The Murder in the Museum of Man (35 page)

It is late. I am tired, and I must go home to dress for the annual dinner of the Seaboard Historical Society, an event that, for the first time, I do not look forward to with much anticipation. I mean, there will be the same food, the same faces, the same things said. But then my life has taken on a new zing of late, and
my capacity for boredom has diminished accordingly. Still, I feel obliged to record the events of the past few days as they relate to my investigation into the murders of Fessing and Scrabbe.

First, I have had another disquieting communication from Worried in the Genetics Lab. As per usual, I will reproduce it here.

When Lieutenant Tracy dropped by this morning to tell me that the autopsy on Mr. Onoyoko’s body proved negative — he
died of a heart attack — I showed him this latest missive from Worried. The lieutenant didn’t seem in the least perturbed and repeated back to me what I had told him about information received anonymously.

“Have you spoken to Gottling?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. He showed us around the whole facility. He’s a most impressive man.”

“What did he have to say about this series of e-mail communications I’ve received?”

“He said they were nothing more than ridiculous fabrications and insisted on seeing the originals.”

“Did you show them to him?”

“I didn’t. But I doubt very much, Norman, that Professor Gottling had anything to do with the murders.”

His enunciation of “Professor” made me raise my eyebrows. “Not personally, perhaps, but he does have people working for him.”

The lieutenant’s expression was comically pained. With some exasperation he said, “I know, I know, but he really is too —”

“Important?”

“Perhaps. Serious might be a better way of describing him.”

I allowed myself a slight smile. “But, Lieutenant, you are the one who has taught me that the most respectable of people are capable of the most heinous of crimes.”

He smiled back, and his
“touché”
had a most endearing uncertainty about it.

Still, I am going to pursue my own investigation into the Genetics Lab. I have sent Professor Gottling another note, this time telling him that I am to open discussions with Wainscott regarding the future of the lab. If that doesn’t get a response, I’m afraid nothing will. There’s nothing much else to report. Ariel Dearth’s office has called several times, but I have refused to take his calls or call back. Damon Drex has also been plaguing me. He wants to have a “meeting of the brains.”

Ah well, Elsbeth arrives in less than two weeks. I’m having the kitchen done over at a quite exorbitant cost, but the results are already manifest and gratifying. Amazing, isn’t it, the gadgets available today for cooking and disposing and whatnot. I micro-waved, if that is an acceptable verb, my first frozen dinner last night, beef something or other, and it really wasn’t all that bad with a bottle of good California zinfandel. Yvette’s coming a week from today to give the whole house a thorough cleaning. But I’m still not sure about investing in a double bed.

I have succeeded in meeting with Professor Gottling, and what I learned today has left me quite disturbed and, frankly, in a quandary as to what to do. I am convinced he has a motive for getting rid of the two deans if they were beginning to find out not only about the arrangements between the Genetics Lab and the Primate Pavilion but about the nature of his experimentation and research. At any rate, when he called me this morning it was more to put me off than to arrange a meeting. He told me that he had gone over everything with the police, and that if they were satisfied, why wasn’t I. When I mentioned Project Alpha he said it had been canceled. I informed him that my sources told me differently and that, as Director of the MOM, it was my responsibility to meet with him about this matter. He turned brusque and said he was a very busy man and did not have time to placate every administrator worried about rumors. I said in return that I would then have to call on the museum’s counsel to summon a Board of Inquiry as provided for in the Rules of Governance. After a bit of blustering about, he finally, and not very graciously, acquiesced to a meeting.

To prepare for the meeting, I reviewed the CV the Wainscott Personnel Office had obligingly sent me some time ago. I don’t need to reproduce it here. Suffice it to say that Stoddard Gottling was born fifty-six years ago not far from Boston. He received a Ph.D. in cytology and biochemistry from Harvard at an early age and worked at the Biological Laboratories there, Cavendish, and Cold Harbor, before coming to the MOM some five years ago. It’s probably not coincidental that, at about the same time, Edo Onoyoko arrived and began taking an active interest in the research of the Genetics Lab. I will not pretend to understand the work he has been doing. He is an expert, I know, in the slicing and splicing of genes and has an enzyme insertion technique named after him, for which, apparently, he has been short-listed several times for the Nobel Prize.

Thus informed I went, a little after two this afternoon, through the labyrinth of tunnels in the subbasement that connects all three parts of the museum. (Because of the increasing number of restricted areas in both the Genetics Lab and the Primate Pavilion, ordinary access through the upper floors has all but ceased.) I was left to cool my heels in the office of his secretary before the eminent geneticist emerged and ushered me through several labs into his book-lined, paper-strewn office. He tried to be cordial, but I could tell it was not something that came easy for him. Almost immediately, he asked me if I had brought copies of the reports I had been receiving.

I told him I had brought along a summary of the reports, which I gave him in a manila envelope. I did not tell him that I had omitted some important accusations, which I thought best to bring up personally during our discussion. Professor Gottling appeared disappointed to the point of anger, but he hid it well enough as he glanced quickly over my summaries.

“This is preposterous,” he said finally, lighting a cigarette and setting up a veritable smoke screen. All the same, I think he was
badly shaken. “I’ve gone over this already with the police. Certainly we are working on gene therapies. Everyone is working on gene therapies. But, really, it is quite another thing to be designing a new human genotype, as this person, whoever he is, alleges.”

It was the words he used and the way he reached for a fresh cigarette with one burning in the ashtray and caught himself just in time that made me think, with a flash of genuine horror, that he was lying. He insisted on seeing what he called “the original documents.” I refused. I told him that they had been sent to me in confidence and that it would take a court order to pry them loose. I think it was the word
court
that brought blood to his face. He is a tall, pale man with short-cropped graying blond hair, eyes the color of ice, and the kind of loose lower lip given easily to disdain. I do not think he is used to having people disagree with or refuse him. His agitation reached such a pitch that for a moment I actually thought he might strike me.

“Professor Gottling,” I said, “it doesn’t make any sense not to be frank with me. I need to know in detail the extent of your experiments, how long you have been doing them, and the results to date, insofar as a layperson such as myself can comprehend them.”

“What do you need to know for?” he asked, exuding so much smoke he might have been a volcano about to erupt.

I repeated that I was Director of the museum and might be for some time. As such, I said, “it is my responsibility to know what is happening in all departments of the museum so that I am able to report with competence and completeness to the Board of Governors. “Furthermore,” I continued, “the person who is sending me these reports will surely start giving them to the newspapers in the belief there may be some connection between what’s going on in the Genetics Lab and the murdered deans.”

In retrospect, I find it difficult to describe the nearly satanic
glower that lit his cold eyes when I mentioned the deans. I could almost think him insane, and did think the unthinkable: it was he who had dispatched Fessing and Scrabbe or had some devoted underling do it for him when they started asking the same questions. Despite a shiver of fear, I pressed on. I told him I needed to know the exact arrangements and conditions under which he was using chimpanzees from the Primate Pavilion for his work. I needed to know the number of animals involved, what he was doing with them, and for how long. I pointed out that state regulations in this regard were very strict, involving not merely fines for infractions but criminal prosecution.

Again he blustered, demanding to see the reports I had received, saying the lab had nothing to hide, that they were “serious and very busy people.” He went on in that vein, but I did not relent. I told him I needed “a detailed accounting of all monies paid to the Primate Pavilion for services rendered.” He denied that the Genetics Lab had paid anything “for the few specimens we have collected from time to time from a few of the animals.” What about the funding of programs in the Primate Pavilion from the Onoyoko Institute? He waved his cigarette at me. He denied he had anything to do with the institute’s funding policies. It was an outright lie. I took out another document I had had the foresight to obtain before coming to the meeting: the last annual report of the institute, which, while vague about where most of its monies went, listed its officers and the members of its disbursement committee, the chair of which is Professor Gottling. Presented with that, he belched more smoke and said that “out of heuristic considerations” he might have sanctioned funding a project or two in the pavilion, but these were details others attended to. The baldness of his lie embarrassed both of us; if department heads pay attention to anything in academia, it is to who and what gets funded.

He stood up and sat down, snubbed out his cigarette and lit another. “Why is this so important to you?”

“Because I am responsible ultimately for what goes on in the Museum of Man.”

“Why don’t you ask Drex about where he gets his funding?” he asked in a sneer.

“To be perfectly frank, I am not convinced that Mr. Drex is altogether sane.”

The man’s laugh and smile were not pleasant, but for a knowing moment we were in some agreement. I persisted, however. I repeated that if he were not forthcoming in all necessary details I would convene a Board of Inquiry. I also said that while I was loath to have the press meddle in any affairs of the museum, I was not above using the media if it came to that.

The man’s expression was such that for a moment once again I could believe he had something personally to do with the deaths of Fessing and Scrabbe. His suppressed rage, his clenched jaw and clenching fists were such as to suggest madness barely under control. “Who told you about the chimpanzees?” he demanded to know with a fury that belied his assertion that the lab used “animal material” from the pavilion merely as a convenience. “Listen, Mr.…”

“De Ratour.”

“De Ratour, the animals happen to be right here. We can get the same thing from other sources on a routine basis.”

I ignored this lie and began to get specific. “I have heard, Professor Gottling, that you are planning to grow a couple of chimp fetuses modified with human genes in a glass box. It’s code-named Mary Shelley.”

His face blanched, his lower lip trembled. Again he demanded that I show him the original documents. He wanted to know who had sent them. “There has been a major breach in security,” he said, catching himself to amend it to “I mean, a breach in confidence, in the kind of trust we need for our work.” He went on, as though speaking to himself, expostulating about human frailty, about how he already had enough problems with the
death of Onoyoko, about how he couldn’t even get a call through to Onoyoko’s son, “a playboy who has taken to decadence with typical Japanese diligence.” I interrupted him finally to say that, unless he wanted to speak to me now in an open and candid way about his operations, I would immediately begin an internal investigation in a very thorough manner. When he hesitated, I stood up and turned toward the door.