The Serpent on the Crown (25 page)

“Hell and damnation! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Ramses came close to figuring it out,” I said, with a kindly smile at my son. “He suggested she slipped out of her bedchamber while he and Abdul were in the sitting room, but she then had to make her way down a longish corridor before she was out of their sight. The simplest explanation was that she simply went into the room next door. She had taken it under another name, her appearance altered by the simple addition of a wig and a more conspicuous frock.”

“So she was there the entire time,” Ramses murmured. “That assumption does answer many of the questions we had.”

“It will be easy to prove,” I said. “We must have Mr. Salt’s permission to enter the room. I thought it best to leave that to you, my dear.” I nodded at Emerson.

“Hmph,” said Emerson, his rancor assuaged by this concession. “Very well. I will attend to it. Now as to the Valley of—”

“One more little thing, Emerson. I offered to dispose of Mrs. Petherick’s belongings. One of the hotel servants will bring them here. I didn’t have the chance to examine them closely, you see. It would have looked suspicious.”

“Curse it,” said Emerson. “Well, don’t expect me to help.”

“It is a woman’s job, my dear. Perhaps Katherine will lend me her advice.”

She accepted with expressions of pleasure. There were times when Katherine felt left out of our activities, and this was a way of making her feel useful—which in fact she would be.

We were finishing luncheon when the hotel attendant arrived with Mrs. Petherick’s possessions. Katherine and I left the others discussing arrangements, except for Nefret, who expressed an interest in assisting us. Jumana did not express interest. She loved listening to Emerson expound on Egyptology, and since Emerson loved to expound, they complemented each other nicely.

I had the bundles taken to my study, since I knew Emerson would object to the scent of stale perfume in our bedchamber. Nefret, who is sensitive to odors, wrinkled her nose. “The sooner we get these out of the house the better. I don’t like handling garments whose owner will never wear them again.”

A strange sentiment, some would have said, considering the aplomb with which she had handled the owner herself. However, scents are particularly evocative.

Katherine had begun examining the frocks. The pockets produced a typical motley array: several handkerchiefs, a withered sprig of greenery, two hairpins, and a considerable amount of lint. A good lady’s maid would have emptied them before hanging the garments in the wardrobe. I understood now why Mrs. Petherick had not brought an attendant with her. She had planned her dramatic disappearance before she left England, and privacy was essential for the scheme.

I will spare the Reader the details of our search, in the event that he is of the masculine gender. Suffice it to say that we found no suspicious stains, no objects sewn into hem or seam, and, in short, nothing suspicious whatsoever. Except for the underclothing, the garments were relatively new and relatively cheap. People do not anticipate wearing mourning for long. In fact, few modern ladies wore unrelieved black, unless it happened to become them. It did become the Countess Magda and she had not been unwilling to make a show of her grief.

We left the repackaging of the clothes to Fatima, who had participated in the last stages of the search. She had nothing to add to our conclusions. I could see that she and Katherine were disappointed—they had hoped to discover a vital clue—so I said consolingly, “I didn’t really expect we would find anything of interest, but the task was necessary. Fatima, will you have these sent to Miss Buchanan, at the school? I will write her a little note explaining the situation. I am sure she can find someone who can make use of them.”

Emerson was on the veranda listening (a word which is seldom applicable to Emerson) to the conversation between Ramses and Mr. Katchenovsky. It was heavy with complex verb forms in ancient Egyptian. My husband leaped to his feet when we came in, and offered to escort Katherine home, Cyrus and the others having gone ahead.

“That isn’t necessary,” she assured him.

“I insist,” said Emerson, with heartfelt sincerity. “Don’t wait tea for me, Peabody, I won’t be long.”

“Before you go, Katherine,” I said, “tell me how Mr. Lidman is getting on. I neglected to ask after him; my excuse must be that I had a number of more compelling duties.”

“He arrived this morning, while you were at the funeral.” Katherine’s brow furrowed. “I would appreciate it, Nefret, if you could find time to have a look at him. He could scarcely walk—two of the suffragis from the hotel had to help him along—and he refused food.”

“That is a bad sign. We will come round later this evening,” I promised.

Nefret went off to help get the children ready for tea, and I invited Mr. Katchenovsky to go on with what he had been saying.

“I would not wish to bore you,” the Russian said politely. “I fear our discussion became somewhat technical.”

“Verb forms are wasted on me,” I said, laughing. “But I am sure you are finding some interesting texts.”

“That depends on what one considers interesting,” Ramses said with a smile.

“Letters,” I said promptly. “Prayers, like the ones you spoke of the other day.”

Ramses’s eyebrows tilted in surprise. “You remembered.”

“Certainly. I remember everything you say, my dear. Unlike some persons.”

Ramses grinned. “Well, so far we have been chiefly concerned with preserving the scraps of papyrus we found the other day. It’s a tedious process, and I’m afraid I’ve left most of it to Mikhail. The scraps have to be softened and then flattened and covered with blotting paper and pressed down until they are completely dry.”

“I am familiar with the process,” I said.

“Of course, Mother.”

“So when do you expect you will be able to start reading them?”

“They’ll have to be sorted and arranged in proper order first. That’s where Mikhail is so useful,” Ramses added, with a polite nod at the silent Russian. “It’s like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle when half the pieces are missing. One must be familiar with the language and with the varieties of handwriting.”

“Excellent,” I said vaguely, my attention having been distracted by merry childish cries.

“Here they come,” said Ramses. “Brace yourself, Mikhail. By the way, Mother, I take it you didn’t find anything of interest in the old clothes?”

“How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“You wouldn’t have been able to keep it to yourself this long.”

A
s I had promised Katherine, Nefret and I went to the Castle after dinner. Emerson offered to drive us in the motorcar, but he had forgotten the confounded thing was still in pieces, so I was able to decline. Cyrus was good enough to send his carriage.

The doorman was on the watch for us. The great gates swung open as the carriage approached and closed with a metallic clang after we passed through. Torches made the courtyard bright as day.

Katherine’s concern about her patient was evident by her failure to offer us coffee. She led us directly to the elegant guest chamber where Lidman reposed.

“I am sorry to hear you are not feeling well, Mr. Lidman,” I said, approaching the bed while Nefret unpacked her stethoscope. “Without wishing to denigrate a fellow practitioner of the medical art, I must say that Dr. Westin’s methods are not always for the best. I would like to examine your injuries, if I may. Your lower limb, is it?”

I whisked the covers back. The leg was heavily bandaged, from ankle to knee. So were his left arm, his head, and his ribs.

“Well,” I said, after unwinding yards of bandage. “It appears to me that certain of your injuries would be all the better for being left exposed to the air. This abrasion on your left limb, for example. What do you think, Nefret?”

She had listened to his heart and taken his temperature.

“I don’t find any broken bones,” she said, running experienced hands over his arms and legs. “You were fortunate, Mr. Lidman, to escape with only bruises.”

Lidman raised a feeble hand to the bandage on his brow. “My memory…” he muttered. “I can’t remember…”

“Short-term loss of memory often follows a blow on the head,” Nefret said. “Don’t try to force it; it will probably return in due course. I recommend bed rest and a nourishing diet. You are in the best possible hands here.”

“One of the servants will sit outside your door tonight, in case you want anything,” Katherine added.

“It is very good of you. So kind…”

“I’ll leave these with you, Katherine,” Nefret said, after we had bade him good night. “These for pain, these to help him sleep if he needs them. One cannot trust a patient who is somewhat confused to take them himself.”

“Quite right,” I said approvingly. “What is your assessment, Nefret?”

“The injuries are genuine,” Nefret said. “And they are consistent with a hard fall and being swept about by the current.”

“Could he have throttled Mrs. Petherick?” I asked.

Katherine started. “Amelia, for heaven’s sake! Why would he?”

“I can’t think of a motive, Katherine, but as we criminal investigators know, motive is a secondary consideration. I am only endeavoring to ascertain whether he was physically capable of doing the job.”

“You know I can’t answer that, Mother,” Nefret said indignantly. “Offhand I would say no, but people are capable of extraordinary effort if the need is strong enough. What makes you suspect the man?”

“I suspect everyone of everything,” I said.

I
was comfortably tucked up in bed reading when Emerson entered.

“An early night, eh?” he said pleasantly. “Excellent, my dear. You have been a busy little bee of late.”

“Mmmm,” I said, and turned a page.

“What are you reading that you find so absorbing?” Emerson demanded. He began to undress, tossing his clothes in various directions.

“Hang your trousers over the chair, Emerson. This is one of Countess Magda’s novels—
The Vampire’s Daughter
. I borrowed it from Marjorie Fisher.”

“Why are you wasting your time on that rubbish?” Emerson asked. I got the notion he had some other time-wasting activity in mind.

“I was curious. It really is a dreadful piece of trash, but this is interesting.” I held up a piece of paper. “It is Magda’s biography. Marjorie must have clipped it from a newspaper.”

“Oh?”

“‘Our beloved authoress was born in her ancestral home, Castle Ormondstein, the only child of her adoring parents, who, recognizing her genius when she was but a tot, spared neither time nor expense in cultivating it, supplying her with tutors in various subjects and nurturing—’”

“Does that sentence ever end?” Emerson inquired.

“Not for another paragraph. It is typical of journalistic adulation, my dear.” I cleared my throat and continued. “‘Her idyllic existence came to a cruel end when the Great War brought tragedy and…’ Oh, very well, Emerson, I will synopsize. Her father, Count von Ormond, enlisted in the Austrian army—”

“I thought she was Hungarian,” Emerson said, throwing the covers back and getting into bed.

“Austro-Hungarian. He was an officer of the emperor, of course, a cavalryman. When he died valiantly at the Battle of Leningrad—”

“That can’t be right,” said Emerson.

“Newspapers always get facts wrong. If you continue interrupting me I will never get through this, Emerson.”

“Hurry it up, then.”

“Her mother died of grief,” I continued. “Alone in the world, with the hordes of the bestial Germans advancing…Yes, Emerson, I know, that can’t be right either. Anyhow, the valiant young girl, whose brilliant novels had already won her worldwide acclaim, fled with two of her faithful servants, and after horrors that cannot be described for fear of rending the hearts of her readers, she made her way to England with only the clothes on her back.”

“No papers, no servants, no cherished cross that had belonged to her mother, now an angel in heaven?” inquired Emerson, flat on his back with his hands under his head.

“Very good, Emerson,” I said, laughing. “She had lost everything, including the servants, one of whom perished after saving her from a ravisher.”

“Not both of them?”

“The other died of a fever, after nursing Magda, giving her beloved young mistress all her food and water.”

“Good Gad.”

“That’s about all there is,” I concluded. “Her publishers and her public welcomed her with open arms and she continued to soar in the esteem of critics and readers.”

“Turn out the light, Peabody.”

“Yes, my dear.”

E
merson agreed to accompany me to the hotel the following morning. He grumbled a bit about taking the time from his work, but I could see he was as curious as I—and that he was half hoping I would be proved wrong about the questionable Mrs. Johnson. Sethos went with us, despite Emerson’s attempts to dissuade him.

I had not expected Emerson would have any difficulty in persuading Mr. Salt to violate a visitor’s privacy. We found the manager more than eager to oblige. The chambermaid had reported that the lady’s bed had not been slept in, nor the towels in the bath chamber used. Mr. Salt was in a slightly nervous condition anyhow. A second mysterious disappearance would have a bad effect on the Winter Palace’s reputation, especially if it were followed, like the first, by murder.

“I do hope,” he said pathetically, “that nothing else has occurred. Perhaps Mrs. Johnson has just gone away for a few days.”

“Without mentioning it to you or the desk clerk?” I asked.

Mr. Salt groaned.

The room had the musty smell of a chamber which has not been occupied for some time. Also palpable to the olfactory sense was the scent of stale perfume. The bedcovers had been turned down and a nightgown spread carefully out across them, as was the custom. I went immediately to the wardrobe, where I found what I had expected—several elegant gowns, of the size that would fit Mrs. Petherick. An even stronger scent wafted from the top drawer of the dresser when I opened it.

“It is the same scent she used,” I said, sniffing.