The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish Read Online Free PDF

labels to be written
in such a place, and your calligraphy is excellent. There’s a new director at the
natural history museum. From Cambridge, I hear. And so handsome.’ A dreamy quality
crept into her voice. ‘Perhaps Headmistress can make inquiries on your behalf.’
    And so it was that in 1926, at the age of seventeen, Beatrice’s glorious copperplate
secured her the position of registrar in the museum’s anthropology department. Archie,
a year older, was in the final year of his museum cadetship. Gangly, pimply, pale
and small for his age, he was awkward in the way only teenage boys can be. A careful
observer, however, might have noticed in his hazel eyes, fine nose and well-defined
mouth the makings of a handsome young man.
    The anthropology department occupied the entire basement of the museum. At one end,
tall double doors opened into a capacious room used to unpack collections and curate
oversized objects such as canoes and carved trees. This space opened onto the registration
area. At its centre was an imposing oak table, upon which sat, on an angled bookstand,
a great, leather-bound register. Beside it was an inkwell, a fountain pen and blotting
paper. A stool, and a tall wooden cabinet against the adjacent wall, in which were
stored specimens upon which the registrar was working, completed Beatrice’s realm.
    A few chairs, scattered about a bench set below a high window, occupied most of the
remaining space, which acted as a sort of anthropology common area. Four doors opened
from this room. Three led to offices of varying size, while the fourth opened onto
a dank corridor which led deep under the building. Light switches along its length
lit up only three bulbs, while simultaneously turning off the three behind, so as
to leave darkness before and behind the visitor. Heavy wooden doors, resembling those
of prison cells, opened off it. Behind each lay a storeroom crammed with objects
for which there was no space in the exhibition, or which were considered unsuitable
for public display. Painted wooden plaques indicated the category of the objects
therein: Egyptology, Oceania, Osteology and so on, into the far darkness.
    In his early days at the museum Archie wandered the storerooms, familiarising himself
with the contents. The walls of the osteology room, he discovered, were fitted with
wooden racks, while coffin-sized crates, stacked almost to the ceiling, occupied
the centre of the room. The boxes held skeletons, the racks, skulls. Hundreds of
them. Each shelf was labelled: ‘Solomon Islands’, ‘British New Guinea’, ‘New Hebrides’,
‘New Zealand’, ‘Tasmania’, ‘Victoria’ and so on. The largest area was ‘New South
Wales’, every shelf of which was crammed with skulls. Some had jaws, but many did
not. Some were stained brown with soil, indicating a long time buried, but others
were fresh and white from the dissection table. One day Archie took a skull in his
hands. It looked like it had been burned, and he noticed that there was a neat hole
in its side, just large enough to accommodate the tip of his little finger. ‘Myall
Creek, Female’ had been inked across the brow. He put the skull back in its place,
wondering how the perforation had been made.
    By the time he entered the next room the minor mystery had been forgotten. ‘Oceania’
was long and rectangular, much larger than ‘Osteology’. The walls were festooned
with shields, spears and clubs, while dozens of canoes, fish-traps and doors to spirit
houses were slung from the ceiling. On the far wall, lying like a funnelweb spider
in its lair, was a terrifying mask, surrounded by skulls—the Great Venus Island Fetish.
Archie backed out, shut the door and vowed never again to enter the room alone.
    On the rare occasion that Archie emerged into the registration area, Beatrice hardly
noticed him. As a cadet he was a general dogsbody, and, except when she needed a
heavy object moved or something brought up from the storeroom,