Death Comes As the End

by Agatha Christie

You couldn’t be grateful to Henet—she drew attention to her own merits so persistently that it chilled any generous response you might have felt.

“At present a few scribes are all that are needed on a large estate, but the day will come, I fancy, when there will be armies of scribes all over Egypt.” “That will be a good thing,” said Renisenb. Hori said slowly: “I am not so sure.” “Why are you not sure?” “Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt—and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle—but all the same the fields and the cattle are real—they are not just marks of ink on papyrus.

“We are a strange people, we Egyptians. We love life—and so we start very early to plan for death. That is where the wealth of Egypt goes—into pyramids, into tombs, into tomb endowment.”

“Fear is only incomplete knowledge,” said Hori. “When we know, Renisenb, then there will be no more fear.”

once the heart is opened to evil—evil blossoms like poppies amongst the corn.