The Deadly Curse by Tony Evans Page B

at me. I guessed that he was thinking the same as I: that it was most unlikely that the weapon had been stolen on its journey to Edinburgh and later used by the thief to murder Flinzer.
    ‘Now, before we take the remnants of these pots to Miss Wilton, we must tell you what we learned last night about the state of Flinzer’s finances,’ I said to Delland. ‘I believe we may have discovered why he felt obliged to sell off the Wilton Collection. He was evidently supporting the indiscretions of his wife’s brother: a wastrel, by all accounts.’
     
    *
    By lunchtime Van Helsing, Mina and I were back at the Professor’s house, having waited for Sarah Wilton to deliver her lecture and collected her en route . The young academic was both shocked and intrigued at what we had told her regarding the horrible scene we had witnessed in Mayfair. After a hurried cold luncheon we took the two cardboard boxes to Van Helsing’s study. Once Maxwell had brought a tarpaulin to cover the Turkish carpet, Van Helsing and I carefully removed the contents of each box, making sure that the remains of each pot were kept separate.
    Sarah knelt down beside the fragments and took out a large magnifying glass from her handbag. She held up a shard from each vessel and studied the edges of the fragments carefully through the powerful lens.
    ‘I’m delighted to say that these canopic jars are perfectly genuine,’ she said. ‘Almost certainly Eighteenth Dynasty and no earlier than 1,500 BC. How unfortunate that they have been so badly damaged. Ironically it would have been much harder to gauge their bona fides had they not been broken. Modern copies of such objects look surprisingly authentic on the surface, but the ancient method used for producing the glaze has proved impossible to replicate – and can be judged by examining a cross-section of the pottery. We can tell Inspector Delland that in their unbroken state the jars would have had a considerable value: of course the damaged items are worth far less.’
    I leaned forward and poked my finger into the mass of what I had taken to be dried vegetables or other foodstuffs, which adhered to the base inside each pot.
    ‘And what of these remains?’ I asked. ‘Are these pots cooking utensils?’
    Sarah shook her head. ‘You are rather wide of the mark, Mr Harker,’ she said. ‘Canopic jars are found exclusively in burial chambers. They contain the internal organs of the mummified bodies that have been entombed: removal of the organs is an essential part of the preservation process, but it was believed that in the afterlife the reanimated beings would still need access to their heart, lungs, et cetera . The remains you have been prodding so disrespectfully are the dried remnants of such organs.’
    The significance of Sarah’s comments was clear, and I could see from the expressions upon my friends’ faces that they, too, had come to the same conclusion as I. There was surely some connection between the brutal evisceration of Signor Fosco Peretti and the mysterious appearance of the canopic jars in his drawing room, containing the insides of another corpse, albeit one that had died more than three thousand years earlier, and – one hoped – before the removal of his or her internal organs.
    ‘These are evidently very deep waters,’ Van Helsing said. ‘Although I dare say Inspector Delland will have convinced himself of a rational explanation. We can at any rate report back to him what Miss Wilton has discovered.’
    Mina held up her hand. ‘Wait. Are we not forgetting something? What of the inscription?’
    Van Helsing snorted in annoyance. ‘Of course. My apologies, Miss Wilton. Perhaps my advancing years are finally taking their toll. We also require your opinion regarding the curious symbols which appear on the inside of the canopic jars.’
    Sarah looked puzzled. ‘Inside?’ she said, and picked up a fragment. ‘I, too, missed this in my earlier examination, so I think we can