The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [12]
Where I may have failed, I’m afraid, is in my attempts to render for the reader the subtle glory of the treasures we have so carefully collected, curated, and put on display. As of old, when I leave in the evenings, I descend through the galleries that encircle and open onto the atrium, which is lit from above during the day by a domed skylight, a web of wrought-iron tracery worthy of Kew. From the delicate potteries, jade work, and silks of the Far East, to the masks and figurines in our Africa display, from the glories of our Oceanic Collection to case after fabulous case of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art, I find affirmation that, in our instinct for the beautiful, in our very need for beauty, we partake of the Godhead, that we are not merely creatures, but creators.
Of course it was these kinds of effusions that Ms. Myrtlebaum at the Press kept putting her pencil through. Politely, of course, and with what sounded like good reason. But I do wish I had insisted on one unfettered declaration from the heart, whatever the risk of mawkishness, if only to lighten the darkness that pervades so much of life.
5
Elsbeth is not well. I fussed about this morning, making her breakfast, pampering her, trying to relieve an awful anxiety until she shoved me out the house, telling me I had more important things to do.
Though late in leaving, I walked to work through Thornton Arboretum as has been my custom for decades now. I walked at a pace brisk enough to do my heart and lungs some good. It takes nearly half an hour. Descending Bridge Street, I turn left through the Oakdale section, formerly a patchy area of rundown redbrick housing that has undergone a dramatic revival. Gentrified, I believe, is the appropriate term of opprobrium for such improvements. Then, after crossing at the lights on Merchants Row, I ascend through an area of well-lawned affluence to the granite gates of the arboretum.
I have never cared much for the gaudy death bloom of our northeastern autumns. I prefer the aftermath, the subtleties of yellows, golds, and browns, the baring branches, the crunch underfoot, the rustle of wind, the smell of sweet decay. The world was thus this morning, with the sky a forbidding gray rendering the agitated waters of Kettle Pond a dull pewter.
A like agitation stirred my own heart as I walked along, as though more in haste than with the purposeful stride of the health-conscious. The geese paddled the cold water, the crows flew against the palled sky, and the jays called, sounding like augurs of disaster. The very trees, my old friends, might have been watching me, mute, as though in warning. My pulse quickened as I crossed the Lagoon Bridge and saw the museum, its five stories of elegant brick with neo-Gothic and neo-Grecian flourishes, rising into view behind the browning sycamores that line Belmont Avenue. Was that beautiful structure, designed by Hannibal Richards, “the Bernini of Seaboard,” harboring another brood of murderers?
Of course, if there is a criminal conspiracy, it’s no doubt festering in the Genetics Lab, housed in the bastardized wing that, added later, squats to the left. To the right, appropriately enough, is the new Center for Criminal Justice, all glass and beige bricks, another monument to architectural hubris.
All of this foreboding, of course, is nothing next and no doubt related to the dread that now shadows my life. I am worried sick about poor Elsbeth. We will have the results of her tests the day after tomorrow, and I fear the worst. She has all but stopped eating. Her face is drawn and pale. Her eyes still shine, but it is only her essential goodness showing through. Today, at the first meeting of the Curatorial Ball planning committee, I had an awful premonition that she would not be with us. I shook the notion immediately, of course. She may simply have one of those