Barbara Cleverly - Folly Du Jour

He and May were the only tourists present. All the rest were — he’d have sworn — academics. Staffers perhaps. Harland was a salesman and a damned good one. And you didn’t make the money he’d made by not being able to read faces. Individuals or in groups. Harland didn’t read much but he read people all right. And this collection puzzled him. It was downright weird! He’d seen a scene like this in one of May’s books. It was entitled The Opening of the Mummy Case . Earnest professor types gathered round a table, all eyes on the box laid out ready in front of them.

Harland glanced around the faces of this crowd. They’d known just how far they could push the cop. They’d retreated exactly when they had to, conceded no more than was necessary to keep him on board. Thinking as one. Like a good platoon. Struck by his insight, Harland tried but failed to spot the senior officer present. Well, whoever these people were, they knew when to keep quiet.

No one spoke. Harland didn’t even hear a gasp when the lid finally went up. He tried to cover May’s eyes but she bit him and he took his hand away. And then, a voice broke the stunned silence.

‘Ah. A double occupancy. It’s a bit crowded in there, wouldn’t you say?’ said Pollock, lazily confident. ‘I think we can safely identify the passenger on the lower deck — and looking a teeny bit ruffled — as the High Priest of Lower Egypt. But — I say — anyone recognize the passenger in first class accommodation on the upper deck?’

‘It’s Lebreton! Professeur Joachim Lebreton!’

‘Ha!’

‘Well! Well!’

‘’Struth!’

A communal breath was exhaled by the gathering. Wondering looks were exchanged. Most made the sign of the cross. But, strangely, Harland saw not one look of distress or sorrow. One or two even gave — he was certain — a bitter smile.

The doctor took over, sweeping the helpers aside. He summoned the policeman to his side and spoke tersely into his ear. Harland could follow his gestures, and all present could see for themselves what had happened to the professor. He was dead. A wound to the heart. A knife wound, Harland judged. Two years of soldiering in the infantry during the war had taught him all anyone would ever want to know about bullet wounds. This was no bullet wound. The poor guy looked like he’d been bayoneted. Slit down the middle. The body had clearly been propped on its feet at the moment of death because the flow of blood down the front of his beige jacket and trousers had been copious and had ponded in his shoes to overflow into the bottom of the box. Harland thought it must have gathered there in quantities, waited for him and Maybelle to stroll by, and started to seep its way through on to the floor.

Oddly, there was something white sticking out of the dead man’s mouth. It looked grotesque and Harland wanted to rush forward and pull it away. The doctor seemed to have the same urge. He chose a pair of pincers from the bag he had laid out open at his feet and tugged at the — cotton, was it? A thin roll of white fabric about two and a half inches wide emerged from the mouth. Moulin pulled again. A further length came out.

‘Linen. Mummy bandage,’ said someone in the crowd.

Another voice specified: ‘ Ancient mummy bandage.’

‘Well — it’s outdated rubbish,’ drawled the Englishman standing in front of Harland, to his neighbour, ‘what else would we expect the dear professor to spew forth? Let’s just hope they won’t feel obliged to check the other orifices. I, for one, should have to leave.’

A waft of some sweet, spicy scent began to wind its way through the crowd. The inside of his grandpa’s old cigar box? Cloves? Cinnamon? Myrrh? What did myrrh smell like? Just like this, Harland imagined. His memory, triggered, went off with a bang. His mother’s apple pie! Suddenly uncomfortable, he reached into his pocket for his handkerchief.

A small gold object fell from the now bloodstained bandage and landed with a tinkle on the marble at the foot of the Chief Egyptologist. He didn’t hesitate. He picked it up and held it aloft between thumb and forefinger. ‘Gentlemen. I think we all recognize the ugly, dog-headed god of Egypt?’ he announced. His arched eyebrows, quizzical, superior, assumed a special knowledge in his audience. He could have been taking class.

Harland itched to put up his hand. ‘It’s Anubis,’ he whispered to May. He knew two Egyptian gods. Ra was the other one.

Maybelle didn’t even hear his mistake. She was staring at the gold trinket. She had turned very pale. ‘ Set ! It’s Set!’ she hissed in Harland’s ear. ‘I don’t like it here. I don’t like these people. It’s crowded, it’s creepy and it’s making me nauseous. Get me out, Harland, or your wing-tips really will suffer!’

Serious efforts were made to bar their way. The policeman’s hand went to his holster. Orders were yelled in several languages. But Sergeant Harland C. White, survivor of Belleau Wood, supporting his wife with one arm, extended the other, stuck out his jaw and charged for the door.

Out in the main corridor and sounds of pursuit fading, they encountered two newsmen carrying cameras armed with those new-fangled exploding light bulb devices. They were looking about them eagerly.

‘Show’s back there,’ said Harland, nodding over his shoulder. ‘Better hurry, you guys. You’ve missed the first act.’

Paris, 21st May 1927

‘I know monsieur will have a most enjoyable evening.’

The young woman who’d shown him to his seat offered him a smile at once shy and knowing. She held out her hand for his tip and slipped it swiftly away with a murmured word of thanks. The solitary Englishman hesitated, eyeing the pair of gilt chairs snuggling cosily together in the empty box with sudden misgiving.

‘Mademoiselle!’

He detained her with his call as she turned to dart away and offered his ticket stub again for her inspection. ‘Some mistake, I think?’

The girl took the ticket and looked with exaggerated care at the number. She was an ouvreuse — yes, that’s what they called them over here, he remembered. Though what they actually ‘opened’ was a mystery to the Englishman. . unless you counted the opening of those little bags into which their conjurer’s fingers made the notes and coins disappear.

‘No, there is no mistake, monsieur. This is indeed your box number.’ She tilted her head and the smile appeared again, this time without the softening element of shyness. ‘You have the best seat in the house.’ Her eye ran over the handsome features, the imposing figure, taking in the evening dress, correct and well-cut. She remembered his generosity and paused in her scurrying to cast a glance, amused and complicitous at the second chair. ‘A little patience!’ she teased. ‘I’m sure it will not be long before monsieur has company.’ She took the time to add: ‘There are ten minutes to go before the curtain rises. And it is no longer fashionable to be late. Certainly not for this show.’

She whisked away in a flutter of black silk and a tantalizing trace of rather good perfume, leaving Sir George Jardine standing about in something of a quandary.

He had an increasing feeling of unease. He was displaced. He ought not to be here. But the momentary touch of vertigo was chased away by a stab of impatience with himself. With the man he had become over the years. Would he ever be free to lay aside the burden of his training? Years of forethought, political skirmishing, and — yes — out-and-out skulduggery had imbued him with a watchfulness that was not lightly laid aside, even when he was thousands of miles away from the arena of his intrigues. Here he was, in the pleasure capital of Europe; it was time to let go the reins and leave the bloody Empire to look after itself.