Agatha Christie - Death Comes as the End

Henet bridled.

"So you're beginning to realize that now! I'm not poor, stupid Henet any longer. I'm the one who knows."

"What do you know, Henet?"

Henet's voice changed. It was low and sharp.

"I know that at last I can do as I choose in this house. There will be no one to stop me. Imhotep leans upon me already. And you will do the same, eh, Yahmose?"

"And Renisenb?"

Henet laughed, a malicious, happy chuckle.

"Renisenb will not be here."

"You think it is Renisenb who will die next?"

"What do you think, Yahmose?"

"I am waiting to hear what you say."

"Perhaps I only meant that Renisenb will marry - and go away."

"What do you mean, Henet?"

Henet chuckled.

"Esa once said my tongue was dangerous. Perhaps it is!"

She laughed shrilly, swaying to and fro on her heels.

"Well, Yahmose, what do you say? Am I at last to do as I choose in this house?"

Yahmose studied her for a moment before saying:

"Yes, Henet. You are so clever. You shall do as you choose."

He turned to meet Hori, who was coming from the main hall and who said:

"There you are, Yahmose. Imhotep is awaiting you. It is time to go up to the Tomb."

Yahmose nodded.

"I am coming." He lowered his voice. "Hori - I think Henet is mad - she is definitely afflicted by devils. I begin to believe that she has been responsible for all these happenings."

Hori paused a moment before saying in his quiet, detached voice:

"She is a strange woman - and an evil one, I think."

Yahmose lowered his voice still more:

"Hori, I think Renisenb is in danger."

"From Henet?"

"Yes. She has just hinted that Renisenb may be the next to go."

Imhotep's voice came fretfully:

"Am I to wait all day? What conduct is this? No one considers me any more. No one knows what I suffer. Where is Henet? Henet understands."

From within the storeroom Henet's chuckle of triumph came shrilly.

"Do you hear that, Yahmose? Henet! Henet is the one!"

Yahmose said fiercely:

"Yes, Henet - I understand. You are the powerful one. You and my father and I - we three together..."

Hori went off to find Imhotep. Yahmose spoke a few more words to Henet, who nodded, her face sparkling with malicious triumph.

Then Yahmose joined Hori and Imhotep, apologizing for his delay; and the three men went up to the Tomb together.

III

The day passed slowly for Renisenb.

She was restless, passing to and fro from the house to the porch, then to the lake and then back again to the house.

At midday Imhotep returned, and after a meal had been served to him, he came out upon the porch and Renisenb joined him.

She sat with her hands clasped round her knees, occasionally looking up at her father's face. It still wore that absent, bewildered expression. Imhotep spoke little. Once or twice he sighed deeply.

Once he roused himself and asked for Henet. But just at that time Henet had gone with linen to the embalmers.

Renisenb asked her father where Hori and Yahmose were.

"Hori has gone out to the far flax fields. There is a tally to be taken there. Yahmose is on the cultivation. It all falls on him now... Alas for Sobek and Ipy. My boys - my handsome boys..."

Renisenb tried quickly to distract him.

"Cannot Kameni oversee the workers?"

"Kameni? Who is Kameni? I have no son of that name."

"Kameni the scribe. Kameni who is to be my husband."

He stared at her.

"You, Renisenb? But you are to marry Khay."

She sighed, but said no more. It seemed cruel to try to bring him back to the present.

After a little while, however, he roused himself and exclaimed suddenly:

"Of course, Kameni! He has gone to give some instructions to the overseer at the brewery. I must go and join him."

He strode away, muttering to himself, but with a resumption of his old manner, so that Renisenb felt a little cheered.

Perhaps this clouding of his brain was only temporary.

She looked round her. There seemed something sinister about the silence of the house and court today. The children were at the far side of the lake. Kait was not with them, and Renisenb wondered where she was.

Then Henet came out onto the porch. She looked round her and then came sidling up to Renisenb. She had resumed her old wheedling, humble manner.

"I've been waiting till I could get you alone, Renisenb."

"Why, Henet?"

Henet lowered her voice.

"I've got a message for you - from Hori."

"What does he say?" Renisenb's voice was eager.

"He asks that you should go up to the Tomb."

"Now?"

"No. Be there an hour before sunset. That was the message. If he is not there then, he asks that you will wait until he comes. It is important, he says."

Henet paused - and then added:

"I was to wait until I got you alone to say this - and no one was to overhear."

Henet glided away again.

Renisenb felt her spirits lightened. She felt glad at the prospect of going up to the peace and quietness of the Tomb. Glad that she would see Hori and be able to talk to him freely. The only thing that surprised her a little was that he should have entrusted his message to Henet.

Nevertheless, malicious though Henet was, she had delivered the message faithfully.

"And why should I fear Henet at any time?" thought Renisenb. "I am stronger than she is."

She drew herself up proudly. She felt young and confident and very much alive...

IV

After giving the message to Renisenb, Henet went once more into the linen storeroom. She was laughing quietly to herself.

She bent over the disordered piles of sheets.

"We'll be needing more of you soon," she said to them gleefully. "Do you hear, Ashayet? I'm the mistress here now and I'm telling you that your linen will bandage yet another body. And whose body is that, do you think? Hee hee! You've not been able to do much about things, have you? You and your mother's brother, the Nomarch! Justice? What justice can you do in this world? Answer me that!"

There was a movement behind the bales of linen. Henet half turned her head.

Then a great width of linen was thrown over her, stifling her mouth and nose. An inexorable hand wound the fabric round and round her body, swathing her like a corpse until her struggles ceased...

SECOND MONTH OF SUMMER, 17TH DAY

Renisenb sat in the entrance of the rock chamber staring out at the Nile and lost in a queer dream fantasy of her own.

It seemed to her a very long time since the day when she had first sat here soon after her return to her father's house. That had been the day when she had declared so gaily that everything was unchanged, that all in the home was exactly as it had been when she left it eight years before.

She remembered now how Hori had told her that she herself was not the same Renisenb who had gone away with Khay and how she had answered confidently that she soon would be.

Then Hori had gone on to speak of changes that came from within, of a rottenness that left no outward sign.

She knew now something of what had been in his mind when he said those things. He had been trying to prepare her. She had been so assured, so blind - accepting so easily the outward values of her family.

It had taken Nofret's coming to open her eyes...

Yes, Nofret's coming. It had all hinged on that.

With Nofret had come death...

Whether Nofret had been evil or not, she had certainly brought evil...

And the evil was still in their midst.

For the last time, Renisenb played with the belief that Nofret's spirit was the cause of everything...

Nofret, malicious and dead...

Or Henet, malicious and living... Henet the despised, the sycophantic, fawning Henet...