He blinked at me. “Not that I recollect, and if I was taken there as a child, it was not memorable. What is the importance of Cornwall?”

“That is where we think this assassin resided, along with his four brothers and a half brother,” I replied. I saw no reason to elaborate on their dwindling number. “They have sworn vengeance on my son and me because of an ill-fated occurrence in the past. You must take precautions, Mr. Buddle.”

“If you say so, Mrs. Emerson, although my life has been so mundane that I cannot imagine why anyone would bother to assassinate me. I have neither friends nor enemies.”

I did not offer a contradiction. “What can you tell me about Herr Morgenstern’s abrupt departure to Cairo?”

“Almost nothing, regrettably. Had not one of the workmen encountered him by chance the next morning at the train station in Minya, purchasing a ticket to Cairo, we would have no idea where he had gone. During the previous day, work was proceeding steadily in Thutmose’s studio.” He took out his notebook and flipped through the pages. “Ah, here it is. One of the men uncovered a broken cast of a male head. There was conjecture that it might have been that of Akhenaton. Herr Morgenstern ordered the men to retreat while he knelt in the sand to examine it more closely, and a quarter of an hour later he told them to depart for the day. He removed the piece, set down a bucket to mark the location, and took it with him to the dig house. That was the last time I saw him until his recent return.”

“Why did you not accompany him in order to get a better look at it?” I asked.

Mr. Buddle took off his hat and ran his fingers through his bristly hair. It reminded me of closely cropped hay on a sunburnt field. He noticed my gaze and replaced his hat before he responded. “I requested as much, but he brushed me aside like a pesky mosquito. He was exhilarated, chortling to himself in German. I did hear him use the word ‘schnapps’ as he strolled toward the dig house.”

“A partial cast of a man who may or may have not been Akhenaton is hardly worthy of celebration.”

“You might ask the missionary chap. I saw him heading that way as I walked to the river. A most unfortunate product of nature’s perverse humor, I must say. When they first laid eyes on him, many of the workmen were convinced he was a fiend from the netherworld. I myself envisioned him to be the offspring of a bear and a gorilla. When he spoke, it was all I could do to refrain from laughing.”