Adrian Wicherly

Dr. Adrian Wicherly was a London-based archaeologist, professor, and author. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford and went on to work as an Egyptologist for the British Museum and a Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. In addition to directing an excavation of the tomb KV 42 in the Valley of the Kings, he also published the monograph Pharaohs of the XX Dynasty.

Wicherly was an extraordinarily handsome man, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a dimpled smile full of perfect white teeth. He was invariably smartly dressed, favoring Savile Row suits accented by an impeccably knotted club tie, polished wing tips, and expensive aftershave. He was also an unapologetic womanizer, prone to smarmy winks, fingertip caresses, and boorish flirtation, and several young docents at the British Museum had fallen prey to his advances.

When the New York Museum of Natural History decided to reopen a long-shuttered exhibit featuring a fully intact Egyptian tomb, Wicherly was hired as a consulting Egyptologist under chief curator Nora Kelly, where his primary responsibliity was writing the script for the exhibition's multimedia walkthrough experience. His formal manner, Oxbridge accent, and decidedly British vocabulary led his American co-workers to find him either smug or a "caricature of the dashing young Brit." He also found himself nonplussed when Nora seemed immune to his heavy-handed coquetry, and was later deeply embarrassed when he propositioned her outright and was flatly rejected.

Still stinging days later from Nora's spurning, Wicherly was lured into the tomb exhibit in the early morning under the guise of a special assignment from Anthropology chairman Hugo Menzies. During the half hour he was inside alone, he unwittingly became the second test subject of Diogenes Pendergast's sound and light show, which was particularly tuned to cause sudden, violent psychosis and brain damage, and had been secretly embedded in the exhibition's multimedia show.

Later that afternoon, Wicherly visited Dr. Kelly's office, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. He became confrontational, and attacked her when she attempted to call security, strangling her on the desk. When security arrived and broke down the door, Wicherly grabbed a letter opener and rushed them; he was shot in the heart at almost point blank range and killed.