“The girl’s reputation didn’t matter, right?”

“Face it, Detective, she didn’t have one. She was just a beginner in this business. In her case, it could have been the harmless mistake of a young graduate student. Wouldn’t ruin her career, as it could ours.”

“So you’re telling us that Bellinger did this, knowing Katrina was dead?”

“Absolutely not. He assured me it was safe to do because she had just resigned from the Met and left the country a few weeks before our trip, at Christmas. She had mailed back her identification tag, as required, which was all we needed.”

“And Eve Drexler used it, to get into the British Museum with you and Bellinger.”

“Drexler’s twice her age. Didn’t anyone check the photograph?”

Thibodaux’s arrogance was unquenchable. “Now who do you think would bother to look at her plastic tag once they recognized me? There I am, director of the Metropolitan Museum, bringing two members of my staff to an executive meeting.”

Chapman knew now that Thibodaux had been lying the first time we met him, when he looked at the photograph of Katrina but denied knowing who she was. “That title, director of the Met-the title you used to have-you think that cloaks you with the power to do whatever you want, say whatever suits you?”

Thibodaux ignored him. But what did his lies conceal? Some knowledge of Katrina’s fate, or just a strategy to keep himself out of a brewing scandal?

I thought of Katrina’s letter of resignation that Bellinger had showed to us when we were first in his office. The single initial of the signature had appeared to be so easy to imitate.

“Did anyone else impersonate Ms. Grooten after her disappearance last winter?”

“Her resignation, Miss Cooper. We believed that she had left us voluntarily. She hadn’t gone missing, so far as we knew. And no, I’m not aware of any other instances.”

“Her employee identification, what became of that?”

“Miss Drexler would know. Or perhaps Bellinger. I never gave any more thought to Katrina after that day.”

Few people had, it seemed to me.

“Before we go, Mr. Thidobaux, we’d like to make arrangements to see the museum’s private vaults this week.”

“Ah, now I know the culprit, Mr. Chapman. You’ve given up your source. Madam Gerst? A pity how a little jealousy can stir up such a pot of trouble. Arthur Paglin’s vault.”

“That one, and the others.”

He looked Mike straight in the eye. “Which others, in particular?”

“I’m expecting you to tell us that.”

“I’ll have to check with our patrons, of course. It is not our privilege to enter them.”

“It’ll be my privilege with a search warrant.”

I’d need a lot more specificity about their location to get any judge to sign off on a warrant, but I didn’t blame Mike for trying.

“I’ll get to work on that first thing in the morning. There are only two that I know of presently, besides the Paglin estate.”

“It’s an interesting concept, these vaults. Didn’t anyone ever try the same gimmick over at Natural History?” I asked.

Thibodaux seemed delighted to point a finger across the park. “Every museum has its hiding places, Miss Cooper. Secret compartments, if you will. Elijah Mamdouba hasn’t shown you the skeletons in his closet?”

Clem’s flight had been delayed by thunderstorms west of London. When Mercer called to tell us that he had picked her up and was on his way to the hotel, Mike and I checked into her suite and directed security to bring them right up to the room.

Mike turned on the television in the living room and gnawed on an apple from an elegant arrangement of complimentary fruit and wine. He listened to a cycle of headline news then moved toJeopardy! Before going to commercial break, Trebek announced that the final category was “Patriotic Poems.”

I put my twenty on the mahogany side table and Mike did the same. “You may be Ms. Iambic Pentameter, but I get the prize for patriotic.”

Trebek read the final answer, printed in the cobalt blue box that was enlarged on the screen. “‘Author of poem, regarded as our national hymn, composed while standing on Pike’s Peak.’”

“Suck it up, Chapman. It’s mine.”

“Wait, blondie. It’s not Key, ‘cause he didn’t say national anthem. What the hell’s the one that Kate Smith used to sing?” I shook my head. “Hymn? Like ’Mine eyes have seen-‘”

I swept the money off the table. “Who is Katharine Lee Bates?”

“You’re right, Mrs. Falkowicz,” Trebek told the only one of the three contestants, a librarian from Boone, North Carolina. “She wrote ‘America the Beautiful’ as a poem, and never even met the gentleman who set it to music, using a song found in a church hymnal.”

“Wellesley College, class of 1880.”

“So you had the alumni advantage this time. That’s almost like cheating.”

“And there’s a street named after her in Falmouth, Massachusetts, which I drive by every time I take the ferry to the Vineyard. You’ve got to get around more, Mikey.”

The door buzzer rang and I went to open it. Standing beside Mercer Wallace’s six-foot-six frame was a woman barely five feet tall. Her dark brown skin and luminous green eyes were framed by a helmetlike shock of straight black hair. She stepped into the room and looked up at me as I introduced myself.

“I’m Clem. Clementine Qisukqut.”

“Mike Chapman. I’m a homicide detective. I’m handling Katrina’s case.”

Mercer carried her small bag into the bedroom and placed it on the luggage rack.

“I’m sure you’re exhausted. If at all possible, we’d really like to get started with some questions this evening.”

“That’s fine. All I did was sit the entire day. May I just clean up a bit?” She excused herself and went inside, returning to the living area ten minutes later.

We all settled into comfortable sofas and armchairs and let Clem begin. She seemed anxious to tell us about Katrina Grooten.

“I met Katrina a couple of years ago, not long after she started working at the museum. It was a year before we began to spend time together on the joint museum show.”

“But you were at Natural History, is that right?”

“Yes. I had a friend who was in the last year of a postdoc here in the States. He worked at the Cloisters before he went back to Europe. I met Katrina at a party at his apartment. It was a regular thing he did, to get some of the foreign students together. It gets quite lonely here, as you can imagine, since most of us arrive without family or a network of friends.”

“Did you two become close?”

“Not right away. We didn’t have that much in common. Our backgrounds were so entirely different, and our professional interests were, too. There’s probably no small museum more beautiful than the Cloisters, but I don’t quite see the relevance of Gothic art and architecture. I couldn’t connect to whatever it was that fascinated Katrina.”

“You’re an anthropologist?”

“Yes. A cultural anthropologist.” She smiled. “And it was quite the same for Katrina. She couldn’t fathom my interest in primitive civilizations, even though the entire history of evolution was the underpinning of my work.”

“How did that change?”

“Slowly. Mutual acquaintances kept bringing us together, unintentionally, of course. If there was an exhibit at the Met that one of the graduate students thought would interest others of us, someone would call or e-mail and we’d end up hanging out together. Sometimes go to dinner afterward, usually in a small group.

“It was early last year, when the office for the bestiary show was set up at my museum, that she began to spend time at Natural History.”

Clem had kicked off her shoes and had her feet curled up beneath her. “Would you mind very much if I had a drink?”

Mike walked to the cabinet under the television and unlocked the minibar. “Name it.”