Little Knell by Catherine Aird Read Free Book Online Page B

pictures.’
    The constable obediently moved away and commanded the mummy to say cheese as the X-ray machine started to make clicking noises.
    Hilary Collins, the deputy curator of the museum, said tentatively to Dr Meadows, ‘I understand, doctor, that mummies usually have a gold plate over the embalmer’s point of incision of the body. It would be most interesting to see that on an X-ray. Would it show up?’
    â€˜Indeed it would.’ The radiologist was all affability. ‘Metals – all dense materials, actually – look white on an X-ray film. Less dense ones go down through all the shades from grey to black.’
    As far as Sloan was concerned most of the dense subjects with whom he usually came into contact were regrettably human. Their ethics also went down through the varying shades of grey. It didn’t help that what the law itself wanted was a state where everything was either black or white.
    The radiographer turned away from her machine for a few moments as she busied herself with a cassette of film, and then she asked Steve Meadows if he could step her way for a moment.
    â€˜I don’t seem able to get a good picture somehow, doctor,’ she said. ‘It’s coming up completely white.’
    Steve Meadows looked down at something she was showing him and then up at Marcus Fixby-Smith. He asked, ‘These old chaps didn’t ever line their – what did you call them – cartonnages with lead, by any chance, did they?’
    â€˜No,’ said the museum curator without hesitation. ‘And, anyway, two men wouldn’t have been able to lift this little lot if they had.’
    â€˜That’s what I thought,’ murmured the radiologist absently, still peering down. ‘The preliminary radiograph’s a bit odd, that’s all.’
    â€˜Usually,’ explained Marcus Fixby-Smith, one specialist to another, ‘the body was just wrapped in a sort of cerecloth – a set of bandages made of the fibres of flax and so forth and often secured with a plant gum.’
    Steve Meadows nodded.
    â€˜And sometimes, they applied resins to the outer wrappings as well. I’m not a specialist, of course. Egyptology isn’t my field, by any means.’
    â€˜According to this plate,’ said Meadows slowly, ‘there’s something else in there. Something metallic.’
    â€˜Gold?’ suggested Hilary Collins. ‘The Egyptians had plenty of gold.’
    The radiologist glanced at Sloan and said, ‘If Mr Fixby-Smith wouldn’t mind indicating how to open this mummy, doing the least damage possible, then I think we may be able to tell you.’
    â€˜Good,’ said Sloan heartily, as the curator and the radiologist advanced on the wooden casing, apparently oblivious of any of the dangers feared by Dr Dabbe. Time, after all, was getting on and Sloan had other work to do.
    What wasn’t good, though, was the noisome smell which assailed the nostrils of everyone in the room as the lid was prised open.
    The metal inside was not gold. It was aluminium and looked suspiciously like domestic baking foil. It was wrapped carefully round something mummy-shaped. The odour got very much worse as Dr Meadows carefully unfolded a little corner and found not the naso-frontal suture of the skeleton he had been seeking but a partially decomposed body.

Chapter Five
    Faded
    â€˜Of course there’s a dead body in that mummy case,’ said Superintendent Leeyes testily. ‘You should have known that, Sloan. It’s the whole idea of mummification.’
    â€˜Not an old body, sir,’ said Sloan down the curator’s telephone: he didn’t think this conversation was for the open airwaves. He was alone in the curator’s room. Marcus Fixby-Smith had turned a nasty shade of green when he had looked at the contents of the cartonnage, and had gone somewhere to be sick. Unexpectedly, Miss Collins had proved to be made of