Agatha Christie - Death Comes as the End

Renisenb shivered, stirred, and then slowly rose to her feet.

She could wait for Hori no longer. The sun was on the point of setting. Why, she wondered, had he not come!

She got up, glanced round her, and started to descend the path to the valley below.

It was very quiet at this evening hour. Quiet and beautiful, she thought. What had delayed Hori? If he had come, they would at least have had this hour together...

There would not be many such hours. In the near future, when she was Kameni's wife -

Was she really going to marry Kameni? With a kind of shock Renisenb shook herself free from the mood of dull acquiescence that had held her so long. She felt like a sleeper awakening from a feverish dream. Caught in that stupor of fear and uncertainty, she had assented to whatever had been proposed to her.

But now she was Renisenb again, and if she married Kameni it would be because she wanted to marry him, and not because her family arranged it. Kameni, with his handsome, laughing face! She loved him, didn't she? That was why she was going to marry him.

In this evening hour up here, there were clarity and truth. No confusion. She was Renisenb, walking here above the world, serene and unafraid, herself at last.

Had she not once said to Hori that she must walk down this path alone at the hour of Nofret's death - that whether fear went with her or not, she must still go alone?

Well, she was doing it now. This was just about the hour when she and Satipy had bent over Nofret's body. And it was about this same hour when Satipy in her turn had walked down the path and had suddenly looked back - to see doom overtaking her.

At just about this same point too. What was it that Satipy had heard to make her look suddenly behind her?

Footsteps?

Footsteps... but Renisenb heard footsteps now - following her down the path.

Her heart gave a sudden leap of fear. It was true then! Nofret was behind her, following her...

Fear coursed through her, but her footsteps did not slacken. Nor did they race ahead. She must overcome fear, since there was, in her mind, no evil deed to regret...

She steadied herself, gathered her courage, and, still walking, turned her head.

Then she felt a great throb of relief. It was Yahmose following her. No spirit from the dead, but her own brother. He must have been busied in the offering chamber of the Tomb and have come out of it just after she had passed.

She stopped with a happy little cry.

"Oh, Yahmose, I'm so glad it's you."

He was coming up to her rapidly. She was just beginning another sentence - a recital of her foolish fears - when the words froze on her lips.

This was not the Yahmose she knew - the gentle, kindly brother. His eyes were very bright and he was passing his tongue quickly over dried lips. His hands, held a little in front of his body, were slightly curved, the fingers looking like talons.

He was looking at her, and the look in his eyes was unmistakable. It was the look of a man who had killed and was about to kill again. There was a gloating cruelty, an evil satisfaction in his face.

Yahmose - the hidden enemy was Yahmose! Behind the mask of that gentle, kindly face - this!

She had thought that her brother loved her - but there was no love in that inhuman, gloating face.

Renisenb screamed - a faint, hopeless scream.

This, she knew, was death. There was no strength in her to match Yahmose's strength. Here, where Nofret had fallen, where the path was narrow, she too would fall to death...

"Yahmose!" It was a last appeal - in that uttering of his name was the love she had always given to this eldest brother. It pleaded in vain. Yahmose laughed, a soft, inhuman, happy little laugh.

Then he rushed forward, those cruel hands with talons curving as though they longed to fasten round her throat...

Renisenb backed up against the cliff face, her hands outstretched in a vain attempt to ward him off. This was terror - death.

And then she heard a sound, a faint, twanging, musical sound...

Something came singing through the air. Yahmose stopped, swayed, then with a loud cry he pitched forward on his face at her feet. She stared down stupidly at the feather shaft of an arrow.

Then she looked down over the edge - to where Hori stood, the bow still held to his shoulder...

II

"Yahmose... Yahmose..."

Renisenb, numbed by shock, repeated the name again, and yet again. It was as though she could not believe it...

She was outside the little rock chamber, Hori's arm still round her. She could hardly recollect how he had led her back up the path. She had been only able to repeat her brother's name in that dazed tone of wonder and horror.

Hori said gently:

"Yes, Yahmose. All the time, Yahmose."

"But how! Why? And how could it be he! Why, he was poisoned himself. He nearly died."

"No, he ran no risk of dying. He was very careful of how much wine he drank. He sipped enough to make him ill and he exaggerated his symptoms and his pains. It was the one way, he knew, to disarm suspicion."

"But he could not have killed Ipy. Why, he was so weak he could not stand on his feet!"

"That, again, was feigned. Do you not remember that Mersu pronounced that once the poison was eliminated, he would regain strength quickly. So he did in reality."

"But why, Hori? That is what I cannot make out - why?"

Hori sighed.

"Do you remember, Renisenb, that I talked to you once of the rottenness that comes from within?"

"I remember. Indeed I was thinking of it only this evening."

"You said once that the coming of Nofret brought evil. That was not true. The evil was already here concealed within the hearts of the household. All that Nofret's coming did was to bring it from its hidden place into light. Her presence banished concealment. Kait's gentle motherliness had turned to ruthless egoism for herself and her young. Sobek was no longer the gay and charming young man, but the boastful, dissipated weakling. Ipy was not so much a spoilt, attractive child as a scheming, selfish boy. Through Henet's pretended devotion, the venom began to show clearly. Satipy showed herself as a bully and a coward. Imhotep himself had degenerated into a fussy, pompous tyrant."

"I know - I know." Renisenb's hands went to her eyes. "You need not tell me. I have found out little by little for myself... Why should these things happen? Why should this rottenness come, as you say, working from within?"

Hori shrugged his shoulders.

"Who can tell? It may be that there must always be growth - and that if one does not grow kinder and wiser and greater, then the growth must be the other way, fostering the evil things. Or it may be that the life they all led was too shut in, too folded back upon itself - without breadth or vision. Or it may be that, like a disease of crops, it is contagious, that first one and then another sickened."

"But Yahmose - Yahmose seemed always the same."

"Yes, and that is one reason, Renisenb, why I came to suspect. For the others, by reason of their temperaments, could get relief. But Yahmose has always been timid, easily ruled, and with never enough courage to rebel. He loved Imhotep and worked hard to please him, and Imhotep found him well-meaning but stupid and slow. He despised him. Satipy, too, treated Yahmose with all the scorn of a bullying nature. Slowly his burden of resentment, concealed but deeply felt, grew heavier. The meeker he seemed, the more his inward anger grew.

"And then, just when Yahmose was hoping at last to reap the reward of his industry and diligence, to be recognized and associated with his father, Nofret came. It was Nofret, and perhaps Nofret's beauty, that kindled the final spark. She attacked the manhood of all three brothers. She touched Sobek on the raw by her scorn of him as a fool, she infuriated Ipy by treating him as a truculent child without any claim to manhood, and she showed Yahmose that he was something less than a man in her eyes. It was after Nofret came that Satipy's tongue finally goaded Yahmose beyond endurance. It was her jeers, her taunt that she was a better man than he, that finally sapped his self-control. He met Nofret on this path and - driven beyond endurance - he threw her down."