The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  “Go on.”

  “I saw my master, thrown by this man. I think I screamed. I raced down the stairs to find my mistress, to protect her.”

  “Did he chase you?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t look and I couldn’t hear. The winds were still bad,” she said.

  The khamsin winds, which blew so hard and loud they could uproot a centuries old palm and deafen one to his own shout.

  “In the courtyard, I saw my master. I . . . I called for my mistress and then ran to get a cloth, to cover his body.”

  “Then what?” I asked her.

  “I returned. My mistress had thrown herself on his body, weeping.”

  “Did you go to find the painter?”

  The slave girl shook her head. “I took my lady into her quarters and gave her refreshment, then stood by my master’s body and waited for the scribe to arrive.”

  “When did you last see your master alive?”

  “I brought perfume for his mouth, this morning.”

  “How was he? Did he seem in good health?”

  “Yes, he was working.” She looked at the foremen. “The payment was to arrive today.”

  “Why was the window open during the khamsin?”

  “It wasn’t, my lady; we had affixed a cloth to the wall, to seal it shut. I guess when he was pushed through, it tore free.”

  “How long have you been a slave, girl?” I asked.

  “Since the last Opet festival,” she said, staring at her feet.

  Less than a year. “This is the only master you have known?”

  She nodded.

  The widow was brought in. The first sight of her was startling, for she was quite the loveliest woman I’d ever seen. Tears tend to swell and distend most women’s eyes, but they made hers more luminous. She bowed to me, a vision in mourning blue. The foremen and scribe tripped on their sandals to assist her – finding a cushion, a glass of wine, a wrap for her shoulders.

  “Condolences to you, daughter,” Anubis greeted her.

  She bowed to me, then saw the painter. “Murderer!” she screamed. It took all three men and Sa’anktet to pry her off the man. He stayed slumped on the floor, streaming blood from his chest, face and arms. He hadn’t defended himself.

  “Tell me what happened,” I commanded her when she had calmed down. “With control.”

  She had been in this room, spinning for thread. She had refused both mid-morning and mid-afternoon meals because the winds were making her head ache. At some point in the afternoon she heard a shout and opened the door to see the slave girl running from her husband’s corpse.

  “After that, I remember little,” she said, “I was overcome by grief.”

  “It was a love match, you and your husband?”

  She shrugged, weeping prettily. “We had an understanding.”

  “Where are your children?” I asked her.

  She tore at her hair and fell to her knees. “We were not blessed by the goddess,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Bes has not come to this house.”

  “Your husband was not a young man,” I said. “Was he married previously?”

  She nodded. “His first wife died before she could give him a son.”

  The priests would want to talk to this widow. It was the duty of the sons and daughters to maintain their father’s funerary offerings. In the event there were no children, the couple needed to hire a priest to stand in that position. The temple had enlarged its holdings ten-fold through this practice. The other choice was to adopt an adult: certainly less expensive than renting the state’s version of offspring.

  “You say you heard a shout. Then you saw the slave girl running. How close were those two events?”

  She shrugged. “A few moments apart, no more.”

  “Do you think the shout was your husband?” I asked. “Do you think that is what you heard, his last cry?”

  “You couldn’t –” the slave girl interrupted.

  The girl knew where I was heading.

  Her mistress glared at her, then turned to me with wide, tear-filled eyes. “I believe it was. I heard my beloved’s last words!”

  I dismissed them all. My sister brought refreshments and I took off the Anubis head. “Tell me what you know,” I said.

  Sa’anktet is a seeress. From childhood she knew things before they happened, saw things that were not there, but would be. She had married a young draughtsman whose life she had saved by telling him not to follow the trail of the lizard that day. His partner had scoffed at the warning and walked into the tomb, just after a lizard had crawled in. No more than a moment later, the ceiling of the tomb caved in and killed the man.

  My brother-in-law did not listen so well after they were married, and thus became dinner for a minion of Sobek, the crocodile-god.

  “The widow lies,” she said.

  “She would have never heard his cry,” I agreed.

  “No,” Sa’anktet said, reaching for a thin slice of bread, layered with smoked duck and onions. “The khamsin winds were too loud.”

  “Also, he was dead long before he fell out of the window.”

  She sipped some wine and poured me some. It was a northern vintage, well-aged. The administrator had not suffered from the delayed wages. They even had water here.

  “If the fall didn’t kill him, then what did?” Sa’anktet asked. “And how did he fall out of the window?”

  “I cannot fathom it, the method of his death.”

  “Did the gods come for him, in his time?” she asked.

  “There are no marks to indicate otherwise, but my instinct tells me no. The conspirators knew he was dead, because they cleaned up the refuse from his body, though a hint of the odour remains.”

  She wrinkled her nose and set down her piece of bread. “The wife killed him?”

  “You heard her say she was barren. His first wife didn’t conceive either. I think perhaps the fault was his, not theirs.”

  “She killed him because she wants to be a mother?”

  “No. She killed him because he wasn’t a father. He didn’t have any offspring and he was wealthy.”

  I saw the realization on Sa’anktet’s face.

  “Perhaps he planned to adopt a son,” I suggested. “ ‘If a man dies, he leaves his wife a third of the estate and the rest goes to his children’,” I quoted. Inheritance practices are something one learns in the House of Anubis.

  “If he has no children,” my sister said, “the wife gets it all.”

  “She’s young, could easily marry again . . .” I took a slice of the duck.

  “How did the painter get involved?” she asked. “His is such a sad tale. The workers say when he was removed from the Tomb of the Many, from painting, that he upset a jar of paint and the two trails of it circled each other and then met again. The paint won’t clean away – it’s a sign of his innocence, they say.”

  The hair on my unshaved head stood on end. “The accusations are false?”

  “They were made, but it is more likely that the painter refused User the pleasure of his wife,” she said. “That is not the seeress speaking, but the gossip. What are you going to do?”

  The image of the two ends of blood meeting together was stark in my mind. “Speak to the slave girl,” I said. “The widow has already admitted her guilt, even though she doesn’t realize it. With the winds, she could have heard nothing. If she opened the door it was because she anticipated her husband’s death. Furthermore,” I said, “there are curious marks on the chair’s leg.”

  “Such as?”

  “Find the cloak the slave girl claims she covered the body with. I daresay it doesn’t exist, but a length of heavy rope does.”

  My sister knows the weavings of my mind well. “You think they rigged the chair to topple, to throw the administrator out the window?” She chewed for a moment. “How would they know when to do it?”

  “Easy enough. If her scream wasn’t heard, she could have run down the stairs or thrown so
mething. Anubis cares little for petty tricks. Who killed the man, is his concern.”

  “So whatever the painter says, whatever his intent, a man can die only once. The administrator was dead, so Rerari is innocent?”

  I nodded.

  My sister stood and brushed out her linen dress. “Speak to the slave girl, she knows more than she says.” She paused. “Her manners are far above her station. And the way she moves – like a snake.” She looked at me and quoted. ‘Wisdom can be found among slave girls.’ ”

  “A serpent,” I murmured. “Yes, she does move as such. Sinuous.” I stood, leaving Anubis on the chair. “I’ll go walk in the garden. Send her to me.”

  The storm had torn branches and scattered flowers, and everything lay under a dimming dust. Anubis, I prayed, help your servant be just and merciful. I turned at the girl’s approach. She was still naked and the evening grew cool.

  “What could happen to place a well-educated, well-bred young woman in the slave quarters of a Libyan administrator?” I asked as I inspected an uprooted sycamore. “You are young, and recently have fallen on bad times. I conclude your father must have committed a crime, thus slavery is punishment for his child.”

  I heard her tiny intake of breath.

  “Tell me,” I said, turning to look at her. “Was he executed? For what? Treason? Betrayal? –”

  “They were lies!” she said. “He was innocent!”

  As the First Prophet of Anubis, I hear this refrain as often as the rising cry of the falcon. I know its nuances. The girl spoke what she believed to be the truth. By Ma’at, her father was probably another victim of intrigue and paranoia, no more or no less than Rerari the painter. “Your mother?”

  “Executed too,” she whispered.

  “Brothers and sisters?”

  “We were all given into the keeping of the temples,” she said. “But, the sem-priest, he . . .” She swallowed. “He made me a woman, and then had no use for me. So he sold me.”

  I wished I had my mask; hearing of temple misconduct infuriates me, a reaction I cannot control. She shivered under my glare, even though she was not its victim. “He sold you so you could not bear witness against his misdeeds,” I stated.

  She looked off into the sunset, that last moment before Kemt is plunged into darkness, and I saw the film of tears on her eyes. Deliberately I breathed out myself and inhaled Anubis. I must be relentless. I must have the truth of this matter.

  “The painter’s children will be sold,” I said to her.

  “No,” she whispered, grabbing my arm. “They are innocent. To punish –”

  “You are the witness,” I said, pulling away. “Your words are his sole condemnation.”

  “His wife is pregnant,” she said.

  “She will be delivered before she is strangled,” I said. “The gods are not unmerciful.”

  “The baby?” the girl asked, stricken.

  “It will belong to the temple, to rear as they see fit.”

  “Oh, mother Isis,” she whispered, dropping to her knees. “What about the law?”

  “Law? Execution is the law when a life has been taken,” I said.

  “But during the khamsin? I thought, I was told, I –” She froze, having heard her words.

  “What did you think?”

  “Crimes of passion during the winds are forgiven, they are accounted as madness brought on by the demons of sand and debris.” Her expression pleaded with me, but I needed the truth.

  “It has been a tradition,” I said, “to pardon those who committed such acts, but your painter intended to lay hands on your master. Rerari intended to make the administrator bend to his will. Intended. His was not an act of passion.”

  “What could be more passionate than protecting his family? What greater fire in the belly is there than to provide for one’s children?” She wept, but for those children or her own childhood? “He can’t be punished for this, he was only doing what he could,” she said through sobs. “This is too cruel.”

  I touched her shoulder and felt the bones beneath her skin, the scabs on her healing flesh. I dropped my voice to a whisper, kneeling in front of her. “Your master was already dead, was he not?”

  She hiccuped and looked at me over her fingers.

  “Truly, how did your master die?” I asked. “Do you rejoice?” I pressed her shoulder as I spoke. “Did he do this to you?”

  “I cannot say,” she whispered. “Only death will break my loyalty.”

  “If you stay, your lady will bring you death.”

  She looked away. “Then I will see my father much sooner.”

  Fury burst from me as I got to my feet. “As you will. Serve your lady and court your own martyrdom. Forget those children who will be at the mercy of degenerate priests and unscrupulous owners. Live for yourself.” I walked away, calling for my chair and my cloak and Anubis.

  I sat alone in the House of Mummification, save for the dozen bodies whose fluids were slowly draining into the pounds of natron we deposited on them daily. Across from me the administrator lay on a low sloped table, naked and washed. Waiting. “Be at peace,” I whispered to his ka, and continued to sketch on my ostraca.

  What is the sign? I asked Anubis again, as I had asked all through the journey back from the Village, and all the night I had sat here, drawing the curves the blood had followed this morning, the directions the painter’s paint was purported to have flowed. After filling in all the pools and drawing the two lines coming together, the amount of ink I had used was almost unconscionable. I sketched the lines again, the bare two meeting, forming a wavering oblong.

  I set the flake of stone down and walked to the corpse. “You didn’t protect yourself,” I said to his ka as I walked around the body. “You were dead before you fell, dead sitting up. Was there poison in the cucumbers? The wine? You have no symptoms, no one stabbed you, nothing bit you and caused swelling. You were not strangled. You did not fight your assailant. Speak to me,” I pleaded. “I need you to tell me what happened before putrefaction claims you.”

  The corpse said nothing; in all my years of speaking to them none have answered. I sighed and rubbed my neck. How long was this day. Out in the desert I heard the lonely cry of the jackal. I glanced over at my empty chair, the ostraca before it.

  I gasped.

  Upside down, the two lines formed the shape of Edjo, the cobra goddess, the uraeus, the protectress of the Magnificent Ones. Cobras, who leave no outstanding mark. Cobras, who smell like sun-warmed cucumbers. Cobras, who kill with peace and stillness. I called for Djedet and lit all the lamps. The strike mark was there, hidden in a fold of flesh, where two needle-sharp fangs had penetrated straight into the biggest blood channel in the body. A second mark on his thigh.

  “Bring me my embalming robes,” I commanded, “and double Anubis’ offerings this dawn as thanksgiving.”

  I donned linens that would be buried with the administrator, for they would bear his body matter upon them. The priests chanted as I broke the corpse’s nose to extricate the offal in his head. I had already scooped out a lot of it, while my “slitter” sharpened his obsidian blade, when an acolyte interrupted me. He fell on his face, begging for mercy.

  One did not interrupt the rites.

  “A girl,” he cried, “she is bleeding and begs –”

  I tore off the linen cloak and foot coverings, the face shield and cloth, and handed the long-handled spoon to Nectanab. Clad in my underdress I ran out of the door and up into the main hallway. The slave girl was leaning against a wall, gasping for air. She turned to me, her skin was ashen and her eyes already glimpsed the Gates of the Gods. No, I prayed to Anubis, not this child, not for years.

  “Physician!” I shouted. “A cobra bite!”

  Her chest was bandaged, but had bled through. “I cut the strike mark,” she said, then laughed. “I fear it is late.”

  “The same snake?” I questioned as I held her up.

  She nodded. “He gave me time to come here and tel
l you.”

  I heard a horse whinney outside. “How did your master die?”

  “Me,” she said. “My mistress, bought me,” the girl gasped as I removed the linen on her chest and replaced it with new. “I charm snakes.”

  “She intended you to kill her husband with a cobra?” I asked. “Is this poison still in there?” I placed my hand on her chest; there was no way to form a tourniquet.

  “I tried to suck it out, but –”

  With the angle of the strike, she would have had to have been cat-headed Bast to reach it.

  “I must tell you,” she said, “this morning, while my mistress spoke to my lord, I sneaked up behind him and made the snake strike.”

  “Your master was seated?”

  She nodded her head. The priests washed the wound with wine. Her screams were wrenching, but there was a chance she could live. When she got her breath back she said she and her mistress had arranged the administrator’s body immediately and struck him a second time.

  “My lady wanted to be sure,” she said, her eyes losing focus.

  “Why now?” I asked.

  “The vizier,” she panted. “My master and lady had fought. He was going to adopt a son, the vizier was bringing the documents.”

  “And the painter?”

  “She sent the message. No one would doubt his guilt, for they all knew the enmity between –” The girl breathed deeply as a smile stole across her face. “It doesn’t hurt. It feels like falling asleep. He will be saved, won’t he?”

  “The painter?” I said. She had given her life for his family and I was to blame. “He will be saved.”

  She nodded, fighting to keep her eyes open. “My name,” she mumbled, “so I am not lost in the Afterlife . . .”

  I brushed her hair back from her face. “Tell me, child.”

  “Nofret,” she said, and sighed.

  Her body was warm still when the priests removed her from my arms. Ra had started his day’s journey but I sought the night-blackness of Anubis’ chambers. I crawled across the raised obsidian floor to his feet. I said the words for her, for Nofret, the words that she hadn’t been able to say in life: “I am pure! I am pure! I am pure!”

  Those words I would never be able to say, for I had lied.