Hori shook his head gravely.
"Renisenb, you are young and trusting.
You think that everyone you know and love is just as they appear to you.
You do not know the human heart and the bitterness - yes, and evil - it may contain."
"But who - which one -?"
Esa broke in briskly: "Let us go back to this tale told by the herd boy.
He saw a woman dressed in a dyed linen dress wearing Nofret's necklace.
Now if it was no spirit, then he saw exactly what he said he did - which means that he saw a woman who was deliberately trying to appear like Nofret.
It might have been Kait - it might have been Henet - it might have been you, Renisenb!
From that distance it might have been anyone wearing a woman's dress and a wig.
Hush - let me go on.
The other possibility is that the boy is lying.
He told a tale that he had been taught to tell.
He was obeying someone who had the right to command him and he may have been too dull-witted even to realize the point of the story he was bribed or cajoled to tell.
We shall never know now because the boy is dead - in itself a suggestive point.
It inclines me to the belief that the boy told a story he had been taught.
Questioned closely, as he would have been today, that story could have been broken down - it is easy to discover with a little patience whether a child is lying."
"So you think we have a poisoner in our midst!" asked Hori.
"I do," said Esa.
"And you?"
"I think so too," said Hori.
Renisenb glanced from one to the other of them in dismay.
Hori went on: "But the motive seems to me far from clear."
"I agree," said Esa.
"That is why I am uneasy.
I do not know who is threatened next."
Renisenb broke in: "But - one of us?" Her tone was still incredulous.
Esa said sternly: "Yes, Renisenb - one of us.
Henet or Kait or Ipy, or Kameni, or Imhotep himself - yes, or Esa or Hori or even -" she smiled - "Renisenb."
"You are right, Esa," said Hori.
"We must include ourselves."
"But why?"
Renisenb's voice held wondering horror.
"Why?"
"If we knew that, we'd know very nearly all we wanted to know," said Esa.
"We can only go by who was attacked.
Sobek, remember, joined Yahmose unexpectedly after Yahmose had commenced to drink.
Therefore it is certain that whoever did it wanted to kill Yahmose, less certain that that person wished also to kill Sobek."
"But who could wish to kill Yahmose?" Renisenb spoke with skeptical intonation.
"Yahmose, surely, of us all would have no enemies. He is always quiet and kindly."
"Therefore, clearly, the motive was not one of personal hate," said Hori.
"As Renisenb says, Yahmose is not the kind of man who makes enemies."
"No," said Esa. "The motive is more obscure than that.
We have here either enmity against the family as a whole, or else there lies behind all these things that covetousness against which the Maxims of Ptahotep warn us.
It is, he says, a bundle of every kind of evil and a bag of everything that is blameworthy!"
"I see the direction in which your mind is tending, Esa," said Hori.
"But to arrive at any conclusion we shall have to make a forecast of the future."
Esa nodded her head vigorously and her large wig slipped over one ear.
Grotesque though this made her appearance, no one was inclined to laugh.
"Make such a forecast, Hori," she said.