Page 75 of The Stolen Queen

The landlady answered the door, scowling as she’d done the day before, but her reticence fell away when Charlotte offered her fifty Egyptian pounds. Charlotte’s Arabic was rusty and the photo she’d brought of Henry from their wedding day was faded and wrinkled, but the old woman studied it carefully. The photo had been shipped separately in a trunk the day after she and Henry left Luxor, along with some hastily packed clothes and possessions, and was waiting for Charlotte when she arrived in New York. It had taken her six months before she could even summon up the courage to open the lid and look inside.

“Have you ever seen this man before, with Mr. Pitcairn, perhaps?” she said to the landlady. “He would be around the same age as Mr. Pitcairn.”

The landlady pointed to Henry’s face and nodded. “Big ears,” she said in English. “It was a few years ago, I can’t remember how many, a man with big ears like that and hair like that came looking for Mr. Pitcairn. I can’t say if it was the same man.”

A mixture of joy, fear, and confusion threaded through Charlotte. Henry had been here. But before she could ask another question, Annie began coughing. Charlotte turned to her. “Are you okay?”

Annie shook her head and leaned over, hands on her knees. The cough grew worse. “I need water,” she finally said, her voice cracking. “The desert air, it’s too much.”

The landlady pointed behind her to a small room off to the left, where Annie disappeared from view. Charlotte found herself irritated at Annie for distracting the old lady at such a crucial moment.

She held up the photo again. “What was his name? Was it Henry?”

The woman shrugged. “I only saw him that one time. Mr. Pitcairn, he pays his rent on time, but I don’t like him. I told my dear husband when he was still alive that I didn’t trust Mr. Pitcairn one bit.”

“What happened when you saw Mr. Pitcairn and this man?”

“They were shouting, making a terrible noise. The man was English, like Mr. Pitcairn.” She wrinkled her nose, her disdain for the country obvious.

“What were they fighting about?”

“I don’t know. My husband told them to stop yelling in the hallway, that they were disturbing the other residents, but Mr. Pitcairn refused to let the man inside his apartment.”

Annie returned, her face red but the coughing fit over. “Sorry about that.”

Charlotte ignored her. “What were they saying?”

“The man with the ears was warning Mr. Pitcairn.” The landlady looked up at Charlotte with rheumy eyes and a determined look on her face. “He was telling him to stay away from his daughter.”

After the landlady closed the heavy wooden door, the world spun around in circles, as if Charlotte were caught in a tornado. She looked up and saw a swirl of skinny palm trees and a grainy sky and tried to catch her breath.

Annie, whose coughing fit had immediately abated, guided her to a bench set back from the road. “Put your head down, try to breathe.”

The landlady had spoken of a daughter. Where was Layla now? Why had Henry not tried to find Charlotte after the shipwreck? He had to have assumed she was dead, as Leon had. Perhaps he was ashamed of what he’d done, at the peril he’d put them all in. But she could have forgiven him; they could have been a family again.

Charlotte had always been reluctant to imagine Layla as a fully grown woman. In her head, she’d kept her as a baby or at best a young girl. Now she had to reconfigure everything. Including the fact that she was alive.

The questions kept coming. What was her daughter doing with Leon a few years ago that Henry was so worried about? Leon Pitcairn was sickly looking, his teeth stained and his breath foul—Charlotte couldn’t imagine her beautiful daughter being romantically involved with a man like that, if that was what Henry’s warning was about. The landlady could have been wrong, of course. Her eyesight wasn’t very good, and there had to be more than one Englishman with big ears out in the great wide world.

Right before Charlotte and Annie had stepped off the stoop of Leon’s apartment building, the landlady had added that the Englishman finished with a threat for Leon to stay far away from Cairo.

Perhaps Layla was only visiting Luxor when she saw Leon, and she lived in Cairo.

Charlotte had so many questions. She closed her eyes, trying in vain to shut out the madness and frustration, as the world spun once again.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Annie

After her conversation with the landlady, Charlotte had become alarmingly fragile. She took a few deep breaths as she rose to her feet, and Annie stayed close by her side as they walked back to the hotel, in case she had another spell.

Charlotte approached the front desk to see if there were any messages. The clerk was the same one they’d met on their arrival—Fatima—and she handed over an envelope from the director of the Egyptian Museum. Charlotte opened it right away. “He says congratulations for the discovery of the canopic box, and requests my assistance in overseeing the transfer of the canopic box as well as the mummies to Cairo,” she said to Annie.

“When?” asked Annie.

“Tomorrow. Off to Cairo we go.” Charlotte put the director’s letter back in the envelope and turned to Annie. “I’ll head up to my room and confirm the arrangements. Can you go to the camera store and see if the Kodachrome slides are ready to be picked up? I could use some aspirin as well, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.” Annie was pleased to be of service. She asked Fatimawhere the camera store was, and the clerk led Annie outside onto the hotel steps to best explain.

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