The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis

by Natasha Narayan

  “Hear me, Ptah Hotep, vizier to the great Pharaoh Isesi. Now I will raise thee from the d-d-dead,” the jackal intoned.

  Sinister shadows raced across the white walls. The jackal leaned over the table, the tip of its snout hovering over the coffin, its hands spread wide. Silence descended on us, as every man, woman and child in the audience drew in their breath. As for me, I could scarce breathe at all. Rachel squeezed my hand and I must confess I took comfort from her touch. She was so warm, so real.

  A stocky figure with the head of a stork-like bird appeared, elbowed the jackal aside and announced. “I am Thoth, god of wisdom. I have come here to unroll the mummy.”

  Thoth advanced toward us. I could see its ibis mask was not as ancient as that of Anubis. The beak was painted with fresh gold paint. Whereas the jackal was sinister, the stumpy figure of Thoth, with its nodding beak, was almost comical. Anyone less like a bird than my sturdy little aunt I could not imagine.

  Thoth and Anubis, my aunt and my father, approached the wooden coffin and each took one side. There was a crack, a rending of aged wood, that echoed through the theater. The lid came away in their hands, exposing something gleaming white underneath. The audience gasped. Some people so forgot themselves as to stand on their seats. Thoth and Anubis lifted the mummy out and the Egyptian “boys” quickly approached to remove the coffin. Finally here it was, the ancient corpse in its swaddling of bandages, laid out on a table before our fascinated eyes.

  Thoth waddled forward, rooted around under the mummy then emerged with an end of the bandage in its hand.

  “STOP!” A voice yelled.

  It was Father. He tore off his mask. “Stop!” he howled again.

  In my wilder flights of fancy I had imagined the mummy coming to life, slowly raising itself up on the stage and taking a few faltering steps toward the petrified crowd. But I never dreamed of this. My father, unmasked, advancing upon the corpse while a stream of frenzied jabber came out of his mouth, ripping apart the mummy’s bandages with shaking claws.

  Why was he behaving like a lunatic? Especially after I had warned him against removing his mask.

  Aunt Hilda tore off her own mask and advanced upon her brother with a brow like thunder: “Theo! Have you gone stark, raving mad? We will have to admit you to Bedlam at this rate.”

  My father turned to her, a tangle of bandages in each hand. “Don’t you see?”

  “I see that you have let me down. Again.”

  “The mummy’s a fake.”

  “A what?”

  “A Fraud! A Fake! A Cheap Modern Copy!”

  “Nonsense.”

  “These bandages are new. I’ll stake my life on it. They have never been anywhere near the desert!”

  Chapter Seven

  It took a second for my aunt to understand my father. Just another second to name the thief.

  “Gaston!” she roared. “That French blighter Gaston Champlon has stolen my mummy.”

  “Control yourself,” Papa wailed. “Please, Hilda, remember your, er … dignity.”

  Pandemonium broke out among the audience. Several ladies fainted and had to be carried out into the fresh air to be dosed with smelling salts. Some of the younger men scurried to the aisles, as if offering to battle the French there and then. A few scholarly-looking old gentlemen were heard to inquire what all the fuss was about.

  Aunt Hilda was spitting fury: “Gaston has always been jealous of my Egyptian finds. He is a foul garlic-eating fiend.” She advanced to the front of the stage and shook her fist at imaginary Frenchmen in the audience. “This means war, Champlon. I will hunt you down and I will make you pay. There is no hiding place from my vengeance.”

  Poor Father was hanging on to his sister, trying to attract her attention. She shook him off her sleeve like an annoying ant. Father has several friends among the scholars of Paris. He is a man of peace not war. I know he would hate his sister to make trouble. Especially with Napoleon’s war-mongering still a vivid memory.

  “Come on,” I said to my friends. “We’d better go backstage. See if we can do anything to help Father.”

  Ladies were swooning on the strong arms of their escorts. The confusion was indescribable as everyone fled in a different direction. Somehow my four friends and I managed to fight our way through the throng to the stage door. I opened it a crack, just enough to allow the others through. I shut the door firmly in the face of a man, with the rat-like look of a reporter from one of the scandal sheets.

  Someone had lowered the curtain. I prayed the thick velvet would muffle my father and aunt’s argument.

  “You need evidence. You can’t just accuse this man without evidence,” Father said.

  “I know this is Gaston. I recognize the way he works.” Aunt Hilda took up her Thoth mask and smashed it to the floor in a fit of rage. “He stole all the glory from me in Luxor!”

  “If you’re wrong he could set the lawyers on you. He would accuse you of spreading lies and injuring his reputation. You would have to pay huge sums of money in damages.”

  Father need not have bothered. Aunt Hilda was not listening. A stream of furious—and not necessarily accurate—insults flew from her foam-flecked mouth: “Foul frog. Horrendous Hun! Rotten rotter. He means to ruin me!”

  I went up to the mummy itself. Only a blind man would have been fooled by the bandages. Why, they positively dazzled with starchy whiteness. No way could this mummy have been buried under the desert sands for thousands of years. I gave the bandages a firm yank. They came away easily. Soon I was holding a yard of linen and had exposed the so-called corpse.

  It was nothing but a bundle of twigs. Common sticks wrapped in stout twine.

  When she saw the “corpse” Aunt Hilda grew pale. “Gaston mocks me. He laughs at me in front of the world’s newspapers.”

  Something fluttered out of the wad of bandages in my hand and flew to the floor. I stooped and picked it up. For a moment I stared, puzzled, at the thing in my hands. No one else noticed it and so I did something very wrong. Something I hope you would never do. I put the fragment into my pocket.

  The appearance of an Egyptian servant in our midst helped to distract attention from me. He was carrying a loaded platter. Steam rose enticingly out of a teapot.

  “Cup of tea, Hilda?” Father begged. “Tea is so very good for the nerves.”

  “Nerves? Blast my nerves. Don’t care a hoot for them. I want Gaston arrested. Want to see him pay!” But Aunt Hilda consented to sit down and have a cup.

  Someone was knocking loudly on the stage door. A moment later a servant appeared followed by an old gentleman. When I saw the bushy beard my heart sank. How many more blows could father take? It was his idol, Charles Darwin.

  “My humblest apologies, dear sir,” Father sloshed tea everywhere in his eagerness to rush to the famous scientist’s side “I would not have had you witness this tawdry farce. Not for anything!”

  “Tawdry indeed,” Aunt Hilda snorted. “It was a very refined production.”

  “Do forgive me. It was a foolish and common—”

  “Nonsense, Theo,” Mr. Darwin smiled. “I enjoyed it immensely.”

  “What?”

  “It was great fun!”

  “Fun?” Father asked, as if he did not know the meaning of the word.

  “I can’t remember when I last enjoyed something so much. Emma said to me: ‘Charles,’ she said, ‘this is just the tonic you need for your nerves.’” Mr. Darwin patted my father kindly on the arm. “Jolly good show.”

  “It didn’t go quite … according to plan.”

  “Things rarely do, my dear fellow.”

  Cheered by the relief on Father’s face, I left the grownups to it and beckoned the others to follow me through the stage door to the emptying theater. Chattering knots of people were still huddled in the anteroom. The fabulous canapés and glasses of champagne, which had been provided for the guests, were largely untouched. Waldo and Isaac grabbed a few prawns in aspic and I took a handful of
cheese puffs. I shook off the same rat-faced newspaperman, who had recognized me as Professor Salter’s daughter. Then we went outside to the front of the museum and sat down together on a park bench.

  “So,” mused Waldo. “It looks like the Frenchman stole the mummy. I wonder why.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “What do you know about it, Miss Clever-clogs?”

  “I just don’t think it was the Frenchman. Not unless he lives in the East End of London, and is a dab hand with the sewing needle.”

  “What?” Waldo said rudely.

  “Don’t tease us, Kit,” Isaac put in. “Tell us what you mean.”

  “I have a clue.” I drew forth the thing that had fluttered out of the mummy’s bandages. It was a grimy, water-stained bit of cloth.

  “What on earth is that?” Waldo asked.

  Rachel was studying the fragment curiously. “What does it have to do with the mummy?”

  “Can I have it?” Isaac asked.

  Slightly reluctantly I handed it over and Isaac took it, turning it over this way and that. Finally a smile broke out on his face. “You are clever, Kit,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Stop making up mysteries,” Waldo grumbled.

  “I’m not.”

  “Course you are. Just to make yourself seem clever and important.”

  “Hold on, Waldo.” I held up the greasy slip. “This is a tailor’s mark. You know one of the labels tailors sew into their clothes to identify their firm. Look, here are the initials of the tailor and here is the beginning of the letter S—”

  “Capital S, and part of a small p for Spitalfields,” Isaac interrupted. “I’m guessing that the mummy’s bandages came from a tailor with the initials MZ.”

  “And Spitalfields is where most of the London tailors are based. The mummy’ bandages must be scrap linen from one of the firms there,” I added. “So all we have to do is find a tailor with the correct initials.”

  Waldo couldn’t help being impressed. He reddened slightly, annoyed at being shown up by a mere girl. “There are probably dozens of tailors in Spitalfields with the initials MZ,” he muttered, but I took no notice. He was only trying to save face.

  “I’m going east,” I announced.

  “Can I come?” Isaac asked immediately.

  Isaac can be relied on. He has sporting blood and is always up for a challenge.

  As for the others, it was as if I had declared I was going to the moon, such is the fear of London’s East End. I have heard that district is a den of wickedness. How I longed to see it! Rachel, tediously, was the most nervous. (Sometimes I wonder why I do not have a more adventurous friend.) She frowned at me, while Waldo turned up his nose in what he hoped was a manly way. All the while Ahmed was silent, clearly trying to follow our talk.

  “Scared?” I smiled at Waldo. “You don’t have to come if you think it’s too dangerous.”

  “Hardly,” he answered coolly. “I suppose I shall have to chaperone you. Someone will have to look after the girls.”

  “I fear you will have a wasted trip. I intend to look after myself.”

  Part Two

  To listen is better than anything—thus perfect love is born.

  Maxim 39, The Wisdom of Ptah Hotep

  Chapter Eight

  “Help!” I screamed. My boots had skidded on something foul on the pavement. I toppled and would have landed with my bottom in the slush if strong hands had not caught me under the elbows. I turned round to see who had saved my skirts from the slime. Oh no, it was as I feared.

  “Thank you,” I muttered, checking under my boot. There was the skin of a jellied eel stuck to the sole. I removed it with a fingertip and flung it savagely away.

  “My pleasure.” Waldo smirked. “Always at your service, ladies.”

  I wanted to say something biting, to wipe that horrid look off Waldo’s face. Annoyingly, I could think of nothing on the spur of the moment.

  “Are you all right, Kit?” Rachel fluttered around my elbow.

  “Don’t be uneasy on my account. Direct your attention to staying upright.”

  “We should never have come here,” Rachel put her hand on my arm, while she stared around us fearfully.

  Until this humiliation, everything had gone to plan. Yesterday I told Papa I wanted to go shopping in London’s fashionable Regent Street. Distracted with mummy troubles he was glad to agree. He is always delighted when I take an interest in anything feminine. He had generously given me three whole guineas and we had agreed that Aunt Hilda would put us up for a few days at her house in Bloomsbury. However, instead of the glittering West End, the hansom carriage had deposited us in Petticoat Lane, in the darkest East. This, I guessed, was the center of the tailoring district.

  We were in the midst of a riot of foul and greasy tatters. Dress coats, frock coats, livery, plaids, knee breeches. Gentlemen’s garments in every faded shade of black, brown and blue. The ladies’ dresses: drab plum and violet, dingy maroon and green. Spilling into the sewage-gushing gutters were thousands of boots and shoes, shining and newly blacked. Look closer and you could see the split heels and worn soles. The rent and repaired leather. Tumbled over the boots were dribs and drabs of handkerchiefs and lace under-things; so washed and worn they would never be white again.

  “I would never wear such rags.” I muttered.

  Rachel looked at me reproachfully. “Many people have no choice, Kit. They must either wear ‘such rags’ or freeze to death.”

  Instantly I felt ashamed. Why is Rachel always so right? She acts as if she has a personal telegraph line to the god of good hearts.

  The lane seethed with a mass of ragged people. Now that Rachel had pointed it out, I could see that many, if not most, were dressed in the clothes for sale all around us. The women were tired and hollow-eyed, some with mewling babies perched on their hips or hanging by a strip of cloth from their shoulders. The men were lean, scarred with disease and fighting. Half-naked children played in the gutters. The stench of sewage, sweat, fried food and dirt seemed to swirl in foggy green air. I had never thought dirt had a smell before. It was so overpoweringly disgusting I wanted to put my handkerchief in front of my nose. For a moment I thought I might swoon, as if I was a feeble namby-pamby like the Minchin.

  “This not London,” Ahmed said, looking around with a dazed expression. “Where is?”

  “Yes it is,” I replied. “This is the East End of London.”

  “London rich. Biggest city of Empire. Richest city of world.”

  What Ahmed was saying was true. Of course London is the biggest and best city in the world. Right then and there I resolved to take him somewhere grand, Pall Mall or Regent’s Park.

  “This is more like bad place in Cairo. Very bad place.”

  “We have poor people too,” Rachel explained.

  I could see Ahmed wasn’t really convinced. He must have been told stories about London, he probably thought the streets would be paved with guineas. In truth I shared a little of his shock. Never had I been so grateful for my cozy home in North Oxford. The golden spires, green fields and fresh air.

  “Isaac! Isaac!” Suddenly Rachel was yelling. “Isaac! Where are you?”

  The boy had vanished. All around us were dirty bonnets, greasy toppers and foul bowler hats, without a sign of Isaac’s brown curls. I felt out of my depth. Still, I had to be strong. I had dragged everyone here. This was my responsibility.

  “He may be in the hands of those Skinners,” Rachel moaned. “Oh Kit, this is your fault.”

  We had heard the stories. “Skinners” would lure children into alleyways with sweets and then strip them naked and make off with their clothes. Gangs of muscular “garroters” overpowered their victims in broad daylight!

  Ahmed was pulling at my hand.

  “Not now, Ahmed. We have to find Isaac.” I said, shortly.

  “Please, you look, Kit—see Isaac.”

  Ahmed was pointing down an alley even
fouler than Petticoat Lane. A grubby signpost said Raven Row. A quarter of the way down was a beige and brown blur. I stared and it focused into Isaac, pausing without a care, on the edge of an excited crowd.

  For a instant I hesitated, then taking a deep breath I took the plunge. All remnants of light and air were cut off in this foul lane. The soot-blackened houses lurched crazily inwards, as if they were drunk and about to fall down to the ground in a stupor. Through steamy gratings in the pavement I glimpsed the hovels below. Nine, ten, eleven men and women huddled together, stitching away as if their lives depended on it.

  “What are you playing at!” Rachel scolded once we’d caught up with her little brother. “It’s dangerous round here. We must stick together.”

  Isaac didn’t trouble to answer. He pointed to the scene in front of him. A swarthy man with a knife scar down one side of his face had a white rat on his bare arm and a carrot in his mouth. As we watched, the rat ran up the arm, somersaulted, righted itself and then took the carrot out of its owner’s mouth. The crowd cheered and a few coppers pattered into his hat.

  “I wonder if I could make an invention of that,” he said excitedly. “A mechanical rat, that plays tricks.”

  “Come on, Isaac,” I said firmly, pulling him by the arm away from the crowd. “We have detecting to do.”

  Something had caught my eye further down the alley, a glint of a sign. “ZWINGLER’S,” it said in large letters.

  The others followed me, past numerous sweatshops and small tailors, till we came to the shop in question. The entrance was crowded with military clothes, a welcome splash of scarlet in these drab surroundings. In smaller letters under the large wooden sign were the words: “Moses Zwingler’s, clothier and tailor to the Gentry. All garments stitched to highest standards.”

  The shop was empty save for a thin girl of about nineteen years of age, with sallow skin, red-rimmed eyes and surprisingly abundant brown curls. Lovely curls, if they were brushed and cleaned. Indeed a little like Rachel’s glorious ringlets.