The Hippopotamus Pool by Elizabeth Peters Page B

Emerson?"
    "He was asking too much."
    Emerson's forthright, candid character makes it very difficult for him to lie to me. His expression at that moment was a dead giveaway—a blend of sheepishness and attempted insouciance. He was holding something back.
    Ramses had (confound the child) been absolutely correct. Emerson's analysis had cast new light on the confused history of the Seventeenth Dynasty, and was to win acclaim when it was published several years later, but it was of no help in pinpointing the location of the tomb we were after. Emerson would not sound so confident unless he had other information he had not shared with us.
    There was one source from which he could have got such information. I should have been ashamed of myself for suspecting Emerson of deceiving me, but it would not have been the first time he had done so. Supposing, I thought, Mr. Shelmadine had recovered from his fit and was able to communicate with Emerson before the latter was struck unconscious? If that were the case, Emerson's only reason for concealing the truth must be that the knowledge of it would imperil me. (At least that was what Emerson always claimed.) And the corollary—mark my reasoning, Reader—was that it would imperil Emerson to an equal degree.
    I shook off the dark foreboding this realization inspired. I had no proof that it was so. And if it was, I would get it out of Emerson one way or another.
    Ramses was examining the photographs of the Tetisheri statue with unusual concentration. Then he looked directly at Nefret. She had turned away, and as Ramses's eyes moved from her delicate profile back to the photograph, and back again to Nefret, I saw it too.
    Nonsense, I told myself. The resemblance was coincidental. All young women of a certain type look much alike. Maturity has not yet stamped their features with a distinctive cast of character. Thousands of girls have delicate pointed chins and rounded cheeks.
                                                    
    The remainder of the voyage was without incident, except for one occasion on which Emerson got away from me and I discovered him on the lower deck with Hassan and the men telling vulgar stories and smoking hashish. At least the men were smoking hashish. Emerson was smoking his pipe. I had no reason to doubt his assertion that he had smoked nothing else.
    If I have not mentioned Miss Marmaduke (which in fact I have not) it is because she kept to her cabin for the first several days, suffering, as she claimed, from a mild case of catarrh. Such afflictions are common to newcomers, so, aside from visiting her daily to supply medication and inquire after her condition, I respected her request to be left alone. I hoped I had not made a mistake in employing such a feeble individual and one, moreover, who appeared to lack the neatness of mind and person I had expected. I was willing to make allowances for the faintly unpleasant odors that pervaded her room—they were not those of illness but of a herb or variety of incense, which I supposed were intended to be medicinal—but her references to prayer and meditation as a means of restoring her health forced me to warn her not to repeat those references to Emerson. He believes that God helps those who help themselves—or would, I daresay, if he believed in a god of any variety.
    Whether it was prayer or the herbal incense or my medication or simply the passage of time, Miss Marmaduke reemerged into the world much improved in appearance and in manner. At dinner that evening I was surprised to see her wearing a forest-green frock that flattered her sallow complexion and displayed a figure more shapely that I had expected. For the first time since I had met her she looked as young as she claimed to be—in her early twenties, to be precise.
    When I complimented her on her frock she lowered her eyes. "I hope you do not think me frivolous, Mrs. Emerson. My illness, brief and