The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man

by Alfred Alcorn

  While there, I decided to take a look at the room with the baize door in the Skull Collection. Luckily, Mort, back to his usual form, was on duty. He fished out his ring of keys, and we made our way down into the kingdom of grinning death. At first Mort couldn’t open the door. He said the key had been changed. The master wouldn’t fit. But Mort is a man of many resources. He took out of his pocket something that looked like burglar’s tool, pried around for a while, and voilà, the door opened.

  Again, there seemed nothing out of place. The table and chairs were as they had been. And just the merest whiff of that distinctive odor I could not place. Until, in making a thorough search of everything in the room, I came across evidence that it had recently been a venue for a meeting. In the wastebasket I found eleven folded pieces of paper marked with Y’s and N’s, evidence of a vote. Someone had also thrown away a withdrawal slip from one of those automated money-dispensing machines with an early-November date.

  Mort said nothing when I told him I wanted to leave the room exactly the way we had found it. He nodded knowingly when I said we were to tell no one about what we had uncovered. Driving home I entertained little fantasies of placing a hidden camera or a microphone in the room, though I had little idea of what I might learn thereby.

  22

  I received a call today from Mr. Freddie Bain, the restaurateur. He was in quite a state about the news of Corny’s death, which appeared in the Bugle this morning. When I tried to fob him off on the Wainscott public relations people, he turned peevish. “Mr. de Ratour, they are the ones who told me to call you. Please, can you tell me who told you of Professor Chard’s death?”

  I told him about Henderson’s visit and his contact with Fernando and that the State Department had received reports to the same effect.

  Who was this Henderson? Where might he be contacted? Was he reliable? I answered as best I could. I gave the man a post office box number for Henderson in Manaus and told him that was all I had.

  “Are you sure there was no documentation?” he asked, his voice edged with insinuation.

  I replied ambiguously, saying that final confirmation was awaited, but that it seemed the worst had happened. I hung up finally in bemusement. It was almost as though the man knew about the tape Corny had sent back. I made a mental note to call Jocelyn to tell her not to let anyone else know about it.

  Prejudice, as the Reverend Lopes has remarked, is like excrement: We tend to think of our own as less offensive than that of others. I try to keep Alfie’s dictum in mind when it comes to my feelings regarding members of the legal profession. Not all lawyers, to be sure. When I catch myself wanting to send the whole lot of them to the wall, I stop and recall the good ones I have known. Not many, actually, but a few. I tell myself that it may be something genetic, something over which they have little or no control. I remind myself that in the past members of the de Ratour family have married lawyers or even gone to law school. But that was at a time when it was considered something of an honor to join the profession.

  I bring this up because of what happened today when I finally met with the principals of the date rape case that came before the Subcommittee on Appropriateness. After several futile calls, I informed them each that I was assisting the Seaboard Police Department in a matter that their case could have a bearing on, and that our conversations would be off the record and strictly confidential. Pulling one of my own teeth would have been easier.

  Ms. Spronger told me they would have to consult “their” attorney, a use of the plural possessive I didn’t pick up on immediately. I increased the pressure at that point, letting them know my requests to see them sprang from the Ossmann-Woodley case, now considered a murder investigation, and involved some urgency.

  My action constitutes a transgression of the rules of the subcommittee. Indeed, the whole point of that body is to avoid involvement with the police or the legal system unless absolutely necessary in conflicts between members of the community. I didn’t really cavil with myself on the point. If these young people had been exposed, however inadvertently, to some kind of potion being concocted in the lab, then we needed to find out about it. Still, I was somewhat surprised to learn that a lawyer had become involved; that the rules had already been bent if not broken.

  It perplexed me even more that they insisted on meeting me together. For my purposes it made little difference except that important information can be garnered from the differences that inevitably arise in separate accounts of the same incident.

  At the appointed time, I made my way over to Sigmund Library, a modern, faceless building of gray granite that exudes an air of futility. We met in the Rex Room, named for a donor, I’m sure, as there seemed to be donor plaques on everything. The room is one of those small, nondescript spaces that all libraries seem to provide and which few people seem to use.

  You can imagine my surprise when Mr. Jones and Ms. Spronger arrived in the company of Ariel Dearth. I could not completely conceal my chagrin at seeing the ubiquitous lawyer, but I dissembled my reaction enough to get through the obligatory introductions and handshakes. Mr. Jones wore chinos and a short-sleeved, open-collared jersey, and I could not but note again the musculature of his arms and shoulders. Ms. Spronger sported denim overalls, and for a moment I thought she might be a member of the maintenance staff. Mr. Dearth wore a contentious expression and one of those tweed hunting jackets with a leather patch at the shoulder, fitting attire for a predator, when you think about it.

  “Are you their counsel?” I asked after we, the mobile, had sat down at a stark table and Mr. Jones had pulled his wheelchair up to it.

  He appeared to think my question over, perhaps consulting the lawyer within. “I am,” he said.

  “In what capacity?”

  “We’re suing the university,” Ms. Spronger announced.

  “Bobba …,” Mr. Dearth started.

  She bridled. “Just because we’ve hired you doesn’t mean I’ve like given up my First Amendment rights.”

  Mr. Dearth nodded perfunctorily and turned to me. “I want to know, Mr. de Ratour, what gives you the right to threaten my clients with a police investigation?”

  “Because, Mr. Dearth, it’s a fact, not a threat.”

  “And you know it’s strictly against the rule of the subcommittee for any member to contact disputants privately without the consent of the Chair.”

  I had to suppress a laugh. “You mean you had the consent of the Chair to solicit these good people as clients?”

  “That’s privileged information.”

  “I’m sure it is.” I turned to the disputants. “Are the grounds on which you plan to sue the university also privileged information?”

  “We —” Mr. Jones started.

  “That’s privileged,” Mr. Dearth said.

  “We’re victims of an institution that like created a working atmosphere in which people like want to rape one another.” Ms. Spronger spoke with what seemed like pride.

  “Ms. Spronger …” Mr. Dearth twitched his nose in frustration.

  “How much are you suing the university for?” I asked.

  “We haven’t settled on an amount,” the learned counsel said emphatically.

  “We’re not concerned with the money part of it,” Ms. Spronger added with a touch of indignation. “It’s a way of like sending a message.”

  “How much is the message going to cost the university?”

  “Is this germane to your interests?” Mr. Dearth asked.

  “Five big ones.” A large smile lit up Mr. Jones’s handsome face.

  “Five million dollars!” I repeated, incredulous.

  “Five big ones each.” Mr. Jones seemed to be enjoying his freedom of speech.

  “Have you settled on a contingency fee?”

  “I advise against answering that question.”

  “Is it thirty percent? Forty? Fifty?”

  The disputants were nodding.

  I turned to Mr. Dearth. “Have you no shame, sir?”


  He shrugged. “It is a long shot.”

  “It’s a way of like effecting social change,” Ms. Spronger said, as though in defense of her attorney.

  “I suppose making lawyers rich through this kind of extortion is a form of social change,” I said.

  Mr. Jones leaned back and laughed. “Makes lots of change, anyway.”

  “What have we got to do with what happened to those professors?” Ms. Spronger began immediately, speaking as though she had been accused of something.

  “Perhaps nothing,” I said, Investigator de Ratour now, professional to my fingertips. I paused for effect. “And perhaps everything.”

  Sitting across the table from me, she in a chair and he in his wheelchair, they exchanged glances at my words then looked to their attorney.

  I thought this curious, as curious as their insistence that they meet with me together.

  “What are you saying?” asked Mr. Jones.

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to prejudice any answers you might have to my questions.”

  “They are not prepared to answer any questions until they know what they are.” Mr. Dearth spoke with great solemnity.

  I kept the obvious rejoinder to myself, as I know Lieutenant Tracy would have. I nodded sagely. “It’s quite simple,” I said. “First, as you stated in your statement to the subcommittee, you ate lunch together on the day of the incident.”

  “You don’t need to answer that,” Mr. Dearth put in.

  “That’s true,” I said, “since it has already been established. “What I need to know is what food or drink you shared just prior to the incident that you brought before the Subcommittee on Appropriateness.”

  “You don’t need to answer that,” Mr. Dearth said.

  I started to gather up my notes, making as though to rise. “In that case, I am turning the entire matter over to the police.” I turned to the disputants. “That, of course, will be to Mr. Dearth’s advantage as he will be able to bill you for the hours of interrogation that are sure to ensue and at which he will insist on being present. And that may well adversely affect your quote unquote case against the university.”

  They glanced at each other. “We shared your rice, Bobba,” Mr. Jones said.

  “As your attorney …,” Mr. Dearth began.

  Ms. Spronger waved him off with a frown. “I don’t see what harm there is in the truth.” She turned to me. “I’m like on a whole-rice diet. I had plenty for both of us.”

  “And you had a half of one of my tuna fish sandwiches,” the wheelchair marathoner said.

  “That’s right. My diet allows for like a small amount of wheat gluten.”

  “Did you cook the rice yourself, Ms. Spronger?”

  “Oh, yes. I use only organic rice.”

  “And none of it came from a Chinese restaurant, from a takeout place?”

  “No.”

  “And the tuna fish sandwich?” I asked, turning to Mr. Jones.

  “Ditto. My wife made them for me. Right out of the can.” He shrugged. “I mean with mayo, salt, pepper, and some chopped chard.”

  I winced. I had begun to get the empty feeling of drawing a blank. I took one last stab. “In your preparation of your respective lunches, did you at any time leave them unattended?”

  Ms. Spronger shrugged. “I like put my rice in the microwave. But I wasn’t gone more than a few minutes.”

  “And there were other people in the area?”

  “Lots of them.”

  “Any strangers?”

  “None that I recognized.”

  I frowned. “You mean you saw no one you didn’t recognize.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you have to drink?”

  “I got a Coke from the machine in the staff room,” Mr. Jones said.

  “And I like have my water.” Ms. Spronger held up the quart-sized bottle I had seen her drinking from at the subcommittee meeting. Apparently she’s one of those people who carries a nippled container with her everywhere, like a child still on the bottle.

  “How soon after you shared your lunch did the incident occur?” I asked.

  “Actually, we hadn’t quite finished,” Ms. Spronger replied.

  “But almost.”

  “Mr. de Ratour,” Mr. Dearth said with an ominous voice, “I am going to report your behavior to the university authorities.”

  “Feel welcome to, sir,” I responded and turned back to the library employees. “Can you tell me exactly how the feeling came over both of you?”

  They were both clearly embarrassed. “It just came over us,” Mr. Jones said. “Big time.”

  “Me, too,” Ms. Spronger said. “It was like a compulsion.”

  “Who first suggested that you retire to the closet?”

  “You really don’t have to answer that question. In fact, I advise against it very strongly.” Mr. Dearth had grown visibly agitated during this time.

  For my part, my irritation at what Mr. Dearth was attempting to do with these two young people had grown to indignation. But I kept my voice calm. “Actually, that’s not really a question pertinent to my purposes. What’s really important is that I ascertain that the only food you ate during that shared lunch came from home.”

  They both nodded. Mr. Jones asked, “What are your purposes?”

  “Very good question,” I said. “It’s one your attorney should have brought up at the beginning.” I paused to let that register. “It’s possible that somehow, somewhere, you ate food that had been doctored with a very powerful aphrodisiac. We’re not sure, but it may have been a mild form of whatever it was that killed Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley.”

  Ms. Spronger grew pensive. “Actually …”

  “We doubt very much anything like that happened,” Mr. Dearth said forcefully.

  “Because that would exculpate the university.” I turned to Ms. Spronger. “You were about to say something?”

  She glanced this time at her counsel. “Nothing. Really.”

  “Are you sure?” I persisted. “This is very important. Other lives may be at stake.”

  But Mr. Dearth had them back under his control. He kept advising them not to say anything. He said, “Mr. de Ratour has no standing legal authority in this case.”

  I regarded Ms. Spronger and then Mr. Jones. I said, “If either of you changes your mind about anything, please give me a call. Anything you tell me will be kept private.”

  When we all, except Mr. Jones, rose to go, I asked to speak to Mr. Dearth in private. The principals left to wait in the hall, and I closed the door. I did not sit down. I leaned across the table on my fisted hands. I looked Mr. Dearth straight in the face. I told him I could scarcely believe what he was doing.

  “I am defending my clients’ rights to a safe working environment,” he responded.

  “You mean to tell me that the university is responsible for the private consensual actions of these two adults?”

  “We are contending that in the particular case of Sigmund Library, the university wittingly or unwittingly allowed an environment of sexual exploitation to exist of which these two young people are the very evident victims.”

  “What exactly, could you tell me, Mr. Dearth, should the university have done differently?”

  “That is up to the deans in the administration to decide. But the very existence of a large securable closet and the ends to which everyone knows it was used indicates substantial grounds for complaint. The principle of undue temptation applies here.”

  “Undue temptation?”

  “A concept I developed. It recognizes the limits of human virtue.”

  I shook my head in wonder and disgust.

  “There’s considerable case law in this area,” the lawyer continued. “Morin versus Museum of Man established a good many of the points now being used in current cases.”

  I told him what he was doing was unconscionable even by the farcical ethics of the legal profession. I paraphrased for him a quote from Izzy L
andes to the effect that an organism’s worst parasites are usually indigenous to it. As in the case of Mr. Morin, I accused him of making a travesty of the law. “You, Mr. Dearth, and people like you in the legal profession are consciously and for your own selfish ends deconstructing a great and noble American institution.”

  “Are you calling me a parasite?” he demanded to know.

  “That’s exactly what I’m calling you, Mr. Dearth. You and your ilk do not help society in the least. You merely find and feed on its vulnerabilities, all the while perverting the law as you go.”

  I told him that, as a member of the Subcommittee on Appropriateness, I was writing to the state bar association demanding that he be disciplined in a most decisive way.

  It was some small gratification to see Mr. Dearth dumbfounded for once in his garrulous life. Leaving him there I turned and walked from the room, ignoring the two pathetic individuals he had suborned into a suit against the university.

  I’m afraid I spent valuable time and a deal of spirit making good on my threats. Not only did I send a detailed and indignant letter to the members of the subcommittee with copies to President Twill and the Wainscott Board of Regents, but I filed a complaint with the state bar association. Not that I have much faith in that latter organization, despite its impressive-looking code of ethics. The lawyers handling the estate of my late aunt, Harriet Heathering, all but looted its substance, leaving the sole heir, a nephew, with a pittance. When he took the matter to the state bar, they sat on it for a year and finally did nothing. As Izzy says, we live increasingly under a rule of lawyers, not law.

  And such is life and death that none of this really means a damn to me; it is nothing more than a tempest in a tosspot next to the daily unraveling of my beloved Elsbeth. She is now insisting that we spend Thanksgiving out at the cottage, but the poor dear is scarcely able to get out of bed.