“A death mask broke?”
“Aye. Not a valuable one but—”
“Where was it? What happened? How was Dr. Eban involved?” I triggered off the questions.
“Um, weel, just upstairs.”
“Take me there while you tell me what happened. Please.” I stood and looked at our microfiche mess. “After we clean up.”
“I’ll clean up later,” he said. “Come along and I’ll show you where it happened.”
Though he didn’t understand my urgency, he respected it enough to hurry us up the two flights to a display case under an arched window that looked out toward the medical school buildings.
“There’s not much tae tell,” he said as we climbed stairs. “We rotate items in the display case, but none of them are valuable. Mostly duplicates, copies, replicas. The case is locked, but not watched all that closely, so museum-quality pieces don’t get put there. We like to keep it interesting, though. We asked Dr. Eban for help with a wee Burke and Hare display. He was happy tae help, but he dropped the mask as he was placing it—he insisted on placing it himself. He was upset.”
“But it wasn’t real?”
“No, not that one. Just a replica, a contemporary plaster casting.”
Based upon what Joshua had told me, I knew there were techniques that allowed one to get a pretty good idea of when certain things—materials, apparel, chemical makeup—had been cast in plaster.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what Dr. Eban told us, that he had it created just for his own interest.”
That was probably true, because if it had been valuable he wouldn’t have let them place it in an unwatched display case in the library, but I was just suspicious enough of him to wonder.
“This is the case,” Artair said quietly as we came to the window.
There were only books inside it currently, all of them titled something about Culloden.
“We took out the Burke and Hare items last week, and whoever was supposed tae come up with something else hasn’t done their job yet apparently. There are usually more than just books.”
“Can you remember the other items in the display?” I asked as I crouched and looked around the bottom edges of the case and the surrounding floor area.
“Books, certainly, but also pictures of the murderers. Nothing valuable, Delaney. The death mask might have been the most interesting item if Dr. Eban hadn’t broken it.”
I stopped my search and looked up at Artair. “Any chance there were scalpels like the ones we saw in the skull room?”
“No, lass, sharp edges like that wouldn’t have been allowed. I see you’re disappointed. Sorry.”
I smiled. “It’s okay. I don’t know what it would mean anyway, but it might mean something.”
I resumed my search, and was well rewarded.
“Artair, look!” I exclaimed as I pointed to the bottom edge of a nearby bookshelf. “What does that look like?”
He crouched as I knee-walked over.
“Looks like the cleaners missed something,” he said.
“I bet they didn’t see it. It’s pretty flush with the shelf. It looks like plaster from a death mask, doesn’t it?”
“Aye.”
“May I take it?”
“I don’t know why not. Wait, what are you going tae do with it?”
“Take it to a newspaper reporter and see if she’ll go to the police with me.”
“Sounds fairly safe. Take it.”
It wasn’t about the fingerprints, but I was careful nonetheless, because you never knew when fingerprints might be needed.
It was mostly about seeing if this piece matched Bridget’s piece, and if so, maybe that would be evidence that Dr. Eban had been in the close, and if not to kill Mallory Clacher, then why else would he have been there? I’d be happy to give the information to the police and let them figure it out. I just had to convince Bridget to come with me.
Carefully, I wrapped the three-inch piece of plaster in Artair’s handkerchief and put it in my bag.
He escorted me to the doors with the promise that he’d call me if he found anything else.
I got on the bus that would take me to the newspaper office, and hoped that Bridget and I might end up seeing eye to eye on more than just the fact that Tom was a really good catch.
THIRTY-ONE
“Delaney?” Bridget said as she looked up from her computer screen. I hadn’t waited to be greeted or escorted but had walked directly to her.
The rest of the staff watched me cautiously but when Bridget didn’t seem in any way scared, they all went back to work.
“I have something,” I said. “Can we go somewhere private?”
Like any good journalist that could smell a scoop, she nodded eagerly, stood and led me to a small office in the back. Other than a desk, there was nothing else in the room, not even chairs. But we could close the door.
“What do you have?” she asked.
“This.” I pulled out the handkerchief and showed her the plaster I’d found. “I don’t know if there’s any way to determine that yours and mine are from the same original piece of plaster, but if they are, I just might have a scoop for you.”
“I’m listening.”
It’s never a good idea to accuse anyone of murder unless you are more than one hundred percent sure he or she did the deed. I skated around an out-and-out accusation and told Bridget that it would certainly behoove the police to see if the pieces went together and if they did, I’d know without a doubt that a replica of a death mask was at one time in Dr. Eban’s possession, that he was the one who broke it, and that at least my plaster piece was probably from it.
Before long, we were both boarding a bus for Inspector Pierce’s office.
The blue windows were no less
