Our story begins when a museum registrar unwraps an unexpected object...
Friday 20 June, 2019.
‘You are a beautiful little problem.’
Peggy examined the object’s surface through slightly narrowed eyes, tilting it a little to remove the reflective glare from the overhead lights.
Copper. An unusual material for a decorative item, but the mellow autumnal tones of the small sphere’s surface were a clear indicator that it had not been made from brass or bronze. Peggy wrapped a tape measure around its diameter before noting 28cm/11 in in the dimensions cell on the registration sheet. Slightly bigger than a tennis ball, and much heavier than it should be for its size. When she tapped the filigree surface with the base of her pencil, it gave a dull clink. Not solid, but not hollow either. Something inside must account for the weight, but no matter how many times she twisted and rolled it in her neoprene gloved hands, peering at the filigree and engraving under the magnifying glass, she could not find a latch or hinge to indicate an opening.
‘Some more problems,’ Celia had said that morning as she slid the box onto Peggy’s workspace. ‘Things we aren’t sure what they are or why Hartwood collected them. You seem to be good at researching this stuff,’ she added as she lifted the lid to show the odd assortment of shapes wrapped in tissue paper and tied with bias binding. ‘Maybe you might have some luck.’
While Peggy appreciated the compliment, it was also empty praise. Registration sat at the bottom of most museum hierarchies, ignored and overlooked—at least until someone needed to locate something in the maze of the collection stores. Despite the lack of prestige, when she was left to get on with things, she loved the work. Sure, the pay was rubbish, and career advancement was limited. But there was a magic to opening a box and finding something no one had held in decades. She loved discovering stories and working out why the adventurer, collector and museums founder Kingsley Hartwood had kept it. And mostly she loved the satisfaction of solving problems, like the ones in the box on her desk, before she carefully wrapped them in archival tissue, fixed a label with white cotton bias binding and gave them a home in the stores. Then each little mystery stopped being a problem, and instead, it became part of the collection. It belonged.
Peggy shivered. It might be summer outside, but in the sun-starved depths of the collection stores, the temperature was a regulated twenty-two degrees. Surrounded by sterile laminate and cool linoleum, afternoons were often chilly. She fastened a button on her cardigan, then picked up the sphere again.
It sat in her hand like a memory. A thin straight line in the centre divided two very different halves. Tiny indentations covered one side, not a patina or nicks from age, but a deliberate engraving, like a complex dot to dot with no guiding numbers. Peggy squinted, trying to group them into a pattern or shape, but saw only dots. No clues there.
An intricate tangle of vines entwined themselves over the opposite side. Copper leaves and six petalled flowers blossomed from each stem in a beautiful filigree. Exquisite workmanship, in a style she hadn’t seen before. Nothing similar in the database either. Peggy pulled the magnifying glass on the desk lamp closer and clicked the light switch. Hidden among the tendrils that curled into life like loops, a small X sat just above the division. A V had been engraved on the next vine, and on the opposite side, an L. Roman numerals. Her heart gave a small leap. In the notes section of the object file, she printed the word European. She had found the first piece of the puzzle.
Peggy reached across the workspace for the handheld glass, and just as she pulled it back, a shadow flickered beneath the door. Shoot, not Clem, not now! She bundled the sphere into the tissue paper, cast around for a hiding place, and finding nowhere he wouldn’t poke into, shoved it into her tunic. Thank God for dresses with pockets. She pulled the stack of documents toward her, tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear, grabbed a pencil, and stared down at her paperwork.
‘Margaret. Isn’t it best practice to be looking at the object when one is writing the condition report for the object?’ Clem’s spicey aftershave rolled over her in a wave, suffocating and strong in the sterile air of the stores. He loomed over her shoulder, and with the desk lamp on, he didn’t cast a shadow. Just like Satan.
‘I was checking before taking them up to Celia,’ she said.
He leaned over the archival box, picked up a wrapped book, read the tag like he understood what it meant even though she knew he didn’t, then dropped it back in. ‘You needn’t bother. Curatorial can’t wait and Celia is coming down. Your lackadaisical approach may suffice in the antipodes, but it is not how we do things here.’
‘I had finished,’ she stammered. ‘I was just—’ The shrill metallic ring of the phone smothered her explanation. Peggy pressed the handset to her ear.
‘Registration.’
‘It’s Celia. Install team can’t find a piece. Can you look it up? Number is…’
Peggy tapped at the keys as Celia recited the alphanumeric registration code. Beside her, Clem pulled open the workstation drawer and with a long, pointed finger, pushed aside a pencil and notebook, before closing the drawer and opening the next one. Peggy shuffled over, the weight of the sphere in her pocket slipping. She tucked it into her lap, then bunched her skirt around it.
‘The system says it’s upstairs. I remember loading the record yesterday. Maybe it needs to update?’ Peggy closed the screen out, then reopened and tried the number again. No luck. ‘I’ll check its location on the shelves and call you back.’
Peggy slid the phone back into its cradle. Clem had finished rifling through the drawers and now leant back against the desk.
‘Lost something, Montgomery?’ He studied his fingernails as he spoke. His eyes flicked to meet hers. ‘Wasn’t there something last week?’
‘I didn’t lose it.’ Peggy took a forced breath. ‘Mr Clements…Something is going on. I think someone is stealing from the collection.’
‘You have proof?’ he asked, frowning.
‘Not proof, except that I don’t lose objects. I always track them and put them away.’
He laughed, his tone sharp and brittle. ‘You would accuse your colleagues of theft rather than be responsible for your poor work?’
Anger rushed to her tongue, and she bit it back, forcing her voice to stay low. ‘These are all things from the seventeenth century. Rare things, like automatons and manuscripts. Things that…’7.22
Clem raised his brows. ‘What type of things, Miss Montgomery?’
She swallowed. ‘Things that sell well to collectors. On the black market.’
This time when he laughed, it wasn’t a snuffled snigger, but full and bellicose. ‘About to crack open a crime ring at Hartwood, are you? This backwater collection of trinkets from a no name explorer with a too hefty trust fund and a misplaced sense of altruism?’ With one final peep in the box, Clem pushed himself off the desk and swaggered to the door. ‘Mistakes are one thing. Not accepting responsibility is quite different. Pay more attention to your work, or I will issue another warning.’
His shoes squeaked as he turned on his heel. Peggy watched his shadow flick across the dull reflection on the linoleum floor and gritted her teeth as the door clicked closed. The hum from the lights and the gentle creaks and moans that made up the basement’s soundtrack settled into white noise as she inhaled, then puffed out five four three two one, before slumping into her chair. With the sudden movement, the weight in her pocket pulled, and the sphere clanged against the chair leg.
‘Shoot.’ She grasped at the weight, pulled it out, and exhaled with relief as she ran her fingers over the smooth surface. Undamaged. And hidden from Clem.
Peggy tucked the tissue paper around the little ball, secured it with a length of bias binding, and tied a neat bow. Clem had worked late last night. And while she’d had managers in other jobs who dropped in on collections, none of them came in every day. They were too busy schmoozing donors, writing grant applications or chasing a bit of media attention—anything to keep them funded and relevant. Clem’s attention was unusual. Suspicious.
Peggy placed the sphere in the box. She looked over her shoulder. Apart from herself, the stores were deserted today. Everyone was upstairs working on the exhibition install, and if she left it unattended while she had lunch, before she’d updated it on the system… If her hunch about Clem was right, it could be gone by the time she came back. Then there would be no record that it had even existed.
Peggy tucked the sphere into her dress pocket, and at her locker, slipped it into the back corner behind her duffle, before removing her tote bag and her lunch.
All she had to do was get it registered, then stored in a box. That would make it exist, and then she could track it. Clem would never search it up on the system. She could tell by the way he spoke of accession numbers and nomenclature that he didn’t even understand how it worked. It was his reason for coming into the stores every day. ‘Hands on understanding of the collection,’ he called it.
Well, he wasn’t getting his hands on this one.
***
‘Friday, hey.’ Kym, the security guard, gave Peggy a nod as she stepped through the staff entrance after her lunch break. ‘Any plans for the weekend?’
‘I’m taking a week off,’ Peggy said as she unslung her handbag and tucked it into her locker. She eyed the sphere, still snug in the corner. Kym coughed. Peggy shut the door and twisted the lock before turning with a fixed smile. ‘After twelve months in London, I’m finally going somewhere. I’m going on a bus tour to France. It leaves from St Pancras straight after work.’
‘I’ve never been to France,’ Kym said with a slight wistfulness.
‘How can you not go? It’s right there,’ she said with a laugh.
‘Just haven’t.’ He shrugged. ‘Celia was looking for you. Something about the exhibition.’
Peggy wished Kym a good day, then took the lift to the second floor, to find the install team scampering between open cases, disgorged boxes and ladders.
‘It turned up,’ Celia called, waving a blue gloved hand. ‘That locket. It was in the bottom of a box full of tissue paper, ready to go downstairs.’
‘Didn’t you check there already?’ Peggy asked.
‘Must have missed it,’ Celia said. ‘Any chance you could take that trolley down and scan the boxes back in? Someone sent the draft files instead of the finals to the designer. Half the labels have typos. We’ll be flat out all day, swapping them before opening tonight.’
Celia pointed to the corner where archival boxes were haphazardly stacked. As Peggy folded the tissue, matched item tags to box numbers, and arranged them on the trolley, she followed the movements of the installation team as Celia directed them. The assistant curator, an overconfident graduate, kept repeating Celia’s instructions like they were his own.
Celia brought over a box and stacked it onto the trolley. ‘Maybe next time, you can work on the team. Broaden your skill set. Be better than…’ Celia jerked her head toward the assistant with an eye roll. ‘Mummy’s on the board,’ she whispered.
Peggy shook her head. ‘I really don’t like attention. And I’m not good with people.’
‘You just need time. You could learn. Even run your own show one day.’
Peggy put a steadying hand on the boxes on the trolley. ‘I better get these downstairs,’ she said, then pushed off toward the lift.
The lights flicked fast between the levels as the lift descended. She’d dreamed of curating when she started her degree as an enthusiastic 18-year-old, straight from school to university. Three-dimensional storytelling, her curatorial methods tutor Christian had called it. A link between the public and the past. Then he quoted Tilden, and smiled, held her gaze, before he looked away, the tips of his ears turning pink. Peggy’s stomach tightened as she shoved the memory aside. She was better in registration. She did her best work out of the way.
The trolley gave an uneasy lurch as it clunked over the floor join. Peggy eased it next to her desk and pushed her computer on. As it whirred into life, a thump came from the door that led into the isolation room, a small, sealed room with an awkward window at the back of the collection offices. In there, conservators assessed and treated objects for pests and contaminants before they were moved into permanent storage. Both conservators were upstairs, supervising the install. No one should be in there without them.
Peggy walked slowly, edging closer to the window, her heart thumping. Clem was bent over, his head and shoulders concealed in a storage cupboard. He rolled backwards, grasping an archival box, then stood and plonked it on the worktable and tipped it onto its side. Cream parchments spilled out before he pushed the box aside, and the rest of the contents spewed onto the floor.
She eased the door open and cleared her throat. ‘Mr Clements?’ He continued rifling through the papers. She swallowed and found a louder tone. ‘You shouldn’t be moving those without gloves. You might damage them.’
He kept his head bowed. ‘None of this is your concern, Montgomery. Go back to your desk.’
‘The acids on your fingertips…’ She bunched her skirt into her palms. ‘They can mark the papers. And you can’t leave them on the floor like that.’ Peggy took two quick steps into the room. She crouched down, righted the box, and lightly picked up the pages by their corners and laid them gently inside.
Clem looked up with a jerk, then rose to his feet. ‘The diary. Where is it?’
‘Which diary?’ she asked, although she knew. He wanted the diary that had been in the box she’d processed this morning, the box that had the sphere in it too.
‘De Tourni’s, that Hartwood found somehow. You deciphered the long hand. Celia,’ he spat her name. ‘Was raving about it. Said I should put you on her team. But I prefer you down here, where I can keep a close eye on you.’ He took a slow step toward her. ‘Where is it?’
Peggy edged back toward the door, and with a fast spin, she tugged it open, then raced through the store and down the long corridor to the staff entry. She pressed her keycode into her locker, flicked it open and grabbed her handbag. There, at the back, sat the little sphere. If Clem would go through conservation looking for things to sell, what would stop him having her locker opened, and finding something more precious than an old manuscript? She shoved the package into her bag, then slung it over her shoulder.
‘All right there, Peggy?’ Kym called from his desk.
‘I got my ticket times wrong. I have to go, or I’ll miss my train. Please don’t tell the boss’, she said with a grimace. ‘He’ll dock my pay.’
‘That man is an arse.’ Kym flicked his paper up, obscuring his face. ‘Peggy who?’ He peeped around the side of his broadsheet. ‘Have a good holiday, miss. I hope it’s one to remember.’