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throwing back the covering. Phryne couldn’t help noticing that it was a fine linen sheet and hoped that Mrs Treasure was not going to be told where her trousseau linen had gone. Although by now she could probably guess.
    The corpse was, as the doctor had said, very well preserved. Horribly so. Even the fingernails were still on the clawed fingers. The face was still disfigured with the half-rotten papier-mâché mask. The drum-tight leathery skin stretched over the great bones of the torso, ribs and pelvis, and even the shrunken remains of male organs were evident. Phryne did not blench, because she never did, but she did not find the sight agreeable. Jane stepped forward with every appearance of delight.
    ‘Who is this?’ asked Dr Treasure, a line appearing between his brows. What he was thinking, Phryne knew, was that naked men, however long dead, are no sight for young maidens. What he said, to his eternal credit, was, ‘Miss Jane, is it? Pleasure to meet you. Have you been to an autopsy before?’
    ‘No,’ replied Jane. ‘But I’ve read several reports. You begin with a Y incision, do you not? Throat to sternum then around the navel to the pubis?’
    Dr Treasure blinked.
    ‘Ah, well, yes, though the very first action is to view the body all over, to see what can be seen. That is what the word means. “Op”, to see; “auto”, for oneself.’ The line between Dr Treasure’s brows vanished. He smiled down on Jane’s enthusiastic face. ‘Do I detect a future colleague in the bud, as it were?’
    ‘I want to study morbid psychology,’ said Jane. ‘But first I want to be a doctor.’
    ‘And so you shall,’ agreed Dr Treasure, equipping Jane with a large apron and blousing it at the waist so that it would not drag on the floor.
    Phryne had wondered how Dr Treasure would react to Jane. She looked so small, so thin, and so schoolgirlish in her good blue churchgoing suit and her round felt hat. But the admirable Dr Treasure had recognised something akin to himself in the composed young woman which had removed all his objections.
    A door closed and someone came in through the house entrance.
    ‘Ah, Ayers, there you are,’ said the doctor. ‘May I introduce my most learned colleague Professor Ayers, the Egyptologist?’
    Phryne smiled. Ayers was from Sydney University, expert in both the pharaonic debris and the beautiful boys that littered the desert. He was a slim, elegant man about the heft and height of Lawrence of Arabia. The last Phryne had seen of him he had been headed for the sandier bits of the world with a papyrus clue to the tomb of Khufu, builder of the great pyramid. Either he was back or he had never left.
    ‘You’ve caught me making final arrangements,’ he told her. ‘Next month I’m off.’
    ‘I wish you every success,’ said Phryne warmly. ‘Allow me to introduce my daughter Jane.’
    Ayers bowed slightly in Jane’s general direction. Professor Ayers evidently did not like children. Phryne noticed that Jane divined this instantly and changed position around the dead man, so that she was standing close to Dr Treasure. Phryne was impressed with Jane’s sensitivity and also that she did not seem to return Professor Ayers’ dislike.
    ‘Well, here’s our chap,’ breezed Dr Treasure, aware of an atmosphere. ‘Weighs in at fifteen pounds and is fifty-nine inches in extremis—and his extremis is more extreme than usual. Beautiful condition,’ he continued, knocking on the corpse’s chest with his knuckles. There was a hollow clonk.
    ‘Would that be his height in life?’ asked Jane.
    ‘No, they shrink a bit,’ replied Ayers. ‘The corpse is desiccated, which reduces the overall weight and the space between the joints. Give him another four or five inches for a living height. My word,’ he said, drawing closer to Jane’s unwelcome proximity. ‘He is magnificent, Treasure. What a find, Miss Fisher!’
    Phryne found the mummy more grotesque than magnificent. Dr Treasure had