The Murder in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Speaking of which (in a roundabout way), I spent a good deal of the afternoon in the company of Malachy Morin interviewing another group of candidates for the press assistant post. What sublime, wonderful ignorance! It is clearly the age of Dionysus. One applicant, accoutred in cartoon clothes, dense sunglasses, long ponytail, and pointy beard, wanted to know if he could use the museum in the evenings to practice with his band. Even Mr. Morin had doubts about that, and neither of them got the joke when I suggested to the young man that he try the Primate Pavilion for such purposes.

  The women, I have to admit, seemed much better qualified than the men. Still, it got embarrassing when Mr. Morin turned on all his blustery charm, especially with the better-looking ones. I think he shook hands three times with Elsa Pringle, a slight, comely young woman who has worked on suburban papers and spent a summer as an intern reporting for the Bugle. She certainly knows how to write a sentence and even a paragraph, to judge from the folder of clippings she brought with her. She’s without doubt the best candidate for the job, except, perhaps, for her self-confidence, which didn’t measure up to her competence as a writer. Malachy “Stormin’ ” Morin was quite smitten with her. She was scarcely out the door of his office (all cheap-looking paneling and a huge framed blowup of himself blocking that field goal attempt by Middlebrough) when he turned to me with that helpless laugh of his and boomed, “You know, Norm, outside of every thin woman there’s a fat man trying to get in.”

  I admit I was attracted to her myself, to the fetching way she tilted her head and the nearly comic seriousness with which she listened to what we were saying. She reminded me, in fact, despite some differences, of Elsbeth. But then, it is one of those fog-rolling-in, sea-racked days when Elsbeth haunts me, even though I used to think that I had, years ago, exorcised her ghost. I never did. Sometimes, like right now, when time seems a mere illusion, I think it is myself who is the ghost, one haunted by the living.

  FRIDAY, MAY 15

  Late this morning I underwent a most distressing experience. Armed with a search warrant, the Seaboard Police did a thorough search of my unprepossessing if commodious home on Bridge Street. Lieutenant Tracy did have the courtesy to call me at the office, and I arrived at my front door in time to open it for a forensic team from the police department. Lieutenant Tracy also told me it was routine; they had already searched the homes of Professors Chard and Pilty, those of several members of the Eating Club, and Malachy Morin’s. Still, it’s a shock to arrive at one’s house and find two police cruisers and an unmarked car parked in front, as though some kind of disaster had happened. I could practically hear Mrs. Norris, a busybody of venomous smile who lives across the street, calling around to make sure no one missed the spectacle. How to explain to them that it was only “routine.” Not that I socialize much with the neighbors, although I am unfailingly polite and friendly enough. One likes to think one doesn’t care what they think, but one does.

  At least I keep a tidy house (Yvette comes in once a week to give it a thorough cleaning), and the officers were most careful with my quite valuable collection. Indeed, I was gratified to hear a couple of them exclaim over my little arrangement of bonsai and Buddha. But really, to see drawers and files opened and inspected, the contents of the kitchen cabinets minutely observed, and samples taken from the ice in the freezing compartment of the refrigerator. Did they really think I might have kept pieces of Cranston in there? And then to have the clothing in my wardrobes gone through was as much an invasion of privacy as I could stand. I tried not to act guilty, which, I’m sure, only made me seem more guilty. I wanted to protest my innocence, to tell them they would find only evidence of a blameless, perhaps too blameless, life. They did turn up a pair of kidskin gloves I thought I had lost years ago and a catalog from a New York art dealer I had misplaced. They even went over the venerable Renault I keep parked in the side driveway for occasional weekend excursions, although I have never liked driving and am not very adept at it to judge from the reactions of other motorists. I can’t imagine what they expected to find in it. I was tempted to scoff, but I didn’t deem it wise to confront the police, especially in front of the whole neighborhood.

  The matter might have remained “routine” had they not uncovered my father’s old Smith & Wesson tucked away in an attic chest filled with memorabilia. The gun was still in its case and looked not only well kept but as though I had used it lately and hidden it there. I told Lieutenant Tracy that I did not have a permit for the gun, as required by state law, because I had quite forgotten that my father had possessed the thing. I explained that my father, the late Alexander de Ratour, had been a mining engineer, an occupation that took him to remote and dangerous places and necessitated his carrying a weapon. I said my own interest in archaeology had been spurred on at an early age by the kinds of artifacts he brought back from his travels.

  This account appeared to satisfy the lieutenant, but another officer in plainclothes, a rumpled suit in fact, a Sergeant Lemure, interrogated me in a manner that bordered on the abusive. Standing in my kitchen, leaning against the sink counter as though he owned it, he had the impertinence to suggest that I “hid” the revolver in the attic and suggested I might want to have a lawyer present. I informed him I had hidden nothing in the attic or anywhere else. I answered him in a dignified manner as he repeated his questions. Where did the gun come from? Why was I hiding it? Why had I not applied for a permit? It took me a while to realize that he was subjecting me to nothing less than a crude travesty of the technique detectives use when they try to get someone to contradict his “story.”

  I finally said to Sergeant Lemure, in a tone that suggested his questions were a trifle foolish, that I thought it should be a simple matter to have the weapon tested to see if it had been fired recently. I followed up with some questions of my own: What exactly did they expect to find that might implicate me in the presumed murder of Dean Fessing? Why had they waited so long? Surely if I had committed the crime I would have gotten rid of any evidence by now. When the sergeant tried to bully me again, I said in an even voice that I was not in the least intimidated by his manner and that if he could not conduct his investigation with intelligence he could at least conduct it with civility. When he mentioned something about “going downtown” (actually police headquarters have been relocated to a new building out near the bypass), I responded that to do that he would have to arrest me and that he had no grounds whatsoever for doing so. I said if he did arrest me I would embarrass both him and the department with a civil suit of exceedingly large dimensions.

  At that point Lieutenant Tracy intervened, saying that Sergeant Lemure was only doing his job and that it would be a simple matter to have the gun examined. He took me aside and, in a tone as apologetic as police use, told me they were operating on an anonymous tip received on the 911 line.

  “A tip?” I said. “Who made the tip?”

  “We don’t really know. Someone calling himself ‘Panglosser.’ ”

  “Panglosser?” The odd name, obviously a pseudonym, struck several faint bells, but I could make nothing of their distant, tantalizing chiming. “But you said it was routine,” I objected.

  He explained that it was routine to follow up whatever leads they had. I was not reassured. My home, my castle, had been legally burglarized and rendered alien to me in a way I cannot describe. It’s as though it, as well as I, has been besmirched. And while I know, as much as anyone can know anything, that I had nothing to do with the dean’s demise, the thought that others suspect me, had even called the police department about me, has left me with a vague, nagging anxiety akin to guilt. I suppose I am naive, but I had begun to think that Lieutenant Tracy trusted me, even counted on me to help him with his investigation. It’s as though, however innocent we may be in one instance, we are all capable of the crime we are suspected of.

  When they had finished, he gave me a receipt for the revolver and, by glance more than anything, apologized, I think, for what he had to do. We parted
on amicable terms.

  But I had hardly gotten back to the office and begun to regain some kind of inner composure when Amanda Feeney called from the Bugle. In that awful voice of hers, she demanded to know why the police had searched my home. When I tried to explain that it was routine, that others had had their homes and offices gone through, she brought up the gun. (Lemure, to get at me, probably told her about it.) When I again tried to explain, she twisted my answers around horribly, put words in my mouth, and made me sound defensive. I can just imagine the story she’s going to write. I’m sure she would have loved to have a photographer there to see me led away in handcuffs. And what I find most offensive is the undisguised relish she takes in maligning the museum through me.

  This assault on my privacy and dignity has had one salutary effect: it has reinvigorated my own investigation of what happened to Dean Fessing. I have gone over my notebook several times. I called Mrs. Walsh to see if she had located the missing files, but she could report nothing. I pondered connections. While the Onoyoko money trail leads all over the place, might not the real connections here be between the Primate Pavilion and the Genetics Lab? I mean, if those communications have any substance at all … And the more I think about Raul Brauer … Those eyes, I mean. His is the home that should have been ransacked.

  I have begun, in fact, to contemplate bold and perhaps dangerous steps. I am thinking of doing some hands-on work of my own. After hours, I mean. Mort and I go back decades, and more than once he has fished through his impressive array of keys to grant me access to restricted areas. And I have put in a call to a friend at the Medical School to see if, in fact, the pavilion is involved with AIDS research there. Or any real research for that matter. Still, I must confess to being quite at sea. It always seems so easy in those detective novels where the amateur sleuth picks up on seemingly inconsequential details and weaves out of them a dark and beautiful tapestry of crime. All I seem to have are random bits and pieces that I might sew into an abstract, not quite plausible quilt.

  Well, I do have some good news. I am finally going to have that dinner party to introduce my shrine to my friends. The Landeses, the Littlefields, Esther and her husband Norbert, a professor of chemistry, and Alfie Lopes can all make it next Saturday. Esther, who is well-known for her Chinese cuisine, is going to cook, while I am going to do the peeling and chopping. What would we do without friends?

  TUESDAY, MAY 19

  A strange transformation has come over Malachy Morin. Of a sudden he appears to be edgy and subdued at the same time. The boom of his voice issuing from his office on the third floor and echoing up through the exhibitions (a counterpoint of sorts to the hoots and hollers rising from the chimps in their exercise yard below) has all but ceased. His very presence seems to have shriveled: he slumps even while standing, and there’s something haunting and askance about his eyes when he looks at you. I don’t think it’s the heat. We’re in one of those greenhouse heat waves that has everyone around here panting. Personally, I rather like extremes of weather; at least they’re memorable, when so much of life isn’t. Perhaps the thickening atmosphere of fear and suspicion is getting to him. Perhaps the police have ransacked his life as well, and he is a more sensitive soul than I imagined. Perhaps he’s ill. Perhaps he has been to the clinic and been told that he has some anomaly, some lump, some shadow behind the heart, some indications that indicate … One forgets that the Malachy Morins of the world sometimes suffer.

  The fact is I’ve never seen the man so considerate without wanting something. This morning he came into my office to ask me if I had gotten any more police inquiries. About what? I asked. Oh, he said, nothing in general. You know, the Fessing murder. I told him that I hadn’t heard much lately about our murdered dean other than what could be garnered from the newspaper. And that, judging from the way the Bugle played the search of my home, wasn’t especially enlightening. (“Museum Official Denies Complicity in Dean’s Murder.” I mean, really.) He asked me if I had heard from Elsa Pringle, and I told him I hadn’t. He lingered around, as though trying to make up his mind about something. He kept inventing questions. Had there been any more calls about the press assistant position? I said no, and added with perceptible impatience that I thought he had decided to offer the position to Ms. Pringle. At that he appeared to turn pale. Yes, he said, he was working on that angle. If she didn’t pan out, he said, he would put another ad in the Bugle. All this time I had the uncanny feeling he wanted to ask me something specific or wanted me to do something. Just what, I cannot begin to imagine.

  Finally he said that if the police ask any questions about any other missing persons to let him know. Was anyone else missing? I asked, and he quickly said no, not that he knew of, and added that perhaps we should have a policy about police inquiries should anyone else turn up missing because the person or persons who had done in Dean Fessing might strike again. What sort of policy? I asked. Mr. Morin said he meant to say that the policy should be to consider a policy. When I looked dubious at that response, he said he meant we should get a press assistant onboard as soon as possible, and was I sure that Elsa Pringle had not called or written, or had anyone else called or written on her behalf? He went on in this vein until I scarcely knew what the man was talking about, and I’m not sure he did either.

  At the end of it, he stood up (he had been standing and sitting by turns during this entire exchange), shook my hand with something of an uncertain grip (he usually breaks your knuckles), and told me that I was doing a wonderful job, that I had an important role to play at the museum whatever the eventual status of the place in relation to Wainscott, and that he was someone I could count on when push came to shove.

  It wasn’t until after he left that I realized I had not acted like the detective I need to be if I am going to solve this mystery. I ought to have questioned him about certain aspects of the Fessing case. For instance, what did he know of Raul Brauer’s whereabouts at the time of the dean’s disappearance? What did he know of certain experiments going on in the Genetics Lab? Of course, the chances are he would know nothing. But I can’t help thinking that he knows something, that he’s hiding something that might have a direct bearing on the dean’s murder.

  I mentioned my impressions of Mr. Morin to Marge Littlefield, and she said we weren’t the only ones to notice. Doreen, his secretary, told her that her boss had called in sick yesterday, saying he was to be called immediately should anything important arise. “I’ve never seen anyone change so quickly,” Marge told me. “I’ve never seen the man so subdued before.”

  In this regard, I would like to think that my own example and some of the quiet but pointed remonstrances I have made to him, particularly in the recent past, have taken their effect. We sometimes underestimate the power of principle and the chastening effects of seriousness where important matters are concerned. Mr. Morin may finally be learning that you cannot bluff and bluster your way through the world.

  However ineffectually, I have continued my own investigation. Today I phoned Mrs. Walsh again about the missing archives. It’s a painful experience. The woman is so apologetic and unhelpful at the same time that I feel both sorry for her and frustrated in my attempts to track down what should be so readily accessible. On the other hand, is not this very inaccessibility significant, as a clue, I mean?

  THURSDAY, MAY 21

  I have suffered all day from a nagging melancholia that I can ascribe to nothing in particular. The morning began brightly enough. I left my house at my usual brisk pace, with happy thoughts about Saturday’s dinner party. But then, as I was walking by the pond … I don’t know, it might have been the flat smell of the water, the midges in the sun, or the call of a red-winged blackbird, which seemed to come from long ago when I was young and easy under the apple boughs. I tried to cheer up, but even the bower of wisteria that graces the entrance to the Marvell Gardens seemed little more than limp lilacs. I remembered it was the anniversary of the first time I met and talked with Elsbeth.

&nb
sp; It seemed like yesterday and yet so long ago. We were both on the ferry to Kirk’s Island. Elsbeth had braved the brisk chop to visit her grandmother, and I had joined a group from the Wax-wing Club, although it was a bit late for warblers. I noticed her immediately. She had tied her hair in pigtails in pink ribbons that didn’t quite go with the bright yellow slicker she wore. Imagine my surprise and delight to see her take from her rucksack a copy of Waugh’s The Loved One. It seemed little short of destiny that we should both be reading the same book, she for a course on the modern English novel and I for my own amusement. We smiled acknowledgment at each other. And, being close enough to talk, we began a spirited conversation as to the merits of the work. While agreeing with her that it was a good laugh, I maintained that its literary accoutrements didn’t save it from an essential nihilism.

  As I write this now, I cringe at the thought that, in learning about our present difficulties, Elsbeth may think me implicated. Why that should worry me I don’t know, but I find it spurring me on to find the culprit myself and thereby free my name from any possible taint.

  Then there was the meeting with Dean Oliver Scrabbe. He called around midmorning, practically summoning me to his office on the third floor. I’m not sure what to make of the man, who seems in a constant state of bristling. He is in his early forties, I would guess, with sandy gray hair that recedes far back over a wide, freckled pate and fringes, as a beard, a long hawkish face. During our interview, he appeared distracted and intense at the same time, pulling at his chin whiskers and glancing away with grimaces that revealed a pair of pronounced canines.