The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [30]
The very success of the documentary screening revived and exacerbated my problems. That is, I remained very much in a damage-control mode, on the phone mostly with reporters, patrons, and members of the governing board both about the coin forgery and my own legal predicament. I began to envy George Twill his impending retirement as president of Wainscott.
In the midst of this, two members of the Seaboard Police Department, both of whom I know very well, showed up unannounced at my office door. The lieutenant sat down wearily. He had Sergeant Lemure with him, never a good sign. The sergeant closed the door. An even worse sign. No coffee, thank you. The worst possible sign.
“We’ve got a real problem, Norman,” Lieutenant Tracy began.
The sergeant fixed me with his tough-cop stare. “Actually, Professor, you’ve got a real problem.”
I looked from one to the other and kept silent.
The lieutenant leaned toward me. “The ballistics on the bullet removed from von Grümh’s brain match the ballistics on the bullets that killed Freddie Bain.”
“You mean …?”
“I mean they came from your Smith and Wesson.”
I shook my head, reassured. “That’s impossible. My gun’s at home locked in a trunk. It hasn’t been fired in more than a year. When I took it out to the cottage. You know, to keep it functioning.”
“We’ll need to take a look at it,” Lieutenant Tracy said equably.
With something akin to alacrity, I drove with the two officers to my house, which is a rather quaint Federalist affair with Greek Revival touches and a Victorian turret toward the back. I called ahead to let Diantha know we were coming, but she wasn’t at home. It mattered little. There’s a fudge factor in ballistics as in any technical procedure calling for human judgment.
Decker growled when we came through the front door, but only at Sergeant Lemure, who looked ready to draw and use his gun. After quieting the dog and putting him in the kitchen, I led the police officers to the attic, where I have my study. I took the key from the hiding place in the top drawer of the antique desk that had once been my father’s and used it to open the lid of the sturdy oak chest where, among other things, I keep the Smith & Wesson, its holster, and extra ammunition.
My misgivings began as I worked the old lock, twisting the key the way it should go, but locking the chest rather than unlocking it. Puzzled, I reversed the key to counterclockwise and felt the mechanism, which did need oiling, switch again, this time to open. Still, I confidently expected to find the weapon and its accoutrements in a lacquered box that fit snugly into one end of the chest.
Alas, the box was empty except for some bullets. With frantic incredulity, I rummaged through the rest of the chest’s contents, mostly family memorabilia, Bibles, documents, framed photographs, several batches of letters, and an old passport I had been looking for.
“I think we need to go downtown,” the sergeant said ominously. He meant police headquarters, even though they had been moved out to the bypass several years ago.
We came back down the two flights of stairs and I was overwhelmed by an impending sense of disaster, which rendered me weak in the knees and in my heart, which felt as though it had stopped beating.
At that moment, Diantha and Elsie came through the door, the former carrying a bag of groceries, the latter running toward me, signing ecstatically something about Momma getting frozen pops. Behind the kitchen door Decker barked.
I picked the little one up and held her close to me, as though it were she and not I who was in jeopardy.
“Diantha,” I said, before greetings or explanations were offered, “do you know what happened to my revolver?”
Had she dropped the bag of groceries, it would have been utterly congruent with the expression of surprise, guilt, and an ineffectual attempt to dissemble both that brought color to