The Murder in the Museum of Man Read Online Free

to the museum.
    The question of how the dean had been cooked was brought up by a young woman from National Public Radio deploying a curiously toneless accent in vogue in that organization. Chief Murphy took that one, saying that, for investigative purposes, certain details were not being divulged. Dr. Cutler did answer an inquiry as to how the remains had been found. It seems a retired doctor had been out walking his dog, and when the animal came back to him carrying one of the dean’s humeri, he recognized it as human.
    A reporter from the local television station asked if the Adventurers’ Eating Club, which has a loose affiliation with Wainscott, was being investigated. Chief Murphy said that all parties would be investigated impartially and that, for the moment, members of the eating club were under no particular suspicion. I added that while it’s rumored that certain members of the club had enjoyed the dubious pleasure of consuming human flesh while abroad (a very private club in Hong Kong, I’m told), the bylaws expressly forbid the preparation and consumption of human remains on the club premises.
    When asked what in fact was left of the dean, Dr. Cutler replied, “Scraps,” and on that rather irreverent note I declared the conference over. I suppose it was arbitrary on my part, but I think they would still be there listening to themselves if I hadn’t cut it off. I’m sure the whole thing will be covered in all the papers tomorrow and on the television news this evening. I find it difficult to imagine that I will be on television. I have an old black-and-white set that my dear mother was watching when she died. I should probably dig it out and try to keep myself
au courant
. It is all too tedious.
    It’s been a sad day for the museum and for the university. And of all nights, I suppose this is one when an appearance at the Club is most necessary for the sake of appearances. I can only hope they haven’t run out of the vegetarian special.

FRIDAY, APRIL 3

    As a matter of routine, I supposed at first, I had a visit this morning from a Lieutenant Tracy of the Seaboard Police Department. It turned into a most disturbing encounter. Dark haired, square jawed, ruddy faced, the young man evinced a demeanor both respectful and skeptical as he said he wanted to ask me a few questions in the privacy of my office. I tried to be as straightforward as possible with the plainclothesman (actually he was wearing a well-cut tweed jacket and a silk tie hand-painted with linked triangles) when he asked me about my relations with the late dean. I readily admitted that I had disagreed from the very start with the objectives of Dean Fessing’s mission to the MOM. I explained that the assignment of a “Visiting Administrative Dean” to an institution already associatedwith Wainscott has come to signal the start of a more formal consolidation.
    Wainscott, he might remember from news accounts, had been publicly criticized for its so-called anomalous relationships with affiliated institutions, and this had become a matter of some concern in light of the auditing that attends federal funding, not to mention the sensitivity to adverse publicity given the plans for a major capital campaign. I recalled for him that a visiting dean had been at the Thornton Arboretum just before that fine institution was trimmed back to a mere sprig of Wainscott’s Department of Botany. I told Lieutenant Tracy, who was all the time taking meticulous notes, that I was not opposed in every case to this practice. Wainscott’s acquisition of the old City Observatory made sense as the place had become decrepit, and the university does have an established and well-respected Department of Astrophysics. But, I said to him, did anyone really think it was in the public interest for Newhumber Conservatory, a financially sound, well-administered school of music (I was on the board of trustees), to be reduced to a mere appendage of the Wainscott Music Department?