The Murder in the Museum of Man (29 page)

Why are nightmares always worse the second time around? Dean Scrabbe has been found. Or his decapitated head, at least, was found yesterday at the Humboldt Museum. Someone with a demented sense of the macabre placed it in the glass case where the demestid beetles have been demonstrating their services to science. A group of residents from a halfway house were standing around looking at the case when one of them, realizing what was
there, started screaming. The rest, apparently, began pointing and lurching and laughing hysterically. I can’t say I blame them.

I did not see it myself, thank God, but a shaken Dr. Cutler told me that the “gnawed brain” of the language theorist, “putrid and crawling with maggots and beetles and things I couldn’t describe,” was the worst mess he had seen inside a human skull in nearly forty years of forensic pathology. The dean was killed, apparently, by a blow to the head, although Dr. Cutler told a hastily convened press conference that “the discernible trauma to the right temple” could have been made postmortem. He reported that no postcranial remains had yet been found.

Again, sadly, the university tried to evade all public relations responsibility. I was adamant with the press: “Dean Scrabbe,” I said in a written statement that I gave to them, “was a Wainscott dean, and he was found, his head, anyway, on Wainscott property. Any other questions would have to be directed to Wainscott authorities or the police.” I finally got tired of the whole sick circus, came up here, and closed the door. When the phone started ringing, I disconnected it. Something evil is happening in this community, and something needs to be done to stop it. I have said it before and I will say it again: The murdering and mutilating of sitting deans strikes at the very heart of civilization as we know it.

Lieutenant Tracy arrived not long afterwards very much in need of a cooperative witness. He said a thorough investigation of the custodial staff at the Humboldt had turned up nothing. I told him that Alger Wherry uses demestids in the final preparation of fresh skulls.

“And who is Alger Wherry?” he asked, turning officious.

“He’s Curator of the Skull Collection.”

“The Skull Collection?” He was taking notes.

“The museum has one of the largest skull collections in the country. It’s located in the sub-subbasement.”

“I think you should have told me this before, Mr. de Ratour.”

“I just found out myself. About the demestids, I mean. I didn’t think them relevant until Dean Scrabbe turned up the way he did. Even then I thought your own investigation would have discovered at least the existence of the Skull Collection.” And although I responded in kind to his tone, there lingered in the air that subtle sense of something held back. Indeed, I was thinking about the collection and about what might be behind the Green Door. And again I refrained from disclosing my suspicions out of a strange, proprietorial instinct. I was determined now, more than ever, to go and see for myself. With Mort’s help, of course. Unless the police got there first.

The lieutenant sensed it right away, but his importuning, for that’s what it was, came as a watchful silence, which deepened between us, exerting a subtle, nigh irresistible pressure on me. With an artful sigh and some uncanny duplicity, I reached into my desk and drew out, as red herrings, the e-mail messages from Worried. “I perhaps should have showed you these earlier, Lieutenant,” I said, “but I thought you burdened with enough crank calls and false leads.”

He read them over quickly, shuffling through them with evident agitation. In a cold, level voice, he said, “Why were you hiding these?”

“I wasn’t hiding them, Lieutenant. I merely thought them irrelevant.”

“And why is that?”

“As a matter of principle I dismiss any communication addressed to me without a name. If someone is unwilling to sign what they write then they are free to write anything.” I did not go into the fact that I had, from time to time, been the object of some rather nasty anonymous communications.

He watched me intently for a moment. “You could be charged with withholding evidence, Mr. de Ratour.”

“I would hardly think that what I’ve given you, which is just a kind of rumor and gossip, hearsay really, constitutes hard evidence.”

He stood to go, the set of his face conciliatory again. “You’re right, Mr. de Ratour. Rumor and gossip are not hard evidence, but they are the heart and soul of an investigation. If you know anything else like this, if you’ve heard anything, if you hear anything, I don’t care how implausible, please let me know.” Standing there in his rain-stained mackintosh (it’s been pouring all day), he said whoever was dispatching the deans would strike again unless apprehended. “You can,” he said, “count on it.”

He was just about to leave when the door opened and Damon Drex came in, carrying in the crook of his arm an infant chimp in a diaper. Introductions were difficult to avoid, and I must say the lieutenant immediately evinced a charm I had not suspected him capable of. Boy or girl? he asked Drex. And it wasn’t until later that I realized he may have taken the chimp to be Drex’s child, as young chimps in fact look quite human. I then had to endure twenty minutes of pressure from Drex regarding the press conference he wants to stage. I know I should have told him then and there what I thought of the whole project, but the lieutenant’s visit and accusations had left me quite chastened. I told Mr. Drex that I was simply too busy even to consider his request at the moment. When he tried to construe that as a commitment, I simply said I had work to do, and that he was in violation of museum rules in bringing an animal into this part of the building. He left abruptly, offended for some reason. But I am not going to worry about him.

I may, however, have to worry about Ariel Dearth. He called to say he wants to meet with me to coordinate a large fund-raising event at the museum to help defray Malachy Morin’s legal costs. The man is one of those obliviously insistent people who don’t hear what you’re telling them. I was particularly exercised by and
vehemently dismissed his suggestion that “the museum bears some responsibility for the accident that befell Mr. Morin in that it occurred when Mr. Morin was acting on behalf of the museum.” It was a threat in the form of an insinuation, and all my instincts about lawyers and the law — a rigged game run by knaves as far as I can tell — came to the fore. I could not shut the man up. I put the receiver on the desk and let him babble on until there was a silence, a click, and the dial tone.

As though this wasn’t enough, the Oversight Committee plans to meet again in the near future. I’ve never seen morale lower at the museum. People are talking in hushed tones. Doors are closed and faces averted. There’s been more than one resignation since Scrabbe disappeared, and now I suppose there will be a virtual exodus. I have to admit that I am seriously thinking again about retirement myself. I am at times dispirited to the point of despair. I am also afraid. I have no wish to be fodder for the grisly mill of whoever is perpetrating these outrages. More than ever I would retreat into history, but now even history seems utterly blighted by what is happening in the present.

A most extraordinary thing has happened. Indeed, I cannot wait until evening to record the event and am writing about it now as I pick at a crab salad sandwich in my office. I have just received a long letter from Elsbeth Lowe, informing me that her husband Winslow died of a stroke nearly a year ago. She writes that she was quite at sea about the whole thing but lately has started to put her life back together. Family business, she says, will bring her to Seaboard. The old cottage out at the lake, it seems, is in a state of
near collapse from an infestation of carpenter ants. She asks if I would like to meet her for lunch or dinner.

While surprised and delighted, I find myself tortured by old quandaries and new possibilities. What am I to do? I have asked myself, pacing my office with her scented letter in hand, the faint, unmistakable musk rising from it, a heady elixir out of the past. I grew angry. Does she want me now, at the eleventh hour, after more than thirty years of emptiness? But that passed quickly, as I am not given to vengeful self-pity. I will, of course, meet with her. But I can’t imagine what she wants. Will she expect overtures from me? And if I don’t make them, would she find someone else again? I am utterly dithered by the prospect. What if we were to flirt with each other and it led to an understanding, where would we go? It would not be good for her reputation to be seen going into a hotel with a man, even with me, or especially with me. Under no circumstances could I think of taking her to a motel. Then I began to worry about whether I would want her to come to my house, as charming as it is in its own way. I have only single beds, except for the sad, sagging old thing in Mother’s room. The bed in my room is a large single, it’s true, but a single nonetheless. I thought about ordering a double bed. There would be room for it if I moved out the wing chair where I read and shifted some other things around.

I then realized how absurd is all this thrashing about. Elsbeth is a bereaved widow who is just being nice to someone she knew years ago. We will probably have lunch someplace like the Club or A La Descartes in town. We’ll talk about old times and the people we used to know. We’ll stand up at the end of it and shake hands or she’ll give me a peck on the cheek. She probably already has another man lined up. One of her husband’s law partners, no doubt, a distinguished member of the bar, a widower who has always admired her from afar. I imagined they had already planned an intimate wedding with a few close friends, after
which they would fly somewhere for a couple of weeks before returning to lead a life of quiet wealth.

So sitting here, glancing out at Shag Bay, pacing, I have been thinking it through. Even if she had marriage in mind for me, I thought, I really shouldn’t be too hasty to line up for it. I do, after all, have a settled way of life. Having another person in the house is not something to be gone into lightly. She may want to cook dinners at home, and she’s not much of a cook. I have gotten used to going to the Club. Everyone knows me there. It wouldn’t be the same if Elsbeth came along. And she wouldn’t want to go every night, anyway. Women crave variety. She would want to go to other places, those fashionable new restaurants in town that serve food no one’s heard of and charge a small fortune for bits and pieces got up to look like bad art. Perhaps I should drop by and talk to Alfie. For all his spirituality, he is a man of the world. He might be able to give me some perspective, especially as it relates to the question of premarital relations.

Then there’s this murder mess. Any association with me would drag her willy-nilly into its coils, could even put her in danger. Indeed, since what remains of Scrabbe has showed up, I have gotten the feeling from time to time that I am being followed. “Shadowed” might be the better word for it, because I can’t quite be sure if the anonymous-looking people — sometimes it’s a man, other times a woman — are actually
following
me. It’s more as though they are simply there. For instance, this morning I increased my stride walking to work, apparently “shaking” one of these elusive pursuers, only to find what looked like another one disguised as a derelict waiting for me as I came through the Memorial Gates in the arboretum. I can’t tell whether I’m being threatened or protected. I can’t be sure it’s actually happening. I would ask Lieutenant Tracy about it, but he would probably just deny it. If that’s the case, how could Elsbeth and I “get away” for some privacy without going through some elaborate and probably futile machination to “lose” whoever might be following me?
It’s a most unnerving sensation, and it’s hardly a situation into which to introduce a woman of standing.

Whatever I decide, I will certainly have to write back to her. I suppose I’ll have to see her when she arrives, at least for a cup of coffee. Anything else would signal an animosity that I simply cannot feel.

You may imagine my shock and chagrin when I arrived at work this morning to find Malachy Morin standing outside his old office and sounding off as though nothing had happened. “Bow Tie!” he bellowed at me as I stood there dumbfounded, unable to avoid his reaching hand, which gripped and crushed mine, nearly pulling my arm from its socket.
Sotto voce
, beneath the boom of his commonplaces, he proceeded to thank me for my help during his “troubles.” “Lining up Dearth, Norm, the way you did, was a stroke of pure genius. The guy’s amazing. So, hey, how are they hanging?”