The Murder in the Museum of Man (31 page)

Now, more than ever, I am determined to get to the bottom of these macabre murders.

When I informed Lieutenant Tracy about the Skull Collection, I expected him to carry out a thorough investigation. He did little, apparently, other than go down there and question Alger Wherry, who told him nothing. I found myself somewhat perturbed
when I learned this during an interview with the lieutenant yesterday morning. I was irritated in any event by the continued presence of Malachy Morin, and I may have acted out of frustration when I decided, finally, to do some looking around myself.

It happened quite by chance. Last evening, after dinner at the Club, I had stopped back in the office to pick up my umbrella since a cloudy sky had turned decidedly leaky. As I was coming down the corridor, I ran into old Mort wheezing his way up the last steps of the stairway. On a sudden impulse I said, “Mort, do you have the key to the Skull Collection?”

Mort, one of those Down East types, sighed and said, “Eyeah.”

“Could you open it up for me?”

“Eyeah.”

“Would
you open it up for me?”

“I don’t see why not.”

As we walked to the elevator together, the trepidation began. As we went down and down, farther down than I thought possible, I became positively fearful. The low, dank corridor was scarcely lit. Mort switched on his club of a flashlight, and I was suddenly very fearful of him for some reason, thinking peripherally how disturbing it was that a source of light could be used as a weapon. But not by old Mort, I thought, not old Mort. That wouldn’t make sense. But little seemed to make sense anymore.

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked as he checked a massive ring of keys for the right one.

“The Skull and few other things,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Uh huh.”

The peculiar odor of bone, of subterranean mildew and preserved death assailed my nostrils. It didn’t help matters in the least that the lights wouldn’t turn on. Mort explained that they were probably on a timer as they had to be on during the day
anyway. I confess I hesitated and thought of turning back. I shuddered audibly when the stab of his light crossed a row of japing bone faces. I heard or thought I heard something. I whispered for us to stop and be still for a moment. But there was nothing but the silence of death and the painful thumping of my heart.

My sense of direction is not very good, and we must have walked through the entire collection, a review of the dead, so to speak, before we came to the Green Door. My resolve nearly faltered there, as though I had used up all the courage I could muster. I was relieved when Mort, upon inspecting the lock, muttered about it being one of the old ones. At least we had tried. Then he produced from his jacket a large object that looked like a stage key. “The old master,” he whispered. “I carry it around because they didn’t change over some of the doors.” The key fit, turned, tumbled the tumblers. The door creaked open.

I was not disappointed as Mort aimed his stab of light around the small, oblong room. Dismayed perhaps, not a little frightened, but not disappointed. There was a solid antique table of the kind that abounds in institutions set short side against the narrow wall, thereby forming a kind of projecting altar. Several chairs of like vintage were arranged around the table as though meetings were held there. Meetings or even ceremonies, for, at the head of the table, against the wall, which was hung with brown bark cloth worked in geometric symbols, stood a squat stone statue, the features in low relief, of a man sticking his tongue over his lower lip while holding his belly. On top of this, the gold tooth gleaming, was the Skull. There appeared nothing else of note until I found, under the table, several banker’s boxes with the missing archives of the Loa Hoa expeditions in them. Just behind them was a plain wooden box. I lifted the lid and found a rubberized poncho, several books on mysticism, some little pipes, and a photograph of a young woman that looked like it came from a high school yearbook.

All of which, I knew, as I heaved the boxes onto the table and started to go through them, proved nothing. I leafed quickly through the contents as Mort held the light for me. I found the usual materials — copious notes, sketches, diagrams of sites, samples of cloth, photographs of artifacts, correspondence, typed reports. All quite routine. Perhaps Brauer, a man of eccentric habit, simply used the place for a study. But why? I asked myself, my detective’s instincts aroused. Why the Skull? Why hadn’t Alger Wherry simply gone and retrieved it for me when I asked for it? Why wouldn’t Mrs. Walsh know where the files were?

I stood, ready to give up, when Mort, with the flashlight, pointed out the drawer in the table. I tried to open it and found it locked. That didn’t faze Mort. He took out a smaller ring of keys, and on the fourth or fifth try unlocked it. With some trepidation I lifted out a binder-size black zippered case. I lay it on the table and opened it carefully, with Mort again holding the light. The loose-leaf paper, running about fifty pages, was filled on each side with encrypted entries. It seemed to be a journal of sorts.

I was frustrated again. I was also in a quandary. Should I confiscate this notebook and turn it over to the police? It probably wouldn’t take them long to break the code. Or should I just put everything back the way it was, alert Lieutenant Tracy, and have him come with a search warrant to carry it all off legally? While thus musing, I noticed a slight bulge in the side pocket of the case. It was a slim package of photographs, five by seven in black and white. As I began to go through them, my heart beat so violently I had to sit down. In the shaky illumination of the flashlight I saw, arranged against a dramatically rising precipice and filling the foreground of the photograph, Raul Brauer, Corny Chard, and Alger Wherry, all holding, quite distinctly, pieces of a human body. Chard had a foot, Wherry a forearm with attached hand, and Brauer what looked like a heart. One of the other pictures showed the three of them sitting on a mat with natives of
rank actually eating these things! I was glad I was sitting down myself, for my vision blurred for a moment and I thought I would pass out.

A moment later my head cleared and I acted decisively. I replaced everything exactly as I had found it. I rang the SPD from Wherry’s phone and was patched through directly to Lieutenant Tracy. I explained exactly what I had discovered and suggested that he obtain a search warrant. He agreed immediately, and we arranged to meet him at the main entrance to the museum. Extraordinary, really, how soon the sirens began and with what flashing fanfare several cruisers and one unmarked car pulled to a wrenching halt in front of the museum. I have to confess I had been very gratified by the note of respect in the lieutenant’s voice as he showed me the warrant and asked that I lead him to the room with the Green Door.

Mort found the override switch, and we got the lights turned on. There were the usual nervous wisecracks from the team as we made our way through the collection. Mort opened the Green Door again, and the police, carefully, with gloved hands, removed every item, with the exception of the table and chairs, from the room. They took the Skull, and I asked the lieutenant that it be treated with every respect. At my suggestion, he called in and got a supplementary warrant to go over the prep room. All the while the lieutenant deferred to me, asking my advice, putting in an occasional question. The supreme compliment came when, taking one of the more egregious photographs, he asked me to accompany him to Brauer’s residence to help with the questioning.

It had started to rain and it was getting late in the evening, but I agreed, if not with alacrity then with a keen, disquieting anticipation. I must say I was glad that I was not doing it alone and that the lieutenant was armed.

Brauer lives a ways out of town in what looked like a converted
barn set well back from the road. We hadn’t called, and I told the lieutenant he might not be at home as he still traveled a great deal. But there were more than a couple of cars in the yard and several lights on. Under an umbrella we stood together and waited for someone to answer our knock. We were greeted by a very striking young woman with a fetching combination of Polynesian and European features, especially the thick black hair that fell over her shoulders. When the lieutenant asked to see Professor Brauer, the woman turned and called up a nearby stairwell, “Dad, someone to see you.”

Brauer, in a dressing gown of flamboyant scarlet silk worked with zoomorphic forms in black, came down the stairs with the face of a man half anxious and half irritated. The lieutenant introduced himself, shook hands, and said, “You probably already know Mr. de Ratour. He’s assisting me with the investigation of the murders of Deans Fessing and Scrabbe.” Brauer nodded curtly at me and led us down a hall into a barn-beamed study hung and set about with a collection of Polynesian art and artifacts — jade weapons, bark cloth, wood carvings, statuettes — worthy of any museum. The considerable computer equipment in evidence didn’t seem out of place, even with the rain tattering clearly on the roof above. From behind a desk of intricately carved rosewood, he produced a bottle of Dalwhinnie, offered us a drink, which we both declined, poured himself several fingers, and asked, in an impressively deep, confident voice, “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

The lieutenant was silent for a moment, as though preoccupied. “You can tell us about the contents of a room in the Skull Collection at the Museum of Man that has a green door.”

Brauer’s face paled, and the hauteur of his expression, seemingly innate, collapsed into uncertainty, even fear. But only for a second. He sipped his single malt, which appeared to restore him, and said, “Some files and a few artifacts. I go there sometimes to
study and to … contemplate. There’s no phone and” — he allowed the lieutenant a confiding laugh — “and not many people come looking for you down there.”

“Have you ever indulged in cannibalism, Professor Brauer?” I asked, surprising myself but not, strangely enough, the lieutenant.

The professor all but sneered at me. “What would give you that idea?”

With exquisite timing and with a gesture nearly threatening in its authority, Lieutenant Tracy produced one of the photographs and handed it to Brauer.

The anthropologist was silent as the blood drained again from his face, showing suddenly a sad man gone jowly with age. He drained his glass, but the whiskey didn’t restore him this time. In a slow, clear voice, he began to talk.

“I want to make it understood, Lieutenant …”

“Tracy.”

“Lieutenant Tracy … and Mr. de Ratour, I want it understood that I have had nothing whatsoever to do with the murders and what happened afterwards to Fessing and Scrabbe. I also do not think any of my immediate colleagues has had anything to do with the murders of the deans. But they can answer just as well for themselves. I can explain that picture and the others you no doubt found with it. Where were they, by the way? I’ve been scouring the museum and this house …”

“In a pocket of the zippered case,” I said.

He nodded ruefully. He reached behind him to a cabinet and pulled out a loose-leaf binder. “Here is an original, an unencrypted version of what’s in the other notebook. It’s an account of what happened offstage, so to speak, during the nineteen-seventy expedition to Loa Hoa, as you might already have guessed. Are you sure you won’t have a drink?”

I accepted, and the lieutenant asked if he might smoke. Brauer
poured me a generous tot of the malt and found an ashtray. All the while he spoke, his voice, though rueful and world-weary, gained confidence, perhaps from the relief of confession or the rebound of his arrogance. “There was, in fact, as rumor has had it, a young man, a drifter of sorts, not quite sane, not that any of us were in those days. We did joke one night around the campfire, while he was off chanting in his tent, about killing him and eating parts of his body to re-create one of the important and more or less suppressed rituals of the Rangu. But it was a joke. We were all a little drunk on honey beer and far gone on the kind of potent marijuana that grows at high elevations. We were joking, but I’m afraid that one of our local helpers, who happened to be very devoted to us and would do, it turned out, literally anything for us, took the joke seriously.”

“What was his name?” asked the lieutenant, who was taking notes.

“Freddy Hiva. It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now. Anyway, the killing and eating of Bud, short for Buddha, as he called himself, became a kind of running joke. He even joined in, made wisecracks about how he would taste. He was a blond fellow, of medium height with a slight build. One of those harmless, clueless creatures. I was, naturally, quite horrified when, coming back to camp one afternoon, Freddy told me there had been an accident. Bud had fallen off one of the nearby cliffs and been killed.”

He stopped and poured himself another measure of whiskey. “I was both horrified and excited. Once a philosopher twice a pervert, I have always thought. Not that, in those days, I didn’t welcome the second appellation as well. When I asked Freddy if he had done it deliberately, he gave me a look of mock horror and said, no, no, no! It was against the law. I know I should have contacted the authorities, but I fancied myself an outlaw scientist, a Nietzschean for whom no experience was taboo, not even
the eating of human flesh. And I still do.” He glanced up at us defiantly. “I did it for research.