It needed one finishing touch.
The Sandman picked up a large curved bone; an enormous tooth. It was a hippo tusk engraved with hieroglyphs. It had been a gift from a stupid man who didn’t understand its real value.
It was an Egyptian wand.
With quiet satisfaction, the Sandman reached into the leather pouch at his belt and pulled out a polished brass button. Then he pressed the tip of the wand into the warm chest of the wax doll and slit it open like a surgeon. When the hole was big enough, he pushed the button inside and closed up the wound again, burying it inside.
Finally the Sandman unrolled a papyrus scroll. It had been written by a priest of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead.
The Sandman cleared his throat and broke the silence.
“Looking, you will not see.
Searching, you shall not find me.
Seek me and all you gain
Is entry to a world of…pain.”
The Sandman turned the wax doll over in his hands. It had a fat round head and a swollen belly with a button inside. For some reason it made the Sandman laugh.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he chuckled.
Charley lifted her face from the microscope and rolled her shoulders. She had been bent over her samples for the best part of an hour and she ached. Billy knew that his partner was in discomfort; she often was.
“What have you found?” he asked gently.
“All the sand samples match,” she said. “Pure white Saharan. And, as I suspected, the cotton fibre I collected from the safe could have been made yesterday.”
Billy furrowed his brow. “So what does that mean? Is the mummy a fake after all?”
“The mummy that attacked us seemed real enough and Lady Fitzpatrick’s description was very vivid.” Charley shook her head. “I’ve left out the best part… The fresh white cotton had traces of black ash on one side.”
Billy rubbed his arm, which felt bruised after the mummy’s crushing grip. “So if an old mummy is wearing new bandages—”
“Then it can’t be working alone,” finished Charley. “Someone repaired it.”
“You mean,” said Billy, “that we’re looking for a ‘daddy’ too?”
“You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”
“It’s a blessing…” said Billy modestly. “And a curse.”
“Mostly a curse, from where I’m sitting.” Charley smiled, although she was so tired that it turned into a yawn. “How about you, Billy? Is your sixth sense telling you anything?”
“I’m sorry,” said Billy. “My skill isn’t like yours. Your brain works every time you want it to, but my…ability isn’t as reliable as that. I wish it was. I wish I could just point the way straight to the end of the trail.”
“Where would be the fun in that?”
“To tell you the truth, Charley, there are so many things whispering to me in this odd house that I can’t hear anything clearly at all.”
“44 Morningside Place has to be one of the weirdest crime scenes we’ve ever been called to,” Charley agreed.
“Imagine that you’re standing in a doorway, half in the room and half out,” Billy went on, doing his best to put into words something he didn’t really understand himself. “It’s like I’ve got one foot in this world – the one that we can see and feel with our natural bodies – and the other in a spirit realm; an invisible world that’s just as real as this one.”
“That must feel…strange.”
“Strange isn’t even close,” said Billy. “It’s as if I’m trying to see through a window that hasn’t been washed in centuries, or attempting to hear one voice in a crowded street.” He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “Hardly anything that I see or hear or smell from the other side is clear at all. I get pictures or impressions of things, flashes of insight, and Sir Gordon’s house is so cluttered with objects that it’s almost impossible for me to cut through the noise.
“Just walking down the hallway, for example, I know that the boxful of finger bones belonged to a shaman. I can see him clearly, rolling the bones in dust and reading the future in them. Since we went into Sir Gordon’s Egyptian hall, all I can taste is the desert. I can still feel the sand blowing on my face, carried on the winds of time…”
Charley looked at her partner’s face, getting a glimpse of the burden he carried.
“Some of the dead people in the photographs that Sir Gordon likes taking have been talking to me, shouting their names, or mumbling incoherently…” Billy’s face clouded slightly. “It’s not easy.”
He turned to Charley. “I also know that owl in the study hates being dead and stuffed but really enjoys playing the banjo.” Billy’s face cracked into a grin.
“You made that up,” said Charley.
“Only the bit about the owl,” he confessed. A dinner gong rang, summoning them both to the table. “Come on, I’m starving.”
Dinner came and went. Five courses. Mrs Fudge, the cook, had prepared Scotch broth, smoked salmon, good Scottish beef with roast potatoes, followed by raspberry blancmange and a cheeseboard. They ate quietly, watched over by Mr Cowley. Plus a row of shrunken heads in a display case and the glassy eyes of a stuffed penguin riding a bicycle.
Wellington seemed spooked. He kept whining and was snuffling round their feet under the table, as if he was hiding from something. Charley slipped a slice of beef to him and Wellington took it eagerly, his rough tongue lapping at her fingers. Charley gave him another slice; she wasn’t really in the mood for eating. She was in worse discomfort than usual and her head felt strange. She’d overdone it probably, and she couldn’t wait for her bed.
The food was all delicious, but the meal had been an awkward experience. The atmosphere in 44 Morningside Place was tense. Two more servants had handed in their notice, and the remaining staff were on edge, as if expecting disaster. The weight of the curse on their minds, thought Charley. Even the ticking of the clock, usually such a reassuring sound, only made her feel that time was running out.
They hardly spoke a word. A combination of weariness and worry had taken its toll. Sir Gordon was sweating even more heavily than usual, and once or twice Charley had spotted him wince slightly during dinner. Probably heartburn, she guessed.
Sir Gordon pushed his plate aside. “Take this away, Cowley,” he said. “My nerves are in tatters, I have no appetite at all.” Charley noticed how his waistcoat was straining to hold in his fat stomach. There was even a button missing! But she kept her thoughts to herself.
“Coffee, sir?” Cowley asked, bringing a steaming silver pot from the dresser. “After-dinner chocolates?”
“Just the one, to be sociable,” said Sir Gordon, popping a chocolate straight into the pink round hole of his mouth and putting two more on a side plate. His Lordship belched loudly and then covered his mouth in embarrassment.
Charley and Billy made their excuses and headed off for bed, leaving Sir Gordon with the port decanter and one more slice of cheese. Possibly two. And some grapes. And then perhaps a brandy.
The ride up in the lift was silent. The lift gates opened and Charley and Billy paused in the corridor before heading for their bedrooms.
“You all right, Duchess?” Billy asked. “You look done in.”
“Fine,” said Charley, even as a twinge of pain stabbed at her temple. She winced and raised her fingers to her forehead. “Just a headache.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No,” she said, waving away his help. “Cowley has left a jug of water in my room, I had a glass earlier. Give me a good night’s sleep and I’ll be tickety-boo in the morning.”
Billy hovered; she could tell he was concerned about her.