The Deeds of the Disturber by Elizabeth Peters

of the day passed in soothing domestic intercourse with those who were dearest to us, and I was able to reassure Ramses as to the health of the cat Bastet. She appeared to be in an odd state of excitability, but her appetite and temperature were normal, and I concluded she was a trifle disturbed by the long journey and the frustration of being kept indoors—for of course we did not let her out in London. After a refreshing night's sleep, we took our leave of one another, amid assurances of soon meeting again; the younger Emersons departed for Yorkshire and we for Kent, little dreaming how short an interlude of pastoral peace some of us were to enjoy before a horror as great as any we had ever known came upon us.
    I often wondered how old our butler Wilkins really is, but I have never had the impertinence to ask outright. When he has been asked to do something of which he disapproves (a frequent occurrence in our household), he totters and mumbles like an aged man on the verge of collapse. Yet his appearance has not changed in ten years, and on several occasions—most of them occasioned by Ramses—I have seen him move with a celerity that would do credit to a man of twenty-five. I suspect he dyes his hair to look older.
    He was so glad to see us, he actually ran down the stairs and returned Emerson's hearty handclasp before he remembered that the master is not supposed to shake hands with his butler. John was the next to greet us, beaming from ear to ear and proudly reporting the successful delivery of our baggage. Maids, footmen, and gardeners followed in their turn; John's wife carried her new baby, and we had to admire him and say how much he resembled his father (though in point of fact there was little to be seen of him except plump pink cheeks and an assortment of shapeless features).
    Ramses rushed off to his room to unpack his trunks. Checking on him later, I found the place in the state of chaos I had expected, and Ramses absorbed in contemplation of a small chest or coffer filled with what appeared to be sand. "You carried that back from Egypt?" I exclaimed. "There is all the dirt you may need here, Ramses; and when I think of the expense—"
    "This is not dirt, nor ordinary sand, Mama," Ramses replied. "It is natron. You recall, Papa gave me permission to carry out certain experiments on mummification—"
    "Well, don't spill it all over the house," I said in disgust. "Really, Ramses, there are times when I wonder ..."
    "It may seem morbid, Mama, but I assure you I suffer from no such tendencies. I am convinced Mr. Budge and the earlier authorities—I am thinking primarily of Mr. Pettigrew—are in error when they describe a bath of liquid natron as the essential agent. A mistranslation of the original Greek—"
    "Mistranslations are Budge's specialty," said Emerson, who had followed me into the room. "He never had an original idea in his life; he simply repeated Pettigrew's error without ever bothering to investigate on his own—"
    I left them to it. Having encountered a good number of mummies in the course of my daily life, I have developed a professional indifference to them, even though some are extremely nasty. However, I do not believe it is necessary to dwell on such matters.
    Somewhat to my surprise, Ramses appeared more pleased than otherwise at the prospect of having his cousins visit—particularly Violet. The gleam in his black eyes when he mentioned her made me a trifle uneasy. His questions, the previous winter, regarding the relationships between the sexes, had left his father in a state of shock from which he had not yet fully recovered, and disconcerted his mother not a little; but upon reflection I realized that such precocity was not as surprising as it seemed; Ramses had spent most of his life in the company of Egyptians, who mature at a much earlier age than Europeans, and who are often married before they reach their teens. Stern lectures had (I hoped) impressed on Ramses the advisability of