A Pocketful of Eyes (14 page)

THERE WERE NO PREGNANT WOMEN
to be seen in the Conservation offices, so Bee moved quickly and quietly towards Featherstone’s office door, and tapped lightly. There was no answer.

It couldn’t hurt to have another peek inside, even if he wasn’t there.

Bee crept into Featherstone’s office, and gently closed the door behind her. The room seemed to be in the same state of chaos as it had been the last two times Bee had visited. Or was it? Bee spotted five things that had changed.

1. An empty pizza box was balanced on top of the filing cabinet.

2. The book entitled
Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions and Other Many-Legged Creatures
was gone.

3. The badly hidden bottle of whisky was almost empty.

4. There was a street directory on the desk, open to page 449.

5. Where the nail clippings had lain on Featherstone’s desk, there was now a single glass reptile eye.

Bee picked up the glass eye and examined it. It was a new one, with no scratches or marks. She remembered the missing lid on the jar in the taxidermy lab. This eye was from that jar. And it was the same as the one Featherstone had put in his pocket on the Monday after Gus had died. She was sure of it. But did that mean anything? She slipped the eye into her pocket, just in case.

‘Well, hello there.’

Adrian Featherstone stood in the doorway. He smiled, stepped into the office and closed the door with a click.

Bee took an involuntary step back, and bumped into a chair.

‘Sit down,’ said Featherstone. ‘It’s so lovely to have a visitor. Why don’t I make us both a nice cup of tea?’

He didn’t move.

Bee sank into the chair, mostly because her knees had gone very weak. Six or seven nasty scenarios involving Adrian Featherstone flashed through her mind.

Adrian Featherstone pulled a keyring out of his pocket and shook it so the keys jangled. He selected a smallish silver key.

‘So we’re not disturbed,’ he said, locking his office door.

He sat at his desk, closing the Melways and putting it in a drawer. Bee hoped he wouldn’t notice the missing glass eye.

‘So,’ said Featherstone. ‘You are very nosy.’

Bee noted his limp, oily hair and his unshaven jaw. He looked as though he hadn’t showered in a week, and he didn’t smell great either. There were dark pouches under his bloodshot eyes. Was he being haunted at night by guilty visions of his terrible crime? Was he unable to sleep because every time he closed his eyes he saw Gus’s dying face?

Bee’s skin crawled. Whether or not he had killed Gus – and Bee thought that the chances were high, frankly – Adrian Featherstone was still a very creepy man.
Something
was going on with him, and Bee was going to get to the bottom of it. And there was
no way
she was going to let him see that she was frightened.

Offensive. That was what she needed. To launch an offensive. Catch him off guard.

‘Would you like to explain why Gus was wearing your hoodie when he died?’ asked Bee. ‘And why
his
hoodie is on your office floor?’ She pointed.

Featherstone looked taken aback, but not as rattled as Bee had hoped.

‘Been snooping around my office, have you?’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘No,’ said Featherstone. ‘I haven’t.’

‘I know who you are,’ said Bee. ‘I know you sold Cranston’s horseshoe crab research to that pharmaceuticals company.’

She felt a surge of triumph as she saw shock flicker over Featherstone’s face. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you clever.’

‘You won’t get away with this,’ said Bee. She was on the front foot now. She’d spooked him. Now to sit back and see if he’d let something slip under pressure.

Featherstone seemed amused. ‘Get away with what? Locking you in my office? What were you doing in here in the first place? Let’s face it, it won’t look good for you either.’

Bee scowled at him.

‘Or do you mean I won’t get away with
murdering Gus
?’ He laughed. ‘That’s it, after all. Isn’t it? You think I murdered Gus.’

‘You betrayed Cranston,’ said Bee. ‘You cost him his chance at a Nobel Prize. You could have destroyed his entire career.’

‘No,’ said Adrian Featherstone, his face growing dark. ‘He destroyed
my
career. I did the research. It was
me.
My
team, not his. I’ve never even
met
Cranston. He sat at home in this pathetic backwater of a country, rolling around in his pots of money, paying other people to do all the hard work.’

‘So you let him pay you,’ said Bee. ‘Then you stole the research and auctioned it off to the highest bidder.’

‘You’re missing the point.’ Featherstone’s face was mottled red and white, and his lips trembled. ‘You’ve got this idea that Cranston is the good guy in all this. Well, he’s not. There
is
no good guy. Do you know what happened afterwards? After I sold the data? Cranston
destroyed
me. He and his friends in the Royal Society smeared my name across the science world. Internationally. There wasn’t a lab or a university on the planet that would hire me. He
broke
me.’

Bee took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. This was serious. Featherstone could hurt her. A lot. This wasn’t Nancy Drew hijinks anymore; she’d stumbled into one of her more adult crime thrillers. She had to get out before things got ugly.

‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she said. ‘But I’m afraid I’m struggling to dredge up any sympathy right now.’

Featherstone kicked a pile of manila folders, which slid in on themselves and then fanned out all over the floor. Bee clamped her hands firmly over her knees so Featherstone wouldn’t notice how much they were trembling.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Cranston. Destroyed. My. Career. What was I supposed to do with the rest of my life?’

‘I imagine the giant pile of money you got for selling him out would have presented you with some options.’ Bee hoped Featherstone wouldn’t hear the tremor in her voice.

‘I spent it,’ said Featherstone. ‘Mostly on getting people to keep my name out of the press. The rest . . . it’s amazing how fast you can spend money when you have it, and it’s all there is in your life. I don’t even remember what I spent it on.’

‘I’m sure it was all about animal shelters and food for the homeless,’ Bee said.

‘Shut up,’ said Featherstone, banging his hand down on his desk. ‘Shut
up
.’

Bee shut up and wondered how she was going to escape. There wasn’t even a window she could climb out of. Would Security have seen something? Bee didn’t think there were security cameras in the staff-only areas of the museum. But surely someone would come. Eventually.

Featherstone leaned forward and rested his head on his desk. Bee waited.

‘You really think I killed Gus, don’t you?’ he said, his voice muffled.

‘I think you’d do anything to get what you want,’ said Bee.

‘And what is it that you think I want?’

‘Revenge.’ Was it really, though? Revenge was nearly always the justification for murder in detective stories – dropped like a one-word bombshell, just as she had done. But if Featherstone wanted revenge, why not just kill Cranston? Unless . . .

Featherstone sat up and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid you’re wrong. Gus wasn’t even working here when I arrived, and when he started I didn’t realise he was really Gregory Swindon, Cranston’s assistant.’

‘Until you found that newspaper article,’ said Bee. ‘You were looking for Cranston. That’s why you came to the museum in the first place.’

‘I wanted to find him,’ said Featherstone. ‘I was hoping if I could just talk to him, explain my situation, he could help me clear my name. The ironic thing is, this museum was the one place on the planet where I could actually get a job. And it was because Cranston was a benefactor. I told Kobayashi that I’d worked for him before, and she welcomed me with open arms. Lucky for me she didn’t check up on the reference letter I gave her.’

‘And then Gus turned up,’ said Bee. ‘I find it hard to believe it was a coincidence.’

‘It was the kind of luck you only dream about,’ said Featherstone. ‘But then, perhaps I was due a little good luck.’

Bee was torn between wanting to bang on the door and scream until someone heard, and wanting to smack Featherstone in the mouth and call him a self-pitying, spoilt child. But she did neither. She was too busy trying to sort out Featherstone’s story in her head, and figure out what questions she could ask to trick him into revealing his secrets. How did Poirot do it?

‘I tried to talk to Gus,’ Featherstone was saying, lacing his fingers together. ‘I tried to explain that I’d changed, that I was sorry—’

‘You’re
not
sorry,’ Bee interrupted. ‘I’ve never seen anyone less sorry.’

Adrian Featherstone glared at her. ‘Beside the point,’ he said. ‘Gus wouldn’t talk to me. He knew who I was, and he wouldn’t even speak to me. Smug bastard.’

‘He didn’t dob you in to Kobayashi, though,’ said Bee. ‘He could have. He
should
have. If she’d known what you did to the museum’s greatest benefactor, there’s no way you would have kept your job.’

A small smile scuttled around the corners of Featherstone’s mouth, making Bee wonder for a moment if she’d been too quick to dismiss Kobayashi as a suspect.

‘I’m sure he was just biding his time,’ said Featherstone. ‘Anyway, the afternoon before he died, I saw him in the museum café. He was waiting for something – a milkshake, or a coffee. And he was sitting at a table eating a doughnut. He’d taken off his hoodie because it’s so much warmer up there, with all the natural light. When he went to get whatever it was from the counter, he left his hoodie at the table for a moment. I saw my chance.’

Bee watched Featherstone through suspicious eyes. She was sure he was lying. Someone as sinister and bitter as Featherstone had to have some darker purpose than mere reconciliation. He
had
to be lying.

‘I swapped our hoodies,’ Featherstone was saying. ‘I thought it might give me an excuse to see him. Talk to him. Explain my case. But it seems I acted too late.’

He folded his hands together and smiled insincerely.

‘Sorry to burst your balloon,’ said Featherstone. ‘But you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think I’m a murderer.’

Bee chose not to point out Featherstone’s mixed metaphor.

‘No,’ said Featherstone. ‘Gus and I were far from being friends, but I wouldn’t have killed him.’ He paused. ‘And if I had, I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to poison him.’

Bee swallowed.

‘I mean really,’ said Featherstone. ‘Not
poison
. And especially not
here
. Have you ever thought, Beatrice, about all the ways you could murder someone in a museum?’

‘I can’t say I have,’ said Bee. ‘But then again, I’m not the murdering kind.’

Featherstone’s lip curled. ‘Think about it. I mean the obvious favourite would be the maceration tank. It’s easily big enough for an adult human. I just pop you in there with plenty of water and a bucketful of liquid bacteria, shut the lid and press “go”. You’ll drown within a few minutes, and then the water will heat up and the bacteria will get to work. After two months there’ll be nothing left but clean white bones and a lingering unpleasant smell.’

Bee’s heart began to pound. Featherstone was clearly unstable. If he really had killed Gus, what would stop him from killing her as well now he knew she suspected him, and knew his history with Cranston?

‘Or there’s the freeze-dryer,’ Featherstone continued. ‘Or the flesh-eating beetles, although that might take a while and be a little conspicuous. I believe there’s a few deadly spiders hanging around in the Live Exhibits studio. Or you could always just lock someone in cold storage until they froze to death.’

Bee shivered.

‘Sorry,’ said Featherstone. ‘It’s a little colder in here than the rest of the museum. A regular twenty degrees Celsius and fifty per cent humidity. We store a lot of film negatives and cellulose nitrate, and it can spontaneously combust if it gets too warm. And once it combusts, it burns with a toxic yellow smoke and is impossible to extinguish. So we like to stay cool in here. Of course, that might be a fun way to kill someone as well,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘A warm room and a few old film reels.’

Bee made a mental list of her options. She could:

1. Make a run for it. But Featherstone had locked the door, and she didn’t want to anger him into doing something crazy – and it didn’t look as if that would be hard.

2. Scream – but would anyone hear? Bee hadn’t noticed any severe pregnant conservators around when she entered Featherstone’s room. And screaming might also trigger the crazy-switch.

3. Somehow disable Featherstone, buying her enough time to escape.

Bee looked around the room for an object large enough to crack over Featherstone’s head. A book? His computer keyboard? The chair she was sitting on? She wished she’d done the self-defence course that her mother had suggested.