Barbara Cleverly - Folly Du Jour

Paris, 1923

Harland C. White of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania shuffled resentfully after his wife, May, through the Egyptian rooms in the Louvre museum. One vaulted stone room after another. You could lose yourself in here. Or lose your mind. He wondered whether this was a good moment to suggest they go for tea on the new roof terrace over the Samaritaine store.

‘Say! May!’ he called after her. ‘This is the fourth roomful of sarcophaguses — okay, then, sarcophageeee — we’ve done. How many more?’

They’d had lunch at Ciro’s. The food and wine had made him sleepy, the size of the check had made him grouchy. $1.00 for a slice of melon? $2.25 for a Baby Lobster? Still, lunch at Ciro’s was on his schedule. You couldn’t go home and not say you’d lunched at Ciro’s. Had to be done. Same thing, apparently, with the Louvre.

Maybelle (May, since she’d discovered all the girls over here had short names. . though it didn’t have quite the kick of Zizi or Lulu or Kiki) had come to a halt in front of a huge, dark-painted coffin box and was doing that thing with her hands. . Tracing the shapes in the air — hieroglyphs, she called them — and silently mouthing the sounds that went with them. Clever girl, May! She’d been to classes. She’d grown chummy with the arty folks at the State Museum. She’d gotten hold of a book called The Mummy by some feller called Wallis Budge and had learned — or so she told him. . what would he know? — to read the sounds out loud. She’d tried to teach Harland to do it but his attention had faded after he’d mastered ‘ Tut — ankh — amen .’

‘Come look, Harland! This one’s kind of special and I can work out the name of the occupant.’

His friends at the Country Club — swell blokes every last one of ’em — had been full of good advice: ‘So, you’re going to Paris? Peppy Paree! Ah! It’s the top of the beanstalk — you’ll just love it. Give my regards to Harry. . and Henry. . and Bud at the Dead Rat. . and Joe Zelli — now he’s a real live wire!’

Two days down and all he’d met were three-thousand-year-old guys who lived in boxes. And here was another introduction coming up.

‘ Kham — nut — see ,’ said May.

‘I’m looking, I’m looking!’ he said, trying to lighten the gloom.

‘Chump! That’s his name. Kham — nut — see ,’ she intoned again. ‘High Priest of Ptah.’

‘Do you have to spit your baccy on my brogue, May?’ he said, never knowing when to give up.

May ignored him. ‘At Memphis.’

‘Memphis?’

‘That would be Memphis, Lower Egypt, not Memphis, Tennessee.’ May could be very squashing.

‘Well. . whoever. . your buddy’s just sprung a leak,’ he said crabbily. He didn’t like the look of adoration on Maybelle’s face — the way she opened shining wide eyes and moistened her lips. Never looked at him that way. He pointed to the foot of the upright coffin. ‘There. He’s sprung a leak — or taken one.’

The ticking off for loose language he was expecting didn’t come. May was staring at the marble floor at the base of the mummy box. He looked again. A dark red-brown glutinous fluid was ponding there.

‘Ah! I’ll tell you what that is. . it’s embalming fluid,’ said Harland, decisively. ‘Come away, May. Time to move on, I think.’ He tugged at her arm.

‘No, it’s not embalming fluid,’ said May. ‘It’s blood. You ought to know that. I’ll stay here. You go get help. Somebody’s climbed in there and died.’

‘But not four thousand years ago. . No, you’re right, Maybelle — that’s blood. And it’s still flowing!’

Oddly, the room guardian wasn’t at his post. Nor was the one in the preceding room. What was this — the tea break? He saw not another soul until he came to a grand staircase he remembered. A party of four men, all carrying briefcases and paper files of notes, were coming down, laughing together and chatting in several languages.

‘Hey there!’ shouted Harland. ‘Anyone here speak English?’

One of them, a smart-looking Anglo-Saxon type, all floating fair hair and ice-blue eyes, detached himself from the group, responding to the urgency in the American’s voice. ‘I do. Can I help you, sir? Jack Pollock, British Embassy.’

‘Thank God for that! I need someone to come and inspect a mummy. There’s a High Priest of Memphis, Egypt, down there and he’s bleeding to death!’

Jack Pollock should have his name added to the list of live wires about Paris, Harland reckoned. In minutes he’d managed to send for the chief curator, the specialist in Egyptology, the police and a doctor, and was relaying what was going on to his party. And all in a babble of English, French, Italian and German.

A crowd had gathered — now where in tarnation had they all sprung from? — clustering around the case, gesticulating. They jostled each other in their eagerness to get close to the coffin and Pollock, using his height and a headmaster’s voice, had set them at a distance, firmly requiring Mr and Mrs White, as discoverers, to stand by and hold themselves in readiness for a police interview should it prove necessary. He wasn’t a man to argue with. In any case, wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them away from the scene of discovery. Their discovery. This was going to go down a treat at the Club when they got home.

A lively Frenchman was doing a lot of shoulder-shrugging and pooh-poohing and Harland made out that he was telling Pollock this was all a load of nonsense and he should mind his own business. Just some fluid, polish probably, spilled by the cleaning detail.

‘My dear Marcel,’ said Pollock, in a kindly voice, pointing to the floor, ‘ flies are not, I believe, attracted by polish. I have never seen a fly in the Louvre before. It would take something frightfully delicious to lure them in here. But here, as you see, they most certainly are.’

A smart navy-suited agent de ville , with képi and baton, swept in and gave orders to clear the room immediately. He waved his arms about. He tooted his whistle. He made threatening gestures with his baton. He tried to arrest Pollock. Not one of this crowd took any notice and he had to content himself with making them all take a step back and sending for reinforcements.

Harland was uneasy. Ghouls! Worse than the flies. One whiff of blood and there they were, mouths open, eyes staring. A doctor bustled in. Was Harland the only one to find the speed of his arrival surprising? No, to give him due credit, the feller himself seemed to be a bit astonished. . ‘I got a message telling me to. . Dr Moulin, from the Institut Médico-Légal, Quai des Orfèvres. . Oh, my goodness! Yes, that’s blood. And relatively fresh blood. Good Lord, there may be someone still alive in that box. The top must come off at once!’

That was what they wanted to hear. At last — they were to be treated to the bit of theatre they’d all been waiting for.

Six strong men, the policeman and Pollock included, heaved and strained, taking their instructions from the senior Egyptologist who’d hurried down from his office. The box, far taller than the tallest of the men, was lowered flat to the ground on its back and at a word from Pollock, three on each side, they flexed their muscles, ready to lift up the bulky lid.

Before the final revelation, Pollock called a halt and addressed Harland. ‘I wonder if perhaps the lady might like to be excused this next bit?’

‘Naw!’ Harland replied. ‘Maybelle’s as tough as my old army boots!’ and knew it could have been better expressed.