Close to Home (DI Adam Fawley #1)(35)

There’s a flicker of interest at that. One of the smaller boys squints up at her. ‘Is there really a witch in the bottle? How did they get her in?’

Grania grins. ‘I don’t think anyone knows. The bottle was given to the museum about a hundred years ago by a very old lady who warned there’d be no end of trouble if they ever opened it.’

‘So they never did?’

‘No, Jack, they never did. Best to be on the safe side, eh?’

Up ahead the queue begins to move and Kate Madigan starts to guide the younger children through into the main gallery, where they stand in a group looking up into the dim cavern of a room. There are African shields and Inuit skins hanging under the ceiling and the floor before them is a maze of glass display cases, crammed with every conceivable type of human artefact – Musical Instruments, Masks, Featherwork and Beadwork, Funerary Boats, Weapons and Armour, Pottery, Coiled Baskets. So far, so organized, but inside each case is a glorious chaos of dates and places of origin, with Samurai jumbled with Surinam, and Melanesia with Mesopotamia. Some items still have their original labels – minuscule Victorian handwriting on yellowing paper attached with string. It’s as if time stopped in 1895. And in some ways, it did. At least in here.

Kate Madigan comes up to Grania. ‘Mel just had to take Jonah Ashby to the Ladies. He’s got a nosebleed, poor little man – I think all this excitement was a bit too much for him. But I know what he means. This place is amazing.’

Grania smiles. There are children everywhere now, pointing and gasping and racing from one case to the next. ‘I know. I love bringing classes here. The weirder the stuff is, the more the kids seem to like it.’

‘No surprises there then.’

Grania nods towards one display where at least a dozen children are thronged round. ‘That’s the tsantas. Never fails to draw a crowd.’

‘Tsantas?’

‘Shrunken heads.’

Kate makes a face. ‘Rather you than me.’

Grania grins. ‘It is an acquired taste, I’ll give you that.’

She makes her way over to the display, to find Nanxi Chen reading out the sign on the case with obvious relish, while a crowd of boys stare inside. There are a dozen heads in the case, most the size of a fist, but some much smaller. Several have rings through their noses and their original hair, out of all proportion to the tiny blackened elongated faces.

‘Shrunken heads were made by taking the skin off, and removing the skull and brain,’ Nanxi is saying. ‘The eyes and mouth were sewn up to prevent the spirit of the dead coming back to haunt its killer. Then the skin was boiled in hot water, which caused it to shrink. Wow, that’s seriously disgusting.’

Grania Webster smiles. ‘They’re very old and they come from South America. Back then the tribespeople thought that taking your enemy’s head would capture their soul and give you their power. They’d wear the heads round their necks at ritual ceremonies.’

One of the boys stares at her. ‘Really? That’s awesome.’

On the other side of the case, under Treatment of Enemies, Leo Mason is looking in at a collection of decorated skulls. Some are studded with shells, others have animal horns impaled on their foreheads. The one that’s engrossing Leo is so small it must be from a child. There are metal skewers piercing the eye sockets, and the bone is bound tight with leather thongs. One of the curators wanders over. ‘Bit scary, aren’t they?’ he says pleasantly.

Leo stares. ‘Why does it have those pointed things stuck through its eyes?’

‘Now that’s a great question. It could have been for revenge. Or the sorcerer of the tribe might have done it to destroy an evil spirit.’

One of the other boys peers round the side of the case at Leo and lifts his hands, spectre-like. ‘Whooooo!’ Leo starts and leaps backwards, gripping the curator’s jacket. The man puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

‘Are you OK? Do you want me to fetch your teacher?’

Leo shakes his head, but he hasn’t let go his grip.

‘How about going on a treasure hunt instead, then? There are fourteen wooden mice hidden somewhere in these cases. Some of your classmates are off looking for them, and your teacher says there’s a prize for anyone who finds all of them. What do you think?’

Leo shakes his head again. ‘I like the skulls,’ he says eventually.



* * *



—

On the far side of the ground floor Kate Madigan is with a group of girls looking at Amulets, Fetishes and Curses. Portia Dawson is diligently copying down the names of the different types of talisman in a little notebook, while Daisy Mason is enchanted by a collection of silver filigree ornaments mounted on black velvet.

‘They’re like on a charm bracelet,’ she says, glancing up at her teacher.

Kate smiles. ‘They are, aren’t they? I’ve seen them before. In Italy. People used to hang them over a baby’s cradle, to protect them from harm and keep bad spirits away while they were sleeping.’

‘Like the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty?’ asks Portia.

‘Yes, a bit like that.’ Kate moves closer and points through the glass. ‘They’re supposed to look like branches hanging upside down. Like mistletoe, at Christmas?’

Portia looks up and peers through the glass at the label, then writes CIMARUTA in careful capitals and starts to draw a picture of one of the charms.