The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man Read Online Free

stimulating than the professional “soft” stuff that Elsbeth, who has a weakness for the meretricious, occasionally finds on the so-called adult channels. The woman involved in this incident, a well-fleshed blonde, knelt away from the camera on all fours fellating a man whose face was obscured in shadow. The second gentleman, back to camera, copulated vigorously with the woman
au chien
, so to speak. I thought it would be interesting, for forensic purposes, to hear what they were saying, if anything. Perhaps the tape could be enhanced enough for us to learn who the three individuals are. I am not being prurient in this matter. For a sleuth the most seemingly incidental knowledge can be crucial. Nor am I interested in the morals of these individuals. Regarding affairs of consensual activity among adults I subscribe to the dictum of my friend Israel Landes: Keep it private and don’t scare the horses.
    I did venture another e-mail to Worried, asking if there wasany possibility of an enhanced version of “the tape,” perhaps with sound. I have to risk that he may think me interested for pornographic reasons.
    I also called Dr. Rupert Penrood’s office and arranged to meet with him Thursday morning after he gets back from London. Penrood is the Director of the institute, and I have yet to have a really good chat with him about the incident. It might be helpful to find out exactly what Professor Ossmann and the gentleman with the Minnesota accent were arguing about.
    On my own initiative I moved last week, with the backing of the Seaboard Police Department, to secure those offices and files Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley maintained in the lab. Because it is not yet officially a murder case, the SPD balked at the cost of hiring a forensic biochemist to examine the lab notes, work in progress, computer files, and anything else of relevance to the case left behind by both researchers.
    I have come up with an elegant solution. It turns out that Nicole Stone-Lee, the daughter of my good friends Norbert Stone and Esther Lee, is not only a doctoral candidate in biochemistry but also knowledgeable about the areas in which both Ossmann and Woodley were involved. After an interview that went very well, I hired her as a special consultant to the museum. She is to report any findings both to me and to the Seaboard police. I’m sure that if the Wainscott Counsel gets wind of this arrangement, all hell will break loose. But frankly, I don’t care. Were I to wait on their acquiescence, any important data would be long gone.
    Quite as an aside, I must say I was taken with Ms. Stone-Lee. What a gorgeous race of hybrids we are breeding! With her combination of animation and repose, with that delicate molding of the face, and with a reddish tinge to her features, she makes me feel my own genes are just a bit dated. She is also a distinct pleasure to work with.
    Which is more than I can say about the University Oversight Committee. While I have acceded to the committee’s entreaty to meet with me on the Ossmann-Woodley matter, I remain concerned about that body prying into the affairs of the museum. I have gone on record, I have put it in writing, that the museum desires to maintain “cordial and mutually beneficial relations” with the university. Indeed, as a token of our goodwill, I have continued to sit on the committee in an advisory capacity, at the same time informing the university that the committee’s warrant where the museum is concerned likewise remains advisory.
    The fact is that the Oversight Committee, hypersensitive to every ingenious whim of group disgruntlement, has become little more than a tool of the Select Committee on Consolidation, whose sole purpose, as I see it, is to take over the MOM lock, stock, and endowment through any means whatsoever. Indeed, they might have achieved their goal had there not been a series of serendipitous events, chief among them our financial independence.
    For this I have to thank