The Adventure of the Travertine Nose-- Part VI

To the Royal Museum

You feel like a fish swimming upstream as you climb the steps of the Royal Museum behind Basil. A throng of bespectacled individuals pour out the doors and into the Edinburgh night as you and your mysterious archaeologist hurry up to the guards. Basil points to the identification tag clipped to his tweed jacket and, sounding very Scottish, offers a, “Guid eenin!” to the guard as you pass.
“Hey Mukker,” a well-dressed man shouts, meeting you inside the door. Basil shakes hands with the man and accidentally introduces you as Margaret. You pull the small sketchpad out of your purse—thank goodness there are still some empty pages in the back. You try to look as official as possible while Basil wraps things up with the curator. Although you can see yourself performing cartwheels through the empty wings and pawing the sarcophagus cases the moment you’re left alone, you try to suppress these ideas and look as academic as Basil.
“Guid cheerio the nou!” the curator says, and waves a “Good night, lass,” to you.
The heavy wooden door heaves shut and Basil turns to you, dangling the keys in front of you like a red flag to a bull. An icy surge of excitement pumps straight from your heart into all of your electrified limbs.
“Do you always have carte blanche to mess around in museums after closing?”
“Of course,” Basil blushes. “I mean, I’m a well-known person. They know I’m not going to start doing cartwheels in here.”
Now you blush. Is he also a mind reader? You wonder as you follow him through a labyrinth of hall. Portraits of men in armor and haughty-looking women lazing holding books or pointing to birdcages line the walls. You walk beneath the skeleton of a blue whale, its monstrous shadow looming over you like an eclipse. The way Basil rushes through the Egyptian wing annoys you. Aren’t there a few spare moments for betraying the curator’s trust? Gigantically large panther-headed women and kings with monkey paws line the walls. The partial light of the closed halls makes the massive statues look ominous. You clutch your sketchbook to your chest and realize you’re holding your breath.
“What’s this?” you ask, pointing at a Plexiglas case containing a darling sheep that looks to be made of a million white cotton balls.
“That’s Dolly,” Basil pauses. “You remember – the famous cloned sheep?”
You do remember. Your heart starts beating again. So it’s not a tea room or a bookstall that’s got you bobbing in that tide of holiday feeling-- it’s a dark, dusty museum and the promise of noses. Will wonders never cease? Before you have time to decide whether wonders do indeed ever cease, you hear a cascade of footsteps coming toward you through the darknesss.
“Evening, Mr. Maidencroft,” a guard says, touching the rim on an invisible hat.
“Evening, Bertie,” Basil boomerangs back, hurrying into the Greek wing. “Blast it!” Basil laments, “These Olympians all have their noses!”
You can’t help but wonder if anyone has ever uttered that particular sentence before.
“Let’s try to Assyrians and Persians,” he suggests. “One of them might be a bloody leper.”
You soon find yourself sketching the face of a devilish-looking Pan with hell horns, and hoofs, and a weather-beaten lady holding an arrow in each hand and wearing a trumpet skirt that looks like a cheese-grater. Basil appears with a mug of water he’s procured from Bertie, the guard, and pulls a small watercolor kit from his backpack.
“Here, use this,” he offers.
“You paint?” you ask him.
“Not really,” he says distractedly. He’s quite busy looking over your sketches. “You are a wizard,” he coos, leaning furtively over your shoulder. He smells like cedar and old books; a combination you find far from repellent.
“What do you think of this fellow?” he asks, pointing at your drawing of a helmeted, albeit nude, soldier who’s holding his enemy’s head by the petrified curls. Neither the conqueror nor the conquered have noses.
“It’s a two-for-one special,” you smile, sharing his excitement.
Basil tells you he venturing off to find Bertie again. He’s suddenly itching to get into the storeroom where the museum keeps all of the pieces that aren’t currently on display. He’s works himself into a lather telling you about all of the treasures the museums are hiding in quarantine while the whole world is visiting the Mona Lisa, or Night Watch for the umpteenth time. Frustrated, he clip-clops off into the darkness of the long hall and you turn back to the severed head. A noise behind you startles you, and you kick the mug of water over. It lays broken into shards, while rivulets of colored water run across the white marble floor.
You run in the direction you last saw Basil and shout his name with forced calm. No response. Just the mocking echo of your own voice, and another noise just like the one that scared the mug into shards. You don’t realize you are backing up until you collide with a stone discus player who, despite his centuries of perfectly-poised athleticism, seems to be thinking of toppling over discus-over-teakettle.
You remove your shoes and sprint unto the tunnel of shadows leading you to the next room. This room is full of medieval statues-- mostly painted saints who look like they’ve stepped down from the eaves of country churches. Some are posed like figureheads, leaning forward like flying buttresses with their faded robes billowing beneath them. A glass case in the center of the room is lit from above by iron chandeliers that look like they were made for fat, pillar candles. You can see that the case holds reliquaries, bits of saints’ bones. A lifelike metal hand with a tiny, hinged window frames a yellow shard alleged to be a bone of Saint Francis of Assisi. A simpler, mirrored box beside it houses a rotten old tooth. The sight of these items does nothing to quiet your hammering heart. You hold your breath and run past the hovering saints, imagining their painted, wooden eyeballs following you.
“Basil!” you shout, a little less controlled. “Basil, where are you?”
You think you hear footsteps in an adjoining room and turn to listen. It’s then that you notice a small wooden door-- open, and revealing a twisting set of stone steps. Light is coming from the floor below. Another footstep behind you.

If you’re sure you heard footsteps – and you don’t think it’s a reanimated panther-faced mummy—retrace your steps and find the exit. You’ve had enough fun for one night. Basil will have to find some other nasal specialist. Choose ‘A’.

So, you have a chronic case of the goosebumps—you aren’t going to desert Basil yet. Get your shoes back on and hoof it down those steep, twisting steps… he must be down there, right? Choose ‘B’.