• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

They conferred momentarily. Then they all shook my hand and left.

But I was in a royal snit about the incident as I tried to sort through the coming year’s curatorial budgets. Why does everyone always want more? More staff. More stuff. More space. More gadgets. More discretionary spending. Why do people think that the idea of an expanding universe applies to us? Not to mention the philistine notion that more is better.

All of which is piffling next to the documentary proof that L. Jackson has designs — in both senses of the word — on the Museum of Man. It’s monstrous. Or do I detect the meaty hands of Malachy Morin, playing one of his games? He’s not above that. Probing. Testing. Disrupting. Not that he doesn’t have to be careful. Izzy informs me he’s on the short list to replace George Twill as president of Wainscott, as incredible as that sounds.

Well, two can play this game. I’ll have copies made of this req form to go along with an account of the incident to show the Board of Governors. And I’ll give a copy to Felix and let him sleuth out the particulars.

On top of all this, I have marital woes. Diantha is scarcely speaking to me. It seems Max Shofar is angry with Merissa for telling Di about what their plans may or may not have been regarding Heinie. So Merissa is on the outs with Di and Di is miffed at me.

Nor has Diantha been amenable to any explanations I have proffered. She doesn’t grasp that I have been charged with a serious crime and that I am out on bail, which means I can be sent back to jail on the flimsiest pretext. Moreover, if I cannot clear my name, everything I have worked for will be for naught. Instead, she talks about “my friend” Merissa and how I betrayed her trust. How a woman can go from devastating disparagement of someone one minute to being her soul mate the next is something I will never understand.

Of course having an ape living in the house has not helped. And when I told her, in a moment of unwise candor, about the broken vase, she hit the ceiling. But what can I do in all honor? If she knew Alphus as Alphus, if she had a chance to sit down and sign with him over a cup of coffee, she would realize that he is a sapient, feeling, trustworthy being who would not knowingly hurt a soul.

But distance makes anything like reconciliation very difficult. And during times of stress, the disparity in our ages starts to show. Even when she’s here she lives in another cultural zone. When I glance at the covers of People magazine and other such publications left hanging around, I swear I do not have a clue as to who any of those celebrities are. Nor have I the least interest in their mismarriages or dining disorders.

I am also bored witless by the television crime dramas Di likes to watch. You would think that a real-life detective, as I consider myself, would enjoy such things. Not in the least. All I see are actors doing a lot of meaningful staring at one another as they talk half cryptically in the latest police jargon. How any reasonably intelligent person — and Di is far more than reasonably intelligent — can watch that stuff for more than a minute or two staggers my credulity. How, these days, can one not be a snob?

But I digress. Which is what I’m prone to when I’m in a quandary. I have in hand a letter that came in a sealed envelope to the mailroom with nothing more than my name on it. Inside, neatly typed (with printers, everything these days is neatly typed), I found the following letter. I will let it speak for itself.

Mr. Ratour:

I am writing to you in regards to the murder of H. v. Grumh. I’m afraid I must do so anonymously as what I have to say may have liability.

I know that you know that Professor Colin Saunders had a long and bad relationship with v. Grumh. Their antagonism began with Pr. Saunders being appointed to the Groome Chair. Recent events have made their relationship worse. Of course I am talking about the Dresden stater. Pr. Saunders had wanted to acquire the coin for Wainscott University’s Frock Museum. He is a wealthy man. He started the campaign “To