The Collector's Daughter

The story of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt continues to fascinate nearly a century after the event took place. Even though it has been debunked, some still believe there was a curse attached to those individuals who disturbed the Pharaoh's eternal rest. It was archaeologist Howard Carter who did the disturbing, bankrolled mainly by Lord Carnarvon. One of those two did die not long after the tomb was opened, but others who were there on that momentous day when the seals  of the tomb were broken lived on for many more years. Among those others present was Lady Evelyn Herbert (later Beauchamp), daughter of Lord Carnarvon, and this is a fictional retelling of her part in that famous event.

We first meet Evelyn, or Eve, in the early 1970s when she is frail and struggling to recover from a series of strokes. Her memory of the recent past is blank or fading, but she clearly remembers everything that happened fifty years before.

Cared for by her loving husband, Brograve, and daughter, Patricia, she is approached by a stranger, Ana Mansour, who claims to be an Egyptian archaeologist looking for objects allegedly missing from Tutankhamun's tomb and of which she believes Eve knows the whereabouts.

The novel takes rather too long to get to the mystery of the missing pieces although anyone who has seen, or read, recent revelations in print and in television documentaries about what really happened prior to the official opening of the tomb will know that certain items were sneakily appropriated by the discovery team. Some of them ended up in Highclere Castle - Lord Carnarvon's estate, the building familiar to anyone who watched the TV series Downton Abbey - while others disappeared. 

Although she'd fancied she might be an archaeologist herself, Eve's younger self isn't as disciplined or circumspect as that profession requires and she isn't good at keeping secrets. The older Eve is also trusting when she should be more cautious given her state of health and it is her patient husband, Brograve, who is the stable influence.

Curiously, on some levels this novel is more about growing old, dealing with the loss of one's faculties and living in the past than it is about some weird Egyptian curse. This may well make some readers impatient with it especially if they looking for more of a fast-paced thriller but it still has its pluses as a story of a little-known woman who witnessed history in the making.

Three and-a-half Stars

​(With many thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC)

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