The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [0]
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Alcorn, Alfred.
The counterfeit murder in the Museum of Man : a Norman de Ratour mystery / Alfred Alcorn.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58195-238-4
1. Museum curators — Crimes against — Fiction. 2. Museums — Fiction. 3. Murder — Investigation — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.L29C68 2010
813′.54–DC22
2010006856
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.1
For Margaret and in memory of Bill
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
1
It struck me as strange the way the car had been left there, not quite aligned on the rough road separating the museum’s parking lot from that of the Center for Criminal Justice. It looked like it had come to a stop rather than having been stopped. And while I usually mind my own business in such matters, I went over with Decker, our black retriever, to investigate.
The closer I approached the vehicle, the more I sensed something amiss. It might have been Decker, straining at the leash and making those low whines that from a dog sound so articulate. The car itself, oddly familiar to me, didn’t quite fit the scene. It was a sleek late-model maroon Jaguar, so polished that I could clearly see in its brilliant surface the reflection of my own tall figure and that of the straining dog. Indeed, as I drew closer, I could discern the features of my face, my thinning hair a bit mussed, my pale eyes quizzical above the rather too prominent nose, my mouth resigned to apologize for intruding on, say, some vehicular lovemaking.
I remember it all in vivid detail — the crunch of gravel underfoot, the midmorning, early-May air moist and bright, the breeze just strong enough to be chilling, the mottled forms of the scattered maples in the chartreuse effusion of their leafing sliding up the mirroring window as I moved closer. I remember especially my own audible gasp of incredulity as the glass of the car shifted from reflective to transparent and I looked in at the body of a middle-aged man slumped over the wheel, a patch of dried blood on his prominent temple where the bullet had gone in. From the swept-back iron-gray hair and from the strong jaw, I recognized the still-impressive form of Heinrich von Grümh.
Shading my eyes, I peered around the front seat area but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. I resisted an impulse to open the car door, to reach in and try to render assistance. Because I was sure he was beyond help from the utter stillness of his body, from the bemused stare of the opened eyes, and from that sense of how each dead person holds inviolate within the mystery of life.
I backed away, talking to Decker. “Come on, boy. We need to call Lieutenant Tracy.”
And so, with a sharp sense of urgency, with a world-weary sigh, and with a quickening of the blood as the hunt begins, I opened the mental notebook I keep ready and began to take notes, to begin, however unofficially, an investigation into another apparent murder here at the Museum of Man.
To be frank, as director of the museum, one of my first concerns, ignoble as it may sound, was for the adverse publicity a murder on the premises would engender. Strictly speaking the murder of Heinrich “Heinie” von Grümh did not occur on museum property, but in an area between the two parking lots, a kind of access right-of-way