by Kat Ross
“You seem very knowledgeable,” John said. “Were you part of the expedition to Alexandria?”
Sharpe hesitated before answering. He rubbed the back of his neck. “No. I was supposed to go, but Julius made a last-minute substitution.”
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
“We had a bit of a row, actually. Nothing serious, but I decided to stay. Julius could be touchy, obsessive even. Frankly, I didn’t relish the thought of spending months with the man.” He laughed. “Though had I known what he’d find, wild horses couldn’t have kept me away.”
“And yet you did go abroad recently,” Harry put in. “South America, I’d say.”
Sharpe gave her a startled look. “Did Holland tell you that?”
“No, but I notice that you have a suntan in December and a spider bite on your left wrist that I would guess came from one of the larger tropical species.”
“Fair enough. But how did you deduce South America?”
“I noticed a bag of coffee beans with a Portuguese label on your desk.”
Sharpe slapped his thigh. “Not bad, Miss Pell. Yes, I am recently returned from Brazil. When the Alexandria dig fell through, I managed to attach myself to an expedition going to the Amazon.”
“I hope it was fruitful,” John said politely.
“We brought back a few trinkets. Some prehistoric pottery shards. Nothing compared to the Egypt find.”
Sharpe stopped before a globe encased in moveable metal rings with numbers indicating celestial longitude and latitude. “This is one of the prized pieces of the collection. An armillary sphere as described in the Syntaxis. Truly priceless.”
“And yet it wasn’t locked up in the strongbox,” Harry said.
“No, only the amulet of Osiris. It belonged to Count Habsburg-Koháry. He’d personally requested an extra layer of security.”
“Where was the count last night?”
“Waiting for Julius in the main hall, I believe.”
“What do you know about him?”
Sharpe gave a shrug. “He’s Hungarian royalty in exile. Fled after the revolution. A well-known collector of antiquities. Filthy rich. He’d been bankrolling Julius’s digs for years.” He sounded envious.
“It must be nice to have such a patron.”
“I imagine so, although I hear he’s a demanding taskmaster. But he let Julius have all the glory in the press. I got the distinct impression Count Koháry prefers to keep a low profile.”
“I look forward to speaking with him.” Harry examined an amulet. “Do you think it was robbery, Mr. Sharpe?”
He shrugged. “What else? There are people who’d sell their own mothers to get some of these artifacts, Miss Pell. It’s a cutthroat business.”
“And where were you after the party?” Harry asked.
“As I told the police, and no doubt you already know, I went back to my office.” He suddenly seemed agitated. “Come now, haven’t they arrested the night guard? Boot?”
“They did indeed,” Harry replied pleasantly. “And released him this morning for lack of evidence. I’d say he’s the least likely to have done it. Surely if Boot had murdered Mr. Sabelline, he would have claimed his copy of the key had been lost or stolen.”
Sharpe seemed taken aback. “I didn’t know that. So you think it’s someone else?”
“I try not to speculate before all the facts have been gathered, but it seems certain.”
“Then it would be one of us. The six who were inside the building.”
There was a pregnant pause.
“If you had to guess, who would you pick?” John said cheerfully. “Gut instinct.”
Sharpe hesitated a moment too long before answering. “Not a clue,” he said with a tight smile. “But I’m sure the police will sort it out.”
“Well, Mr. Sharpe,” Harry said, offering her hand. “Thank you for speaking with us.”
He gave it a firm shake. “Anytime. You know where to find me.”
Outside, Harry turned to John. “What do you make of him?”
He thought for a moment. “Hard to say. He was definitely suffering from a hangover. I could smell the gin. And I don’t think he’s shaved since the party.”
They began retracing their journey south along Central Park. The sun had come out while they were entombed in the grim basement of the museum. The white expanse of the park seemed like another world entirely, ringing with the exuberant cries of children on Christmas Day and the merry jingle of horse-drawn sleighs.
“Trembling hands, glassy eyes,” Harry observed. “A habitual drinker?”
“He’s a little young to show the most obvious ravages of alcoholism, though it’s certainly possible. Don’t forget, Harry, Sharpe did just undergo a traumatic experience. Seeing his colleague brutally butchered could make a man crave oblivion.”
“Perhaps.” Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Did you get the impression he liked Dr. Sabelline?”
John considered this. “Actually, no. I don’t think he was as sorry as he let on.”
“Which is hardly conclusive, but isn’t an argument in his favor either.” Harry bit her lip. “So he has a dispute with Sabelline and goes off on another expedition that ends in failure, or at least nothing that would advance his career.”
“While Sabelline returns covered in glory.”
“Exactly. Add the financial motive if he can manage to sell the stolen amulet on the black market, and we’ve got ourselves a solid suspect.”
“I agree there’s something off about Davis Sharpe,” John said. “He was almost certainly lying when he said the quarrel with Sabelline was minor. I wonder what it was really about, and whose decision it was for him not to go.”
“I’d bet you anything Count Koháry would know. We’ll have to ask him. Now, what did you think of Nelson Holland?”
“That one’s a bit murkier. I don’t know why he’d do it.”
“Nor do I. But we know very little about the man, or his relationship with Sabelline. I do think it was interesting he called Orpha a great friend of the museum. That means she gives them loads of money. It’s how you get invited to these parties.” Harry thought for a moment. “Could you use your contacts at Columbia to look into Holland and Sharpe? Sabelline too, of course. I wonder if professional jealousies aren’t at play here.”
“Oh, all academic institutions have those in spades,” John agreed. “I know a couple of graduate students in the history department. I can try asking them, though it’s Christmas break.”
“Go to their houses and bang on the door if you have to.”
John groaned. “I’ll be blacklisted.”
“Tell them you’re looking into Julius Sabelline’s death. That ought to get the gossip flowing.”
“You may be right. Once the news hits the papers, everyone will be talking about it.”
They walked in silence for a block. “I’ve been thinking about the shoes,” Harry said. “It explains the strange footprints. What if the killer simply slipped them off while standing in the blood, then stepped away in stockinged feet? If he avoided the other bloodstains, he’d leave no trail.”
“But why do such a thing?”
“To confuse the investigators. And to cover his own tracks.”
“Well then, I’d say you can write off Mr. Sharpe. What you’re describing requires cold-blooded cunning, not to mention steady hands and nerves,” John said dryly.
“You think he was too drunk?”
“I don’t know. We should have asked Holland.”
“If Sharpe had been blotto at the party, it seems unlikely he would retire to his office to work in such a state,” Harry said.
“He might have gone to lie down.”
“Lie down where? The room is like a closet. And why not just go home?”
“Too drunk, perhaps.”
“Don’t you find it curious that three of them went to their offices—separately, mind you—after midnight? Such dedication. A bit beyond the call of duty, e
specially two days before Christmas.”
“We need to speak with the wife and son. Also that Count What’s His Name.”
“Yes, we do.” Harry sighed. “Seven people, and not one of them has a solid alibi for the time of the murder except for John Boot, the only one with the key.”
John shot her a significant look. “Even if they all hated Sabelline’s guts, you have to admit, there are some strange aspects to the crime that point to something…otherworldly.”
“The curse, you mean.”
“Yes, the curse! Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be investigating?”
“I find it likelier that someone wanted it to appear as if a curse had been invoked. The staged footprints. The mutilation of the body to correspond with the phrase struck blind.”
John looked unconvinced. Unlike Harry, he believed full-tilt in the supernatural. “Perhaps. Either way, it would be nice to know what the murder weapon was.”
“With any luck, the post-mortem will clarify that. What time is it?”
John pulled out his pocket watch. “One-fifteen.”
“Oh dear. We’ll never make it by train now. Keep your eyes open for a hansom.”
The temperature had risen a bit and the fresh snow was rapidly melting into slush. After being beaten to a cab by an old lady who menaced them with her black umbrella, John finally managed to flag down a driver at Seventy-Second Street. Thanks to the holiday, the usually nightmarish midtown traffic was sparse. Harry and John sped downtown to First Avenue and Twenty-Sixth Street in record time, where they found Mrs. Orpha Winter waiting for them in the Morgue at Bellevue Hospital.
Chapter 14
The Morgue was housed in a forbidding grey stone building at the edge of the East River. In imitation of the Parisian style, New York’s dead house had a viewing room behind a glass partition, where the public could examine the day’s fresh corpses in hopes they might be identified. If no one claimed them within a day or two, they would be sent to an unmarked grave in the pauper’s cemetery on Ward’s Island.
Some were visitors to the city who had died of natural causes, or just as often, been murdered for the coins in their pocket. Others were simply lost souls. Suicides fished out of the harbor. Prostitutes with no family who’d admit to knowing them. Their meager belongings were displayed on the far wall, in case anyone recognized an item of clothing or other personal effect.
The actual bodies lay on four stone tables beneath jets of cold water. This technique was supposed to slow putrefaction, but over the years, the odor of death had inevitably sunk into the foundations of the place.
White sheets covered the naked corpses, with only the faces exposed to public scrutiny. Neither Harry nor John cared to look too closely as they passed through the room. Their business was not here, in this sad, gloomy place. Julius Sabelline’s body would be awaiting the post-mortem in a secluded area of the hospital. Still, Harry couldn’t help but notice that one of the forms was tiny and could only be a young child. She felt a stab of pity. Untold hundreds of children died of illness, accident or parental violence every year, but to lie here, unclaimed by anyone, struck her as a particularly cruel fate.
They encountered Orpha just beyond the viewing room at the start of a long corridor leading deeper into the recesses of the Morgue. Mrs. Winter was an ethereally beautiful woman. She had milky skin and pale blonde hair that she wore twisted atop her head. Her dress was fashionable but tasteful, in dark colors somber enough for the occasion.
Orpha’s green eyes lit on John, then moved to Harry. There was a crystalline hardness to them, like shards of jade. Not a woman to cross lightly, or without consequence.
It was the first time Harry had formally met her, although she’d watched her at S.P.R. functions with her husband, the banker Joseph Winter. He had the money and Orpha had the charm and connections. Together, they were a formidable pair in New York society.
“Miss Pell,” she said with artificial warmth, clasping Harry’s hand. “Such a pleasure. And you must be Dr. Weston.”
John smiled amiably. “Only ‘mister’,” he said. “I’m a student at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.”
“Of course. Well, it will be doctor soon enough, I’m sure. The coroner tells me they’re running late for the post-mortem, so we have a few minutes to get acquainted. Have you come from the museum? I’m most anxious to hear your thoughts.”
“It’s rather early for theories,” Harry said firmly. “I have three witnesses yet to interview. But I’m glad you’re here. Perhaps you can tell us what you observed at the party.”
“Of course. I believe there’s a waiting area up ahead. We can discuss the case there.”
They followed her down the hall to an alcove with two wooden benches facing each other. Orpha sat down and arranged her skirts while John and Harry took the other.
“Mr. Winter was on a business trip so I attended alone,” she began. “The evening went off flawlessly. It seemed a smashing success for the museum. At around eleven forty-five, the staff began clearing the food and drink away. I suppose that’s rather early, but it was nearly Christmas Eve and the guests had families to return to. I fell into conversation with Count Balthazar. We’ve known each other for years. A fascinating man, quite knowledgeable about the ancient world.”
“I’d very much like to speak with him—” Harry began.
“Certainly,” Orpha interrupted. “But you must allow me to arrange it. He’s a busy man and we have no official authority in this investigation. It would be a personal favor if he met with you at all.”
Harry nodded. “Sooner would be best.”
“Of course.” She smiled indulgently. “In any event, Count Balthazar was waiting for Dr. Sabelline to return from his office with the key to the strongbox. The count preferred to keep that himself. I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention, but I eventually noticed the others had drifted off. Sharpe and Holland apparently went to their offices. It was nearly one a.m. and I decided to go home, but the front door was locked and the guard had left his post.”
“He’d gone to smoke a cigarette?” Harry said.
“Apparently. We finally found him in the alley. He let me out the front door and my driver took me home. I heard what happened the next day.”
“Were you in conversation with Count Balthazar the entire time?”
Orpha gazed at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean between the time Julius Sabelline left to go to his office, and the time you decided to go home.”
“I believe I went off for a few minutes to freshen up. You’re wondering if I left the count alone at any point?”
Harry nodded.
“Really, my dear girl, you needn’t waste your time thinking it was him. First of all, he owned the artifact. What reason could he possibly have to steal it from himself?”
“Perhaps it was insured.”
Orpha laughed, long and hard. “You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with, do you? Oh, I suppose it’s not your fault. Kaylock should have explained. Count Balthazar Jozsef Habsburg-Koháry is one of the wealthiest men in the world. He descends from the House of Saxe-Coburg, and before that, the House of Wettin. His family tree goes back nearly a thousand years, to the Holy Roman Empire.”
“That’s all very impressive,” Harry said. “But it hardly exempts him from murder.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Orpha snapped. “I requested you for this case, but I can just as easily have you removed.” She softened her tone. “We should go in now. But let me be perfectly clear. You have a bright future with the S.P.R. if you ally yourself with the right people. I believe you’re clever enough to understand what I mean.”
Orpha swept down the hallway before Harry could reply.
“Well she’s a piece of work,” John muttered.
Harry watched the retreating form. “I suppose she wanted us because she thought we were young and eager to please. Easy to manipulate.”
John laughed. “Then sh
e certainly doesn’t know you at all, Harry. I’d say you’re about as pliable as an iron bar.”
Harry smiled back, but she looked troubled. “Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Orpha Winter,” she said. “We must tread cautiously. I fear there are treacherous undercurrents in this case, John.”
The post-mortem examination of Julius Sabelline was conducted in one of Bellevue’s operating amphitheaters. The body lay on a steel table in the center of the room, covered with a sheet. Four men stood together talking quietly as Harry and John entered the room just behind Orpha Winter. The effect of her appearance was remarkable. They all stood up straighter like schoolboys before a favorite teacher.
“Gentlemen,” Orpha said smoothly. “These are my new associates. I hope you don’t mind if we observe the proceedings this afternoon.”
She made brief introductions all around. A pleasant-looking man in his mid-forties with a slight German accent was the city coroner, Ferdinand Eidman. His job was to issue death certificates and, in theory, perform autopsies and inquests for all suspected homicides, suicides and accidental deaths in New York County.
However, Eidman wasn’t a doctor, and in fact had no medical training at all beyond what he’d seen as a soldier during the Civil War, so he’d appointed a surgeon from Bellevue named Bernard Levis to conduct the actual autopsy. A tall, thin man, Dr. Levis wore a black frock coat with a gold pocket watch on a chain that he checked several times as though he had other places to be—which, considering it was Christmas Day, he probably did.
The last two men were detectives from the Thirty-First Ward, whose jurisdiction included the two-mile stretch from Sixty-Third Street north to One Hundred and Tenth Street, and the Hudson River to the western edge of Central Park. Despite the fact they clearly knew Orpha, their greetings for the pair of young civilian investigators were not warm. This was doubtless due in part to the fact that they had overlooked the grating and the key evidence it contained.