• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I related in some detail how they could not change the clause without the unanimous consent of the Board of Regents — which, by charter, has to include three faculty members, one of whom reliably objects.

“How does all this connect with Ossmann?”

“It doesn’t really,” I continued, “except to provide the context for Ossmann’s activities in the lab.”

“Activities?”

“He was something of a troublemaker. He liked to object, to talk a lot about issues. He liked to speak to the press.”

“But enough so that someone would want him out of the way?”

“Perhaps. I mean, if he was about to blow the whistle on some shady dealings or some off-the-books research. Of course I may be mistaken. I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I feel like I’m offering you little more than wretched stalks.”

The lieutenant smiled and rose to go. We shook hands. “That’s all any of us are doing right now, Norman, clutching at straws. But if you hear anything …”

“Of course,” I said. “We will stay in touch.”

I finished my coffee alone. The lieutenant’s visit reminded me anew that the unfortunate deaths of these two people, both estimable in his and her own way, have cast another shadow over the Museum of Man. While both were on the faculty of Wainscott University, they were, as biochemists, under contract to the institute directly and to the Genetics Lab indirectly. The shadow is real, darkened by the press, which has hounded me daily, all but accusing the museum of perpetrating a cover-up.

Indeed, the university’s Oversight Committee, a claque of inquisitorial busybodies, has requested “in the strongest terms” that I attend a meeting to discuss “its concern with the unseemly recent events in the Genetics Lab.” I have responded to Constance Brattle, who still presides over the committee, reminding her that I have myself (for my own good reasons) remained an ex officio member. I said I would acquiesce to her request but only if it was clearly understood that where the museum was concerned, the committee’s involvement must remain purely advisory. I also stipulated that the press was to be excluded and all statements kept privileged. I reminded her that, as Director of the Museum of Man, I was as concerned as she in maintaining the high repute of both the university and the museum.

Strange how, when you start to worry about one thing, it leads you to worry about something else. For instance, no one has heard for some time from Cornelius Chard. Corny, the Packer Professor of Primitive Ethnology in the Wainscott Anthropology Department, inveigled the museum into underwriting some portion of his expedition to the Yomamas. It’s a venture I tried to talk him out of. There’s been considerable unrest in the area, apparently because of logging operations.

The Yomamas are a small tribe who inhabit an all-but-inaccessible plateau astride the Rio Sangre, one of the more remote tributaries of the Amazon. The tribe, according to Corny, are the last “untouched” group of hunter-gatherers left on earth. He also contends that they are the last people in the world actively practicing cannibalism. He has gone virtually alone to witness, as he puts it, the actual thing. He says he wants to refute once and for all what he calls, in questionable taste, “the cannibalism deniers.”

Where he raised the majority of his funding, I don’t know. It’s one of those mysteries. He claims it’s a perfectly legitimate source that will in no way taint the objectivity of his research. His very protest makes me wonder. I do know he associates with some strange people.

Through Elsbeth, who goes way back with Jocelyn, Corny’s wife, I have gotten to know the man better, perhaps, than I might have wanted to. He’s an advocate of anthropophagy and author of The Cannibal Within, among other works. I never go to dinner at their home without wondering what, exactly, it is we’re eating.

I believe Corny organized his Rio Sangre expedition because, though he won’t admit it, he’s envious of all the publicity Raul Brauer has been getting for his book A Taste