Sonnet of the Sphinx

by Diana Killian

  “Why would you think he’s talking about the Monkton Estate?”

  “I know it’s a stretch, but hear me out. First off, although it’s documented that there was bad blood between John and Sir Vincent, no one knows what the reason was, and John never said a word against Sir Vincent. When John first showed interest in Eden, Sir Vincent seemed to be entirely in favor of the match. That means that something changed along the way. And since Sir Vincent lied about the reason for the split, it seems to me that Sir Vincent was the one with something to hide.”

  “Maybe he didn’t realize originally that Mallow and Eden were serious.”

  Grace ignored this. “I think it’s in John’s character to protect the father of the girl he loved—or at least not speak out against him. Or at least not speak out against him until he had given him a chance to set things right.”

  “In other words, you have no idea.”

  She pulled her glasses off. “You have to grant that the psychology is correct.”

  Peter laughed. “I do?”

  “I’m serious. Now, the thing that Monkton and John had in common, besides Eden, was Egyptology. John was stationed in Egypt, and it seems likely he would have heard the stories about Monkton’s making off with ancient treasures. And from everything I’ve learned about John Mallow, he wouldnot approve of that.”

  Peter set the translation book aside. “Your theory is that Monkton amassed a collection of Egyptian artifacts and antiquities during the 1920s, which he later claimed was conveniently lost in the London Blitz?”

  “Yes. Besides the numerous complaints about him from other archaeologists, he had been declared persona non grata in Egypt by the government. In fact, proceedings had begun to retrieve some of the smuggled artifacts, when the collection was lost in the Blitz.”

  Peter raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Suppose Monkton had the foresight to remove part of the collection before his London home was bombed? Museums were stashing artworks with the gentry all over the country for that very reason.”

  Peter’s eyes narrowed. “You believe he hid the collection in his country home?”

  “Despite the fact that destroyed pieces of the collection were identified in the rubble of his home, the rumors still persist that he had hidden his collection.”

  Dryly, he said, “And where there’s smoke…”

  Grace shivered at that particular analogy.

  “True, those rumors could be wishful thinking. It’s awful to consider that Monkton carried off irreplaceable artifacts, only to get them blown to bits in England.”

  Peter studied John Mallow’s meticulous hieroglyphics. “It would make sense on one score. It would explain what Scott Sartyn was up to.”

  “Exactly! He wasn’t hiding out here; he was trying to discover where Sir Vincent might have hidden his collection. But then Kayaci showed up and jeopardized the whole show.”

  “Or, more likely, wanted a piece of the action.”

  “So while Kayaci was stalking you, Sartyn was stalking him. Sartyn killed Kayaci and…”

  “I’m interested in this next bit.”

  Grace wrinkled her nose. “Okay, that’s a problem. Who killed Sartyn? But the rest of it makes sense, don’t you think?”

  Peter didn’t reply, flipping back through the pages of Mallow’s journal and beginning to read from the beginning once more.

  “So what I want to know is,” Grace said, “would it be possible to get blueprints of the Monkton house?”

  30

  “The other reason I like the idea of a secret treasure room,” Grace was saying, as she rapped on the walls of the room where Scott Sartyn had died, “is that Monkton was fascinated by the secret doors in the Great Pyramid and the idea that there might be a hidden chamber beneath the Sphinx.”

  “Popularized by Edgar Cayce and his Atlantean Hall of Records.” Peter spoke absently, his fingers probing knowledgeably at the underlip of the fireplace mantel.

  “Yes, although I don’t think Monkton needed Cayce to set him off. He was plenty eccentric all on his own. Lots of modern scholars also believe in the idea of a subterranean hall beneath the Great Sphinx. The passages are there; they just don’t seem to lead anywhere.”

  “Odds are, you’re right,” said Peter. “This house was designed by the same architect who planned Craddock House. A secret passage or a hidden room is not out of the question.”

  “The same architect might have used some of the same tricks twice,” Grace pointed out hopefully. And who better than Peter, who had uncovered so many of Craddock House’s secrets, to figure out the mysteries of the Monkton Estate? “Otherwise, we’d have to start pulling up floorboards and cutting up walls and…” She was kidding. At least she hoped she was kidding.

  Peter did not respond to this.

  “The irony would be if there really is a room full of hidden treasure somewhere in this house, and Catriona and her band of cohorts were sitting on it the entire time and never knew.”

  “That would certainly be ironic,” he murmured.

  It was very irksome to her that she could never get him to say anything sufficiently critical of Catriona.

  Peter stepped back from the fireplace. The furniture beneath dustcovers looked like a host of politely seated ghosts. Above the mantel hung a macabre Romantic portrait by John Fuseli of a sleeping woman with an incubus sitting on her belly, clearly a souvenir from the Ruthvens’ sojourn. Monkton had never been interested in any decor that was not straight from the Middle Kingdom.

  Before the fireplace was a chalk outline of where Sartyn’s body had lain. A dark and ghastly stain marked the floorboards. Grace tore her gaze away from this and concentrated on Peter.

  They had focused on that particular room because Sartyn had seemed to concentrate his efforts there on that fatal night—whether because he had already searched the other rooms, or because the room seemed the most likely locale. After several minutes, Peter had centered in on the fireplace. He knocked on panels, pressed different places along the molding, tugged on fixtures.

  Watching him in action, Grace wondered who had introduced whom to a life of crime. She preferred to think Catriona had seduced Peter into it, but he wasn’t the type to be led into anything he didn’t want to do.

  “So where did you meet her?”

  “Who?” His voice was muffled as he was now inside the fireplace, pressing along the brick interior.

  “Catriona.”

  That disembodied voice replied, “We were both modeling in Paris.”

  “Modeling?”

  He spared her a glance. “That’s right.”

  “You were a male model?”

  He withdrew from the fire-scarred but otherwise immaculate mouth of the fireplace and gave her an exasperated look. “And bloody hard work it was.”

  “I—” She couldn’t believe it. Of all the possible occupations she had dreamed up for him—Not that his elegant bone structure and striking features wouldn’t photograph like a charm, and he certainly wasn’t above capitalizing on his attractiveness. She’d seen that often enough.

  “Drop it. There’s a good girl.” He went back to pressing bricks.

  “How do these things usually work?” She tried tugging on a tall, ornate sphinx-shaped andiron. It was very heavy. Then she realized that it was fixed to the stone floor. Was that normal? “Not exactly a practical place to put a doorway.”

  “It depends on how often you plan on using it and how desperately you need to hide the room—and whatever’s in it.” He ran his hands lightly down the wall as though he were brailling the stone, learning it by heart. “It’s here,” he murmured. “I can feel that.”

  She watched him commune with the stone for a few moments, then examined the andiron more closely. She tried pulling it to the left. Nothing. She tried pulling it to the right. Nothing. She tried turning one sphinx head. It didn’t budge. She tried the next one. Nothing. Perhaps they were fastened to the floor to prevent anyone from making off with the
m. They were quite impressive.

  She tried pulling it with both hands as though it were a joystick. She rotated; the andiron stayed stuck.

  “Whatare you doing?”

  Grace was bearing down on the left andiron, shoving it toward the floor. To her shocked delight, the floor seemed to give. There was a heavy grating sound, and the back of the fireplace wall scraped a few feet open.

  “Ohmy…” she gasped.

  Peter looked taken aback as he stared at the cavernous black opening beyond the parting in the wall.

  “Beginner’s luck,” he said, but a smiled tugged at the corner of his mouth as he met Grace’s wide eyes.

  The light from their lantern shone into the dark room beyond, and they could see the dull gleam of metal fixtures, tall braziers.

  “It’s real…” Her voice gave out. She whispered, “We found it!”

  He nodded and turned on his flashlight, slipping into the dark opening. Grace followed on trembling legs.

  A strange mixture of scents greeted her, a musty mixture of bitumen and spices and—cheese and onions.

  Her flashlight beam played over the floor and ceiling, then froze on what appeared to be a golden face staring back at her.

  A funeral mask of gilded cartonnage, she realized after a dry-mouthed moment. “I thought it was alive.” She gulped.

  Peter did something to one of the braziers. There was a hissing sound, and a tiny flame sprang into life. Weird shadows danced across the room, but Grace only had eyes for the tumble of treasure dominating the center of the chamber. Stacked from floor to ceiling was every kind of imaginable item, from delicate painted chests to rough-hewn stone carvings.

  “It looks like Tutankhamen’s burial chamber,” she said faintly.

  “Or his rummage sale.”

  She laughed unsteadily. This was so much more than the few stolen trinkets and artifacts she had expected to find. There were even several mummy cases. It was…outrageous.

  “The rumors were true. It was all true.”

  The brazier flame sputtered, and for a moment the room went dark.

  “Tut tut,” said Peter. The light flared once more.

  Grace laughed nervously at the bad joke. “I suppose we can’t complain. It’s amazing they work at all.”

  In silence, they prowled around the room.

  “We should call the police,” Grace said at last.

  Peter said nothing, fingering a fabulous necklace of gold and blue beads adorning the stone bust of an elegant bronze woman.

  In the far corner of the room, a mummy case lay on a bier surrounded with mason jars. The jars were coated in dust, concealing their contents. Grace stared at the incongruously modern jars and felt a little light-headed.

  “Peter,” she called feebly.

  She didn’t hear him moving through the aisles of priceless junk, but all at once he was beside her.

  Grace pointed at the jars. Her hand shook, her shadow wavering against the wall.

  “Jesus,” he said very quietly.

  Trust Peter to understand instantly. His eyes met hers; they looked black in the pallid light.

  “It’s not possible, surely.” Her voice was tight with tears. She wasn’t sure why she was so near tears; she refused to define the suspicion lurking on the outskirts of her conscious thoughts.

  Peter’s face was stern.

  He went to the mummy case and levered the enormous carved lid off. He gazed down at the contents, his face expressionless.

  Grace stared at his face, then moved toward the case.

  “Grace,” he said in a strained voice.

  She ignored him, gazing down at the wrapped corpse within the box. Between the bandaged hands was a thin roll of paper.

  Her eyes met Peter’s.

  Gingerly she reached out and slipped the browned paper from its resting place. Cautiously she unrolled a bit of the paper.

  The writing was faded and spidery.

  This lament of soft sky and sunny wind…

  “It’s the sonnet,” she said in an unfamiliar voice. “Sate the Sphinx.”

  The brazier light gave another jump and went out.

  Peter swore softly and switched on his flashlight, moving toward the brazier.

  Grace turned her flashlight back to the sonnet.

  There was a small sound, like a cat-sized yawn. Grace directed her flashlight toward the sound.

  The mummy case against the wall was opening, and as she stared, a shapeless form seemed to slip out of the case.

  “Peter!”

  He turned, but the figure had melted into the crowd of statues and furniture.

  “Someone’s in here with us,” she hissed. She shined her flashlight in the direction where she had seen the other. Here and there a painted eye or ancient smile on a funerary stela caught the light, a gleam of gold or the sparkle of a jewel was briefly illuminated in the electric beam.

  “Don’t say anything else,” he warned. “Turn off your torch.”

  Grace snapped out the flashlight, understanding the danger. In the tomblike darkness they were at the disadvantage of this other, who clearly was on familiar ground.

  Replacing the sonnet in the case, she ducked, hands outstretched to guide her. She moved softly, carefully away from where she had seen the other. What did Peter want her to do? Should she try and make her way toward him, or should she try and get out of the room, or should she find a corner to hide in? Their best bet was probably to try and close in on their quarry from both sides, but Grace wasn’t any too keen on trying to corner a murderer, especially with her bare hands.

  She caught the whisper of footsteps coming toward her. Her heart began to thud so loudly in her ears she could hardly hear over it. It wasn’t Peter, because Peter’s flashlight was still on—she could see his silhouette magnified against the far wall, his shadow within devouring range of the shadow of jackal-headed Anubis.

  Her groping fingers knocked against a small vase or statue. She heard it rocking and grabbed blindly, surprised when her fingers closed about it, keeping it from pitching off a carved table.

  The nearly soundless scuff was drawing near. She felt blindly ahead of herself, then scooted through an opening between a crate and a wooden pillar. She was in a maze of artifacts and statues piled in the center of the room.

  Peter’s beam slowly traversed the room, briefly illuminating a golden death mask, a cat statue, a painted throne. Something flickered on the outer edge of the spotlight and was gone.

  Grace swallowed hard and huddled closer to the feet of a six-foot statue of a woman with the surprisingly graceful head of a cow.

  Peter’s beam held steady. He was deliberately setting himself up as the target, and Grace didn’t think her nerves could take the suspense.

  There was a ghastly shriek and a figure crossed Peter’s flashlight beam, something long and silver glittering in the upraised hand. Grace cried out in warning.

  The flashlight rolled and fell from the deck of the funeral boat where Peter had propped it.

  As it hit the floor, Grace heard sounds of a struggle. She stood up, shining her flashlight in the direction of the fighting, and saw Peter struggling with a shorter, bulkier figure.

  She tried to place the beam of her flashlight in the intruder’s eyes, and hoped she wasn’t hindering Peter. The shorter figure slashed and stabbed wildly at Peter’s agile form.

  Peter’s arm went back, and he punched the other squarely in the face.

  The bulky figure crashed down, taking a small table and several faience figurines with it.

  Peter stood for a moment staring down, his chest rising and falling. He looked up as Grace crawled out from under the cow woman’s throne and clambered toward him over furniture and statuary.

  “Speaking of overlooking the obvious.”

  She reached his side and turned her flashlight on their unconscious attacker. A ski mask covered the face. A darning needle lay a few inches from the lax fingers. Grace processed this in silence, then
looked to Peter.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “It does explain—”

  “You’re telling meMiss Webb faked her own disappearance?Miss Webb tried to kill me?Miss Webb killed Scott Sartyn and Hayri Kayaci?”

  “Yes. And no.” He knelt and pulled the ski mask from Miss Webb’s head. She murmured a protest; her eyes fluttered and opened.

  Peter said dryly, “Introducing—”

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” interrupted Grace disgustedly. “I’ve already figured it out.”

  “Arabella Monkton,” concluded Peter.

  Miss Webb groaned.

  31

  “What I don’t understand is why Miss Webb staged that mock abduction?”

  It was the afternoon after Miss Webb had tried to kill them in the hidden treasure room. As they were sitting down to tea, Detective Inspector Drummond had stopped by Craddock House to bring Grace and Peter up to speed on the latest developments in the case.

  “That’sthe bit you don’t understand?” Peter raised his brows.

  Drummond said, “It doesn’t sound like she had thought it out properly. Monkton came to see her about his mother’s letters and journals, and apparently said something to the effect that she looked familiar. At the same time, you were pestering her about the journals. The body count was climbing, and it looks like she decided to do a bunk.”

  “But she only ran as far as the Monkton Estate.”

  “It’s not as though she’s, well, quite right in the head,” Drummond said. He was looking around Peter’s elegant living room with barely veiled curiosity.

  Peter said evenly, “It was home, wasn’t it? Where it all began so many years ago. And she was too old for life on the run. Things have changed now. You can’t turn up someplace without any ID and build a new life, no questions asked.”

  Drummond’s gray gaze moved to Peter, and he shrugged. “I suppose that was part of it.”

  Grace poured tea into the ivy china cups.

  “The one good thing that’s come out of this is that Jack Monkton knows now what happened to his father. That mystery is solved. It’s too bad that Eden couldn’t have lived long enough to learn the truth.” But perhaps she had always known the most important thing—that John Mallow had not deliberately abandoned her and her unborn child. Grace wanted to believe so, anyway.