Chapter Twenty-Eight

London, January 1973

January drew to a close with a dramatic winter storm that brought down an ancient oak in the street outside Eve and Brograve’s apartment. She was sad to see such a mighty creature felled and she took the lift down to the street to pick up a twisty twig with a shriveled acorn still attached to remember it by. She met the postman in the foyer and he handed her a letter addressed to her, in handwriting she didn’t recognize.

“Glad to see you out and about again, Lady Eve!” he said. He always called her that and Eve never corrected him. In fact, the title should only be used with her surname, Lady Beauchamp or Lady Evelyn Beauchamp, but what did it matter?

“I’m greased lightning on my stick,” she said, waving it. “Don’t tell anyone but I’m training for the next Olympic Games.”

“I’d put money on you in a heartbeat,” he said.

Eve opened her letter over morning coffee. It was from Ana Mansour, and it was written on the stationery of a hotel off the Edgware Road.

Ana began by hoping that Eve was entirely recovered. “Please forgive me if my questioning upset you. It certainly wasn’t my intention. Your husband has asked me to leave you in peace, and I fully understand that he wants to protect you. I just wanted you to know that I will remain at this address until I complete my research and you can contact me anytime if you think of anything that might help.”

Ana wrote that she was sorry she hadn’t had a chance to ask about Eve’s recollections of the burial chamber. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I got the impression you remembered something about the wishing cup I showed you a picture of, and possibly the gold unguent container. If you did, I beg you to tell me whatever you know.”

What on earth had she done with that gold container? Eve wondered yet again. It must be somewhere in the flat. Surely she should be able to track it down by the scent?

“I’m sorry to press you after your husband asked me not to,” Ana wrote. “This winter is hard for me because my two children are in Cairo, with their father’s family, and I can’t return home until my research is finished. As a mother, I’m sure you will sympathize.”

Eve was surprised. How could any woman leave her children for months on end? Perhaps they were at school and she had decided not to disrupt their education, but the separation must be heart-wrenching. Could she not fly home for a visit or two? Personally, she could never have left Patricia when she was young. The only time they spent a night apart was when Eve was in the hospital after her accident.

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 poured 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.