Chapter V
London, 1912

Expertus metuit (He who has experienced it is afraid)

- Horace

ouglas Murray received me in a sedately-furnished drawing room, which rather tellingly contained no hint whatsoever, in either style or substance, of an enthusiasm for things Egyptian. Like all his Shadows, he was a trifle haggard of demeanour, but unlike most of them, he was still alive, if maybe not wholly intact - his right sleeve hung empty from the elbow down, a lingering memento of his little accident. He also looked decidedly jumpy. I think he may have had some small inkling of the matter on which I was calling. We made inane small talk about the weather and the recent coal strike while his servant poured tea. Once we were alone, however, I cut to the chase. "You never finished your report for the Egypt Exploration Fund," I said, and then caught the flying teacup before it could do any damage. Murray dabbed left-handedly at his tannin-stained trousers. He had a tremour, I noticed, like a man in the advanced stages of the ague. "You're here about it," he quavered, "About her." "Indeed I am," I replied, "I take it, though, that the artefact is no longer in your possession." The house was psychically and magickally dead. It was about as haunted as the cheerfully knitted tea-cozy that adorned the table between us. "I gave it away," said Murray hurriedly, "I donated it to the British Museum." Wonderful. It must have been sitting just a few hundred yards from me as I'd ploughed my way through the bureaucratic detritus of the Egypt Exploration Fund. I must have driven past even closer on my way over here. It just hadn't occurred to me just to pop into the Museum just on the off chance. The principle of induction as applied to past encounters had disinclined me to look anywhere so obvious. But then again, where do you hide a book? In a library. Where do you hide a mummy case? In Room 60. However, the casket's institutional disposition was not wholly inconvenient. I could leave behind one of my "Removed for Conservation" cards, and no-one would be any the wiser. "Well, then," I said, starting to rise, "it seems that I have disturbed you unnecessarily. My apologies." "Wait," said Murray, looking, if possible, even more alarmed than before, "What do you want with it? You must know something of its history if you managed to trace it to me. Don't you know what you're dealing with? That mummy case is poison." He flapped his unoccupied sleeve at me. "I got off lightly compared to most of the people who have handled it," he added, just to emphasise the point. I hesitated. In eight successive Shadows, my arrival on the scene had accorded largely with the picking up of the pieces - invariably deceased - that had been left in the sarcophagus' wake. Consequently, thus far, I hadn't actually had a first-hand account of the curse and its effects. I sat myself back down again. "Why don't you tell me what I'm dealing with, then?" I asked. Murray was silent for a moment, his remaining hand beating a spasmodic tattoo on the arm of his chair. He was obviously torn between reliving past horrors, and the hope that in warning me off, he could spare me from the same. Altruism finally won out. He rose, a little shakily, and tottered over to a decanter set of Waterford crystal over on the sideboard. He splashed out a small tumblerful of Glenfiddich for me and a rather larger one for himself, which was quickly downed and refilled. Thus fortified, he returned to his seat, and after a few stops and starts managed to compose himself sufficiently for the story to emerge. "I sometimes find it hard to remember what it was like beforehand," he began, "No cares, no worries, my whole life ahead of me. It seems so distant, but the wretched business only started two years ago. I was visiting Egypt with some friends, and we had been hoping that we might be able to participate in the excavations being carried out by Professor Flinders Petrie, with whom I had once worked before. However, we had arrived a little late for the digging season, and so we spent most of our time sightseeing and duck-hunting on the Nile. During our stay in Cairo we engaged a dragoman, and it was he who first alerted us to the existence of the case." "What was the dragoman's name?" I asked, trying to keep the alarm out of my voice. Murray shook his head. "Hassan, I think," he said, "Or maybe it was Hanif. I really don't recall. The bits that tend to stick in my mind are the bits I would far rather forget." I made myself relax. Really, I was starting to see Abd Reis everywhere. Murray's dragoman had no doubt just been doing what dragomans do - trying to make a living out of antiquity-struck Englishmen with more apparent money than sense. I let this particular antiquity-struck Englishman continue with his story. "The case," Murray was saying, "or more properly an inner coffin, was in the possession of an American, a wild-eyed fellow who seemed rather eager to sell. I will admit that it did cross my mind that the artefact was stolen, especially when he tried to claim that it was from the sarcophagus of Queen Hatshepsut, and then asked a ridiculously low price for it. Once I saw it, though, I felt this incredible urge to acquire it. I don't know why, because there was also something quite repulsive about it too. It obviously wasn't Hatshepsut's, although it did seem to belong to a woman of Royal blood from some earlier dynasty. It was in remarkable condition for its age, whatever it was, and the painting of the face was incredibly life-like. So I bought it and took it back to our hotel. My friends were extremely taken by it as well, and in the end we agreed to draw lots for it. "Which you lost," I put in, not unsympathetically. "No," frowned Murray, "I won. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I lost. I got to keep the cursed thing." He got up to refill his glass again. His tremour was back, and he managed to top up several of the unused glasses on the sideboard without making any noticeable impression on his own. In the end, he just brought the decanter over and let me do the pouring for him. "Three days later," he went on, "we went fowling again, and that's when everything started to go wrong." He glanced down at his empty sleeve. "My gun exploded in my hand," he said, "I lost most of my fingers, and by the time we got back to Cairo it was infected with gangrene. The doctors said it had to come off, and I was in no state to object. By then I was starting to think that maybe I should have listened to that clairvoyant fellow after all." "Clairvoyant fellow?" I said. "Just some palm-reader," said Murray, "I'd gone to see him about a year before the trip, just for the fun of it, I suppose. He spun me this yarn about how I would win an Egyptian mummy case in a lottery, and how it would bring bad luck to me and anyone else who came into contact with it. In particular, he told me that a gun would explode and I would lose my arm." "Excuse me," I said, slightly incredulously, "Let me see if I have this straight. Some clairvoyant tells you you're going to win a mummy case in a lottery, and then you'll get your arm blown off by a malfunctioning gun. So when you do in fact win a mummy case in a lottery, the first thing you do is go duck-shooting?" Tempting fate was surely one thing; sending it an RSVP was quite another. Murray just looked glum. "It's just the sort of thing you laugh off, isn't it?" he said. I assume he meant the prediction. Benedict can laugh off losing an arm, but then he's the kind of person who has to be rendered quadriplegic just to slow him down. "What happened then?" I prompted, hoping that my interruption hadn't caused him to clam up. "We went back to England," said Murray, "but the two friends I'd drawn lots with fell ill and died during the voyage. A third, who hadn't been present at the hotel, got back to discover that his family had lost all their money, and the last I heard of him, he was selling matches for a living. I have to admit that by the time I arrived home, I was pretty shaken up. I think I'd convinced myself that I was the one responsible for these disasters. I was the one who had bought the coffin, after all. I'd have been more than willing to give it back, but just before we left Cairo I'd heard that the American who'd sold it to me was dead as well. He hadn't even cashed my cheque. I'd sent the case on ahead, and I was starting to hope that it had got lost in transit. But the first thing I saw when I walked through my front door was the thing itself. My servants had unpacked it and set it up so that it was just standing there in my hallway, staring at me with those damned black eyes of hers ..." He trailed off and took another gulp of ten year old Glenfiddich. I poured him another one. This was one of those occasions where getting an informant drunk was probably more in his interests than mine. "Where was I?" asked Murray, frowning at his unaccountably replenished glass. "Damned black eyes," I reminded him. This seemed to sober him up rather rapidly, so I found myself upending the decanter yet again. "If such a thing could be," he muttered darkly, "as I looked at the carved face of the woman on the mummy case, her eyes seemed to come to life, and I saw such a look of hate in them ... I tell you, my very blood turned to ice. I knew I had to get rid of it. I certainly didn't sleep a wink while it was in the house with me. Then a friend of mine, a writer, persuaded me to let her have it. I must have been mad, but I said yes. Anything to be shot of it. But the day after she took it home, her mother fell down a flight of stairs - she later died - and the day after that her fiancé broke off their engagement. Furniture and ornaments broke by themselves, and her servants started complaining of strange lights and sounds at night. Most of them handed in their notice after the first week. All her pets caught some kind of wasting sickness and had to be put down, and finally she herself came down with an illness that the doctors couldn't identify. Less than a month after she'd taken it off my hands, her lawyer had it delivered right back to my doorstep. She eventually recovered, I was told, but we haven't spoken since." "By this stage I was desperate. I decided that the quickest way of disposing of it would be to advertise it for sale, so I sent it to a photographic studio to have its picture taken. It got returned the same day, but I heard nothing from the photographer for nearly a week. Finally I tracked him down, and he told me that he had photographed the mummy case, but when he developed the pictures, one of them showed not the painted coffin lid, but the face of a living Egyptian woman with an expression of such intense malevolence that he destroyed the exposed plate at once." Now this piqued my interest. This photographer would have been the first person in four thousand years to gaze upon the face of the infamous Queen Nitocris. Aside from the fact that her imprisonment had evidently left her very, very angry, it would be nice to know if her statue had really done her justice. "He committed suicide soon afterwards," added Murray, "Overdose of sleeping pills, I believe." Or on the other hand, maybe I could just wait and see for myself. "So in the end," Murray concluded, "I donated it to the British Museum. I realised that I couldn't give it or sell it to an individual without passing on the curse, so maybe an institution ... At least they'd have the resources to deal with it." They'd be able to absorb the damage, he meant. "Why didn't you try and destroy it?" I asked. I was glad he hadn't, but it was a mystery to me why nobody ever seemed to try. The logic of "no more cursed artefact, no more curse" wasn't exactly reliable, but it was often a natural enough deduction on the part of those on the receiving end of your average supernatural anathema. A look of terror passed over Murray's face. "I knew," he whispered, "I just knew that if I even tried, if I even thought about trying, then she would turn her attention back to me again. It was as if the loss of my arm had just been a warning, and she was otherwise content to use me to spread death and destruction amongst my acquaintances. But if I threatened her in any way, then she would send me the most agonising death imaginable, and then she would be free to start all over again." Well, that seemed fair enough. "Do you know if she's been behaving herself at the museum?" I queried. Murray shook his head. "They put the casket on display," he said, "and that's all I know. I mean, I've heard rumours of deaths and accidents, but I don't listen to them too closely. I don't want to know about it any more. I can't be held responsible for everything it does. Not any more." "Of course not," I said reassuringly. Frankly, I was amazed that he had managed to stay even passingly sane with the burden of guilt and terror that he and the curse had between them managed to pile on his hunched and twitching shoulders. I was inclining towards the conclusion that I'd obliged him to relive enough, so I put to him my final and hopefully least nocuous question. "Have you ever been contacted by a fellow called William Stead?" I asked. "That lunatic!" exploded Murray, "Damn the man, I thought he'd never leave me alone!" "What did he want?" I asked cautiously. Evidently the great crusading journalist possessed other resources when it came to tracking down interviewees. "He wanted me to go to the Museum and help him hold a séance," fulminated Murray, "A séance! He'd seen the mummy case on display and was babbling on about the expression of anguish and misery in its eyes. So he'd decided to hold a table-rapping session to ease the spirit's pain, or some such rot, and because I was the previous owner of the case, he wanted me to be there. A familiar face! Can you imagine the nerve of the man?" "I take it you said no," I hazarded. "I sent the bounder away with a flea in his ear," replied Murray, not without some satisfaction, "Anguish and misery! That's wishy-washy spiritualists for you. The wretched man even published a story about it, the poor unhappy mummy case in the British Museum. Damned lucky for him he didn't mention my name. I told him I was never going near the thing again, and he had to be mad to want anything to do with it. Whatever monstrosity that sarcophagus holds is pure evil!" Just as I had with Esmée, I found myself in the position of advocatus diaboli. "Did you ever find out who she really was?" I asked, "It's not impossible that Stead might actually have a point." "No I didn't," snapped Murray, "And he doesn't." "And if I were to tell you?" I persisted. Murray went as white as a sheet. "For God's sake, man," he gasped, "If you truly know her name, don't speak it, don't even think it! Names have power. That's what the ancient Egyptians believed. Say it out loud and you might as well hold the damned séance right here in this room. I don't want to know! I don't want to hear or think anything that might attract her attention again. She's not some poor lost spirit like Stead thinks she is: she's Death itself!" I scowled. The symbolists and the decadents with their inhumanly deadly femmes fatales had had a corrosive as well as an enlivening effect on fin de siècle culture. "I think," I said, possibly a little unwisely, "that if you'd spent four thousand years forced to haunt a lump of painted cedar wood, then you might be inclined to lash out a bit as well." Murray choked. "Are you mad?" he spluttered, "Haven't you been listening to me? That thing is Evil Incarnate! You're as bad as Stead, with his tormented spirits balderdash! She doesn't want release, she wants to make people suffer and die! Don't you understand that?" "Hmm, yes, Evil Incarnate," I said quickly, "Now that you put it like, it does seem rather clear." Murray had sunk back into his chair, trembling. "I really don't think there's anything more I can tell you," he mumbled. I rose to leave, and this time he made no objection. "One last thing," I said, "Did Stead ever conduct his séance?" "No," said Murray, "I don't think the Museum authorities would let him." "Good," I said. Stead sounded like a well-intentioned if overly-persistent crank, but the apparent fact that he'd sensed something unusual about the case when most other visitors presumably hadn't, did rather imply that he wasn't a complete psychic breeze-block. And even had he been deluding himself, if he had any friends who were genuine mediums, then the last thing I wanted was to find that one of them had been let loose on the trapped spirit of the late Queen Nitocris. Frankly, my money would have been on the Egyptian in any psychical showdown, but the idea of finally catching up with her only to discover that some ectoplasm-exuder had exorcised her was just too appalling to contemplate. Murray however took my response as evidence that his cautionary tale was at long last getting through to me. "I'm sorry if I blew up a bit there," he muttered, "You've been very patient." "Not at all," I replied, "I'm sorry to have put you through all this again. You've been of tremendous assistance in clarifying matters for me." We held a brief contest to match each other in Englishness while his servant fetched my hat and coat. Murray remained seated as I donned the garments, staring into his whisky glass. He'd consumed most of a bottle during our conversation, and he was still sober. He looked as if he desperately wished he wasn't. "Supposing I were to tell you," I said slowly, "that I could lift the curse?" "That's what Stead said," he replied, "But you can't. You can't placate her, you can't control her, you can't banish her." Now he sounded resigned, empty. "In any case," he continued, "It's too late for me. I could drink another ten bottles of this stuff, but I'll still see those eyes in my dreams tonight. Staring at me, the way they do every night. She'll be with me until the day I die, and after that ... After that, it just doesn't bear thinking about." I let the servant show me out. Thence to Bloomsbury again. My researches at the Egypt Exploration Fund and my drinking session with Murray had together wiled away most of the afternoon, and the British Museum was now closing. I slipped inside against the outflowing tide, and headed for the Upper Egyptian Galleries. Rooms 60 and 61 were deserted except for a couple of schoolboys drooling over the embalmed corpses, and sharing such insights as "Cor, 'e's a right bony sod, innee?" Thus are the Egyptologists of the future created. The Mummy Galleries were also deserted in terms of enchanted sarcophagi. I felt my lips twitch in irritation. Not again. Unless of course it had been removed for conservation? I wasn't the only one who could wield with impunity the little buff card. A second quick tour revealed an empty display case that sure enough bore the faintest of magickal residues. "EA 22542," read the tell-tale square of pasteboard at the bottom, "Permanently removed from exhibition." The removal had been authorised by someone who with magnificent disdain for legibility had signed themselves "Eat Wally Budgie". Maybe it was some kind of advertising slogan. So what had they done with it? Put it into storage somewhere? I made myself relax and let my magickal senses take wing. There were one or two very attenuated enchantments amidst the tomb ornaments in Room 61, but I couldn't sense any further trace of the mummy case of Nitocris. "Excuse me, sir, but we're closing." I was now alone in the gallery except for a uniformed attendant, the schoolboys having scampered off. I handed him my card, which I decided I always carried in this Shadow, and he immediately became more deferential. "Excuse me, my Lord, but we're closing." "What happened to the exhibit in here?" I asked, gesturing at the unoccupied display. The attendant peered at the case and shifted uneasily. "I believe it's to be sent abroad, sir" he said, "I couldn't say any more than that." "Are you sure?" I said, slipping him a florin. "It was removed about a month ago," he elaborated, "on Sir Wallis Budge's orders. I really don't know where it's to be sent, my Lord. You'd probably be best to take the matter up with Sir Wallis." Ah, so the culprit was Ernest Wallis Budge, the Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. I'd encountered him in other Shadows, trawling round the dig sites and antique markets of the Nile Delta with a big fat cheque-book. A scholar rather than an excavator, although I think I had once seen him hold a trowel. "And where can I find him?" I enquired. "Most likely in his office, my Lord," said the attendant, making a vague effort to tug me away from the display case without actually initiating physical contact, "I'm sure if you call again tomorrow ..." Or, I thought, I could just beard him in his den here and now, before the curse nudged him under a tram or dropped a statue on his head. A gold sovereign proved more than ample to convince the attendant of the merits of escorting me to said den, especially since it involved being somewhere other than the last public resting place of EA 22542. "So what's the story behind the exhibit?" I enquired, "You seemed a little ill at ease back there." "It's not something we're encouraged to discuss with the ... ah ... public, my Lord," said the attendant apologetically. "Well," I said, "I know of at least five deaths attributed to it so far. I think you can rest easy on account of sullying its reputation any further." The attendant mulled this over, and then drew me aside into the Nubian Gallery. "If you've heard about the ... accidents, my Lord," he said, lowering his voice, "Then you'll understand why the Museum wants to get rid of it. The 'Unlucky Mummy', people call it, even though it's just an empty coffin. The story goes that when it was first brought here, one of the men who carried it in died within the week, and the other broke his hip and never worked again. They also say that no-one's been able to photograph it, not without some horrible accident happening to them or their family. I can't vouch for all that, but I do know what I've heard, and what the other watchmen have heard. You'll think me a fool, my Lord, or maybe you won't, if you know the story, but I swear it makes noises. At night. First time you hear it, you think maybe there's a bit of the roof needs fixed, and it's just the wind moaning, but then you get to the gallery itself, and it's like there's some woman, wailing and crying, only the sound's all wrong, like it's coming from the bottom of a well. Some of the others reckon they can make out words, not in English, mind you, but it's like she's pleading or something. If you've read Mr Stead's stories in the papers, sir, there's certainly some truth in them. He left out the worst though, because there was none of us would dare repeat it to him." There was more? "Tell me the worst then," I said. My informant glanced from side to side, his voice now little more than a whisper, as if he suspected the eroded sculptures around us of being representatives of the Nubian secret police in disguise. "It was pretty bad, sir," he muttered, "I mean, no-one actually got hurt, not injured like, but afterwards none of us would go in Room 60 alone, not for all the tea in China, my Lord, and that's a fact. What it is, you see, is that one of my colleagues here at the Museum, he actually saw her."

Back to Damien's Diary
or
Back to The Last Enemy Page