‘No key signature,’ John muttered. ‘Let’s assume it’s the key of C and that there are no accidentals. Hard to indicate them, really . . .’ He began to whistle. ‘Strike a chord?’

‘Try to avoid puns if possible,’ I said critically. ‘No, it isn’t familiar.’

‘How about this?’ There was a slight difference. I assumed he’d thrown in a few miscellaneous sharps and/or flats.

‘This is a waste of time,’ I grumbled. ‘Schmidt probably was trying to be cute, but if that’s one of his beloved country music tunes you’ll never figure out which song because there are only three or four melodies in the whole damned repertoire.’

John dropped heavily into a chair. ‘My God. I should have known.’

‘What? What?’

He tried to give me the definitive version, but he was laughing so hard he couldn’t keep his lips puckered. ‘If the Egyptians don’t strike a medal for him I’ll do it myself. And kiss him on both cheeks. He’s taken the night train to Memphis.’

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

THE ROOM HAD been stripped of all personal possessions, whether by Schmidt or by John’s hypothetical searchers I could not determine. ‘They’ became less hypothetical as we continued our own search; they had made quite a neat job of it, but I doubted Schmidt would have removed the mattress from the bed and then replaced it and the bedclothes. The searchers must have been men; they hadn’t bothered to tuck in the sheets.

‘Is there a night train to Memphis?’ I asked, investigating the drawers of the nightstand.

‘There’s one to Cairo. Close enough.’ John returned from the bathroom. ‘Nothing there. What about the chest of drawers?’

‘Only the souvenirs he bought today.’ The Nefertiti bag had been on top of the pile. I turned it upside down and shook it. ‘He’s even taken the few odds and ends I left – cosmetics, sunglasses – ’

‘Chocolates, apples, and gingerbread?’

I didn’t want to be reminded of the night in the abandoned church when we had ‘dined’ on the odds and ends I carried in my backpack. Sooner or later I would have to deal with those widening cracks in my defensive walls, but not now, not when we were still four hundred miles from safety and Schmidt was someplace or other doing God knows what, and Mary was looking forward to renewing old acquaintances. I said shortly, ‘He might have left us some money.’

‘He wouldn’t leave anything of value. The point of the message was to suggest that neither of you intended to return to this room.’

‘Obviously,’ I said.

‘That’s it, then. There’s nothing else except a few travel brochures. I’ll go first. Take the next elevator. I’ll meet you at the car.’