Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
In which two mysterious deaths are described in, ahem, detail and it's assumed that the victims were not engaged in premeditated sex.
Jun 25, 2001 | Editor's note: Salon is pleased to present Alfred Alcorn's highly entertaining new mystery novel, "The Love Potion Murders (in the Museum of Man)." The story, both funny and thought-provoking, is appearing in People throughout the summer, with a new installment running every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
"The Love Potion Murders," a classic whodunit, begins as a killer aphrodisiac has taken the lives of two researchers in the Genetics Lab of the Museum of Man. Norman de Ratour, director of the museum, is desperate to solve the case and he works with Lieutenant Tracy of the Seaboard Police to unravel a scheme by a rogue outcast of organized crime to steal the deadly potion. The story takes Alcorn's protagonist to the bleak edge of the human heart, where evil and comedy conjoin, where nihilism holds sway, and brings him face to face with a fiendish villain -- and with the darkness inside all of us.
The first week of "The Love Potion Murders" -- Chapters 1, 2 and 3 -- is available to all Salon readers. Beginning the second week -- with Chapter 4 -- the novel is available exclusively to Salon Premium subscribers.
It is early evening. The light fades over the Hayes Mountains, and from my high windows I can see the first flares of autumn touching with scarlet and orange the rolling, mist-tendrilled foothills, now in shadow. And though I would rather linger here and welcome the darkness in a Keatsian drowse of sweet melancholia, I feel compelled once more to trouble these pages of the Log of the Museum of Man with separate and personal entries.
I say pages only figuratively, of course, as I am seated at my computer, creating words or the ghosts of words on the screen before me. Still, I am reluctant to serve as amanuensis to a nightmare. I do not wish to prompt iniquity with words, however real or spectral they may be. But write I must, because yet again I have a presentiment of evil uncoiling itself in the womb of this ancient institution.
Let me start with this morning. Just as Darlene was heading down to the cafeteria for our coffees (it was her turn), Lieutenant Tracy of the Seaboard Police Department brightened the doorway of my fifth-floor domain. Dapper as ever in charcoal suit, off-white Oxford shirt, and tie in the plaid of the McTaggarts, the officer reminded me that he took his coffee black. The amenities of small talk attended to, the door closed, the detective got down to business.
The Love Potion Murders (in the Museum of Man) appears in People every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The Love Potion Murders table of contents -- with links to all chapters to date.
"I'm here to see you, Norman, about the Ossmann-Woodley case." His tone indicated that he spoke off the record.
"Ossmann-Woodley," I repeated with a sigh, not entirely surprised. "I was under the impression, Richard, that the matter was too riddled with imponderables to even begin an investigation. It's a most unusual case, I know, and not a little embarrassing for the University, not to mention our own Museum, given Professor Ossmann's affiliation."
Thanks to the tabloids and those television programs devoted to the tawdry and the sensational (for which my dear wife Elsbeth has a decided weakness), much of the world knows that, some weeks ago, Professor Humberto Ossmann and Dr. Clematis Woodley, a post-doctoral student, were found dead quite literally in one another's arms, indeed, in an unequivocally amorous embrace.
Foul play, other than double adultery -- they were both married -- has not been ruled out given the circumstances of the corpus delicti. For instance, they were found by one of the security guards, not in some comfortable bed or even on the divan available in a nearby office, but on the floor of one of the laboratories. There, judging from the disorder -- an overturned chair, some smashed pipettes, and a terrified white rat running around loose -- their lovemaking had been spontaneous and energetic if not violent. Rape does not appear to have been involved inasmuch as Professor Ossmann was a smallish man, a good two inches shorter and twenty-five pounds lighter than the formidable Dr. Woodley, who played rugby for Brown, albeit on the women's team. Moreover, neither participant had disrobed in a manner suggesting what might be called premeditated sex. Professor Ossmann's trousers and boxer shorts were down around his ankles, and Dr. Woodley's panties and pantyhose had been clawed off, but by herself, not Professor Ossmann, judging from the fragments of matching material found under her fingernails.
Finally, both victims, if that's what they are, entertained a deep and abiding antipathy for each other. Professor Ossmann had blocked Dr. Woodley's appointment to a tenure-track position as associate professor a year or so back. Dr. Woodley for her part had taken to calling Professor Ossmann "Pip" to his face, "Pip-squeak" being the nickname colleagues used behind his back.
I know the case in considerable detail, not only from the lurid and often inaccurate coverage in the Seaboard Bugle, but from briefings I arranged between the SPD and important University officials in an attempt to keep the rumor mills from working overtime.
The postmortems, done by the venerable Dr. P.M. Cutler, have provided only preliminary findings. The Medical Examiner reported gross inflammation of the genitals of both parties, who otherwise presented no signs of trauma or assault. Professor Ossmann succumbed to a coronary thrombosis while Dr. Woodley died of massive systemic failure when her blood, apparently, simply stopped circulating. Curiously enough, according to Dr. Cutler, despite prolonged sexual activity, no evidence of ejaculate was found. Whether Dr. Woodley experienced a physiological orgasm could not be determined with any certainty. Assays on blood chemistry, other bodily fluids, stomach contents, and organs are presently being conducted and should tell us a lot more as to what happened on that Friday night in early September when the Lab was deserted except for those two.
Sergeant Lemure, Lieutenant Tracy's blunt-spoken deputy, put the matter in words of a characteristic crudity, which I will refrain from repeating here.
One of the psychiatrists in the University's health services opined how a mutual loathing may have driven the pair to a violent mutual rape in which, expressing their deepest cravings and fears, they were murdering with sex each other's corresponding parent, Dr. Woodley her father, and Professor Ossmann his mother. This observation was duly entered into the official police report.
The Lieutenant regarded me closely. "Officially, Norman, it is a low-priority case because we cannot determine whether it's a murder, an accident, or some kind of bizarre suicide pact. But something about this case reeks."
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