Pax Britannia: Human Nature (5 page)

"And who are you?" Ulysses asked, even though there could be no doubt.

"I, sir, am the curator and owner of this museum of marvels, this assembly of astonishments," the man blustered, going red in the face as he did so. "I, sir, am Cruickshank - Mycroft Cruickshank." It looked to Ulysses like the curator's moustache might unravel itself as he seethed away, his complexion steadily turning to beetroot. "And who, sir, are you?"

"Oh, don't you recognise me? You really don't know?"

"Such arrogance!" Cruickshank bridled. "Why the arrogance of you, sir!"

"It's just that I thought you might have recognised me from the papers or the MBBC newscasts."

From a few feet behind him, Ulysses heard Nimrod sigh in polite impatience. Goading pompous fools might be sport for Ulysses but it was a game others soon tired of, including the Quicksilver family's long-suffering butler.

"No, sir, I do not!"

In a trice Ulysses had whipped out his card-holder again. "Ulysses Quicksilver, at your service."

"Oh," was all the exhibition's proprietor could muster as he read the details of Ulysses' ID. And then, recovering himself again: "I see. But your services are not required, sir."

"Look, I'm sorry if we got off on the wrong foot, but I could be of help here."

Cruickshank looked Ulysses up and down, while Ulysses gave the curator a second once-over.

"You know about the debacle surrounding Her Majesty's 160
^th
jubilee celebrations," Ulysses went on.

"Well, yes, of course," Cruickshank had to admit.

"And the loss of the cruise-liner
Neptune
was widely reportedly in the press I believe."

"What? Yes, I did read of it."

"Well, that was me. I was the one who got everyone out of some rather tight spots."

"Oh, I see."

"So, if you wouldn't mind letting us carry on with our work, I'll make sure we keep out of your way. All right?"

Ulysses took a step forward but Cruickshank moved to block him again.

"It's not that," he said, bushy brows beetling, his face already a much calmer shade of cerise. "It's just that Mr Wraith is already on the case."

"What?" The muscles of Ulysses' face tightening and a bloom of colour now came to
his
cheeks.

"Yes. Mr Wraith is already helping the police solve this mystery."

"Wraith?" Ulysses gasped incredulously. "Gabriel Wraith?"

"The very same, sir. London's foremost consulting detective. We are most fortunate. Perhaps now we'll discover just what's been going on around here." Cruickshank cast his eyes around the panelled room and its many and varied glass display cases.

"When did
he
get here?"

Cruickshank consulted his pocket watch. "Almost an hour ago. It would appear that your services are not required after all."

Ulysses stood there, stunned, not knowing what to say. He glanced back at this manservant who raised his left eyebrow in response; as much of a look of surprise as Nimrod was ever likely to give.

This wasn't getting him anywhere, Ulysses thought, and now that Gabriel Wraith was involved he was even more intrigued.
Time to turn on the old Quicksilver charm
.

"Very well," Ulysses said, relaxing his posture, suddenly aware of how tense he had become at mention of his rival's name. "Fair's fair, I suppose. The early bird, and all that. But it's a personal shame, it really is. A real pity."

"What is?" Cruickshank asked, unable to help himself, wrong-footed by Ulysses' sudden change of temperament.

"I've heard so much about your little exhibition here that I was going to offer my services for free, simply to be able to say that I had some small part to play with the phenomenon of the season."

"Really?" Cruickshank said, his ears pricking up at the mention of 'services for free', Ulysses supposed. "Well, that's very kind of you, Mr Quicksilver. But, as I said, Mr Wraith is already on the case."

Ulysses detected the barely concealed disappointment in Cruickshank's tone, like that of a man who realises he's just missed out on that most elusive of meals - a free lunch. Ulysses also noted that Cruickshank hadn't bothered to question why, if he was so eager to visit the freak show he had waited until after the theft to bother to come at all.

"I've heard tell that it is the finest collection this side of Dusseldorf."

"And so it should be, sir. It has taken me nearly thirty years to gather this most... unique of collections."

Vanity and self-importance had done their bit. He had the proprietor on side now.

"Well, seeing as how we're here now, you don't mind if we take a look around for ourselves, do you?"

"Be my guest, sir."

"We'll be sure to keep out of Mr Wraith's way."

"Very good, sir."

Cruickshank moved aside, and Ulysses strode into the man's inner sanctum, into his chamber of delights, as it were, Nimrod close behind as usual.

Ulysses took in the entirety of the collection laid out around the room, having to turn his head and crane his neck to take in all its wonders. And there was certainly a very great deal crammed into the room, for the benefit of the viewing public.

It seemed to Ulysses' experienced eye that there wasn't a walnut-panel that was free of some manner of exhibit, if not several. Hung from the walls or filling dusty glass display cases were holy relics recovered from the wreck of a Spanish galleon, their gold-leaf and gesso decorations scoured clean by the relentless attentions of the sea; earthenware pitchers and porcelain from China; an icon of Madonna and Child from Russia, the wood dry and cracked; a necklace of monkey teeth; the broken-off top of a Celtic stone cross; the carved dragon-prow of a Viking longship; a Javanese ritual-dance mask, that of a red-eyed, leering demon; Egyptian galibaias - he had worn such a thing himself whilst on secondment to the land of the pharaohs; a snake-charmer's basket and pipes from Bombay; human skulls, their eye-sockets filled with clay and flints; the baubles and bells of King Henry VIII's fool; the Turkish Emperor's gold seal; a pharaoh's death-mask; scrolls of papyrus; an Aztec codex; an intricately worked astrolabe; a Viking lodestone compass; a Neolithic quern-stone; and a morose limestone gargoyle, pilfered from a church in Antwerp.

Or at least that was what the exhibits all claimed to be, each label carefully filled out in a tight copperplate hand.

Ulysses half expected to see the green-eyed monkey god of Sumatra snuck in there, buried amongst the other items, having mysteriously become part of the exhibition.

And the objects - or object d'art, as Mycroft Cruickshank might have preferred it - were not all man-made either; far from it. There were the polished shells of sea turtles and giant tortoises; the horn and tail of a rhinoceros; the scalp and one tusk of a mammoth - although Ulysses didn't understand what was so special about that when one could still see the real thing roaming the tundra of Siberia, if one was lucky.

A number of the exhibits had been stuffed to preserve them but they were not the finest examples of the taxidermist's art. There was an elephant's head, minus its ivory; a still-born two-headed lamb; a stuffed pangolin; a two-tailed lizard; various cases of pin-stuck butterflies, moths, spiders and scorpions; and then there was a large pickling jar containing the knotted form of an octopus, which reminded him far too vividly of his jaunt to the Pacific only a few months before.

He was disappointed not to see much in the way of dinosaurian artefacts. Thought of the terrible lizards then took him back to London Zoo and the breakout from the Challenger Enclosure nearly six months previously, and his rather too close an encounter with a fully-grown megasaur. What had happened to the brute after he brought it down in Parliament Square, he wondered.

And there were plants too; dried vanilla pods; the rump-shaped seed of the Coco-de-Mer palm; and, supposedly, a mandrake root, but which to Ulysses looked more like a prize-winning obscenely shaped vegetable at a village flower show. He had seen the genuine article, and it looked nothing like a cheekily-shaped parsnip.

But none of the plants on show here were as amazing, or as deadly, as the others he had encountered within the Amaranth House at Kew.

Suspended from the ceiling by means of a complicated system of pulleys and wires was a hollowed-out bark canoe that had once belonged to a lost Amazonian tribe; a gaudily-painted totem pole of the Gitxsan Indians of Canada, painted in what would have once been bright, overpowering primary colours; a slice taken out of a Californian giant redwood; and the hull of a Chinese junk.

"It's as if the spirit of Pitt Rivers is alive and well, and residing here in London," Ulysses announced with something like delight in his voice. "Oh, I've got one of those," he said, pointing at a Balinese fetish mask, "or at least I should say I had one of those, before the fire and all."

It amazed Ulysses how many items there were. It seemed that it was not enough merely to own the tusk of a narwhal; Cruickshank needed to possess at least three of the things, each carefully labelled and catalogued with its provenance, including where and when it was acquired, or killed, in the case of the whale tusks.

It a less enlightened age, when the world was a much larger and more mysterious place, such tusks were passed off as the horns of unicorns, and for a suitably unreal price too. Recalling to mind the photograph of the Whitby Mermaid from the paper, Ulysses was almost disappointed not to find one of the horns screwed into the skull of a stuffed antelope or llama with the proud boast that this was the last unicorn to die on British soil. However, his faith in human nature, specifically man's ability and desire to dupe his fellow man, and man's readiness, in turn, to be duped, was restored when he spotted what was purported to be the shed skin of a basilisk - in truth, a cobra's skin with cockerel's wattles sewn on.

The Germans had a wonderful word for collections such as these; they called them
Wunderkammer
- literally "Cabinet of Wonders." But Cabinet of Curiosities seemed to suit this place better. Most of the objects on display weren't wonders; they were tired, faded, deteriorating scrag-ends of dubious provenance, or downright fakes. There wasn't anything wonderful about them although they did make Ulysses wonder as to the obsessive hoarding nature of the man who had gathered this disparate collection together. Yes, curiosities, not wonders.

"Excuse me, constable," Ulysses said, putting a fraternal hand on the shoulder of a young policeman whose misfortune it had been to be put on this case. "But who's the officer in charge?"

There weren't any robots Peelers on the case. Apparently it wasn't deemed important enough to warrant that sort of interest or protection. No, it was going to be up to the Bobby in the street to solve this one.

Ulysses supposed that it was an unimportant matter, when one considered what went on in a city the size of Londinium Maximum on a daily basis. It was only the curious nature of the object that had been stolen, and the public's insatiable appetite for the bizarre and macabre that had meant it had even made it into the papers.

Catching the confident look in Ulysses' eye, the policeman - who looked like he hadn't even started shaving yet, now Ulysses came to consider it - swallowed nervously before answering. "Inspector Wallace," he said, pointing at an immaculately turned out gentleman standing in the middle of the room, wearing a sharp pin-striped suit with a tailored trench coat over the top.

Not for the first time that morning - the day was still just shy of noon - Ulysses was unable to hide the look of surprise that seized his face, his emotions as readable as an open book.

"Oh, not Inspector Allardyce then? I would have thought this one would be his territory."

"It would normally, sir," the constable agreed, "but Inspector Allardyce is on holiday at present."

"On holiday? Really? I always took him to be the kind of man who ate, drank and slept the job."

"Not this week, sir." The constable gave a wry smile. "Did you want to speak to Inspector Wallace at all?"

"No, no, don't trouble him." Ulysses was looking beyond the constable and the curiosities now to a darkly-attired man in the far corner of the room. "I'm just here to catch up with an old friend."

The early bird that had caught this particular worm was studying an empty glass display case, the front panel of it hanging open.

"Well, well, well. Gabriel Wraith," Ulysses declared, approaching the cabinet in the corner. "Who'd have thought it?"

The man spun round on his heel, otherwise maintaining his carefully poised, and yet ironing board straight, posture and glowered at the beaming Ulysses.

"Quicksilver."

"Fancy meeting you here."

"Fancy indeed."

Ignoring Ulysses, Wraith turned back to his examination of the display case.

Ignoring the rebuff, Ulysses peered over his shoulder none too subtly to get a view of the case for himself. Resting on the black velvet mount at the base of the cabinet, looking rather forlorn now, was a handwritten card bearing the inscription, 'Whitby Mermaid'.

As Wraith picked at pieces of fluff attached to the velvet with a pair of tweezers, Ulysses also saw now that the consulting detective was wearing crisp white cotton gloves, so as not to contaminate any evidence he might find there.