The Cabinet of Curiosities

“Dr. Wellesley,” the secretary said, “there is a Special Agent Pendergast from the FBI and a police officer here to see you.”

The voice that echoed out of the office was easily heard by all. It was a crisp, no-nonsense voice, feminine, yet cold as ice, and so unrelievedly English it made O’Shaughnessy bristle.

“Unless they are here to arrest me, Heather, the gentlemen can make an appointment like everyone else. I am engaged.”

The crash of her telephone hitting the cradle was equally unmistakable.

The receptionist looked up at them with high nervousness. “Dr. Wellesley—”

But Pendergast was already moving toward the office from which the voice had issued. This is more like it, O’Shaughnessy thought, as Pendergast swung open the door, placing himself squarely in the doorway. At least the guy, for all his pretensions, was no pushover. He knew how to cut through the bullshit.

The unseen voice, laden with sarcasm, cut the air. “Ah, the proverbial copper with his foot in the door. Pity it wasn’t locked so you could batter it down with your truncheon.”

It was as if Pendergast had not heard. His fluid, honeyed voice filled the office with warmth and charm. “Dr. Wellesley, I have come to you because you are the world’s foremost authority on the history of dress. And I hope you’ll permit me to say your identification of the Greek peplos of Vergina was most thrilling to me personally. I have long had an interest in the subject.”

There was a brief silence. “Flattery, Mr. Pendergast, will at least get you inside.”

O’Shaughnessy followed the agent into a small but very well-appointed office. The furniture looked like it had come directly from the museum’s collection, and the walls were hung with a series of eighteenth-century watercolors of opera costumes. O’Shaughnessy thought they might be the characters of Figaro, Rosina, and Count Almaviva from The Barber of Seville. Opera was his sole, and his secret, indulgence.

He seated himself, crossing and then uncrossing his legs, shifting in the impossibly uncomfortable chair. No matter what he did, he still seemed to take up too much space. The blue of his uniform seemed unbearably gauche amid the elegant furnishings. He glanced back up at the watercolors, allowing the bars of an aria to go through his head.

Wellesley was an attractive woman in her mid-forties, beautifully dressed. “I see you admire my pictures,” she said to O’Shaughnessy, eyeing him shrewdly.

“Sure,” said O’Shaughnessy. “If you like dancing in a wig, pumps, and straitjacket.”

Wellesley turned to Pendergast. “Your associate has a rather queer sense of humor.”

“Indeed.”

“Now what can I do for you gentlemen?”

Pendergast removed a bundle from under his suit, loosely wrapped in paper. “I would like you to examine this dress,” he said, unrolling the bundle across the curator’s desk. She backed up slightly in horror as the true dimensions of its filth were exposed to view.

O’Shaughnessy thought he detected a peculiar smell. Very peculiar. It occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, Pendergast wasn’t on the take—that this was for real.

“Good lord. Please,” she said, stepping farther back and putting a hand before her face. “I do not do police work. Take this revolting thing away.”

“This revolting thing, Dr. Wellesley, belonged to a nineteen-year-old girl who was murdered over a hundred years ago, dissected, dismembered, and walled up in a tunnel in lower Manhattan. Sewn up into the dress was a note, which the girl wrote in her own blood. It gave her name, age, and address. Nothing else—ink of that sort does not encourage prolixity. It was the note of a girl who knew she was about to die. She knew that no one would help her, no one would save her. Her only wish was that her body be identified—that she not be forgotten. I could not help her then, but I am trying to now. That is why I am here.” The dress seemed to quiver slightly, and O’Shaughnessy realized with a start that the FBI agent’s hand was trembling with emotion. At least, that’s how it looked to him. That a law officer would actually care about something like this was a revelation.

The silence that followed Pendergast’s statement was profound.

Without a word, Wellesley bent down over the dress, fingered it, turned up its lining, gently stretched the material in several directions. Reaching into a drawer of her desk, she pulled out a large magnifying glass and began examining the stitching and fabric. Several minutes passed. Then she sighed and sat down in her chair.

“This is a typical workhouse garment,” she said. “Standard issue in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Cheap woolen fabric for the exterior, scratchy and coarse but actually quite warm, lined with undyed cotton. You can see from the pattern cuts and stitching that it was probably made by the girl herself, using fabric issued to her by the workhouse. The fabrics came in several basic colors—green, blue, gray, and black.”

“Any idea which workhouse?”

“Impossible to say. Nineteenth-century Manhattan had quite a few of them. They were called ‘houses of industry.’ They took in abandoned children, orphans, and runaways. Harsh, cruel places, run by the so-called religious.”

“Can you give me a more precise date on the dress?”

“Not with any accuracy. It seems to be a rather pathetic imitation of a style popular in the early eighteen eighties, called a Maude Makin. Workhouse girls usually tried to copy dresses they liked out of popular magazines and penny press advertisements.” Dr. Wellesley sighed, shrugged. “That’s it, I’m afraid.”

“If anything else comes to mind, I can be contacted through Sergeant O’Shaughnessy here.”

Dr. Wellesley glanced up at O’Shaughnessy’s name tag, then nodded.

“Thank you for your time.” The FBI agent began rolling up the dress. “That was a lovely exhibition you curated last year, by the way.”