The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  “Miss McFadden, I wanted to ask you about your father, Tinbury McFadden.”

  “My dear, you’re going to have to tell me your name again. I am an old lady with a fading memory.”

  “Nora Kelly.”

  The old woman’s claw reached out and pulled the chain of a lamp that stood beside her chair. It had a heavy tasseled lamp shade, and it threw out a dim yellow light. Now Nora could see Clara McFadden more clearly. Her face was ancient and sunken, pale veins showing through parchment-paper skin. The lady examined her for a few minutes with a pair of glittering eyes.

  “Thank you, Miss Kelly,” she said, turning off the lamp again. “What exactly do you want to know about my father?”

  Nora took a folder out of the portfolio, squinting through the dimness at the questions she’d scribbled on the train north from Grand Central. She was glad she’d come prepared; the interview was becoming unexpectedly intimidating.

  The old woman picked up something from a small table beside the wing chair: an old-fashioned pint bottle with a green label. She poured a bit of the liquid into a teaspoon, swallowed it, replaced the spoon. Another black cat, or perhaps the same one, leapt into the old lady’s lap. She began stroking it and it rumbled with pleasure.

  “Your father was a curator at the New York Museum of Natural History. He was a colleague of John Canaday Shottum, who owned a cabinet of curiosities in lower Manhattan.”

  There was no response from the old lady.

  “And he was acquainted with a scientist by the name of Enoch Leng.”

  Miss McFadden seemed to grow very still. Then she spoke with acidic sharpness, her voice cutting through the heavy air. It was as if the name had woken her up. “Leng? What about Leng?”

  “I was curious if you knew anything about Dr. Leng, or had any letters or papers relating to him.”

  “I certainly do know about Leng,” came the shrill voice. “He’s the man who murdered my father.”

  Nora sat in stunned silence. There was nothing about a murder in anything she had read about McFadden. “I’m sorry?” she said.

  “Oh, I know they all said he merely disappeared. But they were wrong.”

  “How do you know this?”

  There was another rustle. “How? Let me tell you how.”

  Miss McFadden turned on the light again, directing Nora’s attention to a large, old framed photograph. It was a faded portrait of a young man in a severe, high-buttoned suit. He was smiling: two silver front teeth gleamed out of the frame. A roguish eyepatch covered one eye. The man had Clara McFadden’s narrow forehead and prominent cheekbones.

  She began to speak, her voice unnaturally loud and angry. “That was taken shortly after my father lost his right eye in Borneo. He was a collector, you must understand. As a young man, he spent several years in British East Africa. He built up quite a collection of African mammals and artifacts collected from the natives. When he returned to New York he became a curator at the new museum just started by one of his fellow Lyceum members. The New York Museum of Natural History. It was very different back then, Miss Kelly. Most of the early Museum curators were gentlemen of leisure, like my father. They did not have systematic scientific training. They were amateurs in the best sense of the word. My father was always interested in oddities, queer things. You are familiar, Miss Kelly, with the cabinets of curiosities?”

  “Yes,” Nora said as she scribbled notes as quickly as she could. She wished she had brought a voice recorder.

  “There were quite a few in New York at the time. But the New York Museum quickly started putting them out of business. It became my father’s role at the Museum to acquire these bankrupt cabinet collections. He corresponded with many of the cabinet owners: the Delacourte family, Phineas Barnum, the Cadwalader brothers. One of these cabinet owners was John Canaday Shottum.” The old lady poured herself another spoonful from the bottle. In the light, Nora could make out the label: Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Tonic.

  Nora nodded. “J. C. Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities.”

  “Precisely. There was only a small circle of scientific men in those days, and they all belonged to the Lyceum. Men of varying abilities, I might add. Shottum belonged to the Lyceum, but he was as much a showman as he was a scientist. He had opened a cabinet down on Catherine Street, where he charged a minimal admission. It was mostly patronized by the lower classes. Unlike most of his colleagues, Shottum had these notions of bettering the plight of the poor through education. That’s why he situated his cabinet in such a disagreeable neighborhood. He was especially interested in using natural history to inform and educate the young. In any case, he needed help with identifying and classifying his collections, which he had acquired from the family of a young man who had been killed by natives in Madagascar.”

  “Alexander Marysas.”

  There was a rustle from the old lady. Once again, she extinguished the light, shrouding the room in darkness, throwing the portrait of her father into shadow. “You seem to know a great deal about this, Miss Kelly,” Clara McFadden said suspiciously. “I hope I am not annoying you with my story.”

  “Not at all. Please go on.”

  “Shottum’s was a rather wretched cabinet. My father helped him from time to time, but it was burdensome to him. It was not a good collection. Very haphazard, not systematic. To lure in the poor, especially the urchins, his exhibits tended toward the sensational. There was even something he called a ’gallery of unnatural monstrosities.’ It was, I believe, inspired by Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. There were rumors that some people who went into that gallery never came out again. All rubbish, of course, most likely cooked up by Shottum to increase foot traffic.”

  Clara McFadden removed a lace handkerchief and coughed into it. “It was around that time a man named Leng joined the Lyceum. Enoch Leng.” Her voice conveyed a depth of hatred.

  Nora felt her heart quicken. “Did you know Leng?”

  “My father talked about him a great deal. Especially toward the end. My father, you see, had a bad eye and bad teeth. Leng helped him get some silver bridgework and a special pair of eyeglasses with an unusually thick lens. He seemed to be something of a polymath.”

  She tucked the handkerchief back into some fold of her clothing, took another spoonful of the elixir. “It was said he came from France, a small mountain town near the Belgian border. There was talk that he was a baron, born into a noble family. These scientists are all gossips, you know. New York City at the time was a very provincial place and Leng made quite an impression. No one doubted he was a very learned man. He called himself a doctor, by the way, and it was said he had been a surgeon and a chemist.” She made a vinegary sound.

  Motes drifted in the heavy air. The cat’s purr rumbled on endlessly, like a turbine.

  The strident voice cut the air again. “Shottum was looking for a curator for his cabinet. Leng took an interest in it, although it was certainly the poorest curatorial appointment among the cabinets of curiosities. Nevertheless, Leng took rooms on the top floor of the cabinet.”

  So far, all this matched the details provided in Shottum’s letter. “And when was this?” Nora asked.

  “In the spring of 1870.”

  “Did Leng live at the cabinet?”

  “A man of Leng’s breeding, living in the Five Points? Certainly not. But he kept to himself. He was a strange, elusive man, very formal in his diction and mannerisms. No one, not even my father, knew where he lived. Leng did not encourage intimacy.

  “He spent most of his time at Shottum’s or the Lyceum. As I recall, his work at Shottum’s Cabinet was originally supposed to last only a year or two. At first, Shottum was very pleased with Leng’s work. Leng catalogued the collection, wrote up label copy for everything. But then something happened—my father never knew what—and Shottum seemed to grow suspicious of Leng. Shottum wanted to ask him to leave, but was reluctant. Leng paid handsomely for the use of the third floor, and Shottum needed the m
oney.”

  “What kind of experiments did Leng perform?”

  “I expect the usual. All scientific men had laboratories. My father had one.”

  “You said your father never knew what made Shottum suspicious?” That would mean McFadden never read the letter hidden in the elephant’s-foot box.

  “That’s correct. My father didn’t press him on the subject. Shottum had always been a rather eccentric man, prone to opium and fits of melancholy, and my father suspected he might be mentally unstable. Then, one summer evening in 1881, Shottum’s Cabinet burned. It was such a fierce fire that they found only a few crumbling remains of Shottum’s bones. It was said the fire started on the first floor. A faulty gas lamp.” Another bitter noise.

  “But you think otherwise?”

  “My father became convinced that Leng started that fire.”

  “Do you know why?”

  The lady slowly shook her head. “He did not confide in me.”

  After a moment, she continued. “It was around the time of the fire that Leng stopped attending the meetings at the Lyceum. He stopped coming to the New York Museum. My father lost touch with him. He seemed to disappear from scientific circles. Thirty years must have passed before he resurfaced.”

  “When was this?”

  “During the Great War. I was a little girl at the time. My father married late, you see. He received a letter from Leng. A very friendly letter, wishing to renew the acquaintance. My father refused. Leng persisted. He began coming to the Museum, attending my father’s lectures, spending time in the Museum’s archives. My father became disturbed, and after a while even frightened. He was so concerned I believe he even consulted certain fellow Lyceum members he was close to on the subject. James Henry Perceval and Dumont Burleigh are two names that come to mind. They came to the house more than once, shortly before the end.”

  “I see.” Nora scribbled some more notes. “But you never met Leng?”

  There was a pause. “I met him once. He came to our house late one night, with a specimen for my father, and was turned away at the door. He left the specimen behind. A graven artifact from the South Seas, of little value.”

  “And?”

  “My father disappeared the next day.”

  “And you’re convinced it was Leng’s doing?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  The old lady patted her hair. Her sharp eyes fixed on hers. “My dear child, how could I possibly know that?”

  “But why would Leng murder him?”

  “I believe my father found out something about Leng.”

  “Didn’t the Museum investigate?”

  “No one had seen Leng in the Museum. No one had seen him visit my father. There was no proof of anything. Neither Perceval nor Burleigh spoke up. The Museum found it easier to smear my father’s name—to imply that he ran away for some unknown reason—than to investigate. I was just a girl at the time. When I grew older and demanded a reopening of the case, I had nothing to offer. I was rebuffed.”

  “And your mother? Was she suspicious?”

  “She was dead by that time.”

  “What happened to Leng?”

  “After his visit to my father, nobody ever saw or heard from him again.”

  Nora took a breath. “What did Leng look like?”

  Clara McFadden did not answer immediately. “I’ll never forget him,” she said at last. “Have you read Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’? There’s a description in the story that, when I came upon it, struck me terribly. It seemed to describe Leng precisely. It’s stayed with me to this day, I can still quote the odd line of it from memory: ‘a cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and very luminous… finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy.’ Leng had blond hair, blue eyes, an aquiline nose. Old-fashioned black coat, formally dressed.”

  “That’s a very vivid description.”

  “Leng was the kind of person who stayed with you long after he was gone. And yet, you know, it was his voice I remember most. It was low, resonant, strongly accented, with the peculiar quality of sounding like two people speaking in unison.”

  The gloom that filled the parlor seemed inexplicably to deepen. Nora swallowed. She had already asked all the questions she had planned to. “Thank you very much for your time, Ms. McFadden,” she said as she rose.

  “Why do you bring all this up now?” the old lady asked abruptly.

  Nora realized that she must not have seen the newspaper article or heard anything about the recent copycat killings of the Surgeon. She wondered just what she should say. She looked about the room, dark, frozen in shadowy Victorian clutter. She did not want to be the one to upset this woman’s world.

  “I’m researching the early cabinets of curiosities.”

  The old lady transfixed her with a glittering eye. “An interesting subject, child. And perhaps a dangerous one.”

  ELEVEN

  SPECIAL AGENT PENDERGAST lay in the hospital bed, motionless save for his pale eyes. He watched Nora Kelly leave the room and close the door. He glanced over at the wall clock: nine P.M. precisely. A good time to begin.

  He thought back over each word Nora had uttered during her visit, looking for any trivial fact or passing reference that he might have overlooked on first hearing. But there was nothing more.

  Her visit to Peekskill had confirmed his darkest suspicions: Pendergast had long believed Leng killed Shottum and burned the cabinet. And he felt sure that McFadden’s disappearance was also at the hands of Leng. No doubt Shottum had challenged Leng shortly after placing his letter in the elephant’s-foot box. Leng had murdered him, and covered it up with the fire.

  Yet the most pressing questions remained. Why had Leng chosen the cabinet as his base of operations? Why did he begin volunteering his services at the houses of industry a year before killing Shottum? And where did he relocate his laboratory after the cabinet burned?

  In Pendergast’s experience, serial killers were messy: they were incautious, they left clues. But Leng was, of course, very different. He was not, strictly speaking, a serial killer. He had been remarkably clever. Leng had left a kind of negative imprint wherever he went; the man seemed defined by how little was known about him. There was more to be learned, but it was deeply hidden in the masses of information strewn about his hospital room. There was only one way to coax this information out. Research alone would not suffice.

  And then there was the growing problem of his increasing lack of objectivity regarding this case, his growing emotional involvement. If he did not bring himself sharply under control, if he did not reassert his habitual discipline, he would fail. And he could not fail.

  It was time to make his journey.

  Pendergast’s gaze shifted to the massings of books, maps, and old periodicals that filled half a dozen surgical carts in his room. His eyes moved from surface to tottering surface. The single most important piece of paper lay on his bedside table: the plans for Shottum’s Cabinet. One last time, he picked it up and gazed at it, memorizing every detail. The seconds ticked on. He laid down the yellowing plat.

  It was time. But first, something had to be done about the intolerable landscape of noise that surrounded him.

  After his condition was upgraded from serious to stable, Pendergast had himself transferred from St. Luke’s–Roosevelt to Lenox Hill Hospital. The old facility on Lexington Avenue had the thickest walls of any building in the city, save for his own Dakota. Even here, however, he was assaulted by sounds: the bleat of the blood-oxygen meter above his bed; the gossiping voices at the nurses’ station; the hissings and beepings of the telemetry machines and ventilators; the adenoidal patient snoring in the adjacent room; the rumble of the forced-air ducts deep in the walls and ceiling. There was nothing he could do that would physically stop these sounds; yet they could be made to disappear through other means. It was a powerful mind game he had developed, an adaptation of Chongg Ran, an ancient Bhu
tanese Buddhist meditative practice.

  Pendergast closed his eyes. He imagined a chessboard inside his head, on a wooden table, standing in a pool of yellow light. Then he created two players. The first player made his opening move; the second followed. A game of speed chess ensued; and then another, and another. The two players changed strategies, forming adaptive counterattacks: Inverted Hanham, Two Knights Defense, Vienna Gambit.

  One by one, the more distant noises dropped away.

  When the final game ended in a draw, Pendergast dissolved the chess set. Then, in the darkness of his mind’s eye, he created four players, seated around a card table. Pendergast had always found bridge a nobler and subtler game than chess, but he rarely played it with others because, outside of his late family, he had found few worthy partners. Now the game began, each player ignorant of all but his own thirteen cards, each player with his own strategies and intellectual capabilities. The game began, with ruffs and slams and deep finesses. Pendergast toyed with the players, shifting Blackwood, Gerber, and Stayman conventions, positing a forgetful declarer, misunderstood signals between East and West.

  By the time the first rubber was completed, all distractions were gone. The noises had ceased. In his mind, only a profound silence reigned. Pendergast turned further inward.

  It was time for the memory crossing to begin.

  Several minutes of intense mental concentration passed. Finally, he felt ready.

  In his mind’s eye, he rose from his bed. He felt light, airy, like a ghost. He saw himself walk through the empty hospital corridors, down the stairwell, across the arched foyer, and out onto the wide front steps of the hospital.

  Only the building was no longer a hospital. A hundred and twenty years before, it had been known as the New York Rest Home for Consumptives.

  Pendergast stood on the steps for a moment, glancing around in the gathering dusk. To the west, toward Central Park, the Upper East Side had become a patchwork of hog farms, wild lands, and rocky eminences. Small groups of hovels sprouted up here and there, huddled together as if for protection against the elements. Gas lamps stood along the avenue, infrequent this far north of the populous downtown, throwing small circles of light down onto the dusky macadam.