The Egyptian Curse Page 11

  Hale hit to the right just as Knox had recommended - so far right he was somewhere in the trees. “Nice slice,” Hale muttered to himself.

  As they walked down the fairway after Agatha put her shot just short and to the left of Knox’s ball, she started to direct the conversation.

  “The detective story is a game, just like golf,” Agatha said, “so it must have rules.”

  “Perhaps it would not even be blasphemous to call them commandments,” Father Knox suggested.

  “But rules can be broken.”

  “So can commandments, but with more severe consequences.”

  “What are these rules of the detective story?” Hale asked, just to keep his hand in as he started to look for his ball. He had resigned himself to a waiting game. Whatever Agatha had in mind would unfold in due time.

  “That’s the devil of it,” Father Knox said. “No one knows what the rules are. They haven’t been written yet, but they will be[4]. They must. Detective stories are more popular than mahjong right now, but anybody can write anything - secret passages, detectives who turn out to be murderers. Someone has to bring order to it!”

  “I’d like to see you try,” Agatha said. “Everyone may agree that there should be rules, but no one will agree on what those rules should be. For example, I have this notion of making the narrator of my Hercule Poirot stories the killer. No one would suspect him! But I’m certain that some readers would say that’s against the rules which haven’t been written.”

  Father Knox laid his second shot just off the green to the left.

  “You can’t do that, Agatha! It’s just not cricket! The first commandment of detective fiction should be that the killer mustn’t be anyone whose thoughts we are allowed to share.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the killer would be naturally thinking about his crime, so if we’re going to peer into his thoughts that’s what should be there.”

  “He wouldn’t be thinking about it all the time, especially before the murder. And in my idea, the narrator is deliberately concealing some of his thoughts as a kind of game to fool the reader until the end of the book. Everything that he says is true; he just doesn’t tell the reader everything.”

  Father Knox remained unconvinced. And on it went. Hale tuned out. At some point he realized that the topic had switched to the use of Orientals and twins in detective stories. Father Knox was against both.

  “But if they exist in real life, why not in fiction?” Hale objected.

  The clergyman gave him a pitying look. “My dear fellow, the truth is no excuse. Fiction must be believable, even if it’s based on something that really happened. No fiction writer would dare serve up some of the stories I’ve heard in the confessional. So I say sinister Orientals and convenient twins are out on the grounds of implausibility.”

  “How do you feel about servants?” Agatha asked.

  “I don’t have any, save the housekeeper, and she isn’t a very good one. Bless her soul, she does try, though.” Swinging too hard, he chipped over the green. “Have to come back now, won’t I?”

  “No, no. I mean servants as killers or witnesses.”

  “You mean, ‘the butler did it’?”

  “Actually,” Agatha said reflectively, “that would be a bit of a surprise, wouldn’t it? I mean, has any butler in fiction ever actually done it?”

  Father Knox appeared to think about it. “I don’t recall any, come to think of it.”

  “In real life, there was that Musgrave Ritual business that Sherlock Holmes solved as a young man,” Hale said. He had immersed himself in Dr. Watson’s accounts of the great detective soon after meeting him. “The Musgrave butler was the villain - but that wasn’t murder.”

  “And besides, as Father Knox said, real life doesn’t count,” Agatha pointed out with a note of triumph in her voice. “At any rate, I did have a point. People don’t pay attention to servants, either in fiction or in life. They should, you know. When I was young we had a lot of servants, and I learned ever so much from them. Who knows more about what’s happening in a house than the servants? They see everything, and don’t think they don’t talk about it with each other even if it goes no further. The gossip upstairs among the family is nothing to what’s going on downstairs among the servants. That’s why I paid a call at the tradesman’s entrance to Number 10 Carlton House Terrace this morning.”

  Surely Hale was dreaming this. “You did what?”

  “You heard me. Lord Sedgewood was killed in his own home. Who would know more about it than his servants? I talked to the cook and the maid. It turned out that Brigid, the maid, adored my second novel, The Secret Adversary-quite the romantic, that one! How disappointing that she knew so little. And do you know who I didn’t talk to?”

  “Harley Reynolds, the butler,” Hale snapped. “He quit.”

  “Quite so. But I found out where he went.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, but that will wait. It’s a beautiful day and there are seventeen more holes to play. Lay on MacKnox! You’ve only won one hole so far.”

  Hale was frustrated, which didn’t help his game any. By the time they finished the eighteenth hole, he was down nineteen shillings to the good father. Leaving their bags with the caddies, Father Knox recommended a trip to the clubhouse bar.

  Of all the surprises in that day of surprises, the biggest was the sight of the man mixing drinks behind the bar. At about six-foot-five, he looked more like a prizefighter than a bartender - or the butler that he had formerly been.

  “Reynolds!” Hale exclaimed.

  Lord Sedgewood’s ex-servant smiled in recognition. “Mr. Hale - good to see you, sir!” The two had met on many occasions, the first being when Sarah’s father had had the butler throw Hale out of his townhouse after their first encounter almost four years earlier. Hale could scarcely believe that the man he had most wanted to talk with was standing behind the bar on a golf course.

  “Whatever are you doing here?” he asked.

  Reynolds straightened up. “I’m the assistant steward, sir.”

  “Congratulations. Lady Sarah told me that you’d left the family’s service, but she didn’t know why.”

  Reynolds looked around, leaned forward, and spoke in a low voice. “It was the curse, sir. I got the heebie-jeebies being in that house after the old Earl was killed. Suppose that old mummy had bad aim and zapped me next by mistake!”

  “Curse be damned!” Father Knox exploded. “Superstitious drivel! That should be another commandment for detective stories - no ghosts.”

  “A Roman priest is a fine one to be talking about superstition,” Reynolds sniffed. “Even Mr. Charles - Lord Sedgewood, as he is now - said there might be something to the curse. I heard him talking on the telephone about it after His Lordship’s body was found.”

  Hale found it hard to believe that Reynolds had that right. Charles must have been displaying an unsuspected penchant for black humor in a call to a friend. At any rate, Hale had more important questions to ask.

  “Listen, Reynolds,” he said, “someone tipped Scotland Yard that Sedgewood’s dagger might have been the murder weapon. And somebody - likely the same person - told that sap Howell at The Times that the dagger was contraband. Was it you?”

  The assistant steward looked offended. “Certainly not! No one in service would have done such a thing. Besides, how would I know anything about it?”

  “Well, you might have been the one who used the dagger on Alfie Barrington.”

  Reynolds’s jaw dropped. If the man was not utterly shocked at the suggestion, he was the greatest actor since William Gillette.

  “Me, sir? But that’s ridiculous. Why would I have done a thing like that?”

  Hale sighed. He could think of no reason in the world why the butler would have done it. No
ne of the usual motives fit - blackmail, romantic jealousy, money. Unless-

  “Pounds sterling might have something to do with it,” Hale said. “Suppose Alfie’s death was a smoke screen and Lord Sedgewood was the real victim all along. Did he leave you a legacy?”

  “I - I have no idea, sir.” Sweat poured out Reynolds’s craggy forehead.

  “I like that idea,” Agatha said. “May I use it?”

  Ignoring her, Hale continued to address Reynolds. “It’s quite convenient that you had the day off when Sedgewood was killed, thereby making it look that you weren’t around at the time.”

  “His Lordship let me off to visit my brother in Lancashire. He’s quite ill.”

  “Maybe,” Hale said skeptically. “That can be checked. If that’s true, who would know you were away that day?”

  “The rest of the staff, of course. His Lordship may have mentioned it to his family. And perhaps Lady Lawrence.”

  “Who?”

  “Lady Lydia Lawrence - His Lordship’s, er, friend. She and His Lordship often met alone at the townhouse, or sometimes at the country estate, but quite discreetly. Even Lady Sarah and Mr. Charles don’t know.” He leaned forward and whispered. “She is a married woman, you see.”

  4 And they were - by Monsignor Knox himself, with tongue in check. See p. 176.

  Chamber of Horrors

  One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the Twentieth Century.

  – Jack the Ripper, Letter to Police, 1888

  That evening, Hale walked down Fleet Street toward the Cheshire Cheese pub with Agatha’s recriminations still ringing in his ears.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” she’d thundered as they climbed back into her car. “You scared poor Reynolds half to death.”

  “I honestly thought he could have done it.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  The woman was his own age, and yet he felt the way he always had when he’d been chastised by his nanny as a child.

  “Beg pardon, sir!”

  A white-haired man, an old salt judging by his well-worn clothing and his rolling gate, had broken in on Hale’s thoughts with a mumbled apology as he jostled him on the sidewalk.

  What the - Hale was almost sure he’d felt the man’s hand in his pocket. Frantic, he checked to see if anything was missing. On the contrary, he found a piece of paper with a written message in firm copperplate writing:

  Madame Tussaud’s, Jack the Ripper exhibit, 10 A.M.

  Hale looked up to call after the man, but he was nowhere to be seen. Well, thought Hale, I evidently have an appointment tomorrow morning with a person or persons unknown. Normally only a fool would respond to such a summons, but Hale could think of few safer places than Madame Tussaud’s to meet the mysterious individual who chose this peculiar way to demand an audience. The place would be crowded with tourists, and especially the area around the Ripper exhibit. What could go wrong in the Chamber of Horrors?

  Monday morning did not start well for Hale. On his typewriter he found a note from Rathbone summoning him to the managing director’s office. The tone of the missive was not warm: See me. Rathbone.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Rathbone looked up from his desk. “Close the door and sit down.”

  So, it’s going to be that kind of meeting. Just as Hale had suspected.

  “I understand that you have been making inquiries into the deaths of Lord Sedgewood and his son-in-law.”

  It could have been worse. Hale had been afraid that his boss had found out about Willie Gordon’s contributions to his British Open stories. He could have gotten the sack for that.

  “How did you know, sir?”

  “Never mind how I know. Let’s just say that certain people told certain people who told me. Did I or did I not tell you to stay out of that case?”

  “You did not.”

  “Eh? Don’t be insolent. Of course I did.”

  “With respect, sir, no you didn’t. What you said was, ‘You can’t be reporting on a murder in which you’re Scotland Yard’s chief suspect, can you?’ I acknowledged that I could not. But I haven’t been reporting. I have merely been asking questions. I did, however, pass on some answers thus obtained to Ned Malone, who did report it.”

  Rathbone looked down, the trace of a smile at the corner of his lips, and fiddled with his curved pipe. “You know who you remind me of, Hale?”

  “Someone good, I hope, sir.”

  “You remind me of me, damn it to hell.” He paused. “Let me make this clear: I do not want to hear any more about you taking an interest in this case. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”Rathbone had said he didn’t want to hear about it. He hadn’t said “don’t do it.”

  “Good.” Rathbone lit the pipe, signifying that the stern-parent talk was over. “What do you have planned for today?”

  “I was thinking about a visit to Madame Tussaud’s.”

  “Tussaud’s? The place has been around forever. Everybody’s been there at least once. Where’s the story in Tussaud’s?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”

  Madame Tussaud’s wax museum had been founded on Baker Street by Marie Tussaud in 1835. Almost half a century later her grandson had moved it to its current location on Marylebone Road. Hale had visited the museum with Sarah once, viewing with special interest the wax figures Madame herself had created of Sir Walter Scott, Admiral Nelson, and victims of the French Revolution.

  The museum was much more than that, of course, and not just wax. One of the current highlights was a collection of authentic relics of the Emperor Napoleon: three carriages, including the one he used at Waterloo and in the Russian campaign; his coronation robes; his toilet case and telescope; and the bed he died in on the island of St. Helena. The whole collection was valued at £250,000.

  For the more gruesome-minded, however, the biggest attraction at Madame Tussaud’s was and always would be the Chamber of Horrors, featuring such notorious killers as Jack the Ripper, Charlie Peace, Dr. Crippen, and Burke and Hare.

  It was to the Jack the Ripper exhibit that Hale presented himself at ten o’clock, following the instructions on the paper placed in his pocket the night before. No one knew what Jack the Ripper looked like, Hale thought, but the aftermath of his horrific crimes was well attested to. Hale stood looking at the grisly tableau when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Thinking about it later, Hale turned red at the memory of how he jumped.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” said a rough voice behind him.

  Hale turned around quickly. At first he saw only the old sailor who had bumped into him the night before. Then the sailor stood straighter and, by some magic of control, altered his face. It was still an old face, but one that Hale knew well.

  “Holmes!”

  “I knew the Ripper, and so did Scotland Yard,” he said quietly in his natural voice, nodding at the waxworks. “That is really quite a good likeness. The nose is a little too wide, though. Lestrade helped them with that figure. It was his charming way of letting certain people know that he knew without risking his own life.”

  The waxwork image of the killer didn’t ring any bells for Hale. Possessing more than his share of the curiosity natural to every journalist, he couldn’t help asking, “So - who was he?”

  “That, I am afraid, is a story for which the world is not yet prepared, even after all these years.”

  “What’s this all about, asking me to meet you here? And why the disguise?”

  “At the request of my old friend Wiggins, who has little regard for Inspector Rollins, I have been making inquiries into the Barrington-Sedgewood murders. It’s time that you and I share information about the case. However, I thought it inadvisable for Rollins’ man who is following
you to know that we are meeting. Incidentally, I hope you enjoyed your golf game.”

  “How did you - ?”

  “I followed you, of course, which is how I know that a Scotland Yard officer was also following you, and doing a fair job of it.”

  Hale felt foolish, as he often did in the presence of Sherlock Holmes. “I wasn’t just playing golf. I was interviewing Sedgewood’s butler, Reynolds.” He told Holmes the whole story of his day on the links, starting with an abbreviated account of his earlier meetings with Agatha Christie, as they strolled through the Chamber of Horrors.

  “Mrs. Christie should do well in her chosen profession of mystery writer,” Holmes said at the end. “Her insight about the servants was spot on. I myself have been talking to the cook at Carlton House Terrace, a woman of about my age named Agnes. She is a fair hand at cribbage.” His tone turned wistful. “I once knew a maid named Agnes. She married a baker. For a number of years I visited her husband periodically to make sure that he treated her well. Oh, look, my old friend Charlie Peace!”

  As they stood in front of the waxwork representing the famous burglar and murderer, Hale worried - not for the first time - whether the years had at last caught up to Sherlock Holmes. He was reassured when the old detective got back on point.

  “At first I was reluctant to leave Sussex and look into this business. My bees are demanding taskmasters, you know. But that was a mistake. By the time I saw how badly Rollins was botching the matter, it was far too late for me to explore the physical scene. Scotland Yard is fairly good at that sort of thing these days, anyway. I would make bold to say that they took a lesson or two from me. However, I did learn a bit from Agnes in the course of losing multiple hands of cribbage. Now, tell me what you found out, word for word if you can.”

  “I can.” Hale pulled out a notebook that he had reserved for his jottings on the case. “I’ve been writing everything down after every interview, as much as I remember - and I have a trained memory. My involvement began with a phone call in the night from Ned Malone.”