THE CAMBODIAN CURSE AND OTHER STORIES

by Gigi Pandian

  “So,” William continued, “you know how rare it is to have a woman featured so prominently in the battle.”

  “Do you think it’s the king’s wife Indradevi?” I asked.

  William smiled warmly. “You are a historian.”

  “It’s why I agreed to help North, even though I don’t always see eye to eye with him. So…was it the queen?”

  “I hope we’ll find evidence one day that sheds light on that question. The temple complex where Harold unearthed the sculpture is still being excavated.”

  “Who supposedly cursed Harold?” I asked. “The guide you mentioned? What was the curse?”

  “Margery never took it seriously, so she didn’t learn the details. The follies of youth…She tried to distance herself from it. I’m sorry to say I encouraged this as well. Even her grandparents didn’t take it seriously at first. It was only after Sarah gave birth to a child and the museum opened that Harold died of malaria. That’s when Sarah began to rant and rave about the curse waiting to strike just when they were on the brink of happiness.”

  “That’s how malaria works,” I said. “It takes its time and comes back.”

  “I know. That’s what we thought at first. But Sarah had been a rational woman until that point.” He held up his hands to put off my objections. “There’s more. Sarah’s child, Margery’s father, died soon after his fortieth birthday, shortly after he’d taken over the museum. Margery never talked about it. She didn’t like to speak of it. The only thing she told me was that it was traumatic to have him die of a suspected hereditary heart condition. I have a feeling, now, that she pushed it from her mind because she suspected there was something to the curse, but she didn’t want to admit it could really be true. Then, when Margery started receiving threatening letters mentioning the curse, it got to her much more than I expected. It was only then that she admitted the mysterious circumstances surrounding her father’s death—there was no heart condition, hereditary or otherwise. He was in perfect health before his death. I realized, then, that a part of her had always believed in the curse. That’s why she’d never talked about it.”

  “Her father and grandfather didn’t receive the letters, did they?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. But there are other similarities. They all died young. And Margery’s philanthropy was making her happy, just as her father and grandfather found happiness shortly before their deaths. Though she and I had grown apart, I believe she was doing what she loved. Her true calling. Can’t you see the pattern? Each of them found happiness before they died young. I can see the skepticism in your face, but surely you must admit there’s a pattern.”

  “Perhaps if I saw the letters,” I said diplomatically. His “pattern” was so weak I wouldn’t even call it that. But his wife had been murdered in a mysterious way, which was enough to forgive the irrationality.

  William brought me photocopies of the letters. They had been typed on a typewriter, and each conveyed a slightly different threat, referencing the colonial law, the importance of the sculpture, and the curse itself. There were no specific details about where the thief wanted the sculpture returned, only to the Cambodian people.

  I froze when I saw the last letter in the small stack. It wasn’t a photocopy. This was an original. And it wasn’t addressed to Margery.

  I gasped. “This one is addressed to you.” This letter was only one line. Return The Churning Woman to the Cambodian people, or the curse will strike again.

  “The letter arrived in today’s mail shortly before you came,” he said, swallowing hard. “Our murderous ‘Good Samaritan’ appears to believe I’m in possession of The Churning Woman.”

  vi.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I murmured. “There are two thieves working independently? And one got there first?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” William said, “but I hope this one is a copycat, someone with a sick sense of humor who read about Margery and the theft. We’ll see what the police think.”

  “You haven’t told them yet?”

  “I’m on my way there as soon as we’re done,” he said. “Unless there’s anything else, we can collect Mr. North from the back porch.”

  “I’m sorry to have kept you,” I said, “and to have wasted your time. I thought you’d know more details about the original curse.”

  “I should have asked more questions of Margery, Emily thought so, too. But it was so painful for her that I hated to press.”

  I lifted my damp jacket from the coat rack and turned to examine an old photograph hanging next to it on the wall. William and Margery as a young couple at The Met in New York, pictured with the museum’s mascot William the Hippopotamus, the iconic Egyptian ceramic figurine painted with a bright blue glaze. Seeing the affectionate look on his face in the photograph, I couldn’t imagine William killing Margery. But time changes people.

  “I love that photo,” William said, his painful expression lightening. “That little blue hippo is how Margery and I met. I’m named after William. That’s why the hippopotamus is our emblem. You might have noticed the hippo topiaries in front of the house.”

  So that’s what those bushes were meant to be.

  “In the backyard,” William continued, “we had a large stone hippopotamus bench built into the porch. We used to spend a lot of time out there together, looking at our view…We fell out of the habit after an earthquake cracked the foundation under the bench. But Margery got it fixed recently. I’d hoped that her interest in spending more time with our stone bench William meant she and I might become close again as well…”

  “That’s really how you got your name?”

  “My father was a museum curator originally from New York. As a boy he spent countless hours at the museum, and he adored William. I was his first child, so he named me William, after the hippo. It was my fate to follow in his footsteps and essentially live in a museum.”

  “So you know better than most people about how museum security works.”

  “I was wondering if you were going to ask about that. I do, and I wasn’t able to help the police figure out how someone broke in. I know Henry North suspects me of killing my wife. Yes, I love The Churning Woman. It’s well known that it’s my favorite piece in the museum. But even if Margery was going to file for divorce—which she wasn’t—I don’t want the sculpture for myself. I want it for the world. Now it’s gone. And I have no idea how it miraculously vanished from Margery’s office. Or why the letter-writer now thinks I have it.”

  “I’m sure the police will find someone messed with the security cameras or something.”

  William paused and gave me a strange look. “Didn’t North tell you? I was in the museum when it happened. I was near Margery’s office. I would have seen and heard if anyone went by. Nobody did.”

  William walked down the hallway to retrieve North, and I stared in stunned silence at his back.

  “Hippopotamus got your tongue?” North asked once we were back inside the car. “You’re unusually quiet. Not like you at all. Please tell me you had a brilliant revelation while interviewing William. That will make it worth my while when I catch the death of cold from being stranded outside on that frigid concrete porch.”

  “I know less than I did going in,” I said, starting the car.

  “Follow him.” North pointed at the driveway where William was backing out, then turned up the heat. “What did you say to him? Whatever it was, nicely done. He could be checking on his spoils.”

  “We’re not following him. He’s going to the police station.”

  “To turn himself in? Even better. Why didn’t you tell me how well it went?”

  “He’s going to the police to show them the threatening letter he received in the mail today.”

  North scoffed. “Right.”

  “I’m serious. He showed it to me.”

  North
swore. “Another ruse? It must be a desperate attempt to cast suspicion away from himself.”

  As it turned out, that was exactly how the police saw it. William was arrested the following day.

  The police had noticed a more prominent watermark on this paper than the others, and upon searching William’s home, found the typewriter that had been used to write the threatening letters, as well as the paper on which they’d been typed. All of the letters had come from William’s own typewriter.

  Instead of putting my mind at ease, I had a nagging feeling something was missing. Something I couldn’t yet grasp was tugging at the edges of my consciousness, telling me William hadn’t killed his wife. Telling me that the true solution was still to be found—in the curse.

  vii.

  I learned through North—God knew where he got his information, for it wasn’t reported to the press—that William insisted someone else must have broken into his home and used the typewriter.

  On that foggy Sunday morning, North relayed this information to me as we sat directly across from the Lexington Museum. The museum was located in North Beach, the Bohemian-cum-touristy neighborhood that could no longer be considered Italian, though some of the city’s oldest and best Italian restaurants still lined Columbus and Broadway streets. We had the cafe’s prime sidewalk spot. On the corner of two streets, it was the perfect location for people-watching, and other cafe patrons glanced covetously at our spot as they looked around with their cappuccinos.

  I didn’t think North had lucked into the table. Henry North was a man who thought of all the angles and prepared for every possible situation. There was a time he’d wanted a table with a certain vantage point for a heist and wasn’t sure who would be sitting there, so he’d obtained passes to a Paris amusement park, as well as tickets to an opera and a sultry dance show, plus dinner reservations at a restaurant impossible for mere mortals to secure, and most likely other contingencies. I briefly wondered what the lucky tourists or locals who’d had this particular location moments before had gotten out of the deal. Hopefully something better than having North tell them their car was being towed.

  “Sorry you didn’t get to delve more into the curse before they caught William,” North said. “Regardless of how much you protested, I knew the challenge had you hooked.”

  “The curse is a lost cause now anyway. Did you see the dozens of online sites that sprang up after Margery’s murder? They’re supposedly discussions of ‘inside information’ about the curse, but it’s all fake information that was written in the last three days. The curse is now a full-blown legend, 99 percent of it false. How is a historian supposed to do her job in the twenty-first century?”

  “Which is why you want to see the records inside the museum.”

  “The sculpture is still missing.”

  Our original plan had been to meet at the museum itself, but it was still closed to the public as a crime scene. No police tape lined the museum’s modest facade. Instead, a prominent CLOSED sign had been hung on the entrance’s double doors. The museum was smaller than I’d remembered, similar in size to the historical City Lights Bookstore down the street.

  “Life was easier when I didn’t have to work with the police,” North said. “It’s an affront to my dignity that they’re keeping the museum’s security consultant locked out of the museum.”

  “Someone’s inside, though,” I said, pointing at the second-floor windows. “Is that a flashlight beam?”

  North swore and jumped up. I swung my red messenger bag across my chest and ran across the street ahead of him.

  “I don’t see it anymore,” I said, standing at the front of the building. “Maybe it was a reflection from a passing car? It’s foggy enough that some people are using headlights.” Though as I spoke the words, I didn’t believe them myself. There had definitely been a moving light inside the museum.

  “No,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “Come on. This way.”

  We hurried along the street past an antique store and an art gallery, until we came to a narrow alley, which led us to the delivery area at the rear of the businesses.

  “Where’s their car?” he murmured as he extracted his cell phone. He turned away from me and spoke quietly, so I couldn’t hear his conversation. When he turned back less than a minute later, his face was red. “It’s not the police inside.”

  “One of the staff members, then,” I said with more conviction than I felt. Those flickering lights…

  North shook his head and stared at the rear door. “According to the police, nobody is supposed to be inside the museum yet.”

  “Where should we wait?” I asked.

  “Wait for who?”

  “The police.”

  “That beautiful naïveté of yours surfaces again. The police have arrested their killer. They have more important crimes to worry about than a museum staffer who’s crossed a police line.”

  “Nobody is coming? But what if William had an accomplice? Or if he didn’t do it?”

  North entered a string of numbers into a keypad next to the back door. The lock clicked, and with a smile, he pulled the door open. “After you.”

  viii.

  “This is a terrible idea,” I whispered to North as we crept through the museum’s back hallway using my cell phone’s flashlight. The words were barely out of my mouth before I stumbled over one of the storage boxes stacked against the wall.

  “You’re right,” North said in a regularly modulated voice, clicking on a light switch. “First rule of thievery—or is it the seventeenth? I can’t recall—is that it’s best to act like you belong somewhere. Nobody pays attention to lights going on in a house or a business. But they do pay attention to suspicious flashlight beams, like the flickering light you saw. If these lights had been on the whole time, you wouldn’t have noticed anything suspicious. Why is your face scrunched up, Jaya? You’re the one who wanted to get inside the museum to solve the mystery of the missing sculpture.”

  “Is it a crime to want to see an important piece of history saved?”

  “Yes. In this case I think it is, since it involves breaking into a museum.”

  We reached another locked door. North entered a code into another keypad, and also took out a strangely shaped key and inserted it into a physical lock.

  “That’s a lot of security,” I said as we stepped into the portion of the museum open to the public.

  “There are cameras, too,” North said, pointing upward at details in the molding that looked nothing like cameras to me. “But don’t worry. I’ll delete the files once we’re done here.”

  “Couldn’t the killer have done that too?”

  “You mean William? Theoretically possible,” North said grudgingly, “though highly improbable. But that wasn’t the problem in this case. That’s not what hap—” he broke off as the lights flickered.

  My breath caught. The lights flickered right as we passed the empty space that had once contained The Churning Woman.

  “Faulty wiring,” I said. “That must be what’s going on.”

  “I wonder…I’ll be right back. Don’t worry. I’m not going far.”

  While I waited for North to return, I looked at the other sculptures in the room. Many of the intricate sandstone carvings were behind glass cases, but the largest pieces remained in the open so visitors could experience them more intimately. That included the rest of the panels from the allegory of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk—now missing The Churning Woman centerpiece. I thought back on the curse. To someone already on edge, flickering lights inside the museum could make it feel haunted. Had that happened the night of the murder? Had the culprit been trying to scare Margery? And if so, to what end? Was there more than one perpetrator? Was that why someone believed William had the missing sculpture? And why bring up the French colonial law if they wished to scare her with a curse?

  H
arold Lexington claimed he had removed sculptures from Cambodia in 1924 before it was forbidden to do so. But he didn’t arrive in San Francisco until 1925, and he’d set up his museum years later. I wondered…Was the official timing a lie? Or was it simply more misdirection?

  “Boo,” a voice next to my ear said. Instinctively, I stepped on his foot with my heel—before realizing it was North. Still, I wasn’t going to apologize to someone who’d once kidnapped me.

  North proceeded to swear colorfully for a full minute before saying, “That’s what I get for solving this mystery.”

  “You did?”

  “Well, not exactly. But I did discover we’re alone inside the museum. There’s no intruder. There’s a timer set to make the lights flicker.”

  “To scare Margery into believing the curse,” I said.

  “Or at least throw her off balance. Bloody effective. I’m not above saying my heart skipped a beat when we walked past the spot where the cursed sculpture once sat.”

  “Didn’t you notice it before?”

  North shook his head. “William must have set it up to go off at times only the two of them were working late.”

  “It’s not late right now,” I pointed out. “And William was worried too.”

  “Jaya, the man killed his wife. He was acting. He must have been the one who fiddled with the lighting. He probably changed the settings to confuse things.”

  “Maybe. What were you telling me before the lights flickered? About the camera footage.”