The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish (23 page)

Beatrice was breathing shallowly when, in the early hours of the morning, she put
the manuscript down. So that was it. Archie's foreskin was not some obscene act of
tomfoolery, but a sincere offer of marriage. If only she'd been born in the islands;
she sighed.

Beatrice could see the near-full moon through her window. As she dropped to sleep
she could feel a salty, tropical breeze on her skin. She was surprised to find that
she was naked. Then she saw Archie. Tall, muscular and draped in a loin cloth, he
walked across the beach towards her, took her in his arms, and under a graceful coconut
palm kissed her passionately.

Archie pulled his trousers on next morning and absent-mindedly thrust his hand into
his fob pocket. He felt a small object—the incisor that he'd found on the floor below
the Venus Island Fetish on the day of his return, nearly six months earlier. Somehow,
in the excitement, he had misplaced it. Had it really been hidden in that small pocket
all this time? His suit had been dry-cleaned a couple of times, but somehow the tooth
had survived intact.

As Archie rotated the incisor in his fingers, a thought came to him. Griffon had
said that Henry Bumstocks inspected the
fetish regularly. Perhaps Archie could use
the incisor to strike up a conversation with him. The only reliable way to meet the
famously antisocial taxidermist was to venture to his office, but there Archie was
likely to run into Giles Mordant. Then it struck him. Perhaps Mordant kept the foreskin
hidden in his locker in the taxidermy department. He changed out of his street clothes
and into his work outfit every day. He was often busy running errands in the afternoon,
and if Archie took the incisor to Henry while Mordant was out, he could search for
his foreskin while Bumstocks reattached the tooth.

That afternoon Archie adjourned to the Maori's Head. He needed to kill some time
and thought it worth asking Nellie if Giles had shown her anything unusual—such as
his love token. He propped himself against the bar and downed a beer.

‘Gentlemen,' called the publican, ‘who wants a ticket in the duck raffle? A shilling
each. Just a shilling for a duck.'

‘What's this about a duck?' Archie asked Nellie, as the publican announced that the
raffle would be drawn at five o'clock.

‘Oh, Archie! I didn't want to, but I can't make ends meet,' she replied, red-faced.
Then she added brightly, ‘Would you buy a ticket? Please? For me?'

‘Nellie, I'm no gourmand. I wouldn't know where to begin cooking a duck. If I was
still in the Venus Islands, of course, I could
mu
-
mu
it in a stone oven. But I'm
staying with Dithers and we've got no facilities at all.'

The publican drew a ticket out of his hat. ‘Number 14, gentlemen. Who has the lucky
number?' A lanky young fellow missing his front teeth let out a whoop and made a
dash for the
door. Once outside, he ducked into the back of a removalist's van.

‘It's hard times, Archie. I'm sorry,' Nellie whispered as she followed the youth
into the van's darkened interior.

Archie sat in stunned silence. Nellie returned amid the chaos of the six o'clock
swill. She poured Archie a gratis beer on the sly, then another. He couldn't raise
the issue of the foreskin now. The poor girl evidently had her own worries.

It was a decidedly unsteady Archie who made his way to the taxidermy workshop. The
place was already steeped in preternatural gloom. He groped his way in. The stench
was distinctive and subliminally revolting—a cloying, decomposing organic stew that
lodged in the nostrils and pores.

Bones, dried organs, and bits of skin covered every surface and packed every nook.
Even the ceiling was used—a half-stuffed gibbon swung from an overhead pipe and a
human skeleton hung in a corner. In the middle of the room stood a frightening figure.
Naked apart from a loincloth made of animal skins, it held a fearsome, knobbed club.
It must be the model of Piltdown man, Archie realised, the prize exhibit of the new
evolution gallery. It was ugly: a cross between human and gorilla, its face twisted
in a terrifying scowl.

Archie edged around it towards the taxidermists' offices. The nearest one belonged
to Bumstocks. It was a small space running off the back of the workshop with a dim
light in the far corner. The narrow passage forced Archie's face uncomfortably close
to the terrible visage of the Piltdown man. Unnerved, he backed away, and knocked
a huge bone off the shelf behind him. It fell to the floor with an explosive crash.

For a second Archie was startled into stillness. Then a terrible roar erupted from
the nearest office. It was Henry Bumstocks, wearing a long, bloodied butcher's apron
and waving an enormous knife. Even in daylight Bumstocks was a frightening figure,
but as he lurched forward in the gloom he resembled an animated version of his own
monstrous recreation of Piltdown man. And now he was crashing towards Archie, intent,
it seemed, on murder.

Sheer terror gave Archie an agility he usually lacked. He leapt from the taxidermy
lab in a single bound. Once out of the line of Bumstocks' sight he slowed to what
he hoped looked like a leisurely walk, and made his way to his office.

He was recuperating at his desk when Jeevons appeared at the door. Archie snatched
up a book—Professor Hooton's classic
Apes, Men and Morons
—which he pretended to be
absorbed in as he granted Jeevons entry.

‘All in order this evening, Mr Meek? You're working late, I see. But I suppose you've
a lot to catch up on?'

‘Much to do, Jeevons. This new exhibition will take my every waking moment for the
next little while, I expect.' Archie waved his hand in an awkward twirl meant to
dismiss the guard.

Jeevons doffed his pillbox hat, gave a broad smile, and was gone.

Archie was flabbergasted. Surely the guard must have heard Bumstocks' rampage? And
surely Bumstocks had reported the intruder in his office? If not, why not? If he
had reported an intruder, then a search of the institution would surely be conducted.
But, judging from Jeevons' reaction, nothing unusual had occurred.

Chapter 19

Dithers was out at yet another meeting. Archie lay in his bed, his eyes fixed on
the yellowing ceiling, trying to make sense of the events of the evening. Why had
Bumstocks tried to knife him? Could he be involved in the murders of the missing
curators? Jeevons' reaction made no sense. Could he be involved too? It was as if
the whole world was mad, and only he, Archie, saw the truth. As he drifted into an
exhausted slumber, the Great Venus Island Fetish danced around the edge of his consciousness.
He saw it advancing at him out of the gloom, and found himself awake, screaming.
He knew that he needed a new perspective on things. After the episode with the centipede,
Dithers clearly thought he was paranoid. He would not do as a confidant. But what
about Beatrice? She said she would be his
friend. Perhaps together they might make
sense of things.

Archie found Beatrice hunched over an Aboriginal shield, inscribing a registration
number on it. It was work she enjoyed immensely: first finding the spot where the
number could be clearly read but not visible to the public if the object were ever
put on display, and then forming those minuscule figures with the sharpest of nibs.
Archie waited until she pulled the pen away and straightened herself.

‘Beatrice, it's such a glorious day. Would you care for lunch in the botanic gardens?
We could take a picnic.'

‘Oh, Archie that would be wonderful,' Beatrice gushed, before checking herself. She
did not wish to seem too forward. She sat impatiently for the rest of the morning
before the great register, filling in line after line, until the clock struck midday.

Archie and Beatrice walked down Macquarie Street, past the lawn bowls club and the
cathedral, and on to the gate of the gardens. Then they strolled through the ornamental
plantings towards the harbour foreshore, and sat by the duck pond.

‘Beatrice, there is something I have to tell you.'

‘You can tell me anything, Archie,' Beatrice replied.

‘On the day I returned to the museum, I was shocked to see that the Great Venus Island
Fetish had been installed in the boardroom. Vere Griffon has no right to expose one
of the institution's most precious relics to such a hostile environment. And it has
started to deteriorate. Bits are dropping off, and some of the skulls have lost their
patina.'

‘What do you mean, lost their patina?' asked Beatrice.

‘Well, they're not quite the colour they used to be. I became very familiar with
the fetish before I left for the islands. The
skulls are stained dark brown by the
smoke of cooking fires—perhaps lit when food was sacrificed to the fetish. But four
of the skulls I saw the day I returned were more orange than brown. They'd changed
colour, somehow.

‘At first I thought it could have happened through exposure to sunlight, so I carried
out an experiment. I put some smoke-stained bones on the windowsill in the anthropology
department. One end of each bone was exposed to the sun, while the other remained
shaded. They have been there for about six months now, and their colour hasn't changed.
I don't think it's possible that the skulls on the fetish have faded due to sunlight.
And I can't think of another reason they would have changed colour. Unless they're
not the skulls that were originally attached to the fetish.'

Beatrice was silent, taking in the implications of Archie's words.

‘I noticed that one of the orange skulls was terribly buck-toothed—every bit as bad
as Polkinghorne—and his was a severe case, as you know.'

‘As bad as Polkinghorne?' Beatrice echoed.

‘You don't think it was Polkinghorne's skull, do you, Beatrice? Could the original
skull have been taken off, and Polkinghorne's put in its place? I know this sounds
totally mad, but it
was
one of the orange skulls. And I can't think of how the original
skulls could have changed colour.'

‘But why would anyone do that? Exchange the skulls, I mean.' Beatrice was shocked
at the gruesomeness of Archie's thoughts.

‘The day I returned, Vere Griffon raved about “his collection”
of curators. How he
wanted the best museum in the empire. Maybe he is getting rid of those who don't
perform. In any case, he is definitely collecting body parts. I'm convinced that
Mordant stole my foreskin at Griffon's request. And I think that Chumley Abotomy,
Henry Bumstocks and maybe even John Jeevons are involved somehow, too.'

Beatrice was becoming frightened. Archie's thoughts were almost unhinged.

He sensed her fright, and backtracked. ‘Polkinghorne drowned, his body was never
recovered. It's not possible that his skull ended up on the fetish. Tell me that's
right, Beatrice, please.'

‘That's right, Archie.' She knew that she had to hear him out, as distressing as
that might be, and that now was the time to do it. ‘But go on. What else has upset
you?'

‘Oh, Beatrice! So much has gone wrong. I still feel dreadful about poor Eric. Never
in my wildest dreams did I imagine that he'd drink preserving alcohol from my collection!
And I swear, hand on heart, that I was extraordinarily careful with the specimens
and labels. I was tired that night, I'll admit that, and there was much unpacking
to do, but I can't believe that I switched the trout for the toad fish. The value
of the entire collection relies upon having the specimens correctly labelled.'

He took a bite out of a ham sandwich. Beatrice was eating cucumber.

‘Archie, whatever happened that night, you can't take responsibility for Sopwith's
death. It was an accident.'

‘I'm not entirely sure about that.'