Suzanne Robinson Read Free Page A

beam of light filled with dust motes, Lady Georgiana Marshal sank her arms up to the elbows in a wooden crate, arranged the objects within, and replaced the lid. Wiping her hands on her full-length apron, she picked up the box and started down the hall.
    She passed a stack of crates. Beside it, against the wall, loomed a frozen figure of a striding man with the head of a jackal. Past another collection of boxes, beside an open doorway, rested the upright mummy case of a Theban priestess. Even in the near darkness Georgiana could see the outline of the gilded human-shaped container, its black wig and lifelike painted eyes.
    Georgiana entered the gallery with its statues of pharaohs; part-human, part-animal gods; sphinxes; altars; and display cases. Crossing the long chamber, she shoved open a door with her boot and entered the workroom, her footsteps echoing on the marble floor. She went to a long table piled with more boxes, books, pottery, and various other objects and set down her burden.
    “Did you find it, Ludwig?” she asked.
    A domed, slightly bald head shaped like a cabbage popped up from behind a stack of books topped with a bronze scimitar. “Not yet. Oh, my heart, if I’ve lost it, Great-uncle will never forgive me.”
    “You haven’t lost it,” Georgiana said. “I saw it not half an hour ago.”
    Ludwig looked helplessly at the scimitar and made swimming gestures with his hands. His egg-shaped body wavered and almost toppled from the stool uponwhich he was sitting. He regained his balance and tugged on his wispy mustache. Ludwig had adopted it after the style of the dashing royal dragoons and hussars in Her Majesty’s cavalry.
    Taking pity on him, Georgiana said, “Let me look.”
    She began searching between books and boxes, then sank to her knees to fumble among the items that had accumulated in piles around Ludwig’s stool. She vanished under the worktable and reappeared with a slim bundle of wrapped linen. The cloth was an aged yellowish brown, the bundle almost tubular and tapering at one end. Embedded in the cloth were the skeletons of insects and several thousand years’ worth of dust.
    Georgiana held it out and sneezed. “Here it is.”
    “Oh, my heart, you’ve found it! How did it get down there? It’s the only baby crocodile mummy we have, you know. Great-uncle bought it himself in, let me see, in twenty-four in Cairo.” Ludwig took the crocodile mummy from Georgiana, laid it on the table, and picked up a pen. He scratched an entry in a heavy leather-bound volume while Georgiana returned to her carton.
    “This box contains kohl tubes, unguent bottles, a chariot whip, and canopic jars holding the entrails of the high priest of Montu, eighteenth dynasty.” She picked up a cosmetic bottle of Egyptian blue faience. “Amazing. This eye paint is thousands of years old.”
    A musical tinkling caused Ludwig to gasp. He dropped his pen, fished in a pocket of his waistcoat, and withdrew a watch. “Bless my life! It’s two o’clock already and I’m not nearly finished cataloging.” Ludwig fluttered his pale hands around his ostrich egg-shapedbody, found a kerchief, and wiped his forehead. “Dear Georgiana, would you be so kind as to meet the shipment from town? You’re so good with workmen, and you know they’ll treat that royal sarcophagus like a box of tinned meat.”
    “Of course, Ludwig. Don’t alarm yourself. I’ll attend to it at once.”
    “Oh, thank you. I told them to stop at the front so I could meet them. You can ride with them around to this wing.”
    Georgiana removed her apron, wiped her grimy hands on it, and set out on the time-consuming journey from the Egyptian Wing to the entrance to Threshfield House. She had lived all her life in grand houses, but Threshfield was unique. It consisted of a central building flanked at its four corners by pavilions linked to the main block by curved corridors. Its ground plan resembled a crab’s body.
    Georgiana left the southwest