Secrets of the Dead Read online

  ‘I’m sure his music is interesting.’

  ‘Consider yourself warned. Ah … did Greg explain everything? About what we’re doing here?’

  ‘Pretty much, but I didn’t get chance to see where I’d be working when we came up to the castle last night.’

  ‘OK. I can deliver my standard compact-sized lecture that I give to visitors. It’ll outline our purpose here … though I should say “our mission”, which is probably more accurate, as we hope to solve one of ancient Egypt’s great mysteries. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.’

  ‘Fire away. It’ll be useful to hear about the work from someone in the front line.’

  ‘Nicely put, John. Well, here goes.’ She used the coffee cup to point at a plan on the wall. ‘That’s a diagram showing the Gold Tomb in Egypt. Over a hundred years ago, Lord Kemmis blew his family’s fortune searching for the lost tomb of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. He believed he did find the tomb of the pharaoh, which also contained some members of his family. The problem is that there are no names in the tomb to prove who is buried there. The mummies were left in what is essentially an unmarked grave. Lord Kemmis seems to have made a leap of faith when it came to identifying the male mummy as the Pharaoh Akhenaten. What we’re aiming to do is ID the gent found in the tomb. We can do that by examining his DNA and comparing that with the boy king Tutankhamen, as it’s now widely believed that Akhenaten was King Tut’s father. That’s where you come in, John. If you can put the tiny fragments of papyrus documents together again, then those, with luck, might tell us who is in the tomb.’

  John nodded. ‘If it can be proved that the adult male in the tomb is King Akhenaten then it will be the biggest discovery in Egyptology since the discovery of Tutankhamen.’

  ‘Exactly. It will be immensely valuable in historical terms.’ She dropped her voice as if revealing a secret. ‘It also means our employers, the new owners of the castle and the mummy collection, will make millions from photographic rights and souvenirs. People will be queuing down that drive to pay to see the lost pharaoh and his family.’

  John was sceptical. ‘But you don’t even know if the mummies are related. And there are no clues to suggest that the adult male really is Akhenaten.’

  ‘But we’re hot on the trail now, John. DNA results could link our mummies with King Tut. And if you restore the papyrus to a point we can read the hieroglyphs … well, if it says something like, “Here lies the mortal remains of Pharaoh Akhenaten,” then we’re going to collect the biggest cash bonuses of our lives.’ She smiled. ‘As well as put our names in the history books. Fame and fortune, John. It’s not often that an archaeologist can enjoy success like that.’

  John turned his attention to the drawing of the ancient tomb. ‘So, there are two chambers. One was trashed by tomb robbers, or whoever got into the tomb thousands of years ago, so it makes you wonder why they left the second chamber intact, especially as that’s where the mummies were, and grave goods like jewellery and the gold statues.’

  Samantha took a sip of her coffee. ‘Ah, just one of the many mysteries. The first chamber, which we call the Library, on account of the papyrus books that it contained, was attacked with incredible ferocity. Every document wasn’t just torn apart but shredded to tiny fragments. What we also found, when we sieved the debris, were fragments of human bone. There’s speculation now that whoever broke into the tomb was killed, and then they were pulverized to fragments themselves.’

  ‘Gruesome.’

  ‘It also explains why the tomb raiders didn’t make it into the second chamber, which is simply linked by an unlocked door. The second chamber is painted yellow, hence the name Gold Tomb. The bodies were found in coffins, with the exception of the adult male who sits on a chair. It might be the throne-like chair that suggested to Lord Kemmis that he was in the presence of a king.’

  ‘And there’s no writing whatsoever on the coffins, or walls of the tomb?’

  ‘No. Totally anonymous.’ She moved to one of the tables covered with a white sheet. ‘Right … if you wish, John, I can introduce you to one of the occupants of the tomb.’

  John shivered, recalling the night three decades ago when Philip told him he would see mummies in the tower. Now here he was, about to see one for the first time.

  ‘Say hello to Isis, as we’ve named her.’ Samantha tugged away the sheet.

  The three-thousand-year old corpse of a woman lay on its back on the table. Its eyes, or more accurately the shrivelled remains of them, stared up at the ceiling. The body was still bound in strips of linen in the typical ‘mummy wrapped in bandages’ style. The head had been freed of bindings, leaving the face completely exposed. Samantha explained that the head had been unwrapped almost a century ago, and that no self-respecting Egyptologist today would do such a thing – removing a mummy’s bandages would, as she phrased it, ‘degrade the integrity of the body, thus compromising its scientific value’. Isis’s skin was a reddish brown in colour. Lips were slightly parted, exposing the teeth.

  John had been taken by surprise at the sudden unveiling, as it were, of the mummy; he hadn’t expected Samantha to do that. Now his surprise turned to keen interest. ‘The hair … it’s remarkable. I’ve never seen such beautiful hair on a mummy.’

  ‘Looks as if she’s just come from the stylist.’ Samantha nodded. ‘In the right conditions, hair is almost indestructible. Isis’s hair is beautiful, isn’t it? It must have been her pride and joy. Of course, this adds to the mystery.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Egyptian men and women, and children for that matter, usually shaved off all their hair and wore wigs. This is natural hair that grew from her scalp. See the length of it? It would have swished around her waist; a cascade of glossy, raven-black locks. You can just imagine this striking woman lounging on cushions in the palace, while a slave girl brushes her wonderful tresses.’

  John examined the face, which had a papery quality. He noted the high cheekbones and smooth forehead. ‘I wonder, what was her secret?’

  ‘Secret? What makes you say that?’

  ‘Oh, my son repeated something his new friend told him. His friend said, “Everyone has secrets.”’

  ‘What a wise statement.’ Samantha gave a surprisingly erotic wink. ‘We all do harbour secrets, don’t we, John?’

  ‘That’s what makes humans interesting.’ He laughed. ‘The fingernails, too: an amazing state of preservation.’

  ‘Thank goodness the thieves who vandalized the papyrus documents didn’t get their hands on the mummies in the next chamber – they’d have ripped them apart, looking for jewellery wrapped up with the bodies.’ She shone a penlight into the mouth of the corpse. ‘Has your son made friends already, then?’

  ‘A boy of around twelve.’

  ‘Local?’

  ‘He must be. His name’s … let’s see … ah, Fletcher, that’s it, Fletcher.’

  ‘Fletcher Brown. Oh dear.’

  ‘Anything I should be concerned about?’

  She thought for a moment, perhaps choosing a diplomatic description. ‘Fletcher lives with his mother and father in the gatehouse, though I believe the mother’s in a bad way in hospital. Fletcher is … how can I put it nicely? Different. He has a tendency to say peculiar things.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have a chat with my son about him.’

  ‘Fletcher isn’t unpleasant, or a bully, or anything like that.’ She bent over to shine the light at the teeth in the back of the mummy’s mouth. ‘It’s just that my son won’t have anything to do with him. I think Mark finds Fletcher a bit frightening. He even described Fletcher as being “other-worldly”, but then Mark does have good vocabulary.’

  John moved in closer to see the state of the cadaver’s teeth. ‘Would you say that Fletcher has learning difficulties?’

  ‘Just the opposite.’

  Samantha’s decidedly attractive face was just inches from his. John even felt her warm breath on his skin. John realized that the woman did have an erotic power;
what’s more, he knew full well that she knew it, too. He suspected she enjoyed flirting and took pleasure in encouraging men to do likewise. He moved to the other side of the table.

  ‘There’s another mystery about Isis,’ he said. ‘Her teeth.’

  ‘Ah, smart man, you’ve noticed. She has wonderful teeth. I’d call them movie star teeth.’

  ‘And generally ancient Egyptians had rotten teeth?’

  ‘Absolutely. They often lost their teeth at a young age. The millstones used to grind corn into flour left gritty particles in the bread. In effect, the bread was like sandpaper. Gradually, it wore down molars to stumps.’

  ‘This lady avoided that fate.’ John studied the face. ‘She’s what? Thirties? Her teeth would get a whistle of approval from a modern dentist.’

  ‘Nicely put, John.’

  ‘Are the rest of the mummies in such a good state of preservation?’

  ‘Yes, our king and queen, and their children, are all damn near perfect.’

  She circled the table to be on the same side as John. He moved to the head of the table to examine the mummy’s scalp. He still maintained an air of being relaxed in Samantha’s company, even though he knew she was being teasingly sexy with him. Probably harmless fun, and perhaps testing boundaries with a new work colleague, but John wished she’d ease off on the femme fatale act.

  ‘Do you know her cause of death?’

  ‘There are puncture wounds in the torso of this body and in the other bodies, suggesting they were stabbed with a knife or sword.’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Apparently so. An entire family slain, comprising of a mature adult man and woman, a youth in his late teens, a girl of sixteen or so, and a boy of around eleven.’ She may have been annoyed by the way he kept his distance from her, because in a sharp voice she said, ‘In fact, John, they’re the same ages as you and your wife and your own children. Or as near as damn it.’

  ‘Not quite. I don’t have a son in his late teens.’ John turned away, as if to admire the view of the moors through the window. He recalled the words of his son’s new friend, Fletcher; the boy had said: ‘Everyone has secrets.’ John’s secret was that he had fathered a boy almost twenty years ago. He’d kept the secret well and intended never to reveal the truth; he certainly would never reveal it to someone as emotionally manipulative as Samantha Oldfield.

  Fletcher Brown acted strange. It wasn’t funny ha-ha strange, it was worryingly strange. Oliver Tolworth didn’t like the older boy’s behaviour one little bit. In fact, Oliver was starting to feel frightened.

  If Fletcher had been strange right from the start this morning, when they met up by chance in the lane, Oliver would have gone home. But Fletcher had been friendly, and pleasant, and … well … normal. Fletcher had taken him to see deer grazing in the meadow. The twelve year old had then shown him big carp gliding just below the surface of the pond. Fletcher had also allowed Oliver to use his penknife to score his initials in a tree trunk. Fletcher said that’s what kids did in the olden days before they had TV and computer games to entertain them. Oliver wasn’t allowed to own a penknife, so it had been exciting to handle that sharp blade. Oliver decided to buy a penknife then find a hiding place for it in his bedroom so his mother and father wouldn’t find it.

  All in all, Oliver Tolworth had had a really enjoyable Saturday morning. What’s more, there was the prospect of an enjoyable afternoon too. When he’d stopped by the house earlier he’d discovered that his dad had phoned his mother to say that they’d been invited to a barbecue. But now the day was being spoilt because Fletcher had got into a weird mood. He seemed determined to frighten Oliver. Oliver thought of the word ‘sadist’ and wondered if it applied to the twelve year old. They were now in a graveyard that surrounded a little church. There were no houses nearby. Neither were there any other people in sight.

  Fletcher danced amongst the graves. ‘There are two hundred dead people’s names written on these gravestones. I know because I’ve counted them all.’ He picked up a length of plastic pipe from the grass. How it had come to be there Oliver couldn’t guess; perhaps Fletcher had planned something and left it there earlier. In any event, Fletcher slashed the pipe through the air as if it was a sword and he was beheading invisible men. The pipe, about a yard long, and of the type used in plumbing, made a buzzing sound as he swung it left and then right.

  Oliver said nervously, ‘Careful, don’t hit me with that thing.’

  ‘I’m not going to. It’s a scientific instrument. I’m going to use it like a stethoscope.’

  ‘A stethoscope?’ Oliver was baffled by the strange behaviour. ‘How?’

  ‘You’ll see, and you won’t be able to believe your ears.’ Fletcher used the plastic pipe to knock the heads off wild flowers that grew in the graveyard. ‘Just imagine,’ he said, ‘if there were electronic buttons on the gravestones and you could press them, and then … whirr, buzz, clunk … a hoist mechanism lifted coffins up to the surface.’ He pretended to press buttons on a tomb slab that lay flat on the ground. Inscribed there: Joshua Alfred Kemmis. Born 1822. Departed this life 1856. Drowned in Kelp Bay. The boy made sound effects of a mechanism: ‘Whirr, buzz, clunk, chugger-chugger. The coffin rises up out of the ground. We grab the lid …’ He made a screeching sound. ‘We open it up. What would we see inside? Imagine how Joshua Alfred Kemmis would look after being eaten by worms for over a hundred and fifty years.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘A family of mice would live inside his skull.’

  ‘They wouldn’t.’

  ‘Would, too. Baby mice all nibbling what’s left of his brain like it’s stinky cheese.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘No.’ Oliver’s face burned. He felt angry rather than scared.

  ‘Just imagine – you lean forward to look at Joshua’s skull. Suddenly, he reaches up and grabs you, and pulls you into his coffin. Whoosh … you look into the eye sockets and see mice staring back at you.’

  ‘You’re stupid.’

  ‘Am not.’ Fletcher swished the pipe through the air. ‘Don’t you believe the dead can come back to life?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I do. I’ve seen them.’

  ‘You haven’t.’

  ‘Have.’

  The boy was older than Oliver, but now he sounded like a spoilt little kid. An eight year old, maybe. Oliver was tempted to go home and have nothing more to do with him. But it had been fun this morning. And Fletcher had let Oliver use the penknife. Oliver found himself reluctant to stop being friends with him. Perhaps Fletcher would soon stop talking about coffins coming out of the ground, and maybe he’d let Oliver use the penknife again. There must be a million uses for a knife like that.

  Oliver tried to change the subject (sometimes that worked when his sister was being cranky). ‘I’m going to a barbecue this afternoon.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At a house near where I live. There’s going to be lots of burgers, sausages and stuff.’

  ‘My dad doesn’t have time for barbecues. He’s always visiting my mother in hospital.’ The situation clearly annoyed Fletcher. ‘I told you about my mother, didn’t I? She’s dying. Nearly dead, in fact.’

  Oliver didn’t know how to react to such a statement so he didn’t even try to respond. ‘You could come too, Fletcher. To the barbecue?’

  ‘Nah, they won’t want me there. People around here don’t like me.’

  ‘I like you, Fletcher.’

  ‘You don’t like me talking about coffins coming up to the surface.’ He pressed another imaginary button on a gravestone. ‘Buzz. Click! Oooh, look, Oliver, this woman died of leprosy. She’s got a face like a bowl of bubbly yogurt.’

  Oliver realized, at last, that this was Fletcher’s strange sense of humour. Even so, Fletcher’s expression remained deadly serious. Oliver, however, started to laugh. ‘Yogurt face. Ha-ha.’

  ‘Death yogurt. Post-mortem yogurt. Yogurt of the grav
e.’ Fletcher put the pipe to his lips and started making ghostly sounds through it. His sombre expression gave way to a wicked grin. ‘Attack of the yogurt-faced woman.’ He lurched forward, a hand extended to Oliver, zombie-style. ‘Fatal leprosy wasn’t the end … it was the stepping stone to becoming one of the living dead.’

  ‘The juicy, gooey living dead. Can I borrow your penknife again, Fletcher?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Go on, I won’t bust it.’

  ‘Later. I want to show you this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Fletcher reached a grave that took the form of a stone oblong box about six feet long. The sides of the stone box were covered by inscriptions. ‘This gentleman,’ Fletcher began with a strange formality, ‘is the cause of all the trouble at Baverstock Castle.’

  ‘What did he do? Burn it down?’

  ‘Probably would have been better if he had.’ Fletcher tapped the stone box with the pipe. ‘Lying dead in this sarcophagus is Lord Kemmis. He died in 1916 after spending all his money looking for tombs in Egypt. He found the mummies that are in the castle now.’

  ‘My dad’s going to be working on them, and some old-fashioned paper called papyrus. It’s what the Egyptians wrote on.’

  ‘He’s going to be with the mummies? Then God in all His mercy spare him.’

  Oliver scowled. ‘What do you mean? Are you saying my dad might get hurt?’

  ‘Might? There’s no “might” about it, Oliver. Those mummies are evil. Ask Philip Kemmis.’

  Oliver didn’t like the suggestion that his father might be in danger. ‘It’s not nice to say that people are going to get hurt. He’s my dad.’

  Fletcher was pleased with himself. He pointed at a hole in the side of the box-like tomb. ‘See? The weather did that. Erosion.’ He thrust one end of the plastic tube through the aperture and into the grave. ‘Oliver, the tube’s now a stethoscope. Put your ear to this end. You can hear the dead man crying because he made his family broke and brought the evil mummies here.’