The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(935)

                “We’ll take this one out,” I said. “Someone must have stuck it in the box after the fact. I suspect it’s from a whole other collection.”

                If Matt had any reservations, he suppressed them. “This group will be ideal for the exhibition.”

                “Ideal,” I agreed, but just to salve my scholarly conscience, I had him box up the rogue remains and put them on the top shelf in my office. “When I get a minute, I’ll see if I can find where it belongs.”

                Meanwhile, I plowed on with the diaries, without uncovering the secret of Alice Jonken’s disappearance. By the time I’d skimmed the later books, I felt further than ever from understanding Petrus. But there was so much to do that I found little time for pondering my famous relative’s enigmatic personality. Our exhibit was ambitious, and the catalogue, extensive. If Matt and I felt a trifle guilty about our description of the burial exhibit, we put our doubts aside, and, on the whole, the exhibition turned out to be a model of its kind and modestly groundbreaking.



                             Before the opening, I did make an attempt to locate some of Alice Jonken’s relatives, but the American branch had been recently extinguished with the death of a elderly second cousin. I saw no need to pursue the matter further. That left me, I believed, the only descendant of any exhibition notable.

                I was wrong. About a month after the opening, and two months after selected material had been put up on the museum’s website, a Dr. Fuentes stopped in at my office. A handsome, dark haired, sharp featured man perhaps a decade my senior, he had courtly, old fashioned manners. He had already visited Dr. Brisco, he said, to congratulate him on “this admirable exhibition” but he especially wanted to meet and congratulate me.

                As I thanked him, I noticed his eyes strayed to the framed picture behind my desk. To tell the truth, Uncle Petrus’s enigmatic personality had given me mixed feelings about the photograph, but it had been so long a part of my life that I felt as uneasy moving it as keeping it in place.

                “The source of the very handsome poster image,” Dr. Fuentes remarked.

                I took a rolled up copy from my desk drawer—the poster had been a popular souvenir. “You might like one,” I said. “The photo enlarged very well, thanks to the graphics department.”

                “Thank you. This is one of the best photographs of my grandfather as a young man.”

                “He was Jose Antonio? I thought there was something familiar about you. You know, this photo determined my profession. In a sense, I grew up with your grandfather and my great-uncle.”

                “Though you never met your Uncle Petrus, I do not think?”

                I shook my head. “But your grandfather. I am so glad he survived. His disappearance…”

                “Disappearance?”

                “From the expedition site. The same day, if I’m reading the diary right, that Alice Jonken vanished.”

                “Might we sit down?” Dr. Fuentes asked.

                “Oh, please. Would you like some coffee or tea?”



                             He settled on coffee. The department secretary rustled up some cookies and brought in everything with matching cups on an elegant tray. I could scarcely conceal my surprise, but Connie has a keen sense of occasion and she wasn’t wrong about this one either.

                “I noticed the diaries were included in the exhibition. It was very gratifying to see so many of Jonken’s workers and informants recognized at last.”