The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  I have nothing against Korky; he is an engaging young man, and he is devoted to Elsbeth. But the food! I scarcely recognize any of it anymore. And the menus. They read like parodies of pornography. Then we have to sample one another’s portions and, worse, talk about them. I have small relish in “savoring the complexity” or “thinking with my taste buds,” as Elsbeth and Korky urge. For me, the life of the digestive tract and the life of the mind do not mix. Of late I have hankered simply for a plate of old-fashioned beef stew served with mashed potatoes and peas.

  But I really don’t want to complain, certainly not about Elsbeth. My world, after all those years of barren bachelorhood, has been utterly enriched by her presence, by her vitality, by her love. Our happiness is very nearly a public scandal. We have become the toast of Seaboard’s better tables. Last year we won the waltz contest at the Curatorial Ball. Ah yes, and those little billets doux we leave for each other! No, I do not complain. A meal out from time to time in some new bistro is small sacrifice on my part for the woman I love.

  This evening we’re to go with Korky to the Green Sherpa, a restaurant that specializes, they tell me, in a fusion of Himalayan and Irish cuisines. I can’t imagine what they’ll be serving, no doubt some kind of braised yak with boiled cabbage gotten up to look like something exotic.

  2

  It is another beautiful day, despite the rain and the wind, which began this morning and has been blustering about most of the afternoon and rattling the windows here on the fifth floor of the museum. Though now Director, I have kept my old corner office, with its view of the hills to the west and that stern and rockbound coast to the north of Shag Bay. Ah, yes, the beauty of the world, even in — especially in — an autumn rain.

  I am surrounded by beauty within as well. Which is to say I have redecorated my office, jettisoning the mournful array of plaques and citations I accumulated over more than three decades as Recording Secretary, a position, I’m afraid, I have allowed to lapse somewhat. To replace them, I have truffled through the storage bins and closets deep within the bowels of this magnificent old pile and come up with some rare treasures.

  Just over the door, I suppose to remind myself of my executive responsibilities, I have mounted an elegantly shaped nineteenth-century executioner’s sword from the Ngala of the Congo. It has a wide short blade, crooked in the middle into a sickle shape just wide enough for a human neck. In a glass case I have a marvelous Chinese robe of silk satin embroidered with a swirl of peacocks, butterflies, and flowers, all in brilliant hues. And on the mantel over the fireplace (which I have kept in working order), there’s a figurine of Eros with a dog, a piece that by rights should be on display in the permanent exhibits.

  In my more Machiavellian moments, I have considered resurrecting a pair of shrunken heads, a missionary and his wife, if I’m not mistaken, that I came across in the Papuan storage area. I have thought of putting them in a glass-fronted case near my desk with a curtain I could draw aside when meeting with people I want to disconcert. But for the nonce I have made do with a montage of fantastic funereal masks from Melanesia.

  Speaking of which, I cannot, in the wake of Lieutenant Tracy’s visit yesterday, get out of my mind the unseemly deaths of Humberto Ossmann and Clematis Woodley. I have a feeling my good friend knows something about that bizarre tragedy that he’s not telling me. Elsbeth and I were away at the time of the deaths, staying with a friend of hers in Boston and visiting museums. As a result, I didn’t get back until well after the crime scene, if that’s what it was, had been restored to some semblance of normality.

  I also missed, according to Doreen, a veritable plague of grief counselors who descended on the museum telling people not to hold back their feelings. Doreen, who has the sturdy good looks of a backcountry girl, said one of the group, a student from the Divinity School, came by several times and left his card. When she finally told the young man that she had never met either of the victims and hadn’t really given them much thought, his disappointment was such that she had to spend time consoling him. And, apparently, one thing led to another.

  The good lieutenant called again this morning and wondered aloud if it would not be a good idea for me to try to contact Worried. He is the anonymous tipster who works in the Genetics Lab and proved instrumental in solving the Cannibal Murders. I told the lieutenant I would put out an e-mail to all in-house addresses, asking “Worried” to please contact me when he gets a chance. Worried may be able to tell me something relevant about what that collection of wily eggheads are concocting over in the lab.

  But Woodley and Ossmann. I am perfectly willing to consider the possibility that they were murdered or, in one way or another, murdered each other. But how? Murder requires an instrument. But what? Some elisir d’amore? Are they brewing up some magic love potion over there in the lab? It seems too cartoonishly Larsonesque to imagine them sipping some philter from a dripping retort and then transmogrifying into sexual monsters. But stranger things have happened.

  As I am Director of the museum, of which the Genetics Lab remains an integral part, one might suppose that I could simply walk in there and demand to know what’s going on. Ah, the illusion of power. People tell you either what they want you to know or what they think you want to hear. The truth? Another of those illusions by which we live. I don’t know. But if murder has been done, the truth must out if justice is to prevail.

  Which reminds me, I received a call today from Malachy “Stormin’ ” Morin, “the lead blocker of the consolidation team,” as he calls himself. He asked to schedule a meeting between me and “the big-money guys” in Wainscott’s development office. Mr. Morin and other worthies in the Wainscott bureaucracy persist in the fiction that “the consolidation process” is actually happening.

  Mr. Morin, who ought to be languishing in jail for the grotesque way he caused the death of young Elsa Pringle, fancies himself my boss. He has somehow managed to insinuate his blustering persona and considerable bulk — he’s six feet, six inches and four-hundred-odd pounds — into the Wainscott hierarchy as Vice President for Affiliated Institutions. I have to keep reminding him that the MOM is affiliated with the university strictly on its own terms and that he has absolutely no authority concerning our affairs. But for the sake of good relations, I did agree in principle to meet with “the big-money guys,” telling him I would get back to him.

  On a more positive note, I have received word from Corny Chard. It came by way of a telegram, the diction of which made me think of the old days. (You might call it telegramese, a dying literary convention.)

  NORMAN

  HAVE REACHED HEADWATERS OF RIO SANGRE STOP LOGGING AND UNREST EVIDENT STOP HAVE SET UP BASE CAMP STOP WILL PROCEED WITH MINIMAL CREW TO YOMAMA AREA STOP BEST TO EVERYONE STOP

  CORNY

  On an even brighter note, I have been invited to attend the inaugural Cranston Fessing Memorial Lecture that my good friend Father S.J. O’Gould, S.J., is to give in November. It has a curious title: “Why Is There No Tuna-Safe Dolphin to Eat?” There’s to be a dinner afterward, a black-tie affair, to which Elsbeth and I have been invited.

  Speaking of dinner, our evening at the Green Sherpa was not a success. The proprietor, a strange fellow named Bain, fawned all over us, especially when he noticed Korky Kummerbund tucking in his napkin. Korky took it all in good grace, politely refusing to let Mr. Bain, who managed to appear both obsequious and threatening, pick up the tab. Korky did allow one special dish “on the house” to be sent over. Still, it was disconcerting to have Bain, a big blond fellow in a tunic-like outfit who spoke British English with a foreign accent, hovering over us through half the meal.

  I had some sort of pummeled goat while Elsbeth, always game, had what looked like the remains of a rodent. She hasn’t felt well ever since. Indeed, I’m beginning to worry about her. So it was with some relish that I read Korky’s review of the place in today’s Bugle. He concluded a quite thorough savaging of the food with, and I quote: “Despite its elevated amb
itions, the Green Sherpa serves up little more than a pastiche of yak-whey chic and tortured potatoes in a mushy chinoiserie cuisine that induces the gastric equivalent of altitude sickness.”

  But Elsbeth. I’m afraid my love is starting to show her age. Although still full-bodied with abundant dark hair (thanks to chemicals, of course), fresh coloring, and brilliant agate eyes, the ravages of time have not left her untouched. There’s a stoop to her now, a fine wrinkling about the eyes, the slightest tremor in her hands. I should talk. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth myself and a bit stringy, as tall ones are wont to do. But I’ve kept a good deal of my perpetually thinning hair and am at least not a candidate for a shaved head. So many men look like convicts these days. And I will not go into the unspeakable puncturing that young people do to their various bodily parts.

  Oh, well, just like the old days, I’m off on my own to the Club tonight. Elsbeth assures me that, though not up to going out, she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Still, I do worry about the dear girl.

  3

  Dear Mr. Ratour,

  I got your message loud and clear. Maybe I should have told you this sooner, but nobody around here, not on the maintenance crews, anyway, thought that the Ossmann-Woodley thing was suspicious. I mean the researcher types get up to all kinds of things you wouldn’t believe. Back in August one of the security guys was going over a tape from a camera no one knows about and he found footage of one of the research assistants, a really good-looking babe, doing two guys at once. Anyway, he modified it and put it out on the Internet as one of those things you can e-mail to people. Home movies stuff if you know what I mean. You can click on the icon down below and watch it yourself though I don’t think it’s evidence of anything. Anyway, everyone around here just thought the two professors [sic] that died got carried away and you know shit happens. But now that the newspapers are saying it’s under investigation and all that stuff, I maybe ought to tell you that about a week before it happened, I heard Professor Ossmann arguing with another researcher. Ossmann kept saying things like the core discovery is mine and you know it. The other guy who sounded like he was from Minnesota kept answering something about how he figured out the experimentation and without that they wouldn’t be where they were. Dr. Penrood, he’s the English guy who complains about tea bags all the time, tried to act like the referee. I don’t understand him that well because he sounds like he’s talking through his nose but he kept saying something about it being a team effort. But I don’t know what they were talking about. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.

  Worried

  I confess it was at the expense of some qualms that I clicked on the icon and watched the nearly ten minutes of indistinct but quite graphic video footage that unrolled on my screen. I scrupled that the possibility of its being evidence in the Ossmann-Woodley case outweighed any invasion of the already violated privacy of the individuals involved.

  I found it oddly moving, inasmuch as amateur erotica can be far more stimulating than the professional “soft” stuff that Elsbeth, who has a weakness for the meretricious, occasionally finds on the so-called adult channels. The woman involved in this incident, a well-fleshed blonde, knelt away from the camera on all fours fellating a man whose face was obscured in shadow. The second gentleman, back to camera, copulated vigorously with the woman au chien, so to speak. I thought it would be interesting, for forensic purposes, to hear what they were saying, if anything. Perhaps the tape could be enhanced enough for us to learn who the three individuals are. I am not being prurient in this matter. For a sleuth the most seemingly incidental knowledge can be crucial. Nor am I interested in the morals of these individuals. Regarding affairs of consensual activity among adults I subscribe to the dictum of my friend Israel Landes: Keep it private and don’t scare the horses.

  I did venture another e-mail to Worried, asking if there was any possibility of an enhanced version of “the tape,” perhaps with sound. I have to risk that he may think me interested for pornographic reasons.

  I also called Dr. Rupert Penrood’s office and arranged to meet with him Thursday morning after he gets back from London. Penrood is the Director of the institute, and I have yet to have a really good chat with him about the incident. It might be helpful to find out exactly what Professor Ossmann and the gentleman with the Minnesota accent were arguing about.

  On my own initiative I moved last week, with the backing of the Seaboard Police Department, to secure those offices and files Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley maintained in the lab. Because it is not yet officially a murder case, the SPD balked at the cost of hiring a forensic biochemist to examine the lab notes, work in progress, computer files, and anything else of relevance to the case left behind by both researchers.

  I have come up with an elegant solution. It turns out that Nicole Stone-Lee, the daughter of my good friends Norbert Stone and Esther Lee, is not only a doctoral candidate in biochemistry but also knowledgeable about the areas in which both Ossmann and Woodley were involved. After an interview that went very well, I hired her as a special consultant to the museum. She is to report any findings both to me and to the Seaboard police. I’m sure that if the Wainscott Counsel gets wind of this arrangement, all hell will break loose. But frankly, I don’t care. Were I to wait on their acquiescence, any important data would be long gone.

  Quite as an aside, I must say I was taken with Ms. Stone-Lee. What a gorgeous race of hybrids we are breeding! With her combination of animation and repose, with that delicate molding of the face, and with a reddish tinge to her features, she makes me feel my own genes are just a bit dated. She is also a distinct pleasure to work with.

  Which is more than I can say about the University Oversight Committee. While I have acceded to the committee’s entreaty to meet with me on the Ossmann-Woodley matter, I remain concerned about that body prying into the affairs of the museum. I have gone on record, I have put it in writing, that the museum desires to maintain “cordial and mutually beneficial relations” with the university. Indeed, as a token of our goodwill, I have continued to sit on the committee in an advisory capacity, at the same time informing the university that the committee’s warrant where the museum is concerned likewise remains advisory.

  The fact is that the Oversight Committee, hypersensitive to every ingenious whim of group disgruntlement, has become little more than a tool of the Select Committee on Consolidation, whose sole purpose, as I see it, is to take over the MOM lock, stock, and endowment through any means whatsoever. Indeed, they might have achieved their goal had there not been a series of serendipitous events, chief among them our financial independence.

  For this I have to thank attorney Felix Skinnerman, who was referred to me by Robert Remick, the chair of the Museum’s Board of Governors. In the wake of the Cannibal Murders, we were in desperate straits. The Onoyoko Institute, which had indirectly been subsidizing a lot of our operations, withered to a mere name with the virtual collapse of Onoyoko Pharmaceuticals. It is no exaggeration to say that we were on the brink of total capitulation to the university. And our submergence into Wainscott would have left us without a shred of real identity.

  In this crisis the Board gave me complete discretion and some sound advice. Remick, who spends most of his time now in the Virgin Islands, not only put me on to young Skinnerman but advised me as well to take careful stock of the museum’s assets and possibilities before consigning them to the university.

  I have to confess I had my reservations about hiring Felix. In the course of a routine background check, I found that he had been fired from his father’s company. Izzy, who knows the Skinnermans, told me the story. After finishing law school, Felix reluctantly joined the family’s gift business, a firm, apparently, to whom people of means “outsource” their present buying for holidays and special occasions. It appears that Felix, bored with employing his considerable talents handling consumer complaints, inserted a bogus ad into the firm’s online catalog for a “tastefully emboss
ed gift certificate for the services of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the perfect present for that elderly loved one who has lingered too long.”

  It caused quite a row in the family, according to Izzy, but also generated a good number of serious inquiries. It was only the first of several pranks. The following Christmas he listed in the catalog a “Cheeses of Nazareth,” which he called a “Selection of dairy products from the Holy Land tastefully packaged on its own cheeseboard in the shape of a cross.”

  Felix, who has the charm of being slightly oblivious to his immediate surroundings and the marred, rugged good looks resulting from childhood acne, told me at our first meeting to sign nothing until we had done an assessment. How the scales fell from my eyes! True, we had debt, but people were coming in droves to see the Diorama of Paleolithic Life so that, as Felix put it, gate receipts were up. More than that, he convinced me we were sitting on a gold mine. We had “name recognition,” office space to rent in the Pavilion, and state-of-the-art systems already installed in the Genetics Lab.

  It was on that basis that we began negotiating with the Ponce Research Institute. The terms include a share of the royalties for any new treatments developed in the lab by the Polymath Group, its main research arm. The institute moved in and within days was hiring, on a consulting basis, researchers from the Medical School and Wainscott’s highly respected Department of Biochemistry, many of whom had previously worked for the Onoyoko Institute.

  Not only does the Ponce pay us a princely sum for renting the premises — it is a four-story structure, after all — but we have already received substantial royalties on NuSkalp, a biosynthetic hair transplant available in what the literature calls “designer tints.” The institute has recently begun human testing of ReLease, a morning-after medication for hangovers that has, admittedly, caused some controversy.