Malik in Wonderland: A Professor Deshpande Mystery

Malik had never favored dinner with “the boss.” Most of his past bosses had, at heart, been cops. His SAC at the FBI Art Theft Program had lived up to his acronym with a simmering case of Islamophobia. This despite Malik Aboud bringing a CV that included the University of St. Andrew’s, New Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit, and INTERPOL’s Stolen Works of Art Database.

But after a day in ballrooms and breakouts with panelists convinced they were solving world hunger instead of exhuming dead artists, dinner with Chairman Deshpande provided an invigorating respite. Especially at the Za’atar Palace on Randolph – a perfect compromise for the semi-observant Muslim and his Mumbai-born department chief and a virtual Moorish gallery of hand-carved furniture, sculptures, rugs, mosaics, arabesques, and chandeliers. On a Wednesday night in the Loop, the lavish dining room crackled with conversation, clatterings, and the underlying strains of the house quartet on oud, guembri, rhiata, and darbuka.

Saanvi Deshpande had been afternoon keynote for the Midwest Consortium of Art Historians and presenter of the 2024 Giorgio Vasari Award, and she attacked her fattoush with a violence Malik had considered visiting on the Za’atar’s famed lamb shanks. Instead, he’d opted for the L’ham M’hammar – Moroccan braised rabbit stew with figs and preserved lemons – after vetting the cottontail’s halal compliance.

“I didn’t realize rabbit required ritual slaughter,” Saanvi murmured as she harvested a forkful of romaine, Persian cucumber, and toasted pita redolent with mint, sumac, and pomegranate molasses.

The savory stew steamed Malik’s rimless glasses, and he waved in a cloud of tomato and ras el hanout with a beatific grin. “Yeah, the bunny’s throat and arteries are ‘humanely’ cut as the zahiba butcher invokes the name of Allah. Probably not a big hit at Easter. Guess I’m just feeling wascally. I may be heading down a rabbit hole.”

 “How so?”

“Are you familiar with the LCSNA?”

Saanvi sipped her Lavender Collins. “Another of your labyrinthine federal bureaucracies?”

“The Lewis Carroll Society of North America, dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the life, times, influence, and work of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Chiefly, the Alice duology – Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. You may or may not know John Tenniel.”

“Illustrator of said volumes,” Saanvi supplied. “Carroll initially provided his publishers with his own drawings – the manuscript of the draft, Alice’s Adventures Underground, is on display at the British Library.” Malik shook his head in appreciation, and she smiled in kind. “My mother read both volumes to me when I was a child.”

“Dodgson’s publisher recommended he enlist Tenniel, the head caricaturist of Punch at the time – the 1860s. It was not a heaven-made match. Tenniel was an introspective man who nonetheless held rigidly to his artistic standards. Dodgson and Tenniel argued over each’s interpretation of Dodgson’s characters, and the writer actually revised his Walrus and the Carpenter poem to fit Tenniel’s conception. Tenniel also convinced Dodgson to make Alice a blonde, rather than giving her short brunette hair like Alice Liddell – Dodgson’s supposed model for the character.”

“But, ultimately, they suffered a falling out?”

“According to Warren. Warren Liddell.”

Professor Deshpande lifted her waning balloon glass as an inquisitive server hovered nearby. “Please, another? Thanks.” She turned to her colleague. “Curiouser and curiouser. Do proceed.”

**

Malik had completed his morning salat, improvising with a freshly laundered bath mat and the Qibla Compass app to direct his morning prayers, when the room phone shrilled. Assistant Professor Aboud, a transplanted Syrian-Scots-American with one loafer each in the traditional and post-9/11 worlds, glanced momentarily at his iPhone before plucking the handset from the bedside cradle.

“Professor Aboud?” The voice was British, middle-aged, and cheerfully polished. “I pray I didn’t disturb you, but I know you have a busy day ahead.”

“Not at all,” the historian murmured. “I did plan to catch a little breakfast and tea downstairs before the opening session.”

“Excellent! You shall break the fast with me.”

“We haven’t even been properly introduced.”

“Dreadfully sorry. Warren Liddell. I have a proposition you might find both academically irresistible and lucrative. I need to vet some late 19^th Century sketches, and your reputation for discretion and spotting fakes is sterling.”

“Chicago has some first-class authentication services – the Winston Art Group, Art Certification Experts...”

“I’d like to keep this close to the vest, at least until I have some assurance I should proceed.”

“Proceed with what, if I may ask?”

“Proceed…to auction or a private dealer. I have a reputation, as well. If you could give me, how do they put it, a ballpark opinion, I’d be both grateful and generous. Come, what hardworking state university employee couldn’t use a free meal?”

“Few that I know.” Malik conceded.

**

Suite 1232 was two floors down, just beyond the ice-and-vending alcove. The door was ajar; a portly man in an unseasonably light tan suit dealt solitaire at a small dining table, flanked by a pair of plates covered with silver cloches and a matching pot.

Warren Liddell smiled up and folded the cards into a loose pile. “Can’t abide the morning talking heads and their litany of global misery and miscellany. Come. Please. Sit.”

“Unusual deck,” Malik observed, slipping into an ornately gilded chair. Liddell whipped the hood from Aboud’s shirred eggs and multi-grain toast like a Vegas magician, and poured him a cup of Earl Grey. “Sasha Dounaevski? Graphic designer from Israel, I believe?”

Liddell beamed. “Originally Belarus. The Wonderland deck – a gift from my fellow LCSNA members. The Lewis Carroll Society.”

“Whimsical, minimalist Deco touches. And the court cards -- not quite double-ended. The King of Diamonds is serving tea on one end, cake on the other. The positioning of paintbrushes and roses on the Queen of Hearts.”

“You have a marvelous eye. You know, of course, that the name ‘Malik’ means ‘king’? Another reason I felt you were the man for the job. Of course, Dounaevski’s work is a bold departure from the original drawings. How would you like to see the real thing?”

“Tenniel? You have, what, some additional sketches, rough drafts of the original Wonderland illustrations?”

“Oh, much better than that.”

“Through the Looking Glass?”

Liddell grinned silently, like Carroll’s famous feline, brushed a toast crumb from his thick mustache, and ambled to the hotel safe in the foyer closet. With an unwelcome hand on Malik’s shoulder, he placed before him a small, stained, but well-preserved vintage sketchbook. The historian turned it in his hands.

“Well, it certainly appears of the period – the 1860s or 1870s. Ah, here’s what appears to be a faded shop stamp on the inside cover. And—“ Malik froze as he carefully thumbed the heavy, browned, low-acid content pages. “I don’t seem to recognize these, ah, characters. Some sort of sphinx? A raven in a cravat? And the mirrors? I don’t recall anything like this in either of the novels. And, well, Alice herself. She doesn’t look quite the same. She looks…older? Mr. Liddell, where did you come by these sketches?”

Liddell settled back in his chair, as giddy as a Mad Hatter. “We were cousins, several degrees separated. If you know the history of Rev. Dodgson’s friendship with young Alice Liddell, you may know two of Cousin Alice’s three sons were killed during World War I, and to help pay taxes after her husband’s death a few years later, she put the original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Underground up for auction in 1927.

“There are records of Tenniel, as well, visiting Cousin Alice, although it’s widely held the Alice of the novels wasn’t based on any specific child. My great-aunt says they got along famously despite Tenniel and Dodgson having ended their collaboration. Alice apparently decided not to auction these sketches with the Carroll manuscript. And, no disrespect intended, but…”

“Carroll was the money name, not the lowly artist,” Malik smirked. Liddell shrugged.

“And so, a few years ago, my aunt uncovered these drawings in storage. She had no idea what she had, but once I saw them, well, you can imagine.”

“I can. If, indeed, they are the real thing. But you realize I don’t have any x-ray or infrared or pigment analysis tools with me. I would have to be back on campus to be able to provide even a ‘ballpark’ authentication.”

“Of course. But you’re willing to do it?”

The eggs had congealed, the toast was cold, and the opening keynote was on in 20 minutes. “Look, I do have to go now, but I am intrigued. Will you be around later?”

Liddell practically clapped his meaty paws. “Yes, yes. I have another party who wants a peek, but I’ll be back up here by 8 tonight.”

“I have dinner with a colleague at 5, but I can cut out early on her.”

Liddell was silent for a second. “You won’t discuss any of this with her?”

“Absolutely not,” Malik lied. “Look, I’m running late.”

“For a very important date?” Liddell chuckled.

**

Malik cursed as his phone began to dance on the brocade tablecloth. His fingers were sticky from the honey-drenched baklava, and he quickly wiped them before swiping the screen and punching the speaker icon. Saanvi leaned forward.

“The tarts.” The voice was weak, strained, raspy, but undeniable. “The…tarts…”

“Mr. Liddell?” Malik demanded urgently. “Warren?”

The line went silent.

“You go,” Saanvi ordered. “I’ve got the check.” 

**

If Malik had harbored any anxieties charging into the unknown, they were allayed – or exacerbated -- by the welcoming crew waiting in Suite 1232.

A smartly appointed middle-aged woman in a smarter navy suit, who’d been staring glumly at the activity within looked up and came off the opposite corridor wall. Malik caught a glimpse of her gold nametag – Regina Sinclair/Operations Manager. “Sir, we’ve had a, an accident. You need to move on.”

“I’m the man who called you about Mr. Liddell. Malik Aboud? I had trouble getting a cab. Is he all right?”

“I would say he is not,” Sinclair answered with a somewhat accusatory tone. “The detective – Yontz, I think he said – wants to talk to you. He can fill you in on your…friend?”

A man in a suit peered around at his name, and lumbered into the hall. He gave Malik the wary up-and-down the historian had come to expect since the towers came down.

“And what is your deal?” Det. Yontz inquired.

Averting his eyes from the large man lying face down on the carpet, Malik provided an efficient synopsis, emphasizing his culinary alibi over the previous two hours and displaying his mobile call log. “Tell me – have you found a small, antique sketchbook?”

The cop called over his shoulder, collected a consensus of negative grunts. “Nope.”

Malik frowned. “Are you familiar with Alice in Wonderland?”

“Not professionally.”

“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summer day,” Malik quoted eidetically. “The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, and took them quite away!”

“If this is supposed to be a major break, I may need some clarification.”

“The cards on the desk next to Mr. Liddell’s body. When I visited this morning, he’d been playing solitaire. As apparently he had before his meeting with the killer.”

“Not sure we’ve established there even was a killer,” Yontz muttered, unconvincingly. “No sign of a struggle or any mess, though it looks like somebody may have done a fast-and-sloppy search of the place. Maybe they got in a scuffle, Liddell here has a heart attack, and his visitor tries to find whatever it was they were scuffling about. What about the cards?”

“Is there any chance I could look at them? Or you look?” Malik added hastily. “There’s a chance a card is missing.”

Yontz stared for a dead-eyed moment, then puffed his cheeks and began scanning the neatly aligned rows on the spartan hotel desk. And the single misaligned row nearest the former Carroll buff. “OK, Great Merlini, what card am I looking for?”

Malik informed him, and after a few moments, the detective glanced up with a warily respectful look. “No Queen of Hearts. You mean ‘cause of the rhyme?”

“No, that merely planted the notion in my head, though I think the one connects to the other. I think Mr. Liddell’s dying message was quite literal. Could one of your men please turn the body over?”

Another pause, then Yontz rolled his eyes at a crime scene tech and made a circular gesture. Malik winced as the inverted Liddell’s open eyes met his, then caught the thick card half-bent under the victim’s weight. Nearly identical conjoined twin queens, flanked by roses and brushes. And then he detected the small object still lodged in Liddell’s mustache.

“You might want to collect that. I believe it’s a pastry crumb, maybe part of the tart used to poison Mr. Liddell.”

“All to steal some art book? What kinda pictures were in there?”

Malik nodded. “Illustrations. One half of a whole. Mr. Liddell kept the sketchbook in his room safe, and would have brought it out to show the Queen of Hearts. That may have been the only name Mr. Liddell knew. No, this Queen was searching for something more, or at least as, important.”

“Probably got that, too.”

“Not necessarily. These collector types – especially competitive amateurs – possess a strong streak of the theatrical.”

Yontz’ crew found it, in the back of the suite’s old-school armoire, wedged behind a framed dressing mirror. Through the looking glass, Malik smiled tightly. It was little more than a rough synopsis, but no doubt crucial to both ‘Liddell’ and his killer.

“’Plot Summary: Alice, now a young woman, finds herself once again drawn into a fantastical world through an ancient, enchanted mirror hidden in the attic of her childhood home,’” Malik read through the evidence bag holding the distinctly Office Depot stock printout. “’She discovers a realm where reality bends, and the rules of logic and language are even more perplexing.’ I suspect if you examine Mr. ‘Liddell’s home computer, you’ll find the AI outline for a story meant to accompany Tenniel’s drawings. After some creative doctoring and forgery. He wouldn’t want to keep it with the sketchbook in the safe.”

“Seems like it would’ve been safer there,” Yontz quibbled.

Malik considered. “Unless,” he finally muttered, “the killer could get into the safe, as well. Can you check to see if the hotel has emergency combination override codes?”

Assistant Professor Aboud and Det. Yontz turned as one toward the now-empty corridor.

“Hey,” the investigator barked at a uniform talking Cubs with a tech. “You see Sinclair, the manager lady, leave?”

“Um,” the patrolman responded.

Another officer intervened from the bedroom. “Just got a call from Security. They got her on camera, stuck in a stalled elevator between 10 and 11. And it looks like somebody’s kicking her ass.”

**

Fortunately, Malik and Yontz were in the contingent outside the 12^th Floor elevators when the car began its ascent mere seconds before the Pomeroy’s crack maintenance crew was to launch an assault. The detective and a pair of uniforms had their weapons trained as the bronze egg-and-dart-bordered doors slid open. A red-eyed Regina Sinclair glared silently from a corner of the car, nursing a split lip, and for the first time, Malik noticed the manager’s teapot earrings. A second woman emerged, gently placing a keychain canister of pepper spray on the car’s carpeted floor.

“Pardon, Malik,” Saanvi smiled. “I was on my way up; she was on her way down, rather frantically, I might add. I inquired about the incident in Suite 1232, and, well, she went quite off her head.”

“You know this nutjob?” Yontz demanded, turning to Malik.

“Careful,” Professor Deshpande admonished. “It would seem most everyone’s mad here.”

**

“I’m a bit surprised, frankly.”

Malik looked up at Saanvi’s gentle scold. The 9 a.m. Amtrak had set off on schedule, and the visiting scholars split a pooled Chicago Tribune as they rolled past factories and apartment hovels and chain-linked supply yards.

“You know the name Malik translates as ‘king,’ and you are fluent in five languages,” Saanvi continued. You didn’t find it at all odd that amid all this Carollian skullduggery, you were in the presence of a Regina? A queen? No doubt she arranged the fraudulent Mr. Liddell’s accommodations – ingenious, considering no one would find her roaming the hotel’s corridors noteworthy. She arrives for their rendezvous with a box of pastries from the lobby restaurant -- I consulted online, and the Pomeroy House Pub does indeed offer an Ecclefechan Butter Tart, a Scottish treat featuring dried currants. From what you described, our Alice aficionado would have relished the whimsical theatrics of tea time with a fellow enthusiast.

“And then there’s the pristine condition of Suite 1232. If we assume Ms. Sinclair doctored ‘Liddell’s tart with some form of sedative to decommission him while she searched the room, then returned to find she’d sedated him a bit too well, it would be nothing for her to procure a housekeeper’s cart, perhaps even a uniform, clean up the crumbs and any other traces of her presence, then return to her duties until ‘Liddell’s body was discovered by Housekeeping. But then Liddell came briefly around, called you, and you turned up at the scene to set the police on the correct trail.”

Malik smiled at the small thrown bone. “She needed both the authentic sketches and Liddell’s counterfeit storyline to follow through on his planned scheme. Once I’d authenticated the Tenniel sketches, they would have helped the False Mr. Liddell sell a publisher or dealer on a major literary find.”    

“I suspected chicanery from the very beginning,” Saanvi murmured, scanning her folded Tribune. “What is a six-letter word for an interconnecting network of rabbit holes? Starts with a ‘W,’ ends with an ‘N’?”

“Warren—“

Malik closed his eyes, then grinned sourly. Professor Deshpande returned to her reading.