A Pocketful of Eyes (4 page)

‘MOST OF YOU WILL ALREADY
have heard that Gus, our Head Taxidermist, died last night,’ said Akiko Kobayashi, the Museum Director, her knuckles white on the wooden lectern.

Bee sat next to Toby in the back row of the auditorium where the museum held public lectures and forums. The other staff members were dotted around the room, sitting in groups of two or three. Some were crying. Bee felt as if she couldn’t blink. The only part of her body that had any feeling was the hand Toby was still holding. Gus was
dead
?

‘Are you okay?’ whispered Toby, squeezing her hand.

Bee didn’t respond.

‘He was found this morning in the Red Rotunda,’ said Akiko, glancing down at a piece of paper in front of her. She paused and swallowed. ‘The police say that he – he took his own life. At around midnight last night. He took something that sent him into anaphylactic shock. Um. Forensics are working in the Red Rotunda today, so please stay away from that area. Counselling will be made available to any staff member who requests it, and of course my door is always open. The museum will remain closed today, and staff have the option of taking the rest of the day off . . .’

Akiko continued to talk, but all Bee heard was a faint buzzing. Gus was dead.
Dead
. Yesterday he ate a salad sandwich and two hamburgers and several doughnuts and today he was dead. As dead as the possum on Bee’s desk.

‘I need to see him,’ Bee said suddenly, turning to Toby.

‘What?’

‘Gus. I need to see him.’

‘You want to see his body?’

Bee nodded. ‘Now,’ she said, getting to her feet.

There was police tape across the door of the Red Rotunda, but no sign of any officers.

‘We can’t go in,’ said Toby.

Bee ignored him and opened the door, ducking under the tape.

The room looked the same as it had the previous day. It contained a strange collection of creatures, some preserved in jars of yellowing methylated spirits, others posed and mounted. There were some rather mangy cats and a dog in one case, and a scorpion and a funny-shaped crab in another. One large jar labelled Mole Paws contained what looked like several hundred tiny furry hands. A raven perched on a wooden branch, its glass eye winking at Bee.

The only change in the room was that the elderly gentleman and tour guide were gone, replaced by two police officers standing near a glass case containing a dissected dolphin fin and a sperm whale foetus.

And Gus, lying in the very middle of the room, not moving.

He was on his back, his green Natural History Museum hoodie stark against the polished parquetry floor and the red walls. His eyes were closed and his mouth open. In his right hand Bee saw a tiny bottle. She leaned forward to read the label.

‘Seriously?’ said one of the policemen into a mobile phone. He held the phone to his chest to muffle his voice as he spoke to his colleague. ‘Forensics can’t get back here until two.’

‘The guy’s been dead for . . .’ The second policeman checked his watch. ‘. . . nearly eleven hours. He’s going to start to smell.’

Bee went to check the time, only to find her watch wasn’t on her wrist. She grabbed Toby’s arm. There was an awkward moment where he seemed to think Bee wanted to hold his hand, but she pulled back his sleeve impatiently and checked his watch: 10:51.

The movement caught the attention of the policeman on the phone, who frowned at them. ‘I don’t care if it’s only routine, just tell them to hurry.’ He finished the call. ‘You can’t be in here,’ he said to Bee and Toby.

‘Sorry,’ said Toby. ‘We work here. In the same office as . . .’ He indicated Gus and glanced at Bee. ‘My colleague is very upset.’

The policeman nodded. ‘It must be hard,’ he said. ‘And ordinarily it’d be fine, but Forensics haven’t finished yet, and I’ll be in deep strife if I let anyone near the body.’

‘Does he have anything on him?’ asked Bee suddenly. Her voice sounded very loud.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Besides the bottle. Does he have his wallet, or a suicide note, or anything?’

The policeman shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just some loose change in the pocket of his hoodie. Oh, and about ten glass eyes.’

‘What size?’ asked Bee. Toby looked at her as if she were crazy.

‘Different sizes,’ said the policeman. ‘Like for an animal. Yellow, with a line instead of a dot in the middle.’

‘Like a cat’s eye?’ asked Bee.

‘More like a lizard or a snake’s.’ The policeman made an apologetic face. ‘You’d better go. There’s really not supposed to be anyone in here.’

Toby escorted Bee out the front door of the museum and across the lawn to the posh café over the road. As they walked, Bee’s mind was whirling. But amid the confusion of emotions and thoughts, three things stood out very clearly:

1. It was a very nice day. Too nice to be the day you discover your boss has killed himself.

2. The old man she’d seen yesterday – William Cranston – was sitting on a bench on the museum lawn. He was wearing a tweed cap.

3. Bee was a terrible, terrible person.

In the café, Toby bought her a cup of chamomile tea and an orange-cardamom friand.

‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Sorry about before. I was upset.’

‘I know. I’m upset too. It’s . . . it sucks.’

Bee shook her head. ‘I just don’t understand.’

‘Me neither,’ said Toby. ‘I mean, I barely knew the guy, but why would
Gus
want to kill himself? He must have been really unhappy.’

‘He didn’t
seem
unhappy,’ said Bee. ‘Grumpy, but not unhappy. And yesterday he was positively chirpy.’

‘It’s common for behaviour to alter dramatically once the decision has been made to end a life,’ said Toby, as if he were reciting from a book. Bee frowned at him and he looked apologetic. ‘But you’re right, it’s weird.’

‘Yeah,’ said Bee, staring into her cup of tea while her mind clicked and whirred through myriad possibilities and scenarios, none of which involved a suicide. ‘Weird.’

Stop.
She had to stop thinking like a storybook detective. This was real life. A man was
dead
. ‘Have you heard of William Cranston?’ she asked suddenly. ‘He’s an anatomist.’

Toby looked confused. ‘Um, I don’t know. The name sounds familiar. Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Yes,’ said Bee firmly. ‘I’m fine. Gus killed himself. It’s very sad and real. I’m fine.’

Toby leaned closer. ‘You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself. You don’t think he killed himself?’

Bee forced a laugh. ‘Of course he did. That’s what the policeman said.’

‘But you think they might be wrong? What, do you think he might have been
murdered
?’

‘No,’ said Bee. ‘No. Definitely not.’

She just had to stop thinking, that was all. Maybe if Toby kissed her neck again it would drive out all rational thought like last time.

‘Because, really, why would anyone want to kill Gus? I’m sure he didn’t have any money or anything.’

‘Exactly,’ said Bee. ‘It can’t have been murder.’

Toby ducked his head to look directly at her. ‘You don’t look convinced,’ he observed.

Bee stood up suddenly, her chair scraping on the slate tiles. ‘Well, I am,’ she said shortly. ‘I’m going home.’

‘Wait,’ said Toby, but Bee was already marching out of the café and into the bright sunshine.

The whole idea seemed even more ridiculous in the street, with people walking by eating ice-cream and carrying shopping bags. But there were so many things sloshing around in Bee’s head, getting tangled up in her hangover and making her temples throb. She closed her eyes for a moment and wondered how it was possible that Toby knew so much random trivia about the anatomy of creatures, but had never heard of Doctor William Cranston. Shouldn’t a trivia-laden med student like Toby be familiar with a world-famous anatomy expert?

‘Bee,’ said Toby. ‘Talk to me. What’s going on?’

He touched her shoulder and she had a sudden flashback to the stuffed tiger and the little silver flask. They hadn’t talked about what had happened last night. Bee hoped that now they wouldn’t have to. She also remembered seeing Gus’s smartcard on his desk after she was introduced to the little silver flask. She remembered hearing the door to the taxidermy lab close. She remembered going back into the lab and noticing the three-minutes-slow clock, which had read 12:38. Had the smartcard still been on Gus’s desk when they returned? That she couldn’t remember. Stupid silver flask.

‘Bee?’

‘Nothing,’ said Bee, who had an uncomfortable suspicion that she might cry from the enormity of it all, and the nagging thoughts and emerging theories that she couldn’t drive away. ‘Nothing is going on. Because I
know
Gus wasn’t murdered. I know because the world doesn’t work that way. Have you heard of Occam’s razor?’

Toby made a face. ‘It’s one of those things I always pretend to know about when lecturers mention it,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ve got no idea.’

‘It’s this scientific theory,’ said Bee, talking very quickly to stop herself from bursting into tears, ‘that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. And it
is
. My father didn’t disappear when I was six because he got stranded on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe. He left because he was embarrassed by my mother, who is a spotty sixteen-year-old comic-book nerd living in the rather overweight body of a middle-aged woman. And my boyfriend Fletch hasn’t called me all summer – not because he’s a secret agent on a mission in Russia, but because he likes my best friend better than he likes me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The world isn’t complicated at all. It’s very simple and straightforward. Mysteries can be solved with clear, objective thinking. Gus killed himself because he was depressed. There. The end.’

‘But?’ said Toby.

‘But what?’

‘Oh, there’s a
but
. I know you have a
but
. So tell me.
But
. . . ?’

Bee stared at him for a moment. She should just keep quiet.
But . . .

‘But yesterday, Gus didn’t seem like the kind of man who was so depressed he was about to kill himself. He told us all that bizarre stuff about Frankenstinian dogs. He ate a
sandwich
. And that bottle . . . the label said it was corrosive sublimate. I’m not quite sure what that is. But anyway, it was in his
right
hand, yet Gus was
left
-handed. And how did he get into the Red Rotunda if he’d left his smartcard in the office?’

‘Maybe he had a key?’

‘But you need a smartcard to get into the public galleries out of hours. And the policeman said he’d been dead for eleven hours, which puts his time of death at around midnight. So who did we hear in our office at 12:38? Was it Gus? Who else was around? And what was with his pocketful of glass eyes?’

‘Wow.’ Toby took a half-step back from her. ‘You really don’t think he killed himself, do you?’

Bee shook her head. ‘No, I really don’t. There’s something else, too, but I can’t quite figure it out.’ She put her hand to her forehead. ‘I need to get some sleep.’

‘I’ll help you,’ said Toby.

‘No thanks. I’ve been managing to fall asleep solo since I was eighteen months old.’

‘I mean, I’ll help you get to the bottom of the Gus thing,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll be the Watson to your Holmes. Your sidekick.’

Bee swallowed. ‘I think we should go to the police.’

BEE PRESSED THE RED ‘HANG UP’
button on her phone and slipped it back into her bag with a sigh.

‘No luck?’ said Toby. They were sitting on the museum lawn.

‘The detective I spoke to said they’d look into it,’ she said. ‘But he didn’t sound very interested. He said they didn’t routinely investigate suicides.’

‘So it’s up to us.’

Bee shook her head. ‘This is serious stuff. A guy is dead.’

This was what she had spent her whole life wishing for: a real mystery, with clues and suspicious circumstances, and the police refusing to get involved. It was all there, waiting for her. But she should walk away. The police would figure it out.

‘Okay, fine,’ said Toby. ‘But what would you do next, just for argument’s sake?’

‘What?’

‘If it
wasn’t
real life. If you
were
Nancy Drew or Sherlock Holmes or whoever. WWPD?’

‘WWPD?’

‘What Would Poirot Do?’

Bee knew he was trying to trick her into getting involved. She should ignore him. Change the subject. Go home. But it was already there, in her mind. It couldn’t hurt to . . .

‘I’ll only tell you if you promise not to do
anything
,’ she said. ‘You cannot get involved.’

Toby traced an
X
on his chest with one finger. ‘I promise.’

‘Okay.’ Bee pondered for a moment. ‘The first step I’d take would be to find out more about Gus. I don’t think he’d been working at the museum for very long – what did he do before that? Did he have a family? Where did he live? Either there’s a reason why he killed himself, or there’s a motive for someone else to have murdered him. Getting a picture of who he was – what kind of a person, his likes and dislikes, his history – might help figure out what happened.’

‘Then what?’

‘Well, if suicide still wasn’t looking likely, I’d make a list of everyone who might benefit from his death. It’d help if we could get hold of his will.’

Toby nodded. ‘And then investigate each suspect? Interview them and check their alibis?’

‘More or less.’ Bee shot him a pointed look. ‘But you aren’t going to
do
any of that, are you?’

Toby’s eyes were wide. ‘Bee,’ he said. ‘I
promised
. I never go back on a promise.’

Angela was in the shower when Bee arrived home. Bee flopped onto the couch and turned on the TV, but couldn’t pay any attention to whichever celebrity was getting a makeover.

In her brain, two Guses kept flashing before her eyes. One Gus was eating a sandwich with beetroot dangling from it. The other Gus was grey and cold on the floor of the Red Rotunda.

It just didn’t make sense.

Bee’s mum emerged from her bedroom with wet hair, wearing a floor-length purple velvet dress and a green cape.

‘You’re home early,’ she said. ‘Have you seen my amulet?’

Bee pointed to the bookshelf. Angela retrieved a silver pendant with a purple crystal in the centre surrounded by runes, and fastened it around her neck.

‘I’ve got D&D tonight,’ she said, ‘so you’ll have to get your own dinner. There’s some leftover Chinese in the fridge, or a few single-white-lady meals in the freezer.’

Bee nodded.

‘Bee?’ said Angela. ‘Are you okay?’

Bee swallowed. ‘I’ve always liked mystery stories, right?’

‘Since birth.’ Angela chuckled. ‘All I wanted was to read you
The Hobbit,
but you weren’t interested in anything that didn’t involve a detective and a dead body.’

‘Did you think it was weird?’

Angela gave her a flat look. ‘Darling-heart, in about ten minutes I’m going to strap on a sword and sit around a table with my friends rolling dice and pretending to kill monsters with the aid of an imaginary Celestial Badger called Gavin. And you’re asking if I think you liking crime fiction is weird?’

‘Good point.’

‘What’s all this about? You look upset.’

‘Something happened today,’ said Bee. ‘My supervisor at work killed himself.’

Angela sat down and gave Bee a hug. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m not sure. I keep trying to be sad and act like a normal person. But I can’t help thinking that if this was a mystery novel, he wouldn’t have killed himself. He would have been murdered. And then I think about how and why, and . . . and it isn’t
normal
.’

Angela’s amulet poked into Bee’s chest. ‘Bee,’ she said. ‘There’s no right or wrong way to deal with death. You deal with it however is best for you.’

‘But it’s
dangerous
!’ said Bee. ‘And statistically, he probably did kill himself. Do you know suicide is the eleventh-highest cause of death in the United States? Suicide outnumbers
homicide
by two to one, and not all homicides are murders. So the chances of him being murdered are pretty slim.’

Angela raised her eyebrows. ‘Okay, the fact that you can just pull those statistics up
is
weird. What are they teaching you at school?’

Bee scowled. ‘Can I talk to the Celestial Badger? I think he might be more helpful.’

Angela gave her a squeeze. ‘I hear what you’re saying. The world is scary. Why do you think I spend so much time living in a world where there are good elves and evil trolls, where you can tell a person’s allegiance by what colour light sabre they carry?’

‘I thought you just did it because you’re a dork.’

Angela punched Bee lightly. ‘None of your cheek, missy.’

Bee stared at the television for a moment.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, sweetheart?’

‘I think I’m more frightened by the idea that Gus killed himself than by the idea of him being murdered. Is there something wrong with me?’

‘Not at all,’ said Angela, smoothing Bee’s hair. ‘There is nothing in any way wrong with you. It’s terrifying to think someone could be so unhappy that they don’t want to live anymore.’

Bee nodded.

‘Now,’ said Angela, ‘do you want me to cancel tonight? I can stay home and we can watch that episode of
Star Trek
where Picard turns into a hard-boiled gumshoe on the holodeck.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Bee. ‘I’m just going to have a bath and go to bed.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I wouldn’t want Gavin to have to go it alone. He might get his whiskers bent.’

Bee’s mum kissed her forehead, then stood up and slung her backpack over her shoulder. ‘Well, call me if you need anything – I’ll keep my phone on,’ she said, whacking her sword on the doorframe as she waved goodbye.

Bee turned her attention back to the television.

At 8:55 pm, she got the cold beef in black bean sauce and Singapore noodles out of the fridge and took it back to the couch without bothering to heat it up.

At 9:02 the evening newsbreak came on. Bee stopped eating and steeled herself, in case there was a mention of Gus’s death. There wasn’t. Just some stuff about a government cabinet meeting, and an attempted burglary of some mansion in Healesville.

At 9:12, Bee’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID: her best friend Maddy. For an instant she considered answering – she could have used someone to talk to about Gus’s death. And about the incident with the little silver flask and Toby and the tiger. But Bee didn’t answer, because she was pretty sure that instead of talking about Toby and the tiger and Gus, Maddy would want to talk about why she hadn’t called Bee all summer. And Bee was also sure that the reason Maddy hadn’t called her all summer had something to do with Bee’s boyfriend Fletch.

Who, now that Bee thought about it, wasn’t really her boyfriend anymore.

Bee turned off her phone and wondered if there was any ice-cream in the freezer.

Bee spent the weekend doing decidedly unmysterious things. She watched TV, ate pasta, read one of her set English texts for Year Twelve, and played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit with her mother. Angela seemed somehow distracted, checking her phone regularly, and forgetting the difference between a bantha and a tauntaun.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Bee.

‘Hmm?’ said Angela, looking up from her phone. ‘Sorry, I’m fine. Is it my turn to ask a question?’

Bee didn’t press her any further. She wasn’t interested in mysteries.

On Monday morning, everything seemed to have returned to normal. Bee swiped her smartcard at the museum’s front door, and then made her way down through the labyrinth of corridors and stairs to the Catacombs. Pushing open the door of the taxidermy lab, she saw Adrian Featherstone, the Head Conservator, sitting at Gus’s desk and rolling something between his thumb and forefinger.

There was an ongoing rivalry between the Preparators and the Conservators. The Preparators worked in the old-fashioned part of the building, surrounded by mess and chaos. In addition to the taxidermy lab, there were the maceration and freeze-drying labs, as well as a carpentry studio and the fabrication studio, where creatures were modelled in clay, moulded in silicone and then cast in polyurethane before being painted to look as real as possible. Every wall was covered in photos and posters and every shelf was crammed with skulls, stuffed penguins, dinosaur bones and strange things in jars. The Preparators themselves were mostly scruffy, jeans-wearing men in their thirties and forties.

The Conservation studio was a violent contrast. Located in the modern wing of the museum, the studio felt like an aircraft hangar, all white walls, fluorescent lighting and stainless steel benches. There was not a single book, folder or sheet of paper to be seen. Giant racks of bubble wrap, paper and muslin stood against one wall, and every other space was blindingly spotless. Bee thought it was like being in a hospital, a feeling which was only heightened by the fact that all the conservators seemed to be rather severe-looking pregnant women.

Except for the Head Conservator, Adrian Featherstone, a thin, weasel-faced man with a sulky mouth and a plummy British accent. He dressed like a once-rich homeless person, usually in a bizarre combination of dress slacks and a green museum hoodie, unzipped to reveal a stained T-shirt underneath. Everything about him seemed to be somehow out of control – his temper, his unbrushed, shoulder-length hair, his sloppy clothes. He always looked uncomfortable, and treated every other employee of the museum – even Museum Director Akiko Kobayashi – with extreme condescension. That condescension was now focused on Bee.