not.’
‘Objects of devotion?’
‘Sacred, certainly.’
But in the grave at Owen’s feet there was something which was clearly not an object of devotion. It lay across the middle of the pit and cat mummies had been clumsily pulled off the shelves and spread over it in an attempt to hide it. It was rather longer than a cat mummy but bandaged tightly like them.
Except at the head, where the district mamur, alerted by the village omda, had uncovered enough of the modern bandages to reveal that the body was that of a twentieth-century, fair-headed woman.
‘Identification?’ said Owen.
‘They all know her. The omda –’ began the mamur.
‘Someone closer.’
‘There is a husband,’ said the mamur, almost unwillingly.
‘Husband?’
Owen looked at his papers. They made no reference to a husband.
‘Where is he?’
‘Up at the factory.’
‘Has he seen her?’
‘He knows,’ said the mamur evasively.
Owen bent over the body. Already, in the heat, it was changing.
‘You’d better get it moved,’ he said.
The mamur nodded, and beckoned to two of the villagers.
‘Mustapha! Abu!’
They came forward reluctantly.
‘Wait a minute!’ said Owen. ‘Aren’t you going to … ?’
He stopped.
‘Yes?’ said the mamur.
Owen shrugged. It wasn’t really any of his concern and out in the provinces things were done differently; when they were done at all.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
‘Is there a hakim?’ asked McPhee.
In the provinces any autopsy was usually conducted by the local doctor.
‘He has been sent for,’ said the mamur.
The two villagers were hesitating on the brink of the pit.
‘Get on with it!’ said the mamur. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘We don’t like it,’ said one of the men.
‘It’s nothing. Haven’t you seen a body before?’
‘We’re not bothered about the body,’ said the other villager. ‘It’s these.’
He gestured towards the mummies.
‘They’re bodies, too.’
The men still hesitated.
‘Look, they’re only bodies. The bodies of animals, what’s more.’
‘We still don’t like it.’
‘They’re not even recent bodies,’ said the mamur persuasively.
‘All the same …’
‘Are you going to do it or aren’t you?’
The answer, unfortunately, was probably not.
‘Look,’ said the mamur, ‘if I move the cats, will you move the woman?’
The men looked at each other.
‘If you move the ones on top –’
‘And put them back in their right places –’
The mamur jumped down into the pit and began putting the mummies aside.
‘Satisfied?’
The two looked at the other villagers.
‘We call upon the world to witness that it wasn’t we who interfered with the grave.’
‘We witness, Mustapha!’
‘Right then.’
The two got down into the pit, picked up the body of the woman, tucked it nonchalantly under their right arms and set out across the desert towards the sugar cane.
‘Are you coming up to the house?’ asked the mamur.
‘We ought to check the identification, I suppose,’ said Owen.
It was probably being over-punctilious. When he had arrived in Minya the day before and presented the mudir, the local governor, with the list of names, the mudir, knowing most of them, had gone through them mechanically, ticking almost every one. It was only at the last one that he had stopped.
‘There’s been a development,’ he said.
He had gone to the door of his office and called in the mamur, sitting uneasily outside, and had shown him the list.
‘That one,’ he had said, pointing. ‘Wasn’t that the one … ?’
‘Yes,’ said the mamur. ‘She’s been found,’ he said to Owen.
‘Found?’
‘Found dead. This morning.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Owen.
‘Would you like to see her? You could come with me. I’ve got to go back.’
‘Perhaps I’d better,’ decided Owen.
The mudir put a cross against her name.
‘Is she worth the journey?’ he said.
The path to the house led up through long plantations of sugar cane. The cane was twelve feet tall and planted so densely that the long ribbon foliage of one plant intertwined with the leaves of the next, making an impenetrable jungle. You could not see as much as a yard from the path; only the sky overhead, and the path itself, winding, not straight, and stubble underfoot.
Yet it was not the sudden loss of light, the hemmed-in feeling, that became troubling after a while, but the heat. The cane caught the sunshine and trapped it, so that, hot though it was outside the plantation, out on the open desert by the graves – well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit – it was hotter still inside. In no time at all Owen’s shirt was sodden with perspiration.
McPhee took off his helmet, mopped his forehead, and swung the hat at the flies.
‘Of course,’ he said meditatively, ‘there’s the Speos Artemidos at Beni Hasan.’
‘What?’ said Owen.
Used as he was to the heat of Egypt, this walk through the sugar cane was leaving him quite dazed.
‘The Cave of Artemis.’
‘Really?’
‘Artemis is the Greek version, of course,’ said McPhee.
The sweat running down Owen’s forehead was beginning to sting his eyes. Maybe McPhee was right. He took off his sun helmet too.
‘Greek version?’ he said.
‘Of Pakhet.’
Packet? What the hell was McPhee on about?
‘The cat goddess,’ explained McPhee. ‘The one those mummies were probably dedicated to.’
‘Oh.’ And then, after a moment: ‘You think there could be a connection?’
‘Well, Beni Hasan’s not far from here, is it? There could even have been other temples nearer, of course. The whole area is noted for the special recognition it gives to Pakhet.’
It was the kind of curious information in which McPhee excelled.
‘Fascinating!’