Page 29 of Disturbing the Dead
“They just cared about getting it out of there easily,” I say.
“Not only that,” Selim says. “The only reason to steal mummified remains is to sell it for medicines. You do not need it whole for that.”
“Michael did mention something about that,” I murmur. “Any information you could provide will help Detective McCreadie, but we can get that later.”
“For now,” McCreadie says, “we will need as much detail as you can give us on that tunnel encounter. What time you arrived. How you entered. What you heard. We will also need to know your movements between leaving the ship and arriving here.”
“The ship arrived at two yesterday afternoon. I caught a hansom cab directly here. I can give you details on where I was picked up and what my driver looked like. I had him drop me at the corner. I’m not sure which—I can never remember the street names here—but I can point it out on a map. Then I walked directly to the tunnel entrance.”
“Do you know what time you arrived?”
“I know I was in the cab at four. I was hungry and knew dinner would be early because of the party. I checked my watch hoping I had not missed it.”
“And your bags? I presume you brought some.”
“I left them in the little shed, where the tunnel starts. Hopefully, they are still there.”
McCreadie asks a few more questions. Then he looks at me.
“In light of what happened to Sir Alastair,” I say, “we’re going to need to speak to someone who might know how long it would take to unwrap the mummified remains and… rewrap a body.”
I avoid saying who was rewrapped, but the flash of grief on his face says my workaround didn’t help.
I continue, “I don’t know who we’d speak to about that.”
“Me,” he says. “I have worked at my brother-in-law’s excavations since before he was my brother-in-law. Archaeology is my area of study. I found that particular mummy, and I know it was in poor condition, with little resin holding the cloths in place. One could unwrap it rather than cut it open.”
Selim considers for a moment, lips moving as if calculating. “As a rough estimate, I would venture it would take a few hours to unwrap and rewrap. Two to three hours, depending on the expertise of the person doing the work.”
“And that was my next question. How much expertise would be required?”
“For remains in such poor wrappings? The unraveling would be simple enough, the speed only checked by a need to note how the wrapping was done. If one took care and did not simply yank off the cloths but paid attention, the rewrapping could be done by anyone.”
“Thank you.” I look at Gray. “Anything to add, sir?”
“Only instructions for care of that head injury,” Gray says.
TEN
McCreadie is busy verifying Selim’s alibi. That leaves Gray and me on crime-scene investigation, and we now have two crime scenes to investigate. We start with the one in the tunnel.
“This is most unusual,” Gray says as I lead him in after returning to my earlier tunnel-traversing wardrobe tweaks.
“The kids don’t know the original purpose,” I say. “How old would the houses here be?”
“Not old enough to have a network of secret tunnels beneath them. Those are generally for escape in a time of war or persecution. That would not apply to wealthy New Town families.”
“The rich are only persecuted in their own minds.”
I get a soft laugh from him for that.
“True,” he says. “Every time there is talk of reform, the wealthy do indeed rise up, decrying their persecuted state. Somehow, though, I don’t think they were constructing tunnels to escape mobs of the poor.”
“Nah, they already did that by building the New Town. Keep the rabble safely across the Mound. What about other reasons for escape tunnels? When would the last battle have been on Scottish soil? Culloden?”
His expression turns somber as he nods. “Yes, and while the Jacobites certainly had tunnels and such, Culloden predated the New Town by twenty years.”
“Are subbasements normal around here?”
