The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  The Rolls was caught in Midtown traffic now, and O’Shaughnessy began to wonder just how much longer this ride was going to take.

  The Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum was sheeted in Beaux Arts marble, decorated with vast sprays of flowers, and almost unbearably crowded. O’Shaughnessy hung back while the strange FBI agent talked to one of the harried volunteers at the information desk. She picked up a phone, called someone, then put it down again, looking highly irritated. O’Shaughnessy began to wonder what this Pendergast was up to. Throughout the extended trip uptown he’d said nothing about his intended plan of action.

  He glanced around. It was an Upper East Side crowd, for sure: ladies dressed to the nines clicking here and there in high heels, uniformed schoolchildren lined up and well behaved, a few tweedy-looking academics wandering about with thoughtful faces. Several people were staring at him disapprovingly, as if it was in bad taste to be in the Met wearing a police officer’s uniform. He felt a rush of misanthropy. Hypocrites.

  Pendergast motioned him over, and they passed into the museum, running a gauntlet of ticket takers in the process, past a case full of Roman gold, plunging at last into a confusing sequence of rooms crowded with statues, vases, paintings, mummies, and all manner of art. Pendergast talked the whole time, but the crowds were so dense and the noise so deafening, O’Shaughnessy caught only a few words.

  They passed through a quieter suite of rooms full of Asian art, finally arriving in front of a door of shiny gray metal. Pendergast opened it without knocking, revealing a small reception area. A strikingly good-looking receptionist sat behind a desk of blond wood. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of his uniform. O’Shaughnessy gave her a menacing look.

  “May I help you?” She addressed Pendergast, but her eyes continued to flicker anxiously toward O’Shaughnessy.

  “Sergeant O’Shaughnessy and Special Agent Pendergast are here to see Dr. Wellesley.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Alas, no.”

  The receptionist hesitated. “I’m sorry. Special Agent—?”

  “Pendergast. Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  At this she flushed deeply. “Just a moment.” She picked up her phone. O’Shaughnessy could hear it ringing in an office just off the reception area.

  “Dr. Wellesley,” the secretary said, “there is a Special Agent Pendergast from the FBI and a police officer here to see you.”

  The voice that echoed out of the office was easily heard by all. It was a crisp, no-nonsense voice, feminine, yet cold as ice, and so unrelievedly English it made O’Shaughnessy bristle.

  “Unless they are here to arrest me, Heather, the gentlemen can make an appointment like everyone else. I am engaged.”

  The crash of her telephone hitting the cradle was equally unmistakable.

  The receptionist looked up at them with high nervousness. “Dr. Wellesley—”

  But Pendergast was already moving toward the office from which the voice had issued. This is more like it, O’Shaughnessy thought, as Pendergast swung open the door, placing himself squarely in the doorway. At least the guy, for all his pretensions, was no pushover. He knew how to cut through the bullshit.

  The unseen voice, laden with sarcasm, cut the air. “Ah, the proverbial copper with his foot in the door. Pity it wasn’t locked so you could batter it down with your truncheon.”

  It was as if Pendergast had not heard. His fluid, honeyed voice filled the office with warmth and charm. “Dr. Wellesley, I have come to you because you are the world’s foremost authority on the history of dress. And I hope you’ll permit me to say your identification of the Greek peplos of Vergina was most thrilling to me personally. I have long had an interest in the subject.”

  There was a brief silence. “Flattery, Mr. Pendergast, will at least get you inside.”

  O’Shaughnessy followed the agent into a small but very well-appointed office. The furniture looked like it had come directly from the museum’s collection, and the walls were hung with a series of eighteenth-century watercolors of opera costumes. O’Shaughnessy thought they might be the characters of Figaro, Rosina, and Count Almaviva from The Barber of Seville. Opera was his sole, and his secret, indulgence.

  He seated himself, crossing and then uncrossing his legs, shifting in the impossibly uncomfortable chair. No matter what he did, he still seemed to take up too much space. The blue of his uniform seemed unbearably gauche amid the elegant furnishings. He glanced back up at the watercolors, allowing the bars of an aria to go through his head.

  Wellesley was an attractive woman in her mid-forties, beautifully dressed. “I see you admire my pictures,” she said to O’Shaughnessy, eyeing him shrewdly.

  “Sure,” said O’Shaughnessy. “If you like dancing in a wig, pumps, and straitjacket.”

  Wellesley turned to Pendergast. “Your associate has a rather queer sense of humor.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Now what can I do for you gentlemen?”

  Pendergast removed a bundle from under his suit, loosely wrapped in paper. “I would like you to examine this dress,” he said, unrolling the bundle across the curator’s desk. She backed up slightly in horror as the true dimensions of its filth were exposed to view.

  O’Shaughnessy thought he detected a peculiar smell. Very peculiar. It occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, Pendergast wasn’t on the take—that this was for real.

  “Good lord. Please,” she said, stepping farther back and putting a hand before her face. “I do not do police work. Take this revolting thing away.”

  “This revolting thing, Dr. Wellesley, belonged to a nineteen-year-old girl who was murdered over a hundred years ago, dissected, dismembered, and walled up in a tunnel in lower Manhattan. Sewn up into the dress was a note, which the girl wrote in her own blood. It gave her name, age, and address. Nothing else—ink of that sort does not encourage prolixity. It was the note of a girl who knew she was about to die. She knew that no one would help her, no one would save her. Her only wish was that her body be identified—that she not be forgotten. I could not help her then, but I am trying to now. That is why I am here.” The dress seemed to quiver slightly, and O’Shaughnessy realized with a start that the FBI agent’s hand was trembling with emotion. At least, that’s how it looked to him. That a law officer would actually care about something like this was a revelation.

  The silence that followed Pendergast’s statement was profound.

  Without a word, Wellesley bent down over the dress, fingered it, turned up its lining, gently stretched the material in several directions. Reaching into a drawer of her desk, she pulled out a large magnifying glass and began examining the stitching and fabric. Several minutes passed. Then she sighed and sat down in her chair.

  “This is a typical workhouse garment,” she said. “Standard issue in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Cheap woolen fabric for the exterior, scratchy and coarse but actually quite warm, lined with undyed cotton. You can see from the pattern cuts and stitching that it was probably made by the girl herself, using fabric issued to her by the workhouse. The fabrics came in several basic colors—green, blue, gray, and black.”

  “Any idea which workhouse?”

  “Impossible to say. Nineteenth-century Manhattan had quite a few of them. They were called ‘houses of industry.’ They took in abandoned children, orphans, and runaways. Harsh, cruel places, run by the so-called religious.”

  “Can you give me a more precise date on the dress?”

  “Not with any accuracy. It seems to be a rather pathetic imitation of a style popular in the early eighteen eighties, called a Maude Makin. Workhouse girls usually tried to copy dresses they liked out of popular magazines and penny press advertisements.” Dr. Wellesley sighed, shrugged. “That’s it, I’m afraid.”

  “If anything else comes to mind, I can be contacted through Sergeant O’Shaughnessy here.”

  Dr. Wellesley glanced up at O’Shaughnessy’s name tag, then nodded.r />
  “Thank you for your time.” The FBI agent began rolling up the dress. “That was a lovely exhibition you curated last year, by the way.”

  Dr. Wellesley nodded again.

  “Unlike most museum exhibitions, it had wit. Take the houppelande section. I found it delightfully amusing.”

  Concealed in its wrapper, the dress lost its power to horrify. The feeling of gloom that had settled over the office began to lift. O’Shaughnessy found himself echoing Custer: what was an FBI agent doing messing around with a case 120 years old?

  “Thank you for noticing what none of the critics did,” the woman replied. “Yes, I meant it to be fun. When you finally understand it, human dress—beyond what is necessary for warmth and modesty—can be marvelously absurd.”

  Pendergast stood. “Dr. Wellesley, your expertise has been most valuable.”

  Dr. Wellesley rose as well. “Please call me Sophia.” O’Shaughnessy noticed her looking at Pendergast with new interest.

  Pendergast bowed and smiled. Then he turned to go. The curator came around her desk to see him through the waiting room. At the outer door, Sophia Wellesley paused, blushed, and said, “I hope to see you again, Mr. Pendergast. Perhaps soon. Perhaps for dinner.”

  There was a brief silence. Pendergast said nothing.

  “Well,” said the curator crisply, “you know where to reach me.”

  They walked back through the thronged, treasure-laden halls, past the Khmer devatars, past the reliquaries encrusted with gems, past the Greek statues and the Red Attic vases, down the great crowded steps to Fifth Avenue. O’Shaughnessy whistled an astringent little chorus of Sade’s “Smooth Operator.” If Pendergast heard, he gave no sign.

  Moments later, O’Shaughnessy was sliding into the white leather cocoon of the Rolls. When the door shut with a solid, reassuring thunk, blessed silence returned. He still couldn’t figure out what to make of Pendergast—maybe the guy, for all his expensive tastes, was on the up-and-up. He sure as hell knew this: he was going to keep his eyes and ears open.

  “Across the park to the New York Museum of Natural History, please,” Pendergast told the driver. As the car accelerated into traffic, the agent turned to O’Shaughnessy. “How is it that an Irish policeman came to love Italian opera?”

  O’Shaughnessy gave a start. When had he mentioned opera?

  “You disguise your thoughts poorly, Sergeant. While you were looking at the drawings from The Barber of Seville, I saw your right index finger unconsciously tapping the rhythm to Rosina’s aria, ‘Una voce poco fa.’?”

  O’Shaughnessy stared at Pendergast. “I bet you think you’re a real Sherlock Holmes.”

  “One does not often find a policeman with a love of opera.”

  “What about you? You like opera?” O’Shaughnessy threw the question back at him.

  “I loathe it. Opera was the television of the nineteenth century: loud, vulgar, and garish, with plots that could only be called infantile.”

  For the first time, O’Shaughnessy smiled. He shook his head. “Pendergast, all I can say is, your powers of observation aren’t nearly as formidable as you seem to think. Jesus, what a philistine.”

  His smile widened as he saw a look of irritation cloud the FBI agent’s face for no more than an instant. He had finally gotten to him.

  FOUR

  NORA USHERED PENDERGAST and the dour-looking little policeman through the doorway of Central Archives, a little relieved she’d had no trouble finding her way this time.

  Pendergast paused inside the door, inhaling deeply. “Ahhh. The smell of history. Drink it in, Sergeant.” He put out his hands, fingers extended, as if to warm them on the documents within.

  Reinhart Puck advanced toward Pendergast, head wagging. He wiped his shining pate with a handkerchief, then stuffed the cloth into a pocket with awkward fingers. The sight of the FBI agent seemed to both please and alarm him. “Dr. Pendergast,” he said. “A pleasure. I don’t think we’ve met since, let’s see, the Troubles of ’95. Did you take that trip to Tasmania?”

  “I did indeed, thank you for remembering. And my knowledge of Australian flora has increased proportionately.”

  “And how’s the, er, your department?”

  “Splendid,” said Pendergast. “Allow me to introduce Sergeant O’Shaughnessy.”

  The policeman stepped out from behind Pendergast, and Puck’s face fell. “Oh, dear. There is a rule, you see. Non-Museum employees—”

  “I can vouch for him,” said Pendergast, a note of finality in his voice. “He is an outstanding member of the police force of our city.”

  “I see, I see,” Puck said unhappily, as he worked the locks. “Well, you’ll all have to sign in, you know.” He turned away from the door. “And this is Mr. Gibbs.”

  Oscar Gibbs nodded curtly. He was small, compact, and African-American, with hairless arms and a closely shaven head. For his size, his build was so solid he seemed fashioned out of butcher-block. He was covered with dust and looked distinctly unhappy to be there.

  “Mr. Gibbs has kindly set up everything for you in the Research Room,” said Puck. “We’ll go through the formalities, and then if you’ll be so good as to follow me?”

  They signed the book, then advanced into the gloom, Puck lighting the way, as before, by the banks of ivory switches. After what seemed an interminable journey, they arrived at a door set into the plastered rear wall of the Archives, with a small window of glass and metal meshing. With a heavy jangle of keys, Puck laboriously unlocked it, then held it open for Nora. She stepped inside. The lights came up and she almost gasped in astonishment.

  Polished oak paneling rose from a marble floor to an ornate, plastered and gilded ceiling of rococo splendor. Massive oaken tables with claw feet dominated the center of the room, surrounded by oak chairs with red leather seats and backs. On each table sat small leather-sided boxes, containing special pencils and paper for note-taking. Heavy chandeliers of worked copper and crystal hung suspended above each table. Two of the tables were covered by a variety of objects, and a third had been laid out with boxes, books, and papers. A massive, bricked-up fireplace, surrounded by pink marble, stood at the far end of the room. Everything was hoary with the accumulated patina of years.

  “This is incredible,” said Nora.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Puck. “One of the finest rooms in the Museum. Historical research used to be very important.” He sighed. “Times have changed. O tempo, O mores, and all that. Please remove all writing instruments from your pockets, and put on those linen gloves before handling any of the objects. I will need to take your briefcase, Doctor.” He glanced disapprovingly at the gun and handcuffs dangling from O’Shaughnessy’s service belt, but said nothing.

  They laid their pens and pencils into a proffered tray. Nora and the others slid on pairs of spotless gloves.

  “I will withdraw. When you are ready to leave, call me on that telephone. Extension 4240. If you want photocopies of anything, fill out one of these sheets.”

  The door eased shut. There was the sound of a key turning in a lock.

  “Did he just lock us in?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

  Pendergast nodded. “Standard procedure.”

  O’Shaughnessy stepped back into the gloom. He was an odd man, Nora thought; quiet, inscrutable, handsome in a Black Irish kind of way. Pendergast seemed to like him. O’Shaughnessy, on the other hand, looked as if he didn’t like anybody.

  The agent clasped his hands behind his back and made a slow circuit of the first table, peering at each object in turn. He did the same with the second table, then moved to the third table, laden with its assorted papers.

  “Let’s see this inventory you mentioned,” he said to Nora.

  Nora pointed out the promissory note with the inventory she had found the day before. Pendergast looked it over, and then, paper in hand, made another circuit. He nodded at a stuffed okapi. “That came from Shottum’s,” he said. “And that.” He nodded to the elephant’s-foot b
ox. “Those three penis sheaths and the right whale baculum. The Jivaro shrunken head. All from Shottum’s, payment to McFadden for his work.” He bent down to examine the shrunken head. “A fraud. Monkey, not human.” He glanced up at her. “Dr. Kelly, would you mind looking through the papers while I examine these objects?”

  Nora sat down at the third table. There was the small box of Shottum’s correspondence, along with another, much larger, box and two binders—McFadden’s papers, apparently. Nora opened the Shottum box first. As Puck had noted, the contents were in a remarkable state of disarray. What few letters were here were all in the same vein: questions about classifications and identifications, tiffs with other scientists over various arcane subjects. It illuminated a curious corner of nineteenth-century natural history, but shed no light on a heinous nineteenth-century crime. As she read through the brief correspondence, a picture of J. C. Shottum began to form in her mind. It was not the image of a serial killer. He seemed a harmless enough man, fussy, narrow, a little querulous perhaps, bristling with academic rivalries. The man’s interests seemed exclusively related to natural history. Of course, you can never tell, she thought, turning over the musty pages.

  Finding nothing of particular interest, Nora turned to the much larger—and neater—boxes of Tinbury McFadden’s correspondence. They were mostly notes from the long-dead curator on various odd subjects, written in a fanatically small hand: lists of classifications of plants and animals, drawings of various flowers, some quite good. At the bottom was a thick packet of correspondence to and from various men of science and collectors, held together by an ancient string that flew apart when she touched it. She riffled through them, arriving finally at a packet of letters from Shottum to McFadden. The first began, “My Esteemed Colleague.”

  I herewith transmit to you a Curious Relic said to be from the Isle of Kut, off the coast of Indochine, depicting a simian in coito with a Hindoo goddess, carved from walrus ivory. Would you be so kind as to identify the species of simian?