Ahmose had said that Bakwerner was a physical coward. It was rare for Meren to beat someone he suspected of a crime, though such methods were usual among the city police and other officials of the king. Having been the victim of such methods, he was convinced that if one asked questions with a whip, one only got the answers one wanted to hear, not necessarily the truth. The whip could be used later, if needed, after he flushed a few more birds out of their nests in the papyrus swamp.
The problem was, as Master Ahmose had assured him, that he would have trouble finding anyone who knew Hormin who did not want to kill the man.
His task was to discover who had wanted to kill Hormin enough to risk doing evil in the Place of Anubis.
Meren could hear the wails and screams before he reached the street where Hormin had lived. Word of the scribe's death had reached his family, and someone had already hired professional mourners to ply their trade on the small loggia that protected the entrance to the house. One tore at her hair. Another beat her breasts and moaned. The third shrieked on such a high note that Meren covered his ears. His two assistants did the same.
He had seen better performances. Whoever hired the mourners had not paid enough to get the extras. No raking of nails on flesh, no throwing of earth over the body. Meren hurried by the women, only to encounter the household porter. The man bowed several times, but Meren gave him no chance to protest the intrusion, ordering the porter to conduct him to the family.
Once they were inside, the screams of the mourners faded. The porter led him through an entryway, a columned outer hall, and up a staircase. Meren was halfway up the stairs when a shout made him look up. This was not a wail of grief, but a voice climbing the musical scale in wrath. Like the honking of disturbed geese, voices warred with one another. As Meren gained the second floor he heard a woman yell. It was a sound made powerful by healthy lungs, a noise that filled the world with its clamor.
"Robbery! You picking and sneaking thief. Whore." A man's voice joined in. "She took the broad collar." Meren swept by the porter and into the room from which the noise came. Before him were four people standing in the midst of a litter of papers, open boxes and caskets, chairs, and tables. Meren paused inside the door. One of the women cursed. She picked up something from a table and hurled it at the two men. They ducked and the missile sped past them to crash at Meren's feet. It was a faience spice pot. The pottery cracked and red powder burst forth, spraying Meren's gold sandals and feet.
The woman who had thrown the pot squeaked and ducked behind a chair. Meren looked from his sandals to the woman. She was young, with long arms and legs strung with tense muscles and a short, sharp nose like the beak of a sparrow.
Knowing that he had startled them all, Meren directed his gaze to each of the quarrelers. The older woman was looking at him with a puzzled expression. She had the dark brown skin of a peasant but the uncallused hands of a lady. Standing in front of her was a man as tall as she was, who had not made a sound when the others were shouting at the young woman. Beside him was a shorter man, a youth really. He balanced on the balls of his feet and caressed one of his wrists with his hand. Twisting the wrist back and forth within the grasp of his fingers, he stared at Meren.
They were trying to decide who he might be. It was a favorite tactic of his to appear without announcement, to disturb and unbalance. He knew they were taking in the transparent robe that fell to his ankles and covered a kilt belted in red and gold. His long court wig and inlaid dagger would cause apprehension, as would the two men who stood behind him like bodyguards, for only a great man walks abroad in fine linen, carries a warrior's blade, and commands charioteers.
"I am Meren." The name caused a stirring among them like papyrus reeds shifting in the north wind. Four heads lowered, and Meren received their bows. "Evil has been done in the sacred place of embalming, and I am sent to hunt out the criminal who murdered the scribe Hormin."
Lifting his foot out of a hillock of spice, Meren skirted the shards of faience and took a chair of cedar with legs shaped like those of a lion.
"There has been theft in this house?" Meren asked.
Four heads nodded.
"Last night?"
Again the nods.
Meren looked from one bowed head to the other and decided to break up the solid phalanx. If he confronted each of them alone, it would be impossible for them to remain silent.
"I will survey the house and question each of the family." Meren nodded at the older woman. "You, mistress, are the wife of Hormin?"
"Yes, my lord."
This was the voice of the woman who had yelled as he came upstairs.
'Take your family to the dining hall and await my summons." It was his experience that the anxiety of waiting to be examined by one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh loosened tongues.
One of his men ushered the family out and went with them. When they were gone Meren summoned the porter, who produced the chief manservant. With this guide and his remaining assistant, Meren toured the house of Hormin.
It was the house of a prosperous scribe; there were many such in the capital of the empire. A basement housed workrooms used for weaving, bread making, and other chores. Above lay a reception hall and dining room, and above these the family bedrooms and lavatory. On the roof was the kitchen.
To Meren the house appeared ordinary. White-plastered, painted with friezes of lotus petals and geometric designs in bright red, blue, yellow, and green, it contained simple furnishings. The beds, tables, stools, and chairs were of good but not costly wood, the seats of woven rushes.
On the way back from his tour, Meren stuck his head in the door of the scribe's bedchamber. The bed sat at the far end; clothing boxes and a cosmetic table were arranged around the walls. One of his men knelt at a box that held Hormin's kilts, lifted each one, and laid it on the floor.
Meren turned away and headed for the room where he'd first encountered Hormin's family, the man's personal office. Here the furniture was of cedar inlaid with ebony and ivory. Gilt paint adorned Hormin's chair and table, and there were three boxes and four storage caskets, each of expensive wood. One was inlaid with ivory and ebony marquetry. Several alabaster lamps rested on tables, and there was one casket carved from the same stone.
All of the containers bore Hormin's name. Meren touched the obsidian knob on the lid of the alabaster casket, lifted the cover, and placed it aside. Within were fourteen glass bottles and vials. Meren unstopped a vial and sniffed the perfume within. He opened a pot and touched the tip of his finger to the salve within. It was unguent; from the scent, costly unguent, made of foreign spices and resins. Yet it wasn't the same as that he'd found on Hormin's kilt.
Replacing the unguent, Meren summoned the porter and ordered him to bring the wife of Hormin to him. He arranged himself in Hormin's chair and picked up a gilt penholder from the table beside him. Removing the top, he shook out several reed pens and replaced them. He was twirling the penholder when the porter announced Selket, the wife of Hormin.
She must have been of an age with her husband, for Selket bore the signs of middle age. There were pockets of flesh beneath her eyes. The flesh of her upper arms drooped like empty barley sacks, and her skin was as cracked and dry as old wood left in the desert. Without speaking to her, Meren knew that this woman had spent her youth laboring in the sun and heat. She stood before him with her eyes fixed on sheets of papyrus scattered on the floor at her feet. Meren gave her permission to sit, and the woman took a stool.
"Please accept my condolences upon the death of your husband, mistress. I'm here to seek out his murderer."
Selket's face had been as blank as the outfacing wall of a house. At his words, it cracked open and from it erupted a flood of venom.
"It's her. She killed him for his wealth or to hide her depravities. She beds any pretty man who comes into her sight, you know. My husband must have found her out." Selket's arms swept around indicating the disturbed room. "Or perhaps she killed him for finding her in his office pilfering."
"Who?"
"Beltis, my lord. That creature who tried to wound you with the spice pot. She is my—was my husband's concubine."
This was why Meren cultivated the skill of listening. He remembered the admonition of the sage Ptahhotep, which advised a wise man not to listen to the spouting of the hot-bellied. He had found that listening to the hot-bellied often led to the discovery of the truth.
Meren set the penholder back on the table and regarded Selket. "You're telling me that you know the girl killed your husband? You will go before the royal magistrates and give testimony?"
Selket started to speak, then closed her mouth. Her lips pinched together and she shook her head. Meren lifted a brow, but made no comment. She was unwilling to risk the punishment for bearing false witness, but her reticence might not signal an untruth. After all, she could be beaten and starved for three days, or even put to death, for perjury.
"What was the course of your husband's last day?' Meren asked.
"It was like most days," Selket said. "He rose. From her bed. And he ate his morning meal here. Then she came in while I was serving him, and demanded some trinket." Each time Selket referred to the concubine, she hissed out the word "she" as though it tasted of dung. "She is always complaining that she has no jewelry, not enough shifts or wigs or cosmetics."
As he listened to Selket, Meren became aware of his own vague uneasiness. At first he couldn't understand his discomfort, but then he realized that the woman talking to him shifted from fury to complacency and back again in half a heartbeat. When she spoke of Beltis, her eyes took on the look of a rabid hyena, yet moments before she'd mentioned Hormin with a sweet lilt in her voice.
"And after he dined, your husband went to the office of records and tithes," Meren said. "He spoke to no one else before he left?"
Selket had been breathing rapidly from the force of her ire. Suddenly she smiled. "Only to me, about the house, and about our sons. They were avoiding him because he was still a bit angry with them. Imsety, my oldest, wanted the old farm since Hormin dislikes husbandry. Djaper supported Imsety, but Hormin wouldn't give it up. It gives us a prosperous living with Hormin's wages. Imsety would have still handed over the proper share to his father, but Hormin was furious at the idea." Selket waved a hand. "Sons and fathers will contend, no matter a mother's wishes."
Meren got up, motioning for Selket to remain where she was. He stooped and picked up a sheaf of papers, household accounts.
"Go on, mistress."
"My husband went to the office of records and tithes and returned at midday. He ate and went to her, but they fought again. I could hear her shouting at him even though they were in her room. She wanted Hormin to give her a set of bracelets, and he wouldn't."
Selket laughed, and Meren winced at the loud, barking sound.
"I heard him slap her, then he left and didn't return until afternoon. After he was gone, Beltis ran away."
Meren cocked his head to the side. The heavy strands of his wig swung to his shoulder, and he nodded for her to continue.
Selket sniffed. "She runs away all the time. To her parents in the tomb-makers' village on the west bank. Hormin always fetches her back. He did yesterday, unfortunately. When they returned, we all dined." Selket paused and contemplated her brown hands. "My husband spent the rest of the evening with her, and I know nothing of what they did. When I rose this morning, I didn't know he was gone from the house until Djaper couldn't find him. It was while we were looking for my husband that we found his office wrecked and looted. Later, a priest came from the Place of Anubis and told me that he was dead."
Selket pressed her lips together, and Meren was surprised to see a tear creep out of the corner of one eye.
He would never understand some women. She mourned Hormin; he would have been tempted to put the man in his house of eternity long ago.
"And your sons," Meren said. "You say they quarreled with their father."
The flow of tears dammed up at once, and Selket shook her head. "Only a little. They are dutiful sons. Imsety takes care of the farm outside the city. He only came to ask about getting the deed put in his name, and he'll have to go back soon, to oversee the harvest. Djaper follows the path of his father, and I hope he'll take Hormin's place at the office of records and tithes."
Meren shuffled the papyrus sheets in his hands. Taking his seat again, he laid the papers on the table nearby. One of his assistants would question the servants so that stories about the family's movements could be confirmed. He expected everyone to claim to have slept through the night, for unless one were privileged, work was hot and long. The day began with first light and ended with nightfall.
Tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair, Meren contemplated the furrows between Selket's brow. The woman was little more than a housekeeper to her husband. Her resentment bubbled on the surface like molten copper in a smith's crucible. The two women worried over Hormin, two jackals fighting over a carcass. Hormin had been enamored of the concubine Beltis, yet he hadn't set aside his wife. Why?
"Mistress," Meren said. "Your husband was the son of a butcher who attained the honored position of scribe. You must have been proud."
Selket's weather-roughened features relaxed, and Meren caught a glimpse of a young woman whose eyes were bright with pride and whose face wasn't parched from the heat of resentment.
"He worked so hard, and he was so careful to attend to the officials who could place him well. When he was given the position of scribe of records and tithes, we held a feast." Selket's smile turned into a frown. "But the seasons went by with no other advancement. Hormin saw others less talented but more capable of flattery raised above him. Only a few weeks ago he learned that Bakwerner would be set above him."