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

cannibalizing a youth on the Polynesian island of Loa Hoa back in the late sixties as part of a “re-creation” exercise in anthropology.
    Just as the ruckus created by the publication of Brauer’s book,
A Taste of the Real
, was receding, Amanda Feeney-Morin of the
Bugle
tracked down Marilyn Knobbs, the woman whose high school graduation picture was found among the effects of the young man murdered and eaten on that remote island so many years ago. Ms. Knobbs of Beaumont, Texas, no longer young, of course, remembered the boy, saying he was one Richard “Buddy” Waco, also of Beaumont. Well, there was this thing staged on television between the family of the victim and thethree gentlemen who, in the name of science, had eaten parts of the boy while participating in a ritual among the Rangu.
    There, in front of the whole world, Brauer, Alger Wherry, who is Curator of the MOM’s Skull Collection, and Corny Chard all renounced and related with unseemly relish their parts in the sordid affair. Brauer, his head hairless and gleaming like a pale bowling ball, actually hugged the poor old mother, and then the thing degenerated into a regular tearfest. One of the victim’s sisters demurred, accusing the men of being murderers, but even that seemed staged, as though there had to be some kind of conflict, some ruffled feathers for the show’s hostess, a woman with an iron face and awful voice, to soothe over. The word
tasteless
does not do it justice. While I am no longer quite the old stick in the mud I used to be, thanks largely to Elsbeth’s influence, I found the event quite simply
hors concours
.
    Now, according to this morning’s
Bugle
, a film is in the works, something that will only reignite another media conflagration. The film, I’m sure, will star some Hollywood notables and lots of native women running around in the buff, as we used to say.
    Well, I have finally convinced Elsbeth to go to Keller Infirmary for a checkup. She has been feeling poorly for more than a week now. And as ghastly as the food was at the Green Sherpa, surely its effects couldn’t persist for that long. So, I must make my way homeward and try to be of some comfort. Concerned as we both are, it seems that she does more reassuring of me than I of her.

4
    I met this morning with Rupert Penrood, the Director of the Ponce Research Institute. He’s British, with the long face of a royal, and just a bit too well dressed for a research scientist. I mean in his attention to detail, the silk-patterned tie matching the perfectly folded pocket square in his navy blazer. But then a lot of scientists are businessmen these days.
    Dr. Penrood had, previous to the meeting, sent me a folder describing all the research projects under way in the lab. It’s quite extraordinary what they get up to these days. Dr. Penrood assured me that the time wasn’t long off when they would be able to take a cell from your body and alter a few genes to make you smarter or taller or sexier. You then pop the nucleus of that altered cell into an egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed — and
voilà
, you have an embryo that is a new and improved you. I told him I wasn’t sure I liked the idea, whatever the improvements, though God knows we could all use some.
    I am able to recount in these pages our conversation because I have near-perfect recall, at least in the short term. It’s a knack I found useful during three decades as Recording Secretary. Indeed, my memory is very nearly auditory, allowing me to rehear entire conversations in my mind.
    Dr. Penrood, for instance, spoke with the ripe, plummy intonations of a British aristocrat, saying, “You understand, Norman, we may be the last generation to die.”
    “Then we may be luckier than we think,” I replied, notentirely as a witticism. But I didn’t smile long. I looked up and said directly, “Dr. Penrood, I have it on good authority that you were present at a somewhat heated argument between Professor