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removed the clothes and had been engaged in cleaning the leather face with linseed oil. He offered Phryne a swab. She politely declined. The way that the dark skin had torn like paper over one cheekbone was unsettling her. ‘Where be your quips, your quiddities . . .’ she asked herself. ‘Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay might stop a hole to keep the wind away . . .’
    She had been unaware that she had spoken aloud until Dr Treasure completed the quote: ‘“Oh that that flesh that held the world in awe, could patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw . . . Go to my Lady, bid her paint an inch thick, to this end she must come. Make her laugh at that!” Dear me. Shakespeare always has a word for it, hasn’t he?’
    ‘Yes, it’s so accommodating of him,’ said Phryne rather tartly, and turned her back on the table.
    Here were the chaps and the cowboy hat of his disguise. They felt new, or rather, not old enough to be original. They were filthy with dust and old spiders’ webs.
    ‘I think it’s whitewash,’ said Professor Ayers behind her.
    ‘Whitewash indeed, and papier-mâché. Curiouser and curiouser. Ayers, my dear fellow, who whitewashes a mummy?’
    ‘And why?’ murmured Jane. ‘It’s a bit like gilding fine gold or painting the lily, you know.’
    ‘So you read Shakespeare as well, my young colleague. Very suitable. Can you get hold of this bit from your end? I think it will peel. So. Very nice.’
    ‘I do hope you are going to tell us, Miss Fisher,’ commented Professor Ayers. ‘When you have an explanation, of course. I know it is going to be fascinating. Someone makes a mummy—you know, Treasure, some consideration ought to be given to the method of mummification. I am almost prepared to swear that this body was treated in an Egyptian fashion. Give me a probe and I’ll be sure.’
    There was an interval in which Phryne tried not to hear sinister scraping noises, and Ayers exclaimed, ‘Exactly! No nasal sinus!’
    ‘Ah,’ said Jane.
    ‘Ah,’ said Dr Treasure.
    ‘What does that signify?’ asked Phryne after a pause in which the scientific drew their own conclusions and the unscientific wondered why they had come.
    Dr Treasure hurried to explain. ‘Well, you see, there are various ways of preserving a body—by freezing in permafrost, by smoking, by curing, by embalming and by desiccation. I don’t think he’s been smoke-cured, do you, fellows?’
    ‘No singed bits,’ said Jane, who had obviously been promoted to an honorary fellow.
    ‘No soot,’ agreed Professor Ayers.
    ‘And if he had been properly embalmed he’d have more flesh on him,’ Dr Treasure continued, ‘to put it crudely. Embalming works by injecting arsenic . . . well, I suppose that is not relevant.’ He had observed that he was not holding his audience. ‘Of course, there are also the bodies of saints and so on who have been preserved incorrupt by some means, but they are supposed to be perfect and this chap only weighs fifteen pounds. So it’s probable that he was preserved by desiccation, that is, he was dried out. We don’t know yet if it was natural, which he could have done himself by dying considerately in a nice hot desert, or whether someone did it on purpose with a couple of bags of butcher’s salt. Professor Ayers reminded me that in Egypt the brain was extracted through the nose . . .’
    ‘With a thing like a button hook,’ added Jane helpfully.
    ‘And has just ascertained that the nasal sinus is broken, which means . . .’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Phryne. ‘I understand. Pray continue, gentlemen.’
    Phryne turned back to the clothes. Jane was in her element. Phryne was not. The corpse disturbed her. She felt that this examination was somehow indecent.
    The cloth of the shirt tore even under her very careful handling. There were traces of whitewash on the wide band of a cheap collarless blue and white checked flannel shirt, circa perhaps 1910. The trousers were older—moleskins, if