The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Dr. Penrood found out about the experiments through a routine inquiry into the disappearance of the small mammals Professor Ossmann was working on. When Penrood confronted Ossmann with his suspicions and threatened a thorough review by a committee of his peers, the latter decided to include the Director in his scheme. Basically, they were to repeat some of the experiments openly and proceed through the usual channels in developing and testing the aphrodisiac.

  Freddie Bain found out about the experiments through Celeste Tangent. She, in her role as a provider of escort services, had “escorted” Dr. Penrood on one of his trips to a research conference in Atlanta. Penrood, smitten with her, not only told her what was afoot, but took her on as a laboratory assistant. She, Bain’s sex and drug slave, in turn made Penrood her sex and drug slave. I certainly cannot excuse Dr. Penrood’s behavior, but I think I understand it.

  There remain other details yet to be cleared up. Mr. Fang, who is very well lawyered, has said little to date as he maneuvers for some plea bargaining. It is not clear, for instance, how he knew Ossmann and Woodley would be in the lab together that fateful night. It’s not clear how he inveigled both of them to eat the food from the Garden of Delights that he or someone unknown had doctored with the fatal potion.

  Speaking of which, and perhaps not all that surprisingly, the Ponce Institute has already come up with the trade names Priaptin — the version being developed for men — and Lubricitin for women. Another team has taken over the project, and the Acting Director at the lab tells me it shows enormous commercial potential.

  A thorough search of that monstrosity in the woods turned up the cellar room where Korky had been kept on a starvation diet. Korky appears, by the way, to have landed on his feet. With the cooperation of many of the haute cuisine restaurants in and around Seaboard, he has opened up a soup kitchen for the homeless dubbed “the Best Leftovers.” It uses surplus food from the sponsoring eateries and aims at “personal redemption through fine dining.” It’s been so successful that he has reserved a part of the establishment for paying customers.

  Other matters are resolving themselves in one way or another. Production of A Taste of the Real, Raul Brauer’s self-aggrandizing film project, has come to a shuddering halt. It turns out that Freddie Bain was the principal backer. The government has seized all of his ill-gained assets, and I doubt it will feel compelled to honor Mr. Bain’s obligations in that regard … although it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that lawyers are working on it right now.

  On quite another topic, my book about the MOM, The Past Redeemed: The History of the Museum of Man, has received some very positive advance notices. Indeed, on the strength of this reception, I have been asked by a well-known university publishing house to edit the considerable correspondence between Mason Twitchell and Lady Miriam Rothschild, the eccentric English aristocrat who kept a large collection of trained fleas. To date I haven’t said yes, but I haven’t said no, either.

  In the interest of promoting the museum and my new book, I have made several guest appearances on national television talk shows. Elsbeth could watch them for hours and knew extraordinary amounts about the people interviewed and talked about. To me the shows all seemed the same — a ritual in which the host and the guest try to be funny or profound. And I have always found it annoying when the host or hostess lowers his or her voice, mimicking sincerity and signaling to everyone they were asking a searching question. But I must say they all treated me with respect and consideration. One fellow, in suspenders, reminded me of a sideshow barker, and the alpha female on one of the morning shows had very nice legs.

  Which brings me to my own situation. Two days after the denouement in the castle, late in the evening, Diantha came into my room where, restless, I was trying to read myself to sleep. She sat on the edge of the bed and, in essence, confessed that she had returned to the Bain place “on an impulse.” She said she was going to try to convince him to leave me alone. “I knew it was a mistake the minute I got there. At first he was amused. Then he turned freaky. I mean really freaky. He wouldn’t let me go. He kept asking me where Celeste was. He wouldn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t know.”

  “Were you still in love with him?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Until I got there and saw him again. Then …” She sighed and looked at me with her marvelous eyes. “I kept thinking about you.”

  Thus in quick succession she came into my arms, into my bed, and into my life.

  Diantha, it turns out, is pregnant. A week ago she informed me she was late with her period and that an off-the-shelf test from the pharmacy proved positive. I didn’t know quite how to respond, to tell the truth.

  “It’s yours, you know,” she said as we moved around the kitchen, making dinner together.

  “How can you be sure?” I asked as the realization sank in through layer on layer of denials, no, no, no, culminating in a large, smiling yes.

  “Freddie was shooting blanks. He had a vasectomy years ago.”

  “Just like a nihilist would,” I said, stopping to take her in my arms. “You’re sure you’re pregnant?”

  “I am. I’m seeing the doctor, but I know I am. If it’s a girl I want to call her Elsbeth.”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  At the same time, I knew I would peruse the autopsy report of Mr. Bain, where the fact of his vasectomy might be listed. What strange beings we be.

  It hasn’t been all roses between Diantha and me, but the thorns have been few and predictable. It would seem that I am playing Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. But cultural transmission, so to speak, goes two ways. It’s not simply a matter of, say, music. Like her mother, Diantha cannot abide Brahms. She can also be casual about meals. She doesn’t like to cook, and I am still leery about ordering prepared food that comes in those white containers.

  It also turns out that my nubile Galatea has certain preferences of an intimate nature that test both my capacity for stimulation and the limits of my taste. And while a few eyebrows have been raised regarding our arrangements, I couldn’t care less. Not that I haven’t tried to get Diantha to refrain from referring to me, in public, as “Stud.”

  In the wake of all this, I have initiated an ongoing discussion with Izzy Landes, the Reverend Lopes, and Father O’Gould. It could be that I have been seeking a kind of expiation for killing another man, however justified my action was in some lights. We often end up speaking about the nature of evil and the nature of comedy. What intrigues us, I think, is the way comedy relies in large part on pain, mishap, even cruelty.

  The good priest has admitted that evolutionary psychology has yet to come up with a credible theory as to why humor developed among Homo sapiens sapiens. It’s not entirely clear, he says, in what ways a good laugh enhances reproductive fitness. For his part, Alfie Lopes concedes that neither of his good books provides much insight. There really isn’t, he notes ruefully, one good joke in either the New or Old Testaments. And as Izzy points out, we can no longer look to Freud in these matters. The Viennese doctor’s work, more often viewed now as “a grand, inadvertent parody of the scientific method,” is more a source of hilarity, however unintended, than an explanation thereof. Increasingly of late we have explored the possibility that comedy is a form of recognition — but of exactly what, I believe, remains a mystery.

  And finally, and I mean finally, patient reader, you can imagine (you must imagine) my surprise this afternoon when, as I ruminated over this final entry in my office at the museum, the door opened. In hobbled none other than Corny Chard, missing a couple of limbs, of course. His ruddy face, shagged with a rough beard, beamed with a wild smile. “Norman,” he said, clanking over and sitting down in the chair before my desk, his crutch dropping to the floor with a clatter. All the while I stood, speechless with incredulity, and watched as his eyes lit up with a demonic, triumphant glee. “Norman … Norman. Man, do I have a story to tell.”

  n, The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man