The Collector's Daughter Read online

  The second page of Ana’s letter was a list of about twenty items whose whereabouts, she said, remained a mystery. The gold container and the wishing cup were among them. Eve recognized three of the others as the artifacts her father had taken from the tomb—the goose, the amulet, and the wine jar.

  A thought struck her: where had her father’s mementos gone? She remembered him putting them with the rest of his collection at Highclere when they were there at Christmas 1922. Sometime in the late 1920s, Howard had sold that collection to the Metropolitan Museum, but she was sure he wouldn’t have included the three Tutankhamun items in the sale. He couldn’t, because Pups should never have had them. Did that mean they were still at Highclere? She must telephone and ask Porchy. If she could help Ana to recover even three objects, perhaps she would be able to return to her children. She wanted to help if she could.

  Eve decided not to show the letter to Brograve. He was being very protective of her, but there was no need. She felt absolutely fine now and just as soon as the weather improved, she looked forward to returning to life as it had been before the stroke. They could visit the horse races, starting with Newmarket in April; she enjoyed studying the form and having a “flutter,” as her father used to call it. They liked eating out in London restaurants, and sometimes going to a casino afterward, where she used to be a demon at blackjack. And she hoped she would soon be well enough for a shopping trip with Maude, and lunch in the rooftop restaurant at Selfridges, which was their favorite haunt. It was almost a year since she’d bought any new clothes—an all-time record for her. Brograve would happily wear the same clothes for the rest of his life, so he couldn’t understand the particular brand of joy that came from buying a chic new outfit.

  That afternoon she wrote a reply to Ana’s letter, sympathizing about the separation from her children. “What ages are they? Boys or girls?” she asked, doing her best to keep her writing legible. “Are they being well cared for? It must be a terrible worry.”

  She wrote that she did remember seeing a gold container in the burial chamber, but couldn’t imagine what had happened to it—which was more or less the truth. She said there was a chance there might be a few items at Highclere, and promised: “I’m going to telephone my brother and ask him to hunt around.”

  She found a postage stamp in her purse and gazed at it: three pence. Was that what it cost? Money had changed from shillings and pennies to these new decimal “pence” and she couldn’t get the hang of them at all. She stuck the stamp on the envelope and asked Mrs. Jarrold to post it on her way home from work.

  * * *

  The opening of the burial chamber took place on the afternoon of February seventeenth, 1923. Eve and Pups had arrived in Luxor two days earlier to be greeted with controversy. News had reached the Egyptian press that Lord Carnarvon had appointed The Times as the official newspaper covering the excavation of the tomb, a decision he made because their fee helped to offset his escalating costs. The Egyptians were infuriated by what they described as his “colonialist sense of entitlement,” which kept their own journalists out of the loop. The rest of the British press were cross too. Arthur Weigall of the Daily Mail ambushed Eve whenever she walked through the lobby of the Winter Palace.

  “What’s happening?” he asked. “Can’t you give me anything? I’ll lose my job if I don’t file stories every day.”

  She felt bad refusing, so tried to give him snippets of information while being careful to guard her tongue about the important stuff.

  “A little bird told me that you and Howard Carter are an item,” Arthur said with a cheeky grin. “Please tell me it’s not true. An old curmudgeon like him can’t have won the heart of a pretty young girl like you.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Arthur, who on earth have you been listening to? Howard is twenty-seven years my senior and I’ve known him since I was a small child. Neither of us has a scrap of romantic interest in the other; that would be plain odd. Besides, my fiancé is arriving in Luxor any day now. I hope you will keep such tittle-tattle to yourself or he might have to challenge you to a duel.”

  “My lips are sealed,” he said, with a smirk.

  The group invited for the opening of the burial chamber assembled outside the tomb. Howard seemed tetchy, Eve thought, but she couldn’t fathom why. Probably something to do with the press. If Arthur Weigall had asked him whether he’d had a romance with Eve, he’d have got his head bitten off.

  Pierre Lacau, director of antiquities, was there, and an engineer called Sir William Garstin, who was an adviser to the Ministry of Public Works. The Met’s Egyptologist Arthur Mace came with his wife, Winifred, and the photographer Harry Burton brought his wife, Minnie. Harry took some photographs of them all standing in the desert by the tomb entrance and promised to send a print to Eve.

  At four in the afternoon, Howard stood in front of the assembled company and made a little speech, then Pups said a few words, before Howard gave the order for his workmen to go inside the tomb and break through the doorway into the burial chamber. When they pulled the rushes aside, they must have been able to see the section Howard had patched up, but none of the dignitaries were in the antechamber at that point and the workmen didn’t comment.

  The strong musky scent reached Eve before she was inside the antechamber, and it made her feel light-headed. There was a pounding sensation right at the base of her skull that she put down to nerves. The words in Marie Corelli’s letter came back to her: “death by a disease no doctor can diagnose,” it had said. Should she be wary of going inside for a second time?

  She and Pups had mentioned the curse story to Howard, and as predicted, he treated it with instant derision.

  “The tomb was airtight,” he explained, “and therefore nothing could possibly have been living inside: no bats, no insects, no fungi, no spores. The idea of a magical curse belongs in children’s storybooks, along with enchanted castles and wicked witches.”

  Eve shook herself. Of course he was right. How could it be otherwise? She knew her father wasn’t convinced, but he wisely kept his own counsel.

  When it was her turn, she walked inside, paired with Sir William Garstin, curiosity overcoming her apprehension. She hadn’t had a chance to examine the wall paintings last time they were inside, so she looked now, by the light of some arc lamps that had been set up. Were there any dire warnings inscribed there? She was no expert in translating hieroglyphics but it seemed there were just the traditional images depicting the journey of the soul through the skies to the other world. She spotted the opening of the mouth ceremony, which the Ancient Egyptians considered essential so that the deceased could still eat and drink, and the weighing of the heart ceremony; according to their beliefs, the deceased could only proceed to the afterlife if their heart weighed less than a feather.

  Next she examined the intricate gilt carvings on the outer shrine, all set on a brilliant blue faience background. The artistry was staggering. She thought about the body preserved inside and said a silent Christian prayer for Tutankhamun that ended: “May he rest in eternal peace.”

  It would be months before Howard could start the delicate task of opening the shrine and exposing the inner coffin. It had to be handled with supreme care or the remains would crumble to dust on exposure to air. He would need a team of technical experts and lots of specialist equipment before they started breaking the seals.

  When she emerged from the tomb, Eve staggered a little in the heat and brightness of the desert. Everyone seemed overawed. When they spoke, it was mostly gibberish, as if they’d had too much to drink.

  Eve hugged her father tightly, then she hugged Howard too, before jumping back, remembering the absurd rumor about them and not wanting to give any watching pressmen a photograph that might fuel it.

  * * *

  “Is your mother not coming to see the tomb?” Arthur Weigall asked Eve when he came across her in the Winter Palace reception that evening. “She must be curious after all the Rothschild money that’s been p
oured into the Egyptian desert.”

  “Of course she’s curious!” Eve replied. “But, as I’m sure you know, she runs a private hospital in London that takes up much of her time.”

  Arthur looked sly. “I heard she’s got a new friend, an ex–army officer called Ian Dennistoun. What’s more, I heard his marriage has recently collapsed. Care to comment?”

  Eve laughed at him. “Honestly, Arthur! Dorothy Dennistoun is a friend of my mother’s and her husband was recently a patient in her hospital. You should write penny dreadfuls instead of reporting the news. Or go back to your curse stories! They seem more up your street.”

  She climbed the stairs to her suite, wondering where on earth he had dug up that story from. Perhaps her mother had accompanied Ian to some function or other and society columnists had leaped to put two and two together. What a sleazy bunch they were!

  * * *

  Two days after the official opening, Brograve arrived in Luxor with his parents. Eve went to the railway station to greet them and rushed into Brograve’s arms. Although they’d been apart for only three weeks, it had felt like an eternity. She embraced Sir Edward and Betty too. As she got to know Brograve’s father better, she realized he wasn’t stern, as she’d first thought, but reserved, like his son. Beneath his exterior was a kind, hardworking, intensely moral man. Both he and Brograve were content to let the women do the talking, which was just as well because Eve and Betty always had plenty to say.

  The morning after their arrival, Eve took them to the Valley, where Howard had agreed to give them a personal tour of the tomb. His mood seemed much improved and he was almost jovial as he greeted them.

  “So you’re Eve’s young man,” he said, shaking his hand vigorously. “I had no idea you were so tall! She told me all about you but omitted that detail.” Howard wasn’t short, but Brograve towered over him.

  “You didn’t ask,” Eve replied.

  The ceiling of the passageway into the antechamber was too low for Brograve and he had to stoop to walk down the slope. Eve clutched his arm, excited for him to see it. Once inside all three were visibly impressed by the treasures.

  “You must be so proud,” Betty gasped. “Everyone’s saying it’s the eighth wonder of the world. I’m honored that you were able to arrange for us to see it.”

  When they emerged, while Betty and Sir Edward were asking Howard questions, Eve led Brograve behind a sandy hillock so she could kiss him. She glanced around first to check that none of the Arab workers were watching, then stepped farther up the slope to even their height difference; otherwise he had to bend almost double to press his lips to hers.

  “I love you, Pipsqueak,” he whispered, and she giggled at the nickname he had recently coined for her.

  “Love you too, Beanstalk,” she replied.

  “I like your young man,” Howard told her later. “Even a romantically unschooled amateur like me can tell you’ve found yourself a good one.”

  Eve glowed. When she was with Brograve, it felt magical. She was a different person, a newer, shinier, happier, better version of her old self.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  London, February 1973

  Eve couldn’t help worrying about Ana Mansour. There had been no reply to her letter so she decided to try telephoning to ask how she was. Brograve wouldn’t approve but she could call when he went out for his walk after luncheon. That was the time when she usually rang her friends, sitting at the telephone table in the hall with a cup of tea to have a good old natter.

  The phone in the hotel rang out for a long time and Eve was about to give up when a man with a foreign accent answered. He knew who Ana Mansour was and Eve heard the creaking of stairs, then a knock on the door. There was a pause followed by the sound of feet hurrying down and the receiver being lifted.

  “Lady Beauchamp?” Ana said, with hope in her voice.

  “Please, at this point you should call me Eve,” she replied. “I wanted to telephone to say I’m worried about you stuck here without your children, and to say please don’t stay in London on my account. I will try to find some information for you but there are lots of gaps in my memory and I’m not sure if I will be able to help.”

  Ana didn’t speak for a moment and when she did, she sounded deflated. It occurred to Eve that by telephoning she had raised her hopes, then torn them down again.

  “I need to finish my research before I return to Egypt,” Ana said, “but thank you for your thoughtfulness. I do sympathize with your memory loss. It must be hard.”

  Eve tried to shrug it off. “Most of the time it doesn’t affect me. Life goes on, you know. But your questions made me stumble up against some of the blank spots, and I wanted to apologize if I seemed vague.”

  She heard the flare of a match as Ana lit a cigarette, then inhaled. Eve got a fleeting sense that she could smell the tobacco smoke wafting down the line.

  “After my father’s stroke, he found that writing down his memories helped. The more he wrote, the more he remembered little details that had escaped him. You might try that.” Ana inhaled again.

  “Yes, I suppose I could, but I don’t seem to have the concentration for writing anymore. Besides, the difficulty lies in pinpointing exactly what I can’t remember.” She laughed, but it made her anxious. It was one thing knowing what she didn’t remember; what about all the things she didn’t know she wasn’t remembering? There might be some important ones. “How is your father now?” she asked.

  “He died over ten years ago,” Ana said, “but I spent a lot of time with him after the stroke. Like you, he had gaps in his memory, and I came to the conclusion that his brain protected him from distressing memories, like his experiences in the war. It made me wonder if . . . Please stop me if you find this upsetting, but I wondered if you might have forgotten some things that happened around the opening of the tomb because of all the tragedies that came afterward. It must have been tough for you, and not helped by everyone saying they were caused by a curse.” Eve heard a crackling sound as she took another draw on her cigarette.

  “Ah, that old curse myth. Howard Carter used to say that sane people should dismiss such inventions with contempt. Those were his exact words.”

  “Did you never have a moment when you wondered if there might be any truth in it?” Ana asked.

  Eve considered the question. “If I ever wondered, Howard brought me back down to earth with a bump. And Brograve was always very scathing about it. So I had two rational people to hand.”

  Ana chuckled. “I can tell your husband wouldn’t be the type to believe in the supernatural, but when you look at the list of all the bizarre deaths of people associated with the tomb, you can’t help speculating. Maya’s writings, the ones recently discovered at Saqqara, are full of blessings and curses and magic. Maybe some of the items from the tomb were cursed.”

  Were they? Suddenly the musky scent of the tomb filled Eve’s nostrils. It used to linger around that gold box and now it seemed to be in the hall where she was sitting. The smell was so strong that she glanced around to see if the container had somehow appeared on the telephone table.

  “It does make you question whether there’s anything in it,” Ana continued. “There are still mysteries surrounding how the Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, and how they made their incredible observations of the stars without the aid of a telescope, so perhaps they did come up with a way of harming tomb robbers with their spells. I wouldn’t want to keep anything from the tomb in my home, just in case.”

  Eve fell silent, thinking back to the weeks after they entered the burial chamber and took their souvenirs. Everything began to go wrong from that moment, starting with Howard’s canary. She shivered.

  “Are you alright?” Ana asked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’m fine,” Eve said, but she had an urge to get off the phone, so she made up a white lie. “It’s just that I think I can hear my husband returning. He doesn’t know I telephoned you. I’d better go.
I’ll be in touch if I think of anything that might help you.”

  She hung up, feeling alarmed. Why had she telephoned Ana? It didn’t feel as if it had achieved anything. Instead, strange thoughts had been poured into her head, where they swirled around like Scotch mist.

  What if the gold container was cursed, and that’s why she kept having strokes? Where had she put it, and why had she not told Brograve? She had to find it and get rid of it as soon as possible before it finished her off completely.

  Chapter Thirty

  Luxor, February 19, 1923

  Two days after the opening of the burial chamber, Eve’s maid, Marcelle, developed excruciating stomach pains. A local doctor came to examine her and said he thought it might be appendicitis. Marcelle begged Eve to let her return to London; she was terrified at the thought of being operated on in a foreign country. Eve telegrammed her mother, who replied that Marcelle should come back as soon as possible for treatment at her hospital.

  Brograve was sailing to London the following day to take care of business matters and said he would accompany her and make sure she was comfortable on the journey. Eve traveled on the train with them both to Alexandria and booked a first-class cabin on the steamer for Marcelle, then said her goodbyes. She would miss Brograve terribly but at least she knew her maid was in safe hands.

  Eve stayed overnight in Alexandria and when she returned to Luxor the following day, she found her father in his suite, stomping around in a foul mood.

  “Bloody Howard has suddenly got airs above his station,” he told her. “He thinks he’s the only one in charge of the tomb and we’re all supposed to bow to his will.”

  Eve was surprised. Howard and her father had never fallen out before, at least as far as she was aware. She sat in the armchair under his ceiling fan.