Agatha Christie - Death Comes as the End

Esa had weighed the matter carefully before speaking. A false word now - and disaster might result.

Then she had made her answer, stressing it with the force of her indomitable personality. Kameni, she said, was undoubtedly the husband for Renisenb. Their declarations and the necessary attendant festivities - much curtailed owing to the recent bereavements - might take place in a week's time. That is, if Renisenb was willing. Kameni was a fine young man - together they would raise strong children. Moreover, the two of them loved each other.

Well, Esa thought, she had cast her die. The thing would be pegged out now on the gaming board. It was out of her hands. She had done what she thought expedient. If it was hazardous as well, Esa liked a match at the gaming board quite as well as Ipy had. Life was not a matter of safety - it must be hazarded to win the game.

She looked suspiciously round her room when she returned to it. Particularly she examined the big wine jar. It was covered over and sealed as she had left it. She always sealed it when she left the room, and the seal hung safely round her neck.

Yes - she was taking no risks of that kind. Esa chuckled with malicious satisfaction. Not so easy to kill an old woman. Old women knew the value of life - and knew most of the tricks too.

Tomorrow - She called her little maid.

"Where is Hori? Do you know?"

The girl replied that she thought Hori was up at the Tomb in the rock chamber.

Esa nodded satisfaction.

"Go up to him there. Tell him that tomorrow morning, when Imhotep and Yahmose are out on the cultivation, taking Kameni with them for the counting, and when Kait is at the lake with the children, he is to come to me here. Have you understood that? Repeat it."

The little maid did so, and Esa sent her off.

Yes, her plan was satisfactory. The consultation with Hori would be quite private, since she would send Henet on an errand to the weaving sheds. She would warn Hori of what was to come and they could speak freely together.

When the black girl returned with the message that Hori would do as she said, Esa gave a sigh of relief.

Now, these things settled, her weariness spread over her like a flood. She told the girl to bring the pot of sweet-smelling ointment and massage her limbs.

The rhythm soothed her, and the unguent eased the aching of her bones.

She stretched herself out at last, her head on the wooden pillow, and slept - her fears for the moment allayed.

She woke much later with a strange sensation of coldness. Her feet, her hands, were numbed and dead... It was like a constriction stealing all over her body. She could feel it numbing her brain, paralyzing her will, slowing down the beat of her heart.

She thought: "This is death..."

A strange death - death unheralded, with no warning signs.

This, she thought, is how the old die...

And then a surer conviction came to her. This was not natural death! This was the enemy striking out of the darkness.

Poison...

But how? When? All she had eaten, all she had drunk - tested, secured - there had been no loophole of error.

Then how? When?

With her last feeble flickers of intelligence, Esa sought to penetrate the mystery. She must know - she must - before she died.

She felt the pressure increasing on her heart - the deadly coldness - the slow painful indrawing of her breath.

How had the enemy done this thing?

And suddenly, from the past, a fleeting memory came to aid her understanding. The shaven skin of a lamb - a lump of smelling grease - an experiment of her father's - to show that some poisons could be absorbed by the skin. Wool fat - unguents made of wool fat.

That was how the enemy had reached her. Her pot of sweet-smelling unguent, so necessary to an Egyptian woman. The poison had been in that...

And tomorrow - Hori - he would not know - she could not tell him... It was too late.

In the morning a frightened little slave girl went running through the house crying out that her lady had died in her sleep.

II

Imhotep stood looking down on Esa's dead body. His face was sorrowful, but not suspicious.

His mother, he said, had died naturally enough of old age.

"She was old," he said. "Yes, she was old. It was doubtless time for her to go to Osiris, and all our troubles and sorrows have hastened the end. But it seems to have come peacefully enough. Thank Re in his mercy that here is a death unaided by man or by evil spirit. There is no violence here. See how peaceful she looks."

Renisenb wept and Yahmose comforted her. Henet went about sighing and shaking her head, and saying what a loss Esa would be and how devoted she, Henet, had always been to her. Kameni checked his singing and showed a proper mourning face.

Hori came and stood looking down at the dead woman. It was the hour of her summons to him. He wondered what, exactly, she had meant to say.

She had had something definite to tell him.

Now he would never know.

But he thought, perhaps, that he could guess...

SECOND MONTH OF SUMMER, 16TH DAY

"Hori - was she killed?"

"I think so, Renisenb."

"How?"

"I do not know."

"But she was so careful." The girl's voice was distressed and bewildered. "She was always on the watch. She took every precaution. Everything she ate and drank was proved and tested."

"I know, Renisenb. But all the same, I think she was killed."

"And she was the wisest of us all - the cleverest! She was so sure that no harm could befall her. Hori, it must be magic! Evil magic, the spell of an evil spirit."

"You believe that because it is the easiest thing to believe. People are like that. But Esa herself would not have believed it. If she knew - before she died, and did not die in her sleep - she knew it was a living person's work."

"And she knew whose?"

"Yes. She had shown her suspicion too openly. She became a danger to the enemy. The fact that she died proves that her suspicion was correct."

"And she told you - who it was?"

"No," said Hori. "She did not tell me. She never mentioned a name. Nevertheless, her thought and my thought were, I am convinced, the same."

"Then you must tell me, Hori, so that I may be on my guard."

"No, Renisenb, I care too much for your safety to do that."

"Am I so safe?"

Hori's face darkened. He said: "No, Renisenb, you are not safe. No one is safe. But you are much safer than if you were assured of the truth - for then you would become a definite menace, to be removed at once whatever the risk."

"What about you, Hori? You know."

He corrected her. "I think I know. But I have said nothing and shown nothing. Esa was unwise. She spoke out. She showed the direction in which her thoughts were tending. She should not have done that - I told her so afterwards."

"But you - Hori... If anything happens to you..."

She stopped. She was aware of Hori's eyes looking into hers.

Grave, intent, seeing straight into her mind and heart...

He took her hands in his and held them lightly.

"Do not fear for me, little Renisenb... All will be well."

Yes, she thought, all will indeed be well if Hori says so. Strange, that feeling of content, of peace, of clear singing happiness - as lovely and as remote as the far distance seen from the Tomb - a distance in which there was no clamor of human demands and restrictions.

Suddenly, almost harshly, she heard herself saying:

"I am to marry Kameni."

Hori let her hands go - quietly and quite naturally.

"I know, Renisenb."

"They - my father - they think it is the best thing."

"I know."

He moved away.

The courtyard walls seemed to come nearer, the voices within the house and from the cornbins outside sounded louder and noisier.