But Cahors was singularly determined, and the tomb was eventually taken apart, block by numbered block, and barged down the Nile to the Bay of Aboukir, where it was laid out on the desert sands in a vast array, awaiting transport to France.
The famous Battle of the Nile ended those plans. After Admiral Horatio Nelson met Napoleon’s grand flotilla—and soundly defeated it—in the most decisive naval battle in history, Napoleon fled in a small ship, leaving his armies cut off. Those armies soon capitulated, and in the terms of surrender, the British appropriated their fabulous collections of Egyptian antiquities, including the Rosetta stone—and the Tomb of Senef. A day after the signing of the terms of capitulation, Cahors stabbed himself in the heart with his sword while kneeling amid the stacks of blocks on the sands of Aboukir. And yet his fame as the first Egyptologist lived on, and it was a descendant of this same Cahors who was bankrolling the museum’s reopening of the tomb, à la distance.
Nora put the first sheaf of documents aside and picked up the second. A Scottish officer with the Royal Navy, Captain Alisdair William Arthur Cumyn, later Baron of Rattray, managed to acquire the Tomb of Senef in a murky transaction that appeared to involve a card game and two prostitutes. Baron Rattray had the tomb transported and reassembled on his ancestral estate in the Highlands of Scotland, went bankrupt doing so, and was forced to sell off most of his ancestral lands. The Barons of Rattray limped along until the mid-nineteenth century, when the last of the line, in a desperate bid to save what was left of the estate, sold the tomb to the American railroad magnate William C. Spragg. One of the museum’s early benefactors, Spragg shipped the tomb across the Atlantic and had it reassembled in the museum, which was under construction at that time. It was his pet project and he spent months haunting the site, hounding the workers, and otherwise making a nuisance of himself. In a tragic irony, he was crushed under the wheels of a horse-drawn ambulance just two days before the grand opening in 1872.
Nora took a break from her perusal of the documents. It was not quite three o’clock, and she was making better progress than she’d expected. If she could get this done by eight, she might have time to share a quick bite with Bill at the Bones. He would love this dark, dusty history. And it might make a good piece for the Times’s cultural or metropolitan section when the tomb’s opening neared.
She moved along to the next bundle, all museum documents and in much better condition. The first set of papers dealt with the opening of the tomb. In it were some copies of the engraved invitation:
The President of the United States of America
the Honorable General Ulysses S. Grant
The Governor of the State of New York the Honorable John T. Hoffman
The President of the New York Museum of Natural History
Dr. James K. Moreton
The Trustees and the Director of the Museum
Cordially invite you to a Dinner and Ball in honor of the opening of the
GRAND TOMB OF SENEF
Regent and Vizier to the Pharaoh Thutmosis IV,
Ruler of Ancient Egypt
1419-1386 B.C.
The Diva Eleonora de Graff Bolkonsky will perform Arias
from the New and Celebrated Opera Aïda
by Giuseppe Verdi
Egyptian Costume
Nora held the crumbling invitation in her hand. It amazed her that the museum commanded such a presence in those days that the president himself signed the invitation. She shuffled further and discovered a second document—a menu for the dinner.
Hors d’oeuvres Variés
Consommé Olga
Kebab Egyptien
Filet Mignon Lili
Vegetable Marrow Farcie
Roast Squab & Cress
Pâté de Foie Gras en Croûte
Baba Ghanouj
Waldorf Pudding
Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly
There were a dozen blank invitations in the file. She set one aside, along with the menu, in a “to be photocopied” folder. This was something Menzies should see. In fact, she thought, it would be marvelous if they could duplicate the original opening—without the costume ball, perhaps—and offer the same menu.
She began reading the press notices of the evening. It had been one of those great social events of late-nineteenth-century New York, the likes of which would never be seen again. The guest list read like a roll call at the dawn of the Gilded Age: the Astors and Vanderbilts, William Butler Duncan, Walter Langdon, Ward McAllister, Royal Phelps. There were engravings from Harper’s Weekly showing the ball, with everyone dressed in the most outlandish interpretations of Egyptian costume . . .
But she was wasting time. She pushed the clippings aside and opened the next folder. It also contained a newspaper clipping, this time from the New York Sun, one of the scandal sheets of the time. It had an illustration of a dark-haired man in a fez, with liquid eyes, dressed in flowing robes. Quickly she scanned the article.
Sun Exclusive
Tomb in New York Museum Is Accursed!
Egyptian Bey Issues Warning
The Malediction of the Eye of Horus
New York—On a recent visit to New York by His Eminence Abdul El-Mizar, Bey of Bolbassa in Upper Egypt, the gentleman from the land of the pharaohs was shocked to find on display at the New York Museum the Tomb of SENEF.
The Egyptian and his entourage, who were being given a tour of the museum, turned away from the tomb in horror and consternation, warning other visitors that to enter the tomb was to consign oneself to certain and terrible death. “This tomb carries a curse well known in my own country,” El-Mizar later told the Sun.
Nora smiled. The article went on in the same vein, mingling a stew of dire threats with wildly inaccurate historical pronouncements, ending, naturally, with a “demand” by the alleged “Bey of Bolbassa” that the tomb be returned forthwith to Egypt. At the conclusion, almost as an afterthought, a museum official was quoted as saying that several thousand visitors entered the tomb every day and that there had never been an “untoward incident.”
This article was followed by a flurry of letters from various people, many of them clearly cranks, describing “sensations” and “presences” they had experienced while in the tomb. Several complained of sickness after visiting: shortness of breath, sweats, palpitations, nervous disorders. One, which merited a file all its own, told of a child who fell into the well and broke both his legs, one of which had to be amputated. An exchange of letters from lawyers resulted in a quiet settlement with the family for a sum of two hundred dollars.
She moved to the next file, which was very slender, and opened it, surprised to find inside a single yellowed piece of cardboard with a label pasted on it:
Contents moved to Secure Storage
March 22, 1938
Signed: Lucien P. Strawbridge
Curator of Egyptology
Nora turned this card over in surprise. Secure Storage? That must be what was now known as the Secure Area, where the museum kept its most valuable artifacts. What inside this file could have merited being locked away?
She replaced the piece of cardboard and put the file aside, making a mental note to follow up on this later. There was just one final bundle to go. Unsealing it, Nora found it to be full of correspondence and notes on the building of the pedestrian tunnel connecting the IND line subway station to the museum.
The correspondence was voluminous. As Nora read through it, she began to realize that the story the museum told—that the tomb had been sealed off because of the construction of the tunnel—was not exactly true. The truth, in fact, was just the opposite: the city wanted to route the pedestrian walkway from the front of the station well past the entrance of the tomb—a quicker and cheaper alternative. But for some reason, the museum wished to situate the tunnel toward the far end of the station. Then they argued that the new route would cut off the tomb’s entrance and force its closure. It seemed as if the museum wanted to force the closure of the tomb.
She read on. Toward the end of the file, she found a handwritten note, from the same Lucien P. Strawbridge who’d placed the earlier file in Secure Storage, scribbled on a memo from a New York City official asking why the museum wanted the pedestrian walkway in that particular location, given the extra costs involved.
The marginalia read:
Tell him anything. I want that tomb closed. Let us not miss our last, best chance to rid ourselves of this damnable problem.
L. P. Strawbridge
Damnable problem? Nora wondered just what kind of problem Strawbridge was referring to. She flipped through the file again, but there didn’t seem to be a problem connected with the tomb, beyond the annoyance of the Bey of Bolbassa’s comments and the crank letters they had generated.
The problem, she decided, must be in the file in Secure Storage. In the end, it didn’t seem relevant, and she had run out of time. When she had time, she might look into it. As it was, if she didn’t get started on her report, she’d never make dinner with Bill.
She pulled her laptop toward her, opened a new file, and began typing.
15
The following day, Captain of Homicide Laura Hayward showed her ID and was deferentially ushered into the office of Jack Manetti, head of security for the New York Museum of Natural History. Hayward liked the fact that, in a museum where the administration seemed overly concerned with status, the head of security had chosen for himself a small, windowless office in the back of the security pool, and had furnished it with utterly functional metal desks and chairs. It said something positive about Manetti—at least she hoped it did.
Manetti was clearly not happy to see her, but he made an attempt at courtesy, offering her a chair and a cup of coffee, which she declined.
“I’m here on the Green assault,” she said. “I wonder if you’d be willing to accompany me to the Sacred Images show so we can run through a few additional questions I have about ingress and egress, access, security.”
“But we’ve been all over that, weeks ago. I thought the investigation was complete.”
“My investigation isn’t complete yet, Mr. Manetti.”
Manetti licked his lips. “Did you go through the office of the director? We’re supposed to coordinate all law enforcement—”
She cut him off and stood up, growing irritated. “I don’t have the time, and neither do you. Let’s go.”
She followed the security director through a labyrinth of corridors and dusty halls, arriving at last at the exhibit entrance. The museum was still open and the security doors hooked back, but the exhibit itself was almost deserted.
“Let’s begin here,” said Hayward. “I’ve been going over the setup again and again, and there are a few things I just don’t get. The perp had to enter the hall through this door, am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“The door at the far end could be opened only from the inside, not from the outside. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“And the security system was supposed to automatically keep a log of all who came and went, because each magnetic card key is coded with the name of the owner.”
Manetti nodded.
“But the system registered no entry other than Margo Green. The perp then stole her card and used it to leave by the rear exit.”
“That’s the assumption.”
“Green could have entered and left this door hooked open.”
“No. First, that would have been against the rules. Second, the system registered that she didn’t do that. A few seconds after she entered, the door reengaged. We had an electronic log to that effect.”
“So the perp must have been waiting in the hall, hiding, from the time it closed to visitors—five o’clock—until the time of the assault, two A.M.”
Manetti nodded.
“Or else the perp managed to get around the security system.”
“We think that’s highly improbable.”
“But I think it’s almost certain. I’ve been through this hall a dozen times since the assault. There’s no place for the perp to have hidden.”
“It was under construction. Stuff was all over the place.”
“It was two days from opening. It was almost finished.”
“The security system is foolproof.”
“Like the Diamond Hall. Right?”
She watched Manetti’s lips tighten and felt a pang. This wasn’t her style. She was becoming a bitch, and she didn’t like it.
“Thank you, Mr. Manetti,” she said. “I’d like to make another pass through the hall, if you don’t mind.”
“Be our guest.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Manetti disappeared and Hayward took a thoughtful turn around the room where Green had been attacked, picturing, yet again, each step of the assault in a kind of mental stop-motion. She tried to shut out the little voice in her head that said this was a wild-goose chase; that she wasn’t likely to find anything of value here weeks after the attack, after a hundred thousand people had walked through; that she was doing this for all the wrong reasons; that she should just get on with her life and career while she still could.
She took another turn around the room, the little voice disappearing under the rap of her heels against the floor. As she came to the side of the case where the spot of blood had been found, she saw a crouched, dark-suited figure moving toward her from behind the case, ready to spring out.
She pulled out her weapon, drew down on the figure. “You! Freeze! NYPD!”
The person leaped up with a gargled shout, arms windmilling, an unruly cowlick of hair bobbing. Hayward recognized him as William Smithback, the Times city desk reporter.
“Don’t shoot!” the journalist cried. “I was just, you know, looking around! Jesus, you’re scaring the hell out of me with that thing!”
Hayward holstered her weapon, feeling sheepish. “Sorry. I’m a bit on edge.”
Smithback squinted. “You’re Captain Hayward, isn’t that right?”
She nodded.
“I’m covering the Pendergast case for the Times.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Good. In fact, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
She glanced at her watch. “I’m very busy. Make an appointment through my office.”
“I already tried that. You don’t speak to the press.”
“That’s right.” She gave him a stern look and took a step forward, but he didn’t step aside to let her pass.
“Do you mind?”
“Listen,” he said, talking fast. “I think we can help each other. You know, exchange information, that kind of thing.”
“If you have any information of an evidentiary nature, you better divulge it now or get slapped with an obstruction charge,” she said sharply.
“No, nothing like that! It’s just that . . . well, I think I know why you’re here. You’re not satisfied. You think maybe Pendergast isn’t the one who assaulted Margo. Am I right?”
“What makes you say that?”
“A busy homicide captain doesn’t waste her valuable time visiting the scene of the crime when the case is wrapped up. You must have your doubts.”
Hayward said nothing, concealing her surprise.
“You wonder if the killer might have been Diogenes Pendergast, the agent’s brother. That’s why you’re here.”
Still, Hayward said nothing, her surprise mounting.
“And that happens to be why I’m here, too.” He paused and peered at her curiously, as if to gauge the effect of his words.
“What makes you think it wasn’t Agent Pendergast?” asked Hayward cautiously.
“Because I know Agent Pendergast. I’ve been covering him—in a manner of speaking—since the museum murders seven years ago. And I know Margo Green. She phoned me from her hospital bed. She swears it wasn’t Pendergast. She says her attacker had eyes of two different colors, one green, the other milky blue.”
“Pendergast is known to be a mas
ter of disguises.”
“Yeah, but that description fits his brother. Why would he disguise himself as his brother? And we already know his brother pulled the diamond heist and kidnapped that woman, Lady Maskelene. The only logical answer is that Diogenes also assaulted Margo and framed his brother. QED.”
Once again, Hayward had to control her surprise, his thinking so closely paralleling her own. Finally she allowed a smile. “Well, Mr. Smithback, you seem to be quite the investigative reporter.”
The Book of the Dead Page 9