The Mummy of Mayfair

ONE

Watson

London, 1895

Benjamin Watson folded his arms over his broad chest and peered at Anubis, god of funerary rites and guide to the underworld, with its black human body and jackal’s head, collar necklace painted in gold and gems, gazing forever forward, unblinking, unmoving.

It still gave Ben the chills. All the ruddy things in the wide gallery of the Sawyer manor gave him the willies. ‘Egyptomania,’ he muttered under his breath as he glanced about the gaslit space with its arched, vaulted ceilings and wide expanse of chequerboard tile on the floor with Persian rugs strewn about. There were chaise-longues upholstered in dark burgundy velvet, carved chairs and delicate tables. But instead of the usual mirrors, portraits, swords or spears or even deer heads adorning the walls, every square inch seemed to be peopled by other statues of Egyptian gods both large and small, stone urns, jewelled scarabs in glass cabinets, busts of the ancients, and wallpaper with papyrus plants and blue hippopotami covering the walls.

The place smelled like a knocking shop with the heavy perfumes in the air, then he realized that it was incense in brass censers placed about the room. The spicy aroma was enough to make one gag. It served as atmosphere, he reckoned. It didn’t seem to bother the guests, who would only view it as adding to the mystery of the proceedings.

Money is wasted on the wealthy, he mused. It wasn’t that Ben objected to the collection of ancient artefacts. He found it illumin­ating, in fact, this study of the past. But what was dredged up from antique burials certainly wasn’t proper to have in one’s house. It was unsanitary. Better left to museums.

Tim Badger sidled up to him with a barely concealed grin. ‘This is the strangest thing we’ve had to do yet, eh?’

Ben agreed with a nod. ‘Why did you ever take this job, Tim? We’re detectives, not Yeomen of the Guard.’

Badger was in his best suit – brown with tiny stripes running down the trousers and coat. His new dark green waistcoat was visible at his chest just as the jacket’s lapels formed a V. His smart homburg sat in a jaunty tilt on his head as usual, and his smile was not marred by any fancy moustache. ‘It wasn’t as if we had clients beating down the door,’ he replied.

Badger was right, of course. After their first high-profile case – with the ambiguous help of one Mister Sherlock Holmes, the man who had set them up in their new lodgings – they had done several more investigatory jobs. Those first exploits showed up in the papers with all the exciting prose worthy of Doctor John H. Watson’s, even though it had been written by that female reporter Ben still didn’t trust. But they needed more. More cases, more stories to end up in the paper to get them even more cases, though he hated to admit how much those articles had helped.

Still, Ben mused, this arrangement where Holmes paid the lion’s share of their upkeep by benefit of Tim Badger once being one of his Baker Street Irregulars certainly benefited Ben, who could never have hoped to move up to Soho so quickly, and with a maid and all at that. Frankly, he was proud of Badger for having the gall to even open a detective agency five years ago, and him from the slums. And then bringing Ben along with him. Though he admitted how much they had foundered until Mister Holmes realized their potential and stepped in. He scarce believed that Badger even knew Mister Holmes until Ben met him himself only a few short months ago. Who would have thought that a black bloke like him from Camden would be rubbing shoulders with the world’s most famous detective?

He caught the sparkling eye of the hawk-headed god Horus, who seemed to agree with that assessment … and Ben winked back at him.

‘So … this is all we’re supposed to do?’ said Ben, scanning the guests – the men in their black suits, and the ladies in their sparkling and satiny gowns. ‘Just … keep an eye out?’

‘We’re security,’ said Badger. ‘Who cares why the old codger said he wanted it.’

‘Tim, may I remind you that we do not refer to our rich clients as old codgers. He is the famed Doctor Enoch Sawyer.’

‘And what does a doctor need with security at his own party, I’d like to know?’

‘Didn’t you ask him?’ Ben wished he had been in consultation with the wealthy surgeon, but Badger hadn’t given him the chance.

‘Sawyer was in a rush. Barely allowed me to ask a thing or two. He seemed nervous to me, out of sorts, like he wanted to get our interview over as soon as possible. Flew out the door once he was done speaking.’

‘We’re partners, remember? We’re supposed to be together in consultation with all clients,’ he hissed out the side of his mouth. ‘We agreed on that.’

‘What was I supposed to do? He was gone before you could say Jack Robinson.’

‘Where is he anyway?’ He glanced around, looking for the white-haired doctor. He’d seen his face in the papers, but there were many in the room who had a similar look.

Badger scoured the room before he looked at his watch. ‘He’s late, but I’m sure he’ll turn up. Meanwhile, we’d best keep an eye peeled for thieves … or anarchists.’

‘Anarchists? Where’d you ever hear a word like that?’

Badger drew himself up, affronted. ‘I read.’

‘Penny dreadfuls.’

‘And what of it? I’ve learned lots of things from those.’

‘Tim, Tim. I despair of you. I really do.’

‘Don’t worry about me, my lad. I’ve got it all in here.’ He tapped his temple. ‘But what’s a surgeon got to do with all this muck?’

‘He dabbles in other scientific pursuits. Can you guess what he favours?’ He gestured all around them.

‘Egypt,’ said Badger with a sneer of disdain. ‘What’s the good in all these old dead things?’

‘Because it’s interesting, you pillock. To learn about the lives of ancient people is interesting.’

‘It’s just interesting? That’s it? How does it help the Empire tick, I’d like to know.’

‘It don’t have to have any earth-shattering applications to the real world. At least not to our lot. Don’t you think it’s interesting?’

Badger adjusted his homburg and glanced towards the dais in the centre of the room, flanked by four torches, feathering black smoke up into the vaulted ceiling. On the dais was a genuine Egyptian sarcophagus lying on its back on two trestles, with its sculpted and painted effigy of the inhabitant carved on its lid. The glittering guests strolled around it, peering at it and all the other Egyptian artefacts surrounding them with glasses of champagne in their gloved hands, while footmen glided among them, offering dainties on silver trays.

Badger leaned in close to Ben and whispered, ‘I know I agreed to this, but what exactly are they going to do here with all these people?’

‘It’s a mummy unwrapping party. Whatcha think they’re gonna do?’

‘They aren’t really though, are they?’ Badger shivered. ‘I mean, here they are, all them rich people dressed up, and they’re gonna stand around and watch that doctor unwrap a dead bloke?’

‘An ancient mummy.’

‘He’s still a dead bloke when it comes down to it.’

Ben sighed. ‘Just circulate, like you’re supposed to.’

‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on.’ Badger adjusted his homburg again, straightened his tie and strolled out, keeping to the perimeter and checking the windows. What Ben should be doing, he decided, and moved in the opposite direction.

Ben felt underdressed. They both were. He looked down at his perfectly serviceable workman’s boots and began to wonder if he and Badger shouldn’t get themselves some nice shoes and evening clothes for just such occasions as they might be called upon to pursue. They had only the tweeds they had managed to pay for from the broker’s shop back in their old neighbourhood of St Andrew’s Street. They were better than the patched and threadbare clothes they used to have before Mister Holmes’s benevolence. They were their work clothes, and he supposed they were working, but they stuck out like sore thumbs. Like Scotland Yard detectives, for that matter, which made Ben feel marginally better. But he didn’t particularly like the stares of the guests, glancing at him with upturned noses, although that was likely due to his being a black bloke.

Was it possible to buy evening dress second-hand? Surely they couldn’t prevail upon Mister Holmes’s beneficence for such things. Though … that carved box in their drawing room … Badger called it the ‘magic box’, for it always seemed to have a perpetual abundance of coins that never ran out, nor could they account for its refilling. It was a mystery neither Ben nor Badger really wished to solve. But it was there, as they had been told by their housekeeper Mrs Kelly, so that they could provide themselves with such this’s and that’s as young detectives would need, like cabby fare and train tickets … and proper clothes. He decided to discuss it with Badger when this job was done.

He pulled decisively at his waistcoat with the acknowledgement that he was doing a proper job, and none of these rich toffs ever lifted a finger to do a real job themselves.

He patted the Webley Bulldog in his inside coat pocket. He wished he knew what Doctor Sawyer expected to happen, but he supposed he and Badger could take on any ruffian. They weren’t gentlemen after all. Fighting dirty had its advantages among this lot.

And just as he was beginning to enjoy himself, he spied Miss Ellsie Moira Littleton herself, all fancied up in a satin evening gown that lay off the shoulders. A long slim neck, a beautiful and regal face, a font of auburn hair piled on her head, a slender form … Blimey, no wonder Tim fancies her. The notebook and pencil in her hand spoiled the effect somewhat, but by the glances she was receiving from the male guests, they likely didn’t notice. She lived in Mayfair herself, a daughter of a baronet, but had nothing but her address to her name, so a reporter for The Daily Chronicle she had become to earn her keep. Or so she had said. Ben wasn’t ready to let his guard down with Ellsie just yet, especially when considering the effect she had on Tim.

He snorted and glanced across the room towards Badger … and his friend seemed to have noticed her at the same time. Like a dazed man, he walked directly for her through all the bejewelled guests.

‘Damn the man,’ Ben swore under his breath. He wanted Badger to keep on his toes, not dabble with the affections of a woman decidedly outside his class.

But before he could make a move towards Badger, an older man with white hair and whiskers appeared before him. ‘You are one of them, are you not?’ he said. ‘You are one of those detectives Sawyer hired, eh?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Ben with a military bearing, minus the salute. ‘I am Benjamin Watson. And who might you be, sir?’

‘I am Doctor Cornelius Archer, a colleague of Doctor Sawyer’s. We had planned to unwrap the mummy together …’ He took out his pocket watch and looked at it. Ben did the same.

‘It’s getting late,’ said Ben.

‘I suppose we shall have to carry on without him. I am certain he will arrive later. He must have been detained at St Bart’s.’ He chuckled. ‘It is likely, if I know Enoch, that he will arrive at an inopportune moment and in the most flamboyant of manners.’

Ben shuffled his feet. ‘I had not yet had the pleasure of meeting him, sir.’

‘Then I shall be pleased to introduce you. Have you ever attended one of these soirees before?’

‘I have not. Do you have any idea why Doctor Sawyer should have retained security for the evening?’

‘Well, look around you, man. There are priceless artefacts in every corner of the room. It wouldn’t do to have a guest nip away with one.’

‘But … they’re your guests. I presume they … they, er …’ He couldn’t manage to say that they were rich enough not to steal. But the doctor only chuckled.

‘Though our guests are wealthy and part of the upper crust of England, some are not above making away with the occasional trinket, either on a wager, or because they simply fancy it.’ He moved in close to Ben. ‘And some are not as wealthy as they would like you to think.’

‘I see, sir. We’ll keep at it.’

‘Good man,’ he said absently before he slowly made his way to the dais.

As soon as he had disappeared into the crowd, Ben scanned for Badger. Where are you, Tim? He looked for Miss Littleton, but he couldn’t find her either. You don’t suppose … Tim Badger wasn’t subtle in his interest for the woman, but she was reckless with his affections, and Ben had nearly reached the end of his tolerance of her. She had promised to be their Doctor Watson and pen their investigations with the thrill of a penny dreadful in order to get her exclusive. She had dutifully risen to the challenge a few times, and it had brought in clients … just not as many as they had hoped for.

Doctor Archer reached the platform, and the crowd began to silence except for some excited whispers. Ben had to abandon his search for Badger and stood back as the partygoers crowded round the dais.

Someone was dimming the gaslights. Ben marked servants in black coats doing the deed.

The flaming torches around the sarcophagus lit the dais like a stage. Ben supposed that was the intention. He kept half an eye on that and the other half on the crowd, studying the men for any bulges in their pockets that might indicate a fingersmith’s light touch.

Archer had a fringe of white hair wagging on either side of a bald head, whose side whiskers met up with a pronounced moustache. He looked authoritative standing in the torchlight in his starched white evening shirt and black tailcoat, gold chain in a swag across his white waistcoat.

‘Good evening, my friends,’ he announced. He was a man used to making speeches, Ben reckoned. Probably used to lecturing medical students at Bart’s. His voice carried to the room’s walls. ‘I am Doctor Cornelius Archer, friend and colleague to your host. Doctor Sawyer has been delayed, but he would want me to proceed on time. I, too, am a surgeon of some merit’ – he chuckled at his own humility, whilst some of the men chuckled along with him – ‘and an interested amateur in the history of ancient Egypt. We would like to thank you all for attending this evening.’

The crowd broke into polite applause, hands muted by innumerable white gloves.

He gestured to the sarcophagus. ‘This man, this Runihura Saa, whose name we have interpreted from the hieroglyphics on this, his tomb, once walked in the sunshine of a golden oasis – the deadly stretches of endless desert on one side, the life-giving Nile on the other. He lived and loved five hundred years before Moses, two thousand years before Jesus Christ. He wept, he ate, he served his pharaoh and, at last, he died and was given the honour of mummification in this marvellous coffin. Such a man is to be revered, and so, tonight, we honour him. I am sure he would not mind being part of a scientific study so that we may know more about the people who inhabited their bejewelled palaces and composed the histories chiselled into their walls, the food they ate, the things they thought.’

Scientific study my eye, thought Ben, searching all the eager faces, their eyes lit with the macabre, their hands still clutching champagne glasses. It’s like no scientific study I’ve ever seen.

He glanced to his left and finally caught sight of Badger, doing his duty and standing like one of the Queen’s guards, erect, stoic, critical of all he viewed down his nose. That’s more like it, lad.

Assistants attired in evening dress – possibly even Archer’s students – gathered on the dais. They held trays of medical instruments. It made Ben feel a little queasy. But no. This was a mummy. The blood had long ago been drained from the body. He’d look more like dried leather than a corpse. Ben had been to the British Museum. The place was lousy with mummies. You couldn’t swing a cat in there and not hit a mummy.

Why did the wealthy take such ghoulish delight in uncovering these ancient dead? That’s what comes of too much money and too much time on one’s hands, he mused. Anyone making an honest living wouldn’t have a care to do anything like this. He couldn’t help but fold his arms over his chest and peer at the guests with stern disapproval.

Badger caught his eye just then. He smirked at Ben and winked. The man could always read him like a book.

The gallery fell into silence as Doctor Archer spoke again. ‘But I must caution you all. This was no simple burial. The ancients used magical incantations to purify and bury their dead. They put curses upon these tombs to ensure that those who interfered with them would suffer the consequences.’

Only a few gasps from the ladies cut the sudden stillness.

Then the doctor sniggered and drew himself back. ‘But we in this modern era don’t believe in any of that now, do we?’

Other light laughs of relief tittered about the room.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, gesturing to the sarcophagus. The lid was then pried up by at least four men. It was heavy, if the huffing and puffing they were doing was any indication, and they finally set it aside and propped it upright so that all the partygoers could see the careful but chipped paint of the wood carver’s art.

Doctor Archer then chose his instruments from the trays and bent over the open coffin. Ben could see from where he stood the greyed linens painted with ancient spices. The crowd drew closer. Ben couldn’t help himself and did likewise, straining to see. After all, he prided himself on his own scientific methods gleaned from the writings of Mister Holmes and from his time as a chemist’s assistant.

Archer narrated what he was doing for the crowd. ‘The Egyptian mummification process is quite extensive,’ he said as he cut carefully through the first linen covering the wrappings. ‘With apologies to the sensitivity of the ladies present, I shall just say that the brain matter is carefully removed without disturbing the head. And then the intestines, the lungs, the liver and the stomach are removed, dried and placed in canopic jars … similar to those you can see in that cabinet there.’ He gestured towards a glass cabinet standing in the middle of the room with painted alabaster jars shaped like giant seed pods with animal-headed gods and one human head as lids. All the guests turned to look before they gave their attention again to Archer.

‘The heart,’ he went on, ‘was also removed and dried but then returned to the body. In those ancient days, they had little understanding of what each organ actually did in the human body, you see. They thought the heart was far more important than the brain, for instance, and that magic was part of their everyday lives. In many ways, the people of the great society of ancient Egypt were very like ignorant children.’

He reached in and gently folded away the linens as he spoke. ‘And then the now empty body cavity’ – and here a few women gasped – ‘was cleansed with palm wine and spices, then packed with myrrh and cassia for more rituals and to keep the body from caving in on itself. The body was then sewn up, packed in natron to dry in an already dry climate, and, when a sufficient time had passed and the body would no longer decay, it was oiled and spiced before being wrapped in layered strips of linen, with various magical amulets being tucked away under the folds and creases of the bandages, before the final layer of linen was painted with resin to protect it from the elements. You see how dark these linens are …’ Heads nodded. ‘As we cut the top layers away, you will see how the lower layers are lighter in colour. And,’ he said with a smile and a sparkle to his eye, ‘we hope to uncover some of those prized amulets that Doctor Sawyer promised to auction off tonight.’

Ben couldn’t resist straining to see the mummy. Its bandages appeared to be wrapped in intricate patterns, particularly over the face. He felt himself leaning forward … then pulled himself up short. Blimey, I’m as bloodthirsty as the lot of them! But he had to reluctantly admit … it was fascinating.

‘A prodigious number of linen wrappings,’ Archer muttered, making ‘hmm’ noises as he turned his head this way and that. ‘Hand me that,’ he said to his assistant, gesturing to the gleaming tray. He took up a pair of scissors and began cutting away the layers of linen around the face.

Some of the ladies turned away. One shrieked and seemed to faint.

Archer glanced up with impatience. ‘Do take her away to the outer parlour.’

For one glorious moment, Ben allowed himself to consider that the shrieking woman might be Miss Littleton … but of course – more’s the pity – it wasn’t. She hadn’t struck him as a fainter.

The crowd parted for the hapless gentleman to sweep up his partner and hurry her out of the room, gown trailing down his arm like a waterfall.

Once the crowd closed in again, Archer proceeded. ‘This is odd,’ he said softly, concentrating on his work. The surgeon cut away more linens before he drew back with a gasp. His assistants – moustachioed gents and young medical students with beards – were equally aghast.

Archer raised his head, searching the room and lighted on Ben.

Crikey, thought Ben. Had the mummy been stolen, leaving only empty linens, right out from under their noses? Ben looked towards Badger and signalled to him. They both moved with haste towards the dais, shouldering the crowd aside with ‘beg your pardon’ muttered over and over.

When they reached the dais and stood on either side of Doctor Archer, they saw what had caused him such distress. It was not an empty coffin, nor was it a wizened, leathery face that accosted them, but the waxy flesh of the newly dead.

‘That’s Doctor Sawyer,’ said Badger, much too loudly.

Shrieks arose from ladies in the crowd.

And Doctor Archer fainted dead away.

TWO

Badger

‘Gentlemen, step back,’ said Badger with authority.

The gobsmacked assistants yielded to him, while some of the other assistants ministered to Archer.

And him a doctor, thought Tim. ‘Smelling salts, anyone?’ he called to the crowd. He thought a footman went running as he himself cradled the man in his arms on the floor of the dais. ‘Doctor Archer.’ He gently patted his cheek. ‘Doctor Archer, sir.’

The man grumbled some sounds and by then the footman returned with a glass of brandy. Tim ran it under the man’s nose, and when he seemed to awaken a bit, he pressed it to his lips and he drank.

His eyes fluttered open and looked up at Tim.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘The mummy …’

‘Steady now. It was Doctor Sawyer.’

‘Yes. Yes. Help me up.’

Tim lifted the man unsteadily to his feet. He was white as a sheet. ‘It was a … a shock. A dreadful, dreadful shock.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Tim.

Watson was bending over the corpse, paying little attention to the drama of the fainting doctor.

‘What do you reckon, Ben?’

‘Let’s calm ourselves, take a breath and do the method,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes, the method.’ Tim’s old guv, one Mister Sherlock Holmes, lived by his method of deduction. And Tim had watched it carefully when he was a lad as one of Mister Holmes’s Baker Street Irregulars. How the guv seemed to pull clues and details out of thin air. At first, he’d thought it was a trick, but once Tim discovered that he accomplished it through strict attention to detail, he began to practise the art as well, just to see if he could do it. How could he have imagined when he was a boy that it would later become part of a new vocation?

He threaded his fingers, straightened his arms, cracked all the knuckles and joints, then rubbed his hands together. In a way, he was grateful it wasn’t one of those mummies. They gave him the nerves, with a sort of creeping feeling over his skin. This was just a dead man, and he had now seen his share of them.

Though why this one’s face was a cherry red instead of pale as milk, he didn’t know.

‘Can we have lights?’ called Watson.

Servants in black livery moved to turn the gaslights back up.

Tim reached for the bandages stained a dark tea colour.

‘Hold there, Tim,’ said Watson. ‘Doctor Archer, is it your opinion that these are authentic bandages from the mummy, or are they concocted only to look like them? If you’re feeling up to it, that is.’

Now that’s good thinking, Ben, he thought. I should have thought of that first. The method! Think of the method!

Archer took a mincing step closer. He blinked and seemed to gird himself. ‘Let me examine them …’ He took a long pair of forceps from the tray that a quaking assistant was still holding and gently pulled a scrap away from the dead face of Doctor Sawyer.

Delicately, Archer wiggled the bandage enough to pull it free. Holding it thus between the pincers, he turned it this way and that with a trembling grasp. Watson peered closely, and Tim thought he had better look too. It had the smell of resin.

‘In my opinion,’ said Archer, ‘it is only made to look – and smell – like the original. This is not old linen. A true mummy no longer smells like spices and resin, but … well