The victim on the doctor's table had died of repeated blows with a blunt instrument. Just as pharaohs clubbed enemies to death in ritual execution scenes, Daniel thought. Or could it have been something else… say the successive blows of a churning Nile paddlewheel?

A "MOCK MURDER" game with a rich man's family on an antique Nile paddlewheeler turns deadly real for Daniel Cane, Egyptologist hired to 'play detective'

Daniel, the lawyer and the filmmaker Mayet joined the ship’s doctor, a Coptic Egyptian, in the boat’s white medical clinic area where the body lay under a sheet on an examination table, hidden behind a screen. “He did not drown,” the doctor explained. “He was clubbed to death with something blunt. See, here.” The doctor pulled back the sheet. Daniel had been up close and personal with ancient Egyptian mummies, so death no longer frightened him, yet it was a relief not to be met by the bloodied face of the dead man. Instead, the sponsor of archaeology had been turned onto his stomach to display his back and a view of multiple blows to the old man’s bald crown, back of the head, neck and spine. Blows had rained down on him. Multiple attackers? Daniel pictured a Julius-Caesar style execution with the whole family, like a ring of conspirators, raining blows on Calder’s head and body. Was it possible? A joint murder? A rare moment of family togetherness?