Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 77, No. 7. Whole No. 454, June 17, 1981

What Time Do the Pyramids Open? by Betty Jochmans

© 1981 by Betty Jochmans

Betty Jochmans’ first story, “The Glass Slipper Murder,” appeared in our issue of February 11, 1980. Her second story, as usually happens with second stories, is altogether different — different in type, tone, and theme...

For five consecutive summers they had enjoyed wonderful trips to foreign countries. But Thalia had remained an “amateur traveler.” It was Harold to whom traveling meant so much...

Driving into Oaxaca about 5:30, I had no idea that in a few hours I would see my dead wife, peering out of a black-and-white Mexican taxi as it careened down Hidalgo Street. But on my 5:30 arrival I had other thoughts about Thalia — the normal thoughts of a bereaved widower.

I couldn’t help but think what Thalia’s reaction would have been to the afternoon crowds along that narrow, one-way street. Tiny, aggressive cars were honking and maneuvering into every gap, and ancient, dilapidated buses spewed thick exhaust. Thalia would have grabbed for a tissue and gagged. Then she would have said something like, “Couldn’t they have looked ahead a little and realized that some day, with big cars and all, they’d need more room?” Poor dear Thalia, to whom history and logic meant nothing.

I was doing it again — thinking about her when I had decided to erase the ghost of Thalia from my life. That was, after all, what this trip was all about. I pulled up at a curb and rolled down the car window.

“Por favor, senor... donde es el Hotel el Presidente?” The lounging figure of a young man straightened slightly. He looked curiously at my car and then at me.

“Dos cuadras...” and he gestured ahead in the direction I was going.

“Muchas gracias.”

I steered the car out into the honking traffic and a few minutes later pulled up in front of the former Convento de Santa Catalina, now another in the government’s line of Hotels “El Presidente.”

It was like walking into another century. Someone had been clever enough to preserve the cloistered atmosphere of the convent. The rooms faced a quadrangle, in the middle of which was a courtyard. A fountain in its center splashed soothingly over a shrouded figure kneeling reverently at its side. Old stone pots full of bright flowers lined the walls. Original wall paintings of saints, faded but still discernible, caught my eye as I looked for my room number, and I promised myself a closer look after I had settled in.

Opening the door to my room I half expected to find a barren cell with a straw pallet in the corner. Instead, I found bright orange woolen drapes and bedspreads, fuchsia and yellow flowers against swirled white plaster walls, and dark, almost black rough-hewn woodwork and furniture. Things obviously had changed since the time the nuns inhabited this convent! Then immediately came the thought that had I said that to Thalia she would have agreed, very seriously.

There was a large mirror, framed in hand-worked tin, shining over the desk. Looking in it from the doorway I saw two beds, and then it struck me: out of force of habit I had asked for a twin-bedded room. It was too late now, and too embarrassing, to go back and change. Besides, they were busy with a busload of tourists which was why I had found my own room and carried my own bag. It didn’t matter, this was probably a better, larger room, and I could afford it. But I kept looking at the empty bed, seeing Thalia’s white American Tourister suitcase on it, just as I had seen it so many times in the past.

I remembered when the department store delivered that suitcase, brand-new. It was so large! I had teased Thalia about it, calling it a second cousin to a steamer trunk and questioning her ability to lift the thing when it was packed. “The question is,” I had said, “can a ninety-nine-pound woman lift a one-hundred-pound suitcase!”

For Thalia had been tiny, and yet, ironically, she had had none of the qualities usually associated with diminutive women. Neither petite nor dainty nor perky, Thalia had just been tiny. Even her lovely name had been ironic. Thalia, the muse of comedy or merry poetry, had not smiled favorably on her namesake. A sickly child, an only child, Thalia had always depended on others to take care of her needs.

We both knew that lifting suitcases was my job, and I had seldom complained about the weight of her suitcase which always felt as though it were full of cement blocks. Over the years Thalia had remained the amateur traveler, packing heavy flatirons and hair dryers that, even with current converters, managed to blow fuses in hotels all over the world.

My own travel equipment has always been minimal — but I insist on the best quality in everything. My watch, for instance, must be water, shock, and magnetic resistant, and it must work with precision accuracy. The Gerard-Philippe I am wearing is a little masterpiece of mechanism. I bought it in Geneva two summers ago, and I’m sure Thalia had no idea how much I paid for it. It is a quartz digital, in silver, with an unusual orange face.

Ah, memories! Automatically I chose the bed I would have taken had Thalia been with me. She always chose the one nearer to the bathroom. It was a little joke with us, but not always funny. “The closer I am to the bathroom,” she used to say, “the better off I’ll be.” Poor Thalia! She was often plagued by car sickness, air sickness, and any other kind of motion sickness imaginable. After a day’s travel I usually had to eat dinner alone, always staying in the hotel to be near her, and to take hot soup or tea back to the room.

Even on our trip to Florida, over ten years ago now, to attend my mother’s funeral, Aunt Catherine had had to leave the service in the chapel to take care of Thalia. I had not been able to leave my mother’s side as she lay in her white-satin-lined coffin, looking lovely and gracious, just as she had in life. I had remained at her graveside for hours, until they had insisted I leave and go back to Aunt Catherine’s for some supper. Even there I found that Thalia was still resting and I had to eat alone. Tonight I would still have to eat alone — but not in the hotel. Tonight I would walk to the public square for Oaxacan food in a typical Mexican restaurant.

I chose one on the second floor, overlooking the square that was crowded with strollers, peddlers, and lovers who cuddled on the white-iron benches. Children played noisily around the fountain, chasing each other and getting wet from the spray when the wind blew. It was only seven, early for supper by Mexican standards. Most Mexicans were still digesting their four-o’clock small meal. Mexican restaurants, however, are not averse to serving dinner to foreigners at any hour, and my foreign stomach said it was dinnertime.

I chose the best table for two I could find, right next to the balcony railing. It occurred to me that there are never restaurant tables for one — always for a minimum of two. Maybe they were saying that no one should eat alone — everyone should have someone. This opened up a train of thought I was trying to avoid, so I concentrated on the menu.

Indulging my independent spirit — to say nothing of my strong stomach — I ordered the polio mole, chicken cooked in a sauce picante with a chocolate base. It was a strange combination I had always wanted to try. I had described it once to Thalia, but she had turned her head from the breakfast table. Just the contemplation of the ingredients in the national dish of Mexico had nauseated her.

The mole was delicious, almost black, and very thick. I could just barely taste the rich flavor of cocoa in its base. Combined with the exotic spices of the salsa, the chicken tasted like nothing else I had ever eaten. I was determined now to order the moles in other parts of Mexico, for comparison to the Oaxacan, reportedly the richest and darkest of the lot.

Ah, this was Mexico! Four more weeks ahead of me, a comfortable, air-conditioned car, a money belt full of travelers’ checks — the kind of vacation most people only dream of. If only Thalia could be here — but I must control those thoughts, even though they were natural for me.

Thalia’s reactions and opinions were part of me. Hadn’t I lived with her for fifteen years and traveled with her for five wonderful summers? Our life together had been what most people would call “normal.” I taught geography at the local junior college, and Thalia puttered around the house. I wasn’t fond of teaching, but as I jokingly said to colleagues, “It beats working!” At least I always had long summer vacation periods, and for five years now, Thalia’s mother’s money to spend on traveling.

What a time I had had getting Thalia interested in travel! When we were first married and her mother was still alive, they had both thought I was crazy to want to travel to foreign countries for a vacation.

For all their money, the farthest Thalia and her family had ever been from Akron, Ohio, was the Grand Canyon. Until her mother’s death, after which I worked hard to introduce her to the joys of travel, Thalia thought the Grand Canyon was the end of the earth.

Well, all that had changed, and for five years now I had spent my semester break planning one exotic vacation after another. Making hotel and plane reservations, reserving rental cars and Jeeps, tracing on maps just where we would go and what we would see. At first Thalia had been enthusiastic. I suppose my own passion for travel was catching — at least, she tried to enter into the plans. She was, however, woefully ignorant in geography. Thalia couldn’t even keep the continents straight; she was always confusing Africa and South America, and she couldn’t find Australia to save her soul. “Oh, it’s down there,” she would say in surprise, when I finally pointed it out for her.

Those first trips were the fulfillment of life-long dreams for me. For Thalia — it was hard to tell what they were. Someone once told her that a trip abroad was like having a baby — difficult at the time, but afterward, well worth the trouble. That analogy appealed to Thalia, and she went around repeating it to everyone. The trouble was, each and every trip for Thalia was as difficult as the first one. In truth, Thalia had been far from the ideal companion for my travels. The wonders of the world were like Disneyland attractions to her, and her simple remarks had often been painfully embarrassing. There had been that awful moment in the elevator at the Cairo Hilton last year.

We had just arrived and I was aching to jump in a cab and head for el Giza and the pyramids, but Thalia was exhausted from the plane trip, so I agreed to postpone going until morning. It was then that she said, in her high penetrating voice, “What time do the pyramids open, Harold?” The elevator had been crowded, and an amused titter passed through the car.

For five years, then, all went well. Last spring, however, when one day I received in the mail a fat manila envelope and started poring through folders on Mexico and Central America, I had seen a look of determination on her face. An unusual look for Thalia. She had set her little mouth as rigidly as she could, even though I could perceive a slight trembling at the corners, and said that this summer she intended to find a nice quiet lake resort — maybe in Wisconsin or Minnesota — where it would be cool and restful and where the most exotic dish served would be roast beef and mashed potatoes.

Having made her big announcement she had hurriedly left the room. She knew how easily I had always been able to change her mind, usually by pointing up the romantic aspects of a distant place. Moonlight on the pyramids, sunrise over the Acropolis. Even though she knew she would probably be seeing the moonlight or the sunrise from a sickbed, she had always given in to me. But not this time; her mind was made up.

I even tried to convince her that this would be our last foreign trip, that next summer I would help her to find that Wisconsin lake resort where we would sit and rock on a shady veranda and eat roast beef and apple pie every night of the week. She knew better, and so did I. There was no way I could have endured such a vacation, trapped in one spot and subjected to the kind of dull, insipid people who frequent such places. They would all, I thought, be exactly like Thalia.

So after five trips Thalia had had it. I couldn’t complain that she had been stingy with her mother’s money. It was all kept in her name, of course. Her mother had trained her well in the matter of hanging on to her own money. I really didn’t care, as long as Thalia was willing to finance our vacation trips. Traveling was all I had ever wanted out of life, and I had had five wonderful summers. But was I ready for it all to end? My appetite for travel was by no means assuaged; rather, it was heightened by what I had already seen. On my salary I would never be able to travel in style, for a whole summer, as I had been doing. The thought of a budget trip every two years depressed me.

Now my life had changed again, with the loss of my Thalia. It was still difficult for me to believe that she wasn’t with me on this trip, that she was gone from this world. How strange, how final, is death... My travels could go on indefinitely now, of course. I tried to take comfort in that thought. I might even give up my job at the junior college. I had thought many times of traveling full-time. Why bother owning a home? It was just something to worry about and pay taxes on. There was enough of the world left for me to see, after Mexico and Central America. There was the entire Far East — and Russia! I might even put some of my adventures into a book, tell the world about the joys of travel.

All this I thought about while sitting on an iron bench in the charming little public square where I had gone after dinner. My thoughts drifted between the past and the present, which was a parade of colorfully dressed Mexicans, out for the evening in their very best. For some reason I glanced across the square just in time to see a black-and-white taxi take a fast corner and speed down Hidalgo Street. I jumped to my feet as though the bench were charged with electricity. In that brief glance at the taxi I had seen a white face looking through the rear window. The small face reminded me of a skull, but it was framed in fine, red hair — Thalia’s face and Thalia’s hair.

I sat down abruptly, trying to recover my composure. I hoped no one had seen my foolish action. The woman in the cab bore a striking resemblance to Thalia, that was all. There must be thousands of such women in the world. My heart was beating rapidly, though, over that shock of recognition. My knees trembled as I got up to walk back to the hotel.

Crossing the street, my mind was still full of Thalia, and I decided to visit the nearby cathedral to get her off my mind. Besides, the sky had become unusually dark, and people were scurrying along the streets, picking up their small children to hurry the process of getting home to shelter.

The huge carved wooden doors were ajar as I walked up the uneven stone steps. Flower sellers trying to make a last sale hurriedly offered me bright scarlet gladioluses to place on the shrines inside. I entered, my nostrils assailed by a mixture of scents — flowers, incense, burning wax. The hushed atmosphere was restful, and I slipped into the last pew. The altar was magnificent. Gold leafing covered all the pillars and niches where delicately sculptured statues stood, pure white and eyeless.

Glancing over to the side of the altar, my attention became riveted on one of the confessionals. A woman in the act of confessing was kneeling with her face almost completely covered by her hands. The curtains on both halves of the confessional booth were open, probably because of the heat. I could see the priest, a dark figure, slumped in his seat, with his arms folded over his ample stomach.

The woman had the same color of hair, the same general build, the same white skin as Thalia’s. She was even wearing a white dress that looked exactly like one Thalia had worn on our last trip. I sat watching her, telling myself that it was just another woman who happened to look like Thalia. Then, gradually, there was an impression of familiarity about her. I sat up straight in the pew. Those infinitely small details that make you identify a person subconsciously, from even a great distance, told me that the woman was Thalia!

I leaped to my feet for the second time that evening, almost calling out to her. Suddenly she was leaving, and very quickly. Never looking my way, she seemed to sense that I was approaching, and to fear me. She reached a side door and left through it with remarkable speed. I reached it seconds later, pushing the heavy door open roughly — but she was gone. I scanned every possible direction, but she had disappeared.

The sky was rumbling ominously now, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. How had she reached cover without my seeing her? There must be some explanation ... I ran this way and that, trying to peer into the darkening shadows of the park and street. Reason told me this could not have happened, and yet it had happened. I felt sick, and for the first time wished I’d eaten a more conventional dinner.

I was completely alone on that dark deserted street as the rain began. I walked slowly because I felt dazed. I was being soaked to the skin by the steady downpour, but it didn’t seem important. Trying to review the experiences of the evening, I attempted to put them into some kind of perspective. How could I have deluded myself that I saw a woman who was dead and... I almost stopped. I found myself facing something I had been avoiding for days — the circumstances of Thalia’s death.

Why couldn’t I remember just how it had come about? Accident? Illness? I imagined a deathbed scene with Thalia holding my hand. No, it hadn’t happened that way. For some reason I thought of the flowers in the cathedral and in my mind I saw a funeral — a real funeral, not an imagined one. There were baskets of lilies and other flowers all banked around a coffin. Something told me that this funeral had taken place a long time ago — but Thalia’s funeral must have been very recent, not more than a few weeks past...

Perhaps I was suffering from some kind of fever. I had been too over-confident about my resistance to illness when traveling. I wasn’t getting any younger, and maybe my natural immunity to infection was wearing off. Yes, certainly these problems were based in the physical. My loss of memory was simply due to the shock of having lost my wife; it would all come back to me one day soon. As for seeing Thalia tonight, I had never been subject to hallucinations before; it was undoubtedly the fever. Yes, the fever. I resolved to take my temperature as soon as I got back to the hotel.

I was feeling a little better when I got to my room, but the real blow was yet to come. Fumblingly I unlocked my door and entered. It was the first thing I saw — Thalia’s white American Tourister suitcase. I managed to slam the door shut and then lean on it, gaping at that suitcase on the bed nearer to the bathroom. It looked so big — almost the width of the bed. It took every bit of self-discipline I had to refrain from turning and running out of the room.

After a minute I sank into a nearby chair, my wet suit clinging to my body, my eyes still glued to that suitcase. Where had it come from? Was it, after all, Thalia’s? Other women traveled with similar suitcases. No, that wouldn’t do. I could see part of a Hotel Royale label from Rome, torn in one corner. Other familiar nicks and scratches became visible as I continued to stare. Oh, it was Thalia’s all right. But how had it got here? That suitcase was in my home in Akron, Ohio, shoved in the back of Thalia’s closet. Of course it was there — and yet, it was here!

Somehow I had to pull the two facts together. One of them was obviously wrong. If the suitcase was here, it couldn’t be at home. And it couldn’t have come all this way by itself. Logical analysis came to my rescue and I felt better. By some bizarre set of circumstances Thalia’s suitcase had been delivered here. By whom? Suddenly I thought of the bellboy. Before dinner he had knocked on the door to ask if he could bring in anything from the car. He apologized for not carrying my suitcase to my room earlier, but what can one do, he asked, raising his shoulders and rolling his eyes heavenward, when a bus with forty people arrives.

Yes, it was now coming back. I had smiled at the bellboy, knowing. that what he regretted was missing my tip. Had I said I needed something? Yes, now I remembered handing him my car keys and telling him to look in the trunk of the car for my camera case. I was afraid I had forgotten it because it wasn’t in the back seat with other luggage. Traveling light, I might have tossed the camera case in the trunk without thinking, so had asked the bellboy to have a look.

I took a deep breath and continued my deductions. Yes, the bellboy had opened the trunk and had found — Thalia’s suitcase! Wanting to bring in something to earn his tip, he had carried it to the room. But how had it got into the trunk compartment in the first place? My mind was a blank on that score. How could I have brought her suitcase with me, and then forgotten all about it? Was it packed? Empty?

Now that there was a rational explanation, at least for the presence of the suitcase, my mind was beginning to clear. Walking over to the bed, I grabbed it by the handle, half expecting it to be light — empty. But no, it took all my strength to drag it across the bedspread. I had to bend my knees in order to hoist it onto the floor. My God! The thing must weigh almost a hundred pounds.

The touch of that suitcase repelled me and I felt sick again as I staggered back to the chair. Holding my head in my hands, I felt anger rising in me. Why was my vacation being disrupted by that thing sitting over there? It had no place in my life any more. My mind was spinning — was I conscious or dreaming? So many pictures were racing through my mind now. I felt like a stranger, standing off to one side, looking at a movie.

There was the funeral again — the lilies, the coffin, the people sitting in the little chapel. Their blurred faces became clear for a moment, and I recognized them as relatives I hadn’t seen for many years, relatives who were long dead. Suddenly I knew it was my mother’s funeral I was seeing, not Thalia’s. More vague pictures danced across my consciousness and then started to take shape, like a camera coming into focus.

There was Thalia sitting by the fireplace, reading the evening paper. The picture was so real. Someone was coming up behind her chair with a knife — look out, Thalia! I caught my breath. I couldn’t see the face of the person with the knife clearly, but something gleamed on the wrist of that raised arm. It was a silver digital watch with an orange face. I think I cried out as the raised arm struck at the back of her neck—

At my sanity hearing they said they led me away screaming.