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Speaking of which, I cannot, in the wake of Lieutenant Tracy’s visit yesterday, get out of my mind the unseemly deaths of Humberto Ossmann and Clematis Woodley. I have a feeling my good friend knows something about that bizarre tragedy that he’s not telling me. Elsbeth and I were away at the time of the deaths, staying with a friend of hers in Boston and visiting museums. As a result, I didn’t get back until well after the crime scene, if that’s what it was, had been restored to some semblance of normality.

I also missed, according to Doreen, a veritable plague of grief counselors who descended on the museum telling people not to hold back their feelings. Doreen, who has the sturdy good looks of a backcountry girl, said one of the group, a student from the Divinity School, came by several times and left his card. When she finally told the young man that she had never met either of the victims and hadn’t really given them much thought, his disappointment was such that she had to spend time consoling him. And, apparently, one thing led to another.

The good lieutenant called again this morning and wondered aloud if it would not be a good idea for me to try to contact Worried. He is the anonymous tipster who works in the Genetics Lab and proved instrumental in solving the Cannibal Murders. I told the lieutenant I would put out an e-mail to all in-house addresses, asking “Worried” to please contact me when he gets a chance. Worried may be able to tell me something relevant about what that collection of wily eggheads are concocting over in the lab.

But Woodley and Ossmann. I am perfectly willing to consider the possibility that they were murdered or, in one way or another, murdered each other. But how? Murder requires an instrument. But what? Some elisir d’amore? Are they brewing up some magic love potion over there in the lab? It seems too cartoonishly Larsonesque to imagine them sipping some philter from a dripping retort and then transmogrifying into sexual monsters. But stranger things have happened.

As I am Director of the museum, of which the Genetics Lab remains an integral part, one might suppose that I could simply walk in there and demand to know what’s going on. Ah, the illusion of power. People tell you either what they want you to know or what they think you want to hear. The truth? Another of those illusions by which we live. I don’t know. But if murder has been done, the truth must out if justice is to prevail.

Which reminds me, I received a call today from Malachy “Stormin’ ” Morin, “the lead blocker of the consolidation team,” as he calls himself. He asked to schedule a meeting between me and “the big-money guys” in Wainscott’s development office. Mr. Morin and other worthies in the Wainscott bureaucracy persist in the fiction that “the consolidation process” is actually happening.

Mr. Morin, who ought to be languishing in jail for the grotesque way he caused the death of young Elsa Pringle, fancies himself my boss. He has somehow managed to insinuate his blustering persona and considerable bulk — he’s six feet, six inches and four-hundred-odd pounds — into the Wainscott hierarchy as Vice President for Affiliated Institutions. I have to keep reminding him that the MOM is affiliated with the university strictly on its own terms and that he has absolutely no authority concerning our affairs. But for the sake of good relations, I did agree in principle to meet with “the big-money guys,” telling him I would get back to him.

On a more positive note, I have received word from Corny Chard. It came by way of a telegram, the diction of which made me think of the old days. (You might call it telegramese, a dying literary convention.)

NORMAN

HAVE REACHED HEADWATERS OF RIO SANGRE STOP LOGGING AND UNREST EVIDENT STOP HAVE SET UP BASE CAMP STOP WILL PROCEED WITH MINIMAL CREW TO YOMAMA AREA STOP BEST TO EVERYONE STOP

CORNY

On an even brighter note, I have been invited to attend the inaugural Cranston Fessing Memorial Lecture that my good friend Father S.J. O’Gould, S.J., is to give in November.