The Merchant and the Rogue by Sarah M. Eden
by Brogan Donnelly
Day One
In the heart of Dublin City, between the River Liffey and the Grand Canal, surrounded by Merrion Square, Trinity College, and St. Stephen’s Green, sits the imposing and stately Leister House where meets the Royal Dublin Society. And housed in the newest wing of this residence-turned-Society premises is a museum of a most unusual nature. Its contents are not unknown elsewhere; its function is not strange for a museum. It is made unusual by the oddity of its name, a moniker both amusing and dark.
This place of learning and study and preservation is a museum of natural history, filled with the remains of animals large and small, bird and insect, mammal and fish. Skeletons sit alongside wax models that occupy displays alongside taxidermy of a most realistic nature. Whales and eagles, rodents and trout, a Tasmanian tiger and a polar bear. The species are too numerous to name here, but the museum is far from empty. And its contents have earned it, amongst the locals, the name “The Dead Zoo.”
Early on a spring morning, Amos Cavey, a man who had earned in his thirty-five years a reputation for intelligence by virtue of having mentioned it so very often, stepped inside the zoo of no-longer-living creatures, having been sent for by William Sheenan, keeper of the exhibit of mammals.
William had asked this tower of intellect to call upon him at the zoo, not out of admiration but desperation. Amos never ceased to brag of his intellectual acumen, and William was in need of someone who could solve a very great and pressing mystery.
Amos walked with unflagging confidence up the Plymouth stone stairs to the first floor where the mammals were housed. He was not unfamiliar with the museum and its displays. Indeed, he had once proclaimed it “quite adequate, having potential to be impressive indeed.” He had made this observation with a great deal of reluctance as it might very well be seen as a declaration of approval of the Royal Dublin Society, which he did not at all intend it to be.
Alighting on the first floor, he stepped into the grand hall where the preserved species were displayed, some on shelves, some behind glass, some posed on pedestals. The ornate ceiling rose three stories above the stone floor. Two upper stories of balconies overlooked the space beneath. Tall columns supported those surrounding galleries, giving the room a classical look, one designed to complement a place of learning.
He held back his inward expression of frustration at having to step over and around a mop employed by a janitor. The man offered no acknowledgment of their near collision, but simply continued his efforts, so intent on his work that one would assume he was expunging the worst of muck and grime rather than polishing the floor of a museum that was kept quite clean.
“Do not mind Jonty,” William said as he approached. “He is so very dedicated to his work. We owe the beauty of this building to his unflagging efforts.”
Jonty grunted but didn’t speak, neither did he look up from his mopping. As William had declared, he was quite good at what he did, and no oddity of character would see him dismissed from his position. Do we not endure things in people when we value something else enough?
“Your note,” said Amos with his usual air of superior intelligence, “indicated you are faced with some puzzle you find unsolvable.” He spoke the last word with an unmistakable tone of doubt.
“Indeed, I am.” William’s tone held far too much worry for anyone to mistake his sincerity.
“I fancy a challenge,” Amos said. “Tell me of your mystery, and I will find your answer.”
The reader may find this declaration a touch too arrogant, but Amos did have a most impressive intellect. He was not wrong to rate his abilities so highly, though his tendency to regularly regale people with acclamations of his intelligence made him a difficult person with whom to spend any length of time. Were William not truly in need of Amos’s particular assistance, the self-assured intellectual would not have been offered so sincere a welcome.
“How familiar are you with our collection?” the harried keeper asked as he motioned for Amos to walk with him amongst the displays.
“I have visited a couple of times.” Amos looked over the nearest animals with an eye to evaluating them. “I found the musk ox mother and calf intriguing. The particularly large trout, however, I take leave to declare might actually be a salmon.”
William let the criticism pass, not wishing to dwell on anything other than the matter at hand. They passed the dodo skeleton, a particular favorite of his, though why it was displayed amongst the mammals, he could not say.
“I am, however,” Amos said, “quite intrigued by the polar bear.”
As William was partial to the arctic predator, he found himself better pleased with his current company than he had been. “That bear was brought back by Captain Leopold McClintock after his arctic search for the lost Franklin expedition. The bear’s fatal wound has been left in the fur, giving us a perfect picture of how the creature looked in its final moments.”
They’d reached the taxidermied animal they were discussing. Amos eyed it with curiosity. Something about it was different from what he remembered. He prided himself on his eye for detail and would not be satisfied until he knew what had changed since he last saw the animal.
“We have recently added this Arctic ringed seal.” William motioned to the large pinniped, displayed in all its taxidermied glory in a wood-framed glass box. “Our collection of ice-bound animals is growing.”
Amos took pointed noticed of the seal before studying the bear once more. Two glances at each were all he needed to sort out the change in the massive polar bear. Its positioning had been changed from the last time he saw it. The museum had turned the bear’s head to be looking not at the lions, as it had on Amos’s previous visit, but at the seal.
Clever,he thought to himself, as the seal was a polar bear’s natural prey. He hadn’t realized the taxidermied animals could be repositioned.
The Dead Zoo possessed an unavoidable degree of eeriness, being so full of creatures that had met their demise. Row after row of skeletons, of long-dead and, at times, not-long-dead animals frozen in poses meant to mimic life but never fully capturing it. How chilling was the effect of a dangerous, deadly animal, focused unblinkingly on the very animal that constituted nearly the entirety of its diet, but both animals nothing more than skin and fur stretched over expertly formed frames.
The janitor trudged past, pulling his mop and bucket with him, grumbling something neither William nor Amos attempted to overhear. As soon as he was out of sight, William addressed the matter at hand.
“I’ve asked you here because pieces of our collection have gone missing. I dismissed the first few disappearances as items being misplaced or pulled off their shelves for repair or cleaning, but they have never returned.”
“You wish me to solve for you a string of petty thefts?” No man in possession of as much pride in his cleverness as Amos could help but feel disappointed at the request.
“These are no ordinary thefts.” William guided him past kangaroos, posed in mid-jump, and an armadillo preserved in full armor. All around were skeletons and glass-eyed forms. Tall displays cast odd shadows. Rows of displays broke up the large space into small, sometimes confining sections.
Amos glanced backward as they walked, fighting the oddest sensation that someone was there, watching or wishing for his attention. But he saw no one. Only row upon row of animals. Bears. Lions. A magpie.
From the long-ago years of his childhood came the familiar refrain of the well-known nursery rhyme about magpies.
One for sorrow.
Two for joy . . .
He’d long ago outgrown superstitions, but that lone bird sent a shiver over him, one he clamped down with effort.
The two men paused at a display of rodents, many of a variety unseen in Ireland. William indicated three separate empty places. “These are newly missing, but they were held in place by strong metal bands and thick bolts. Freeing them from their confines is not a simple task. These specimens couldn’t simply be picked up and slipped in one’s pocket. This required time and effort, yet we’ve seen nothing.”
That bit of additional information did offer some degree of intrigue to the mystery.
“And what does the museum director have to say about these thefts?” Amos asked.
William glanced in the direction of the director’s private office. “I would rather not tell Mr. Carte about this, not if we can discover the thief’s identity and recover the stolen items.”
While Mr. Alexander Carte was not a vindictive man, there was no doubt he would be none-too-happy to hear that the museum, whose collection was not yet what he wished it to be, was being diminished by thievery. The director’s displeasure might very well cost William Sheenan his position.
“Are these the only specimens to have been stolen?”
“No,” William said, “only the most recent. We have lost mammal skulls, taxidermied rodents, even a couple of small felines.”
“And how long has this been happening?”
William’s expression grew ever wearier. “For a week now. Something has disappeared every day. That is all I know for certain. The items disappear, though I know not when or how. I’ve seen nothing, can explain nothing. I am at a loss.”
Amos took a slow look around the enormous display room. Row after row of specimens spread out over three floors, the ground-level floor not yet completed. The museum was quite popular, owing in no small degree to Carte’s exhaustive efforts to raise funds, expand the collection, and build interest.
Discovering who amongst the many visitors could possibly be pilfering items would be a challenge, indeed. A challenge worthy of a finely honed mind.
Amos tugged at his right cuff, then his left. He smoothed the front of his sack coat, then straightened his neckcloth.
“I will return in the morning,” he said, “when the museum is open once more to visitors. I will observe, study, sort, and, I have no doubt, solve these mysterious thefts.”
William offered his gratitude along with expressions of confidence in Amos’s ability to do just as he had promised. One would be quite justified in wondering if he offered the praise as a matter of sincerity or in the hope of convincing himself that the disaster awaiting him should his superior discover the thefts could yet be avoided.
“Until tomorrow.” Amos dipped his head quite regally.
“Tomorrow,” William repeated.
He watched as the would-be detective left, a spring in his step and an unmistakable confidence in his stride. He watched with heavy expression, tight pulled lips, and tension radiating from him. The situation was a dire one, more so than Amos Cavey yet realized.
