Deceit by Deborah White

there was a pool of light reflected off the ceiling. Then she sat down and methodically opened every desk drawer. Took sheaves of paper out and sifted through them. Looking for something…a clue to where Robert might be hiding Matthew. But if Robert owned other houses in London, there was no sign of where they might be.
    Searching around the room, she noticed how meticulous his record keeping was; the walls
not
lined with bottles and jars held row upon row of account books, leather bound and detailing what seemed to be the sale and purchase of herbs and spices from a warehouse off Swan Alley. Records dating from the seventeenth century, when Margrat was alive. Swan Alley. She checked out the name using her phone’s street-view function. The warehouse was long gone… replaced by luxury flats. But she’d go and look, just to be sure.
    Her torch beam flashed over some pictures hanging on the wall. Engravings of a grand house… she looked closer… La Maison Benoit,Rue de Montmorency, Paris. A date… 1664.
Paris
, where Jacalyn lived. Could Robert have taken Matthew there? No, it was too far away. Too complicated. She would have to look it up though.
    Now, what else was there of interest in the room? Loads more files and some recent accounts that listed the sale and purchase of antiques. But if he had a shop anywhere in London, Claire couldn’t find any mention of it. And there was no sign that he’d used a computer… no internet connection cable… nothing. Weird. How could you do business these days without a computer?

    She was just about to leave, the torch dangling from her hand, when the torch beam caught something glinting on the carpet. She hunched down and picked it up. An earring. A diamond stud. It looked familiar somehow, but it wasn’t hers, or her mum’s, and Micky didn’t have pierced ears. Probably lots of people had studs just like it, though the diamond did have an unusual, old-fashioned setting. She pocketed it and went out closing the door behind her. Now she would check out the downstairs rooms. And she was feelingmuch less scared. Less jumpy. It was clear Robert hadn’t been here for a long time.
    Claire opened the shutters in the library enough to let in a little light. Nefertaru’s mummy case was still standing propped upright against the far wall, where it had been for over four hundred years. Claire couldn’t stop herself from going across and lifting the lid of the case and looking inside… at Nefertaru’s bony hand, with the third finger missing. She remembered how Robert had spooked her and Micky by telling them Nefertaru had been murdered for a ring just like Claire’s. He’d told them that Nefertaru – as a red-haired girl of just fourteen – had been charged with taking the casket and the 21 spells from Ancient Egypt into the afterlife.
    Claire felt for her ring. She knew now that it had been stolen from Nefertaru. She looked at the mummy’s face. The skin was yellow and parched and stretched tight over the skull. She reached out to touch the dry tufts of red hair.
    “You poor thing,” she whispered. “Were you happy to sacrifice yourself for the honour of taking the spells into the afterlife? Or did they murder you, after you fought it every step of the way?”And as she spoke the words, a faint sparkle of silvery blue dust atomised on her breath and Nefertaru’s hair seemed suddenly lustrous and supple and springy under Claire’s fingers. And in her mind’s eye Claire saw Nefertaru’s skin grow soft and downy as an apricot.
    In horror, Claire clamped her mouth shut and slammed the lid back on the mummy case. Robert hadn’t told her the full story of Nefertaru; she’d discovered that from Margrat’s manuscript. The poor girl had never made it to the afterlife with the casket, because of the most ridiculous mistake: the name on her case had been misspelled. And now it suddenly occurred to Claire. Supposing, just supposing she had enough power still inside her to bring