The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  I could feel my hair whitening as I read the legalese on the attached document. It stated that Mr. Warwick, upon his demise, wished to have his remains mummified “in the manner of the ancient Egyptians” and placed in the collections of the museum in perpetuity, there to be displayed periodically in a sarcophagus that he had chosen from his collection of Egyptiania.

  In exchange, he would bequeath an amount of no less than ten million dollars to the museum. An additional five million would be left to the MOM should it create a room in the museum to be called Temple Warwick, which would house not only his mummy but his collection of ancient Egyptian art and artifacts as well.

  What, one might ask, are the objections? After due consideration, I saw many. First, it is not in line with the “mission” of the museum. (Mission is one of those buzzwords like transformative that I heartily detest, but it serves here well enough.) Whatever our mission, it is not to provide mortuaries for the privileged.

  Second, were we to accede to Mr. Warwick’s request, surely others would importune us to allow them to park their mortal remains here. We would become a laughingstock in the museum world. Or maybe not. Others might envy our endowment as it fattened on bequests from the well-heeled waiting to get into our upscale necropolis.

  Of course, we could count on the local media to criticize us in no uncertain terms. Especially when the heirs to Mr. Warwick’s fortune challenged the matter in court, as they most surely would.

  But, as I thought it over, equivocation began. Egypt is of unparalleled importance in human history. Yet all we have are a few small items in a case next to the Greco-Roman display. Temple Warwick could be done tastefully, a few toned-down inscribed columns in the style of Karnak, but nothing too pharaonic. As well, Elgin is of old Seaboard money and lots of it, mostly in vast tracts of woodland north of here. Old money does come with a patina of respectability when you think about it. And think about it I must. I’ve been up the coast to his mansion by the sea where he has his Egyptian collection on display. The sarcophagi alone stir my museum director’s highly refined and, I like to think, justifiable cupidity. But there is much more there. Statuary from the Second Dynasty; tomb furnishings including a small painted throne, probably for a child; mummified ibises; scrolls; an obelisk of polished red granite.

  Some of it could be fakes, of course. Except that Elgin is a sly old fox. He is a large, genial, courtly man whose eccentricities, according to people who have done business with him, are part of an elaborate pose.

  So I will do what I usually do in these circumstances. I will stall. I will have Doreen work up a letter stating that I am studying his very generous and interesting proposal in consultation with our general counsel.

  I was in the midst of ruminating on this matter when Dr. Harvey Deharo, director of the Ponce Institute, under which auspices the Genetics Lab now operates, called to arrange a meeting with me and Thad Pilty. It seems that, according to the latest research, the skin tones of the mannequins in the Diorama of Paleolithic Life in Neanderthal Hall are not quite accurate.

  For those not familiar with this award-winning and very popular attraction at the museum, some years ago, after considerable controversy, we created a lifelike tableau of daily life among what are called Stone Age people. Our models, which move and interact, however minimally, with the visitors, are based on the Gerasimov reconstructions. Not knowing what their pigmentation was at the time, we settled on a dusty hue, more gray than brown, that we hoped would not offend anyone.

  Harvey, who was hired to take over the lab nearly two years ago after a lengthy search, told me that researchers have turned up DNA evidence that the Neanderthals were pale-skinned and perhaps red-haired. He chuckled in that soft Caribbean accent of his. “Don’t worry, Norman. This, too, will pass.” But how, I wonder, how? Because there’s no alternative but to confront and resolve the matter. Without at least the attempt at authenticity, we would be providing little more than a circus sideshow filled with fakes.

  And, finally, I opened my e-mails to find a missive from Constance Brattle, the hard-bottomed chair of the University Oversight Committee. She wants to convene a special meeting regarding “disturbing events at the museum.” She mentioned the murder, of course, but also the chimpanzee Alphus, a remarkable beast by any standards. He has been back in the news as a porn star. It seems that the university’s recently established Victim Studies Department and some local animal rights advocates have been complaining to the committee about the matter.

  Indeed, the Bugle recently ran a long article rehashing an unfortunate incident in Alphus’s past. No doubt because it involved the museum, the paper took the liberty to malign the poor beast with half-truths and out-and-out distortions of what happened. To begin with, Alphus is not a “wild” animal, though try telling that to the troglodytes of the Bugle. (Come to think of it, the epithet in this case should be considered a slur against members of that species.)

  Anyway, the incident occurred last spring, at just about this time. Alphus, who is a thirty-two-year-old chimpanzee from the remaining population we keep in the Pavilion, feigned a medical emergency and, while en route to the animal hospital at the Middling County Zoo in an ambulance, overpowered his attendants and escaped into the leafy refuge of Thornton Arboretum. There he eluded several attempts to capture him in a humane way. At one point the Seaboard Police Department’s SWAT team apparently had him cornered in a large tree. But even their best sharpshooter, encumbered, it’s true, by a lot of high-tech protective gear, couldn’t bring him down with one of those dart guns.

  The animal rights groups took up his cause. They filed for a cease-and-desist order in Middling County District Court, which a judge promptly issued. Alphus’s supporters, a well-intended group of young idealists, brought him food and water and generally stood watch to make sure no harm befell him. They were, however, under the mistaken impression that Pan troglodytes is an herbivore when, in fact, like us, chimps will eat just about anything. And who’s to say that what happened wouldn’t have happened even had they brought him steak tartare on a regular basis?

  Because early one warm summer evening, Royale Toite, one of those wealthy, adamantine club women with a sense of entitlement bordering on the pathological, decided to walk her querulous toy poodle through that part of the arboretum where Alphus led his largely arboreal existence. As they passed under a tree where Alphus sat minding his own business, the dog began yapping at him. Alphus swung down, grabbed the noisy dog, and climbed back up to a stout limb well out of reach. Had the poodle been secured with one of those leashes that play out, it’s possible that Ms. Toite might have been able to yank it back to safety. But that appears not to have been the case.

  A tourist who had been looking for Alphus happened to be there. He videotaped the whole sorry scene from beginning to end: the barking dog, the swooping grab, and the owner, mad with anger and grief, shrieking at Alphus as he calmly strangled her wriggling dog before peeling back its hide with marvelous strength and eating a good deal of the exposed bloody flesh.

  The video made it onto the national news, and an awful ruckus ensued. A militia group from a remote part of the state set up camp in the parking lot of the arboretum and, labeling Alphus “a demented, dog-eating pervert,” vowed “to protect the neighborhood and if necessary take out the killer ape.” Animal rights groups again came to Alphus’s defense, mounting a watch around the area where he nested. One of the more pongiphilic opined that Alphus may have been provoked by the poodle, which the video shows barking insultingly at him. I and the museum, of course, were caught right in the middle and came in for most of the blame for allegedly having created the situation in the first place.

  Litigation ensued. According to her attorneys, Ms. Toite, whose name, incidentally, is pronounced in the English fashion, remains in the throes of traumatic shock disorder and wants several million dollars for the pain and suffering of watching her pet get killed and eaten by “a rogue chimpanzee.”

  Through my con
nections with the SPD, I know I could have had Alphus destroyed one way or the other. But I desisted because I could not bring myself to order the killing of a chimpanzee, a species very much like us, after all. I and the museum got pelted from both the dog and ape sympathizers.

  At that point something wonderfully adventitious occurred. A group of hearing-and-speech-challenged individuals, deaf-mutes in the old parlance, living communally in a place called, appropriately enough, Sign House, announced that they would become Alphus’s caretakers, or caregivers as they say nowadays. Because of Elsie’s condition, Diantha and I have been there several times and have become friendly with some of the residents.

  One of the inhabitants of the house, which is an old Victorian in an area of genteel shabbiness that borders the Arboretum, had been among those bringing Alphus his food and had gotten to know him. Overnight, with no fanfare and no fuss, Alphus left his trees and went to live in the rambling old place with people who, for all intents and purposes, were as unvoiced as he. The militia types packed up their sad little camp, grumbling about do-gooders and no doubt disappointed not to be able to take on the ape mano-a-mano with their automatic weapons.

  I have since learned that one of the residents of the house, an attractive young woman of sympathy and grace with the euphonious name Millicent Mulally, had struck up a friendship with Alphus while he was still living in the trees. The other occupants of the house apparently had no objections to his coming to live among them, even helping her construct a “nest” for him in the attic.

  Because the animal still belonged to and remained the responsibility of the museum, I had Felix Skinnerman draw up papers to the effect that Alphus was “on loan” to the young woman, who agreed to accept all liability for his behavior. (Adoption was not a legal possibility, and to sell Alphus seemed unseemly.) I arranged as well to have a stipend sent to her for his upkeep. Our veterinarian also makes regular visits.

  Now it appears that someone has been videotaping the “conjugal” visits of Alphus to the MOM’s Primate Pavilion, which we now refer to simply as “the Pavilion.” A large male in his prime, Alphus made it clear through some graphic signing (he apparently has learned a considerable vocabulary in that silent language) that he wanted to consort with females of his own kind from time to time. Thus, whenever one of our females came into estrus, Dr. Angela Simone, the Ruddy and Phyllis Stein Keeper of Great Apes, called Sign House and a visit was arranged.

  As a matter of routine, for security and for a research project a graduate student was conducting on the sex lives of captive chimpanzees, the sessions were video-recorded. It was perhaps only a matter of time before some unscrupulous individual made copies of the recordings and uploaded them onto a pornographic site on the Internet.

  It means that we will have to take steps to secure any further video recordings. Of course, were we not to monitor the animals in our care and something happened to them, the same groups would castigate us for negligence.

  It raises the larger issue of what to do with the remaining chimps. Over the years, we have been trying to deacquisition them, to put things in museum jargon. But that is easier said than done.

  As it stands, I will go before the Oversight Committee, of which I remain an honorary (some say ornery) member for the sake of good relations with the university, and not only answer for the exploitation of our chimps as porn stars, but also fend off insinuations regarding security at the museum.

  I do wish Felix, our very competent general counsel, were here to handle the matter. But he’s in Brazil for another week or so on honeymoon with his latest bride. He sent me a postcard from one of the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, describing himself as “a pale northern peeper among flocks of great-breasted thong birds,” a pleasantry even I get.

  All of which pales, of course, next to the murder of Heinie von Grümh. Even in the privacy of this account, I am reluctant to reveal the source of qualms that have plagued me since the moment I discovered the man’s body. The fact is, I was not as frank with Lieutenant Tracy as I should have been. Had I been so, I would rightly be considered a prime suspect in the case.

  For one thing, I did not tell the lieutenant that I had been in the museum around the time the murder was committed. Let me explain. That evening, after a very early dinner, I had gone to my office to finish some paperwork dealing with the expatriation of specimens from the Skull Collection. A tribe in Arian Jaya have petitioned us to return about a dozen skulls collected there at the turn of the last century. The fact that most of the skulls are of European origin apparently has no bearing. They make up, we are told, “an integral part of the tribe’s cultural heritage.” The fact that they have no adequate facilities for preserving this heritage also has no bearing on the case.

  Second, I did not inform Lieutenant Tracy that my wife had had an affair with the victim. Indeed, my animus toward the man has remained sporadically murderous despite something Diantha told me in the wake of their affair. During one of our tender moments of reconciliation, the keener for being edged with the savor of jealousy and curiosity, I had asked her how Heinie had been in bed. She paused in her ministrations and a sly smile lit her face. “He was classy enough. But as Marilyn Monroe said about Frank Sinatra — he was no Joe DiMaggio.” Implying, I assumed, that I’m a real slugger in this regard.

  Still, I conceived a visceral hatred of Heinrich von Grümh. In the guise of worldliness, he deigned to patronize me, making what he probably thought were subtle allusions to having slept with my wife. But then, Heinie was a force of nature in the way of a big wind. He had to win or, rather, beat everyone else in the smallest things. At the same time, I pitied him. He was the echoing shell of a man who had everything and nothing. The more wealth and expensive toys he acquired and displayed, the less there seemed of him. Is this all there is? his expression seemed to say. As though all would never be enough. In the end, he had become the ultimate impostor, that is, someone posing as himself.

  Why then, one might ask, did I accept coins from him for the MOM’s collection? The fact is, a responsible museum director does not turn down objects worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, however many strings come attached. In fact, a conservative estimate of Heinie’s donation of coins to the museum amounts to well over two million dollars. It’s not a matter I would allow personal feelings to interfere with.

  The final reason I might be considered a suspect in the case is that I have a license to not only own but also to carry concealed the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver I inherited from my father. Oiled but not loaded, it is locked in a chest in my study. Ballistics would easily prove that my gun had not been used as the murder weapon.

  Then why not tell Lieutenant Tracy? I submit that my motivation is nothing less than exemplary. As a suspect, I doubt my friend would consent to my help on the case, however distant and unofficial my involvement. It would be false modesty to deny that I played a key role in bringing to justice those responsible for past murders in the Museum of Man. At the same time, I relish the role of investigator, of participating in a direct way in what is nothing less than a manhunt.

  But I must also be candid. I confess that I did not want it known, especially by Lieutenant Tracy, that my wife had not only been unfaithful to me, but had been so with a man of Heinie von Grümh’s ilk.

  3

  Merissa Bonne does make a most fetching widow. She dropped by early last evening for a drink and to ask for a favor. I couldn’t tell whether she wore the black satin choker with its circle of small diamonds in celebration or in mourning. “I just hope he didn’t suffer,” she sniffled, wiping away a nonexistent tear and holding out her glass for a refill of the house Merlot, a sturdy red we buy by the case.

  We were comfortably ensconced in the tree-shadowed conservatory with Di up and down getting drinks and things and taking care of Elsie. Merissa sat close enough to me on the small wicker sofa for the effects of her perfume, redolent of spring flowers, to sharpen the effect of the wine on me.
So much for the trappings of woe, I thought, though in fact the favor she finally got around to asking involved the arrangement of obsequies for her late husband. She wanted me to petition the Reverend Alfie Lopes to have a memorial service for Heinie in Swift Chapel.

  “Heinie was absolutely devoted to the museum and to Wainscott,” she said. “He went to all the graduations although he didn’t graduate himself.”

  I doubted Heinie’s devotion to anything but himself, but did not feel it my place to demur. Grief, even feigned grief, must be served. Still, I nodded only vaguely, hesitant to make such a request on her behalf, although it would be, I suppose, the Christian thing to do. I did not want to help dignify the memory of this man, regardless of his apparent generosity to the museum. I say apparent as he got a thwacking great tax break in giving us those coins.

  It is more complicated than that. At the risk of sounding petty, indeed, of being petty, I am all too aware that Swift Chapel is part of Wainscott, and the museum’s relations with the university are at a delicate juncture. To have a memorial service for an honorary curator of the MOM at Swift Chapel could be construed as an admission on our part that we are more closely a part of Wainscott than we want to concede.

  Merissa sensed my reluctance and backed off immediately. “It doesn’t really matter. It was something he wanted me to do. In case …”

  “Really?” I said, my investigative instincts piqued. “In case of what?”

  She shrugged and let it drop. With more wine we passed on to other topics — how she had already moved out of the big house and into an apartment in town. How the first and second wives were at each other’s throats and leaving her alone. How she wanted to get her own lawyer because Heinie’s lawyer was nothing more than a well-dressed thief.