The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [69]
He turned surly. “There are procedures …”
“We are no longer part of the university in that way, Alger. Appeal all you want to Human Resources, it won’t do you any good. In fact I’m looking for a good excuse to get rid of Maria Cowe and her inefficient staff.”
“The Long Piggers have been using the room.”
“You mean they never stopped using the room.”
“Right.”
“Who are the members?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“You don’t really expect me to believe that.”
“I don’t know most of the new members. Everyone has a code name. I don’t know who they are. I don’t really care.”
“Who does have the names?”
“Brauer. And Corny did.”
I believed him if only because I could tell from his air of defeat, which was more pronounced than usual, that he didn’t care enough to lie. He left, agreeing to clean out the room and start using it for storing skulls.
Word of Corny’s demise has spread far and wide. I have arranged for the Chards’ family attorney and an officer of the Middling County Probate Court to witness the tape. I can only hope they don’t start telling others about it afterward.
24
It’s evening and we are back from a couple of days out at the cottage. Elsbeth, weak and frail as she is, asked several times to spend Thanksgiving at the lake. I remonstrated with her, saying what if something happened? What if there was an emergency?
She smiled and took my hand. “Norman, dear, it’s already happened. I’m beyond emergencies.”
“But …”
“What’s the worst that could happen? That I die out there. I’d love to die out there.” She laughed her wonderful laugh, even if it were only a slight echo of itself. “You could build a bonfire on the lakeshore and cremate me right there like they did Byron. And then have an orgy.”
It turned out to be, despite everything, a wonderful time, of the kind that haunts you afterward. We all knew, of course, that this would be the last time Elsbeth would make the journey, taking the same roads, the same turns, winding our way through the needle-carpeted evergreen forest until we come to the fork in the road that I always used to miss. I think we fear death because we think we will miss all the things we do again and again in life.
It hasn’t changed much over the years. We’ve cleared back the hemlock saplings encroaching on the drive that leads to the cottage. We’ve had the rotting sills replaced, a new well dug, and some new wiring installed. But otherwise it’s not a lot different than it used to be all those years ago. We packed an extra space heater, because Elsbeth does suffer from the cold.
Upon arrival, I plugged in an electric blanket for Elsbeth on the wicker sofa in front of the fireplace. I lit the fire while Diantha started the turkey breast in the oven. She said it looked like something that had been given thalidomide, what with the stumps where the legs had been. But we had all the fixings — stuffing, cranberry sauce, creamed onions, gravy and mashed potatoes, three kinds of squash, a decent white wine, and pumpkin pie. We toasted our lives and we said a prayer of thanks and asked that Korky be returned safe and sound to us.
While there was still light, Diantha and I took a walk along the lakeshore to the pines on the point that reaches like a widow’s peak into the mirroring water. Why, I wondered, is there consolation in the beauty of dying nature? All around, the light of the setting sun touched to gold the browns and yellows of the trees, shrubs, and withered grass. I could hear the blue jays of my youth and the chiding of chickadees. I wanted to weep out of sheer poignancy.
Perhaps sensing my mood, Diantha looped her arm in mine, as though to remind me that life goes on. Her gesture both deepened and sweetened my melancholia, because it was exactly the way, over the past couple of years, Elsbeth and I had walked