The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. Michael Pearce
pushing a lady.’
‘A crowd,’ said Garvin. ‘Somebody standing in the way?’
McPhee shook his head.
‘They’d go round them.’
‘In any case,’ said Owen, ‘it wasn’t like that. Not according to Hamidullah. He says she was the one who was going round. She stepped out to pass and then a hand came out and pushed her.’
‘That’s the bit I find—’ said McPhee.
‘A hand in the crowd!’ said Garvin. ‘That’s all. That’s not much to go on, is it? Not much to ask the Parquet to build a case on.’
‘We’ve got to do something about it,’ said McPhee. ‘We can’t just leave it. If only in the interests of the lady’s future protection.’
Garvin was silent for a moment, turning things over.
‘Is that a factor, though?’
‘Of course it is!’ said McPhee. ‘Really—!’
‘Yes, but is it?’ Garvin insisted. He turned to Owen. ‘How long did you say she’d been in the country?’
‘Ten days.’
‘Hardly long enough to earn yourself an enemy, is it? And she’s not likely to have brought one with her!’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m just wondering whether the attack was directed against her personally.’
‘She was the one who was attacked, wasn’t she?’ said McPhee belligerently.
‘Yes, but not because she was Miss Skinner.’
‘Why, then?’
‘Because she was something else. A European—or seemed so to them. Or—how about this?—a European woman.’
‘Some fanatic?’
‘Offended because she was improperly dressed. Wasn’t wearing a veil.’
‘This is Cairo,’ Owen objected. ‘Surely they’re used to European women?’
‘Perhaps whoever pushed her was not.’
‘Or some brand of Nationalist. Offended, anyway.’
There was a little silence.
‘It has to be something like that, doesn’t it?’ asked Garvin. ‘It couldn’t really be because of anything personal to Miss Skinner. She’s not been here long enough for that.’
Owen thought about it.
‘You could be right,’ he said slowly.
‘And if I am,’ said Garvin, ‘we don’t have to worry about protecting her. It’s a one-off and won’t be repeated.’
‘It had better not be,’ said Owen. ‘Her uncle could be the next President of the United States.’
McPhee went over to the window and poured himself some water from the earthenware pot standing there to cool.
‘It mightn’t be a bad idea if someone spoke to her. Tipped her off about the veil.’
‘Owen can do that.’
‘No, I can’t. She’s not in town any longer.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Der el Bahari.’
‘Der el Bahari? All the better. She’ll be out of harm’s way there.’
But Miss Skinner would return. And when she returned she would want to know what he had done about that antiquities business. He decided to start at the Museum.
An under-keeper, harassed-looking, intercepted him at the door.
‘We’re moving the cow,’ he said.
‘Cow?’
‘You know. Of course you know.’
Owen racked his brain.
‘The Cow of Hathor,’ said the under-keeper impatiently.
The name tickled his memory.
‘Haven’t I read something about it?’
‘Eighteen months ago. The newspapers were full of it.’
‘I remember! It was found—found in some temple—’
‘Menthu Hetep.’
‘—and brought here. There was a lot of fuss about it.’
‘Rightly so,’ said the under-keeper huffily. ‘It’s one of the best things we’ve got.’
Some workmen walked backwards into the foyer pulling on ropes as if they were a tug-of-war team.
‘Steady!’ cried the under-keeper. ‘Steady!’
Behind them glided a podium on which stood a beautifully formed cow, carved out of limestone and painted reddish-brown with black spots. On its head it wore a hat.
‘A lunar disk,’ corrected the under-keeper, ‘with two feathers. It’s the normal head-dress of Hathor.’
‘I see. But what—?’
Below the head was the carved form of a man.
‘He’s the king grown up,’ said the under-keeper. ‘This is him as a boy.’
At the other end of the cow, sucking milk from its udders, was a small boy. There was an intimacy and humanity about the composition unusual in Egyptian statuary.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said the under-keeper affectionately.
The tug-of-war team disappeared down a corridor and the cow slid after it, hotly pursued by agitated Museum officials in tarbooshes.
‘Now what was it you wanted? The Despatch Room?’
He led Owen beneath the jaws of some twenty-foot-high colossi, past a row of intimidatingly lifelike painted statues of Pharaohs and into a room in which were several half-open sarcophagi and various mummies in different degrees of undress.
The under-keeper stopped for a moment, startled, but then recovered, strode firmly across the room and moved a brightly gilt sarcophagus lid which was leaning against the wall.
‘You never know what to do with these damned things,’ he said.
Behind the lid was a door which led down some steps into a basement. Some men were bending over packing cases and a clerk was standing by with what looked like an invoice in his hand.
‘Hello, Lucas,’ said the under-keeper, ‘we’ve come to see what you do about exports.’
‘You’ve come at the right time,’ said the clerk, glancing at the invoice. ‘Would you like to do some valuing while you’re here?’
The clerk, like most of the clerks in Cairo, was a Copt and had the round and slightly flattened face of some of the statues upstairs. The Copts were the original people of Egypt; the Arabs had come later.
‘What have you got for me?’ asked the under-keeper.
Lucas indicated the packing cases.
‘How many? Three? Oh, that won’t take long.’
He bent over one of the cases and looked at the label.
‘Brownlow,’ he said, ‘Captain Brownlow. One of the boys going home on leave.’
He began to take things out of the case.
‘One set of Canopic jars, eighteenth-century, good condition, fifteen hundred piastres; one jar, large, Twenty-Third Dynasty, slightly chipped, seven hundred piastres; one kursi table, small, twelve hundred piastres; four mummy-bead