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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 sca
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 tu
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 tu
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 co
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 di
She pulled her laptop toward her, opened a new file, and began typing.
Chapter 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.”