The Egyptian Curse by Dan Andriacco, Kieran McMullen Page A

Inspector Rollins thought, but not when he thought.”
    â€œThen what?”
    â€œI buried it in my backyard. Nobody will ever find it there.”
    Hale leaned forward and lowered his voice. He wanted to shout. “That was a little detail you left out earlier, when you told me the dagger had been taken from the library. Not to put too fine a point on it, you lied to me, Lady Sarah.”
    The formal title was a deliberate slap, and Sarah seemed to feel it. She flinched.
    â€œI didn’t want to involve you.”
    â€œHow could I be any more involved than I already am, you silly girl?”
    â€œHere we are.” The waitress set down Hale’s ale. He forced a grateful smile and told the Irish girl they didn’t want to order anything else just now.
    â€œI deserved that,” Sarah said when the waitress had left. “It was silly to do that. But, don’t you see, I was still stunned from Alfie’s death and lacking sleep. I wasn’t thinking very clearly at all. I should have told you everything and let you take care of it.”
    Hale’s anger drained out of him. “That would have been equally silly, I’m afraid. I haven’t exactly covered myself with glory in this business. Maybe the answer was in front of me the whole time.”
    He thought back to Charles saying that even the governor wouldn’t have killed Alfie for the company he kept, or something to that effect. Hale remembered thinking then that perhaps that was exactly what had happened - that Sedgewood could have killed his son-in-law during a heated argument. Maybe somebody else reached the same conclusion with more conviction, and killed Sedgewood in retribution. But who loved Alfie that much? Certainly not his wife - Hale felt that in his bones.
    â€œWhen I could think more clearly,” Sarah said, “I realized that Daddy never would have taken an Egyptian artifact out of the house. He certainly wouldn’t have had it with him on the street outside the Constitutional Club. That means he didn’t kill Alfie after all.”
    Hale wasn’t so sure. “Maybe the two of them were in the library at the townhouse. Your father was examining the dagger at the time. They argued, and he thrust the weapon into Alfie before he even knew what he was doing. Then he moved the body later.”
    â€œI actually thought of that.” Triumph shone in Sarah’s green eyes. “So I talked to Reynolds. He was home that night - and so was Daddy. Daddy never went out. And Alfie wasn’t at the townhouse that night.”
    Hale took a long pull on the dark brew, fervently wishing that it were something stronger. His head throbbed.”Let’s recap: You found a bloody dagger in the library a little more than a day after somebody stabbed your husband to death. If His Lordship didn’t use that dagger on Alfie, then who did?”
    She was quiet for a moment. “I’ve thought a lot about that. I just don’t know.”
    â€œIt would have had to have been somebody who had access to your father’s library both before and after the murder.”
    â€œYou mean, like, one of the servants?”
    No, that’s not what I mean. Hale took another drink, for courage. He lit a panatela, stalling. “One of Alfie’s friends” - it wouldn’t help to mention the Woolfs - “suggested to me that maybe Charles was one of the many people who owed Alfie money.”
    Two years ago, when Hale had first met Charles without knowing who he really was, Dorothy Sayers had thought there was something fishy about him. Hale had never quite gotten over a negative prejudice against Sarah’s brother, although Charles had always been nice enough to Hale. Was he the sort of man who could kill his brother-in-law to cancel out a big debt? Hale couldn’t say no.
    Sarah just looked at Hale, as though not believing what she had just heard.
    â€œWell,” Hale prodded.