Jack was suddenly coursing with excitement. Could it still be there? The cruck-framed house was still in the possession of the Howard estate, lived in by one of Jack’s elderly aunts. He pulled out his phone, scrolled through the address list and made a call. There was no reply, and he left a message. He drummed his fingers against the desk. He could make it up there today, and return in time for the meeting tomorrow morning. It would be a long drive, but he could do with it. And if there was a result, it would be something else he could throw in front of the board of directors.
Rebecca came bounding through the door, holding a small brown parcel that looked about the same vintage as the envelope Jack had been looking at, though hers evidently still held its contents. Jack knew there would be numerous interesting items among Colonel Howard’s papers, and this package was too big to be Lieutenant Tanner’s letter. She was flushed with excitement, but Jack held up his hand. ‘Before we get distracted by anything, I may have made a breakthrough. I remembered something your great-grandfather told me years ago about an ancient Egyptian artefact shown to him by his grandfather, Colonel Howard. It’s just possible that it’s the artefact that was once in the envelope that Corporal Jones sent him. And I think I know where it might be. We might have to drop everything and go on a long drive.’
‘Hold it right there, Dad. First, this.’ She took a single sheet of old letter paper out of the package she was carrying, cleared her throat and stood upright. She sniffed, and Jack realised that she had been crying. ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘It’s just this,’ she said, holding up the letter. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She cleared her throat again. ‘This is the final page of the letter from Lieutenant Tanner at Semna to Howard. It’s very affectionate; they seem to have been great friends. Tanner was in love with Howard’s sister-in-law, and was planning to marry her when he returned from Egypt. I think the letter was written somewhere dusty, not at a desk. He’d been doing something grim, burying some comrades, and the tone of the letter is as if he’s making the best of a bad situation, taking his mind away from it.’
Jack leaned forward, suddenly riveted. ‘That would be the sangar, and the grim business would be the burial of the two soldiers killed there by the Mahdist sniper. Incredible. This really gives the story behind Maurice and Aysha’s discoveries.’
‘He mentions the crocodile mummies,’ Rebecca said. ‘As an archaeology enthusiast he must have recognised them for what they were, as the soldiers were digging through them to make the graves.’
‘Read out the entire page, Rebecca.’
She took a deep breath, and began:
‘As well as the extraordinary crocodile mummies, there is another remarkable archaeological discovery here that I’d love to tell you about but it will have to be another time, when I can sit down undistracted and do it justice – suffice to say that Edward Mayne was here with us, and went with the major of the Canadian contingent and myself into the underground temple, through the barest of cracks at the top of the door – that really gives the game away to you, doesn’t it, but it’s not fair to keep you on tenterhooks, until I write next time; at any rate Mayne took a small stone slab with carving which he instructed me to give to his servant, Corporal Jones, who you will remember from the Rampa expedition when he was a sergeant, and I instructed Jones to send it on to you if Mayne should be killed. It may be merely of passing interest to you, I fancy, but as I believe you have been appointed curator of Gordon’s antiquities – for which my congratulations – it would make sense for you to be its recipient. Corporal Jones, incidentally, is for the Railway Company, to keep him out of mischief and away from any fights, though I fear we may all be in line for that in due course, with the Mahdi’s army growing daily. Mayne is for headquarters at Korti and some secret mission, I know not what. He has being doing reconnaissance out here. (You will remember that he instructed us in sharpshooting when we were juniors at Chatham; he has his rifle out here, I believe it is a Sharps, tho’ he keeps it concealed. It was he who used one of our rifles to pot the Mahdist sharpshooter who killed our two poor soldiers.)
My dear John, I am fed up with war already and would wish nothing better than to take up an appointment like that held by Kitchener in Palestine and carry out archaeological survey, or perhaps back in India. Egypt is now crying out for archaeologists as will the Sudan if we can finish this infernal war and get Gordon out alive. But if I were to be an archaeologist in Egypt, then your sister-in-law, darling Maria, would have to live in Cairo, and I would wish that on no English woman on account of the cholera, certainly no English woman wishing to bear children. I would not wish my wife to endure the sufferings of your own dear wife Georgina when your poor boy Edward died in Bangalore. Perhaps if there is no survey post I will find a position at the School of Military Engineering and we can communicate not by letter but daily and in person. I should like that above all things.
I am called by General Earle to the river. More anon.
Your most affectionate friend and fellow archaeologist,
P. Tanner, Lieutenant, Royal Engineers, at Semna, November 24th, 1885’
Rebecca looked up, and put the letter on Jack’s desk. ‘I was sad because you said he was killed only a few weeks later. It seems such a waste. I almost think of him as still being there, at that date, waiting for a life ahead which would never be fulfilled. You can say what you like about Gordon, but this was the cost.’
Jack took the letter and looked at it. Now he knew the name of the sniper: Mayne. He quickly walked over to the cased book collection that he had inherited from his grandfather, and pulled out several volumes of the Army List for the 1870s and 1880s. ‘Here it is,’ he murmured. ‘Edward Mayne, commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1868, captain 1878, major 1884. Served in the Red River expedition in Canada in 1871. Always a survey officer, or on secondment. This is interesting. He disappears completely from the list after 1885. Missing, whereabouts unknown.’
‘Killed in the desert campaign?’
‘If so, not on official operations, otherwise it would have been recorded. But it wasn’t unknown for men to ride out and disappear without trace in the desert.’