Everyone agreed it was the party of the year.
Waiters in Egyptian costume plied the buzzing crowd with trays of caviar and frosty magnums of champagne. Hundreds of beeswax candles cast a cozy, flattering light on the cream of New York society, people with names like Vanderbilt, Astor and Gould. Mayor Hewitt chatted with the museum’s energetic director, Morris K. Jessup. A thick haze of cigar smoke hung like smog below the high ceiling.
Outside, Christmas wreaths adorned the brick façade of the American Museum of Natural History, but in the spacious entrance hall beyond its front doors, the décor was more exotic. A much-anticipated new exhibit would be opening on January 2nd: Ptolemy’s Tomb: The Secrets of Alexandria. The soiree was intended to provide an advance viewing of the treasures brought back by Dr. Julius Sabelline before they went on display to the general public.
Glass cases held amulets and terracotta amphorae and crumbling fragments of papyrus scrolls. There were blue-glazed scarab beetles and solid gold bracelets of writhing snakes. But the thickest knot of party-goers swirled around the six mummies in stone sarcophagi, one of whom was supposedly the famed mathematician and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy.
Speeches were made, more champagne consumed. By midnight, the party started winding down. The long line of lacquered carriages outside ferried their well-heeled (and well-oiled) passengers to mansions across Central Park, or to late-night diversions in less reputable areas like the Tenderloin. The hired staff cleaned up and departed for their own beds in cramped tenements and row houses. At twelve-thirty, the front doors of the museum were locked. Only eight people remained.
Dr. Julius Sabelline, the reclusive Egyptologist who had brought the relics back to New York from Alexandria.
His wife, Araminta, and twenty-year-old son, Jackson.
The socialite Mrs. Orpha Winter and Count Balthazar Jozsef Habsburg-Koháry, financier of the dig.
Nelson Holland, head of Near East and North African Acquisitions at the museum.
Davis Sharpe, Dr. Sabelline’s junior colleague.
And lastly, Jeremy Boot, the guard stationed at the front entrance.
Dr. Sabelline retired to his office to return one of the most valuable artifacts to a strongbox for safekeeping. Half an hour later, when he had failed to return, his wife went looking for him, accompanied by Mr. Sharpe. Dr. Sabelline’s office door was locked and he didn’t respond to their entreaties to open it. Boot was summoned with a spare set of keys.
He unlocked the door, took two steps inside, and promptly vomited on the carpet. Mrs. Sabelline rushed in behind him. A scream of horror echoed through the corridors of the illustrious institution….
“Does it actually say she screamed?” Harrison Fearing Pell interrupted. “I don’t remember that bit.”
John Weston paused in his dramatic rendering of the police report. “Wouldn’t she, though? Finding her husband lying there in a pool of blood, all mangled.” He gave Harry a sober look. “I’d shriek like a schoolgirl and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”
“I’m sure you would, John, but I believe it says she fainted. Don’t muddy the waters. They’re thick enough already.” She suppressed a smile. “I won’t hold it against you for taking liberties with the party. All of that’s probably true. But don’t embellish the crime itself, please. Or the key witnesses.”
The pair reached the corner of Seventy-Third Street and Eighth Avenue. Harry, a solemn, diminutive figure in sturdy boots and a red wool coat, her strawberry blonde hair dusted with melting snow. John, nearly a foot taller with brown hair and lively eyes, shaded now under the brim of a grey Homburg hat.
They had been close friends for many years, but in recent months, the paths of their lives had taken a strange twist. As of that morning, they had signed consultancy contracts with the New York branch of the Society for Psychical Research and been sent off to the American Museum of Natural History to investigate a murder with some very peculiar elements.
It had proven impossible to find a hansom cab so early on Christmas Day, so Harry and John took the elevated train to Fifty-Ninth Street and trudged north from there. To the right, the gentle hills and walking paths of Central Park lay under four inches of pristine snow.
John held his hands up. “Just trying to imagine the scene. Give it a little spice.”
Harry shot him a disapproving squint. “What else did you make up?”
“Not a single thing, I swear.” He consulted the paper. “Right…time of death occurred between twelve forty-five and one-thirty a.m., when the body was found. Cause was blood loss from six nasty stab wounds, all confined to the neck and upper body. No weapon was found, so the killer must have taken it with him.”
“Or her.”
“Or her,” John agreed. “But the ghastliest aspect is what was done to his eyes.”
Harry nodded, gazing distantly into the park. “Without question. It implies a very personal motive. And an aberrant killer. Someone with a point to make, who won’t hesitate to commit an act others would find repugnant.”
“It reminds me of the Hyde case.” John paused. “The way Brady covered his victims’ faces. This killer may be taking it a step further, but the result is the same. They can’t look at him anymore.”
“Or her,” Harry corrected automatically.
“Or her.”
“It’s a fair point, but we don’t know why this killer took Dr. Sabelline’s eyes. It could be connected to something ritualistic, a burial practice related to his work. Or something else entirely that’s of significance only to his murderer. There are no other similarities that we’re aware of. No bloody messages. No satanic pacts.”
She blinked snow from her eyelashes. Harry’s favorite hat—a saucy confection with a single black raven’s feather—had blown off on the elevated platform, a casualty of New York’s sudden capricious gusts. “Let’s hope this one’s not a repeat killer too.”
They crossed Seventy-Fifth Street, walking along the east side of the avenue and the low stone wall that skirted the park. The lake lay on the other side. Beyond it stretched the woods of the Ramble. Bare of leaves, with fresh snow on the ground, this rustic section of Central Park looked bright and open.
It had been a different place on a sultry August night the previous summer, when Harry chased another killer into its dense thickets. She thought briefly of an archway dark as midnight, and the dull gleam of a blade….
“Let’s move on to the locked door,” John said. “There were only two keys. Sabelline had one, the guard had the other.”
Harry tore her gaze from the Ramble. The terror she’d felt that night seemed so unreal now, with John at her side and the happy shrieks of children in the distance.
“The lock had been changed at Sabelline’s request on the morning of the party,” she said. “It makes a copy by a third party unlikely, although not impossible. But it does raise the question of why he changed the locks at all. It almost sounds like he expected a break-in.”
They’d both read the report on the train, but Harry found reviewing the details aloud helped clarify her thoughts.
“Which is why the police initially arrested Boot, the guard. Even if Sabelline had left his office door unlocked and the killer waltzed straight in, how could he—or she—have locked it behind…them?” John thrust his hands in his coat pockets. “Sabelline’s key was found in his desk, where he’d placed it when he entered. There were no windows in the office. So Boot is the only person present who could have done it.”
They waited as a carriage rolled past on its way downtown, the horses’ breath steaming in the cold air. Harry switched the small valise she carried to her left hand. They’d made a hurried stop at her townhouse on West Tenth Street before heading uptown so she could grab the bag. Harry had kept it packed and ready for years.
“And yet Boot was released hours later for lack of evidence,” she pointed out. “No blood on his shoes, or anywhere on his clothing. And the others all saw him slip out for a cigarette. He was gone only a few minutes, and a smoking butt was observed in the alley when they summoned him back in. I believe the police found it and took it into evidence. Boot simply wouldn’t have had time to commit murder.” She gave a thin smile. “It’s a pretty mystery, John. However, I’m certain that once we are in possession of all the facts, a solution will present itself.”
“It had better. I wouldn’t want our first case for the American S.P.R. be a dog’s dinner.” John skipped over a puddle of slush. “What about motive? The police seem to assume it was a robbery since Sabelline’s strongbox was emptied.”
“Let us not assume anything,” Harry said dryly. “The report doesn’t even specify what was taken, except that the objects were connected with the Egyptian exhibit. What else?”
“Only the bizarre fact of footprints not belonging to the victim leading into a pool of his blood but not out again. It’s what drew the S.P.R.’s attention to the case in the first place. That and the fact that Orpha Winter happened to be there.” His voice took on a gleeful sing-song quality. “This one’s a stumper, Harry.”
Besides her status as one of the shining lights of New York society, Orpha Winter happened to be a vice president of the S.P.R. She was also a potential suspect in Dr. Sabelline’s murder. This was almost certainly a conflict of interest, but one Harry had to overlook if she wanted to be an agent for the Society.
“Maybe Orpha did it,” Harry muttered.
“We can’t rule her out,” John agreed cheerfully. “Though the footprints were most definitely male. Size eleven. Both Jackson Sabelline and Nelson Holland are size eleven, but their shoes didn’t match the tread.”
Harry sighed. “There’s much yet to be learned. I’m sure this morning’s interviews will shed some light on what happened the night before last.”
Having been forewarned by the sad fate of Harry’s little French number, John grabbed onto his hat as a gust of wind swept across the park. They weren’t far from the fortress-like structure of the Croton Receiving Reservoir. Harry fancied she could feel the chill of that great body of water even from several blocks away.
“I hope so,” John said, jamming the Homburg more firmly onto his head. “Rupert’s probably opening all my presents right now and handing them out to the other savages.”
By mutual unspoken agreement, their steps slowed as the gothic building of the American Museum of Natural History appeared on the north side of Seventy-Seventh Street. Two police wagons stood on the verge.
Harland Kaylock, vice president of the New York branch of the Society for Psychical Research, had promised his newest agents full authority to view the crime scene. But despite her recent success in the Jekyll and Hyde case, Harry felt a twinge of nerves. Working for the S.P.R. was a lifelong dream come true. She didn’t want to contemplate what failure on her first official assignment might mean.
Oh, she knew Kaylock didn’t expect her to actually solve the murder. That was a job for the police. Homicide lay well outside the bounds of the S.P.R.’s mandate, which focused on apparitions, clairvoyance, precognitive dreams, thought-reading, hauntings, mesmerism and other supposedly supernatural phenomena.
Harry’s only task would be to determine whether there were any credible occult elements involved in the case, and to investigate them to the best of her ability. She would then compile her findings in a report almost no one would read, and that would be the end of the matter.
The real problem, which even Harry had to acknowledge, was her own ambition. Growing up in the shadow of her elder sister Myrtle Fearing Pell, whose reputation as the scourge of the criminal classes, both high and low, seemed to grow by the day, Harry felt an acute need to prove herself. Perversely, solving the Brady case had only poured oil on the flames.
A single victory could be chalked up to luck. Now she had the chance to show her new employers she was, if not smarter than Myrtle—no, never that, Harry thought with a hollow laugh—at least competent. She could already picture the half-amused, half-pitying look in Myrtle’s cool grey eyes if her sister got wind that Harry’s case had dead-ended.
John seemed to understand all this, for he didn’t rush her. “I haven’t been here in ages,” he said, surveying the five-story red-brick building. “We came once on a trip when I was in school at St. Andrew’s. Lots of fossils and dusty taxidermied animals, as I recall.”
“I’ve never been, not since it moved from the Central Park Armory,” Harry admitted. “Mrs. Rivers took me and Myrtle there when we were children. I don’t think Myrtle cared much for it, except for the venomous spiders, of course. And the snakes.”
John laughed. “They had live ones too back then, didn’t they? I got the impression the museum was more popular before it moved uptown. When my class came here, oh, seven or eight years ago, it was practically deserted.”
“I imagine the new Alexandria exhibit is supposed to give attendance a boost.” Harry stamped her boots, hoping to regain some feeling in her toes. It had been nearly a mile’s walk from the elevated station. “Shall we, Mr. Weston?”
“Off to the races,” he said, tipping his hat at her.
A lone guard stood dolefully outside the front doors, his cheeks ruddy with cold. “We’re closed,” he yelled the moment they came within hearing distance.
“And we’re expected.” John flashed a toothsome smile. “Merry Christmas, sir.”
“Not for me,” the guard grumbled. “First time I’ve ever worked on Christmas Day, and it ain’t worth the pay and a half.” He eyed them with open disenchantment, and a touch of quiet but heartfelt hostility. “You the pair come to see Mr. Holland?”
“We are indeed.” John rubbed his hands together and turned the grin up a notch, undeterred in his relentless spreading of yuletide cheer. “Can you point us in the right direction?”
“Let’s see some identification first.”
John and Harry produced their spanking new S.P.R. badges—a circle with the Greek letter Psi in the center, which John thought looked a bit like a candelabra—and were ushered inside. The Egyptian exhibits had been moved to the east wing early that morning and replaced with the usual motley assortment of stuffed fur, fowl and scales. Altogether, the museum boasted some twelve thousand birds, more than a thousand mammals, three thousand reptiles and fish, and a large number of corals. Its collection was unrivaled, in America at least, but the lifelike dioramas for which it was to become famous in later years had not yet materialized, and some of its harsher critics compared the museum to a glorified cabinet of curiosities.
Harry felt the gazes of dozens of glass eyes as the guard re-locked the door and escorted them up several flights of stairs to the fourth-floor corner office of Nelson Holland, head of Near East and North African Acquisitions.
“Come in,” a deep, resonant voice commanded.
“S.P.R. people, Mr. Holland,” the guard said, eying them askance.
“Of course. Mrs. Winter mentioned you’d be popping by.”
Nelson Holland rose from his desk to greet them. Harry guessed his age at somewhere in the late forties. He sported thick auburn whiskers with his chin shaved clean. Holland had narrow, close-set eyes and a scholar’s high forehead and fine bone structure, but his hands and shoulders indicated a powerful build.
Two windows behind the desk overlooked Central Park, where people were venturing out for strolls and sledding on some of the larger hills. Old Latin maps hung on the walls, and a few photographs of Holland posing in exotic jungle locales. Tomes on history and archaeology lined the shelves of a mahogany bookcase. It was a highly ordered room, Harry noticed, with minimal clutter. Even the masses of paper on the desk were organized in neat piles.
“Mr. Weston,” Holland said, shaking John’s hand. “And Miss Fearing Pell. I’ve heard of your sister, of course.”
“Of course,” Harry said with a tight smile. “Who hasn’t?”
John leapt into the silence. “Perhaps you’re familiar with Miss Pell from the Hyde case?” he said loyally. “She’s the one who caught him.”
Holland frowned. “Those murders last summer? I vaguely recall them from the papers. In any event, Orpha spoke quite highly of you both.” He gestured to chairs that had been placed in front of the desk. “Please, sit down.”
Harry and John shared a brief, puzzled look. Orpha Winter was Kaylock’s archrival at the S.P.R. Neither of them had met her yet, although Harry knew her reputation. She was a firm believer in psychic and occult phenomena, unlike Mr. Kaylock, who was known to be a skeptic. Harry couldn’t help but wonder why Mrs. Winter would give them such a ringing endorsement.
“Was she here?” Harry asked. “Since the party, I mean.”
“Yes, Orpha stopped by early this morning. She was interested in the progress of the investigation. I suppose you know they released Mr. Boot.” Holland picked up an inkwell, examined it in a distracted way, then set it back down. “Hard to imagine he’d do such a thing.” He gave a humorless laugh. “But I suppose that leaves the rest of us. I honestly don’t know what to make of it.”
“I imagine the police thoroughly searched the building?”
“Oh yes. They’re still at it. Windows and doors locked tight. No sign of any break-in.”
Harry gave him a small, sympathetic smile. “What can you tell us about Julius Sabelline?”
“A brilliant man. We’re all reeling from the tragedy.” Holland leaned back. “Jessup has managed to keep it out of the papers so far, but I expect the murder will be front page news by tomorrow. Quite a disaster for the museum. I’m sure they’ll play up the curse angle. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
John visibly perked up. “Curse?”
Holland sighed. “The relic taken from Dr. Sabelline’s strongbox was supposed to be cursed. Of course, this wasn’t uncommon. In ancient Egypt, curses were often placed on sacred objects and possessions to stop the living from disturbing them, grave robbers mainly.”
“Interesting,” John said, drawing out every syllable with relish. “And what did this particular curse say?”
“It’s a long one.”
“We’re in no great hurry,” John said with an encouraging smile, pulling out a notebook and putting nib to paper.
Holland sighed again, more deeply. “Some nonsense about They who shall disturb this talisman of the Underworld shall lose their earthly positions and honors, be incinerated in a furnace, capsize and drown at sea, have no successors, receive no tomb or funerary offerings of their own….Um, Their bodies will shrivel because they will starve without sustenance, they will be struck blind and their bones will decay to dust.”
“That does seem quite exhaustive—” John began, scribbling furiously.
“As for every mayor, every wab-priest, every scribe and every nobleman who shall touch the talisman, his arm shall be cut off like that of this bull, his neck shall be twisted off like that of a bird, his office shall not exist, the position of his son shall not exist, his house shall not exist in Nubia, his tomb shall not exist in the necropolis, his god shall not accept his white bread, his flesh shall belong to the fire, his children shall belong to the fire, his corpse shall not belong to the earth, I shall be against him as a crocodile on the water, as a serpent in the field, and as an enemy in the necropolis.”
John waited to see if there was any more, but Mr. Holland seemed to have wound down. Harry tried to maintain a sober expression. She had little use for curses unless they were carried out by human agency—which seemed to be the case with Julius Sabelline, unless vengeful mummies had taken to wearing size eleven men’s dress shoes.
“How many people knew of the curse?” Harry asked.
“Oh, everyone involved in the exhibit. We thought it was, well, rather funny.”
“I’m impressed that you memorized the whole thing.”
“As I said, we made rather a joke of it.” He glanced meaningfully at a clock atop the bookshelf.
“Just a few more questions, if you don’t mind, Mr. Holland. I understand you were in your office when Dr. Sabelline was killed?”
“Yes. I had some grant proposals I planned to take home over the holiday. There are several expeditions in the works for next year and we need to find backers. Mr. Jessup believes strongly that exploration is a key mission of the museum.”
“Such as the one Dr. Sabelline conducted in Alexandria?”
“Precisely. That was financed by a private benefactor and the Egypt Exploration Fund.”
“By private benefactor, I take it you’re referring to Count Balthazar Jozsef Habsburg-Koháry?” Harry asked. Kaylock had mentioned his name that morning at the S.P.R. offices.
“Yes. The Egypt Exploration Fund covered about twenty percent of the costs, and the count generously paid for the rest. He is a collector of antiquities.”
“So he was Sabelline’s patron?”
“I suppose you could say that. Sabelline worked with Flinders Petrie for many years until they had a falling out. Julius was quite well-connected in Egypt. Spoke Coptic and Greek fluently. A stickler on methodology, not like some of the slapdash archaeologists out there. When his partnership with Petrie ended, Count Habsburg-Koháry approached him about a dig in Luxor. It proved successful and they planned a second expedition to Alexandria.”
“Did Dr. Sabelline have any enemies?”
“None that I can think of. Julius was a quiet man, devoted to his work.”
John looked up from his notes. As a student at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, he knew firsthand how bitter academic rivalries could become. “Were any other teams elbowed aside at Alexandria?”
“Quite the opposite. Most of them laughed at him when he said he planned to dig there. Nothing of value had ever been found. The general wisdom is that there was nothing left. Sabelline proved them all wrong. It turned out to be a goldmine.”
“He found items belonging to Claudius Ptolemy?”
“Yes, among other things. The city was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. It became the capital of Egypt and quickly grew to be one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, second only to Rome.”
For the first time, Holland showed a spark of enthusiasm. It was clearly a subject he enjoyed talking about. “Then, in 641 AD, Alexandria was besieged and fell to the Rashidun Caliphate. The city entered a long decline. Over the centuries, the original granite and marble buildings vanished, but the ancient sewer system remained. There’s a network of underground chambers. It was in one of these that the primary find was made. The Tomb of Ptolemy.”
“That was about five months ago?” John asked.
“Yes. It took time to transport the relics to New York and prepare them for exhibition. Julius had been working on it night and day.”
“Do you know why he went back to his office after the party ended?” Harry asked.
Holland nodded. “He’d gone to lock up one of the objects on display. Sabelline kept a strongbox next to his desk. That’s what was emptied. His papers were left untouched, but his attacker took an item Count Habsburg-Koháry Balthazar placed special value on. It was a condition of lending it to the museum that it be secured at night.”
“Which item carried the curse?” John asked.
“The amulet of Osiris. It’s called a Tet, or Djed. About the size of my hand. I suppose you could say it resembles a pillar with four stacked squares on top. The curse was in Greek on the lid of the box containing it. We don’t know who wrote it, although Julius believed it was Ptolemy himself. There are also three hieroglyphs carved into the amulet. One meaning door, or gateway. A second representing a key.”
“And the third?”
“The third is an Amenta. The symbol for the Underworld.”
“The key to the gates of Hell,” John whispered.
“Something like that.”
Harry adjusted the small valise on her lap. “Was anything else missing?”
“From the exhibit? No. And some of the items on display were solid gold, worth far more than the contents of Julius’s strongbox.” Holland tapped his fingers on the desk. “I must say, Miss Pell, the police already asked me all of these questions. I thought you’d be focused on the occult aspects. Isn’t that why Mrs. Winter sent you?”
“I’m interested in the facts,” Harry said blandly. “All of them.”
“Your employer is a great friend of the museum, which is the only reason I agreed to entertain this visit, but I’m afraid there’s not much more I can tell you.”
“Of course,” John said. “We’ll just be on our—”
“One last thing. Was anyone with you in your office that night?” Harry interrupted.
“I was working alone. I believe Sharpe was also in his office. But you can ask him that yourself.”
“We’d like to see Dr. Sabelline’s office first, if you don’t mind.”
Holland rose with a weary expression. “Yes, I thought you might. The body was taken away yesterday, but otherwise the room was left exactly as they found it.”
He escorted them back down to the basement. A young patrolman from the Thirty-First Ward stood outside Sabelline’s office. He had a droopy mustache, closely shorn hair, and the beefy solidity typical of New York’s Finest.
“Officer Clancy, these are the people I told you about. From the S.P.R.” Holland said it with an air of faint awkwardness, like someone pretending to laugh at a joke that had gone on just a bit too long.
Harry presented the patrolman with her card. It still secretly thrilled her to see her name engraved next to those illustrious initials, Holland be damned.
“You worked the Jekyll and Hyde case, didn’t you?” Clancy said.
Harry smiled. Clearly, her reputation was growing. “I did.”
The policeman nodded slowly. “Are you the poor bugger she shot?” he asked, turning to John.
John made a choking sound that sounded suspiciously like suppressed laughter. “Afraid so.”
“It was an accident,” Harry said, a red flush creeping up her neck. “He’s fine now.”
“That true?”
John flapped his left arm. “Right as rain.”
Clancy grinned. “Well, Miss Pell, you might be a lousy shot, but you brought that maniac down in the end, so I guess you’re okay.” He stood aside. “Don’t touch anything,” he warned. “The detectives have been through twice, but it’s still an active crime scene until they say otherwise.”
Harry and John nodded assent. Nelson Holland discreetly cleared his throat.
“I’m afraid I have to leave you to it,” he said. “As deeply as it pains all of us, the exhibit must proceed without Julius, and there is much yet to be done. If you wish to interview Davis Sharpe, you’ll find him at the end of the hall. Just follow it around to the left. He works with his door open.”
John thanked him for his time. Harry gave him a card in case he thought of anything else, but the careless way he shoved it into his pocket and hurried off made her doubt they’d be hearing any more from Mr. Holland.
“Ready?” she asked John.
He nodded, hazel eyes dead serious for a change. They’d been to one crime scene together before, an old grain elevator on the East River where an actress named Anne Marlowe had been brutally strangled. When Harry and John arrived, the chain was still wrapped around her slender neck. The killer had slashed open her wrist and used the blood to write Mors me solum potest prohibere in backwards Latin on an adjacent wall.
Only death can stop me.
The stranger part had been the fingerprints John found burned into her skin. It was one of several aspects of the Hyde case Harry had never resolved to her satisfaction.
Anne Marlowe had not been an easy sight. In fact, the image had haunted Harry for days. But when she opened the heavy oak door of Dr. Sabelline’s office and saw what waited there, she understood that there were far worse ways to die.