Sonnet of the Sphinx

by Diana Killian

  Grace chuckled.

  The Shorbet Araneb rabbit soup arrived. It was a rich, slightly greasy-looking mixture. Peter tore off chunks of the fried brown bread and added it to his soup. Doubtfully, Grace followed suit.

  “How is the quest for the lost Shelley going?” he asked.

  She sighed. She had told Peter all about “Sate the Sphinx.” This did not stop her from running through all the possibilities again. She paused when the waiter brought their dinners: lemon-flavored lamb served over basmati rice for Peter, and shish kebab rubbed in cinnamon clove for Grace.

  “We’ll have another.” Peter tapped his mug, and the waiter nodded.

  “I think John would have loved this place,” Grace remarked, nibbling her shish kebab. It was unexpectedly spicy. She licked her lips and found Peter’s gaze on her mouth. Heat flooded her face, but maybe it was the spices.

  “John? Oh, right. Mallow.” He raised one brow. “Don’t tell me I’m now competing with ghosts as well as dead poets.”

  She laughed at the idea of Peter competing with anyone. The waiter brought another round of drinks, wished them “Bel hanna!”and departed.

  “It is odd that he just disappeared,” Grace mused.

  “Perhaps he had to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he may have got in over his head.”

  “With what?”

  His lashes lowered, concealing his thoughts. “How much do you know about Mallow? You’ve read one letter and parts of a journal. If he’d any brains, he wouldn’t commit anything incriminating to paper.”

  “He wasn’t that k—” In time it occurred to Grace that this might not be a very tactful comment. “Well, what are you suggesting?”

  “You said he was stationed in Egypt. He lived next door to a collector of all things Egyptian.”

  “Your theory is that he was involved in smuggling antiquities?”

  “It’s one of any number of possibilities.” He smiled sardonically at her expression. “You don’t like that theory.”

  “No, I don’t. I think I’m a better judge of character than that.”

  “Do you?”

  She considered her involvement with him, and knew that he read her thoughts accurately when he questioned, “Did Bullhead Drummond really suggest that I was trying to off you?”

  “He thinks you killed Kayaci.”

  “As do you.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were watchful.

  “No.”

  “Strive to get a little conviction into it, darling.”

  “No pun intended?”

  He laughed and signaled for another round.

  That was surprising. She had never seen Peter drink to excess. She suspected it was partly because he liked always to be in control, but he was definitely knocking them back. Not that it seemed to affect him.

  The conversation moved to less hazardous topics as they finished their meal. The final order of drinks came withBasboosa, semolina cakes with lemon and honey. The restaurant was crowded by then, and the smoky air and tinned music was contriving to give Grace a headache. She ordered Turkish coffee, and as far as she could tell it was simply ordinary, very strong, very sweet coffee.

  Peter seemed steady enough when they left the restaurant, but he looked up at the starry sky, and said, “Perhaps we should walk.”

  “To Rogue’s Gallery?” Despite her newfound enthusiasm for walking, Craddock House was a good twenty miles. “I can drive.”

  “I’m not drunk. I thought we might talk.”

  That sounded ominous.

  “Haven’t we been talking all evening?”

  His look was quizzical, and Grace realized she sounded as if she were afraid to be alone with him. She offered her hand as they crossed the wide country road, walking in silence across a meadow of moonlit buttercups and bluebells. The scent of dust and flowers lingered in the warm air.

  As the woods loomed somber and dense before them, Grace was reminded of the Tinker’s Dam in Kentmere where they had first met. What a very long time ago it seemed.

  She was glad that Peter did not continue into the woods, heading instead for a strange rock formation that stood in the middle of the field. The three tall outer stones were slightly bent, like robed figures hunched against the wind. In the center was a long slab that looked as though it might have been the roof of a prehistoric temple.

  They entered the circle of stones.

  “What is this place?” Grace stroked the nearest sandstone form, still warm from the day’s heat. There was a perfect hole in the top of the rock about the size of a face.

  “It’s called the Monk’s Supper.”

  “They do sort of look like hooded figures from behind.”

  She sat down on the fallen square in the center of the ring, slipping her shoe off and rubbing her foot. She was not really dressed for an impromptu hike.

  Having dragged her out there, Peter seemed to have nothing to say. The chirp of crickets filled the night.

  She studied his profile, etched in silver. No Egyptian relief had ever looked more remote and aristocratic. It was at moments like those that he reminded her of the maddening and mysterious heroes in those Barbara Cartland novels she had secretly devoured in her teens. Something he would no doubt be appalled to learn.

  “When you said the situation with Kayaci would soon resolve itself, what did you mean?” she asked abruptly.

  It was a moment before he turned to her. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  A muscle moved in his jaw. “I felt, shall we say…confident that some interested party would take care of the problem.”

  “What interested party?”

  “There’s a large Turkish expat community in London. Turks, Turkish-speaking people, Kurds—people with scant love for Kayaci and the Turkish government. People who have lost sons, brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters, and sisters, for that matter.”

  “You have friends there?”

  “You meet people in prison.” He spoke evenly. “You form…alliances.”

  Like the alliance he had formed with Hayri Kayaci?

  “You think one of those people found out Kayaci was here?”

  He smiled, and it was a chilling thing. “I’m quite sure the news traveled quickly.”

  “And one of them killed Kayaci?”

  He said nothing.

  Grace shivered and hugged herself. Staring at her shoes, at the gleam of moonlight on the toes of her dusty pumps, she asked softly, “Did you go to France to see Catriona?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t hesitate. She wished she could read that brusque tone, but perhaps there was nothing to read. She said lightly, “How is the Bride of Dracula?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see her. Apparently she’s in the States.”

  Was that an alibi for his crazy ex-girlfriend? Grace could imagine Catriona dispatching Harry and anyone else who got on her wrong side.

  “You acted so…odd on the phone the day you called me. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned her head, and he was looking at her, smiling. He sounded genuinely perplexed.

  “You once said you’d never lie to me.”

  “I don’t think I said that, Esmerelda.” His smile was a twist of self-mockery. “I said I’d try not to.”

  Grace made an unamused sound, and he said, “There it is, that little Mary Poppins sniff. I can always tell when you’re displeased.”

  “Newsflash. I’m not trying to hide it.”

  He laughed, sounding more like himself.

  “Right. Well, I haven’t lied to you. I’ve never been keen on the idea of commitment. I think you know that.”

  She nodded.

  “Steady relationships, routine—that’s never been for me.”

  It wasn’t really a surprise, and she supposed it was as well they were getting it out into the open, although why right there and right then?

  “I haven’t asked for
anything.”

  “You don’t have to ask. You’re that kind of girl.”

  She found that a little insulting, although he probably didn’t mean it to be. And he was right, after all. She had no quarrel with routine or steady relationships or reliability or responsibility, or all the other “R” words.

  “I went to warn Catriona. I wanted her to know about Kayaci. I wanted her to know that the vermin is gnawing its way out of the woodwork.”

  “You don’t owe her—”

  He interrupted flatly, “I do. But when I phoned you, and you asked whether I were in France, I felt…”

  “Guilty?”

  “Uh…yes.”

  She didn’t say anything. She could have said, “You don’t oweme anything,” but she couldn’t help feeling that he did, since she had essentially stayed on in Britain because of him. And she certainly didn’t want to hear him agree that he didn’t owe her anything.

  Because she didn’t know what to say, she said nothing. Peter did not speak, either. And after a time, the silence between them changed and softened like the mist rising from the damp ground.

  It seemed to Grace that whether he knew it or not, the fact that Peter was explaining himself to her was a positive sign. She knew he cared for her. Perhaps it would simply be a matter of time before he came to realize that his feelings for her were the lasting kind.

  Or she came to realize that they were not.

  17

  Grace glanced up from Ceram’sGods, Graves and Scholars in time to catch Scott Sartyn passing her with that habitual scowl he seemed to save for her. Grace scowled back at him.

  She turned back to the book but there was nothing about Sir Vincent Monkton in it. She moved on to the next book, Weigall’sTutankhamen and Other Essays. Weigall had been Inspector General of Antiquities with the Egyptian government and on the staff of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo back in the 1920s. She was hoping he might have something to say on the topic of the irascible Sir Vincent Monkton.

  But mum—or perhaps mummy—was the word there, too. Grace moved to the next tome.Letters from Egypt and Palestine by Maltbie Davenport Babcock, written in 1902. For a moment Grace paused to consider parents barbarous enough to name a child “Maltbie.”

  She noticed that Sartyn was making another pass, apparently trying to see what she was researching.

  If only she knew what she was researching, how much simpler it would all be.

  The problem was that because there was little information available on John Mallow, she had to resort to secondhand sources. Mallow had been engaged to one of Monkton’s daughters and had run off with the other. Monkton was comparatively well known. It was not inconceivable that a reference or two to Mallow might crop up in connection to Monkton. It was slim, but she was running out of options.

  The connection seemed to be Egypt. John Mallow was fascinated by all things Egyptian. His neighbor was a famous eccentric Egyptologist. John Mallow had been stationed in Egypt. The Shelley poem was about the Sphinx.

  On the other hand, Scott Sartyn’s archaeological dig had been in Turkey. Peter had been imprisoned in Turkey. Hayri Kayaci had been a prison guard in Turkey. So maybe the connection was Turkey.

  Egypt or Turkey, somehow all of these threads wove a tight web around Innisdale, which was about as far from the sands and sun of the Middle East as one could get.

  But there had to be another connection. Why did Sir Vincent Monkton disapprove of John Mallow for Eden? Sure, he had ended up running off with Eden’s younger sister, but it didn’t seem like there was any indication of trouble before that. Mallow had referenced Monkton in his journal, but the references had been casual and friendly enough.

  What had changed between them?

  And why had John Mallow run off with Arabella Monkton? There hadn’t been more than three passing mentions of her in his journal. Of course, Grace had access only to the year before Mallow’s disappearance. Maybe something drastic had happened in the following year. Something to turn Monkton against John, and make John abandon Eden.

  And somethinghad happened: John had had the Shelley poem authenticated. And John had disappeared.

  An hour later Grace did not know much more about Sir Vincent Monkton, but she had expanded her knowledge of the early days of archaeology in Egypt. She found it engrossing. The first systematic exploration of Egypt had been undertaken by French scholars accompanying Bonaparte’s military expedition through the Nile Valley in the eighteenth century. When the French turned Alexandria over to the British in 1802, all their work, including their discovery of the Rosetta Stone, was handed over as well.

  Fascinated, Grace read on, learning about the discovery of the legendary Serapeum, where generations of the sacred bulls of Apis were buried; the unearthing of the temple of Abu Simbel by circus strong man Giovanni Belzoni; the amazing find of a cache of over fifty royal mummies in Deir el-Bahri. As Egypt and its fabulous antiquities became “fashionable,” a Wild West period of plunder-and-pillage archaeology began, which gradually slowed but did not effectively stop until 1914. Even in the twenty-first century, Egyptian antiquities meant big money on the black market—thus encouraging Lady Vee’s hopes of one day owning her own mummy case, Grace thought ruefully.

  Monkton’s own contribution was the discovery of the Tomb of the Sorceress in 1921. The “sorceress” was actually a minor princess, but her ornately painted tomb had yielded, among other treasures, a collection of literary, magical, and medical papyri within a mummified leopard.

  Unfortunately, Monkton’s discovery had occurred during a decade for monumental achievements in Egyptology, and the appearance of the sorceress was eclipsed by the previous year’s discovery of the fabulous riches in Tutankhamen’s tomb.

  “Have everything you need?”

  Grace returned from the windswept dunes and the lost tombs, and blinked up at Roy Blade.

  He waved a hand in front of her. “Ground control to Grace Hollister.”

  Slipping off her specs, she leaned back in her chair. “Actually, I’ve been looking for a book calledKingdom of the Dead by Sir Vincent Monkton. It doesn’t appear to be checked out, but it’s not on the shelf.”

  Blade jerked his head toward the counter where Sartyn, arms folded, stood observing his domain. He reminded Grace a bit of those statues of ancient pharaohs. That wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command.

  Was Blade cautioning her? She couldn’t read his profile; the eye patch covered the eye facing her.

  “I’ll have a look,” he said casually, and pushed off the desk.

  He returned a short time later and handed her a faded red volume. “I’ve checked it out in your name.”

  “Terrific!”

  He grinned and put a finger to his lips. “Best keep it under wraps. Someone else had it in his private collection.” He jerked his head back toward the desk where Sartyn stood.

  Grace shoved the book in her knapsack.

  “If anyone is behaving suspiciously, it’s Sartyn,” Grace informed Peter at Rogue’s Gallery later that afternoon. “You should see the way he watches me.”

  Peter, who had been trying for twenty minutes to wrestle a suit of samurai armor into a shipping crate, grunted noncommittally.

  “And I think he’s been following me.”

  “And why do you think that?”

  “Someone’s been following me. I can feel it. I can feel someone is watching me.”

  Peter swore under his breath and sucked the blood welling from where his knuckle had scraped the mouth of the black battle mask.

  “You’ve probably just ingested sixteenth-century hibernating microbes.”

  “So long as they continue to hibernate…” He gave the metal face a long, level look.

  “Anyway, I’m notthat imaginative. It’s a very real, very primitive sense, the ability to tell when someone’s watching you. I don’t know if it’s animal instinct or what, but it’s real.”

  Peter did not argue with her.

  “You’ll brea
k your hand if you punch that thing.”

  “Do I look like the kind of chap who resorts to brute force when frustrated?”

  “At the moment? Yes. What I can’t understand is why Sartyn would deliberately try to throw suspicion on me. And he definitely did; he told the police I was going through Harry’s pockets.”

  “Perhaps he thought you were going through Harry’s pockets. It was dark on the path. Or perhaps something about you raises alarms. It should do.”

  She ignored that last crack. “According to Blade, he swiped the library copy of Monkton’sKingdom of the Dead and tucked it away on his own bookshelf.”

  Peter directed a droll look her way but said nothing.

  “Fine, but why that book? Miss Webb said he was asking all kinds of questions about Sir Monkton. Why?”

  “You said his field was archaeology. What could be more natural than interest in a famous local archaeologist? He may be planning to write a book.” He added dryly, “It’s been known to happen.”

  Grace admitted, “He’d make an interesting subject—Sir Vincent, I mean. He was kind of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Heinrich Schliemann. Apparently he dressed and lived like an Egyptian noble, even at home in England. His first wife was one of these doughty lady archaeologists, but after she died, he married an Egyptian girl who was young enough to be his daughter.”

  “And this shocks you?”

  “Not that. There are rumors that he wasn’t exactly strict about keeping track of finds, but that, unfortunately, was par for the course in the early days of Egyptology. And he wasn’t uncovering treasures on the scale of Howard Carter or Flinders Petrie or even George Reisner. Still…”

  Peter’s eyes held a certain gleam. “Ah, Petrie. The hidden treasure of Princess Sithathoriunet. Gold, amethyst, lapis lazuli, and turquoise jewelry from the Middle Kingdom, as well as ceremonial vessels of alabaster and obsidian.”

  Trust Peter to know his lost treasures. “Petrie’s finds ended up in the Eqyptian Museum in Cairo, but Monkton was like a lot of his contemporaries, and accumulated a private collection. Unfortunately, almost all of it was lost in the London Blitz.”

  “It’s possible. Incendiary raids destroyed sections of the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. To this day, the west side of the Tate is scarred by wartime explosions.”