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“Then what did you do?”

“I returned to my office.”

“Do you have any proof of that?”

I thought for a moment. I had checked my e-mails but I had not answered any. Then I remembered our new security system. “I had to swipe my museum card to get in after hours …”

“Is there any way we can verify that time?”

“Indeed there is. The mechanism at the door is wired to a computer that records the card and time of any employee coming in or going out after hours.”

The lieutenant noticed my reaction. “That will help, Norman, but the time of death could have been before that.” He sighed. “I wish you had told me this earlier.”

I nodded an apology. “But you see, Lieutenant, when one is innocent, and I am innocent, these kinds of coincidences seem irrelevant.”

It took me a while to recover from this interview. If not a suspect, I had become a “person of interest” in the case. Had that been all, I might have been able to shake off the queasy feeling of having been less than frank with a trusted colleague. Sometimes a walk around the exhibits helps. Or a call to Diantha for a chat or to arrange lunch. Not this time. What a tangled web we weave and all that.

What I did do finally was make my way over to the Genetics Lab and the facility that houses the electron microscope. It has a verification capacity that the curators use from time to time for objects in the collections to ascertain their authenticity. The facility is impressive in its own way, with clean-room equipment and what seemed like, to me at any rate, an array of futuristic-looking devices. Of course, people of my generation tend to forget that what used to be the future has already arrived and in some cases gone hurtling by.

Perhaps I should have called first, but right then, in the wake of the lieutenant’s visit, I needed to do something, to act.

Robin Sylphan was not in, I was told by her assistant, a young woman with close-cropped hair and hostile, suspicious eyes.

“When do you expect her back?” I asked.

“Tomorrow. She’s taking a personal day.”

I was about to quip that I thought all days were personal days, but thought better of it. Instead, I said, “My name is Norman de Ratour. I’m the museum’s director …”

“Yes, I know.”

“I’m here about the work Ms.…”

“Doctor …”

“Doctor Sylphan is doing on coins from our collections.”

“You’ll have to speak to her directly about that.”

I did not have the moral stamina to persist. People think being director gives one power. But institutions like the Museum of Man comprise little fiefdoms defended in depth by thickets of procedures, precedents, and prerogatives. So I glanced around, gritted my teeth, and kept myself from speculating aloud about just how essential to the museum was this particular facility.

At the same time, I knew myself well enough to know that I was desperate to find any scrap of evidence, however tangential to the case, that I could give to Lieutenant Tracy. If only to appease him.

5

All things considered, I was not unreasonably happy when, in pajamas and slippers, steaming cup of coffee in hand, I went out into our bird-loud front garden to pick up the plastic-sheathed Bugle. It looked to be another jewel of a late-spring day. Not only that, but warmth, rain, and no doubt high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had conspired to produce a plush of green vegetation seldom seen before.

Diantha and I had just returned from two marvelous days together in Boston, where we had gone to visit some friends, attend a concert, and take in an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, a sterling place. We stayed at one of those small, boutique hotels where we took the honeymoon suite and indulged ourselves to sybaritic excess. Not that we both weren’t anxious to get back to Elsie, whom we left in the care of Millicent Mulally from Sign House and Bella, her nanny.

My not unreasonable happiness dissolved into a nasty chagrin when, in the silent kitchen, I unfolded the paper to read the headline, “Museum Collection of Rare Coins Found to Be Fakes.”

My heart did not skip a beat so much as suffer