The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle

by Pamela Rushby

  Hattie changed into her costume as speedily as she could. She hurried with her eye make-up, hoping she wouldn’t smudge it. It was quite difficult to get the wide black lines straight. Finally, she was ready.

  As she appeared from behind the screen, the maid clapped a hand to her chest and gasped. “Miss! You gave me quite a turn. You look –”

  “Like an ancient Egyptian, I hope!” smiled Hattie.

  Back in the room where the unwrapping was to take place, Edgar and Edwina Raven had already laid the mummy on a table, and stood the top and bottom of the mummy case up against the wall.

  “Hattie, suppose you keep out of sight until I call for you,” suggested Great-aunt Iphigenia. “You’ll be more of a surprise that way, have more of an impact.”

  Judging from the maid’s reaction, Hattie thought Great-aunt Iphigenia was right. She stepped back, out of sight, as the crowd surged eagerly in.

  Great-aunt Iphigenia waited until they had settled, then gave her introductory speech, describing the methods the ancient Egyptians had used to mummify the dead. Then she turned her attention to the mummy case.

  “This is, we believe, the mummy case of a man named Padiamenet. Already I’m aware that it’s an unusual mummy case. If you look at the base of the mummy case –”

  The audience craned their necks, some half-standing to see what it was that Great-aunt Iphigenia was indicating.

  “– you will see that the last twelve inches or so are unpainted. In fact, those twelve inches are an extension of the original case. The last twelve inches have been added after the mummy case was completed.”

  There was a buzz of interest from the audience.

  “And why would that be?” a man asked.

  “Possibly the original case was not intended for Padiamenet,” Great-aunt Iphigenia replied. “It may have been what we would call stock-in-hand in the workshop. Padiamenet, judging from the mummy, was a taller than average man. So the mummy case was extended to accommodate his feet.” She glanced at the mummy on the table. “You will see that this mummy only just fitted into the case. Now, what else can we discover? If my assistant –” she glanced towards Hattie, who stood hidden at the side of the room, “if my assistant will kindly hand me shears and scissors –”

  Hattie stepped forward, the instrument box in her hands. The room went absolutely still, then came a hissing of drawn-in breaths, and a few soft, nervous laughs.

  “My word, for a moment I thought –”

  “It’s like someone come from – from the dead.”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia smiled. “Far from dead, I assure you. This is my great-niece, Miss Hatshepsut Lambton, who kindly assists me, and demonstrates what an ancient Egyptian would have looked like, in life.”

  The room buzzed and then settled again as Great-aunt Iphigenia held her shears aloft. “We will now commence removing the wrappings.”

  The audience leaned forward and watched intently as Great-aunt Iphigenia murmured on, explaining what she was uncovering.

  “An adult male, perhaps five feet nine inches in height, so yes, quite tall for his time. The teeth have advanced dental wear . . . there is evidence of several large abscesses at the ends of the roots of the upper teeth.” She glanced up to explain. “These abscesses form when bacteria from the mouth enters a tooth and infection occurs. Pus forms at the ends of the roots and hollows out a pocket of bone – I can see this clearly where the skin has fallen away, exposing the skeleton. It would have been an extremely painful condition. In fact, if the infection had spread further, it could have had fatal medical complications.”

  “Could that have been what killed this man?” a woman queried.

  “We can’t be sure,” Great-aunt Iphigenia replied. “Possibly –” She broke off. “Well, now. This is indeed interesting.” She drew something out from the mummy and held it up. It was a short, thick stick. “Two of these sticks have been inserted into the mummy, inside the neck, one at the front and one at the back of the spine.”

  “Inserted? Why?” The audience was fascinated.

  So was Hattie. She leaned forward eagerly to see.

  “Most likely to support the mummy’s neck,” explained Great-aunt Iphigenia. “The front one, the one I’m holding up now, has been inserted through an opening made in the neck. The back one –” She passed the stick she’d held to Hattie. Hattie took it gingerly, between two fingers. “– the back one runs obliquely across the spine to support the back of the neck. It’s rather hard to extract . . . ah . . . here we are.” Great-aunt Iphigenia held up the second stick and then handed this to Hattie, too. “What this indicates is that at some point the head was detached from the body. These two sticks – please display them, Hattie – were used to hold it back on.”

  A man rose to his feet. “Do you mean that this person was, well, beheaded? In fact, executed?”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia leaned forward and inspected the mummy closely. “I think not. There is no evidence of decapitation on the vertebrae of the neck. They appear to be intact.”

  “So what could have caused this?”

  “I would suggest an accident in the embalmer’s workshop,” Great-aunt Iphigenia said cheerfully. “When a body is mummified, dried out, it becomes much lighter. But the head, due to the weight of the bone in the skull, is still relatively heavy. If the head should be unsupported, especially when a mummy is being lifted, the head could quite easily become – well – detached.”

  Hattie thought about that. Just imagine! She envisaged the workers in the embalmer’s workshop lifting the mummy, the head falling back, the neck snapping, the dismay and consternation of the workers as the head perhaps rolled to the ground. Hattie swallowed. It was a disturbing thought.

  A young woman at the back of the audience had clearly imagined the same scene as Hattie. Silently, she slid off her chair and collapsed onto the floor.

  “Dear me,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “I think the young lady requires some assistance.”

  There was a scuffle as the audience members nearby attempted to revive the young woman.

  “Fan her.”

  “Here, take my smelling salts.”

  Everyone turned to watch.

  Hattie took the opportunity to put the two sticks she still, reluctantly, held onto the table beside the mummy. Ugh, she thought, wiping her hands down her skirt. Ugh, they’ve been inside him, actually inside him.

  And as she glanced at the mummy, now almost totally unwrapped, with the head awry, the gas lights in the room flickered and the room darkened. A groan, a deep groan of despair, filled the room.

  Hattie, startled, looked quickly around the room. It wasn’t the young woman who had groaned in such anguish; she had been carried from the room. Then who was it? The audience were all returning to their seats. No one seemed to be in distress. No one else was reacting. In fact, no one else seemed to have heard the sound. Hattie looked around wildly. Great-aunt Iphigenia was calmly preparing to continue her work. The Ravens were standing, ready, near the mummy case. But the sound had been so loud, so dreadful, so heartbreakingly despairing – someone must have heard!

  Hattie put her trembling hand on the table and leaned against it. What was that? She felt a sharp elbow in her side. “Pull yourself together!” hissed Edgar Raven. “You’re not going to faint here!”

  Hattie stepped away from the table and straightened her back. She took several deep breaths. “I am not going to faint!” she hissed back. Edgar Raven cast an eye over Hattie and seemed to accept that she was, indeed, not going to faint.

  “Then get on with your work.” He moved away.

  Hattie got on with her work. She passed instruments, removed linen wrappings, moved as gracefully and tranquilly as any Egyptian princess. But her thoughts were racing. Where had that groan of distress come from? She knew she’d heard it! What did it mean? Was Lady Belcannon’s house haunted? And if it was, why had no one else heard the noise?

  When the unwrapping was over and the maid conducted Hat
tie back to the dressing room to change out of her costume, Hattie seized the opportunity to ask the maid if the house was haunted.

  “Haunted, miss?” The maid looked at her with round eyes. “Why, no. Not that I’ve ever heard. What makes you ask that?”

  “Oh nothing, nothing,” said Hattie hastily. “It’s just, well, some houses are . . . you know . . .”

  The maid gave her a sideways look, and they said nothing more.

  Hattie was quiet in the train on the way back to Ely, even though Great-aunt Iphigenia was extremely pleased with her, and was passing on all the complimentary things Lady Belcannon had said about her charming young assistant.

  “And Lady Belcannon says she will be recommending us highly, most highly, to all her friends,” Great-aunt Iphigenia went on, smiling brightly at Hattie. “Especially because of the delightful young Egyptian princess, she said. Well done, Hattie!”

  “Thank you, Great-aunt Iphigenia,” Hattie said. “That’s very good. That’s – excellent.”

  “You’re rather quiet, Hattie,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “Are you feeling quite well?”

  “Quite well, thank you,” Hattie replied. “Just a little tired.”

  “It wasn’t too much for you?” said Great-aunt Iphigenia anxiously. “If it is –”

  Edgar and Edwina Raven had been studying some papers that Edgar had taken from his attache case. Now, Hattie saw them pay sudden attention. They’d like nothing better than for Great-aunt Iphigenia to decide it’s too tiring for me to act as her assistant, Hattie thought. “Not at all,” Hattie replied instantly. “I love being your assistant!”

  The Ravens subsided. Great-aunt Iphigenia was reassured.

  But Hattie couldn’t get that sound, that terrible groan, out of her head. Where had it come from? What did it mean? Hattie had no idea, but she sincerely hoped she’d never hear such a desolate, anguished sound again.

  But she did. And the next time, it was even worse.

  It was at the very next mummy unwrapping, a week later.

  As Edgar and Edwina Raven carefully unloaded the mummy case at the Countess of Carlisle’s house in Russell Square, Edgar remarked, “This is our last mummy, Miss Lambton. I have made some enquiries about purchasing more. As a matter of urgency, I think that Edwina and I should travel to London next week and visit the dealers to see what is available.”

  “Of course, Edgar. I shall leave it in your hands,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia.

  “You won’t go yourself?” Hattie asked her great-aunt.

  “Oh, no. Edgar and Edwina are more than capable of making the purchases and stocking the mummy room up again.”

  Pity, Hattie thought. She would have loved to visit the dealers in antiquities, but she knew she had no hope of going if only the Ravens were making the journey.

  The Countess of Carlisle’s party was going well. The audience had been plied with tea and cakes and wine, and they were in an excellent mood, eager for the unwrapping. Great-aunt Iphigenia gave her introductory speech and beckoned to Hattie to join her, ready to pass instruments, then turned her attention to the mummy case.

  “This appears to be the mummy case of a young woman of child-bearing age,” she began. “The case is quite a realistic representation of a youngish woman, with the suggestion of breasts and wide hips. The face, as you see, is painted a rather beautiful gold, and the entire case is covered in hieroglyphs. The young woman’s name appears in five places on the mummy case, each time spelled a little differently –”

  “Is that usual? The different spellings?” asked an audience member.

  “Not unusual,” replied Great-aunt Iphigenia. “Egyptian names were often long and complex, and a little variation in spelling is not uncommon. The shortest version of the name, here –” She pointed to the place on the lid where the name appeared – “is Tamut. Perhaps that was what her family called her. Now, let us proceed. Edgar, Edwina, if you would?”

  The Ravens stepped forward and carefully lifted the lid of the mummy case.

  “Well,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “This is a surprise. Edgar, Edwina, if you would lift the mummy out, please.”

  The Ravens did so. Hattie’s eyes opened wide. The audience leaned forward. The mummy had not filled the whole of the mummy case. It was much smaller. It appeared to be the mummy of a child.

  “As you see,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia, “Tamut is not a young woman, as the mummy case would suggest. She appears to be a much younger girl.”

  “Then why would a mummy case that suggests a young woman have been used?” asked a woman.

  “Perhaps the family wanted to suggest what she might have been, had she lived,” Great-aunt Iphigenia replied. “We cannot be sure. But let’s see what we can find out from the mummy itself. Hattie, if you please.”

  Hattie handed Great-aunt Iphigenia the usual shears and scissors. Hattie had learned to hold the fearsome looking instruments well up, to display them to the crowd. The audience gasped, rustled in anticipation, and then settled again. Great-aunt Iphigenia set to work.

  “Certainly this is a young girl,” she announced. “She died at quite an early age. I can be sure of this, because she doesn’t yet have a full set of second teeth. The front two teeth are missing, not yet erupted, so I would assume she was perhaps seven years old, or thereabouts. Also, as we have seen, the mummy does not fit the mummy case. I would estimate a height of perhaps four feet. The hair also suggests childhood.”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia looked up at the audience. “Not a very young child, however, because the hair here is well preserved, and you can observe that it is thick at the sides and back of the head.”

  “How does that explain that this is not a very young child?” asked a man.

  “Very young children of both sexes wore their hair in a style called the lock of youth. If this had been a very young child the head would have been shaved, with one long side-lock on the right side of the scalp, falling to the shoulder. The lock would usually have been plaited. But that hairstyle is absent here. This is the style worn by a girl no longer a small child, but not yet married.”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia thought for a moment. “Perhaps the mummy case suggests that this girl would have been considered to be of marriageable age, though she was still so young. Now, proceeding to the body itself . . .”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia gestured to Hattie for a scalpel.

  “Children were frequently mummified differently to adults. Some were not mummified at all. However, this mummy case suggests high status and this girl appears to have been mummified to a certain extent. The brain has been left in the skull. The eyes have been left in place. Some internal organs have been removed and mummified, but they have then been replaced in the abdominal cavity –”

  Hattie suddenly jumped. What was that sound? The audience was completely still, no one was making a noise, but someone, somewhere, was crying.

  Hattie looked towards the door of the room. It had been left open, and she could see maids passing, collecting the cups and plates from the party and carrying them away. Nothing unusual was happening there. Could it be someone in the street? But the outer doors were shut, the windows closed. The sound was growing louder, now not only soft sobbing, but great gulps and heaves of total distress. Hopelessness. Anguish.

  Hattie had never heard anything so heartbreaking. She turned to look at Great-aunt Iphigenia, at the Ravens. Surely they could hear it! But Great-aunt Iphigenia was continuing calmly with her work and the Ravens were watching her, totally composed.

  Then the lights flickered, the room darkened a little, and suddenly Hattie saw someone standing by the mummy case. A girl, a little girl about seven years old, in a white dress, with hair thick at the sides and back of her head, eyes painted with dark outlines. She was crying, sobbing, shaking in distress, her hands wringing together then flying up to cover her face, then wringing again. For a moment, her eyes met Hattie’s. She flung out her hands in a desperate appeal. Then, as Hattie watched, she began to
disappear. She simply faded away – into blackness.

  Hattie gasped. She fought desperately to control herself, to keep her face still and her back straight. If the Ravens saw her discomposed they’d insist she could no longer assist Great-aunt Iphigenia. But, Hattie thought desperately, did she want to? Could she ever do this again, if something so terrible was going to happen?

  Hattie’s head was whirling. She guessed now that the groan she had heard at the last unwrapping, at Lady Belcannon’s house, had had nothing at all to do with Lady Belcannon’s house being haunted. No, it must have been something to do with the mummy that was being unwrapped. Just as it had been this time. But what? What? And why had she, Hattie, clearly been the only one to have heard the groan, and to have seen the crying, despairing little girl? Why had the girl reached out to her, as if for help?

  What help could Hattie give, when she had absolutely no idea what was wrong or what the girl had been asking for?

  There were no unwrapping parties scheduled for the next few weeks, and Hattie was glad of it. She could not stop thinking about what had happened at the last two, and was desperately trying to make sense of it. She needed time to try to work things out.

  The Ravens had packed their bags and attache case and departed for a few days in London, to purchase a new supply of mummies. Great-uncle Sisyphus decided it was an excellent opportunity to concentrate on Hattie’s education.

  “We’ve missed some time, with your involvement in the unwrapping parties,” he said. “I think we could, with profit, spend a morning on arithmetic.”

  Hattie sighed. “I just don’t see the point of arithmetic.”

  “Essential,” Great-uncle Sisyphus assured her. “Absolutely essential. For example, without arithmetic, how would we know that your great-aunt’s unwrapping parties are profitable, that they actually make money, that feeds us all and pays for the repairs to the castle?”