Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

“Sorry, Ma’am,” Bat responded, “what I meant was, I’ll go with you, if you’ll allow me to.”

“Well… why not?”

“Just let me walk the Inspector out and I’ll have a cab waiting when you’re ready.”

“Very well.”

Outside the hospital Bat said to House, “You go and tell Flaherty what I’m doing. After the doctor and I go to the museum I’ll come and find you.”

“What the hell, Bat-” House said. “I can’t go back to the Chief with this.”

“This could be the only explanation we have for what seems to be impossible,” Bat said.

“Ancient Egypt? Mummies? Do you believe all that?”

“Don’t you ever do any reading, son,” Bat said. “We’re talking about history.”

“Still,” House said, as they headed down the hall, “It’s hard to believe.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Who do we ask for?” Bat asked, as they entered the Denver Museum of History, located on Broadway.

“The Egyptology expert,” Dr Ford said.

“I’ll let you start to do the talking.”

“Shouldn’t Inspector House be with us?” she asked. “After all, he’s the policeman.”

“Inspector House had something else to do,” Bat said. “Don’t worry, we have official standing.”

They walked down a long hall until they encountered a man standing at a desk.

“Can I help you?”

“My name is Doctor Ford,” she said, “and this is Bat Masterson, the, urn, columnist. We are hoping to speak to whoever is your expert on Egyptology?”

“Bat Masterson?” the man asked. He was a small man roughly Bat’s age, but he stared at the frontier legend with a little boy’s enthusiasm. “Really?”

“Yes,” Bat said, “I’m afraid so. Do you have an expert in, urn, Egyptology?”

“Ooh, yes, we do,” the man said. “You want Mr Vartan. I’ll get him for you.”

“Thank you,” Doctor Ford said.

“Doctor, how many of these experts could there be in Denver?” Bat asked while they waited.

“I would think only one.”

“And would he know how to do this, how to… what? Mummify?”

“I know what you mean, and I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose we’ll have to ask him.”

They waited in silence, and after a few minutes had past the doctor looked at Bat curiously. “Did you mean that you… suspect this man, even though you haven’t met him yet?”

“No,” he said, “of course not. I just thought if he’s the only expert that maybe the killer had come to see him, just like we have.”

“Oh, I see.”

But now that she mentioned it, why couldn’t the one man in Denver who had the know how be a suspect in the crime? Bat decided he would give this jasper a real close going over and watch him carefully.

They heard footsteps coking towards them and saw the small man returning with a very tall, dark-skinned man wearing a suit and tie.

“This is Mr Vartan,” the small man said.

“I am Michael Vartan. I understand you were looking for me?” Vartan asked. “Sam said one of you is a doctor?”

“I am Dr Ford,” Justina Ford said.

Vartan looked at her in complete surprise.

“I did not know we had any black doctors in Denver, let alone a woman. How fascinating.”

“Mr Vartan?” Bat said. “My name is Bat Masterson. We would like to ask you some questions about-”

“The famous killer?” Vartan asked.

Bat closed his mouth and glared at the man.

“I am a columnist for the newspaper George’s Weekly.”

“Ah, but surely you are the famous Bat Masterson,” Vartan said. “There could not be two men with such a name.”

“I am perhaps famous,” Bat said, “but not as a killer.”

“I am so sorry,” Vartan said. “I have offended you.”

“Mr Masterson has been many things, Mr Vartan,” Dr Ford said, “among them a lawman.”

“And now a writer,” Vartan said. “How commendable. I apologize again. You have some questions concerning what?”

“The process of mummification,” Dr Ford said.

Vartan stared at them for a few moments, then said, “I have an office. Would you follow me, please?”

He led them through hallways of the museum, so that they never saw any displays except through doorways as they passed. Eventually they came to a room with a desk and a few chairs. He invited them in to sit, and closed the door before circling his desk and seating himself.

“Please, tell me your problem.”

Dr Ford looked to Bat, who took up the tale. He told Vartan about the three women who had been killed and what had been found by Dr Ford during the autopsy.

“What we need to know is,” Dr Ford said, “could the organs have been removed through this small incision?”

“Interesting,” Vartan said. He paused to consider and while he did he picked up an instrument from the desk. It was a long copper needle with a small hook on the end. “Do you see this? It was used by the Egyptians to remove the brain through the nasal passage.”

Bat remembered Dr Ford mentioning that earlier.

“Could it be used for the organs, too?” Bat asked.

Vartan didn’t reply to Bat’s direct question, but went on in his train of thought. Bat thought Vartan warmed to his gruesome subject too much.

“No one knows how the brain was removed, but it must have been in pieces,” the man went on. “It could not have been removed this way as a whole.”

“The organs couldn’t have been removed as a whole either,” Dr Ford said. “At least, not through that incision.”

“The incision you refer to was indeed used to remove the organs,” Vartan said, “and then they were put into a jar and buried along with the body.”

Bat didn’t like the way Vartan’s eyes shone during the telling.

“But no one knows for sure how it was done,” Vartan continued, “just as we don’t quite know how the brain was removed.” He set the bronze tool down. “But we know that they were.”

“So no one,” Bat said, “not even you, who is an expert, would be able to do such a thing now?”

“I?” Vartan asked, looking shocked. “I would never-no, no, too bloody. I would be too… squeamish, I think.”

Bat doubted that Vartan was squeamish about much of anything. The man seemed to be enjoying the spotlight and also – to Bat’s trained eye from years of not only gambling but sizing up men who may or may not try to kill him – he thought the man seemed amused.

“Mr Vartan,” Dr Ford said, apparently unaware of these things, “has anyone else come to see you about these things in, say the past six months or so?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Vartan said, making a steeple of his hands and fingers and regarding them above it. “I rarely get to speak of these things in this way.”

Another thing Bat noticed about Vartan was that the man’s gaze never wavered from his own. Even when he speaking to the doctor, he was looking at Bat. Many men had looked at Bat that way over the years, as if they had or were getting his measure. They had all been disappointed.

Oddly, the room seemed bare. There were no Egyptian objects of any kind on the walls, and the only one on his desk was that bronze tool sitting on the edge of his desk.

“I am so sorry these women were killed – how were they killed?”

“That’s still something of a mystery,” Dr Ford said, “but their organs were removed after death.”

“Shocking… in this day and age, I mean.”

“Yes,” Dr Ford said, “quite.”

“They were peaceful in death, Mr Vartan,” Bat said. “What would make them die so peacefully?”

“Well, certain poisons would have that effect,” Vartan said. “There are poisons which cause horrible, painful deaths, but there are several which could cause a person to simply… fall asleep… forever. Some of these were used in ancient Egypt.”