The Murder in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  Last, but by no means least, I must press ahead with my own investigation into the murders of the deans. I am naive, perhaps, but I still do not share the lieutenant’s belief that one or all of the cultists are implicated directly in the crimes. The cultists certainly fit into the larger puzzle that is slowly coming together in my mind. I may be wrong, of course, and I must say I find it troubling that Thad Pilty is the only other person with a motive who knew about what happened in Loa Hoa. A thorough search and examination of the Skull Collection and the residences of Wherry and Brauer has turned up no incriminating evidence, or none that Lieutenant Tracy has been willing to share with me.

  I am also pursuing some hunches of my own. I do not want to reveal what they are even in this journal as it’s possible that the perpetrators, who appear to be omnipresent, may have access to material in the mainframe, even that protected by a password. Suffice it to say that I have retained at my own expense a reputable detective agency to do some research for me. It may or may not be a long shot. In the meanwhile I’m going to have to keep my wits about me if I’m not to end up, quite literally, in the same pot as Fessing and Scrabbe.

  I have yet to receive a reply from Elsbeth, and it makes me think that I was perhaps overly warm in my response to her. In my worst moments I think there might be a farcical replay of the awful little missive I got from her when I was at Infra. But I have no regrets. As it is said, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16

  What is it about our age that inverts so many expectations? Here I was, daily expecting another grotesque media circus when the news of the Brauer cult and those incidents in Loa Hoa so far and so long ago leaked out, as I knew they eventually would. The story “broke” the day before yesterday as the lead article in the Bugle under a byline by Amanda Feeney, who has her own sources in the Seaboard Police Department. Except for the headline, “Cannibal Cult Uncovered in the MOM,” it was a reasonably straightforward account of what Brauer had related to Lieutenant Tracy and me. So I braced for the usual spate of calls by reporters asking loaded, insinuating questions, for visitations by the television types, trailing through with their gear as though they owned the place. And there have been a few calls, tours of the Skull Collection and that sort of thing. But instead of pariahs, Brauer and company have been made into national celebrities.

  A story in this morning’s news reports that Brauer is on the point of signing a three-point-two-million-dollar contract for a book and movie deal. Marge told me there’s already a lot of speculation about who will play Brauer. She mentioned some names that I didn’t recognize, but then I’ve never been much up on popular culture. Corny Chard has been utterly irresponsible. I tuned in Mother’s old black-and-white television set last night, and the man seemed to be on just about every channel, saying things about how human flesh tasted to him like lamb. I wonder sometimes if this is the way civilization unravels.

  All of which pales, I must confess, next to what’s happened in my own life. Elsbeth called this morning to tell me she is arriving on Thursday, October 8, and plans to spend at least two weeks here. She told me she is looking forward very much to seeing me and asked if I would drive her out to the cottage. She said she was utterly delighted that I had written back and couldn’t wait to see me and “dear old Seaboard.”

  Her call has me walking on air one moment and the most miserable of wretches the next. The sound of her voice turned my knees and my heart to mush. The way she said “Norman” made more than thirty years of life and time simply disappear. She sounded so pleased, with a note of something like relief in her voice. Then I think, is she merely being polite, was there not also a kind of condescension in the voice, the expectation that I will act like a dog she has well and truly whipped? Am I just an old boyfriend to her while to me she is the object of a lifetime of painful obsession? What will we say to each other? What will we talk about? Will I even care? Will she be little more than a plump suburban matron d’un certain âge who will, with some thoughtless banality, snuff out the flame I have been carrying lo these many years? Or will we, however decorously, fall into one another’s arms? Will she rescue me from what I admit has been a stunted bachelor existence? And do I really want to be rescued? Will that not make a mockery of most of my adult existence? On the other hand, I have to admit that even these torments are better than those that would have come from a tepid or cold response, from the prospect of nothing.

  Not unexpectedly, perhaps, the prospect of her visit has made me resolve to get to the bottom of this murder business once and for all. I mean, if Elsbeth is bent on some arrangement, something more than a casual meeting, then I can scarcely expect her to remain in a situation where my life and perhaps hers would be in danger. It is time, in short, to act.

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

  I should have had more faith in Malachy Morin, more faith that he would give me cause not merely to fire him but to fire him with something akin to relish.

  Until late this morning he gave me little to complain about regarding his behavior since getting out of jail. Indeed, his demeanor and his pathetic attempts to find something useful to do have all been exemplary. There is nothing really against him other than the fact that he is implicated in the suspicious and unseemly death of an innocent young lady and the fact that, quite simply, he is not needed here. I certainly have no plans to retain him as an executive assistant.

  Anyway, it was getting on toward noontime when it happened. I had just gotten back from an exhausting meeting with Marge Littlefield. My head was quite spinning from the sheer amount of raw and confused data regarding the museum’s finances. Small wonder Fessing and Scrabbe had difficulty pinning down just where the money comes from and where it goes. Marge claims to “have a good idea” about what’s happening, but frankly I could make neither head nor tail of it. She didn’t object openly when I told her I would be retaining a consultant to go over things, only I could tell her nose was just a bit out of joint. But I’m afraid it is going to take a veritable Theseus of an accountant to get through that fiendish labyrinth, and I shudder to think what Minotaur of finances will be found at its center.

  It was in this state of mind that I received a call from Mr. Morin asking if I would come down to “go over our strategy” in the Pringle case with Ariel Dearth. I demurred, saying I was very busy. Then he mentioned that I might be interested and helpful as part of their defense would involve the museum’s policies. With that bit of information my ears pricked up and I betook myself with dispatch down to his locker room of an office.

  I found Mr. Dearth at his officious best when I entered. “I’m glad you could make it, Mr. de Ratour,” he said, snidely insinuating that it was the least I could do under the circumstances. Then, his mustache twitching as he spoke, he began by blithely assuming I would serve as a character witness for “your esteemed colleague, Mal.” I had just sat down in one of those spindly wooden armchairs so common in institutions like ours. I shook my head and was about to voice my refusal as candidly as possible when he barged on obliviously, taking up other areas where my “support would be useful.” He and his team, he said, would establish that what had happened to Elsa Pringle was nothing more, technically, than an “industrial accident.” The defendant sat there nodding his head (he’s starting to put on weight again, I noticed) and said, “Happens all the time.”

  But that, Ariel Dearth announced with a flourish, standing and pacing in his best courtroom manner, was only the beginning. “Malachy Morin,” he declaimed, gesturing in the direction of his client, “is nothing less than the victim of widespread prejudice against persons with aberrant morphologies. Indeed, we are a society racked by a deep-seated and broad-based adiposephobic bias.” Pacing, turning dramatically, framed in the aura of the wood paneling, he went on in that vein, talking about the “millions of victims suffering in heavy silence” while “a multibillion-dollar diet industry feeds on them.” I was surprised, to say the least, when the learned counsel stopped i
n front of me in a pose meant to convey deep thoughtfulness (head bent forward, chin in hand, other hand crossed over holding elbow) and said, “Tell us, Mr. de Ratour, is there or has there ever been a program in place at the museum to counsel and help individuals like Mr. Morin come to terms with their configurative conflicts?” Objection, I nearly said, but before I could recover from my utter bemusement, he strode away, turned, strode back, and whirled on me. “Is it not also true, Mr. de Ratour, that the system failed Mr. Morin to the extent that the museum did not have in place any programs to counsel and help its sexually vulnerable employees? Was any effort made to identify and help the morally impaired among you? Was there even a pamphlet available to help them be conscious of and cope with situations of interpersonal conflictual stress? And is it not also true, Mr. de Ratour, that at the time of the accident, Mr. Morin, in the wake of Dean Fessing’s murder, was under intense pressure from the museum to secure the service of Ms. Pringle as a press assistant?” He turned again from me to a putative jury. “I would suggest, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that it was under just such pressure that Mr. Morin, utterly unprepared by the institution he was to suffer so much for, felt obliged to take extraordinary measures in his efforts to enlist Ms. Pringle’s services for the Museum of Man. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me sum up for you by pointing out that the real victim of this tragedy, the person who has had to live and endure unimagined pain and suffering, is none other than the accused, Mr. Malachy Morin.”

  To the applause of the defendant, Dearth sat down in a chair like mine. I didn’t know where to begin. I was ready to go upstairs, unlock my top drawer, take out my father’s gun, bring it back down, and shoot them both. But before I could get a word out, Dearth stood up again and resumed his lawyering. All of the elements he had mentioned, he said, constitute not merely a defense “but the basis for a civil suit against the museum, which as an institution had been derelict in its responsibilities to those employees susceptible to victimization by the system.” He went on to claim that Malachy Morin “in making his extra effort at the behest of the museum had, knowingly and with incredible courage, not only put himself in great moral and physical danger but risked heart attack, stroke, or worse.” Indeed, he said, Mr. Morin was to have a complete checkup at the infirmary to see what damage had been done.

  When he had finally finished, I stood up. I was so angry I was trembling. I told them both that I had not heard anything so preposterous in my life and that if they attempted in any way whatsoever to malign my museum, I would see to it that they were countersued for millions of dollars. Well, both of them were flabbergasted in turn. Sounding a note of strained patience, Dearth started to explain that what he was proposing was now standard practice and that they had checked and found the museum had insurance coverage for just such eventualities. I became quite uncivil. I told him not only that I found his proposed suit outrageous but that his conduct was subverting a grand and honorable profession, that he was making the law into the disorder of which it purports to be the relief. As he sat there sputtering, I turned to his client and said, “Mr. Morin, you are fired. You have exactly one half hour to remove your personal effects from this office and turn over any keys you have to Doreen. You will receive written confirmation of this dismissal in due time. Whatever traces of you are not gone by one P.M., I will personally escort to a Dumpster. And if you present any difficulties, I will call the police and have you arrested for trespass.” I then turned and stalked out the door.

  “Mr. de Ratour, Mr. de Ratour,” Ariel Dearth called after me, “you are making a great mistake. You are acting without due process. You are in contempt of litigation …”

  I ignored him. And when I poked my head in shortly after one, Malachy Morin and his stuff were gone. Doreen sat there looking somewhat bewildered, and I told her she could stay on as my secretary but that she would have to stop chewing gum or at least stop inflating and snapping those obscene little bladders in front of her mouth as she does so.

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

  Edo Onoyoko died suddenly today under unusual circumstances, and we will have to await the results of an autopsy to find out if foul play is involved. In the meanwhile the media have descended like a plague of locusts, gobbling up what few stalks of information I have been able to throw them. I was present when the old gentleman died, and for reasons of propriety, I have refrained from telling members of the press exactly how it happened.

  I should, I suppose, start at the beginning. I had planned to announce at today’s Oversight Committee meeting that I had been named Director of the MOM, and that this was to be the last “hearing” about the diorama to which the museum or its representatives would be party. Then I remembered my agreement with Thad Pilty and decided instead to let the meeting proceed as scheduled. And it did proceed, opening as has become customary with a long statement by Constance Brattle that tested my resolve to see the thing through. She spoke darkly of what had happened to two Wainscott deans while serving at the MOM. She said the discovery of a “cult of cannibalism” in the museum made it likely that the committee would undertake “full and open” hearings into “these dark events in the Museum of Man.”

  On the other hand, I was encouraged by the number of absentees. Ariel Dearth wasn’t there; he was hard at work, I assumed, perverting justice on behalf of Malachy Morin. Corny Chard didn’t make it; he has become quite a public figure as an advocate of what he calls the New Anthropophagism. Father O’Gould also failed to appear, and Bertha Schanke came late, giving me a chance to grab the only Blueberry Filled. Mr. Onoyoko was there and seemed his usual self, bowing and smiling to everyone in anticipation of another good laugh. Two newcomers arrived in the persons of Professor Ray Mooney and Ms. Jackie, a model brought along for demonstration purposes by Emmanuel Quinn of Humanation Syntectics. As habits die hard, I took out my notebook to keep the minutes.

  Mr. Quinn’s technical show-and-tell began sanely enough. Ms. Jackie turned out to be the upper torso of a model from what he called their “standard line.” As a demonstration, he proceeded to dismantle the model. We were all impressed, I think — as much as a committee in academia is ever impressed — by the way Mr. Quinn lifted the lifelike fair skin and glossy brunette hair of the model, a comely young woman, to reveal the array of tiny servomotors and miniaturized hydraulics that gave her such a living presence. I heard some stifled gasps of incredulity when, restored by Mr. Quinn to her original state, the young woman, who was dressed in a modest blouse and a business suit jacket, began to speak. Her lips moved in remarkable synchronization with her words, and she made appropriate gestures with her hands and face as she told us, in a pleasant, natural voice, that she was available to work at trade shows, shop windows, specialty displays, and any other place where her services would be useful.

  I should point out that Ms. Jackie, as she introduced herself, was set on a base on a chair in such a way that she appeared, for all the world, just like another person at the meeting. After she had finished her little talk, Mr. Quinn activated a switch on her base that put her in what he called an “active/passive mode.” She appeared most attentive the way she blinked her eyes from time to time, furrowed her pretty brow, raised a finger to her mouth in a thoughtful gesture, and even glanced around with a winsome, attractive smile. I fully expected one of the attendant activists to tell Mr. Quinn to put away his distracting homuncula, but they, like everyone else, seemed quite taken with her.

  There were, of course, the usual hostile questions. Professor Brattle asked Mr. Quinn in a bristling voice why his company had decided to use female models for demonstration purposes. Mr. Quinn replied in an unoffended tone that they had found that when they used male models for presentations at universities and other nonprofit organizations, someone, usually a woman, invariably protested that female models weren’t being used instead. Ms. Schanke, polishing off donuts with her usual panache, asked how much each model was going to cost. Professor Pilty took that question, saying that while
final costs had yet to be determined on the “package” they were negotiating with Humanation Syntectics, he estimated that each model, with a five-year maintenance contract, would cost around thirty thousand dollars. Well, that created some reaction, and Ms. Schanke opined that there were many other causes on which the university’s money could be better spent. Forgetting myself for a moment, I interjected that the funds in question belonged to the MOM, not to Wainscott. Everyone seemed surprised that I had spoken up, and my reminder produced some murmured demurrals, but I think the point went home, and I felt the better for having made it. Mr. Onoyoko, serious for a change, made it known through Ms. Kushiro that all of the microchips and precision servomotors were designed and produced in Japan. Izzy Landes provided a needed note of levity when he remarked that it would be worth the money to have such a model of himself to send to faculty meetings.

  At that point a strange quiet descended on the room and its large circular table. It was, I think, the presence of the robot lady that fascinated us all into silence. Even Professor Athol, who speaks when he has nothing to say, remained silent, taken, like everyone else, with the beguiling Ms. Jackie. Professor Murdleston began to mutter something about seeing her “lower parts” when he was interrupted by Professor Mooney, one of the lesser lights in the Biology Department. He asked what was being done in the diorama to depict the sex life of the Neanderthals. I should explain that Professor Mooney, who came of age in the sixties, is a thin, beamish man with a wispy beard and a ponytail to match who walks around in a celebratory haze and used to be considered ever so daring for the graphic lectures he gives on mammalian reproduction. He is one of those people who still wants to free us all from our oppressive Puritan past.