Murder in the Smithsonian Read Online Free PDF Page A

foreign powers, all based on Lincoln’s words, “…government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
    “I don’t look much at this stuff,” the guard said. “I do my job, that’s about it.”
    “I understand.” And he did. It was how he sometimes excused himself for not living enough of the rich full life his ex-wife used to talk about.
    Hanrahan had heard of the First Ladies’ Gown exhibition. It had been written up often in the papers and was the museum’s most popular attraction. Started in 1943 by renowned curator Margaret Brown Klapthor, it had steadily grown until reaching its current size, a detailed and revealing view of the women behind the great men, the nation’s first ladies.
    They stopped in front of one of many large, glass-walled rooms representing a White House parlor of the mid-nineteenth century. Hanrahan saw himself in the glass, touched his salt-and-pepper beard, ran his hand over baldness extending from his forehead to the crown that was bordered by fringes of what had once been a full head of black hair. Hanrahan never understood why he was balding. His father had had a full head of hair until he died at the age of eighty-four. At least he hadn’t put on weight like his father. He still weighed a trim 170 pounds, about right for his six-foot frame. It wasn’t that he made a big deal out of trying to stay slim, he just never put on weight. Metabolism, he figured. So nature evened things up. Bald but good metabolism. Couldn’t have everything…
    He shifted his focus from his reflection to the display.The mannequins, exquisite in their detail, represented the early women who’d occupied the White House. Other display rooms featured more contemporary first ladies. In this room, according to the placard, were Sarah Polk; Betty Taylor Bliss, President Taylor’s daughter, who served as White House hostess in place of her ailing mother; the tall and motherly Abigail Powers Fillmore; the Victorian Jane Means Appleton Pierce; Harriet Lane, bachelor president James Buchanan’s “mischievous romp of a niece,” who functioned as her uncle’s official hostess; the extravagant Mary Todd Lincoln; and Martha Johnson Patterson, daughter of President Andrew Johnson. Martha’s mother, too, had been ailing during the White House years and had delegated hostess duties to her.
    “You comin’?” the guard asked. The dog yawned.
    “In a minute,” Hanrahan said, drawn to the splendor in the room behind the glass—Mary Todd Lincoln’s resplendent silver tea service gleaming from a marble tabletop in the center, wallpaper reproduced from a scrap discovered during a White House renovation, a white marble mantle from the Pierce administration, laminated rosewood American Victorian furniture by John Belter, a burgundy floral carpet with pink and red roses surrounded by green leaves, gilt-framed mirrors, oil portraits of the presidents and a myriad other reminders of America at another time and place.
    “Let’s move on,” the guard said. He sounded impatient.
    “Yeah, right. Sorry. It’s pretty fascinating stuff.”
    “I guess.” He jerked the dog’s leash and the animal slowly, reluctantly moved with his master.
    They went now to the center of the floor, where the Foucault pendulum dangled through the circular opening.
    “Well, thanks for the tour,” Hanrahan said. “By theway, are there any places you know of where somebody could hide, I mean
really
hide?”
    “Like whoever killed the man tonight?”
    “Yeah, like him.”
    “Mister, there’s more places to hide in this funhouse than you can imagine.”
    “I figured,” Hanrahan said.
    As he peered over the railing, he was, of course, unaware of a most peculiar movement in the First Ladies’ exhibition. One of the mannequins, dressed in a black velvet casaque over a gray silk skirt with black velvet ruffles and ruche, wearing a brunette wig combed up over crepes on the sides and adorned with velvet ribbon, feathers and a bead