Being The Steel Drummer Part 11

There was an efficiency about Piper Staplehurst's manner that was probably one of the keys to her success. Her desk was neat and the books on the shelves were even. On one table, plans to restoration projects were laid out. There was a carefully rendered schematic of the Civil War cemetery showing every stone, crypt, and elevation. The large work surface also held a collection of faded blueprints of the city's infrastructure. Several groups of carefully aligned artifacts drew my attention most of all.

"I'm sorry the office is such a mess. I may have gotten here the morning after the Winter Solstice, but I'm so busy I'd swear the days are getting shorter. I'll just clear these away," said Piper. Over her shoulder I saw Kathryn make a brief scoffing expression in response to the word mess. Except for some dust tracked on the floor it was one of the neatest offices I'd ever seen.

While Kathryn helped Piper stack the papers and old plans of the city on a shelf, I noticed the room's extraordinary 19th century architectural details. Nothing like it could have been built today. There was a beautiful Greek key pattern on the wall, a foot below the ceiling. Built-in marble benches skirted the room. There were four oval faux windows with glowing green gla.s.s in them that looked like they came from a hall in the Emerald City. I went to one of them, touching the frame of carved slate.

"It's a light-shaft all the way from the roof. White polished marble reflects the light through the iridescent gla.s.s. It's really an amazing effect isn't it?" said Piper smiling. She turned to Kathryn. "I have the picture catalog of Victoria Snow's work here, if you'd like to look at what the Museum has in its collection. There are a few pieces she did in Rome when she was not much more than an apprentice to Harriet Hosmer and there are photos of all the large pieces, including the Evangeline statues."

Kathryn looked at the book as Piper recited some V.W. Snow facts we already knew. I couldn't help but notice that Piper skipped over the part about Victoria knowing many of the Lesbian artists of her day.

When Kathryn got to a photo of some found-object heads, she pulled one of the little casts she'd bought at the market out of her canvas bag and unwrapped it. Kathryn had ten of the cast faces in all. The sh.e.l.l decorations seemed even more wild and exciting to me today. I made a mental note to try my hand at this kind of form as soon as I had a couple of free hours.

Kathryn took the nude Evangeline sculpture out of the bag and placed it on the table with the other pieces.

The sight of the collection mesmerized Piper Staplehurst. A snake sliding over the table in front of her wouldn't have diverted her attention.

After several more long moments of silence, Kathryn cleared her throat a little impatiently. "Any thoughts, Dr. Staplehurst?"

"Piper, please," she murmured, still rapt by the works.

"I'm sorry. What do you think of these, Piper?" said Kathryn.

"I... Oh well, yes, yes, even without the clear snowflake insignia, the style is hers. The media... Where did you get them?"

"At a sale."

"Really? Really? Where? When?"

I tried to read Piper Staplehurst's expression. It certainly was animated, but I couldn't tell whether she was thrilled at the possible new find or frustrated by the looming amounts of research she'd have to do to catalog these new pieces.

Kathryn explained she'd bought them from a dealer at an antique and flea market.

Now it was Piper Staplehurst who was impatient. "This statue really is a significant piece, but if there is any possibility that these works were obtained from illegal sources..." She stared at Kathryn, waiting for a response.

For the briefest of moments, it seemed as though Piper Staplehurst was intimating that Kathryn had received these little objects as stolen goods. But then the moment pa.s.sed. It was an absurd suggestion. After all we'd just brought them directly to the museum for verification. This was not something a thief would do with stolen property.

After a beat Kathryn said disarmingly, "You take this all very personally, Piper?"

"Well, yes, yes I do." Then she laughed. "Yes, well, I suppose I do. I'm sorry. It's just that... Well, I had believed all of Snow's work was fully cataloged, and to find all these works, these unknown works..." She waved her hands over the little collection. "I just can't imagine where they came from. Where do you suppose the flea market dealer got them?"

"I heard him tell one of the other buyers that he cleaned out houses," said Kathryn.

This was entirely possible. Salvage people typically buy the entire contents of a house. Sometimes distant relatives inheriting far-away estates hire salvage teams for speedy clean-up to accelerate property sale. It's an interesting business, because while old house contents are mostly nameless flotsam and jetsam, some items can be cleaned up and sold, and sometimes there is priceless treasure. Of course, I found it cleaning out a house is also a fairly plausible cover-up for more nefarious ways of procurement. It's often a euphemism for burglary.

Piper Staplehurst shook her head. "Which antique market was it?"

Kathryn told her exactly where in Adamstown she's gotten it, but added, "I don't think he sets up there regularly, yet who knows. He may be back. Is there anywhere we can look these up?" asked Kathryn. "I'd love to find out more about them."

"There's no record of Snow using sh.e.l.ls, and this nude statue, really, take my word for it, you won't find anything written about it. Snow must have done these when she was working in Fenchester, because obviously this is Evangeline Fen. Though it's unlikely she posed for this. A Victorian lady of the day wouldn't have posed without clothes, and besides there is no record of them ever meeting. All the larger statues were done after Evangeline Fen was dead."

"You're sure they're original Snows?" I asked.

"Yes, she did these; no questions about it. I don't even have to microscopically inspect them. I can tell by the unique color of the clay and the cast marks. Any expert would stake their reputation on it. Really, her work is very easy to identify. Forgers aren't exactly flooding the market with copies. They aren't that valuable."

"Do you know where her personal papers are? Are they archived somewhere?" asked Kathryn.

"Papers?" Piper Staplehurst's gaze drifted to the left as she considered. "I'm not an anthropologist so I haven't researched Snow's personal life, especially since all her work had already been identified and cataloged. Well..." She looked back at Kathryn's collection again. "That's what I'd thought, anyway. We'll have to catalog these."

"We'll bring them back as soon as the museum photographer is ready to shoot them," I said. I gave her my card and Kathryn did the same.

Kathryn paused to shake Piper Staplehurst's hand and thank her warmly for her time. It was a trifle too warm for my green eyes, but I reined in my little monster. Kathryn caught my eye over Piper's shoulder and covertly winked at me. I winked back.

While Kathryn wrapped everything back up, I examined the group of exquisite museum pieces of art and craftsmans.h.i.+p on a table against the wall. It included an Egyptian ushebti, some Asian porcelains, a bronze figure of a horse, and a late Renaissance miniature portrait.

"May I touch these?"

"Yes, go ahead. Your friend asked me about the things the museum is letting go. Tell me her name again," said Piper.

"Farrel Case. She mentioned she was going to bid for some of them."

"I have some other things too," Piper drew some items out of a shoulder bag on her desk. "I just took these into Philadelphia to see if Retman's Auction House would handle them, but they won't bring enough. Your friend Farrel might like them. She said she sold old silver. Really, it doesn't matter to me who buys the objects as long as the museum gets its price. I've taken things all over this part of Pennsylvania to find buyers-antique stores, consignment shops, the flea and antique markets, all sorts of auction houses."

Piper spread a pile of silver flatware on the table. I separated the pieces and picked up each one for a closer look. There was a large ornate fish server, a wide Victorian serving fork with a stag horn handle, an 800 silver punch ladle in an art deco style, an early American sucket fork, and a Georgian marrow scoop.

I picked up the hammer-formed two-tined sucket fork that had a hand-rounded spoon bowl on the other end, because it looked like the oldest piece and was in excellent condition other than some flakes of something brown on the tines. But when I turned it over there was the Williamsburg Reproduction stamp in the silver handle below the bowl. It was "new," and not really of any significant value.

Before I could say anything, Piper said apologetically, "Oh, I'm sorry, that doesn't belong to the museum. It's something I bought when silver was cheap, just to carry in my handbag when I have to eat a meal on the fly. These other things are all authentic though. And do feel free to look at the ancient items on the other table."

I inspected the long narrow marrow scoop. I could see by the early English marks that it was made in London by a silversmith named Hannah Northcote in the 1700s. Farrel and Jessie have an extensive collection of women silversmiths' work from that period. This was an important piece that surely Farrel would want for herself. I didn't want to tip Farrel's hand, but I knew she'd buy anything by a Georgian woman maker for a collector's price.

On the other table I gently lifted the little ushebti. Egyptian ushebtis are funerary figurines that were considered magical objects; they look like little statues of people. They were supposed to help do the work of their owners after they are deceased. This one was made of white clay. It was about ten inches long and glazed blue. It was in excellent condition for something that was two millennia old. It had hieroglyphics on it that were probably the words to the prayer that would bring the figure to life. The ancient Egyptians believed that dirt and clay had life-giving properties.

Kind of eerie that 2000 years ago the percentage of the population who strongly believed that if I recited this Egyptian prayer out loud this statue would come to life is the about same percentage of people today who believe just as strongly that G.o.d will answer their prayers.

I said, "Yes, I'm sure Farrel would like to see all these things, but..."

"But can the museum afford to part with items from its collection? Frankly, it can't afford not to," said Piper. "The museum has at least twenty similar ushebtis and a great deal of more significant silver flatware. It has more than three dozen Renaissance miniatures and only room to exhibit two or three at any given time. But to keep its doors open, what the museum needs is cash, not items in storage that will probably never go on public view."

I nodded, understanding the point.

Kathryn finished looking at the Snow catalog and readied to go.

I noticed a door at the far end of the office and asked, "Is that a way out?"

Piper said, "Well, it's sort of an old-fas.h.i.+oned fire escape."

"Can we use it?" I asked.

"Uh, well, I don't recommend it. Frankly, it stinks. It's tied into the sewer system somehow."

"Maggie, we should use the..." Kathryn began as I turned, lifted her canvas bag onto my shoulder and reached for the huge bra.s.s door k.n.o.b. The door was heavy. I had to lean back to open it.

"The stairs are to the right. The other direction is sealed off," said Piper.

We called out our last thank-yous and plunged into the dim hallway.

The light shaft provided little illumination. Decades of city dust and grime filtered the rays of pale February daylight to a minimum. It was cool in the hall but not as cold as outside. I could feel a slight breeze coming from the left. As our eyes adjusted, we could see another light shaft about 100 feet to the left. There, a pile of rocks and concrete debris effectively blocked the way except for a dark s.p.a.ce a foot from the ceiling; that must have been where the air movement was coming from.

To the right was the staircase. We went for it.

Kathryn's eyes darted swiftly to every surface, checking for sewer creatures. Her shoulders relaxed when it was apparent the tunnel-like hallway was not only tight and dry, but vermin free.

"It doesn't smell too bad," she said.

"Kind of dusty, but it certainly doesn't reek of s.h.i.+t," I said.

"Why did you want to come this way?"

"I'm drawn to doors people rarely use. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge."

"I think it's that you're a snoop, but I'm willing to say you just like taking the less traveled path."

"You're right about that, that I'm a snoop. It made me a good investigator, but it also cut down on dinner invitations when my hosts found me peeking in their cabinets." I stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back along the hall. "It is kind of fascinating, isn't it, that this perfectly built hallway was put here decades ago and now no one uses it. There's probably a door to every office down here."

"When I was at Central Western, some grad students told me they'd found a whole network of underground pa.s.sageways that linked every building on campus. They said each door that led to the pa.s.sages in the buildings was marked with a yellow and black sign that said something like: DANGER RADIOACTIVE."

"Did you investigate?" I asked.

"Would you have?"

"C'mon, it sounds like so much fun!"

"Well the doors were alarmed from the outside," Kathryn laughed softly. "It's funny, now that I really think about it, those pa.s.sageways were probably marked with the radioactive signs in the early '60s when seeing a sign like that would strike fear into anyone's heart. But it's absurd to have dangerous radioactive material lying around that someone could accidentally stumble across. Of course the signs were a sham."

At the top of the stairs, Kathryn pushed open heavy swinging doors and we found ourselves in a lighted marble hallway. We finally reached the ground floor after another long set of broad stairs.

"I'm very excited that Piper authenticated the sculptures. I'm so glad I bought them," said Kathryn.

"So you're not going to say more negative things about her hair and make-up?"

"That was very rude of me. I was emotionally distraught," she said smiling. "If she wants to wear a lot of make-up and dye her hair in dramatic shades that's her business. I don't really understand why though. It must take her an hour to apply and it doesn't enhance her face. Perhaps she has some sort of skin condition she's covering. That doesn't explain the bright eye shadow though. Doesn't go with her Gucci coat."

"Really, Kathryn, it's not that overdone. It's not as though she was going to kill Batman," I laughed. "She was certainly sure about the sculpture. I can't wait to tell Farrel about it and about the marrow scoop too. Shall we go for a late lunch?" I said, as we got our coats from the museum checkroom.

Kathryn looked at her watch. "All I have time for is something quick. Then I have to rush off to another meeting that's going to carry into the evening. I don't think I'll be back to the loft until after 9 p.m. I'm sorry. And then tomorrow I have things all morning and afternoon, and then in the evening I told Farrel I'd work with her and the crew on the office."

"You know it's my birthday on Friday," I said archly.

"Hmmm, I like that tone of voice. Shall we celebrate your birthday all weekend?" Kathryn ran her fingers up the collar of my jacket, making a pretense of arranging my scarf. She used both hands. She looked into my eyes deeply and said, "Not that we won't see each other until then. And I won't be too late tonight. But Friday will be a special date, OK?"

"OK, I'll look forward to Friday, but I'm distracted by the thought that you won't be too late tonight," I said, appreciating her own provocative tone. "And of course I'll help tomorrow night on the office construction. I'm good at taping drywall. How did you know it was Gucci?"

"What?"

"Piper's coat?" I asked.

"I saw the tag... well... I looked at the tag. I can be a snoop too."

I shouldered the heavy bag of sculpture and we hurried out against the cold winter wind. We went west toward our neighborhood, while icy gusts blew the speech from our mouths. Snow was in the air, and from the looks of the darkening sky it would soon be on the ground.

Five blocks later we ducked into Brews on the Mews. We slid into a booth and put our coats in the corners of the red leather seats. I always enjoy this little cafe and not just because it's warm.

Mews old-timers still called it Pop's, its drugstore soda shop name through most of the 20th century. Its stool-lined marble-topped counter, pattern-tiled floor, bra.s.s and gla.s.s pastry display cases, and large front windows still made it seem ready for a bobby-socks rock 'n' roll teen movie. But the smell of rich coffee, fresh pastry, and soft jazz music quieted the ambiance and made it more welcoming for the coffee shop culture of the current age.

Sh.e.l.ly, the server who had worked here for decades, greeted us like old friends. "We have great clam chowder today. Fresh clams and everything," she said.

"Sounds lovely. I'll have that, and a Caffelatte," said Kathryn.

"I'll have the soup too, with... Would it be wrong to have root beer with clam chowder?"

"Yes," said Sh.e.l.ly and Kathryn in unison.

"With hot tea."

"Better," said Sh.e.l.ly. "Say, have you heard about Samson and Lois Henshaw? Breaking up, maybe. Well, no surprise. He's been acting wacko for a while now. Poor Lois. She's a good egg. You know she comes in here for coffee every morning like clockwork, weekdays and weekends, hasn't missed a morning in years. We chat every day. I'll get your soup."

As Sh.e.l.ly padded to the kitchen in her old-style waitress shoes, Kathryn said, "She's talking about the Henshaws when there was a murder yesterday? Is the Mews gossip hotline breaking down?"

"Perhaps the Henshaw story is cutting edge."

"And this Henshaw business is something you know firsthand?"

"Confidential," I said with a smile.

"I see. Well, then we'll talk about something else. I bet the college has Victoria Snow's papers. I want to see them."

"Would they let you take them out of the archives?"

"I doubt it. They're very strict about removing things from there, but I'll see. It depends. The bigger problem is that I just don't have the time today."

Sh.e.l.ly brought two bowls of chowder to our table along with our drinks. The soup was exactly what I'd wanted, piping hot, rich and satisfying, and there were even saltines to crumble in it.

We ate in silence for a few minutes, letting the warm liquid raise our core temperatures. I was nearly done when I said, "I could go to the archives. I have some work I want to get done today, but it probably won't take too long."

Kathryn looked up at me for a moment. "Yes, you could. I could give you a letter of introduction. The archives are restricted to professors and graduate students, but they also let research a.s.sistants in, and undercla.s.s students with special permission from their advisors."

"So you could be my advisor?" I said as though it was a double entendre.

Her face transformed and she became feline. She looked at me darkly, with a half-smile. "No, you could be my research a.s.sistant," she said in a tone that would easily have verged on s.e.xual hara.s.sment if she'd said it to any real student.