The Bone Vault

“And I must interject, A

“I never claimed to have toldyou about it, Richard. I had no idea she was so taken with your, your…beasts,” she said dismissively. A

It was ordinarily my habit to interview each witness alone, which we would attempt to do later on, but Mike’s idea to bring the group together brought out talons on each that might not have been visible one-on-one.

“You seem to think you had the market cornered on her friendship, A

“Katrina was hardly what I would call African, would you, Elijah? She was Dutch. Boer. About as primitive as Erik.” A

“Are you Dutch, too?” I asked Poste, remembering that Ruth Gerst had told us his father was a great explorer and hunter who had taken museum trustees on African safaris and shoots.

“Yes, by birth. But we moved here when I was a child, and I grew up in the States.” He seemed embarrassed by the petty squabbling among the museum staff members.

“What did Mr. Socarides mean when he said your department at the Met was weak?”

A

Mamdouba’s irrepressible grin reemerged. “Ah, tell the truth, A

Bellinger and Poste had to smile along with him. But A

“I’m glad Timothy Gaylord isn’t here,” Socarides said. “He’d be apoplectic hearing you compare some of those drooping-breastedNational Geographic figures of yours to his precious Egyptian carvings.”

Mamdouba bowed his head in my direction. “This is a centuriesold dispute, Miss Cooper, not likely to be resolved today. Miss Friedrichs and I often battle for acquisitions. My colleagues and I believe that primitive objects are much better respected under our aegis.”

Friedrichs walked to the coffeemaker and refilled her cup. People shuffled papers and pretended not to notice the silence.

Mike Chapman tried another topic. “I’m go

Friedrichs didn’t want to play anymore. She looked straight ahead and ignored the question. I thought of her disorderly conduct arrest and imagined her planted in the middle of the street with her picket sign in defiance of police instructions to move on.

Erik Poste leaned forward, his hand on his chest. “I suppose I can give you the definition, Detective. It’s an architectural term, illustrated quite often in paintings. In fact, you both saw vaulted areas the day we took you around the basement of the Met. Vaults are a series of arches that radiate from a central point, used to make a roof in a building’s interior.”

“In my business, that’s what the medievalists called burial chambers. They were mostly underground, in churches and cathedrals, so they were called vaults,” Bellinger said.

“Fu

I thought again of our conversation with Ruth Gerst about Poste’s father. Erik might be the one to know something about private vaults.

“I understand that there are some personal storage rooms that wealthy contributors were able to keep in the museums.” I looked to Mamdouba. “Might you have a list of those names?”

“Not here, madam. We’ve had no such thing that I’m aware of.” The smile had vanished and he was quite firm in his denial.

“Are you saying you’re not aware of any, or that there aren’t any? I’m going to ask you to check with President Raspen and consult your archives. Surely, Mr. Poste, you know something about that tradition.”

Everyone turned to stare at Erik Poste. “I, uh, I know they’ve been rumored to exist at the Met. Three or four of them at most.”

Mike wanted to prove to the group that he had this on better information than rumor. “The Arthur Paglin vault. Others like that?”

Poste shrugged his shoulders. “Paglin had the great Egyptian collection. Gaylord would know more about that than I do.”

“What became of your father’s collections?” I asked Poste, who had pursued such a different line of scholarship from Willem, as Ruth Gerst had described it to us.

“You know about him, do you?” He looked pleased that I was familiar with his father’s work.

“Not very much. But I’ve heard he made great contributions to this museum.”

“I was twelve years old when he died, Miss Cooper. Killed by native poachers when he was leading an expedition. Greedy and ignorant men who took his life simply because he stood between them and some ivory animal horns. Killed because of the power of their superstition. My older brother, Kirk, remained on, in Kenya, doing my father’s work. He’d be the one to ask about my father’s contributions.”

“You didn’t stay in Africa?”

“I was sent off to boarding school in New England. My mother’s health was quite fragile. She was hospitalized for long spells while I was growing up. I developed a preference for art, which was Mother’s influence.”

“Are any of your father’s things here, in the Natural History museum?”

Poste extended his hand, palm upward, deferring to Mamdouba. “Oh, surely. Many, many of our finest African exhibits were brought back to us by Willem. I can arrange for you to see a catalog of the items, if you wish,” Mamdouba said.

Mamdouba played to Chapman now, smiling a bit too broadly. “I imagine by the time you’re through with this investigation, you’ll be asking me to sign you up for one of our safaris, Detective.”

“Don’t count on it. I’m a Discovery cha

I was ready to break up the group and take them down the hall, one at a time, to an empty lab that had been set aside for us. Mike wanted to ask each of them whether they had known Pablo Bermudez, the worker who fell off the Met roof, and I had scores of questions about their contact with Katrina.

“Any of you done any foreign travel this year?” Mike asked.

Each one of them nodded. He threw out a random sampling of foreign cities, then got to London. Both Bellinger and Poste responded that they had been there.

“When did you go, and with whom?”

“Can’t be sure of the date,” said Erik Poste. “Late March, if I’m not mistaken. Alone. I’d been to an auction of great Masters in Geneva and stopped there on the way back. Did a bit of museum business at some galleries. Twenty-four-hour layover.”

“And you?”

“January,” Bellinger answered. “Pierre Thibodaux took me along. The British Museum was thinking of deaccessioning some medieval objects. He wanted my opinion. Spent an afternoon there with him looking them over.”