The Murder in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Mr. Morin recalls quite clearly that they lay together for some time. The clock on his bedside table read 10:35 P.M., making it about 10:30 P.M., as the clock is about five minutes fast. Miss Pringle at this time lay there in what Mr. Morin took to be a drowse of postcoital bliss. Although Mr. Morin does not smoke, he went downstairs to get Miss Pringle’s cigarettes and brought them back to the bedroom with another sherry for her and a double Scotch for himself. Not being sure that Miss Pringle wanted to stay the night, Mr. Morin called her name softly, asking her if she wanted him to call her a cab. At first he thought she was just a deep sleeper and continued to try to rouse her. Then he noticed there seemed to be something strange in the way she lay there, her head bent to one side and her legs still splayed. He called her name several times quite loudly and nudged her arm. Gradually and with deepening horror, Mr. Morin realized that Miss Pringle was unconscious. Then, with even more horror, he realized that she seemed not to be breathing. He took a small mirror off his bureau and held it under her nose. It did not fog. She appeared, in short, to have died.

  Mr. Morin’s first impulse was to dial nine-one-one and ask for help. He is a faithful fan of the television show named after that emergency number and was aware of the nearly miraculous resuscitations paramedics and others had effected in the course of their work. But in his panic he quickly drank the Scotch he had brought up for himself and then the sherry. He dialed nine-one-one but out of a nameless dread put the phone down before anyone answered. He did not know what had happened to Miss Pringle. He was afraid. Whatever the cause of her death, he knew there would be a scandal, that it would bring shame on himself and on the museum as well as Wainscott University. Mr. Morin had several more drinks. He is not sure how many. He tried to think. The horror of what had happened kept engulfing his sense and senses. The record should show that he sat down and cried like a little boy. He wondered if she had had a heart attack. He thought of putting her clothes back on and calling the police. But all the time he was growing more and more confused. Mr. Morin considered calling a priest or a minister. But he knew they would only tell him to call the police.

  In his desperation and confusion, Mr. Morin decided what he really needed was time. But he knew he didn’t have any time. Every moment made it later at night. In his whirling thoughts he contemplated the nature of time and its relation to life. He recalled hearing somewhere that there is no time without motion and no motion without energy and that only at absolute zero does motion cease, all of which led him to think of the freezer in the basement of the house. Mr. Morin did not want to conceal anything. He merely wanted time to think and to present the situation in a more appropriate setting. In the mental state he was experiencing then, he imagined he could keep Miss Pringle intact until he could arrange for it to appear that the accident had happened in the afternoon, with all of her clothes on.

  It was on that basis alone that he decided to put Miss Pringle in the freezer, an upright Kenmore that had been in the basement for years. To do this, he had to remove the shelving and some of the things on them, including a twenty-pound turkey that had been there since his wife had left him. When Mr. Morin had accomplished that, he went back upstairs to the bedroom, hoping to find that through some miracle Miss Pringle had come around. But she lay there, exactly as before. He lifted her up and took her down into the basement, where, in a sitting position, knees up, she fit into the bottom of the freezer. He was able to fit some of the upper shelves back in along with some of the food but had to discard the turkey.

  After that, Mr. Morin went upstairs, turned off the music, and drank himself to unconsciousness. The record should show that never during this whole time did Mr. Morin, who was only trying to do his job as a highly respected museum administrator, compel Miss Pringle in any one of her actions. The record should show that what happened was an accident, a tragedy for Miss Pringle and a tragedy for Mr. Morin, whose only mistake was to fail to report to the proper authorities in a timely fashion what had happened.

  Well, I’m not sure what to make of this document. It sounds plausible enough in not sparing us the awful details. On the other hand, I know Mr. Morin to be capable of imaginative mendacities, and the threat of the electric chair is a real one. And the circumstantial evidence for the charge of murder and cannibalism (I mean, keeping that poor girl in the freezer) is certainly strong. I will, in any event, pass a copy of this document on to Ariel Dearth. With the disappearance of Scrabbe, there appears to be considerable commercial potential for anyone even peripherally connected to the case. Malachy Morin, in short, might now be able to afford Mr. Dearth’s services.

  On an entirely different subject, as I have leafed back through these unofficial entries, I found them to be a bit more autobiographical than I intended. Not that I object to autobiography as such. I simply wouldn’t want these diaristic leavings to sound like contemporary fiction. So much of what is offered these days is consciously and self-consciously about what are called “relationships,” a horrible hybrid of a word that sounds like it comes from a manual on pathology. It all stems, I suppose, from what might be called the therapeutic ethos. What I certainly don’t want these entries to sound like, what I cannot abide myself, are accounts by faculty members about what goes on in their institutions, especially dreary accounts of the petty politics involved.

  Not that it makes much difference what I include or exclude. I can’t imagine anyone besides myself or a future historian of the MOM reading this account.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 10

  I feel like a juggler who has gotten one or two too many balls going in the air. I have heard from Dexter McFarquar. It appears a tentative date has been set for the Board to meet. His response, as usual, was most gracious, but he hinted at reaching “an accommodation” with the university. I suppose I should expect that.

  I did receive what may be some good news. Ariel Dearth gave a press conference Friday announcing that he will undertake the legal defense of Malachy Morin on a pro bono publico basis. In practice that means he will charge only three hundred and fifty dollars an hour for his time. More important, from now on I will have all calls concerning the Morin case referred to Mr. Dearth’s office at the Law School, which, apparently, he runs like a regular law office. Dearth called asking me to coordinate any of the museum’s public relations efforts with the strategy he and his “team” will develop over the next few weeks. I told him I would take the matter under advisement. You have to be careful with lawyers. The next thing you know I will be listed as codefendant.

  But there are still some grace notes left in life. The Reverend Lopes dropped in this morning, making a pastoral visit, both bringing and seeking comfort, or at least advice. He offered quite generously to conduct a prayer service at the museum if I thought it would help the staff cope with Dean Scrabbe’s disappearance. I am ashamed now to admit that I discouraged it, that I dissembled with vague remarks my real objection: to have the Wainscott Minister presiding at a service in the MOM might be seen as a legitimization of the university’s claim to the museum. We passed over the matter quickly. He said he was in fact stumped as to what to do for the larger community. “I can’t, Norman,” he said, holding the cup of tea I had brought him from the cafeteria, “hold a memorial service when the poor man is simply missing. He could show up any day, the victim of amnesia or a bizarre kidnapping.” He went on to say that Scrabbe’s disappearance raised for him a more fundamental theological problem: “To disappear like that, Norman, makes us all seem, well, ephemeral.”

  I quaffed my coffee. “Alfie,” I said, “it is only our mortal form that is ephemeral; and I am more and more convinced of that every day.” I went on to suggest that he hold a vigil service in Swift Chapel for the whole community. That, I said, would acknowledge the dean’s disappearance, signal the hope of his eventual return, and constitute, in retrospect and in the eventuality that the dean’s fate never comes to light, a kind of standby memorial service.

  Alfie replied that he and his staff ha
d considered doing just that. The problem, he said, is that given the nature of vigils — their being acts of faith and hope — they are easier to initiate than to terminate, especially when the object of their observance remains unresolved, as might happen in this case. He confessed to me that he was deeply disheartened by what was happening to the museum, to the university, and to the city. “When these things happen, Norman,” he said, picking up his straw boater and preparing to leave, “it takes some time to restore our faith in the possibility that we are transcendent beings.”

  He left me feeling small that I had caviled about his holding a prayer service at the MOM. It is summertime, after all, and there’s really no one around to notice. And Alfie is such a benign presence. Indeed, I felt uplifted all morning by his visitation. I was brought back to reality by the presence of a police officer at the main entrance. We now have a member of Seaboard’s finest stationed at the door twenty-four hours a day, although what good that will do is beyond me. It certainly has done nothing to dispel the sense of doom that pervades this beautiful old place.

  My own investigation, at the expense of my historical research, I must say, has continued apace. I have decided to enlist old Mort in getting behind the Green Door. I have a feeling I will find the Skull, the missing archives, and God only knows what else there. I have called over to the Wainscott Personnel Office to have sent to me the CV’s of several — I won’t call them “suspects” so much as individuals on whom I am starting dossiers. “Human Resources” at Wainscott helps us keep employee records, especially for the lab, the pavilion, and professors with joint appointments.

  I am also starting to take more seriously the communications I have been receiving from the lab. Upon my arrival this morning I found another communication from Worried:

  Dear Mr. Detour [sic]:

  I am writing to tell you that I have found out important information about what Professor Gottling and the others are up to with Project Alpha. I was talking yesterday with a friend who I haven’t seen in a long time who works at the pavilion part-time and he told me they have a really restricted area there that you need a special badge to get into where they keep eight chimpanzees. He says three of the chimpanzees are males and five are females and that the doctors come over and go through these special procedures to get the eggs from the females and milk the sperm from the males. It sounds disgusting to me but my friend says they bring the sperms and eggs over to the lab here to mix together and then they bring them back and put them back into the females. He says they come back after a few weeks and give the females an abortion. Then they take the fetus back to the lab to study. He says they are doing it in secret because there are really tough state laws about experiments with animals even with rats. We now have guards at all the entrances around the clock. I don’t know if it has to do with Project Alpha or with Charlene’s mother who came in last week and disrupted a big meeting that Dr. Hanker was having in his department. One of the secretaries who was there told me that she came in and started screaming at Dr. Hanker saying she had seen the tape and knew what he had done to her daughter and that he was going to pay. Then she went right up to him and punched him right in the face and had to be restrained. Poor Dr. Hanker was walking around all week with a big bandage over his nose. I’ve also heard that his wife wants to divorce him. She’s supposed to be rich and good looking and bored with Seaboard anyway. I told my friend at the pavilion that I was writing to you and he said he would try to find out more. Maybe he can get some solid evidence to send to you. I don’t know but I’m starting to think that this all has something to do with what happened to Professors [sic] Fessing and Scrabbe.

  Very Worried

  Of course, Worried may only be some disgruntled lab technician or a graduate student playing a sophomoric prank, as graduate students are wont to do. I would show these communications to Lieutenant Tracy, but they hardly constitute real evidence. He says they get crank calls all the time down at headquarters. My real worry, frankly, is the press. Even if there is a small sliver of truth in these allegations, the Bugle would blow it out of all proportion. The story or some mangled version of it would get into the national and international press, and we’ve had enough of that what with the cannibalizing of Dean Fessing and now Dean Scrabbe’s disappearance and Malachy Morin’s involvement in the death of Elsa Pringle. Speaking of which, Marge told me yesterday when I saw her at the Club that Morin and Amanda Feeney have become something of “an item,” even though he’s still in jail. Wonders never cease.

  What I should do, of course, is confront Professor Gottling with these accusations. There’s no one else left, not even Scrabbe, who didn’t have any official authority in the first place. If Gottling is involved in anything remotely like the experiments Worried accuses him of, a Board of Inquiry will have to be convened. The Rules of Governance allow for that, of course, given “just cause on the part of any museum principal or employee.” It’s all so tiresome and complicated. I am sorely tempted at times to take early retirement. I could retreat to my own study at home and dwell on the beautiful past. I won’t, of course. It would be the coward’s way out. And there comes a time, sometimes more than once, when a man has to stand and face things even when he’s not sure what it is he’s facing.

  And it’s more than that. I have something of a small confession to make. At times, especially in the summer, when the days are long and I have this old place all to myself, I wander down through the galleries, very nearly inhaling the light from the setting sun that fires the skylight above with scarlets and amethysts, tinting the glass on the cases with paler hues, especially up on the fifth floor. I linger there over the terra-cotta figurines, miniatures of Attic perfection, one of which, a full-bodied Aphrodite in clinging, diaphanous gown, reminds me of the Elsbeth of my youth. Or, for the thousandth time, I stop by the case of netsuke, never failing an inner smile at the contorted antics of Ashinaga and Tenaga rendered in elongated detail in one inch of ivory. I grow nearly breathless under the sway of a wonderful, eerie sensation: this place, where the beauty of the past is gathered and venerated, is the afterlife; this temple to man’s propensity to create beauty is where our spirits go to dwell, and I fervently believe that if only one particle of one’s being could survive and persist here, it would be enough.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 14

  My hands are unsteady as I type this entry. I may just have solved this whole bloody business! This afternoon the Wainscott Personnel Office faxed me several of the CV’s I had asked for. I was puzzled to find two CV’s, one for Francis Snyders and one for Franz Snyders, identical except for their present employment. Perhaps he had more than one job. The former is listed as working at the pavilion and the latter in the creative writing program in the Wainscott English Department. But when I read the attached stick-on note, I felt that bristling that comes with the pulse of adrenaline. The note simply stated they couldn’t decide which of the twins I meant so they were sending me both CV’s. Twins! I called over there at once to ascertain if the twins were identical. I was bumped up the line to someone with sufficient authority to inform me that she couldn’t say for sure if they were identical but it certainly looked that way judging from their file photos, the ones they use on their identity cards. Identical twins! If one of them doesn’t have an alibi, then neither does! I also learned that the brothers were owners and operators of a restaurant in Boston called something like Dri (P? B?) rat … sten — something German, I think, but I couldn’t make out the name because of a typographical distortion in the transmission. So they would know about cooking!

  What a confusion of delight and fear I experienced at this discovery. The delight of knowing, of finding this crucial fact before any of the police did. I had to resist the unseemly pleasure of suspicions confirmed, if only because this inner smirk was accompanied by a distinct presentiment of danger. There are two of them, after all, big, strong men both, and who knows how many more are involved. Drex, perhaps, persons unknown in the Genetics Lab. The missi
ves from the lab began to take on a new, darker significance.

  I called the SPD and was patched through immediately to Lieutenant Tracy when I told the dispatcher who I was and what I had to relate. How gratifying it was to hear the lieutenant say, “Good work. We’ll get on it right away.” Once the arrests are made, I think I’ll turn my whole file over to the police.

  Needless to say, I feel positively triumphant. I feel like calling Elsbeth and telling her what has happened. I’m not sure why. To make her feel proud of me, I suppose, although I don’t know why I should want her to be proud of me after all these years. Just yesterday, in going through my desk drawers as part of a preliminary reorganization of my office, I came across a piece of paper with Elsbeth’s phone number scribbled on it. For a moment I couldn’t place it, even though in a premonitory way my pulse had already begun to quicken. I gazed at it for several moments until, just like you see in the movies, the scrap of paper dissolved into a scene some fifteen years ago on a blustery wintry day outside of Waugh’s Drugstore, in the old downtown part of Seaboard. I was just emerging from the pharmacy with a prescription for a sinus infection, I think, when whom should I literally bump into but Elsbeth. I scarcely recognized her. I hadn’t seen her, after all, in more than fifteen years, and in the meanwhile she had put on some weight. But she was still quite attractive, and seemed to take genuine pleasure in meeting me. In the sway of those large, shining eyes, time skidded to a stop, reversed, and went careening backwards. I stood on the wind-plucked sidewalk trying to gather enough wit to say something civil and intelligent while the old passion, a Lazarus of infinite tendernesses, aches, and yearnings, rose from the crypt of my heart.