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 One afternoon deep into a slow summer day, the conservator came up from her basement stronghold, glanced around to see if anyone was nearby, leaned toward me and whispered, “If anything happens to me, I want to tell you where the files are.”

“What files?” I asked in a normal tone of voice.

She did a frantic little shushing dance, which led me to believe that the basement conservation shop had bred another nut.  I sighed.  Claudia was such a good conservator, too.  There was something about the basement of the museum that led to strange behavior, paranoia, or worse.  The previous conservator had left in a huff, believing that I and other members of the museum staff were monitoring her phone calls, preventing her from getting the equipment she required, and hounding her friend, the janitor, out of his job.  Here was Claudia, then, on this quiet afternoon, exhibiting similar signs, and she had only had her job for six months.  At least, I thought, she’s planning to confide in me.

She was still dithering in front of me.  “There’s no one else in the building but you and me,” I said.  “What’s the problem?”

“You know the terms of Mrs. Sullivan’s Will,” she began.

“Intimately,” I said.  Mrs. Sullivan’s collection was the backbone of the museum’s holdings, primarily Chinese art from the late 19^th Century.  In recent years, however, the museum had been concerned with updating the collections, showing more contemporary pieces, and trying to be responsive to the needs of the art school at the other end of the campus.  It was a difficult maneuver, since Mrs. Sullivan’s Will made it clear that not a stick, not a stone, not a piece of jade or old costume was to move so much as a centimeter from its appointed place.  That meant that half the museum was unavailable, with no galleries open above the first floor for touring or changing exhibitions of any kind.  All that stuff had been put in place by Mrs. Sullivan’s hands or those of one of her minions.  Now, forty years after the fact, her influence was lessening on campus, but I still occasionally got calls from some old lady who believed that the position of the Imperial throne had been changed to hide the fact that someone had removed a foo dog from the throne case.  Sometimes the caller even intimated that dire consequences awaited anyone who meddled with the sacred Sullivan Collection.  I hoped that Claudia had not heard these threats; some of them had even hinted that the collection was like an Egyptian pyramid, haunted by the spirit of the original collector.  Probably that spirit was at war with the original owners of all that stuff, and I wouldn’t want to tangle with them at all.

“Wally’s trying to break the Will,” she said in a loud whisper.

“There’s nobody here but us,” I said.  “Yes, we’re trying to break the Will, but it will take some time yet.”

“He’s been down there pulling things out of drawers.  He gave me a list of things he wants me to … to … deaccession,” she wailed.

“Uh-oh,” I said.  Wally would jump the gun.  He was the director, and had been in charge since Mrs. Sullivan’s death.  He was due to retire and had nothing to lose, but we did.  Claudia, as conservator, had a reverent attitude toward the sanctity of the collection, in conjunction with the spidery voices on the phone.  That was probably reasonable, since she was responsible for the welfare of the collection.  “What are you going to do?” I asked.  I might as well find out how many sides there were to this problem.  As administrative assistant, I could expect to have it all dumped in my lap sooner or later.

“Well,” said Claudia, “I’ve started a file folder.  I’m putting it in my files downstairs and I want to put a copy in your office files.