions about his work and about Trilipush, I couldn’t help but think: Here’s a poor boy made good, not some toff criminal, and it’s a pity that the scandal about to erupt all around here is going to pull the world’s attention from Mr. Carter’s work, and place it on mine instead.

  Well, Carter had indeed met Trilipush several times, and in fact, Trilipush was hard at work on something, working on a shoestring budget but just on the other side of those cliffs, Carter said, pointing to a monstrous wall of this hellish valley. So even more of Trilipush’s story had been true. And, Carter says, about a week earlier, another bloke, an American, had been looking for Trilipush, and Carter’d told him where to go as well, and off he’d gone with one of Carter’s men showing him the way. When had Carter himself last seen Trilipush? That same day, a week earlier. That morning, a letter for Trilipush had inadvertently been included in the post one of Carter’s boys had fetched, and as he was curious to see what Trilipush had found, Carter had taken the letter over to Deir el Bahari personally. And? And Trilipush was filthy, limping from an injury to his leg, a little unwell perhaps, but “wildly excited about his find.” He absolutely wouldn’t let Carter peek inside, and that was that. Carter returned to his own camp and a few hours later was found by an American, Mr. Finneran, asking for Trilipush. “I began to feel like the man’s social secretary, and I am, after all, rather busy here with my own work.”

  I understood the dismissal, took it with grace, shook the great man’s hand, and thanked him sincerely for his time, sorry to have bothered him. I headed back to town to hire myself a guide to help me find Trilipush’s site.

  Now, Macy, what did we think at this moment? I’d been wrong. I admit it now and I admitted it then: Trilipush had told the honest truth: there definitely was a treasure, and Trilipush was so close to it, as of a week earlier, that he wouldn’t even let the great Carter see the site. That same day, Finneran must’ve found him. I was behind them by exactly a week, and part of me despaired, since I didn’t know where either of them was staying. Now, I didn’t really credit O’Toole’s idea that Finneran had come to kill Trilipush and steal the gold, though you can never be entirely sure with men under pressure. More likely, with the wealth right there glittering in front of them, the two of them would probably make amends, patch it all up, with Finneran relieved to forget everything I had so patiently helped him see, and now the murderer and his serially gullible father-in-law-to-be were already a week ahead of me on their way back to Boston, where Finneran would pay off his debts with Egyptian gold and Trilipush, bearing wealth and fame, would take Margaret’s hand as his wife, though a sad sort of marriage it would be, him using her to disguise his unnatural proclivities. And he’d probably get his Harvard job back on the strength of his find. I’d probably already missed them, and now I’d have to go sailing back the way I’d just come, to interrupt family bliss once more in order to ask my troublesome questions on behalf of poor murdered Caldwell-Davies and Marlowe. I didn’t relish the possibility, Macy. I don’t care much for Boston, and I didn’t want to go back. I’d spent enough time sailing the Atlantic Ocean, and I admit I might even have given up then, closed the case right there if these two were already on their way back to Boston with Trilipush consolidating his lies. I’d’ve done anything to keep the investigation near the scene of the murders.

  I had to hold on for another night to get answers, and my fears grew stronger the next morning, when I finally managed to hire a local boy and two donkeys and we trotted over the rocks, past another archaeological site managed by an American, past a giant temple cut into the cliff side, past barren, brown boredom, not too different from certain rough parts of Australia. And then after a silent spell, for no particular reason I could see, the boy stopped and said, “Here.” “Here? Are you sure?” There was absolutely nothing different about this bit of cliff-side donkey path than anything we’d seen in the previous hour. We were on an incline amidst some little hills, around a bend from any other living thing, and I wondered if I was about to be ambushed by this Egyptian boy. “Here?” I asked again, and the boy shrugged. I tied up my donkey, took a walk around the area, and found nothing of interest, no sign of any life at all. “How do you know it’s not farther up?” I asked. The boy was adamant, he knew these hills, and this was what I had told him Carter had told me. We waited. I searched in the heat for two hours, walking up and down, finding nothing and no one. No glinting gold, no fleeing Finneran, no treacherous Trilipush, no corpse of Caldwell, no murdered Marlowe.

  I was worried, and no lie. I had no other address for Trilipush, and now it appeared he’d shut down his excavations in the last week, kicked over the traces. At least I still had the post. Those cables and letters to Margaret had come from somewhere. I headed back to town and went from post office to post office distributing O’Toole’s money until I heard a correct answer: I paid the Egyptian behind the counter to open his mouth—“Yes, Mr. Trilipush comes quite regularly to check the poste restante, and yes, he sends cables from here, and the last time he was in was probably two hours ago”—and then in my joy I paid the Egyptian behind the counter to close his mouth, and to signal my boy there in the corner the next time Trilipush appeared, and there’d be another payment coming his way.

  I left my little assistant there (one of a rotating team of eight I assembled that afternoon for their discretion, instructed them in the basics of secret surveillance, and counted on them for their ability to know the streets and blend in). I stationed the boy discreetly in the post office, waiting for the mouse, December 28th, late in the afternoon. I then went to the riverboat office and disbursed more payments, billable to the Davies case, the O’Toole case, the Marlowe case, one and all of them: but the office h
ad no riverboat reservations for a Trilipush or a Finneran on their records, and no one had travelled north to Cairo by that name today. I left my name and some money: any reservations under those names, please contact me at my hotel. I went to as many other Luxor hotels as I could find: no Finneran or Trilipush anywhere, and I scattered my clients’ money behind me: should those names appear on a register, I was to be contacted at my hotel at once. I was busy, all right, but I had nothing: Trilipush and Finneran hadn’t left and they weren’t there: what could be clearer than that? “Patience, Macy,” I urged. “Now more than ever.” I’d laid the only snares I had at my disposal. I continued my circuit: to the villa, to the excavation site, to the post office to check on my local boys. The 28th. The 29th (post office closed). The 30th.

  Thursday, 28 December, 1922

  This morning, CCF and I stepped out to take the air and saw a man some 200 yards down the path. I watched him for hours from behind the rocks. Orange-haired, even from this distance, with some lazy native boy. He paced and sat and wandered and sat. Do you know him, CCF? “Oh, indeed, Ralph, my boy, oh yes. He is hungry to intrude, destroy, confound. He devours what other men build. He is a scavenger of lives and survives on loose ends.”

  It is certainly time to hurry along with our work. CCF sends me into town for food, check the post. No word from you, M. There is no need to continue pretending, my darling. Our “split” is quite forgotten.

  Afternoon spent cleaning and analysing Chambers 8 and 9, copying illustrations and texts.

  Friday, 29 December, 1922

  There is in any scholarly effort a certain amount of guesswork, a clarification of ideas achieved only through the physical act of writing. By definition, a first draft is both inaccurate and necessary. One uses one’s pen to cut through impossibilities. Now I can throw out much of what has come before, and prepare the text with more accurate analysis.

  To that end, CCF and I work on measuring Chamber 9, understanding the items in relation to each other. I must quickly copy down the last translations, History Chamber Wall Panel L and the walls of Chambers 8 and 9.

  Most extraordinary find of course is the complete copy of the Admonitions of Atum-hadu. Spend hours reading it.

  I realise also that I misunderstood Pillar 12: it is not an ally carrying the dead Atum-hadu; it is Atum-hadu carrying the dead Master of Largesse. CCF pointed this out to me. Brilliant insight on his part.

  WALL PANEL L: THE LAST HOURS OF EGYPT

  Atum-hadu was abandoned. He left Thebes and crossed life-giving Nile and walked. Alone, he carried his goods, his Admonitions, paint, reed, ink, brushes, his cat. And he carried the Master of Largesse.

  Saturday, 30 December, 1922

  Journal: CCF and I discuss next steps, and we are decided. We will return to this place of our glory, but later. Now it is time to go home, gather our forces and our money and our health, file new requests with the proper authorities, et cetera.

  I have a few more notes to make in this journal before CCF and I return home, on Monday. All clear, simplest thing in the world: I will post these notes to my fiancée, to be sure of their safe publication should anything happen to CCF and me on our long crossing to Boston. A terrible risk to the written record of my extraordinary work otherwise, at the whim of the elements on a boat. Finneran and I will travel by boat to Cairo, stay the night at the Hotel of the Sphinx (where CCF is laughingly ready to settle my accounts stretching back to October), take the train to Alexandria, and board the Cristoforo Colombo for a pleasure cruise home. I will marry Margaret. CCF is 100 percent behind the idea again, will help me to cure her of her troubles. We will have children. We will be happy. Then I will return to Egypt to conduct a more complete survey of my great discovery here. My work will be studied forever. Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt: The Complete Admonitions of King Atum-hadu (2nd edition, revised and complete, Yale University Press, 1923). The Discovery of the Tomb of Atum-hadu by Ralph M. Trilipush (Yale University Press, 1923).

  Finneran provides the cash to deal with these last details in Luxor while he prefers to stay near the tomb. “I find the place too lovely to leave just yet,” he says, dozing on a cot in Chamber 8. I set off to town to arrange tickets on various boats home, hotel reservations along the way.

  But that red-haired fellow is lurking about again, and CCF and I watch as he loses interest, again some 200 yards down the path from us. The strangest sort of pursuer—inefficient, purposeless, but still clumsily menacing my work. He is utterly unrelated to anything important, but he seems devotedly intent on being in my way. At last he putters off, and CCF sends me to run our errands.

  On the afternoon of the 30th our patience is rewarded at last, Macy! I’m back at my hotel after again staking out Trilipush’s excavation site across the river to no avail. And now, all at once, Trilipush moves from invisible to omnipresent. The riverboat office calls: reservations were made just now for Trilipush and Finneran on the boat north to Cairo for Monday, the 1st of January. A wire is delivered to me from Cairo: they’ve received word at the Hotel of the Sphinx to expect Messrs. F and T for the evening of January 2nd. And then a knock on the door: one of my little Luxor bandits, his palm out. “Bock Sheesh,” he says, the local greeting. “Bock Sheesh,” I reply. “What news?” His palm remained outstretched. Of course: as soon as his hand had been suitably weighed down with money, its connecting pulley system opened his mouth: Trilipush had come to the post office an hour before, had received nothing and sent nothing, and he was now sitting not thirty feet from my very hotel!

  I ran after the boy down the stairs, out into the blinding sun, and across the street. I hid behind a palm tree. My heart was beating hard. Any moment now I would at last meet the devil who’d slaughtered the Australian boy and the English officer, the swine who’d broken the heart of that wondrous girl, your aunt. I recalled a picture of him she’d shown me, his arm round Marlowe’s shoulder. Trilipush had looked an ordinary man with sandy hair, but with something greedy and immoral around the mouth and eyes. I looked now where the boy was pointing, but I saw no Trilipush. “There, he is there.” The boy pointed again to a bearded man in native garb, staring at a drink at a shaded café table. “You’re certain?” “Certain, yes. The man at the post said. I follow him here. He takes drink, I go to you.”

  And here we were, Macy, after all this time, racing so many thousands of miles across the globe, probing events of years before, chasing the dreams and nightmares of so many clients, often not even knowing myself that this man here was the man I was seeking, this was the man whose crimes would become famous only three decades later thanks to you and me right now.

  “Mr. Trilipush, I presume?” I stood before him with the sun behind me, a tried and true method to disorient an interrogatee.

  He looked up. “Ah, the dogged Mr. Ferrell. I’m a busy man. I’ve only a few minutes for a drink. Join me if you must, but do let’s be brief about it.” The effect was astonishing, Macy, I confess it. The brilliance of criminals must never be denied, otherwise it’s the detective’s pride getting the better of him, you see. And he was clever: he’d known me, a total stranger, at a glance, God knows how, and hadn’t shown the slightest surprise that I was standing before him in the middle of Egypt, and had recognised him, considering.

  For he looked horrible. Whatever he’d once been—in the spring of their fraudulent affair, when he’d wooed Margaret with smoke and mirrors—she never would’ve wanted this filthy thing, that’s certain. He was dressed in a torn robe, dirt-stained and spattered with blood and tied with bits of rope knotted together, and he wore a single, broken boot, his other foot just a mass of crusted, yellowing bandages. His beard and hair were matted, and his face was tanned unevenly, and simply covered with dirt elsewhere, and one of his eyes was blackened and swollen, and his cheek and forehead bruised and cut quite badly. I nearly pitied him, Macy, but then I was put in mind of the filthy home where a promising young Aussie boy had grown up, the same boy murdered by this pom sitting in f
ront of me. And my pity vanished.

  My God, how he stank, Macy. He stank of rot, of tombs, of his own filth, I don’t know. Probably of his ghastly, bootless leg. At the end of our talk, when he stood and hobbled away, he was practically a one-legged man. Yet, for all this horror, most maddening of all, most certain to eliminate any trace of pity I might possibly have felt for him, he still spoke as if he were completely unaware of his appearance, with all the dismissive bite and insane, unjustifiable snobbery of the English upper classes, all that distaste for real people, the generations of congealed hatred he’d been born with in his blood, that made him feel superior to the rest of us. You could hear what this stinking criminal thought of us Aussies: that pom bastard voice that makes colonials act like servants and servants act like blacks and blacks pick up rifles and revolt. And of course there was absolutely that something extra in his manner: the peculiar singsong of the invert, although it was greatly subdued, no doubt from the habit of hiding his nature.

  The questions crowded my head, and I had to take a moment to organise my thoughts, so I told him to order me a beer, which he did in the local lingo. And then I plunged in, asking questions as they occurred to me, all my clients’ interests mixed up, and the criminal answered each one so rapidly that I knew he’d been prepared for me. Finneran had betrayed me to this filthy wreck, no question. There must’ve been heaps of gold, that was sure.

  Now recall my position as I circled Trilipush: I couldn’t hope he’d quickly confess to the killings, reveal the whereabouts of the bodies. Four years on, he was too set in his lies, relying on the passage of time, the weakness of pressing physical evidence. No, instead I had to provoke him, like a bull, until in his anger he wrote his crimes on his face. Snares had to be laid, and in my words (transcribed only a few hours later, so I don’t doubt their accuracy for an instant), you’ll see those snares tightening around our hare. Note that I do not hesitate to transcribe his every insult and verbal charge at me: you must see in them his thrashing against the hook setting deeper in his lip. His arrogance undoes him, so I include every word, no matter what he throws at me. You must understand, as a man of the investigative sciences, that I extracted my own feelings from the proceedings, allowed him to fire off at shadows. A good lesson for you, Macy: the detective uses his own hollowed-out form as bait, makes of himself a tarman against which the criminal rages, ensnaring himself in the process.

 

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