The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [248]
The question was unexpectedly direct, and the tone of the voice behind it sharp.
“Miss McFadden, I wanted to ask you about your father, Tinbury McFadden.”
“My dear, you’re going to have to tell me your name again. I am an old lady with a fading memory.”
“Nora Kelly.”
The old woman’s claw reached out and pulled the chain of a lamp that stood beside her chair. It had a heavy tasseled lamp shade, and it threw out a dim yellow light. Now Nora could see Clara McFadden more clearly. Her face was ancient and sunken, pale veins showing through parchment-paper skin. The lady examined her for a few minutes with a pair of glittering eyes.
“Thank you, Miss Kelly,” she said, turning off the lamp again. “What exactly do you want to know about my father?”
Nora took a folder out of the portfolio, squinting through the dimness at the questions she’d scribbled on the train north from Grand Central. She was glad she’d come prepared; the interview was becoming unexpectedly intimidating.
The old woman picked up something from a small table beside the wing chair: an old-fashioned pint bottle with a green label. She poured a bit of the liquid into a teaspoon, swallowed it, replaced the spoon. Another black cat, or perhaps the same one, leapt into the old lady’s lap. She began stroking it and it rumbled with pleasure.
“Your father was a curator at the New York Museum of Natural History. He was a colleague of John Canaday Shottum, who owned a cabinet of curiosities in lower Manhattan.”
There was no response from the old lady.
“And he was acquainted with a scientist by the name of Enoch Leng.”
Miss McFadden seemed to grow very still. Then she spoke with acidic sharpness, her voice cutting through the heavy air. It was as if the name had woken her up. “Leng? What about Leng?”
“I was curious if you knew anything about Dr. Leng, or had any letters or papers relating to him.”
“I certainly do know about Leng,” came the shrill voice. “He’s the man who murdered my father.”
Nora sat in stunned silence. There was nothing about a murder in anything she had read about McFadden. “I’m sorry?” she said.
“Oh, I know they all said he merely disappeared. But they were wrong.”
“How do you know this?”
There was another rustle. “How? Let me tell you how.”
Miss McFadden turned on the light again, directing Nora’s attention to a large, old framed photograph. It was a faded portrait of a young man in a severe, high-buttoned suit. He was smiling: two silver front teeth gleamed out of the frame. A roguish eyepatch covered one eye. The man had Clara McFadden’s narrow forehead and prominent cheekbones.
She began to speak, her voice unnaturally loud and angry. “That was taken shortly after my father lost his right eye in Borneo. He was a collector, you must understand. As a young man, he spent several years in British East Africa. He built up quite a collection of African mammals and artifacts collected from the natives. When he returned to New York he became a curator at the new museum just started by one of his fellow Lyceum members. The New York Museum of Natural History. It was very different back then, Miss Kelly. Most of the early Museum curators were gentlemen of leisure, like my father. They did not have systematic scientific training. They were amateurs in the best sense of the word. My father was always interested in oddities, queer things. You are familiar, Miss Kelly, with the cabinets of curiosities?”
“Yes,” Nora said as she scribbled notes as quickly as she could. She wished she had brought a voice recorder.
“There were quite a few in New York at the time. But the New York Museum quickly started putting them out of business. It became my father’s role at the Museum to acquire these bankrupt cabinet collections. He corresponded with many of the cabinet owners: the Delacourte family, Phineas Barnum, the Cadwalader brothers. One of these cabinet owners was John Canaday Shottum.” The old lady poured herself another spoonful from the bottle. In the light, Nora could make out the label: Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Tonic.