The Cabinet of Curiosities

“That’s not the worst. She was arrested when she was sixteen. It was probably at that point her two younger siblings became street children. They called them guttersnipes in those days. There’s no more record of them in any city files; they probably starved to death. In 1871 it was estimated there were twenty-eight thousand homeless children living on the streets of New York. In any case, later Mary was sent to a workhouse known as the Five Points Mission. It was basically a sweatshop. But it was better than prison. On the surface, that would have seemed to be Mary Greene’s lucky break.”

Pendergast fell silent. A barge on the river gave out a distant, mournful bellow.

“What happened to her then?”

“The paper trail ends at the lodging house door,” Pendergast replied.

He turned to her, his pale face almost luminous in the gloaming. “Enoch Leng—Doctor Enoch Leng—placed himself and his medical expertise at the service of the Five Points Mission as well as the House of Industry, an orphanage that stood near where Chatham Square is today. He offered his time pro bono. As we know, Dr. Leng kept rooms on the top floor of Shottum’s Cabinet throughout the 1870s. No doubt he had a house somewhere else in the city. He affiliated himself with the two workhouses about a year before Shottum’s Cabinet burned down.”

“We already know from Shottum’s letter that Leng committed those murders.”

“No question.”

“Then why do you need my help?”

“There’s almost nothing on record about Leng anywhere. I’ve tried the Historical Society, the New York Public Library, City Hall. It’s as if he’s been expunged from the historical record, and I have reason to think Leng himself might have eradicated his files. It seems that Leng was an early supporter of the Museum and an enthusiastic taxonomist. I believe there may be more papers in the Museum concerning Leng, at least indirectly. Their archives are so vast and disorganized that it would be virtually impossible to purge them.”

“Why me? Why doesn’t the FBI just subpoena the files or something?”

“Files have a way of disappearing as soon as they are officially requested. Even if one knew which files to request. Besides, I’ve seen how you operate. That kind of competence is rare.”

Nora merely shook her head.

“Mr. Puck has been, and no doubt will continue to be, most helpful. And there’s something else. Tinbury McFadden’s daughter is still alive. She lives in an old house in Peekskill. She’s ninety-five, but I understand very much compos mentis. She may have a lot to say about her father. She may have even known Leng. I have a sense she’d be more willing to speak to a young woman like yourself than to an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“You’ve still never really explained why you’ve taken such an interest in this case.”

“The reasons for my interest in the case are unimportant. What is important is that a human being should not be allowed to get away with a crime like this. Even if that person is long dead. We do not forgive or forget Hitler. It’s important to remember. The past is part of the present. At the moment, in fact, it’s all too much a part of the present.”

“You’re talking about these two new murders.” The whole city was buzzing with the news. And the same words seemed to be on everyone’s lips: copycat killer.

Pendergast nodded silently.

“But do you really think the murders are connected? That there’s some madman out there who read Smithback’s article, and is now trying to duplicate Leng’s experiments?”

“I believe the murders are connected, yes.”

It was now dark. Water Street and the piers beyond were deserted. Nora shuddered again. “Look, Mr. Pendergast, I’d like to help. But it’s like I said. I just don’t think there’s anything more I can do for you. Personally, I think you’d do better to investigate the new murders, not the old.”

“That is precisely what I am doing. The solution to the new murders lies in the old.”

She looked at him curiously. “How so?”

“Now is not the time, Nora. I don’t have sufficient information to answer, not yet. In fact, I may have already said too much.”

Nora sighed with irritation. “Then I’m sorry, but the bottom line is that I simply can’t afford to put my job in jeopardy a second time. Especially without more information. You understand, don’t you?”

There was a moment’s silence. “Of course. I respect your decision.” Pendergast bowed slightly. Somehow, he managed to give even this simple gesture a touch of elegance.

Pendergast asked the driver to let him out a block from his apartment building. As the Rolls-Royce glided silently away, Pendergast walked down the pavement, deep in thought. After a few minutes he stopped, staring up at his residence: the Dakota, the vast, gargoyle-haunted pile on a corner of Central Park West. But it was not this structure that remained in his mind: it was the small, crumbling tenement at Number 16 Water Street, where Mary Greene had once lived.