Well indeed, you might ask. And the answer to this mystery is:—

There was among them one mummy, or rather, a Mummy, the grandest of them all, in a splendid golden sarcophagus, stored in the little room right next to Fanny’s tiny bedroom. It had been the very first of the many acquisitions, and has been in fact the only item that Lady Bertram did not order and pursue herself. A distinguished Egyptologist, with a slew of references, including a glowing letter from her absolute authority of authorities, Georg Ebers, had asked if he could take up her one-time casual and kind offer of storage in order to temporarily house a splendid find destined for the collection of the British Museum, that was to be sorted and catalogued in due time, but for the moment it needed a discreet and clandestine place to stay, and what lovelier than the loveliest Mansfield Park? He was in the neighborhood, one could see, and it was terribly obliging of Her Ladyship to offer generous hospitality to the venerable bit of the Ancient Past in her very own safe and dry and secure attic.

Charmed and flattered into immediate acquiescence, Lady Bertram agreed. The shipment of a great crate followed. It was dutifully taken upstairs. The Egyptologist was wined and dined, and then made his excuses and soon disappeared, with an abundance of promises of contacting her as soon as progress was made with the museum bureaucracy, at which point the precious find would be relocated to its final destination. But—that was the last they heard of the Egyptologist.[3]

And thus the Mummy came to inhabit Mansfield Park.

And with it came the Curse.

Lady Bertram discovered, in a stash of items belonging with the sarcophagus, a particular lovely amulet. She innocently placed it around her neck and became mesmerized, enthralled by the emanations coming from the royal undead creature bound in precious rotting linen underneath the ancient layers of gold—sleeping and dreaming and calling out to her in its own dreams, calling for Egypt. All things Egypt. From grand pyramids to the smallest shrunken cat mummy. The pharaoh’s otherworldly longing manifested full force in the sensitive lady and translated into her conscious daily obsession. Lady Bertram started to make more and more purchases of imported Egyptian items; at first a quite charming and innocent hobby, then more and more peculiar, until even Sir Thomas could see something was amiss—with his wife, he thought.

Little did Sir Thomas know. . . .