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The light went on very brightly. I sat forward. “You’re a dear,” I said. I leaned over to give her a little kiss. “You’re a very smart dear. And now I must go to bed before I have another one of these and make a fool of myself.”

Diantha stood up with me and gave me a real kiss. “I’ll never think of you as a fool, Norman.”

But of course I am a fool, an utter, low fool. The very next morning I watched her as she left the upstairs bathroom with a small towel draped so haphazardly over herself that I could not but help seeing her naked form in its every robust detail. My breathing all but stopped. I suppose she doesn’t realize what this does to me. I am not one of those casual males where displays of this kind are concerned. As someone once said, the beauty of women makes good men suffer. Not that I count myself good. Because I find myself utterly infatuated. Can one love two women at once? Can one love a mother and daughter simultaneously, love them like a man loves a woman?

We came back on Saturday to find that Amanda Feeney-Morin had done a long “think” piece in the Bugle, dredging up the Bert-Betti and Ossmann-Woodley cases, linking them together, of course, rehashing the details with insinuating, subtle invective, and speculating about the management of the Museum of Man, “which has resisted efforts by the university to provide modern institutional leadership.” She then quoted President Twill of Wainscott to the effect that he has “ongoing concerns with the policy directions underway at present in the Museum of MOM [sic].” The man doesn’t even know what we’re called.

I have written to Don Patcher asking him to assign a more unbiased reporter to cover the university and the museum. I pointed out to him that Ms. Feeney is married to Mr. Morin and is doing nothing more than serving as a mouthpiece for Wainscott in its continuing attempt to take us over. As it stands, I wrote, you might as well put Malachy Morin’s byline next to hers. I don’t know whether that will do any good or not, but it is right and proper to respond to these matters.

25

Well, Lieutenant Tracy and I have taken the bulls by the horns, so to speak, and confronted Dr. Penrood and Celeste Tangent about their relations with Professor Ossmann.

In turns out that Ms. Tangent’s possible involvement takes on added significance in the light of certain aspects of her background. Indeed, the lieutenant’s briefing on the matter provoked in me a heuristic arousal bordering on the unseemly. According to his sources in New York, both of the establishments mentioned prominently in her CV — the Caucasian Escort Service and the Crazy Russian — were controlled or owned through dummy corporations by one Moshe ben Rovich, a leading figure in the Russian-Jewish mob in Brooklyn with connections to Tel Aviv and Moscow. A leading figure, that is, until he crossed Victor “Dead Meat” Karnivorsky and disappeared a couple of years ago.

The lieutenant and I discussed strategy at some length. We decided to try to “break” Penrood first, using tactics somewhat less than gentlemanly. To that end, I put in a call to Dr. Penrood first thing yesterday morning, saying that I needed to see him in the Twitchell Room on a matter of some urgency. He said he could spare some time around eleven. I said that would be fine.

Penrood’s evident if subtle English annoyance turned to a decided wariness upon his arrival at the Twitchell Room, where I introduced him to Lieutenant Tracy. I said the meeting was part of our investigation of the Ossmann-Woodley case. We needed him to look at some video footage. The play’s the thing and all that.

So after I had closed and locked the door and turned down the shades, we watched for several minutes in silence Professor Ossmann and two other persons in sexual congress. There was enough light for me to notice that Dr. Penrood’s complexion went from considerable color to a decided pallor and back again.

When the tape ended, I turned the lights back on. Lieutenant Tracy