The Egyptian Curse by Dan Andriacco, Kieran McMullen

snorted. “Preposterous! Lady Sarah would hesitate to kill a scorpion that was about to strike her. Someone else would have to do it for her. She certainly wouldn’t kill anyone.”
    Hale sat forward. “Now that’s interesting.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI would have expected you to say that she couldn’t have killed Mr. Barrington because she was very devoted to him.”
    â€œDevoted?” Baines appeared to consider the word. “That depends on what one means by the word. Lady Sarah was a dutiful wife to Mr. Barrington, certainly, from what I could observe. I didn’t get the sense, however, that theirs was a love match. Forgive me, Mr. Hale, I see that I’ve shocked you.” No, you have delighted me, Baines. “I’ve overstepped my bounds. You will write me down as a hopeless gossip.”
    Hale’s heart soared. Although Sarah had essentially told Hale the same thing, Baines’s comment was a third-party confirmation of her story. That meant that Sarah hadn’t just been telling him what she must certainly know he would want to hear.
    â€œI hope you didn’t tell Inspector Rollins that,” Hale said. “It wouldn’t do Sarah a bit of good.”
    The archeologist’s jaw dropped. “Inspector? You mean Scotland Yard? The police haven’t talked with me. Do you think they will?”
    â€œPerhaps not. I’m poking into different corners than they are. For example, did you owe Alfie money?”
    â€œCertainly not! What makes you ask that?”
    â€œI understand that a lot of his friends owed him money.”
    â€œYes, but I wasn’t in the category of friend.”
    â€œYou didn’t get along?”
    Baines set down his teacup with a clink. “That’s not what I meant. Mr. Barrington was my sponsor’s son-in-law. We weren’t on the same social level, and thus we didn’t quite play bridge together.” He spoke dryly, stating the obvious with a light touch that said he was resigned to his station in life.
    Hale believed him. The nature of his relationship with Alfie would be too easily checked to lie about. Besides, the card game that Alfie played with his pals was euchre.
    â€œWhy do you ask?”
    â€œA friend of mine has a bee in his bonnet that maybe somebody killed Alfie to avoid paying back a loan.”
    â€œAnd you think that I-”
    â€œI don’t think anything. I’m just asking questions and collecting information. That’s what reporters do. The only difference is, I’m not doing this for the Central Press Syndicate - at least, not at this point. As I said on the telephone, I’m just trying to find out something that might help Sarah.” And myself.
    â€œWell, at any rate, I don’t think it’s very likely that one of Mr. Barrington’s perennially hard-up friends would go so far as to kill him to avoid debt service,” Baines said. “They haven’t the energy. Besides, Mr. Barrington would more likely have lent them the money to make the payment! It would be interesting to know how much he ever actually recouped from his loans.” Baines sat back in his chair. His eyes played about the room and he was clearly lost in thought for a moment. Hale left the silence hanging and waited for the next comment. He noticed that Baines’s eyes came to rest on some Egyptian curios on the fireplace mantle. “No, Mr. Hale,” Baines finally continued in a voice barely audible, “you ought to take a hard look at Howard Carter.”
    Hale braced himself to hear Baines’s version of the argument between Alfie and Carter at the Constitutional Club on Sunday night, but that’s not what Baines had in mind.
    â€œThere was bad blood between Carter and Lord Sedgewood. I’ve thought for a long time that Carter would kill His Lordship if he had the chance.”
    â€œYou mean because of the rivalry between Sedgewood and