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Vanessa needs a familiar face. Unburdening her soul to Dr Seward is helping – she thinks – but each session leaves her feeling raw, like the corruption in her brain is being scraped away none too gently. The thought of that empty, echoing house is more than she can handle right now, and her feet direct her to the British Museum before she’s consciously made the decision to go there. Lyle’s not in his office, but it’s full of enough artefacts to keep her quietly fascinated until he bustles in, jovial as ever.
“Ah, Miss Ives!” he exclaims.
He’s followed by two men carrying a long wooden box. It’s festooned with cobwebs and an impressively thick layer of dust.
“Your timing is impeccable, my dear,” he says, clearing the table so the men can place the box upon it. “The depths of this fine institution may have yielded an unexpected treasure. Now gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind, it has been sealed for quite some time…”
The lid refuses to come off. It’s been nailed shut with far more nails than seems necessary but even so, there’s clearly something more than that holding it on. In the end they have to go for an axe, by which point Lyle is practically buzzing with excitement.
“What exactly are you hoping to find, Mr Lyle?” Vanessa asks as they wait for the men to return.
“Priceless antiquities! Or at the very least, interesting ones; I was perusing the notebooks of a predecessor of mine, and found a reference to some ‘other matter’ he had hidden away.” He leans towards her conspiratorially, as if passing along juicy gossip. “There were a number of treasures that disappeared under his watch – into his personal collection, according to rumour – and I am hopeful – ah, at last!”
The men return, armed with an axe; they make short work of the box, and the smaller box within it. The contents is neither gold or glittering, but Lyle is reasonably thrilled nonetheless.
“How marvellous!” he exclaims.
Vanessa peers over his shoulder. Once-white cloth, wrapped around a vaguely humanoid form - a mummy. It’s remarkably intact given its ignominious lodgings, and Lyle is enraptured.
“I shall leave you to get acquainted with your new friend,” she says, and sees herself out.
---
A few nights later, a flustered Lyle is on her doorstep, glancing suspiciously at every shadow like he expects them to move as soon as his back is turned.
“Mr Lyle, to what -”
“We may both be in grave danger,” he says, pushing past Vanessa.
“Again?” Vanessa says lightly. “Oh, allow me to introduce you. This is Dr. Seward, my -”
“Delighted, delighted,” Lyle says, too distracted to do more than go through the motions. Seward raises her eyebrows and gives Vanessa a distinctly unimpressed look.
“So what excitement brings you here at such an hour?” Vanessa says. She attempts to usher the jumpy little man towards a chair; he perches on the edge of it, poised to take off at any moment.
“You recall, Miss Ives, the mummy I discovered the other day? Well, in an unlikely turn of events, it is now a murder suspect. The men who pried open its box for me were both found dead this morning - I’ve seen the bodies and they’re frightful.” He gives a theatrical shudder.
“How so?” Vanessa asks.
“Dried out,” Lyle says. “Shrunken. Completely drained of all fluids, as if they too had been buried in the desert for thousands of years. Unsettling, isn’t it?”
“Certainly,” Vanessa says.
“And the mummy in question has moved, has it?” Seward says, unconvinced.
“Yes, madam. I would not be paying a call at midnight if I knew where it was,” Lyle retorts.
“Perhaps I’m missing something,” Vanessa says quickly, “but why is an inanimate object being blamed for a crime?”
“Sand,” Lyle says dramatically. “Surrounding the bodies, trailed throughout the museum, and, tonight, not an hour ago, it appeared all over my floor.”
“Truly, you keep extraordinary company,” Seward says to Vanessa.
“I left the room for no longer than a few minutes!” Lyle continues over her. “It is highly unlikely a person could have done it, and there were no footprints. Until an explanation is found, I am open to all possibilities. Now, Miss Ives, are you entirely sure that there is no sand in this house?”
He’s regarding her with such well-meaning concern that Vanessa humours him with a full inspection. Separating him from Seward before he gets any more worked up is a bonus.
There are signs of the darkness she’s clawing her way out of still apparent throughout the house, things that haven’t been fully cleaned yet, but she has nothing to hide from Lyle. He grows less and less twitchy as they rule out each successive room. That is, until they reach her own, and the light of her candle reveals the floorboards, covered with drifts of sand…