The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man (9 page)

Diantha had not forgotten, and it lifted my spirits to find her wearing a fetching summer dress and keeping on ice a perfect martini, which she knew I would need. After a quick shower, I put on my off-white linen suit, faintly striped shirt, and silk tie of muted paisley pattern. What, after all, does one wear to a film about cannibalism?

Rather than finish my drink, I sat on the living room floor with Elsie and Decker to teach one of her dolls, the one with lifelike hands, a few new words. I swear that my toddler already has a larger signing vocabulary than I do. In the midst of all this I realized that, whatever happened to the museum, I was a profoundly lucky man.

Diantha drove us over in her powerful motor car. We arrived at a gala scene, a party of more than a hundred clustered around tables on the side deck of the building lit by paper lanterns. I was greeted like the star of the show by the star of the show, Corny himself, who led me through a scattering of applause to the bar.

Ah, to have friends. Korky Kummerbund, looking a bit haggard, arrived just behind us with a new friend named Merwin. Korky, who was very close to my late wife, has gone national with his upscale food pantry called Best Leftovers, and I think the strain is starting to tell.

Izzy and Lotte were there for a handshake and kiss. He suggested a wine he described as “a quite good if complacent
little Bordeaux.” Father O’Gould or “S.J.,” as he likes to be called when wearing mufti, came with his aging mother. Aging, but in no way decrepit, Theresa O’Gould ordered bourbon, a double shot, from the busy bartender.

Soon, Harvey and Felice Deharo were adding to the buzz of conversation along with Corny’s wife, Jocelyn, who, I suspected, had been looking forward to widowhood when it seemed her husband wasn’t going to make it back from the Rio Sangre. Felix introduced me to his new wife, Flora, a sloe-eyed beauty of Filipino descent. (Asked once about his taste in wives, Felix replied he was taking a swim in the gene pool.)

I was surprised when Merissa Bonne showed up with Max Shofar in tow. I expected her to make at least a pretense of mourning in public. But then I am inclined toward the old decencies even at the expense of hypocrisy.

I was more surprised and quite delighted when Lieutenant Tracy arrived with his wife, Katlin. She is a quiet, observant, and very pretty woman in her thirties.

The hors d’oeuvres were large indeed. There was grilled shrimp, a warm pesto salad with rigatoni, a green salad with oil and lemon, baguettes so good they should be a controlled substance, and the usual plethora of cheeses and little hot pastries with stuffing.

The Reverend Lopes came alone. Though he plays for the other side, as he likes to say, he keeps his private life very private. He joined in the sympathy I received regarding the coins. We waxed philosophical about the difference between a good fake and a bad original. He recalled how a Dutchman, Han van Meergeren, forged Vermeers so well that he sold a fake of
The Woman Taken in Adultery
to Herman Goering.

Someone tapped a glass. A black woman of regal bearing from the managerial ranks of the Boston PBS station responsible
for the film thanked us all for coming. She said her station had been honored to work with Professor Chard, the university, and the Museum of Man. She mentioned the production staff and thanked the Seaboard Players for letting us use their wonderful facilities.

We settled down eventually in the theater itself, which felt like a large living room. Music reminiscent of Villa-Lobos started just as the enormous screen on the stage filled with an expansive aerial view of the Amazon rain forest. Credits rolled, the music faded, the camera closed in on rising ground in the distance, and the authoritative if somewhat unctuous voice of a well-known actor began.

“Professor Cornelius Chard is a modern-day Indiana Jones. The world’s preeminent expert on human cannibalism, he is also an indefatigable explorer who has traveled the world in search of those people who eat people. Not long ago, his search led him to the headwaters of the Rio Sangre, a tributary of the Amazon, and the homeland of the fierce Yomamas, a tribe that has successfully resisted the predations of loggers, miners, and other outsiders by killing and eating them.”

Corny appears on screen laboring up a dense jungle trail following loincloth-clad porters. The cut is taken from the video that Corny sent to me through an intermediary. Breathless from his exertions and reminiscent of that famous British naturalist, Corny stops to describe where he is and where he is going.

The scene changes abruptly to a dizzying flyover view of Seaboard before coming down to street level and driving, as it were, up to the massive front doors of the museum. The voice-over intones, “Meanwhile, back in the quiet coastal city of Seaboard, a drama quite different but related to that of Professor Chard’s was unfolding in the Museum of Man. There, two academics, sane, sober people, appeared to have killed themselves with sex.”

As I watched the documentary with interest, I let my gaze wander around the assembled group, gauging their reaction. They appeared riveted. All except Merissa Bonne, who was on display in a diaphanous number that in certain backlit situations left little need for figural inference. I noticed that she fidgeted, distracted. A bit brazen, I thought, showing up with Max like that. Perhaps too brazen. Too much like a gesture calculated to show that they had nothing to hide. Which didn’t necessarily mean they had something to hide. But they, more than anyone, had a strong motive to murder Heinie von Grümh. Not only that, but Lieutenant Tracy told me that they were each other’s alibi for the time when the murder occurred. A flimsy one at that, something about a drive up the coast.

Merissa caught me looking at her and, judging from her private smile, not altogether mistakenly thought I was thinking of something other than the film.

The documentary moved briskly on, dramatizing with deft strokes the intertwining strands of bizarre murder, drug dealing, Corny’s gruesome adventure, and the all-important videotape. I spend some time myself in front of the camera explicating the development in the Genetics Lab of a powerful aphrodisiac and the attempt by the mobster Freddie Bain, aka Manfred Bannerovich, among other aliases, to get control of it. I mention the tape and how it came into my hands.

Returning to the rain forest, the documentary built skillfully to the horrific climax at the village of the Yomamas. The gasps were audible as the chain saw did its bloody work. Cut to dark, green jungle, bird sounds, moving water.

Music over and a distant shot of Swift Chapel along with close-ups of obituaries and snippets of local news coverage documenting the belief that Corny has been killed and eaten. Another drive to the museum and an actor somewhat resembling
me reenacts my foolhardy journey out to the monster’s lair in the Hays Mountains, where I rescue Diantha and kill the miscreant Freddie Bain with my father’s revolver.

Then Corny’s apparent resurrection and return to Seaboard in a blaze of media glory. Articles and interviews galore, one pundit calling him “The risen Christ of anthropology,” who had “suffered for the sins of anthropologists.”

The interview with Barbara Waters or someone of that name is the most egregious. In the course of it, she flutters her eyes and lowers her voice, intimating that a really difficult question is about to be asked but one that she, we all know, has the courage to ask.

“Professor Chard, what was going through your mind when you smelled your own flesh roasting?”

“My mind? Well, you might say I didn’t have much of a mind at that point.”

“And, after they cut you down, it’s reported that you asked for some … of yourself. Just to try it.”

“Well, I was offered some actually. The Yomamas are very hospitable in their own way.”

“What part was it?”

“A piece of the lower thigh, if I’m not mistaken.”

“And what was going through your mind when you actually bit into a piece of yourself? How did you taste?”

“A little like lamb. Or, rather, mutton. A bit chewy, actually. Like shank when it’s not quite done enough.”

“It’s not the first time that you’ve tasted human flesh?”

“Right.”

“There was the young man on Loa Hoa …”

“Right.”

“How did you compare?”

“In taste?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was cooked differently to begin with. He was baked in a hole in the ground using heated stones. I was flame-broiled.”

“It’s not an experience you’ll want to repeat?”

“Well, I don’t have that many limbs left.”

“Professor Chard. Thank you very much.”

The scene then changed back to the village where, with some trepidation, a camera crew returned with Corny. He was carried up the steep path by well-paid porters to a ceremony where he was welcomed with great acclaim.

As Corny recounted in the book and as the narrator retold it in the film — his voice over the welcoming rituals — just after the amputations, a harpy eagle soared above the village with a huge snake in its talons. This was taken for a sign from the gods, and Corny was medicated as best they could and asked to join the feast. It was seen as significant that the old chain saw wouldn’t start, either.

“I think they should make a real movie out of it,” Merissa said to Harvey Deharo after the film ended and we were standing around with coffee. “I think Dennis Hopper should play Professor Chard.”

Harvey laughed. “I think it would be difficult to get any more real than what we’ve just seen.”

“Yes, but don’t you think a really good movie …?”

Alfie Lopes of all people chimed in, “Wouldn’t Anthony Hopkins be a better choice? It would serve him right to get eaten this time.”

“But who would play Norman?” Diantha asked. “I mean, he has a big part.”

I tried to hide my pleasure. “Oh, come on, they’d probably write my part out of the script.”

“Oh, don’t believe it,” put in Lotte Landes, taking hold of my
elbow. “I still find it hard to believe, Norman, that you actually shot someone dead.”

“But sure it’s extraordinary what we’re capable of,” said S.J. — Father O’Gould — with a philosophic sigh.

To one side, I glimpsed Lieutenant Tracy watching and listening as he so often does.

Mere anarchy has been loosed upon my world. My humiliation is complete. I scarcely know where to begin this account of a debacle so sudden and total that I have hesitated these several days to commit what happened to words. But words are all that I have left. However ephemeral, self-damning, and difficult, words are the only lifeline I have in this sea of troubles.

The very success of the documentary screening revived and exacerbated my problems. That is, I remained very much in a damage-control mode, on the phone mostly with reporters, patrons, and members of the governing board both about the coin forgery and my own legal predicament. I began to envy George Twill his impending retirement as president of Wainscott.

In the midst of this, two members of the Seaboard Police Department, both of whom I know very well, showed up unannounced at my office door. The lieutenant sat down wearily. He had Sergeant Lemure with him, never a good sign. The sergeant closed the door. An even worse sign. No coffee, thank you. The worst possible sign.

“We’ve got a real problem, Norman,” Lieutenant Tracy began.

The sergeant fixed me with his tough-cop stare. “Actually, Professor, you’ve got a real problem.”

I looked from one to the other and kept silent.

The lieutenant leaned toward me. “The ballistics on the bullet removed from von Grümh’s brain match the ballistics on the bullets that killed Freddie Bain.”

“You mean …?”

“I mean they came from your Smith and Wesson.”

I shook my head, reassured. “That’s impossible. My gun’s at home locked in a trunk. It hasn’t been fired in more than a year. When I took it out to the cottage. You know, to keep it functioning.”

“We’ll need to take a look at it,” Lieutenant Tracy said equably.

With something akin to alacrity, I drove with the two officers to my house, which is a rather quaint Federalist affair with Greek Revival touches and a Victorian turret toward the back. I called ahead to let Diantha know we were coming, but she wasn’t at home. It mattered little. There’s a fudge factor in ballistics as in any technical procedure calling for human judgment.

Decker growled when we came through the front door, but only at Sergeant Lemure, who looked ready to draw and use his gun. After quieting the dog and putting him in the kitchen, I led the police officers to the attic, where I have my study. I took the key from the hiding place in the top drawer of the antique desk that had once been my father’s and used it to open the lid of the sturdy oak chest where, among other things, I keep the Smith & Wesson, its holster, and extra ammunition.

My misgivings began as I worked the old lock, twisting the key the way it should go, but locking the chest rather than unlocking it. Puzzled, I reversed the key to counterclockwise and felt the mechanism, which did need oiling, switch again, this time to open. Still, I confidently expected to find the weapon and its accoutrements in a lacquered box that fit snugly into one end of the chest.

Alas, the box was empty except for some bullets. With frantic incredulity, I rummaged through the rest of the chest’s contents, mostly family memorabilia, Bibles, documents, framed photographs, several batches of letters, and an old passport I had been looking for.

“I think we need to go downtown,” the sergeant said ominously. He meant police headquarters, even though they had been moved out to the bypass several years ago.

We came back down the two flights of stairs and I was overwhelmed by an impending sense of disaster, which rendered me weak in the knees and in my heart, which felt as though it had stopped beating.

At that moment, Diantha and Elsie came through the door, the former carrying a bag of groceries, the latter running toward me, signing ecstatically something about Momma getting frozen pops. Behind the kitchen door Decker barked.

I picked the little one up and held her close to me, as though it were she and not I who was in jeopardy.