Douglas Preston - The Cabinet of Curiosities

“So now you’re cynical, you’re tired, you’ve come to realize that the whole idea of protect and serve is farcical, especially out there on the streets, where there doesn’t even seem to be right or wrong, nobody worth protecting, and nobody worth serving.”

There was a silence.

“Are we through with the character analysis?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

“For the moment. Except to say that, yes, this is a questionable assignment. But not in the way you’re thinking.”

The next silence stretched into minutes.

They stopped at a light, and O’Shaughnessy took an opportunity to cast a covert glance toward Pendergast. The man, as if knowing the glance was coming, caught his eye and pinned it. O’Shaughnessy almost jumped, he looked away so fast.

“Did you, by any chance, catch the show last year, Costuming History ?” Pendergast asked, his voice now light and pleasant.

“What?”

“I’ll take that as a no. You missed a splendid exhibition. The Met has a fine collection of historical clothing dating back to the early Middle Ages. Most of it was in storage. But last year, they mounted an exhibition showing how clothing evolved over the last six centuries. Absolutely fascinating. Did you know that all ladies at Louis XIV’s court at Versailles were required to have a thirteen-inch waist or less? And that their dresses weighed between thirty and forty pounds?”

O’Shaughnessy realized he didn’t know how to answer. The conversation had taken such a strange and sudden tack that he found himself momentarily stunned.

“I was also interested to learn that in the fifteenth century, a man’s codpiece—”

This tidbit was mercifully interrupted by a screech of brakes as the Rolls swerved to avoid a cab cutting across three lanes of traffic.

“Yankee barbarians,” said Pendergast mildly. “Now, where was I? Ah yes, the codpiece…”

The Rolls was caught in Midtown traffic now, and O’Shaughnessy began to wonder just how much longer this ride was going to take.

The Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum was sheeted in Beaux Arts marble, decorated with vast sprays of flowers, and almost unbearably crowded. O’Shaughnessy hung back while the strange FBI agent talked to one of the harried volunteers at the information desk. She picked up a phone, called someone, then put it down again, looking highly irritated. O’Shaughnessy began to wonder what this Pendergast was up to. Throughout the extended trip uptown he’d said nothing about his intended plan of action.

He glanced around. It was an Upper East Side crowd, for sure: ladies dressed to the nines clicking here and there in high heels, uniformed schoolchildren lined up and well behaved, a few tweedy-looking academics wandering about with thoughtful faces. Several people were staring at him disapprovingly, as if it was in bad taste to be in the Met wearing a police officer’s uniform. He felt a rush of misanthropy. Hypocrites.

Pendergast motioned him over, and they passed into the museum, running a gauntlet of ticket takers in the process, past a case full of Roman gold, plunging at last into a confusing sequence of rooms crowded with statues, vases, paintings, mummies, and all manner of art. Pendergast talked the whole time, but the crowds were so dense and the noise so deafening, O’Shaughnessy caught only a few words.

They passed through a quieter suite of rooms full of Asian art, finally arriving in front of a door of shiny gray metal. Pendergast opened it without knocking, revealing a small reception area. A strikingly good-looking receptionist sat behind a desk of blond wood. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of his uniform. O’Shaughnessy gave her a menacing look.

“May I help you?” She addressed Pendergast, but her eyes continued to flicker anxiously toward O’Shaughnessy.

“Sergeant O’Shaughnessy and Special Agent Pendergast are here to see Dr. Wellesley.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Alas, no.”

The receptionist hesitated. “I’m sorry. Special Agent—?”

“Pendergast. Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

At this she flushed deeply. “Just a moment.” She picked up her phone. O’Shaughnessy could hear it ringing in an office just off the reception area.

“Dr. Wellesley,” the secretary said, “there is a Special Agent Pendergast from the FBI and a police officer here to see you.”

The voice that echoed out of the office was easily heard by all. It was a crisp, no-nonsense voice, feminine, yet cold as ice, and so unrelievedly English it made O’Shaughnessy bristle.

“Unless they are here to arrest me, Heather, the gentlemen can make an appointment like everyone else. I am engaged.”

The crash of her telephone hitting the cradle was equally unmistakable.

The receptionist looked up at them with high nervousness. “Dr. Wellesley—”

But Pendergast was already moving toward the office from which the voice had issued. This is more like it, O’Shaughnessy thought, as Pendergast swung open the door, placing himself squarely in the doorway. At least the guy, for all his pretensions, was no pushover. He knew how to cut through the bullshit.

The unseen voice, laden with sarcasm, cut the air. “Ah, the proverbial copper with his foot in the door. Pity it wasn’t locked so you could batter it down with your truncheon.”

It was as if Pendergast had not heard. His fluid, honeyed voice filled the office with warmth and charm. “Dr. Wellesley, I have come to you because you are the world’s foremost authority on the history of dress. And I hope you’ll permit me to say your identification of the Greek peplos of Vergina was most thrilling to me personally. I have long had an interest in the subject.”

There was a brief silence. “Flattery, Mr. Pendergast, will at least get you inside.”

O’Shaughnessy followed the agent into a small but very well-appointed office. The furniture looked like it had come directly from the museum’s collection, and the walls were hung with a series of eighteenth-century watercolors of opera costumes. O’Shaughnessy thought they might be the characters of Figaro, Rosina, and Count Almaviva from The Barber of Seville. Opera was his sole, and his secret, indulgence.

He seated himself, crossing and then uncrossing his legs, shifting in the impossibly uncomfortable chair. No matter what he did, he still seemed to take up too much space. The blue of his uniform seemed unbearably gauche amid the elegant furnishings. He glanced back up at the watercolors, allowing the bars of an aria to go through his head.

Wellesley was an attractive woman in her mid-forties, beautifully dressed. “I see you admire my pictures,” she said to O’Shaughnessy, eyeing him shrewdly.

“Sure,” said O’Shaughnessy. “If you like dancing in a wig, pumps, and straitjacket.”

Wellesley turned to Pendergast. “Your associate has a rather queer sense of humor.”

“Indeed.”

“Now what can I do for you gentlemen?”

Pendergast removed a bundle from under his suit, loosely wrapped in paper. “I would like you to examine this dress,” he said, unrolling the bundle across the curator’s desk. She backed up slightly in horror as the true dimensions of its filth were exposed to view.

O’Shaughnessy thought he detected a peculiar smell. Very peculiar. It occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, Pendergast wasn’t on the take — that this was for real.

“Good lord. Please,” she said, stepping farther back and putting a hand before her face. “I do not do police work. Take this revolting thing away.”

“This revolting thing, Dr. Wellesley, belonged to a nineteen-year-old girl who was murdered over a hundred years ago, dissected, dismembered, and walled up in a tunnel in lower Manhattan. Sewn up into the dress was a note, which the girl wrote in her own blood. It gave her name, age, and address. Nothing else — ink of that sort does not encourage prolixity. It was the note of a girl who knew she was about to die. She knew that no one would help her, no one would save her. Her only wish was that her body be identified — that she not be forgotten. I could not help her then, but I am trying to now. That is why I am here.” The dress seemed to quiver slightly, and O’Shaughnessy realized with a start that the FBI agent’s hand was trembling with emotion. At least, that’s how it looked to him. That a law officer would actually care about something like this was a revelation.