The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [6]
Speaking of dinner, our evening at the Green Sherpa was not a success. The proprietor, a strange fellow named Bain, fawned all over us, especially when he noticed Korky Kummerbund tucking in his napkin. Korky took it all in good grace, politely refusing to let Mr. Bain, who managed to appear both obsequious and threatening, pick up the tab. Korky did allow one special dish “on the house” to be sent over. Still, it was disconcerting to have Bain, a big blond fellow in a tunic-like outfit who spoke British English with a foreign accent, hovering over us through half the meal.
I had some sort of pummeled goat while Elsbeth, always game, had what looked like the remains of a rodent. She hasn’t felt well ever since. Indeed, I’m beginning to worry about her. So it was with some relish that I read Korky’s review of the place in today’s Bugle. He concluded a quite thorough savaging of the food with, and I quote: “Despite its elevated ambitions, the Green Sherpa serves up little more than a pastiche of yak-whey chic and tortured potatoes in a mushy chinoiserie cuisine that induces the gastric equivalent of altitude sickness.”
But Elsbeth. I’m afraid my love is starting to show her age. Although still full-bodied with abundant dark hair (thanks to chemicals, of course), fresh coloring, and brilliant agate eyes, the ravages of time have not left her untouched. There’s a stoop to her now, a fine wrinkling about the eyes, the slightest tremor in her hands. I should talk. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth myself and a bit stringy, as tall ones are wont to do. But I’ve kept a good deal of my perpetually thinning hair and am at least not a candidate for a shaved head. So many men look like convicts these days. And I will not go into the unspeakable puncturing that young people do to their various bodily parts.
Oh, well, just like the old days, I’m off on my own to the Club tonight. Elsbeth assures me that, though not up to going out, she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Still, I do worry about the dear girl.
3
Dear Mr. Ratour,
I got your message loud and clear. Maybe I should have told you this sooner, but nobody around here, not on the maintenance crews, anyway, thought that the Ossmann-Woodley thing was suspicious. I mean the researcher types get up to all kinds of things you wouldn’t believe. Back in August one of the security guys was going over a tape from a camera no one knows about and he found footage of one of the research assistants, a really good-looking babe, doing two guys at once. Anyway, he modified it and put it out on the Internet as one of those things you can e-mail to people. Home movies stuff if you know what I mean. You can click on the icon down below and watch it yourself though I don’t think it’s evidence of anything. Anyway, everyone around here just thought the two professors [sic] that died got carried away and you know shit happens. But now that the newspapers are saying it’s under investigation and all that stuff, I maybe ought to tell you that about a week before it happened, I heard Professor Ossmann arguing with another researcher. Ossmann kept saying things like the core discovery is mine and you know it. The other guy who sounded like he was from Minnesota kept answering something about how he figured out the experimentation and without that they wouldn’t be where they were. Dr. Penrood, he’s the English guy who complains about tea bags all the time, tried to act like the referee. I don’t understand him that well because he sounds like he’s talking through his nose but he kept saying something about it being a team effort. But I don’t know what they were talking about. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.
Worried
I confess it was at the expense of some qualms that I clicked on the icon and watched the nearly ten minutes of indistinct but quite graphic video footage that unrolled on my screen. I scrupled