Read Online The Egyptian Curse by Dan Andriacco, Kieran McMullen - Free Book Online Page A

just hours after his encounter with Carter. What were the chances that he would have had the opportunity to challenge Baines so soon after Carter suggested that something was amiss? Well, maybe Alfie just happened to have had an appointment with Baines that night, to talk about a loan or something. Stranger things had happened.
    Hale was still bouncing ideas around like that - raising objections to Baines’s guilt and then knocking them down - when he returned to the headquarters of the Central Press Syndicate on Fleet Street. A familiar form, heart-achingly familiar, stood in the shadow of the doorway. Her hair was covered by a dark blue draped crown hat and her dress by a mid-calf length coat in what the latest fashion magazines called a grackle head blue. She looked even more tired than when he had seen her on Monday. Hale wondered when she had last slept.
    â€œSadie-” Damn it, where did that come from? Sadie was the name under which he had first known her - not as the daughter of a peer, but as a music hall singer. “I mean, Lady Sarah, what are you doing here?” Keep it polite, formal, unemotional.
    â€œCan we talk? In private, I mean.”
    Hale looked around, half afraid to see Rollins watching from across the street. “Come inside.”
    Hale didn’t have an office of his own. He took Sarah past the mass of desks in the pit to the conference room near the back door, followed by the appreciative gaze of Ned Malone. This was totally inappropriate, being behind a closed door with a recently widowed woman, but Hale didn’t give a damn.
    â€œWhat’s happened?” he asked as he closed the door and took a seat opposite Sarah.
    â€œI saw Father today for the first time since I left his townhouse yesterday morning. Charles and I had dined with him on Monday, and I stayed overnight because I didn’t want to go back to Bedford Place. Father told me this afternoon that policeman, Inspector Rollins, showed up after I left yesterday and interrogated him about the murder weapon.”
    â€œI don’t understand. Why would Rollins ask the Earl about that?”
    Sarah leaned over and grabbed Hale’s hand as if she were clutching a lifeline. “Rollins said an informer called and told him that a dagger from the funerary equipment of Queen Ahhotep, mother of Ahmosis I of the 18 th Dynasty, was used to kill Alfie - a dagger from Father’s collection. He demanded to see it.”
    Hale didn’t know what to make of that. It was coming at him too fast. “What did your father say?”
    â€œHe denied owning such an item. Oh, Enoch, what if Inspector Rollins can prove that he was lying?”
    â€œHow can he do that? Unless... do you mean he was lying?”
    She sighed. “Father couldn’t admit to owning the dagger because he acquired it by, let’s say, less than legal means. Queen Ahhotep’s tomb had two similar daggers - one of solid gold, both dagger and sheath, which was reported to the Egyptian authorities, and the one that Father managed to get, which has a copper blade with gold handle and gold sheath. Father kept it with the rest of his collection in the library.”
    â€œWho told Rollins about it?”
    â€œHe said the call was anonymous, although he made it clear he wouldn’t have told me if he’d known.”
    â€œWho do you think it was?”
    â€œOne of the servants, I suppose.”
    â€œDoes Rollins suspect your father?”
    Sarah shook her head. “Oh, no. He still suspects me” - there was the slightest hesitation - “and you. He thinks the dagger does exist, and that I took it while I was visiting Father, and that Father is covering up for me.” Her voice trembled, on the verge of tears. “He said I could have taken it out of the library in my handbag, and there is no denying that is true. It’s my favorite room in the house and I always spend a lot of time there. If it were the murder