A Pocketful of Eyes (20 page)

Bee looked at William Cranston, who finally looked up from his folded hands, closed his eyes and nodded.

‘CRANSTON WAS SICK,’ SAID
BEE
, looking at the old man.

He nodded. ‘He was dying,’ he said, his voice quiet and a little shaky. ‘He’d had a few cancer scares before, but last year there’d been a big one. The doctors told him he had six months to live, at the very most. That’s when he came up with the whole plan.’

‘Cranston never had a family,’ said Bee. ‘No one to carry on his name. His research was always the most important thing to him.’

‘It was William’s life,’ said the old man. ‘Losing that Nobel Prize in 1986 was like losing a child to him. It meant he’d lost his legacy. His name could never be carried on by children, so he wanted it to at least live on in scientific history. That’s why he donated all this.’ He looked around the Red Rotunda. ‘So at least he’d be remembered in here.’

‘So he kept trying for another Nobel,’ said Bee. ‘He kept researching, and then he found it. The deathstalker scorpion.’

Toby shook his head in amazement. ‘Chlorotoxins,’ he said. ‘All of that time we spent in there looking at dogs’ eyes and horseshoe crabs, the answer was there all along – just in a different part of the case.’

‘Cranston discovered that its venom contains a neurotoxin that might be a cure for cancer,’ explained Bee.

Kobayashi snapped to attention. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Cranston had a cure for cancer?’

Toby shrugged. ‘He certainly had the first steps,’ he said. ‘He’d done all the groundwork. There’s a long way to go, but the major breakthrough has been made.’

Kobayashi glanced at Featherstone, who was staring stubbornly at the floor.

‘Didn’t he mention that, Akiko?’ asked Bee. ‘He didn’t tell you the thing you were stealing from Cranston was a cure for cancer? Do you see what I was saying before about life choices?’

Kobayashi swallowed and didn’t respond.

‘So Cranston had found it,’ Bee continued. ‘He’d made the breakthrough that was going to cement his legacy. He was just a hair’s-breadth away from finally getting his Nobel Prize. There were just two things in his way.’

Adrian Featherstone shifted his weight uncomfortably.

Bee smiled at him. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You were the first thing. But Cranston didn’t really see you as much of a threat. He was much more careful with security, made sure that none of his staff got too close or stayed long enough to really figure out what he was doing. The only person he confided in was his closest friend and assistant, Gregory. Or Gus, as we knew him.’

‘So what was the second thing in his way?’ asked Kobayashi.

‘Death,’ said Bee. ‘Cranston was dying. His doctors told him he had no more than six months to live. The Nobel Prize nominations aren’t until September.’

‘And?’

‘And you can’t win a Nobel Prize if you’re dead.’

‘That’s right,’ Toby confirmed. ‘You can win it if you’re still alive when nominated, but there are no posthumous nominations.’ He turned to the old man in the red leather chair. ‘Oh,’ he said, realisation creeping across his face.

‘William hung on for as long as he could,’ said the old man. ‘He was very sick, but he still came to work every day and pretended everything was all right. He was in a lot of pain by the end. But he had to make sure everything was ready. He wanted to make sure everything was in place, before he . . .’ The old man turned his head away.

Bee smiled sadly. ‘And that’s why he ate so much junk food the day he died,’ she said. ‘Because it was all ready.’

The old man laughed bitterly. ‘He’d been stuck on a macrobiotic diet of brown rice and seaweed for six months in the hope that it might give him more time. I used to find him staring at recipe books, at pictures of cakes and roast beef and fried chicken.’

Toby was shaking his head. ‘So he
did
kill himself,’ he said. ‘After all that, it
was
a suicide.’

Bee nodded. ‘Occam’s razor,’ she said. ‘I told you so. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.’

‘Except this is hardly simple.’

‘Nothing ever is.’

Toby held Bee’s gaze for a long moment, and Bee’s insides squirmed happily.

Kobayashi was staring at the old man. ‘You’re not William Cranston,’ she said, slowly.

‘Well done,’ snapped Featherstone. ‘Only took you ten minutes longer than everyone else in the room.’

‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘You used to
work
for him, and you didn’t figure it out.’

Featherstone shut his mouth and resumed his sulky floor-staring.

Bee pulled the newspaper article out of her pocket. ‘I should have realised,’ she said. ‘William Cranston was known for being a recluse. Yet here I was thinking it was
him
who was grinning at the camera, and Gus – Gregory – who was looking shyly down at the ground.’ She pointed at the caption on the photo. ‘And it says “Scientist and Museum Benefactor William Cranston with his assistant, Gregory Uriel Swindon”. Not the other way around. It’s
Cranston
standing on the left, not Gus.
Cranston
is the one with the dark eyes. Those pale blue eyes belong to Gregory.’

She looked into the old man’s eyes. Not smiling and sparkling like they had been in the photo, but sad and bloodshot. But they were as startlingly pale as ever.

‘I kept looking for clues relating to reptile eyes,’ said Bee. ‘But it was human eyes I should have been paying attention to.’

‘We swapped,’ said the old man. ‘It was William’s idea, of course. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want to be responsible for his death, or for seeing out his legacy. I didn’t want to give up who I was, even though I was no one special. But he wore me down, and in the end I couldn’t refuse a dying man’s last request. Especially not his. Nobody had seen him for thirty years, and one old man looks much like another. It was easier than we thought. He became Gus, and came here to work at the museum that he loved so much. Taxidermy had always been a hobby of his, it just made sense. We thought six months would be long enough to establish his identity. Then it was time.’

‘But why the mercuric chloride?’ asked Kobayashi.

‘It wasn’t mercuric chloride,’ said Bee. ‘That vial was full of water. It was a backup plan, in case anyone doubted that Gus had committed suicide. The only other person who could have got hold of that vial was Featherstone, and if he was implicated in Gus’s death . . .’ She shrugged.

‘He’d deserve it,’ growled Gregory Uriel Swindon, with a black look at Featherstone.

‘So how
did
he do it?’ asked Kobayashi. ‘If it wasn’t the mercuric chloride, how
did
Gus . . . Cranston kill himself?’

‘It was the venom of the deathstalker scorpion,’ said Toby. ‘Wasn’t it?’ He looked at the old man.

‘William was always the researcher,’ said Gregory Swindon. ‘He wanted to record the effects of the venom on a human – a sick human. He wanted to see how long death would take after administering the venom – how long you could safely wait before administering antivenom, and whether that would be enough time for the chlorotoxins to destroy cancerous cells.’

Toby looked interested. ‘And was it?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Swindon. ‘I’m no scientist. I just recorded the findings and will forward them to the relevant people.’

‘You’d been planning it for a while, hadn’t you?’ said Bee. ‘Gus – William Cranston – swiped the mercuric chloride bottle months ago, and then two weeks ago he borrowed the key to the Red Rotunda and had a copy made. You made sure people saw you in the Red Rotunda, and associated your face with the name of William Cranston. On the night itself, Cranston stayed in the office until 8:37 and then hid somewhere, I assume with you.’ She looked at Swindon, who nodded.

‘I was waiting by the staff entry just before closing,’ he said. ‘William let me in and I waited in one of the storerooms. He joined me later on, and we waited until after midnight, so we could be sure everyone had gone home.’

‘Except we hadn’t,’ said Bee.

‘We actually didn’t know that,’ said Gregory Swindon. ‘William had left his smartcard in the taxidermy lab. When he popped back in to get it, he saw the door to the Catacombs open and the light on. He never imagined there was someone in there, but being the meticulous man he was, he had to turn off the light and close the door. Then he picked up your watch.’ He nodded at Bee. ‘We borrowed your watch. Sorry. In all our months of planning, neither of us remembered to bring a watch.Then we went upstairs.’

Bee blinked. They had taken her watch? She hadn’t even noticed it was missing. She’d been so busy trying to remember if Gus’s smartcard had been on his desk when she and Toby had come out of the Catacombs she hadn’t thought about what
else
might be missing.

‘You went to the Red Rotunda,’ Toby was saying.

‘William wanted to die among his past, his research. It was the closest he could get to dying surrounded by family.’

‘And you,’ said Bee. ‘He wanted his best friend there to help him record the data. Researching until the end.’

‘Yes.’ Gregory Swindon’s face crumpled. ‘He had the deathstalker venom ready in a syringe. He got me to set the watch at midnight exactly, and then injected himself. It didn’t take long for him to die.’ He sighed. ‘Eleven minutes and twenty-four seconds, to be precise. When he was gone, I slipped the mercuric chloride into his hand, took his smartcard and the syringe, and went back to the lab. I reset your watch according to the clock on the wall and replaced it.’

Bee let a bubble of surprised laughter escape. ‘I kept wondering why the clock on the wall was suddenly correct. But it was actually my watch that was now three minutes slow as well.’

‘How did you get out of the building?’ asked Toby, looking at Swindon.

‘First I went back to the storeroom. I waited until the next morning, when more people would be moving around the museum and my departure wouldn’t attract the attention of Security. Then I slipped out, threw away the smartcard and the syringe, and sat down on a bench in the sunshine, trying to comprehend what I’d just done.’

Bee remembered seeing him as Toby was dragging her off to the café across the road.

‘And that’s really all,’ said Gregory Swindon. ‘Nothing that complicated. Just an old man who wanted to die, but not be forgotten.’

He looked back down at his hands and closed his eyes. Bee saw his shoulders tremble.

‘Well,’ said Adrian Featherstone, standing up. ‘That was all very enlightening. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .’

‘Not so fast,’ said Toby. ‘I’m not sure we’ve quite dealt with the issue of you and what a terribly bad man you are.’

Featherstone smirked. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. William Cranston is dead. It’s not as though I can steal his work now.’

‘And yet I don’t really feel like justice has been served.’ Toby shook his head.

‘So what?’ snarled Featherstone. ‘It’s not like you can touch me. If you expose me to the authorities, I’ll just tell them the truth about William Cranston, and then there’ll be no Nobel Prize. No legacy. No history books. And you’ve all got too much to hide.
You
can’t risk your secret coming out,’ he said, nodding at Gregory Swindon. ‘And
you
were working with me,’ he sneered at Kobayashi. ‘You’re just as guilty as I am.’

‘What about us?’ asked Toby, going over and standing next to Bee. ‘
We
have nothing to lose.’

‘You?’ Featherstone barked out a short laugh. ‘You’re just a couple of kids. As if anyone’s going to believe your crazy harebrained story over the sensible, pragmatic word of a respected conservator.’

‘Hmm,’ said Toby. ‘I’m afraid I might have some bad news for you.’

‘What?’ said Featherstone with mock terror. ‘Are you going to dob me in to your mummy? You can’t go to the police. There’s no evidence against me that would stand up in a court of law.’

‘I have no intention of turning you over to the police,’ said Toby. ‘The people I’m working for have much more . . . scientific methods of exacting justice.’

‘The
people you work for
?’ said Featherstone, laughing shrilly. ‘What are you, a superhero?’

‘Hardly,’ said Toby. ‘But does the name Patrick Meagher mean anything to you?’

Adrian Featherstone stopped laughing.

‘He’s my dean at uni,’ Toby explained. ‘We’re pretty good mates, actually. It was Patrick who suggested I come here to get some work experience. And he had a couple of little jobs for me while I was here, some stuff for this club he belongs to. It’s called the Royal Society and from what I hear it’s pretty awesome.’

Adrian Featherstone looked nervously towards the door.

‘You can run, Featherstone,’ said Toby with a grin. ‘Feel free to leave any time you like. But they’ll find you. Your confession to me just now is more than enough for them. They will find you, and I have no idea what they’ll do to you, but I know they’re a pretty creative, intelligent bunch of people. Always inventing new ways to do things.’

Featherstone fled the room, skidding on the parquetry floor as he left.

‘Have a lovely day,’ called Toby, as the door banged shut.

Kobayashi had risen rather nervously to her feet. ‘So what happens now?’