The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man Read Online Free Page A

antecedents of the Museum of Man, which can be found profusely documented in my own well-received
The Past Redeemed
. Nor do I wish to repeat in any detail here why I oppose our submergence in the corporate monolith into which Wainscott University has evolved. Suffice it to say that the Museum of Man would suffer an irreparable decline were it to become a subsidiary or operating unit of Wainscott, Inc. All one has to do is look at the university’s Frock Museum. Once considered a first-rate if small institution, it has of late both grown and stagnated. It has launched an ambitious fund-raising effort for a new building. For additional exhibition space? No. For more curatorial work space? No. It wants something on the order of twenty million dollars for a new addition for administrative offices for the panoply of staff, which has grown in direct proportion to the means available to support it.
    Blindfolded Justice remains blind to these apprehensions on our part, as perhaps she should. But due notice should be given by the courts to the university’s conduct as litigation proceeds. It is no exaggeration to say that the Wainscott apparatchik, in the gross person and character of Mr. Morin, has waged an unscrupulous and unrelenting campaign to undermine my management of the museum. I am reluctant to rake over the still-smoldering coals of that man’s ignoble history, which includes, at the very least, a case of manslaughter, a veritable
sale histoire
. Suffice it to say that the Museum of Man once more stands endangered as a vital, independent institution and a living link to our common past.
    Having said this, I would like to affirm, yet again, that I want the living links between the museum and the university toremain strong and meaningful. Wainscott faculty work with our curators and with the collections to great mutual benefit. The research staff at the Ponce Institute include a good number of university professors and postdocs. Yet as long as I am in charge, the Museum of Man will remain a separate entity as in law and reality it always has been.
    Which is why I roll my eyes, inwardly at least, when people, upon hearing what I do, begin to wax exclamatory about what an interesting job I must have. All of those beautiful and fascinating things. All of those interesting people. And even when their reactions are accompanied by a dismissive smile, I detect a note of envy, summed up on one occasion by an aging, oblivious socialite who volunteered, “What a plum you have, Norman.”
    Ah, if they only knew. Quite aside from answering media calls regarding the murder of Heinie Grümh, three other headaches landed on my desk this morning. In my mail there was one of those large, ominous-looking envelopes from Limpkin, Limpkin, and Leech, Seaboard’s preeminent law firm. I knifed it open to find a friendly note scrawled by Elgin Warwick on notepaper with an embossed letterhead. Elgin is the scion of an old and wealthy family, a member of the Board of Governors, a generous supporter of the MOM, and a true eccentric if not barking mad.
    I could feel my hair whitening as I read the legalese on the attached document. It stated that Mr. Warwick, upon his demise, wished to have his remains mummified “in the manner of the ancient Egyptians” and placed in the collections of the museum in perpetuity, there to be displayed periodically in a sarcophagus that he had chosen from his collection of Egyptiania.
    In exchange, he would bequeath an amount of no less than ten million dollars to the museum. An additional five million would be left to the MOM should it create a room in the museum to be called Temple Warwick, which would house not only hismummy but his collection of ancient Egyptian art and artifacts as well.
    What, one might ask, are the objections? After due consideration, I saw many. First, it is not in line with the “mission” of the museum.
(Mission
is one of those buzzwords like
transformative
that I heartily detest, but