The Vandemark Mummy Read online

Althea led him up the main steps, through the wooden doors, and into the reading room. A group of people had gathered there, around a big man with a bushy mustache and heavy glasses. Phineas did a double take. The guy looked like he was wearing a Groucho Marx disguise. He wasn’t, but just for a second it had looked like he was.

  Phineas and Althea brought the number of people up to seven, as they went to stand close behind their father on the thick oriental carpet. Mrs. Batchelor was beside their father, and she watched their entrance, as if they proved her point. Mr. Fletcher was opening a pocket watch he’d taken from his vest pocket, and Ken—dressed scruffy, for Ken, in jeans and deck shoes, his shirttails out, his bearded head looking as if it needed tidying—craned his head around to see the clock, which read 4:35. Phineas decided the big man must be the policeman, because everyone seemed to be waiting for him to give orders. There was nobody else in the reading room, although a few people lingered beyond the door, peering in.

  The reading room, with its tables and leather chairs and racks of newspapers and magazines, with its shelves of encyclopedias and the eight long windows, four on each side, could have comfortably held three times as many people without even starting to be full.

  “Everybody here?” the Groucho man asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “These the kids?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Hall said. “Phineas, Althea, this is Detective Arsenault. He wants to ask all of us some questions.”

  “Except me,” Mr. Fletcher said. “I’m here as observer. In my role as attorney to the Vandemark family.”

  “We know why you’re here.” Detective Arsenault hesitated, just long enough, before he added, “Sir.” He sounded bored, and already tired of them all. His hair was long for a policeman and he wore a jacket and tie, not a uniform. “Mr. Vandemark got the chief’s permission for you to be included, I’ve been told that.” And told a couple of other things too, from his tone of voice, although his face looked expressionless. “Now, if I can get on with my job?”

  “I’d hope so,” Mr. Fletcher answered. “Time is money.” He snapped his watch shut and slipped it back into his vest pocket.

  They all stood to attention.

  “What I want is for you to take a look around, to see if you notice anything different,” the detective said. “I’ve been assigned to this case, and I’m asking you to help me examine the scene of the crime.”

  “Attempted crime,” Mr. Fletcher interrupted.

  “Yes, exactly,” Detective Arsenault answered. “That is exactly it.”

  They were looking at each other like opponents over a checkers board, but Phineas couldn’t figure out what the game was they were playing.

  “Do you mean to imply that until something has been stolen you don’t call it a theft?” Ken asked the question, amazed.

  “That’s only common sense,” the detective answered. “Isn’t it?”

  “You mean,” Ken rephrased it, “that unless I actually make off with the goods I’m not guilty? If all I do is want to take them, and plan to take them, and do everything I can to take them but don’t succeed?”

  “It’s only attempted, until you do it. With the crime rate the way it is, attempteds don’t get much time in court.”

  “That’s appalling,” Ken said. “Don’t you think it is?” he asked Mr. Fletcher.

  “It’s the law,” Mr. Fletcher answered.

  “But it’s wrong,” Ken protested.

  “Law isn’t a moral entity. It’s a civic, or social entity. You’re an historian, young man, you should appreciate the difference between the two.”

  “There’s always breaking and entering, to charge someone with. There’s always attempted,” Detective Arsenault said, taking over the conversation again. “If I can proceed?”

  Ken subsided, but it was clear he wasn’t satisfied. He was shaking his head, paying almost no attention while the detective asked Mrs. Batchelor, “Now, you lock the windows every night?”

  “Not me, personally, but yes, the windows are locked every night. I do check every one of them before I close the library.”

  “Every single one?” He doubted her.

  Mrs. Batchelor drew herself up stiff, and pursed her mouth. She didn’t deign to answer.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this building is three stories high, plus the cellar. There must be I don’t know how many windows.”

  “Forty-eight,” Mrs. Batchelor told him. “Of course, the third floor is seldom used, being devoted to storage, and the rare-book room. The cellars, being completely underground, have no windows. If anyone has used the rare-book room, or gone into the storage rooms, he will have asked for the keys from the desk, so those windows aren’t part of my daily round. If I didn’t make my rounds each evening, I would be failing to take proper precautions. The library is, after all, my responsibility. I am ultimately the one responsible.”

  Phineas wondered how she could say that. Had she forgotten that the crime, the attempted crime, had taken place in her library?

  “I take it then that you will have checked the windows in this room last night?”

  “You may take it thus.”

  “And you can swear that this window was locked.” He pointed without drama to the window in question.

  Phineas watched Mrs. Batchelor’s face, waiting for her to snap out the answer. But she didn’t. The pride that had puffed her up left her, like air from a balloon. “I believe it was,” she said, slowly and carefully. “I assume it was. But swear? I can’t remember checking this window specifically, although I can swear that it is my habit to check each window. I am confident that I would have known if it was unlocked, but I can’t swear that I remember checking this particular window, and finding it locked. If you see what I mean.”

  The detective nodded his head, as if what he’d suspected had just been shown to be true.

  “Something which is a daily habit,” Mrs. Batchelor began, but she dropped the sentence without finishing it.

  “We have to assume,” the detective said, “that for some reason this window was unlocked. And the thief discovered it, and entered through it. Unless he had a key to the library?”

  “But if he had a key,” Ken asked, “why would he break through the lock on the door to the cellar? The same key fits both locks.”

  “Yes, that’s the question,” the detective agreed. Ken looked pleased with himself, and his question. Phineas was a little disappointed with this detective. He didn’t seem to know any more than anyone else.

  “Now, Mrs. Batchelor,” the detective said, turning back to the thin woman, “are you sure the real objective wasn’t the rare-book room? Is there anything in the rare-book room a thief might go after?”

  Mrs. Batchelor started nodding before he’d even finished his question. “I’m glad you have some understanding of what treasures a library might hold. We do have an edition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, very rare, very valuable. Because of the illustrations, each of which were done by hand, by the poet himself—”

  The detective moved his hand impatiently and she caught herself.

  “It’s the first place I looked, of course, when I heard the building had been broken into. The Blake is priceless. We’d never be able to afford to replace it. But that room hadn’t been discovered, I’m glad to say. I could see no signs that anyone had been in there. Or tried to break in.”

  “We can assume then that the thief didn’t know about it,” the detective said, “just as we have to assume that, contrary to the usual practice, the window was left unlocked. Shall we move along?”

  The group followed him to gather around the door that opened from the library’s main floor to the staircase into the cellars. “Does anyone notice anything odd here?” the detective asked. He waited, while everyone stared at the door.

  “I take it you mean beyond the obvious,” Mr. Fletcher said.

  The obvious was just what they would see again downstairs: the results of a crowbar inserted between the door and th
e frame, and then levered back until wood split, forcing the metal plate backward into the splintered wood until it was possible—using the crowbar as a bat if appearances didn’t lie—to force the door open.

  Nobody saw anything to comment on. Phineas thought that the thief must have been pretty strong, even with a crowbar, but he didn’t trust his thinking. He knew enough about levers, which he’d studied in fifth-grade science, to know that he couldn’t remember by how much a lever multiplied force. The detective would surely know that, so Phineas kept quiet. They all trooped down the staircase, then turned left down a corridor, left again, left once more, and then right—following Mrs. Batchelor’s lead—until they stood before the door to room 015.

  Nobody had anything to observe, so they entered the room. The detective told them what he wanted. “I know you reported nothing missing, Mr. Hall, but I just want you—all of you who worked to set out the collection, and anyone who’s seen it as it originally was—I want you to look carefully around. You probably won’t see anything, but . . .” He turned around to look over the room. “That’s the mummy?” he asked, his voice changed for the question. He walked over to look down at the wrapped figure. “It’s . . . really something, isn’t it? I never—well.” He drew himself up. “Look around, don’t touch anything, just see if anything at all is different. Even just shifted on its shelf.”

  Phineas lagged by the doorway. He’d be no help, anyway. He didn’t know why he’d been asked along. If this was what detective work was like, it was pretty boring.

  The detective and Mr. Fletcher also stood back. Mrs. Batchelor did go into the room, but mostly she stood aside and pretended to be looking, pretended that she was important to what was going on. She looked worried; that was what Phineas thought. He wondered if she had some suspicion. If she did, why wouldn’t she speak up? It was her library, after all. Then he wondered if the look on her face was guilt, not worry.

  The detective stood with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t take notes, he didn’t ask questions, he just watched. If it were a Disney movie, Phineas thought, the detective would be whistling, to distract attention from his watching.

  Althea stayed by the mummy, letting her father and Ken check the shelves. The room was silent, with the thick silence of a class taking a test everybody wanted to do well on, and thought they had a chance to do well on. The air control machinery hummed.

  Phineas was getting a little restless. He didn’t know how long they were going to have to stay there before the detective dismissed them. He went to stand beside Althea, which meant standing at the mummy’s feet.

  She was small, lying down, wrapped stiff in strips of cloth, her feet pointed at the ceiling. Small, and sad. Phineas had the odd, angry idea that she should have been left alone, left where she was found, left buried in her own country, in her own time. But he guessed you couldn’t blame people—historians, scientists—for always wanting to find out more. That was their job. It was their nature too, to want to take things away, into their own labs in their own countries, and take them apart, and find out answers.

  His father turned around and looked at Ken, with his eyebrows raised in questioning. Ken shook his bearded head. Nothing missing, nothing wrong.

  “Nothing,” Mr. Hall said to the detective.

  “I was afraid of that,” the detective answered. “Well, that’s that. Nothing more I can do. It looks like a dead end, Mr. Fletcher. That’s what my report will say.”

  “It’s the crown, of course,” Ken said.

  “Crown?” the detective asked, politely.

  Ken didn’t notice the detective’s lack of interest. “There’s a funerary crown,” he said. He reached around and took it off its place on the shelf, his hands more gentle than his appearance would suggest. He held it out. “It’s in perfect condition,” Ken said, “and beautiful craftsmanship. I can’t say exactly what a museum might pay for it. A lot.”

  Detective Arsenault went over to look more closely. “What is it, gold?”

  “Gilded bronze.” Ken turned around to put the wreath back on the shelf. “It worries me, Sam.”

  Detective Arsenault didn’t give Mr. Hall a chance to speak. “You think that’s what the thief was after?”

  “How would I know?” Ken asked. “But if I were a thief, it’s what I’d take.”

  “You’d have to know your stuff, though, wouldn’t you? To know its value,” the detective pointed out.

  “If I were a thief, I’d make a point of knowing my stuff,” Ken announced.

  Nobody said anything for a while. They were all waiting to be told what to do next, except for Detective Arsenault, who must have been wondering what he should tell them to do next, or so Phineas thought. “Place is like a tomb,” the detective said.

  “Mr. Hall?” Mrs. Batchelor had finally made up her mind to speak. She cleared her throat. “If you would prefer, my husband was sincere in his offer to have the crown stored at the museum.”

  Althea looked at Phineas, and he thought he knew what she was thinking. “I might take him up on that,” their father said.

  “My husband is at the museum until seven on Wednesdays, because the museum is open Wednesday evenings until seven. You could call him now, from my office, and I’m reasonably confident that the crown could be taken into safekeeping tonight.”

  “That sure would take a load off my mind, Sam,” Ken added, as if Mr. Hall was hesitating. “In fact, why don’t I stick around to ride shotgun when we move it. My car’s out back.”

  “Then I’ll be the one riding shotgun,” Mr. Hall pointed out. “Detective Arsenault, is there any objection to moving it? Always assuming the museum will accept it.”

  “I don’t think you need worry about that,” Mrs. Batchelor said.

  “I see no difficulty,” the detective answered. “Although my hunch is that it’s the mummy he was after. Since he could have grabbed that crown and been gone, even with the alarm going. But I’ll be the first to admit I’m no expert,” he said, with a nod at Ken.

  “Besides, we’re taking the mummy off first thing in the morning, for X rays,” Phineas’s father said. “And as soon as you give the okay, which I hope will be immediately, they’re ready to put a new door on here, with a new lock, to which only the captain of the security guards and I will have keys. No insult intended, Ken.”

  “None taken,” Ken said. “I’m going to be leaving the country so soon, it would be silly to be given the new key.”

  “And the alarm’s still in place?” Detective Arsenault asked.

  Mr. Hall nodded.

  “I think you’ve done everything you can. I don’t think there’s any danger of a repeat visit. I figure, it was probably kids. It’s summer,” he said glumly, “kids get bored, they read the paper too. But at least your thief wasn’t a professional, which is what would worry me, speaking personally.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t?” Mr. Fletcher asked.

  “Well, sir, in the first place, he wouldn’t have jimmied the doors. He’d have had a set of skeleton keys. Secondly, he’d have spotted the alarm, and turned it off. But mostly, a professional would have succeeded.”

  CHAPTER 11

  It was eight o’clock before Althea and their father got home, with Ken Simard tagging along behind them. Phineas took one look at his father and got three cans of chicken noodle soup out of the cupboard. He turned on the oven to four hundred degrees, and started buttering the tops of saltines while the soup heated. They were all too wiped out to say anything and Phineas was too busy to talk—putting the cookie pan of buttered crackers into the stove, setting the table—

  “Ken, will you be staying for supper?” he asked. “It’s just canned soup and crackers.” Sometimes, with guests who wouldn’t go away, you had to make your hints pretty loud and clear.

  “Gee, you know? I’d like to. If it’s not too much trouble. If there’s enough for me. If you don’t mind, Sam?”

  It was lucky he didn’t ask Althea if she minded. Phinea
s grinned into the simmering soup, pale yellow with chunks of chicken and streaks of noodle.

  “Won’t your wife be expecting you?” Mr. Hall asked. Phineas wondered if that was the grown-up version of a hint. If it was, Ken missed it entirely.

  “Michelle’s in Boston, looking into a company that might be a good subject for a takeover bid. She’s got a full week scheduled, which means she won’t be here to see me off on my great adventure. However, that’s the way it is, if we’re married to successful women with careers of their own, isn’t it?”

  Phineas set out four soup bowls, four spoons, four glasses. He was doing what his mother would have done. He didn’t mind that. Then he asked, as his mother would have, “Do you want a beer?”

  Both men did.

  Phineas opened two cans and poured them into glasses. It wasn’t so bad, being a housewife. He had come back to an empty house, watched a rerun of “Magnum,” then a rerun of the “Cosby Show,” then a rerun of “New-hart,” and now they were all thanking him for making dinner. Ken was more grateful than the others.

  “Really good, Phineas,” he said, as if Phineas had done anything more than open three cans and add water. “I for one will sleep better, knowing the crown is safe. I know, I know,” he raised a hand as if Mr. Hall were about to say something, which he clearly wasn’t since he was spooning soup into his mouth as fast as he could, “it’s your concern, not mine. I admit to feeling—not exactly proprietary, but perhaps the analogy is to a groom in an arranged marriage, waiting for his affianced to grow up? I’ve had a couple of ideas for the paper, but what I’d really like to try is”—he pushed the half-empty soup bowl away and leaned forward on his elbows—“something for a more popular market. Maybe the magazine section of the Times? Or the Atlantic, Harper’s, something in that class. To explain the beauty of the thing, the craftsmanship, the symbolism of its use. It could be a crossover paper. So I’m in the happy position of having something to go away for, and something to come back to.”

  “What is it that’s waiting for you in England, Ken?” Mr. Hall asked. He took some crackers. “Anyone else want peanut butter with these?”