Page 126 of Disturbing the Dead
“That would explain why she had them in a cipher.”
“Using them to help him without him realizing it,” I say. “Focusing his studying on the right questions.”
“That would be a more laudable explanation than cheating for herself,” Isla says.
“Unless it led to murder,” I say. “Sir Alastair figures out that Florence stole exam questions for her husband. He threatens to kick Emmett out. As Florence has said, that’s a problem—one of them needs to be a practicing doctor. She goes to Sir Alastair’s house to speak to him. She slips in during the chaos of preparing for the party and finds him in the artifact storage room. She begs mercy for her husband. Sir Alastair refuses. In a panic—or fury—she kills him. Hides him in the mummy wrappings so the body won’t be discovered until she’s long gone. She already confirmed that she knows mummia is worth something. So she takes the remains—their apartment suggests they are typical starving students. Only she’s worried about what will happen when Sir Alastair is unwrapped and finds an excuse for being nearby during the party.”
Isla nods. “She then reaches out to the White Lady to sell the mummia, knowing of her association with a former medical student. And then, when the key and cipher are revealed to have been stolen, her husband leaps in to claim responsibility, with an awkward explanation for both.”
Gray takes another slice of cake. “Yet that means that her husband either knew or suspected what she had done.”
“Did he figure out that she’d stolen the exam questions?” I say. “Did he also know about the mummia? He claimed to have found that letter in the trash—the one from someone looking for mummia—which is awfully coincidental. Was that an awkward attempt to divert attention again—this time to some uneducated third party who might have the remains?” I shake my head. “Damn it. I’m stuffing square pegs in round holes. This felt like a solution, but Florence doesn’t seem to fit much better than Selim Awad.”
“Perhaps because we are looking at it wrong,” Isla says. “At the wrong culprit, based solely on penmanship.”
I stare at her. Then I let out a string of curses. “Of course. The cipher seemed to be in a feminine hand and so did the letter to the White Lady. For the one found at the King apartment, the obvious writer was Mrs. King. For the one sent to the White Lady, Mrs. King also fit. But we’re basing all that on deciding that a woman wrote it because it looked like a woman’s writing.”
“When it could very well be a man with more typically feminine penmanship,” Gray says. “One who fits the criteria otherwise and already took credit for the cipher.”
“Emmett King.”
As a suspect, Emmett King does indeed work better. I still don’t like suspecting a pleasant young man who supported the pioneering efforts of his wife and other women. But otherwise, it works.
Emmett takes the key—which he already confessed to. He uses it to steal exam questions. He’s caught, and he goes to speak to Sir Alastair, who winds up dead. This would be the same scenario we’d contemplated for his wife—he goes to beg for leniency, Sir Alastair refuses, and there is a fight, during which Emmett kills Sir Alastair.
Realizing what he has done, Emmett unwraps the mummy and wraps Sir Alastair so he won’t be discovered until that evening. Then, seeing the unwrapped remains, he remembers that mummia was believed to have medical uses—he only pretended to have missed that part of medical history.
He also knows of an upperclassman who had a sweet deal selling body parts to a trader woman. That makes more sense than Florence knowing the White Lady’s former contact. The majority of the male students won’t exactly be tossing back a pint with their new female classmates, especially not while gossiping about selling human remains in a side gig.
Does Florence know what her husband did? Is that why she was outside the party? Possibly, but when I consider that more, I realize it’s a dangerous ploy, one that initially brought her into our pool of suspects.
No, I think Florence had already been planning her protest, and her talk about the unwrapping party led her husband to realize Sir Alastair would be home that day and the house would be in chaos, giving him a chance to sneak in and speak to the man.
Emmett must either know about the tunnel or had discovered it. He enters that way and then exits that way, only to encounter Selim and knock him out. His stature fits the description Selim gave of the person he saw in that tunnel.
When we arrived at Emmett’s door the next day, he must have had a heart attack. To his relief, we were there for Florence, whom he knew was innocent. Then we returned to ask about the key and cipher, and he made up a story.
Why claim to have found a letter about mummia in the trash? Diversion, if clumsily done. After all, he knows the mummified remains are missing, which hasn’t been made public. Set us looking for some poorly educated scoundrel who might have killed Sir Alastair for that mummy. As for why the fellow wanted it?
Mummia? Never heard of it. You were right there when I said so.
I don’t expect McCreadie will have any problem convincing the police to bring Emmett in. After all, he’s not nobility. Or I certainly hope he’s not.
I leave that to Gray. What I want now is to compare Emmett’s handwriting with that cipher—and see whether it matches the White Lady’s recollection—but all that will need to come after Emmett’s arrest.
Once again, I’m trying to occupy my time, feeling as if I’m stalled. I’m satisfied with this solution, but I still feel sidelined… even though I put myself there.
I need to find my footing and solidify my position, personally and professionally. I can’t step on McCreadie’s toes, and I can’t become a cop myself. I need to accept that I have chosen a life where being a woman will raise more barriers than it did in my old one.
Would I have felt better seeing Emmett arrested? No. In fact, I might have felt worse, watching a young man dragged away from his trailblazing wife.
I feel bad for Emmett and Florence, but this is justice, and maybe, in the end, I only wanted to be there because not watching his arrest feels like cowardice. But it isn’t my place to witness arrests, and doing so would feel ghoulish. I’ll be here if anyone needs me, but until then I’ll change my mood by reading the latest installment of The Mysterious Adventures of the Gray Doctor. It might make me laugh, and it might make me want to spit nails, but a distraction is a distraction.
I settle in with the pamphlet Jack dropped off earlier. It’s the first installment in our mummy mystery, beginning with the scene I already read, where I unwrap the face of the mummy and nearly faint into Gray’s arms. That makes me smile again.
From there, the party scene devolves into pure fictional chaos, which is entertaining. Or it’s entertaining up to the point where the chaos comes from McCreadie’s inability to control the scene, when in reality, he handled it like a pro. For that, I’m outraged on his behalf, which is also usefully distracting.
On to the next scene, where Selim is discovered unconscious in the basement tunnel…
