Agatha Christie - Death Comes as the End

Renisenb had only one thought in her mind: "Hori is going..."

She called to him timidly:

"Hori, where are you going?"

"Out to the fields with Yahmose. There is much work there to be done and recorded. The reaping is nearly finished."

"And Kameni?"

"Kameni comes with us."

Renisenb cried out: "I am afraid here. Yes, even in daylight with the servants all round and Re sailing across the heavens, I am afraid."

He came quickly back.

"Do not be afraid, Renisenb. I swear to you that you need not be afraid. Not today."

"But after today?"

"Today is enough to live through - and I swear to you you are not in danger today."

Renisenb looked at him and frowned.

"But we are in danger? Yahmose, my father, myself? It is not I who am threatened first... is that what you think?"

"Try not to think about it, Renisenb. I am doing all I can, though it may appear to you that I am doing nothing."

"I see -" Renisenb looked at him thoughtfully. "Yes, I see. It is to be Yahmose first. The enemy has tried twice with poison and failed. There is to be a third attempt. That is why you will be close beside him - to protect him. And after that it will be the turn of my father and myself. Who is there who hates our family so much that -"

"Hush. You would do well not to talk of these things. Trust me, Renisenb. Try to banish fear from your mind."

Renisenb threw her head back. She faced him proudly.

"I do trust you, Hori. You will not let me die... I love life very much and I do not want to leave it."

"You shall not leave it, Renisenb."

"Nor you either, Hori."

"Nor I either."

They smiled at each other and then Hori went away to find Yahmose.

II

Renisenb sat back on her haunches watching Kait. Kait was helping the children to model toys out of clay, using the water of the lake. Her fingers were busy kneading and shaping, and her voice encouraged the two small serious boys at their task. Kait's face was the same as usual, affectionate, plain, expressionless. The surrounding atmosphere of violent death and constant fear seemed to affect her not at all...

Hori had bidden Renisenb not to think, but with the best will in the world Renisenb could not obey. If Hori knew the enemy, if Esa had known the enemy, then there was no reason why she should not know the enemy too. She might be safer not knowing, but no human creature could be content to have it that way. She wanted to know.

And it must be very easy - very easy indeed. Her father, clearly, could not desire to kill his own children. So that left - who did it leave? It left, starkly and uncompromisingly, two people - Kait and Henet.

Women, both of them...

And surely with no reason for killing...

Yet Henet hated them all... Yes, undoubtedly Henet hated them. She had admitted hating Renisenb. So why should she not hate the others equally?

Renisenb tried to project herself into the dim, tortured recesses of Henet's brain. Living here all these years, working, protesting her devotion, lying, spying, making mischief... Coming here, long ago, as the poor relative of a great and beautiful lady. Seeing that lovely lady happy with husband and children. Repudiated by her own husband, her only child dead... Yes, that might be the way of it. Like a wound from a spear thrust that Renisenb had once seen. It had healed quickly over the surface, but beneath evil matters had festered and raged and the arm had swollen and had gone hard to the touch. And then the physician had come and, with a suitable incantation, had plunged a small knife into the hard, swollen, distorted limb. It had been like the breaking down of an irrigation dike. A great stream of evil-smelling stuff had come welling out...

That, perhaps, was like Henet's mind. Sorrow and injury smoothed over too quickly - and festering poison beneath, ever swelling in a great tide of hate and venom.

But did Henet hate Imhotep too? Surely not. For years she had fluttered round him, fawning on him, flattering him... He believed in her implicitly. Surely that devotion could not be wholly feigned?

And if she were devoted to him, could she deliberately inflict all this sorrow and loss upon him?

Ah, but suppose she hated him too - had always hated him? Had flattered him deliberately with a view to bringing out his weaknesses? Supposing Imhotep was the one she hated most? Then to a distorted, evil-ridden mind, what better pleasure could there be than this - to let him see his children die off one by one?

"What is the matter, Renisenb?"

Kait was staring at her.

"You look so strange."

Renisenb stood up.

"I feel as though I were going to vomit," she said.

In a sense it was true enough. The picture she had been conjuring up induced in her a strong feeling of nausea. Kait accepted the words at their face value.

"You have eaten too many green dates - or perhaps the fish had turned."

"No, no, it is nothing I have eaten. It is the terrible thing we are living through."

"Oh, that."

Kait's disclaimer was so nonchalant that Renisenb stared at her.

"But, Kait, are you not afraid?"

"No, I do not think so." Kait considered. "If anything happens to Imhotep, the children will be protected by Hori. Hori is honest. He will guard their inheritance for them."

"Yahmose will do that."

"Yahmose will die too."

"Kait, you say that so calmly. Do you not mind at all? I mean, that my father and Yahmose should die?"

Kait considered a moment or two. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

"We are two women together. Let us be honest. Imhotep I have always considered tyrannical and unfair. He behaved outrageously in the matter of his concubine - letting himself be persuaded by her to disinherit his own flesh and blood. I have never liked Imhotep. As to Yahmose - he is nothing. Satipy ruled him in every way. Lately, since she is gone, he takes authority on himself, gives orders. He would always prefer his children before mine - that is natural. So, if he is to die, it is as well for my children that it should be so - that is how I see it. Hori has no children and he is just. All these happenings have been upsetting - but I have been thinking lately that very likely they are all for the best."

"You can talk like that, Kait - so calmly, so coldly - when your own husband, whom you loved, was the first to be killed?"

A faint expression of some indefinable nature passed over Kait's face. She gave Renisenb a glance which seemed to contain a certain scornful irony.

"You are very like Teti sometimes, Renisenb. Really, one would swear, no older!"

"You do not mourn for Sobek." Renisenb spoke the words slowly. "No, I have noticed that."

"Come, Renisenb, I fulfilled all the conventions. I know how a newly made widow should behave."

"Yes - that was all there was to it... So - it means - that you did not love Sobek?"

Kait shrugged her shoulders.

"Why should I?"

"Kait! He was your husband - he gave you children."

Kait's expression softened. She looked down at the two small boys engrossed with the clay and then to where Ankh was rolling about chanting to herself and waving her little legs.

"Yes, he gave me my children. For that I thank him. But what was he, after all? A handsome braggart - a man who was always going to other women. He did not take a sister, decently, into the household, some modest person who would have been useful to us all. No, he went to ill-famed houses, spending much copper and gold there, drinking too and asking for all the most expensive dancing girls. It was fortunate that Imhotep kept him as short as he did and that he had to account so closely for the sales he made on the estate. What love and respect should I have for a man like that? And what are men anyway? They are necessary to breed children, that is all. But the strength of the race is in the women. It is we, Renisenb, who hand down to our children all that is ours. As for men, let them breed and die early..."