The Curse of the Labrador Duck (38 page)

And then, on a Monday afternoon in August, fully nine years, one month, and six days after my search began, “the call” came through. It was from Errol Fuller. He wanted to know if I could fly to London immediately. Captain Hewitt’s duck was back in Great Britain, but the window of opportunity to see it was extremely narrow. Lisa leapt into action, and secured me a seat on a flight arriving at Gatwick at 10:50 the next morning.

Errol and his son, Frankie, were waiting for me at Gatwick. As we drove off, Errol brought me up to date. The duck had been taken
from England to Qatar in a fashion that, if not strictly illegal, was certainly not done by the books. The Sheikh, in an apparently random whim, had decided that his Labrador Duck was to be shipped back to England so that the proper paperwork could be completed for its removal to Qatar. Since the duck had been residing in Qatar for two years, and no one had any way of forcing its extradition to England, this seemed a rather odd move. Furthermore, there was a degree of urgency to complete the paperwork, as the duck was going to be one of the star attractions in an exhibition in Qatar ten weeks hence. Indeed, the paperwork might come in the form of a temporary export license to facilitate the duck’s appearance in the exhibition, although the chances of the duck’s returning to England afterwards seemed extremely remote. Regardless, the duck was residing at an art gallery near Piccadilly and had to be taken to a firm of international art shippers in Vauxhall, where it would be held until all of the necessary paperwork would be completed, at which time it would be shipped back to Qatar. Errol was well known to the gallery owners who had taken him up on his offer to transport the duck to the shippers. The interval between the art gallery and the shipper was to be my opportunity to examine the duck. The plan was to take the duck to Errol’s home so that I could examine it at leisure. We would give it to the shippers when Errol took me back to the airport.

At the art gallery, on a street lined by an assortment of posh art galleries, we were buzzed in. Errol thought it prudent not to mention my specific interest in the duck, and so I was introduced as his colleague. I was expecting the duck to be brought to us in a stout and professionally constructed shipping container, with lots of wood and big brass screws. I was surprised when we were brought a reused cardboard box sealed with masking tape and secured with a bit of string. It sported two small red “fragile” stickers, and the words LABRADOR DUCK were scribbled on the side in felt pen. Frankly, my Christmas ornaments reside in a more secure box.

When we got to Errol’s home, he cleared a bit of space at his kitchen table, and I set the box down. For some reason, I wasn’t in a terrible hurry to get on with my examination. Perhaps it was because we were suffering through a very hot and humid day, and I needed a breather. More likely it was because the box contained an object that I had been searching for for almost a decade, and it was to be the last new Labrador Duck I would ever see. This was it. Once I opened the box and poked at it a bit, the adventure would be over.

Frankie watched me as I cut the string, pulled off the masking tape, and reflected the box’s flaps. At first all I could see was crumpled tissue paper, but as that came away, the duck revealed itself, and my breath rushed into my chest with a whoosh.

I had seen a scanned image of a photocopy of a fifty-year-old, black-and-white photograph of the duck being examined by Richard Ford before selling it to Captain Hewitt, and from what detail remained after so much time and copying, it seemed a truly lovely specimen. Errol had warned me that the duck had been restuffed about 18 months earlier. This had been a really dangerous move; in taking
apart a specimen this old, even the most skilled taxidermist might have been left with nothing more than a pile of feathers. However, Errol had assured me that a good job had been done. My first impression was of a very artistic interpretation. When it was first found, the duck had seemed a little too alert, but the new taxidermist had given it a more relaxed look. The neck was more bent, bringing the head closer to the shoulders, and the eyes were ever so slightly closed, as though the drake was getting ready to nod off. Originally, the duck had been mounted on a base covered in pebbles and seaweed, suggesting, I suppose, the seaside where the duck had lived. This had been replaced by a simple wooden slat, 18 by 19 by 2 cm, painted black, which allowed viewers their own interpretation of the duck’s circumstances.

So far so good. Regrettably, the fellow who restuffed the duck had taken it upon himself to paint the legs, toes, and webs a uniform gray-blue. Even worse, he had painted the bill. The distal half was black, and the proximal half was mustardy yellow, overlain along the midline by a broad triangle of gray-blue. To give the taxidermist credit, he was thorough, having painted even the underside of the bill in the same mustard-yellow and battleship gray.

So I made my measurements, and drew little pictures in my notebook, and used a magnifying lens to examine wear to the tail and wing feathers. And as I poked and peered, the sun broke through the persistent British clouds, and a shaft muscled its way through Errol’s kitchen window, and fell on the duck. Something strange happened. In the afternoon sun, a few patches of particularly black feathers glowed an iridescent green. I was ready to blame my dirty contact lenses, but when I called Errol over, he said that he could see the green sheen too. Some birds have patches of iridescent green feathers, including some ducks. Was this a feature of Labrador Ducks that I had somehow missed? If the sun hadn’t come out, I wouldn’t have spotted it this time. Could all of the authors who described Labrador Ducks in life so long ago have missed this iridescence? There was certainly no green hue in Audubon’s painting. I looked, and turned my head, and blinked, and looked again, and convinced myself that the green iridescence was the result of a little subterfuge. I believe when the taxidermist was restuffing the duck, he found himself short of
feathered skin in spots, and used bits from another duck, possibly a Mallard, to fill in the gaps.

And there we have it. Some sixty years ago, this Labrador Duck was owned by someone in a country house in Kent, then by naturalist Richard Ford, by Captain Vivian Hewitt, by Hewitt’s son, Jack Parry, by bookseller David Wilson, and by my chum Errol Fuller, after which it came into the possession of an art dealer, who sold it to Sheikh Saud of Qatar. And I suppose that is the end of my story. Barring some unforeseen discovery, I can claim to have seen absolutely every stuffed Labrador Duck in the world, and no one else could make that claim, and I am sure that no one ever will. This left only a quick trip to the shippers to exchange the duck for a receipt numbered 4513/04.

Of the owners of this duck, a pretty good chunk are known to be or suspected of being dead, or well on their way. Many other protagonists in the story are dead. To be fair, an historian friend of mine pointed out that the same can be said of any very old artifact, but part of me thinks that this particular duck is not particularly charmed. Could it be cursed? Let’s wish Sheikh Saud a very long and happy life.

I
TOLD YOU
earlier that I wouldn’t reveal the end of the story of
The Maltese Falcon
. Upon further reflection, this seems to be a tease. After all, your local video store is bound to have hundreds of copies of
Spider-Man
and
Harry Potter,
but the odds are about three to one that the clerk has never heard of
The Maltese Falcon
, and would probably confuse Humphrey Bogart with Harrison Ford.

At the end of
The Maltese Falcon
, the statuette that the crew have been following turns out to be a fake, and Caspar Gutman leaves to continue his search for the real one. In the movie, Sam Spade calls the police to put them on to Gutman as a murderer, but Gutman escapes police custody, and, presumably, continues his quest. They do capture the young lady and charge her with murder. The end of the book is a little more gruesome than the movie. Gutman dies in a shoot-out with police, and so never gets the falcon statuette that he has been following for seventeen years. I searched for this single specimen of the Labrador Duck for more than nine years. Unlike Caspar Gutman, I eventually found it, and didn’t die in the chase.