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“Marvelous,” I said. “It’s starting to look like something out of a book.”

He laughed. “Someone should do a book on that.”

“On what?”

“On the entertainment value of murder. Where would we be without it?”

Tall and clerical in an offhand way, Father S.J. O’Gould, S.J., whose Paragon of Animals continues to create a stir, asked when we would have another meeting of The Group. Along with the Reverend Alfie Lopes, Izzy, Professor Thad Pilty, Corny Chard, and one or two others, we hold a dinner about once a month to go over issues of some weight.

Corny Chard sported a new leg he claims is better than the original. He also has a prosthetic arm and hand he manipulates most wonderfully. Corny, of course, made news a couple of years ago when he survived partial dismemberment at the hands of cannibals whose rituals he had gone to observe in a remote part of the Amazon basin.

He remains as cocky as ever with a grizzled short beard beneath his red face and balding, close-cropped skull. His best-selling account, A Leg to Stand On, has formed the basis of a two-hour television documentary, the public opening of which Diantha and I have been invited to here in Seaboard.

Ariel Dearth, the Leona von Beaut Professor of Situational Ethics and Litigation Development, sat there like a man with better things to do. He has been so successful in being universally despised, I sometimes wonder if I should pretend to like him, if only to disconcert him.

He was flanked by Professor Randall Athol of the Divinity School, a staunch ally of Professor Brattle in whatever foolishness she indulges in. He is of the same stripe as Professor J.J. McNull, who, with no books or original research to his name, has made a very successful career out of committee work.

One pleasant surprise at the meeting was the transformation of Bertha Schanke. Now civilly united to the woman she had been living with for some time, she is no longer an active member of BITCH, a coalition of complainers, as someone put it, and is obviously pregnant. She has also lost weight and has let her rich brown hair grow out. She greeted me warmly as “Norman,” and said it was good to see me after such a long absence on my part.

Professor Constance Brattle, the well-known expert on blame and chair of the committee, introduced Professor Laluna Jackson, chair of Wainscott’s recently established Victim Studies Department, as a new member of the committee.

Professor Jackson stood for a moment and said she was honored to be joining the committee, “whose work I have found both stimulating and necessary in an age when so many vulnerable groups continue to suffer the agonies of victimization.”

I was very taken with her voice. Its locutions were those commonly associated with people of African American descent. And, despite a decided if strangely dark tinge to her complexion and her hair done in what are called cornrows, she could have passed for Caucasian quite easily. Not that these things matter much anymore.

Chair Brattle shuffled some papers in front of her, furrowed her brow in an accusatory frown, and said, “It seems that the sad spectacle of murder has once again turned the spotlight of sensationalism on the Museum of Man. I realize that, until the murderer is brought to justice, no specific blame can be assigned for this criminal act.

“But the community in general and the museum in particular cannot escape the aura of what is called diffuse blame. What we need to question about the museum is its genius loci. What, in short, makes it such a place of murder? What is it that makes it so conducive to such crime? More to the point, what are our responsibilities as those in leadership roles in creating a venue amenable to more normative behavior?”

“Are you saying that Heinie Grümh’s murder was the fault of the museum?” Izzy Landes asked.

Despite the scattering of smiles, the oblivious chair took his question seriously. “No. I wouldn’t go that far. But I am saying that what has happened at the Museum of Man is of overweening concern to this committee, enough so