The Love Potion Murders In The Museum Of Man Part 16

"It is not a done deal, Professor Brauer. The university in general and Mr. Morin in particular have no say whatsoever regarding the premises of this museum. But it doesn't surprise me that he has been less than straightforward with you. He has always had a tendency to tell people what he wants them to hear regardless of the truth."

"Did you ask me in here just to tell me that?" His expression was decidedly baleful.

"If I had, you could take it as an act of courtesy."

His frown turned to puzzlement. "Then what did you ask me here for?"

I cleared my throat. "I'm willing to consider some very restricted use of the museum for the film in return for some information."

"What information?"

"I want to know who, in the Long Pig Society, funded Corny's trip to the headwaters of the Rio Sangre."

He did something of a double take. He had the expression of one suddenly thinking quite deeply about something. "Well, that's privileged information."

"I understand. And these are privileged premises. And as you know, I have very good relations with the Seaboard Police Department. I'm quite sure I could arrange to keep your crews from getting anywhere near the place."

He sighed. "If I do tell you, it's strictly, strictly confidential."

"Of course."

"I want to be able to use the Skull Collection."

"Okay."

"And the Oceanic exhibit."

"With restrictions."

"Understood. And outside shots, doors and one or two window shots."

"Within a period of no more than..."

"Say three weeks."

"Two and a half."

"Done. You'll get a call from Mr. Castor."

"Yes. I've spoken to him before. And now..."

"Yes. You know this is in absolute confidence."

"Understood."

"For your protection as much as anyone else's."

"I understand."

"Most of the funding came from Freddie Bain."

"Freddie Bain," I said. "The restaurateur?"

"Yes. Among other things, the proprietor of the Green Sherpa."

"Yes. Of course. He makes quite an impression. When did he join the club?"

"Not long after the trial. Of the Snyders brothers. He's quite a man about town, if you didn't know."

"I didn't. Are his interests in matters anthropophagic purely scholarly?"

"I'm not sure. He's the kind of person who talks but doesn't say much."

We left it at that. I felt I had learned something valuable, but I wasn't sure what. I also remained under the distinct impression that Raul Brauer was holding something back. What else did he know about Freddie Bain and what the man was up to? How did he get the kind of throwaway wealth to fund an expedition like Corny's? Not from a restaurant, surely. What, if anything, were his connections with Ms. Celeste Tangent? Why was the FBI interested in him?

Not that it matters. Not that anything matters. I continue this weird, bifurcated existence. I fill my life with this stuff only to find it empty at the end of the day. I suppose the only thing to do in these situations is to invent another life for yourself. But I don't want another life. I want what I had and what now exists only in the sunshine of memory.

But what memories! Into little more than two years we packed a lifetime. We had the most marvelous little wedding at the Miranda Hotel overflowing with friends and champagne. We honeymooned for three glorious weeks in France. (Izzy has remarked that people in relationships go to therapists; people in love go to Paris.) Elsbeth, I have come to realize, was like a magnifying lens, shaping, brightening, and intensifying my life.

No more. No more! It is like the sad old days again. I think I'll make my way over to the Club. There are people there. Someone might ask me to join their table. If nothing else, the waiters talk to you, they smile, they bring you things.

31.

Diantha, dressed alluringly in slacks, a clinging jersey, and a tailored jacket, came in to see me at the museum this afternoon. My delight at her appearance vanished when I learned she wanted to borrow the car to drive out to Eigermount, Mr. Bain's country place. I was perfectly willing to let her take the old thing, but then she had another idea. "Why don't you drive me out instead? That way you can see Freddie in his natural habitat. It's surreal, to use one of your words."

When I declined, she persisted. "Oh, come on, Dad, you need an outing."

I couldn't really refuse, even though I was busy with year-end budget matters. Dealing with surpluses, I've found, is quite as tiresome as dealing with deficits. So we took a cab home, where Diantha packed an overnight bag.

We then drove northwest out of Seaboard to the Balerville Road and the picturesque little town of Tinkerton. Where the road forks just beyond a bridge that crosses Alkins Creek, we went right. The route climbed for several miles through gloomy stands of pine and hemlock and brought us eventually to a turnoff that would have been easy to miss. We drove into it and made our way along a narrow paved drive.

Well, Diantha was right about one thing. Seemingly out of nowhere, like a castle conjured in a tale about sinister fairies, rose a great round structure of cut granite. Nestled in a rug of evergreens, it towered at least four stories against the side of a steep declivity. The windows, narrow vertical slits with Gothic arches, blinked at the visitor uncomprehendingly, bringing to mind that line in Yeats about the pitiless sphinx.

A baleful kind of folly, I thought immediately, but let that impression seem, in my outward expression, a kind of awe. "A Martello tower writ large in the woods," I said, as though giving it some kind of architectural context might blunt the sense of foreboding I felt wafting from it.

We pulled up across from the main entrance - two ma.s.sive oak doors with studded hinges set in a portal with pointed arch and curved surrounds of weathered stone. I wanted to drop Diantha and scuttle back to the office. I wanted really to keep Diantha in the car with me and drive away. But as in a dream bordering on nightmare, the oak doors opened, and Freddie Bain, in loose trousers and one of those Russian tunics cinched around the waist, came forth.

The man positively clung to me. He wouldn't hear of my returning without coming in for a cup of tea or a gla.s.s of wine.

I parked the car, and we crossed over a virtual drawbridge spanning a dry moat before entering through the great doorway. Such places are not really my cup of tea, but I admit the basic design had a vulgar grandeur to it. Indeed, it reminded me of the museum, only circular, the central core an atrium around which rooms led off from bal.u.s.traded balconies. Sconces in the form of torches alternated with large oils on the walls, which, made of marble or synthetic marble, gave off a dark shine. An octagonal skylight opened dimly at the top.

Diantha, apparently knowing the place well, went into a kitchen off the main floor to see about tea. Mr. Bain showed me around. He was particularly proud of the immense fieldstone fireplace that, situated on the side of the building against the mountain, rose up through three stories, narrowing as it went before disappearing into the wall. Somewhat prosaically, the heads of mounted game - mostly deer - looked down with gla.s.s-eyed serenity from over the fireplace.

"I had a moose up there, but he was too...how do you say..."

"Lugubrious," I suggested.

Then, as though on the same subject, he said, "Permit me to express my condolences on the death of your wife, Diantha's mother."

I nodded and murmured my thanks, feeling oddly compromised. "This is quite a s.p.a.ce," I said, sweeping my arm around the area. There were sofas and several armchairs upholstered in black leather on a raised stone area before the fireplace and a dining table with chairs not far from the kitchen door off to one side. Otherwise, the remainder of the ground floor, a vast expanse of polished hardwood that gleamed, remained bare. "What do you use all this for?" I asked.

"Human sacrifice," he said, and laughed, making a sound devoid of humor. With a sharp glance, he went on. "I hear you have a very interesting tape from the late Professor Chard." We had stepped up onto the raised area, and he was indicating an armchair to one side of the fireplace.

I tried to dissemble any double take. "Diantha told you?"

"She says you call it quite...sensational."

"That's one way of putting it."

"Strange that you didn't mention it to me when I first asked you."

"The widow wants it kept private."

"Ah, yes, the widow." Mr. Bain pursed his wide mouth. His frown was nearly confiding. "I don't know quite how to put this delicately, Mr. de Ratour, but I believe that tape is my property." He turned and scarcely had to stoop to enter the fireplace, where he tended to the lighting of paper, kindling, and logs.

"On what grounds do you base that claim?" I asked as evenly as I could.

"As you know from Professor Brauer, the Green Sherpa funded most of that expedition."

"He told you he told me?"

"He did."

"In that case Professor Chard should have sent the tape to you. Yet he very clearly sent it to the museum."

"We had an understanding."

"In writing?"

"We are men of the world, Mr. de Ratour. We are gentlemen. We don't need lawyers to keep ourselves honest."

"Perhaps, but I'm afraid you'll have to discuss this with the museum counsel. I have given the family my word as a man of the world that the tape will be kept sealed in a vault for the next fifty years."

The fire now roaring dramatically behind him, as though he had stepped, a blond Lucifer, from the flames, Freddie Bain smiled grimly. "We will discuss this matter at a more appropriate time...Norman. You don't mind if I call you Norman?"

"Not at all." But I did in a way. The inner cringing that people like Mr. Bain provoke in me had reached my throat. I glanced around. To change the subject, I said, "You built this yourself?"

"I did. With an architect indulgent of my whims."

"Which are also many, I presume."

"They are."

"Your restaurant and gift shop must do well to be able to afford this kind of whimsy. Not to mention..." I left it hanging.

"Whimsy?" he repeated, perhaps offended. "Oh, I have many other...resources." He moved out over the coffee table across from me. "Would you like to try a cigar? From Havana."

"No, thanks. I never learned to enjoy tobacco."

"One of life's little pleasures." He toyed with a cigar but didn't light it.

"You seem to have a penchant for things Russian."

"I have a penchant for many things." He looked in the direction of Diantha, who was emerging from the kitchen in the company of a little old lady in head scarf and frumpy clothes, a veritable babushka. "Among them beautiful women."

"I would think Diantha worthy of more than a penchant."

He glanced at me anew, his mobile face - his mouth and the finely wrinkled flesh around his eyes - registering a realization and some faint amus.e.m.e.nt. "That is very well said."

Diantha came over with the tea and the babushka. "Nana's teaching me Russian," she said with a little laugh. "Spa.s.siba "Spa.s.siba, Nana."

The old woman smiled a gummy smile and retreated.

Diantha, whom I found to be disconcertingly at home, sat in the armchair across from me and poured tea. "Isn't this an amazing place," she more exclaimed than asked.

"I've never seen anything like it," I said honestly.

We made small talk. Mr. Bain, standing in front of the large, busy fire, was very much the man of the manor. He was definitely Diantha's point of reference, the recipient of her smiles and small attentions. It dismayed me that she could be so taken with him. His charm struck me as an elaborate pose, a kind of parody he put on for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. He smiled as he related, with a kind of mock homage, how he had visited the museum several times over the past year.

"I like primitive art because it is primitive," he said. "Its savagery has an honesty we have lost."

I nodded, but noncommittally.

Diantha said, "Dad thinks that all art forms have their own integrity."

With a knowing laugh, Mr. Bain said, "Except for that noise your friend Mr. Shakur makes."

What didn't he know already about Diantha and me? I wondered.

At intervals Mr. Bain's pocket phone would ring, and I found it curious that he usually hung up after a word or two in a foreign language that may have been Russian or German, then excused himself to use a regular phone. At one point a man with a head of shorn, pelt-like hair and wearing a hip-length leather jacket appeared near the entrance and beckoned to Mr. Bain to join him elsewhere in the building.

I suppose I am too scrupulous in these matters to have taken the opportunity to disparage Mr. Bain and his effects in his absence. I doubt Diantha would have listened anyway. She seemed utterly oblivious to any of the more indirect cues I offered her as to my real feelings about the man. And each time he returned, her eyes would brighten and she would hang on his every word.

As I was making motions to get up and go, Mr. Bain produced a bottle of expensive vodka and insisted I join them in a shot for good luck. That led to a second small gla.s.s, knocked back with ceremony. And while still capable of driving home, I was inveigled into staying for dinner. It didn't take much convincing, I'm afraid to say. The thought of returning to an empty house left me vulnerable. And I nursed a faint hope that Diantha might change her mind and return with me to Seaboard.

You may imagine my surprise when the babushka, answering the sound of a gong, went into the small foyer at the main door and returned with Celeste Tangent in tow.

I expected from the lab a.s.sistant a start of surprise, a frown, a look of alarm, even. But after she had finished a loud and elaborate exchange of greetings with her host, she turned to me with an irresistible charm of smiles, voice, and gesture. "Norman, how delightful to see you again."

"Miss Tangent," I said, inclining my head, standing my ground.

She gave a quick, toothsome laugh. "'Miss Tangent!' Oh, I love it. So full of restraint. Not that this place is a stranger to restraints. And, Di, princess!" She turned to Diantha. "How are you? You're so right about Norman. He is precious." Then to me again, her hand sweeping the vast room, her silver bracelets jingling. "Isn't this wild! Don't you love its..."