"There's a reference in the minutes to the publican decorating the room to their specifications," Hilary said. "You asked what kind of group it was. I think it was just an informal gathering, nothing official. They were mostly anthropologists, interested in bones, and I suppose they thought the skull decor was cute, or something. I've always thought that the pub's name was a bit of a joke," she added. "And that perhaps it was chosen as the meeting place for that reason. The pub predates Piper by about twenty years."
Brook and Hare? A joke? "I don't get it, I'm afraid," I said after a moment's pause.
"The Brook and Hare, Burke and Hare," she said.
"Burke and Hare," I said, slowly. "It rings a bell, but you're going to have to help me here. I'm from the colonies, you know."
She laughed. "In that case, it behooves me as a representative of an imperial power to enlighten you. William Burke and William Hare were a couple of rather notorious mid-nineteenth century grave robbers in Edinburgh, Scotland. They made their money digging up bodies and selling the cadavers to doctors and other scientists. This was a time when science was quite the rage, and apparently supplying skeletons for research was a lucrative venture. Grave robbing, however, was frowned upon, even then. When the Bobbies posted a guard on the cemetery Burke and Hare favored, the two of them began to create their own cadavers, to put it politely. They murdered people in other words, so they'd have something to sell. They were caught eventually and executed for their crimes."
"Perhaps the group that met here thought the pub name was cute, then, too," I said. "I found some of the content, and certainly the tone, of those meetings a bit offensive. These people were—"
"Racist pigs? I know what you mean. I think you have to be sympathetic to the times, you know, the standards of the day. I mean we shouldn't judge the past by current thinking. Having said that, I would agree with you. I can't help but feel that this was a group of men who were not only racists, but misogynists, too. There wasn't a single woman in the group, and there are letters in the file from at least one woman asking to be admitted to the group, and others from the members making pretty clear this was not something that would ever be allowed. Does the name Francis Galton mean anything to you?"
"Sure," I said. "He wrote the book about travel that Piper used as a reference point, The Art of Travel, I think it was. And he was the man who coined the term eugenics, wasn't he? The idea that races can be improved by only letting the fittest, in all senses of the word, people marry? Piper attended a lecture of Galton's, and was not terribly impressed."
"Did you know that Galton developed what he called a Beauty Map of the British Isles, rating cities by how attractive the women were. London won, of course."
"Ugh," I said.
"Exactly," she agreed. "I'll take your word for it that Piper didn't approve of this kind of thing, but the fact of the matter is that some of the members of the group that met here would not have disagreed with Galton's theories. A rum bunch when it comes right down to it."
"A rum bunch, but not, perhaps, atypical, as you put it," I said.
"Maybe," she said. "Most of these men were scientists, you understand. They had an academic interest in the subject at hand. Having said that, some pretty terrible things were done in the name of science. And I'm not talking about murderers like Burke and Hare."
"You're referring perhaps to the bad habit some explorers had of bringing—what's the word I'm looking for here, live specimens maybe?—back with them, bringing native people back home from their travels and showing them off to an amazed public?"
"Yes. I know that we can't be self-righteous about it. When you think of the experiments the Nazis carried out, we could hardly say that we are past all that. But at the end of the last century, at the time Piper was our chief curator, leading anthropologists in both the States and here regularly plundered graveyards in the name of research."
"I have been struck more than once in the course of my research," I said, not telling her what that research actually entailed. "That perhaps my definition of civilization, my previously firmly held conviction that things are almost inevitably getting better despite the odd setback, needs to be rethought. I have to tell you, though, that Piper makes it quite clear he does not agree with these kinds of theories. I have trouble reconciling this room and the group you have described with the author of the diaries."
"I hope you're right," she said. "Sometimes working on this stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it's just boys will be boys."
"On that score, I thought there was a little bit of one-upmanship in that group," I said. "As if each presentation had to top the last."
"Exactly. Let's face it, these guys collected skulls. Not for sport exactly, but each month one of them had to come in with a skull and it was, as you've said, rather competitive. Piper was a big success with his skull from Hungary. No one else had come in with one anywhere near as old. Unfortunately, they had no idea just how old it was. They almost certainly didn't. I don't want to imply, when I talk about Burke and Hare, that the men who met in this room killed people to get the skulls or anything, but I can't help feeling it was entertainment as well as science, you know? Rather grotesque, when you think about it."
"Very." There was something niggling away at the back of my own skull at that moment, but I was focused on what I saw as a more immediate problem. "Where did the skulls go, then?" I asked. "Does the Bramley still have the skeleton Piper found with the Venus?" Please, I pleaded silently, let her say yes, so I can show Stalin to Kdroly and get the thing out from under my bed!
"No, we don't. We've looked. It's gone."
"You often read about fantastic things being rediscovered in a drawer somewhere in storage in a museum," I said, mightily disappointed, but not prepared to give up. "It may still be possible to find it. Couldn't it be there, somewhere?"
"I don't think so. Most of the stories you hear about that sort of rediscovery occur when someone is looking for something else, and just happens upon the object, whatever it is. But we've done a thorough search for this one. Once the Venus was confirmed, we got right on it. The Cottingham Museum in Toronto asked us to have a look for the skeleton, of course, but we would have, regardless. This isn't new. We had an inquiry from someone even before the Cottingham made it official. This person was looking for both the skeleton and the Venus. The Venus wasn't here, and the skeleton isn't either."
"Someone asked about the Venus?"
"Yes," she said. "Amazing, isn't it? It could have been someone working for the Cottingham, I suppose. They went on to find it, though, didn't they? Serves this place right, if you ask me. The man who found it, perhaps you know, is a former chief curator of this museum, a chap by the name of Karoly Molnar. I really liked him. He was trying to pull us kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. People said he got the job because of his wife. She was the chair of the board's daughter, don't you know. But I thought he was great. And he's the one who figured it all out."
'I've met him," I said. "I interviewed him for this article I'm writing."
"Weren't you impressed?" she said.
"Very," I replied.
"I adored him," she said.
We sat in companionable silence finishing our beers, she probably thinking about Karoly, I about Piper. As I looked at the little row of skulls at the ceiling, the thought that had been worrying its way to the forefront of my brain, surfaced.
"Calvaria Club," I said. It was almost a whisper.
"Sorry? I missed that. What did you say?" Hilary said.