Jane still couldn’t take her eyes off those lethal-looking bear claws. “I thought this was an archaeology museum,” she said. “How does this bear fit in?”
“Actually, it’s an everything museum, and that’s what makes it so hard to market ourselves. Most of this was collected by five generations of Crispins, but we also have a number of donated items. On the second floor, we display a lot of animals with fangs and claws. It’s strange, but that’s where the kids always seem to end up. They like to stare at carnivores. Bunnies bore them.”
“Bunnies can’t kill you,” said Jane.
“Maybe that’s what it is. We all like to be scared, don’t we?” Debbie turned and continued up the stairs.
“What’s up on the third floor?” Frost asked.
“More display space. I’ll show you. We use it for our rotating exhibits.”
“So you bring in new stuff?”
“Oh, we don’t have to bring in anything. There’s so much stored down in the basement that we could probably change that exhibit every month for the next twenty years and never repeat ourselves.”
“So what have you got up there now?”
“Bones.”
“You mean human?”
Debbie gave him a quietly amused look. “Of course. How else do we catch the attention of a hopelessly jaded public? We could show them the most exquisite Ming vase, or a carved ivory screen from Persia, and they’d turn their backs and go straight for the human remains.”
“And where do these bones come from?”
“Trust me. These are well documented. They were brought back from Turkey a century ago by one of the Crispins. I can’t remember which one, probably Cornelius. Dr. Robinson thought it was time to get them out of storage and back in the public eye. This exhibit’s all about ancient burial practices.”
“You sound like an archaeologist yourself.”
“Me?” Debbie laughed. “I’ve just got a lot of time on my hands, and I love beautiful things. So I think museums are worth supporting. Did you see the exhibit downstairs? Aside from the mounted carnivores, we have treasures that deserve to be seen. That’s what the museum should focus on, not stuffed bears, but you have to give the public what it wants. That’s why we had such high hopes for Madam X. She would have brought in enough cash to keep our heat turned on, at least.”
They reached the third floor and walked into the Ancient Cemeteries exhibit. Jane saw glass cases containing human bones arranged on sand, as though just uncovered by the archaeologist’s trowel. While Debbie walked briskly past them, Jane found herself falling behind, staring at skeletons curled into fetal positions, at a dead mother’s bony limbs lovingly embracing the fragmented remains of a child. The child could not have been much older than her own daughter, Regina. A whole village of the dead lies here, thought Jane. What sort of man would so brutally rip these people from their resting places and ship them to be ogled in a foreign land? Did Simon Crispin’s ancestor feel any inkling of guilt as he’d wrenched these bones from their graves? Old coins or marble statues or human bones-all were treated the same by the Crispin family. They were items to be collected and displayed like trophies.
“Detective?” said Debbie.
Leaving behind the silent dead, Jane and Frost followed Debbie into Simon Crispin’s office.
The man who sat waiting for them looked far frailer than she’d expected. His hair had thinned to white wisps, and brown age spots blotted his hands and scalp. But his piercing blue eyes were agleam with keen interest as he shook hands with his two visitors.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Crispin,” said Jane.
“I wish I could have attended the autopsy myself,” he said.
“But my hip hasn’t quite healed from surgery, and I’m still hobbling around with a cane. Please, sit down.”
Jane glanced around at the room, which was furnished with a massive oak desk and armchairs upholstered in frayed green velvet. With its dark wood paneling and Palladian windows, the room looked like it belonged in a genteel club from an earlier century, a place where gentlemen sipped sherry. But like the rest of the building, the room showed its age. The Persian carpet was worn almost threadbare, and the yellowing volumes in the barrister’s bookcase appeared to be at least a hundred years old.
Jane sat in one of the velvet chairs, feeling dwarfed by the throne-sized furniture, like a child playing queen for a day. Frost, too, settled into one of the massive chairs, but instead of looking kingly, he looked vaguely constipated on his velvet throne.
“We’ll do all we can to help you with this investigation,” said Simon. “Dr. Robinson’s the one in charge of daily operations. I’m afraid I’m rather useless since I broke my hip.”
“How did it happen?” asked Jane.
“I fell into an excavation pit in Turkey.” He saw Jane’s raised eyebrow and smiled. “Yes, even at the ripe old age of eighty-two, I was working in the field. I’ve never been merely an armchair archaeologist. I believe one has to get one’s hands dirty or you’re nothing but a hobbyist. ” The note of contempt he used for that last word left no doubt what he thought of such dabblers.
Debbie said, “You’ll be back in the field before you know it, Simon. At your age, it just takes time to heal.”
“I don’t have time. I left Turkey seven months ago, and I’m worried the excavation’s turned into a mess.” He gave a sigh. “But it couldn’t be as big a mess as we’re dealing with here.”
“I assume Dr. Robinson told you what we found in the autopsy yesterday,” said Jane.
“Yes. And to say that we’re shocked is an understatement. This is not the kind of attention any museum wants.”
“I doubt it’s the kind of attention Madam X wanted, either.”
“I wasn’t even aware we had a mummy in our collection until Nicholas discovered her during his inventory.”
“He said that was back in January.”
“Yes. Soon after I had my hip operation.”
“How does a museum lose track of something as valuable as a mummy?”
He gave a sheepish smile. “Visit any museum with a large collection, and chances are you’ll find basements as disorganized as ours. We’re a hundred and thirty years old. In that time, over a dozen curators and hundreds of interns, docents, and other volunteers have worked under this roof. Field notes get lost, records go missing, and items get misplaced. So it’s not surprising we’ve lost track of what we own.” He sighed. “I’m afraid I must assume the largest burden of blame.”
“Why?”
“For too long, I left the operational details entirely in the hands of Dr. William Scott-Kerr, our former curator. I was abroad so much, I didn’t know what was happening here at home. But Mrs. Willebrandt saw his deterioration. How he began to misplace papers or affix the wrong labels to displays. Eventually he became so forgetful, he couldn’t identify even common implements. The tragedy is, this man was once brilliant, a former field archaeologist who’d worked all over the world. Mrs. Willebrandt wrote me about her concerns, and when I got home, I could see we had a serious problem. I didn’t have the heart to immediately dismiss him, and as it turned out, I didn’t have to. He was struck by a car and killed, right outside this building. Only seventy-four years old, but it was probably a blessing, considering the grim prognosis had he lived.”
“Was it Alzheimer’s?” asked Jane.
Simon nodded. “The signs were probably there for a decade, but William managed to cover it up well. The collection was left in complete disarray. We didn’t realize how bad things were until I hired Dr. Robinson three years ago, and he discovered that accession ledgers were missing. He couldn’t find documentation for a number of crates in the basement. In January, when he opened up the crate containing Madam X, he had no idea what was inside it. Believe me, we were all stunned. We had no inkling there was ever a mummy in the collection.”