Murder in the Smithsonian

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Electronic edition published 2015 by RosettaBooks
Cover design by Brehanna Ramirez
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795345029
www.RosettaBooks.com

Chapter 1

Lewis Tunney stopped in front of a small shop on Davies Street, in London’s fashionable Mayfair district. A brass plate set into the door read: Antiques. Peter S. Peckham, Prop. By Appointment Only. An elaborate coat of arms over the door assured potential customers that the shop had provided goods to at least one royal household.

Tunney tried to peer through the window but saw only a reflection of himself and of vehicles passing behind him. The shop was dark. Big Ben’s leaden chimes sounded noon from 320 feet atop Westminster Palace’s clock tower.

He pushed a button and heard a musical triplet, tuned in thirds, from inside. A shaft of light cut through the interior darkness as a door at the rear of the shop opened, a man stepped through it, glanced at his watch, then came to the front door, unlocked it and said pleasantly, “Lewis, how are you, besides being your usual punctual self?”

They could have been brothers, both tall and slender, and with soft, brown wavy hair. Peter Peckham was dressed in gray flannel slacks, a turtleneck the color of port wine, a camel’s-hair sport jacket and brown loafers. Tunney wore a three-piece blue suit, blue-and-white striped shirt with a solid white collar, narrow dark blue tie and highly polished black wing-tip shoes. Tunney was forty-three years old, Peckham forty-one. Both had brown eyes, with Peckham’s just a shade darker. Tunney was American, Peckham British.

They proceeded through the shop to Peckham’s office at the rear. The office, like the shop, was cluttered with artifacts of antique value.

“Yes, it has, my fault. This project has turned me into a virtual recluse. I’m happy to be breaking out of it.”

As Peckham swished hot water inside a china cup to warm it, poured the water into a small sink and put tea leaves in a silver tea infuser, Tunney perused the contents of his desk. There were journals of interest to collectors, the latest copy of Smithsonian, the monthly magazine sent to members of the Smithsonian Institution, a wooden box filled with precious and semiprecious stones, two rare, leatherbound books, invoices, correspondence and other items common to any office. In the center of the mess was a solid gold, ten-inch-tall pendulum suspended from a pyramid of three gold sticks. The ball of the pendulum was a large, deep green emerald.

Peckham turned and saw Tunney flick the pendulum with his finger. “An unattractive piece,” he said, pouring hot water over the infuser, “but not without value. The stone is chockablock with flaws. My best estimate is that it might have come out of a Turkish sultan’s collection, late eighteenth century. What do you think?”

“You’re probably right, but it might be older, early eighteenth century. It is Turkish. The gold is finely worked.”

Peckham placed the cup in front of Tunney, and they watched the gentle sway of the pendulum. Tunney looked across the desk and said, “Well, Peter, here’s to seeing you again.” He tasted his tea. “Good, Peter, very good.”

“Personally. I keep up with you professionally through gossip. Your personal life is a little harder to track that way.”

Tunney smiled. He pulled out a large, thin brown Dunhill cigar, lighted it and directed a stream of blue smoke at the pendulum. “Interesting things have been happening, Peter, professionally and personally, especially personally.”

“Probably, but before I go into true confessions, Peter, tell me why you were so anxious to see me today.”

“Of course, but friends could have made a luncheon date, drinks at the end of the day. You sounded anxious when you called. Is there a problem?”

“Probably not, but you can help me on that. Give me a half hour, Lewis, and I think you’ll be able to judge whether or not there’s a problem.”

Big Ben chimed once as Lewis Tunney got up from his chair. His youthful, smooth face was now creased. He chewed on his upper lip and hunched his shoulders, as though to force comprehension of what had been said.

Peckham picked up a small chamois sack the color of burnt ocher from the desk top and put it in a drawer, came around the desk and offered his hand. “When are we having lunch?” he asked. “My treat at the Audley.”

Peckham slapped Tunney on the back. “Call soon. I might even spring for the Connaught.”

“Spring? You’ve become too Americanized, Peter.” Tunney stood and looked down at the pendulum. It had slowed considerably and was nearing the point where friction would win out.

Tunney leaned forward and extended his index finger into the pendulum’s field of motion. The emerald stopped against it. He glanced up at Peckham, forced a smile and left the shop.

Chapter 2

“I’m always fascinated by it,” William Oxenhauer, vice president of the United States, said over the sounds of the party taking place around him. “Visitors think it’s supposed to demonstrate perpetual motion, but it’s not.”

The Oxenhauers and a small group of guests focused their attention on the 240-pound hollow brass bob of the National Museum of American History’s famed Foucault pendulum. The brass bob, suspended from the building’s fourth floor through large circular holes cut in floors below, moved gracefully, quietly and ceaselessly across an inlaid compass rose on the main floor. Red markers that looked like stubby candles were positioned every five degrees around the compass’s 360-degree circumference and, one by one, over the course of the day, the pendulum toppled them. It was close to hitting one now.

“That the earth rotates. The pendulum’s plane remains the same, but the markers, like us, are turning with the earth.”

“Interesting,” said the guest, his eyes watching the marker next in line to be struck.

Oxenhauer was joined at the railing by Alfred Throckly, the museum’s new director. “Wonderful turnout,” the vice president said.

“Yes, sir, delightful. You should be very gratified. The exhibit was, after all, your idea.”

Oxenhauer smiled, said, “I won’t pretend modesty, Mr. Throckly. I gave that up the first time I asked people to vote for me.”

Joline Oxenhauer looked out over the sprawling main floor where Washington’s social and arts hierarchy had gathered. Most of the men wore tuxedoes, and the women were adorned in a variety of formal styles and colors. Three tuxedoed musicians performed contrapuntal fugues on a seventeenth-century harpsichord and recorders, all belonging to the Smithsonian’s collection of antique musical instruments. As the strains of Vivaldi blended with the tinkling of ice in glasses and the buzz of two hundred guests talking at once, Mrs. Oxenhauer touched her husband’s arm and said, “I wonder when Lewis will be arriving.”

Oxenhauer glanced at his watch. “Maybe his flight was delayed.” He turned to Throckly, who’d just asked a uniformed waiter to refill his bourbon and soda. “Quite a surprise, wasn’t it, having Lewis Tunney accept the invitation at the last minute?”

Throckly raised his eyebrows and nodded. “It certainly upset a lot of plans, Mr. Vice President. I have hostesses upstairs right now inserting Dr. Tunney’s introduction and bio into programs.” Then, as though he’d suddenly been reminded by an unseen voice that the vice president and Tunney were best of friends, he added, “But it’s worth any inconvenience to have him keynote the exhibit. As far as I know, this is the first public event he’s attended since going to England two years ago.”

Joline Oxenhauer laughed. “Just like Lewis, packing up everything and hibernating… I wish he’d get here.” She knew how excited her husband was at seeing Lewis Tunney again. They were old, good friends, and had spent considerable time together when Oxenhauer was teaching American history at the University of Chicago, which was before he decided to enter politics. Joline had resisted his decision to run for state office in Illinois because it meant giving up the relaxed academic life-style she enjoyed so much. Of course, neither of them imagined that he would rise quickly from a one-term Illinois state assemblyman to lieutenant governor, then win election to the United States Congress, from which he was selected to run for vice president on the Democratic ticket.

Bill Oxenhauer was chosen for two reasons: he hadn’t been in Congress long enough to have many political enemies, and he’d developed a national public recognition by spinning entertaining tales on leading television talk shows about the man in history he most admired, Abraham Lincoln. No one in Congress told a better, funnier story than Bill Oxenhauer, nor had any teacher of American history been as successful in bringing it alive.

The sudden emergence of a vice president whose consuming passion was American history delighted the Smithsonian’s leadership. The vice president was, by congressional “enactment,” the head of the Smithsonian’s board of regents. Until Bill Oxenhauer, other vice presidents had ignored that titular position. Oxenhauer had made time to take an active role in moving the Smithsonian Institution, and its myriad museums and programs, into a golden age, of sorts, onto center stage. When the National Museum of American History’s previous director, Roger Kennedy, resigned for personal reasons, he told his staff at a going-away party, “My biggest regret is leaving now that we have a vice president who cares, and who considers a museum to be something special. My timing, as usual, is terrible.”

The waiter returned carrying a silver tray with Throckly’s drink, a plate of crab balls and a small dish of horseradish sauce. Throckly picked up a crab ball on a toothpick, dipped it into the horseradish and raised it to his mouth. A dollop of sauce fell on one of his black velvet loafers. “Oh, my,” he said, squatting and wiping at the stain with a cocktail napkin that bore the Smithsonian seal.

Oxenhauer looked down and smiled. He’d approved the hiring of Alfred Throckly to replace Roger Kennedy, but not without reservations. There was a foppishness to the new director which, although not alien to museum professionals, was a little too precious for a vice president who’d once been described as a lumberjack with a Ph.D. Oxenhauer was as ruddy and beefy as Throckly was pale and delicate, his wooly, matted salt-and-pepper hair as natural as Throckly’s helmet of soft gray curls was coiffured. Oxenhauer, who preferred tweeds and corduroy and who detested formal wear, was sure Throckly was content to spend every waking moment in a tux, maybe sleeping moments, too.

But the vice president could not deny Throckly’s professional credentials and stature. His background included curatorships with leading museums in San Francisco, New York and Europe. He’d been published extensively in professional journals and sat on advisory boards around the nation. Equally important, he was known as a superb fund raiser.

They moved from the pendulum to where an old-fashioned ice cream factory and parlor had been faithfully recreated, the four Secret Servicemen assigned to them never breaking their protective box as they walked.

Oxenhauer greeted Congressman Jubel Watson, who also sat on the Smithsonian’s board of regents along with two other members of the House of Representatives, three U.S. senators, the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court and six private citizens. Watson was the only other member of that board besides Oxenhauer who took an interest in Smithsonian activities. He was an avid collector of art and rare books, and many of his millions were tied up in collections. Short, slender with black hair looking like patent leather, he was on the opposite end of the political and philosophical spectrum from Oxenhauer. Watson was an arch-conservative, to the right of John Birch, and proud of it. “Lovely gown, Mrs. Oxenhauer,” he told Joline.

“Bill you’re not old,” his wife said, squeezing his arm. “Bill loves playing the role of the grizzled old man, but underneath that exterior is—”

“Hold it,” Watson said, raising his hands. “No lurid tales out of the house of the vice president. There’s press around.”

Alfred Throckly turned to a tall young man whose way into the vice president’s elite circle was discreetly blocked by the Secret Servicemen. “Ford,” Throckly said, extending his hand past the V.P.’s protection, “say hello to the vice president.”

The young man was considerably taller than Throckly but looked like a younger version of the director. “Mr. Vice President,” Throckly said, “this is Ford Saunders, administrative assistant to Chloe Prentwhistle.”

Oxenhauer extended a large, calloused hand and was met with Saunders’s startlingly cold, limp one. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Saunders. I’ve been a fan of Miss Prentwhistle for years.”

“Chloe and I go back a long way together. She put together the first really good Lincoln exhibition in the state of Illinois.”

Saunders looked at Throckly before answering. “Busy, Mr. Vice President, last minute details. She’ll be down shortly.”

Oxenhauer shrugged. “I understand he’s still leaving notes around, claiming to be a relation to James Smithson and threatening to blow up every museum in the Smithsonian unless he’s ‘recognized.’”

“The frightening thing is that he might do something drastic some day,” Joline Oxenhauer said. “It’s so easy to dismiss people as crazy, but then sometimes they act out.”

One floor above, where two hundred folding chairs formed a horseshoe around a lectern, women in gowns moved through the aisles and placed an insert into programs that had been placed on the seats. The women were volunteer members of the Friends of the Smithsonian, a fund-raising group dedicated to obtaining rare items for the Smithsonian’s museums.

The insert had been written and reproduced at the last minute after Lewis Tunney changed his mind about attending the event and delivering the welcoming address.

DR. LEWIS TUNNEY

We are indeed honored that Dr. Lewis Tunney will personally introduce this very special and exciting exhibition of the Harsa and Cincinnati societies. Dr. Tunney, as many of you know, has established himself as the preeminent scholar of post-Revolutionary exclusive societies. His writings on the American Revolution have earned him not one but two Pulitzer Prizes in history.

Originally, Dr. Tunney’s busy schedule abroad prevented him from accepting our invitation to speak, but a sudden change in his schedule has benefitted us.

We all express our appreciation for his presence here tonight, and for his willingness to share his knowledge of the subject of our exhibition.

Welcome, Dr. Lewis Tunney.

“I can’t wait to meet him,” one of the volunteer women said. “He’s so handsome in his pictures. Looks like Alan Alda.”

Another woman laughed. “You’re giving away your age. Alan Alda appeals to… well, to more mature women who appreciate sensitivity in men.”

Sounds from the party downstairs drifted up through the Foucault pendulum’s opening in the floor. One of the women leaned close to another. “I’ve never seen Mr. Throckly so wound up. I can’t decide whether he’s excited about having Dr. Tunney here or annoyed.”

“Well, it did upset Mr. Throckly’s plans… Come on, let’s go downstairs and enjoy the party.”

A long, black limousine turned off Constitution Avenue into a circular drive in front of the National Museum of American History. The chauffeur came around to open the door for his passenger but Lewis Tunney had already gotten out. He thanked the driver for a safe and pleasant ride, looked up at the building he’d once said had all the architectural charm of a stone shoe box, drew a deep breath and went to the main doors, where two uniformed guards and a Secret Serviceman stood. He identified himself, was checked off a long list and entered the building. “Hello, I’m Lewis Tunney,” he said to the first person he met, an attractive middle-aged woman wearing a maroon gown.

“Oh, Dr. Tunney, welcome,” she said, shaking his hand, “let me find Mr. Throckly for you. He’s been worried that your flight might be delayed.”

Before she could respond Tunney spotted the vice president, thanked her for her hospitality and moved away. Oxenhauer saw him coming, left the circle and greeted him warmly. “Lewis, good to see you. How’ve you been?”

“Considering the fact I willingly committed myself to four years inside an institution, not bad. Come, say hello to Joline. She’s as excited as I am.”

Joline threw her arms around Tunney, then stepped back and took him in from head to toe. “My God, more handsome than ever. How you’ve stayed a bachelor so long is worth congressional study in itself. You’re an American original.”

Tunney felt embarrassed by the open flattery. “Thanks, Joline. And you look… splendid.”

Throckly, who’d broken away from Oxenhauer’s group moments before Tunney’s arrival, returned and said, “Hello, Dr. Tunney. I’m Alfred Throckly. We met a long time ago.”

“Hello.” Tunney turned to Oxenhauer. “Could I catch a minute with you?” Throckly’s face reflected his annoyance at Tunney’s abrupt greeting, and seeming dismissal.

“We’ll be going in to dinner soon,” Throckly said. “I thought you might like to come upstairs and see where you’ll be speaking. I have an audiovisual person on hand in case you want to—”

“Maybe later,” Tunney said. “I’m not using my props. Would you excuse us?” He touched the vice president’s arm. Oxenhauer looked at his wife, whose expression said that she didn’t understand either.

Oxenhauer and Tunney, accompanied by three Secret Servicemen, went to a corner of the museum near the main entrance, where a rural country store and post office were displayed. It had been a functioning store and post office in West Virginia back in 1861, and had literally been moved lock, stock and barrel to the Smithsonian. Besides being a popular exhibition, it also served as the Smithsonian’s only working postal outlet.

Oxenhauer nodded to the Secret Servicemen, who retreated out of earshot. “Well?” he said to Tunney. “You look as though whatever’s on your mind is pretty damned important.”

“No. We can discuss my personal life later.” His face was serious, hard. He put his hands on his hips, exposing a field of dark blue vest and a gold watch on a chain, looked down at the floor, then up at Oxenhauer. “Let me tell you a story, Bill. I’ll make it as brief as I can.”

Oxenhauer looked to where his wife stood with a cluster of young curators. “Make it quick, Lewis. We really should be getting back…”

Ten minutes later Alfred Throckly looked at his watch, then told two committeewomen acting as hostesses, “Let’s try to move them into dinner. We’re running behind schedule.” He looked to where Tunney and Oxenhauer were talking in front of the old post office, and disappeared behind a partition.

“Lewis,” the vice president was saying, “we’d better get back to the party. I think dinner is close to being served—”

“Of course not. I’m as sickened as you are. Look, you’re staying around a few days, aren’t you?”

“I planned to fly back to London tomorrow night. I have someone waiting for me.”

“That gives us the day, then. I’ll clear the decks. Come to my office at ten. I have some things to tell you about too.”

“You could win a battle and lose a war. Besides, there are compelling reasons to hold up. Don’t misunderstand, I’m as concerned as you are. All I ask is that you keep it to yourself until we get a chance to really sit down and talk.”

Throckly intercepted Tunney as he headed for one of three bars. “We’ll be going in for dinner soon, Dr. Tunney. You’ll be sitting with the vice president and with—”

“Thank you, that’s fine, Mr. Throckly,” Tunney said. “I’ll get a drink and join you shortly—”

Tunney turned, and was face-to-face with a tall, gaunt woman in her late fifties. She wore a long, loose gray gown with a strip of black silk at the neck and cuffs. Her face was a montage of angles and planes, but not without a certain bright attractiveness.

Tunney looked past her and saw that guests were moving toward the museum’s private dining rooms. “No, I’ll get it myself,” he said. “I need a few minutes alone… you know, to gather my thoughts before speaking.”

Tunney sighed and followed her to a small room that housed public telephones. They were alone. Five minutes later Tunney left the room.

A hostess asked if there was anything he needed. He told her, “Just a drink.” She went to where two other women, all wives of prominent Washington businessmen, stood, and said sotto voce, “Just like Alan Alda, really. And never married, I understand.”

Tunney took a gin and tonic from a bartender and walked to a bank of elevators. A member of the museum’s security force stood in its open door. “The second floor, please,” Tunney said.

He stepped out on the next level. When the elevator doors had closed behind him he went to the folding chairs and put his hand on one of them. In front of him, rising majestically, was the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the thirty-by-forty-two-foot American flag that had flown over Fort McHenry following the successful defense against British naval forces in September, 1814. A young lawyer on a ship that fateful night observed that the “flag was still there” by the “dawn’s early light” which inspired him to create America’s national anthem.

Tunney felt a chill as he looked up at the huge red, white and blue banner that had been so painstakingly restored by museum experts.

The room was dark except for low-wattage perimeter lights. A single spotlight illuminated the lectern. To its left were a large movie screen and two speakers. Tunney went to the lectern and looked out over the sea of metal chairs. Behind them was the opening through which the Foucault pendulum dangled.

He turned and faced the reason he was here, the Harsa-Cincinnati exhibition. In the morning the exhibit would be open to the public, another chance for Americans to touch base with their heritage. He stepped down from the lectern and entered the shadowy exhibition space. A massive oil painting of George Washington stared down at him from one side, an equally large portrait of Thomas Jefferson from the other.

He went over to a wall that had been constructed in the center of the exhibit, two glass cases housing precious memorabilia. Swords belonging to Washington and Jefferson hung vertically on either side. Behind each of the two glass windows were gem-studded medals, symbols of the Harsa and Cincinnati societies.

Tunney listened to the carefree sounds from the floor below; a woman’s loud laughter cut through the din. Suddenly he looked to his left, thinking he’d heard someone.

The hostesses at the party downstairs moved through the crowd and urged people to go into the dining room.

Bill and Joline Oxenhauer stood with six other people at the railing surrounding the pendulum. Another red marker was about to be toppled. Everyone laughed as Joline suggested they bet on how many seconds before the earth rotated sufficiently to bring the pendulum into contact with it.

“Want to get in on the bet?” Oxenhauer asked the Secret Serviceman nearest him.

“No, sir, but thank you,” he replied, his eyes never straying from the crowd.

“Twenty seconds. I’ll count,” Oxenhauer said. He looked at Joline, who was staring at the ceiling. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Now a series of red drops splattered the edge of the compass rose. The pendulum reached the side where the group stood, then swung back in the other direction, catching the marker and toppling it.

Slowly, as though having been photographed in slow motion, Lewis Tunney’s body slipped over the second floor railing and fell to the compass rose. Protruding from his back was a sword that had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

The pendulum reached its apex on the other side, then headed back toward the vice president, stopping for the first time in years as it thudded into the lifeless body of the night’s keynote speaker, the late Dr. Lewis Tunney.

Chapter 3

Tunney’s body was removed from the National Museum of American History in a black body bag. As it passed, Alfred Throckly shook his head. “My God…” The tone in his voice seemed a blend of shock and impatience.

Captain Mac Hanrahan, chief of detectives of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, excused himself from the museum director and went to the Constitution Avenue entrance. He stepped back to allow two uniformed policemen to carry the body bag outside, then followed. The street was choked with vehicles, some from MPD, most belonging to news media. Three large television remote trucks were parked on the sidewalk. Powerful lights mounted on their roofs turned night into day.

“Take it easy,” Hanrahan said, holding up his hands. “I’ll have something to tell you in an hour.”

Hanrahan saw that the officers carrying Tunney’s body could not get through the crowd to a waiting ambulance. Lights and cameras were trained on the bag. “Ghouls,” Hanrahan muttered, and in a louder voice: “Let them through, damn it, unless you want an obstruction rap.”

“This is terrible,” Throckly said, “beyond belief. What perverse, horrible…?”

Hanrahan saw that Vice President William Oxenhauer and his wife were talking with his assistant, Lieutenant Joe Pearl. He went up to them. “Sorry for the delay, Mr. Vice President.”

Oxenhauer’s face was ashen. The strain of Joline’s earlier hysteria still showed, though she was now under control. Her eyes were red, watery. “Don’t worry about us, Captain, please…” Oxenhauer said, “just do what you have to do.”

A Secret Serviceman took Hanrahan aside. “The vice president should leave, Captain. He has a full schedule tomorrow—”

“Yes, I understand.”…“Why don’t you and Mrs. Oxenhauer go home now, sir. You’re not involved in this and—”

Joline looked sharply at him. “Lewis Tunney was one of our closest friends.”

Oxenhauer put his arm around her. “The captain is only trying to help, darling. He’s not being unkind. He’s right, let’s go home.”

Throckly, who’d joined them, said, “There’s an exit through the kitchen.”

Oxenhauer told a Secret Serviceman to have the limo pull around to the kitchen exit, and to Hanrahan said, “Thank you for your courtesy, Captain. Could I have a word with you?”

They moved halfway around the pendulum railing. Oxenhauer checked to see that they weren’t being overheard. “I learned something tonight that might have bearing on your investigation, Captain…”

The vice president again looked over his shoulder. “It can wait until tomorrow… Please come to my office at ten.”

“Well, sir, maybe I should be the one to decide whether it can wait, Mr. Vice President. This is a murder we’re dealing with—”

“Of course, but I’d much appreciate your allowing me to follow your earlier suggestion. I’d like to take Mrs. Oxenhauer home. She’s very upset.”

Hanrahan’s instinct was to press the matter then and there, but Oxenhauer was, after all, the vice president of the United States… “Thank you for your cooperation, sir. I’ll be there at ten.”

He watched them leave, then followed Lieutenant Joe Pearl into the dining room, where others at the party had been corralled. A team of six detectives was busy establishing the identity of each person who had been in the museum at the time of the murder, noting addresses and phone numbers, asking questions about movement during the evening and warning that they were not to leave Washington until further notice.

“I don’t think so. Maybe we’ll put something together after we assimilate and correlate the statements—”

Pearl picked lint from Hanrahan’s lapel. “You’re about to lose a button, Captain.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hanrahan slapped Pearl on the back. His assistant was only slightly younger—Hanrahan was forty-seven, Pearl forty-one—but displayed a capacity for jargon that never failed to amuse his boss. Pearl had a master’s degree in sociology. Hanrahan had graduated high school. Period. Pearl was Jewish, and relatively devout. Hanrahan’s parents were Irish, and he was raised a devout Catholic, although he’d broken away from the church years ago. He’d recently divorced after twenty-two years of marriage. His mother had said at the time of the separation, “That’s what happens when you marry out of your faith, Mac. You go to bed with swine, you get up with swine.” Hanrahan’s wife had been Baptist, which, he told his mother, hardly made her a swine.

His personal feelings about his ex-wife were another matter. She’d taken up with a man the age of their eldest son, twenty-five, in order, she said, to establish her identity as a “female being” and to catch up with the sexual revolution she’d missed out on. Hanrahan hadn’t contested the divorce. He wasn’t interested in competition with a damned flower child. His last words to his wife when she left were, “Remember, you go to bed with swine, you get up with swine.” At least she’d laughed at that. He didn’t…

The museum’s security director, L. D. Rowland, who’d been called from his home right after the murder, asked for a few minutes with Hanrahan. They left the dining room and went to the second floor, the site of the Cincinnati-Harsa exhibition. Rowland, a black man with hair like pasted-on cotton balls, pointed to the floor.

“Yeah, we got that,” Hanrahan said, referring to drops of blood leading from the exhibit area to the railing Tunney had fallen over. “Did your men see anybody at all leave the building about the time of the murder?”

“They say no, but of course it’s hard to be positive about that sort of thing. I have a good staff, though.”

“I’m sure you do. Let me ask you something, Mr. Rowland. Why wasn’t there an alarm system on the case over there?” He pointed to where the Legion of Harsa’s medal had been displayed, next to the Society of the Cincinnati’s symbol. The glass covering the Harsa medal was smashed and the medal was missing.

“Museum policy now, Captain Hanrahan, not that I entirely agree with it, which is between you and me. Alarms can be triggered by a lot of things besides an actual break-in. It happened so many times in the past—short circuits, breakdowns, you name it, they decided to do away with the system. The idea is, it’s sort of like sticking labels on windows warning intruders that a house is armed with a burglar alarm. It doesn’t matter whether it is or not so long as a potential intruder thinks it is. I guess the museum figures people will assume these things are protected and not try anything. And at the same time avoid false alarms. I also hear talk they’re thinking of installing a more sophisticated, newer system. Meanwhile…”

“Meanwhile it looks like they assumed wrong this time, or these intruders knew there wasn’t an alarm.” He went to the broken display case. Lab technicians had finished dusting for fingerprints and had taken photographs of the scene. The area had been roped off, including the path Tunney had staggered along from the exhibit area to the pendulum railing. Signs warning that it was the scene of the crime and that no one was to enter hung from the blue ropes. Two uniformed MPD officers stood guard. Broken glass from the display case had been carefully swept up and removed with other evidence.

Rowland shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it, Captain. I heard it wasn’t worth a hell of a lot—”

THE LEGION OF HARSA

Created by an identified gemologist in 1794, the medal was a gift to Thomas Jefferson from original members of Harsa. It was worn by Jefferson during his term as the legion’s first president, then passed down to succeeding presidents.

The medal, set with diamonds and rubies in a sunburst design symbolizing the power of God and nature, and the light under which all free men prosper, hangs from a blood-red ribbon edged with white and set in a bow. The color of the ribbon, and of the large ruby at the center of the sunburst, was to honor the blood shed by free men who steadfastly stood against what Jefferson and other founders of the legion termed “a race of hereditary patricians or nobility” as characterized by the Society of Cincinnati.

Hanrahan now read the card beneath the Society of the Cincinnati’s medal, which rested securely behind glass that was intact.

THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI EAGLE

The president-general’s eagle of the Society. This badge set with diamonds was a gift to General Washington by officers of the French navy who had been admitted to the order. It was designed by Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant, and had been worn by Alexander Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and twenty-two other presidents of the society.

Pale blue ribbon set in a bow and edged with white; band of five diamonds leading down to the top medallion (all diamonds). In the body of the eagle is an oval of porcelain around which is inscribed OMNIA RELINOT SERVAT REMPE. On the eagle’s wings are two larger diamonds on top, and smaller diamonds make up the rest of the wing. The tail is made of graduating-size diamonds and larger ones at the bottom. Upper medallion has large center diamond, two oval diamonds flanking it and smaller stones around them.

Hanrahan walked the route Tunney had taken from the display area to the pendulum, carefully avoiding the dried drops of blood. He reached the railing and looked down into the pit, where the pendulum was once again in motion. Guests already interviewed and logged were leaving. Joe Pearl stood near the main floor railing.

“Might as well. We’ll get the steno transcripts of the initial statements typed. Need me?”

“Okay, Mac.” Pearl looked down at a chalk outline of Tunney’s body, then walked out of Hanrahan’s view.

“Never have. Museums have always… well, I guess I just never had the time.”

“I never did either ’til I started working here.” His laugh was warm. “I’ll send somebody with you. I’ve got paperwork to do, you know how it is.”

Ten minutes later Hanrahan walked alongside a security guard who wore a starched white shirt, black tie and officer’s cap. A leash in his hand was attached to a German shepherd.

“Been using dogs long?” Hanrahan asked as they climbed stairs leading to the second floor. He didn’t want to admit it but the dog made him nervous, the way MPD dogs did.

They started in the Nation of Nations exhibit, more than five thousand original objects and documents dedicated to the diversity of people who have come to America over the years, then moved to Everyday Life in America, where the fabric of the American character was displayed, from a classic colonial parlor in Virginia to a Victorian-Gothic bedroom in Connecticut, from a Philadelphia banker’s library to a New England one-room schoolhouse.

Hanrahan was tempted to linger at some of the displays but knew he wasn’t there as a sightseer. He needed to have a better sense of the building in which this bizarre murder had taken place, wanted to know it. “You must get to know a lot about American history,” he said to the guard as they entered the We the People area—artifacts of the westward expansion, Indian wars, the Civil War, gifts to the fledgling nation from foreign powers, all based on Lincoln’s words, “…government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

“I don’t look much at this stuff,” the guard said. “I do my job, that’s about it.”

“I understand.” And he did. It was how he sometimes excused himself for not living enough of the rich full life his ex-wife used to talk about.

Hanrahan had heard of the First Ladies’ Gown exhibition. It had been written up often in the papers and was the museum’s most popular attraction. Started in 1943 by renowned curator Margaret Brown Klapthor, it had steadily grown until reaching its current size, a detailed and revealing view of the women behind the great men, the nation’s first ladies.

They stopped in front of one of many large, glass-walled rooms representing a White House parlor of the mid-nineteenth century. Hanrahan saw himself in the glass, touched his salt-and-pepper beard, ran his hand over baldness extending from his forehead to the crown that was bordered by fringes of what had once been a full head of black hair. Hanrahan never understood why he was balding. His father had had a full head of hair until he died at the age of eighty-four. At least he hadn’t put on weight like his father. He still weighed a trim 170 pounds, about right for his six-foot frame. It wasn’t that he made a big deal out of trying to stay slim, he just never put on weight. Metabolism, he figured. So nature evened things up. Bald but good metabolism. Couldn’t have everything…

He shifted his focus from his reflection to the display. The mannequins, exquisite in their detail, represented the early women who’d occupied the White House. Other display rooms featured more contemporary first ladies. In this room, according to the placard, were Sarah Polk; Betty Taylor Bliss, President Taylor’s daughter, who served as White House hostess in place of her ailing mother; the tall and motherly Abigail Powers Fillmore; the Victorian Jane Means Appleton Pierce; Harriet Lane, bachelor president James Buchanan’s “mischievous romp of a niece,” who functioned as her uncle’s official hostess; the extravagant Mary Todd Lincoln; and Martha Johnson Patterson, daughter of President Andrew Johnson. Martha’s mother, too, had been ailing during the White House years and had delegated hostess duties to her.

Murder in the Smithsonian