The Murder in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Well, the very thought that she might welcome them, that she was, right then, in the next room, a thin wall away, quite as naked as I and perhaps, in her own way, as ready as I, spurred me to provide my own relief. But still, imagine my state of mind that evening at dinner with her parents. Albert Merriman, of Merriman Chevrolet, a stout, balding, mild-mannered, amateur myrmecologist — he had published several papers on the genus Camponotus — grilled chicken for us on the outdoor barbecue, the somewhat charred remains of which we ate on the screened porch while the darkening world cheeped and chirped all around us. I was mortified, scarcely able to chew the potato salad or Rosalind Merriman’s rather runny coleslaw, never mind the blackened, underdone breast of chicken, thinking that I had just seen the naked body of their daughter, who was only a junior in college. Elsbeth chatted on as though nothing had happened. Indeed, as though to be deliberately provocative, she wore a thin, strapless summer dress, white with red polka dots, that was quite revealing. It didn’t help that her manner remained coy and teasing and that every once in a while she would glance at me significantly, as though she had seen me naked rather than the other way around. My particular disquiet persisted through two rubbers of bridge, during which I flubbed an underbid three no trump before the elder Merrimans (no doubt disgusted with my play) retired for the evening, leaving Elsbeth and me to the crepitating summer night.

  It was not, of course, the first time we had been alone together under these circumstances, although Al and Rosie were usually good for three rubbers of bridge. But this night, as wraithlike moths pestered the porch light, I sat with Elsbeth on the rattan sofa that faced the fieldstone fireplace and shivered with an anxiety born of conflicting desires. Despite my earlier dissipations à la main, so to speak, the beast in me wanted to take advantage of the situation. I wanted to use the incident in the upstairs hallway to effect, in effect, a conquest. We were sitting rather close together on the sofa. The heat of the day lingered in the cottage despite the storm. And Elsbeth affected a distinctly sensual languor as she half-sat and half-stretched beside me. Oh, how I was tempted right then to make overtures, to tell her that I had found the sight of her ravishing, that I could not get the vision of her beauty out of my mind, especially when she wore such a low-cut, strapless dress, that I was, in short, a helpless, craven male utterly at her mercy!

  But the other me, the decent, restrained me, perhaps the cowardly, self-relieved me, prevailed. With an effort, fighting the headiness of some new, provocative musk rising from her warm person, I inched from Elsbeth on the sofa. I held her hand and, as gently as I could, rebuked both of us for what had happened. I said that we would have to be more careful in the future, that I was not a man of infinite restraint, that we would have to work harder on the spiritual and intellectual aspects of our relationship if we were ever to think of building a life together based on mutual respect. Well, I had hardly finished my speech when Elsbeth, who had developed a surprising capacity for profanity, withdrew her hand and said, “Oh, for Christ’s sakes, Norman, go to bed.”

  I know I did the right thing, even though I can see now, in the clarity of hindsight, that it might have been better had the beast in me prevailed. We no doubt would have married, perhaps, heaven forbid, have been forced to marry. My life might have been richer for it. I’m sure I would have been more successful professionally, perhaps as professor of archaeology at some small, respected university like Wainscott. It’s extraordinary how much of life can hinge on the decision of one moment, how close I came that warm summer night to seducing myself into seducing her.

  Oh, well. The summer school students have started to arrive, and Shag Bay is littered with sailboats. The museum is nearly deserted, except for the chimps, of course, who never go away. I was hoping to get some work done on the history, but I have been interrupted endlessly by phone calls regarding Malachy Morin. It’s turned into a ghastly circus, and Corny Chard has not acted responsibly in the least. Marge Littlefield told me he was on one of those television talk shows, David Litterman or Latterman or someone like that. Chard apparently caused quite a stir when he asserted that the cannibalizing of Michael Rockefeller by natives in Irian Jaya back in the sixties resulted in the most expensive food ever eaten in history. I mean, that is precisely the kind of publicity we don’t need.

  Speaking of Mr. Morin, I had the most pathetic plea from him in the form of a nearly unreadable letter. The man is barely literate, a football scholarship student, no doubt. It seems all of his friends and colleagues have deserted him, and he’s been unable to get a lawyer, other than a courthouse drunk desperate for work, to represent him. I frankly don’t see why I should feel obligated to visit the miserable wretch. He never showed me one kindness or consideration during his tenure here. He’s committed unspeakable crimes and owes a debt to society, which he ought to pay without whining. Besides, what could I do for him? Surely he doesn’t expect sympathy from me? He needs a good lawyer more than anything else; the district attorney is looking for blood, and the whole community is in a lynching mood. And I do have to consider my position at the museum and in the Seaboard community. I am, after all, the Recording Secretary at the Museum of Man, and the name de Ratour has a long and distinguished history in these parts. I mean, if I were to be seen visiting him in the county jail and it got into the newspapers, what kind of a signal would that send?

  In fact, with Mr. Morin’s departure, I seem to have become the unofficial source of authority here at the museum, with all kinds of people seeking my advice and deferring to my judgment. It is not a role I have sought, but it is one I must fill to the best of my abilities as I assist in finding a suitable replacement for Morin or, better still, an energetic successor to Dr. Commer, which would obviate the need for the former position altogether.

  But the man’s letter is so piteous. And I call myself a Christian. And if everyone else has forsaken him, is it not my duty to recognize him as a fellow soul, however depraved his character and heinous his acts? Didn’t Christ tell us we have to love our enemies? Oh, my, my. I probably will have to drive over sometime and see him. But I can’t imagine what good that will do either him or me.

  MONDAY, JULY 6

  I returned this morning from a wonderful weekend with the Landeses at their cottage on Mercy Island, which is just north of Shag Bay. The Littlefields have a place there as well, and they joined us and Father O’Gould for Saturday night dinner. I’m starting to think that such gatherings may be all we have left of civilization, I mean as it was once thought of.

  The Landeses were both, I must say, in excellent form. Lotte is a pale, freckled woman who wears her striking, coppery hair, which has just started to turn, swept up into a knot, which bobs back and forth when she laughs. Izzy is a smallish man with an elfish face, a white mustache, and a floccose ring of white hair that looks impishly like a fallen halo. They have been married now more than thirty years. Imagine that. When asked once to what he attributed the longevity of their “relationship,” Izzy replied, “Because I have never confused marriage with tenure.” But I think it’s because of Lotte. I’ve been half in love with her myself for nearly thirty years. But then Izzy is known for his bons mots.

  They have always treated me as though I were one of the family, and it’s painful to admit at times that they are just about the only family I have. The Landeses and the others were most solicitous about what happened to me at that “reception” in the Primate Pavilion. I assured them I was fine, when in fact I remain quite shaken by the incident.

  But I must resist anything like self-pity. It was a gorgeous weekend. The cottage rambles along a headland that faces north to Hooker’s Point, where you can still see a submarine spotting tower left over from World War II. The cove just south of the cottage sweeps back to a stretch of muddy shallows teeming with seabirds and shorebirds. The whole magnificent view can be taken in from their deck, to which we repaired early Saturday evening with good cheese and better wine.

  Despite protestations from L
otte (“I came up here to get away from all that”), and efforts by the rest of us to avoid the subject, the conversation did drift inevitably to what was happening at the museum. Once Lotte had excused herself to see to the dinner, we all took a low, keen pleasure in shaking our heads with incredulity that it was Malachy Morin who had turned out to be the culprit. Only Father O’Gould, I think, refrained from appending a disparaging opinion of the man, though he joined in the general surprise that Morin was the Wainscott cannibal. I mentioned that he had written me a note denying he had murdered Elsa Pringle or intended to do anything unseemly with her body and saying that he had had nothing to do with Dean Fessing. I confessed that I was in a quandary as to how to respond to the man’s pleas for me to come visit him. Father O’Gould reminded me that we don’t have to like our enemies, we only have to love them. It was a comment that left me both chastened and encouraged.

  Margery, resplendent in a suede skirt and green plaid shirt, her shapely legs crossed enticingly, her chin tilted up to blow cigarette smoke, remarked that “Morin certainly had a motive for getting rid of Fessing.” She told us the man had so many crooked schemes going with suppliers and contractors, not to mention the fiddling he did on his expense accounts, that Fessing was sure to have called him on it. She recounted how, on her own initiative, she had spent nearly an afternoon with Fessing going over the details of Morin’s fraudulent activities.

  “Yes, but why cannibalize him?” asked Izzy, always the skeptic. Below us in the cove I noticed a raft of eider ducks bobbing in the swell.

  “Corny Chard thinks it’s natural,” said the priest. “He claims human flesh is just another form of protein and the suppression of its consumption is another irrational human prejudice. I’ve heard him say that we think we’re too good to eat.”

  “Au contraire.” Izzy laughed. “I think I would taste awful.” He sipped from his wine. “On the other hand, I have been marinating myself in this stuff most of my adult life.”

  We all chuckled at that and turned to watch an unfamiliar black-sailed ketch running south. Into this silence Bill Littlefield, who hadn’t spoken much during the conversation, remarked with effective portentousness that there weren’t many left in the DA’s Office “who thought that Malachy Morin killed Cranston Fessing.”

  “Why is that?” I asked. I felt oddly vindicated and fearful at the same time.

  “They say it doesn’t fit. The dean really was expertly cooked. And Morin’s apparently something of a slob. They may still try to hang it on him in the public mind to clear the books, but it won’t be one of the charges.”

  “You mean the Fessing case will remain officially open?” My question overlapped with that of Father O’Gould, who spoke at the same time, “Then who did murder the dean?”

  Bill Littlefield said yes to my question and shrugged at that of the good father.

  Izzy said, “I still think they should turn that Raul Brauer operation upside down. The man’s been a charlatan from his first day at Wainscott.”

  And just as we were about to take up that gambit, Lotte called us to come in for lobsters, French bread, and salad.

  That night, sleeping to the sound of waves, I dreamed a most realistic dream in which all the principals in the case — Malachy Morin, Lieutenant Tracy, Chard, Pilty, Brauer, Wherry, Drex, myself of course, Dean Fessing and Elsa Pringle, neither looking the worse for wear — were assembled in the Twitchell Room under the chairmanship of Constance Brattle to sort the matter out once and for all.

  Early the next morning, I walked out with my powerful field glasses toward the shallows to peep on nature. Izzy and Father O’Gould accompanied me, and while I dwelt visually in that tremulous, prismatic world of spangled water and reedy grasses, I was able to eavesdrop on their conversation, which I always find edifying. They were immersed in that ancient and durable conundrum: man’s place in nature. Izzy, who is the author of the award-winning The Science of Science and its equally brilliant sequel, The Nature of Nature, held forth on why it is both difficult and unwise for evolutionists to ascribe to organisms a qualitative order, saying that it is simply bad science or not science at all to assert that the frog is higher than the worm or that mankind is higher than the frog.

  I had just spotted a greater yellow legs and would have let both of them have a look, only the bird is rather common on these shores even at this time of the year. Besides, Father O’Gould had begun his countering view, claiming that the scientific enterprise could not escape these kinds of value judgments. “The very people,” he said, as we moved off the road down a path lined with late-blooming blackberries, “who contend there is no inherent superiority of man over the frog are perfectly willing to subject the latter to all kinds of grotesque experiments and even to eat its legs in restaurants. By those standards, are not cannibals and those doctors in the death camps the only ones who really see no difference between man and other forms of life?”

  Izzy was shaking his head, and I nearly interrupted them, thinking I had found a rara avis, but it turned out to be only a common snipe. On this subject, Izzy said, there is much misunderstanding. “It is pernicious to both science and society to try to infer a moral order from the natural world or to examine the natural world through a lens distorted by social theory. The former leads to National Socialism and the latter to Lysenkoism and worse.”

  “But what of the brilliant medical student who forgoes what will surely be a lucrative practice to pursue a career in cancer research in order to relieve mankind of this scourge?” Father O’Gould asked.

  “That medical student,” Izzy responded, “may be propelled into the laboratory by his passionate humanity, but once he is there and in the process of comparing, say, the DNA of a frog’s eyelid with that of a human being, it is of no use and indeed detrimental to the methodology of research to call one ‘better’ than the other.”

  We had reached the flats themselves, pungent at low tide with the smell of life, and we paused for a moment to watch a couple of egrets in courtship display. Our footgear squelching in the muddy sand, we moved on. Father O’Gould, I think, was leading Izzy on, waiting to spring his trap. We had left the flats and were ascending through a stand of wind-stunted oaks toward a brackish pond when he stopped walking and said, “If the scientist is willing to experiment on the frog in ways that he is not willing to experiment on human beings, then the scientist assumes absolute superiority right from the start, a condition that must color his research, whether he is conscious of it or not. The scientific method is anything but objective at its very basis, but in fact it assumes and depends on what might be called a ‘higher objectivity.’ ”

  Izzy was only slightly fazed. He muttered something about “the Uncertainty Principle” writ large. “Of course,” he said, “to presume a value-free objectivity in science or any other field is in itself what I have called a ‘necessary fiction,’ objectivity being nothing more than another human contrivance, often colored by prevailing ideologies. But I would suggest very strongly that the effort to strive for such objectivity, however theoretical one may render it with philosophical discourse and ideological slumming and slamming, is an important one. Surely, the most skeptical deconstructionist and the most ardent feminist demonstrate absolute faith in the largely male science of aerodynamics when they board an aircraft to fly to one of their conferences. Such faith clearly transcends the rhetoric of rhetoric. And I would wager, S.J., that members of your own order would rather have that same airplane well maintained by an expert ground crew than prayed over by a thousand devout nuns.”

  “Indeed, Izzy, indeed.” It was the good father’s turn to concede, which he did with his usual graciousness. “But I think we both agree that the admirable tradition of scientific objectivity relies, at least in part, on an ethical tradition in which truth is valued for itself alone.”

  “Yes, yes,” Izzy agreed. “And I will concede that I have little patience for those who hold there is no hierarchy in the scale of evolution — those who prese
nt themselves as hard-nosed, no-nonsense scientific tough guys but who are among the first to protest when the insights of sociobiology are even tentatively applied to our own species.”

  At that point, standing on the shore of the pond, I shushed them both. In my moist field of vision, perched on a low branch and doubled in the gleaming water, was a black-crowned night heron, looking almost jaunty with its long hindneck plume. “What we should never forget,” I whispered as I handed them my binoculars to take a look, “is that nature is above all, always and forever, the supreme artist.”

  TUESDAY, JULY 14

  Poor Malachy Morin. I am most thoroughly chastened. Never again will I gloat over the fate of another human being. I finally went this afternoon to visit him in the Middling County Jail, where he is being held on a million dollars’ cash bail. What really has him frightened, though, was the announcement by the District Attorney that the prosecution would seek a first-degree murder indictment, conviction, and the death sentence in the state’s newly refurbished electric chair. Newton Flanner has announced plans to run for Governor, which in some ways makes the threat even more real.

  And I must say that the county jail, a large, granitic pile near the waterfront, a veritable Bastille, is a grim place. After an indecorous “body search” by a suspicious guard, I was taken to a room bare except for a table and two chairs. Malachy Morin, his limbs shackled, was brought in by another guard, who stood to one side of the table and watched every move we made. The poor man started to cry when he saw me. “Norman, Norman,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s come to see me. Everyone else has deserted me.” It seems all his friends from his football days and all the people he knows at Wainscott have forsaken him, and perhaps, because of the nature of the case, he has still not been able to find a competent lawyer to represent him.