The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Dr. Simone disappeared for a moment and came back with a cup of black coffee. Mort sipped the coffee, rubbed his eyes and the back of his neck, and answered our questions.

  We determined that Mort, who came on duty at midnight to work a twelve-hour shift, as is his preference, found everything normal as of 2:30 AM when he went to the staff room for the lunch he had brought with him. There, in a refrigerator used by the staff, he had left a sandwich and a large bottle of Coke with his name taped to it. He said he warmed his sandwich, a cheese and tomato, in the microwave, poured himself a paper cup full of Coke, and brought it back down here. He ate the sandwich and drank the soda and that’s the last thing he remembers.

  I asked him if he’d noticed then that the monitor covering the area of the cages had gone blank. He replied that he was certain all the monitors were in working order when he started his meal.

  After directing one of the crime scene officers to secure the Coke bottle in the staff refrigerator, and after seeing that Mort had a ride home, Lieutenant Tracy and I went with Dr. Simone into her office.

  Taking notes, the lieutenant with firm gentleness took Dr. Simone through what she had found upon arriving at work. I must say I admired again the thoroughness of his questioning. However, I was able to make one important contribution. I asked if Bert had been in the larger cage alone when she had left in the evening.

  Dr. Simone nodded. “He still gets moody, and at night we usually put him in that cage by himself.”

  “How would someone have enticed Betti to leave her cage and go into Bert’s?”

  “They may have used M&M’s.”

  “M&M’s?” the lieutenant asked.

  “M&M’s were used in the writing program that was in place before I came here,” Dr. Simone explained. “Betti participated in that program and, like the others, developed a craving for them. We still use them as little bribes to get the animals to do things.”

  “Who would have known about that?” I asked.

  She made a shrugging gesture with her hands. “Anyone who worked with the chimps. I mean people in the lab.”

  “Could you possibly get us a list of names?” the lieutenant asked.

  “I’ll try,” she said. “It might not be complete.”

  The lieutenant thanked her in leaving and paused to commiserate with her, letting her know in a subtle way that he realized her charges were something more to her than mere animals.

  We stopped by the crime scene again so that the lieutenant could tell one of the crew to keep an eye out for M&M’s.

  “We’ve already found some,” the officer said, and indicated a clear plastic bag with some of the candies in it along with a distinctive brown smear.

  Next we met with Hank, the technician in charge of audiovideo security. He indicated the camera, an unobtrusive black device with a short lens that covered the cage area. As he showed us, the cable from the camera to the monitor and the digital recorder had been not only cut but also reconnected to a router programmed to a device attached to the pay phone in the booth next to the visitor cloakroom. A sign on the booth said OUT OF ORDER. The thing was wired into the phone in a way that made Hank, a burly fellow with an engaging face, shake his head. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”

  “What do you mean?” Lieutenant Tracy asked.

  “I’d say, when they wanted to see what was going on and to tape it at the same time, all they had to do was dial this number.”

  “Wouldn’t the phone company have a record?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “You could try them, but I doubt it. They probably phoned from another booth. There’s other ways around it as well.” He attached a small video screen to the device on the telephone and showed us how the video camera had been adjusted to take in just the cage where Bert and Betti were found.

  The lieutenant and I finally went up to my office. Doreen brought us coffee. I could not sit still. I paced diagonally corner-to-corner while the lieutenant watched me pensively.

  “The two cases are obviously related,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “But not really the same.”

  “Yes.” But for the moment I was too agitated with anger and frustration to think straight. I sat down and took a couple of deep breaths.

  Lieutenant Tracy went on. “The Ossmann-Woodley case could be murder. This looks more like an accident.”

  “Yes, yes, but a kind of deliberate accident.”

  The lieutenant’s frown eased as he picked up on my meaning. “The way accidents occur when someone is testing something.”

  “Exactly. They may be trying to calculate exact doses or ratios of that mix Cutler described for us. Which is what may have happened to Ossmann and Woodley. But … if both cases were deliberate and made to look like accidents, experiments gone wrong …” I paused, and the lieutenant waited. “Then what exactly would the motive be unless … unless it is part of some grotesque scheme to get me out of the museum.”

  “How realistic is that?”

  “I don’t know. They want the lab and the revenue it brings in. The university itself would never sanction such means, but there’s a cabal doing everything it can to discredit me. But you’re right, Lieutenant, it’s a stretch. At the same time, you might want to question Malachy Morin …”

  “The fat guy involved in the death of Elsa Pringle?’

  “The very man.”

  “We’ll bring him in.”

  “Good. And have someone leak the timing of his arrival to the television newspeople.”

  He gave one of his rare smiles. We spoke about what to do next. I called one of the mammalian specialists in the Biology Department and asked him to assist Dr. Cutler in a postmortem.

  With the lieutenant’s assistance I dictated a news release to Doreen setting out the facts as tersely as possible. We checked it over and had her fax it to our priority list. The phone started ringing immediately. Amanda Feeney-Morin, in that peremptory tone of hers, demanded to know every last detail. I told her the matter was under investigation and that I would keep her and others up to date with any developments. She persisted, asking a lot of insinuating questions designed to make it seem we are covering things up.

  The lieutenant agreed with me that, given the implications of what had happened and the intense media interest, it would be best to hold a press conference. Accordingly, I secured Margaret Mead Auditorium for one in the afternoon and had Doreen contact our list with that information. Lieutenant Tracy, after talking to Chief Murphy of the SPD, agreed to conduct the conference with me. As best we could, we went over probable questions and arrived at responses we deemed as candid as we could make them.

  In the midst of these preparations, Malachy Morin called to ask me why I was conducting a press conference without his authorization. I’m afraid I lost my temper. I told the man that he was a poor deluded wretch to think that he had any authority over anything that happened at the Museum of Man. I told him he was perfectly welcome to call a press conference of his own and share his considerable ignorance with anyone so feebleminded as to take seriously anything he would have to say about anything. I then gently hung up the receiver.

  Now, I want to go on record as saying that, in the course of my career in dealing with the press, I have met many thoughtful, diligent, intelligent, and responsible journalists. And it is clear that a democracy cannot function without an active Fourth Estate. But even in a community as small as Seaboard, there appear to be hordes of them. And so many of them are benighted beyond redemption, crude beyond credibility, and so openly hostile as to be comic. One young man, after making a dramatic entrance in a long, swirling overcoat that looked like a bathrobe, asked me in a challenging manner some long unintelligible question with the phrase “sex torture” thrown in. I simply shook my head and said I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Another, wearing raked-back hair and those squinty little glasses you see in photographs of W.B. Yeats, asked me if Bert and Betti were a “breeding pair.�
��

  I answered that we no longer had a breeding program at the Pavilion and that the two chimps had been placed together in a single cage by persons unknown and without any authorization.

  “If the chimps are not allowed to breed, how do they take care of their sexual needs?”

  When I responded facetiously that we did not disclose details about the sex lives of our chimpanzees out of respect for their privacy, I was taken entirely seriously.

  “Was Bert still in a program for recovering alcoholics?” someone else asked.

  “No. Bert completed that program and had been sober for more than three months at the time of his death.”

  Amanda Feeney-Morin sat right up front, poised, I knew, to make slurs disguised as questions. Right on cue, she stood up. “Given what’s been happening at the Museum of Man over the past few months, Mr. de Ratour, are you going to resign as Director?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Have you considered, given what’s been happening, turning over administration of the museum to the university?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  To be fair, the journalists did ask some pointed, pertinent questions that it was our responsibility to answer. One of the network reporters, who had flown from Boston, asked the lieutenant if the deaths of the chimps confirmed his suspicions concerning the Ossmann-Woodley case.

  The officer nodded. “The similarities are obvious and, of course, we’re exploring any links it might have to this case.”

  “Is the Genetics Lab as vulnerable to break-ins as the Pavilion?” one sharp young woman asked me.

  I indicated that her question was a good one before reassuring the public, through the press, that the lab had its own highly sophisticated and independent security system.

  I was starting to feel a little complacent when the same reporter asked, “If that’s the case, what happened to Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley?”

  I responded as honestly as I could: “We don’t know. There was no detectable break-in. That’s the mystery we’re trying to solve.”

  When a reporter asked me what possible motive could anyone have to be wreaking such havoc in the constituent parts of the museum, I had to bite my tongue. I wanted to say that perhaps it was part of a conspiracy to discredit me and the museum so that the university could take us over. Instead, I shook my head with what could have been wise sadness or sad wisdom and said I didn’t have a clue.

  After more than an hour of taking abuse and providing some useful information to the public, I closed off the questions. Afterward, outside, in front of the museum, I could see the television reporters in front of cameras, reading from notes, sawing the air with their hands, and pausing to glance away, as though in thoughtfulness, before resuming their narratives for the evening news.

  I spent most of the afternoon answering press calls. It is an exhausting, nerve-racking exercise in trying to balance candor with discretion as you talk to people who, basically, have given themselves the right to insult you with impunity.

  The one bright spot was a call from Elsbeth, who told me I looked absolutely dashing during the news conference. She said that a reporter on the midafternoon news summary had labeled the death of the chimps the latest of “The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man.” I told her it sounded like a title for a murder mystery and heard her give that good old chortle of hers.

  Sometime well after six I was able to leave for home. In the relative darkness of the Arboretum, as I strode along, I nearly fainted at the sight of a chimpanzee coming up the path toward me. I was about to start back to the museum and spread the alarm when the chimp was joined by a gorilla, a nun in full regalia, a football player in helmet and pads, a ballerina, and a fairy godmother. I had forgotten it was Halloween.

  14

  I feel like Job, stretched on a rack of torments, afflicted with the Seven Plagues, if I may be allowed to conflate a couple of tales from the Good Book. I sometimes think we invented God because we need someone to complain to.

  The press simply has not let up on the Bert-Betti tragedy. Indeed it has drawn far more coverage, if that is the word, than the deaths of Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley. The tabloids are publishing outright lies, talking about “a new, deadly aphrodisiac” and “the Tristan and Isolde pill” and that sort of rot.

  I have been besieged with calls from what are called news shows for interviews and camera access to those parts of the Pavilion that still house chimpanzees. I did agree, under the prompting of Felix Skinnerman, to allow a camera crew in for a “pool” shoot, whatever that means. I have agreed to submit to taped interviews on the condition that I be guaranteed final editing approval with elaborate safeguards including a one-million-dollar performance bond. That has gotten me much outrage over the telephone and no takers.

  Felix also urged me to open the Pavilion and allow Dr. Simone to give a few “backgrounder” interviews. It appears some animal rights firebrand has filed a bill in the state legislature to set up a committee to investigate the lab and its treatment of the animals used in its experiments. I explained to Felix that while we had to do something, I did not want to use the panoply of lobbyists the university keeps on staff to influence legislation in both Washington and the state capital.

  He explained in his calming voice that we didn’t have to. “We can use the same private firm they use when they really need help. It will cost a few bucks. I’ll look into it and get back to you.”

  What, I wonder, would I do without that young man.

  The fact is, I haven’t really had much to report to anyone in terms of “breaking” news. I did receive a call from Lieutenant Tracy. He said Dr. Cutler had phoned to tell him that the M&M’s ingested by Bert and Betti had been dipped in soy sauce. Soy sauce had also been present in significant amounts in the food eaten by Ossmann and Woodley not long before they tore into each other. “Soy sauce, it seems,” the lieutenant said, “is the vector of choice.”

  “An interesting little clue,” I responded, “but for the moment it doesn’t ring any bells.”

  As though I didn’t have enough on my hands, I received just after lunch a most noisome call from a gentleman named Custer or Castor representing a company called Urgent Productions. He chewed my ear for a full half hour with one of those awful grasping voices, trying alternately to cajole me and to threaten me to let them use the museum for filming parts of A Taste of the Real, based on the book by the same name. It would drag the museum into the grotesque hoopla surrounding Raul Brauer’s account of the ritual cannibalizing of that young man on Loa Hoa.

  Mr. Castor took it for granted, I think, that I would accede with groveling gratitude to the request to “borrow the authenticity” of the museum for a “serious film” that will “explore a profound human experience with an edgy but sensitive treatment.”

  When I demurred, implying that the museum’s authenticity derives in part from eschewing participation in such ventures, he said that the studio would be willing to pay a “site fee” in the form of a considerable contribution. He mentioned a generous sum and added that they would give the museum “priceless, worldwide publicity.”

  I demurred again. Mr. Castor increased the amount of the “donation.” I said no, thank you. He offered to hire me as a “consulting museum expert” and named a considerable sum.

  When I said no again, he said, “Mr. de Ratour, I am a serious producer making you and your museum a serious offer to have you help us make a serious film.”

  I told him I was a serious museum director who had just made a serious refusal. I told him I had read Professor Brauer’s book and found it to be full of half-truths, gratuitous sensationalism, and self-promotion. I said I expected the movie to be no less exploitive of an event that involved the tragic death of a hapless young man.

  Mr. Castor’s voice took on a tone that I presume he meant to be quietly threatening. “I’m going to give you a couple of days to consider our offer. If the answer is still no, then we are prepared to go over
your head big time.”

  I told him that, given most of the world was over my head, he was welcome to it.

  On the pretext of a managerial inspection, but mostly to satisfy my curiosity about the apparently fabulous Celeste Tangent, I took a stroll through the Genetics Lab in the afternoon, dropping by departments and saying hello. I wasn’t more than twenty minutes on my little excursion when Dr. Penrood approached rather breathlessly, a thin smile more revealing than concealing his annoyance, asking me if he could be of assistance.

  By that time I had been into the area where Ms. Tangent works amid banks of complicated machines attached to computers that dice and splice bits of DNA from various sources. We were introduced, and I can still feel the unmistakable frisson of that women’s erotic aura. Worried is right. She is a strikingly attractive woman and about as plausible as a laboratory assistant as I would be a sumo wrestler. And, though I can’t prove it, I am quite certain that she is the woman involved in the three-way sexual congress caught on video by the surveillance camera.

  In fact, Dr. Penrood’s agitation rather pleased me. Had he been just a little more officious, I might have thought he had nothing to hide except for a possible sexual peccadillo with his most attractive employee. Because Ms. Tangent has more than looks. She has the confidence of her sensuality: She is the kind of woman who can lead a man on, turn him down while sympathizing with him, and make him her slave. And I suspect now that the man in the three-way engagement with his back to the camera is indeed Dr. Penrood.

  Moreover, given the incongruity, as I see it, of these three individuals involved in that kind of congress, I can’t help but speculate that some sort of powerful aphrodisiac was involved. Professor Tromstromer’s words come back to me: Researchers are not above experimenting on themselves. This may be the break we’re looking for. I’ll have to push Worried on getting us that enhanced version of the surveillance tape.

  Perhaps I should be excited. Perhaps I should call Lieutenant Tracy and tell him there’s been a “development.” But frankly, all of this pales to insignificance when I think on my dear wonderful Elsbeth, who grows more wan and weak with each passing day. The unrelieved impulse is to get her help, to take her to hospital. But there is no help. And she doesn’t want to go to hospital. She wants to die here, in our home, surrounded by friends.